"Nancy has a stiff neck": on August 14, 1944, at 7.15 pm, a coded message broadcast by the BBC in London warns the French Resistance of the imminent landing in Provence. This operation, called Dragoon (initially Operation Anvil), begins the next day, 70 days after the landing in Normandy. Operation Dragoon will consist for the allies (450,000 men, including about 250,000 Frenchmen) to grip the German occupier to force it to retreat. Faced with the French, American, Canadian and British troops, General Wiese's 19th German army had only 250,000 men, dispersed on the ...