Operation Torch: Allied Landings in French North Africa
Anglo-American forces landed in Morocco and Algeria on 8 November 1942, in the first large amphibious operation of the western Allies. The strategy was a compromise nobody liked. The Americans wanted a cross-Channel invasion in 1942 or 1943; the British argued they were not ready, and that the Mediterranean was where an inexperienced army could learn without risking everything; Roosevelt wanted American troops fighting Germans somewhere before the year ended. The politics were harder than the fighting. The territory was held by Vichy France, technically neutral, whose forces had been attacked by the British at Mers-el-Kébir in 1940 with the loss of 1,300 sailors and had not forgotten it. The operation was therefore mounted as an American enterprise with the British kept in the background, and negotiations were opened with French commanders in advance — including a submarine landing to meet General Mast, and an attempt to bring in General Giraud, who arrived demanding overall command of the whole expedition. Resistance at Casablanca, Oran and Algiers lasted three days and cost about 1,300 Allied and 1,300 French lives. It was ended by Admiral Darlan, the Vichy commander-in-chief who happened to be in Algiers visiting his sick son, and who ordered a ceasefire in exchange for being recognised as head of the French administration — a deal that caused an outcry and that Eisenhower defended as saving lives. Germany occupied Vichy France in response, and the French fleet scuttled itself at Toulon. Darlan was assassinated on Christmas Eve. The campaign that followed took six months rather than the weeks expected, and the Axis surrender in Tunisia in May 1943 gave up some 230,000 prisoners.
- Year: 1942 CE
- Category: Military
