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The landscape of North Africa looked different on 8 Nov 1942: after a series of telegram exchanges known as "the transatlantic essay competition" between Washington and London, Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt agreed upon a simultaneous landing in North Africa under the overall command of American Lieutenant General Dwight Eisenhower. Considerations for the American North Africa expedition included the potential vulnerability of relying on Gibraltar as a center of operations due to the possibility of Spain joining the Axis as well as the French forces in North Africa. Eisenhower favored an attack that involved landings at several locations along the Casablanca-Oran railway which would provide them with ports on the western coast of the continent and a means to transport supplies eastwards. The final execution plan of Operation Torch would closely resemble this preliminary plan.

The Western Naval Task Force of 102 ships and 24,500 American troops under Major General George Patton sailed from the United States for Casablanca, and the Center Task Force under Major General Lloyd Fredendall would deliver 18,500 American troops to Oran. Meanwhile, the Eastern Naval Task Force of 18,000 British and American troops under Major General Charles Ryder would be delivered by 650 mostly British ships to Algiers. The truly unified command at the Allied Expeditionary Force HQ under Eisenhower was a feat all in itself; the appointment of the politically-minded Eisenhower was key for this success.

After training in amphibious warfare, Lieutenant General Dwight Eisenhower's troops landed in North Africa. Many of his landing ships were converted commercial vessels. Most of the transports made it to their destinations without incident; the exception was USS Thomas Stone which was torpedoed but eventually made her way through rough weather to the target landing area at a delay of merely 24 hours. During the landings, the Allied command assumed little resistance from local Vichy-French troops that outnumbered the Allied invasion force. The assumption was incorrect. As Eisenhower later noted in his memoirs, the gamble to invade the territory of technically neutral Vichy-France was encountered by French forces loyal to Marshal Philippe Pétain. Before the landings took place, Allied fleet also fought in a brief gunnery battle with defending French destroyers (and a stationary Jean Bart acting as shore battery). The French destroyers gave American battleship Massachusetts a tough time with their fast evasive maneuvers and smoke screen, however the action was brief, and two French destroyers were sunk, allowing the landing to take place. The landing itself was also met with resistance, resulting in 500 American lives lost. The diplomatic Eisenhower made the subsequent invasion as Americanized as possible to counter any anti-British feelings among the French while he negotiated with local French leader Admiral Jean-François Darlan. During the negotiations, fighting between Allied and French forces continued. After days of negotiations, an armistice was reached on 9 Nov that ceased fighting between the Allied and French forces (note Eisenhower's men were secretly in North Africa and talking with French leaders as early as Oct). On 10 Nov, Darlan sent out a wide communications to all French forces to cease fighting against the Allied forces, which brought the immediate dismissal of Darlan from the French navy by Vichy leader Philippe Pétain. Faced with the dishonorable dismissal by his country, Darlan felt he needed to rescind his order to regain his honor, but he was stopped by American General Mark Clark. The combination of Eisenhower's visit on 13 Nov and news that German troops entered southern France (thereby violating the Vichy France-Germany treaty of 1940) finally convinced him fully to cooperate with the Allied forces.

Overall, Torch landing operations were successful and efficient, putting 100,000 men on the beaches in the first phase of the operation. However, initial positions were still precarious as troop numbers were still not significant, and shipping for supplies and troop movement were still rather lacking. At this time, General Anderson's plans for maneuvers against the opposition were based around speed and boldness rather than traditional reliance upon numbers.

With American reinforcements starting to arrive in North Africa, German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel realized that if Allied was to gain solid footing in Tunisia, the Axis troops would be trapped between Montgomery's forces and the newly arrived Americans. After receiving a reinforcement of 17,000 troops by the end of Nov, Rommel launched a full force attack against the weak French forces in Tunisia, augmenting his attack with air power called in from Sicily, Sardinia, and Italy. In Berlin, Hitler also recognized the importance of North Africa, where the Allies could threaten southern Europe if Axis presence was to be removed; as a result, Germans committed a major effort to reinforce Rommel's forces, including the use of the giant Me323 motorized gliders to deliver 150,000 troops and Tiger tanks to the theater. Meanwhile, Allied attempts to reinforce their recently acquired positions were slow and difficult, complicated by torrential rain.

By the end of Jan 1943 Rommel's forces pushed the Allied line as far back as the passes in the western Dorsals. On 14 Feb, Rommel attacked the American 2nd Corps in southern Tunisia with two panzer divisions, breaking through Kasserine Pass after a week of offensives. While defending against this offensive, the green American pilots committed a tragic mistake in dropping bombs upon the friendly town of Souk-el-Arba. While it cost the morale upon the Americans, Eisenhower was quick to perform damage control, dispersing money to keep the local mouths shut. Fortunately for Eisenhower, whose men in general lacked training and proper supplies, Rommel's successes never capitalized on the Allied weaknesses due to the failure of German units to act cohesively.

On 9 Mar, Rommel flew to Germany to convince Hitler to evacuate the Tunisian bridgehead, and as events would turn out, he would never return to Africa again. While he was in Germany, Allied air and naval units prevented supplies from getting to the German Afrika Korps and therefore repulsed the German Tunisian offensive. Montgomery's British troops took the Mareth positions by the end of March, while the American counterparts stormed the passes in the mountain range that divided Tunisia and Algeria. The American offensive, conducted by green troops, put pressure on the German troops but it was also extremely costly. "Our Grant tanks were death traps," recalled General Donald Bennett of the United States Army, who served as an artillery officer in the campaign. The Grant tanks deployed at Kasserine Pass were "nothing but slow-moving targets for Rommel's 88s and Mark IV tanks. Our men were ill prepared and poorly deployed and showed all the weakness of an amateur army gone to war." Nevertheless, Bennett's men, as well as all American troops, stepped up and launched a final offensive alongside their British counterparts on 22 Apr. Patton's tanks, coordinated with Montgomery's forces, drove the German troops back into the northern tip of Tunisia. As the terrain slowly changed, Eisenhower removed Patton, a tank commander, from the helm and replaced him with an infantry general, Omar Bradley. Patton was sent to prepare tank units for the upcoming invasion of Sicily. American forces entered Bizerte in early May, and the last German troops surrendered on 13 May. The surrender of the remaining German units in Africa was the largest defeat suffered by German yet, losing 275,000 men as prisoners of war. The end of the North African campaign also spelled the end of Benito Mussolini's military influence, and from this point on his existence would depend entirely on Adolf Hitler.

Upon receiving the 275,000 prisoners of war, Eisenhower was stunned and did not know how to process such a large influx of prisoners. He noted in his memoirs in 1948 that, at the time, he exclaimed to his operations officers "[w]hy didn't some staff college ever tell us what to do with a quarter million prisoners so located at the end of a rickety railroad that it's impossible to move them and where guarding and feeding them are so difficult?" The front line Allied soldiers, however, did not get the same rosy picture perceived by the Allied generals. The German prisoners, despite their situation, were still neatly dressed and proud; they taunted the young American troops, threatening that if they bring the war onto continental Europe, their fellow brothers would bring the war to America. An empty threat today with perfect hindsight, but at that time, it instilled a little bit of wariness in the young American draftees.

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Visitor Submitted Comments

1. Anonymous says:
   17 May 2008 11:55:36 AM
   
   enjoyed the article,but one question, life or look mag had a cover picture of the north african campaign any chance of finding it? thanks

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