Resources required

• Resource E: Background to the Dieppe raid
• Resource F: Headline news
• Resource G: The Dieppe Raid presentation (also available as a Word document)
• Resource H: Yellow beach
• Resource I: Orange beach
• Resource J: Blue beach
• Resource K: Green beach
• Resource L: Red beach
• Resource M: White beach
• Resource N: Reporting the raid

Rationale and learning intentions

• To understand why the Dieppe Raid went wrong
• To analyse how lessons could be learned from the Raid’s mistakes
• To understand why the Raid failed and is remembered controversially today
• Conduct an enquiry using a variety of visual and written primary and secondary source material
• The purpose of this enquiry is for pupils to explore not only why the Dieppe Raid is seen by Canadians as such a disaster in the annals of their armed forces, but also what the lessons were that might have been learned from the action. Furthermore:

Is the view that the Raid was a complete disaster necessarily wholly accurate?

Starter

Resource E: Background to the Dieppe raid is designed to give teachers extra information which is more than pupils are likely to need, but may prove useful when answering contextual questions. If appropriate it can be fed into the plenary session to aid discussion.

Begin by showing pupils 2-3 optical illusions. These are easily obtainable in books or by searching the Internet. Ask them what they see. Quickly establish with them that things aren’t always what they seem and that things can be seen from a number of different perspectives.

NB: Definitions & Criteria: It is important that pupils understand what is meant by the term ‘Raid’ and the basis on which these were considered successes or failures in the wider context of the Second World War.

Their previous knowledge of the term may be confined to the idea of raiding parties in the trenches, criminal activity (i.e. Ram-raiding) or playground/ dormitory contexts. This element will be necessary in order for pupils to determine the relative success of their allocated part of the Mission. For example, students should be clear about the reasons behind such raids and their deliberately limited scope. Students should not view them necessarily as failures because full-scale invasion was not achieved in 1942. In other words, the ‘Smash and Grab’ – or ‘butcher & bolt’, as Churchill put it - element should be emphasised.

See the Resource E: Background to the Dieppe raid  about the smaller-scale Bruneval and St.Nazaire raids that preceded Dieppe. Students could be prepared  for the lesson by exploring other successful raids of the Second World War (e.g. the Cockleshell Heroes) as homework. This would also allow light to be shed on some lesser-known actions from all theatres of War.

Progression

Show students Resource F: Headline news that followed the Dieppe Raid. Explore with the class the reasons why such divergent views of the same event may have arisen. Pupils should the consider bias, provenance, objectivity, etc of each interpretation.
 
Main Activity

Using Resource G: the Dieppe Raid, the teacher introduces some context and demonstrates the activity, which is carried out by the students in groups. After the mission instructions, there are 3 slides showing pictures of Dieppe today. The photos were taken by Mr P Ginnings on 19 August 2005 - the 63rd anniversary of the Raid – on an extremely wet and windy day. The weather did not stop remembrance services from taking place, attended by Canadian and British veterans of the Raid.

Students are to imagine that they are special investigation teams who have been asked by Combined Operations Headquarters (COHQ) to report on what happened in each of the sectors of Operation Jubilee and on what lessons should be learned from the exercise for the future. Each group is responsible for reporting about at different beach (Resources H-M). Specifically, they must examine the following:

• What were the successes of the Raid in your chosen sector – if any?
• More importantly, identify what went wrong?
• What lessons could and should be learned from the Raid on Dieppe?
• Each group is to complete their part of the research grid from the information they find. It would be a good idea if each of the sources that students use are individually cut up and laminated so that they can be exchanged between pupils and the activity becomes literally more hands-on. The length of each extract varies and so differentiation within the group is possible.

Conclusion

Class discussion-report back: The groups feed back their findings to the rest of the class by filling in a class equivalent of their own research grid Resource N: Reporting the raid on the board/ flipchart and explaining why they have reached the conclusions they have.

(Alternatively, pupils complete an enlarged copy of the grid in Resource G: The Dieppe raid, slide 14, and using a felt tip colour that equates to the relevant beach, they sum up their findings and recommendations. Each group’s contribution can be posted up to obtain an overview.

This should ensure that pupils have understood what went wrong with the Dieppe Raid, why it is controversial and encourage pupils to see what lessons could be drawn from the raid to ensure improvements for the next time i.e. D-Day.  Some quotations by historians could be used as discussion prompts or as the basis of a written piece of work examining the effects and effectiveness of the Dieppe Raid from a Canadian and/or Allied point of view [see Resource E: Background to the Dieppe raid, conclusions].

Alternatively, this could be set as homework or an extension activity.