Unauthorized Action

On 19 August 1942, a mainly Canadian force that had spent two and a half years in training, left England to raid the Nazi-occupied French port of Dieppe. The mission was a complete disaster, with some 4000 soldiers and marines killed, maimed or captured in a single morning. Over forty five years later, Canadians have yet to fully come to terms with one of the Second World War's greatest tragedies. The result of eight years' exhaustive research, Brian Villa's book delves beneath the official obfuscation to reveal why the Dieppe raid was sanctioned, when its abject failure was anticipated, the political and military pressures placed on Churchill and the British Chiefs of Staff and the vagaries of Lord Louis Mountbatten, who as Chief of Combined Operations was ultimately responsible for the decision to attack.