This museum commemorates the Dieppe Raid of 1942, in which a mostly Canadian force of over 6000 men, backed up by 300 ships and 800 aircraft, landed on 20km of beaches around Dieppe. The only large-scale Allied assault on the coast of Nazi-occupied Europe before D-Day, it ended in catastrophe: 73% of the men who took part ended up killed, wounded or missing-in-action. But lessons learned here proved very useful in planning the Normandy landings two years later.
Among the most valuable lessons was the realisation that the element of surprise was critical, a lesson put to extremely good use for D-Day and the disinformation disseminated prior to the landings.
