On 8 November 1942 American and British troops landed around Casablanca, Oran and Algiers in French North Africa, held by forces loyal to Marshal Pétain's Vichy regime. Operation Torch was commanded by Lieutenant General Dwight D. Eisenhower. Algiers, where local resisters had seized key points overnight, agreed a ceasefire that same evening, while Oran and Casablanca fought on until 10 November. The landings gave the Allies a foothold in North Africa and opened the race for Tunisia.
Why North Africa
American planners wanted to land in northern France as early as possible, while the British thought such an attack premature. Roosevelt and Churchill broke the deadlock: American troops would go to North Africa in 1942, and a cross-Channel attack would follow later. The French account in Les Chemins de la Mémoire, published by the French Ministry of the Armed Forces, notes that the principle was agreed on 24 July 1942, that Eisenhower was named on 14 August, and that the operation was meant to take German pressure off the Red Army.1
The French army in Africa was under orders to defend its territory against anyone. Both sources stress the bitterness left by the British attack on the French fleet at Mers-el-Kébir in July 1940, so the operation was given as American a face as possible, and even the largely British force at Algiers went ashore under an American general, Charles Ryder.2
Three landings
According to the U.S. Army's campaign history, Major General George S. Patton's Western Task Force, sailing straight from the United States with 34,871 men, landed at Safi, Fedala and Mehdia around Casablanca, Major General Lloyd Fredendall's Center Task Force landed at Oran, and the Eastern Task Force landed at Algiers. In all, it says, some 125,000 soldiers, sailors and airmen took part, 82,600 of them from the U.S. Army.3
Surf, currents and inexperienced boat crews caused as much trouble as the French. At Fedala, 57 of the 119 landing craft of the first wave were lost. Two attempts to rush troops straight into the harbors failed: at Oran only 47 of some 400 American soldiers aboard two British cutters got ashore, and at Algiers the force landed from a Royal Navy destroyer was surrounded and surrendered.4
Algiers in a night
In Algiers a small resistance network, many of its members Jewish, seized the city's command and communication centers during the night of 7 to 8 November, with the medical student José Aboulker among its leaders. Admiral François Darlan, commander of all Vichy French forces, happened to be in the city. Pétain authorized him to act as he saw fit, and Algiers was the first of the three objectives to cease fire, at 8 p.m. on 8 November. Oran agreed a ceasefire at 12:15 on 10 November, and the French command at Casablanca sent out its order that evening.5
The two sources count the losses differently. The U.S. Army history gives 1,469 Allied casualties, 96 percent of them American, with the Army losing 526 killed, 837 wounded and 41 missing. Les Chemins de la Mémoire gives French losses of 1,346 men, American losses of 479 dead and 720 wounded, and a total of 1,825 dead and 2,717 wounded.6
The Darlan deal and Tunisia
On 13 November the Americans came to terms with Darlan, who stayed the highest authority in French North Africa. The French account calls the deal a political setback that scandalized opinion in Britain and the United States and infuriated de Gaulle. Germany answered the landings by occupying the rest of France on 11 November and rushing German and Italian troops into Tunisia, which became the next battleground. The full story of the landings is in our article on Operation Torch.7
Also on this day
- 1620: Battle of White Mountain. An army backing Frederick V and the Bohemian Protestants was defeated outside Prague by Catholic Habsburg forces of Emperor Ferdinand II early in the Thirty Years' War.
