Operation Dragoon opens a second front in southern France
Ten weeks after Normandy, a second Allied invasion lands in Provence and races north to trap the retreating Germans
Quick facts
- Location
- Provence, southern France (Toulon to Cannes)
- Date
- 15 August 1944
- Allied commander
- Major General Lucien Truscott, VI Corps
- D-Day force
- 94,000 troops landed; 395 casualties
- Result
- Marseille and Toulon liberated by 28 August; linkup with Patton's Third Army near Dijon, 10 September
What happened
On 15 August 1944, Allied troops came ashore on a thirty-mile stretch of the French Riviera between Toulon and Cannes in Operation Dragoon, originally planned as Operation Anvil to coincide with D-Day but delayed by a shortage of landing craft. Major General Lucien Truscott's VI Corps, built around the US 3rd, 36th, and 45th Infantry Divisions, landed alongside French forces under General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny, meeting light and disorganized resistance from conscripted, low-morale German garrison troops. On D-Day for Dragoon the Allies put 94,000 men ashore for just 395 casualties. Task Force Butler pushed inland to the Rhône Valley within a week, and over the next three weeks Allied forces drove 400 miles north, inflicting roughly 143,000 German casualties along the way, before linking up with George Patton's Third Army near Dijon on 10 September and sealing off the German retreat from southern and western France.
Why it matters
Dragoon gave the Allies the deep-water ports of Marseille and Toulon, which they needed badly: the invasion beaches and small Normandy harbors could not keep the armies in northern France supplied, and Marseille alone would handle a large share of Allied cargo into Europe for the rest of the war. It also stretched German defenses across two fronts in France at once, at a moment they had no reserves to spare.
How we know
US Army after-action reports and Naval History and Heritage Command records document the landing plan, casualty counts, and the timeline of the advance from the beaches to the Dijon linkup.
Sources
- The National WWII Museum. Operation Dragoon: Invasion of Southern France · Reputable sourcenationalww2museum.org · The domain "nationalww2museum.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- American Battle Monuments Commission. Frances Second D-Day: Operation Dragoon and the Invasion of Southern France · Reputable sourceabmc.gov · The domain "abmc.gov" is on our Reputable source registry.
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