Mediterranean and North Africa · United States and France vs Germany
Operation Dragoon
15 August 1944 – 14 September 1944
The Allied landing on the Riviera between Toulon and Cannes met light resistance. French forces took Toulon and Marseille within a fortnight and the Seventh Army pursued Army Group G up the Rhone to join the forces from Normandy.
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Day by day
— Anvil
The 1st Airborne Task Force drops around Le Muy from 04:30 and three US divisions land from 08:00 on sixty kilometres of coast between Cavalaire and Saint-Raphael: the 3rd on Alpha, the 45th on Delta, the 36th on Camel. The 242nd Division opposite has two regiments to hold it all, and by midnight VI Corps has 60,000 men ashore for fewer than 500 casualties.
— Army Group G ordered out
Hitler authorises the withdrawal of Army Group G from southern France, leaving fortress garrisons in Toulon and Marseille. Draguignan and the LXII Corps staff have already been taken. Truscott sends Task Force Butler north-west through Sisteron to cut the Rhone valley at Montelimar, while de Lattre's French Army B, landing since the 16th, turns west on Toulon.
— Toulon
The Toulon garrison of 18,000 surrenders to French Army B after a week's fighting through the forts; Marseille follows on the 28th. At Montelimar the 36th Division has sat above the Rhone road since the 21st while the Nineteenth Army fought past it; the Germans get most of their men through but leave 2,000 vehicles and 1,500 dead and horses on the road.
— Lyon
French and American troops enter Lyon, freed largely by its own Resistance, as the Germans blow all but one of its bridges. VI Corps is 350 kilometres from the beaches in nineteen days. To the west the German LXIV Corps, 20,000 men marching from the Atlantic coast, is trying to reach the Belfort gap before the door shuts.
— The armies meet
Patrols of the French 1st Division from the south and Leclerc's 2e DB from Normandy meet near Chatillon-sur-Seine; the Allied front now runs from the Channel to the Swiss border. Besancon fell on the 8th and Dijon on the 11th. Most of LXIV Corps has been cut off west of the junction and surrenders over the next week.
— The Vosges
Dragoon is formally over. Seventh Army has come 650 kilometres up the Rhone in a month and taken 79,000 prisoners, and the two great ports are working. But the Nineteenth Army has got about half its men into the Belfort gap and the Vosges, where the front freezes until November.
