Operation Torch (1942): The Allied Landings in North Africa

Operation Torch was the Anglo-American invasion of French North Africa, launched on 8 November 1942. Allied troops landed at Casablanca in Morocco and at Oran and Algiers in Algeria, territories loyal to the Vichy French government. It was the first major American offensive against Germany in the Second World War and opened the way to the defeat of Axis forces in North Africa in May 1943.

Background

In 1942 the Soviet Union pressed its allies to open a second front in western Europe. American military leaders, notably General George C. Marshall, wanted to invade France as early as possible, but the British argued that the Allies were not yet strong enough, a view reinforced later by the failed raid on Dieppe in August. In July 1942 President Franklin D. Roosevelt agreed with Prime Minister Winston Churchill to invade French North Africa instead.

The strategic logic was strong. In Egypt the British Eighth Army faced Erwin Rommel’s German and Italian army. A landing far to the west would threaten Rommel’s rear, help clear the Axis from Africa and reopen the Mediterranean to Allied shipping. American troops would also gain combat experience.

French North Africa was controlled by the Vichy regime, which had made an armistice with Germany in 1940. Its forces numbered over 100,000 men, with warships at Casablanca and other ports. Relations with Britain were bitter after the British attack on the French fleet at Mers-el-Kébir in 1940, so the operation was presented as mainly American, in the hope that the French would not resist. American diplomats led by Robert Murphy made secret contacts with sympathetic French officers, and the American general Mark Clark landed from a submarine at Cherchell, west of Algiers, in October 1942 to meet them.

The plan

The Allied commander-in-chief was Lieutenant General Dwight D. Eisenhower, with his headquarters at Gibraltar. Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham commanded the naval forces. Three task forces were to land at once:

• Western Task Force: about 35,000 American troops under Major General George S. Patton, sailing directly from the United States with Rear Admiral H. Kent Hewitt’s fleet, to land at Safi, Fedala and Mehdia around Casablanca on Morocco’s Atlantic coast.
• Centre Task Force: about 18,500 American troops under Major General Lloyd Fredendall, sailing from Britain, to take Oran.
• Eastern Task Force: American and British troops under Major General Charles Ryder for the landings, to take Algiers, with the British First Army under Lieutenant General Kenneth Anderson to follow and advance on Tunisia.

More than 70,000 troops landed in the first wave, carried by several hundred warships and transports.

The landings

The landings began in the early hours of 8 November 1942. At Algiers resistance was relatively light, helped by a small pro-Allied rising by French resisters that briefly seized key points in the city. However, an attempt to force the harbour with two British destroyers carrying American troops (Operation Terminal) failed. The French commander in Algiers surrendered the city that evening.

At Oran the fighting was fiercer. An attempt to send two former US Coast Guard cutters into the harbour to prevent sabotage (Operation Reservist) ended in disaster, with both ships destroyed and heavy casualties. American troops landing on beaches either side of the city met determined resistance, and Oran did not surrender until 10 November.

In Morocco, heavy surf and inexperience caused confusion on the beaches. Off Casablanca the US Navy fought the French fleet in the Naval Battle of Casablanca on 8 November; the unfinished battleship Jean Bart was damaged and several French destroyers and submarines were sunk. Fighting continued around Fedala, Port Lyautey and Safi for three days.

Darlan and the ceasefire

By chance, Admiral François Darlan, commander-in-chief of Vichy’s armed forces and one of its leading figures, was in Algiers visiting his seriously ill son. The Allies had hoped that General Henri Giraud, who had escaped from German captivity and was brought from France by the British submarine HMS Seraph, would rally the French army, but few officers followed him.

Eisenhower’s deputy, Mark Clark, negotiated instead with Darlan, who ordered a general ceasefire on 10 November. The last French resistance in Morocco ended on 11 November. In return Darlan was recognised as head of the French administration in North Africa. This “Darlan Deal” ended the fighting but caused outrage in Britain and the United States because Darlan had collaborated closely with Germany. It ended when Darlan was assassinated in Algiers by a young French royalist, Fernand Bonnier de La Chapelle, on 24 December 1942; Giraud succeeded him.

German reaction

Hitler responded quickly. On 11 November 1942 German and Italian forces occupied the previously unoccupied southern zone of France. On 27 November, as German troops approached Toulon, the French navy scuttled most of its fleet there rather than let it fall into German hands.

From 9 November German troops were flown into Tunisia, whose French authorities offered little resistance. The British First Army’s “race for Tunis” came within about 25 kilometres of the city in late November but was stopped by German counterattacks and winter rain. The Tunisian campaign lasted until May 1943 and included the American defeat at the Battle of Kasserine Pass in February. Meanwhile Rommel’s army, beaten at the Second Battle of El Alamein in early November 1942, retreated westward into Tunisia.

Key people

• Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969): commanded the operation as Allied commander-in-chief. Torch was his first experience of leading a major coalition campaign, and the lessons he learned in North Africa shaped his later command of the invasion of Normandy.
• George S. Patton (1885–1945): led the Western Task Force in Morocco, where his forces made the long Atlantic crossing directly from the United States.
• Andrew Cunningham (1883–1963): the British admiral who commanded the Allied naval forces, responsible for convoys, landings and naval gunfire support.
• François Darlan (1881–1942): commander-in-chief of Vichy France’s armed forces, who ordered the ceasefire and briefly headed the French administration in North Africa before his assassination.
• Henri Giraud (1879–1949): French general whom the Allies hoped would lead French forces in North Africa; he succeeded Darlan and in 1943 became co-president, with Charles de Gaulle, of the French Committee of National Liberation before being sidelined.

Casualties

Losses during the landings were relatively light for an operation of this size. Allied deaths numbered in the hundreds, with American losses around 500 killed, and French forces lost well over 1,000 killed. Exact figures vary between sources.

Timeline

• 1942, 25 July: Roosevelt approves the plan to invade French North Africa.
• 1942, 21–22 October: General Mark Clark meets French officers secretly at Cherchell.
• 1942, 8 November: Landings at Casablanca, Oran and Algiers; Algiers surrenders that evening.
• 1942, 9 November: German troops begin arriving in Tunisia.
• 1942, 10 November: Oran surrenders; Darlan orders a ceasefire.
• 1942, 11 November: Fighting in Morocco ends; Germany occupies southern France.
• 1942, 27 November: The French fleet is scuttled at Toulon.
• 1942, 24 December: Darlan is assassinated in Algiers.
• 1943, 13 May: The last Axis forces in North Africa surrender in Tunisia.

Why it matters

Operation Torch brought the United States into the ground war against Germany and was the first large Anglo-American amphibious operation of the war. It led to the destruction of Axis forces in Africa, reopened the Mediterranean and prepared the way for the invasions of Sicily and Italy in 1943. It also gave Allied commanders, including Eisenhower and Patton, experience that shaped the later invasion of Normandy, and it brought the French forces of North Africa back into the war on the Allied side.