On November 8, 1942, the Allies landed in North Africa, Morocco and Algeria, then under the rule of the Vichy regime. Nicknamed Operation Torch, this major event of World War II was a success but still little known to the general public.
“Suddenly the sirens wailed, I heard them for the first time in North Africa. Powerful, their noise drowned out the city. Everything suddenly went out, it was total darkness. A few minutes later we saw a biplane, under fixed wheels, flew low over the water and released a curtain of smoke. Finally I knew what his nationality was: he was American.” As a member of the land defense forces of the French army of the Vichy regime, he faced the Allied forces who had just launched their landings in Algeria and Morocco.
This operation had been carried out by Americans and British a few months earlier in the summer of 1942. “This decision was due to British difficulties in the ‘Battle of the Desert’, with defeats at Gazala and Tobruk, Libya, in June 1942. Also, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was put in the hot seat by a vote of censorship in the British Parliament . It doesn’t take much to lead to a political disaster,” says historian Tramor Quemeneur, author of 8. November 1942. Resistance and Allied landings in North Africa” (ed. v Knackig). “As a result, the United States decided to come to the aid of its struggling English ally in North Africa, while creating a ‘second front’ in the Mediterranean where the English had interests.”
The role of the local resistance
To carry out this project, the Allies decided to rely on the local resistance, which at the time was still fragmented and poorly organized, while public opinion essentially agreed with Vichy’s theses. “Resistance is almost non-existent among the Europeans of North Africa, Petainism triumphs there and Algeria in particular represents a kind of Vichy proconsulate, which does not mean that we are favorable to the Germans or to Nazism,” summarizes the historian Jean- Marie Guillon, professor emeritus at the University of Aix-Marseille.
However, the Americans and British could count on a well-disposed group of several hundred people in Algeria, which had formed since the autumn of 1940. The vast majority of them were young Jews who could not stand the anti-Semitic measures taken by Marshal Pétain and his government, like the medical student José Aboulker who became the figure of this network in Algiers. Supported by the royalist resistance fighter Henri d’Astier de La Vigerie, he gave “tactical information to facilitate the Anglo-American landing,” as Tramor Quemeneur points out.
Medical student Jose Aboulker. Wikimedia Commons
The plan for Operation Torch ultimately consisted of around 107,000 men (84,000 Americans and 23,000 British, supported by 200 warships, 110 transport ships and heavy air cover). A total of nine sites will be selected on the coasts of North Africa, six in Morocco and three in Algeria.
In Algiers, the resistance of around 400 made it possible to clear the Vichy troops out of the way. It seized strategic administrative and military points and arrested the most important military leaders, including General Juin, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces in North Africa, and Admiral Darlan, Commander-in-Chief of the French Army, who happened to be found on the spot that day.
Landing of the Royal Navy on a beach at Oran, November 1942. Imperial War Museum/Wikimedia Commons
Very tough fights
In the other sectors, the situation turns out to be more complicated and the fight harder. “The fighting there was very hard: in three days there were 1,827 dead and 2,717 wounded,” reports Tramor Quemeneur. “In Oran and Morocco, Vichy forces were ordered to fight, which they did. spoke to his superior, thus facilitating the fight against the Allies. Therefore, in fighting the Allies directly, Vichy’s position is clear: Vichy is resolutely on on the side of the Axis powers.” In response to this landing, the Germans decided to occupy all of France on November 11, 1942. The southern zone no longer exists.
The American landing in November 1942 near the Moroccan city of Safi. National Museum of the US Navy/Wikimedia Commons
Negotiations continue in North Africa. Finally, on November 22, the Americans signed an agreement on political and military cooperation with Admiral Darlan, Marshal Pétain’s representative in North Africa. It provides that Darlan’s French forces are considered full allies of the United States and the United Kingdom while recognizing the integrity of the French colonial empire.
“In the end, the Americans arrived in Africa and the African army took up the fight again,” José Aboulker later summarized. Thanks to this operation, the Allies can thus open a new front on the African continent against the Axis powers, as a first step the reconquest of Tunisia. For Tramor Quemeneur, “This eases the fighting of the ‘Sand War’ against General Rommel with support from the Free French: the Allies now know to reckon with them. But above all, Operation Torch prepares the campaign against Italy and the overthrow of the Mussolini regime. Now the Axis powers are losing ground and weakening in the Mediterranean.”
But did this landing represent a crucial turning point during World War II? “Overall, 1942 represents a major turning point in World War II, and Operation Torch represents one of the significant events. Added to this is the Battle of Guadalcanal in the Pacific War and the ongoing Battle of Stalingrad conducted in late 1942. Operation Torch is the first successful Allied landing,” replies the historian. His British colleague from the University of Exeter, Richard Overy, wants to be more moderate. “Despite Operation Torch, there was still a long way to go before the Allied victory,” said he.”The only way to achieve that on the Western Front was by landing off the British coast and winning the Battle of the Atlantic. Torch contributed little except by pointing out the flaws in amphibious warfare doctrine and the necessity.” to introduce improvements.”
A forgotten part of French history
Eighty years later, this event is not very present in the collective memory anyway. At the head of the association Les Compagnons du 8 Novembre 1942 – which highlights the role played by the local resistance during Operation Torch – Nicole Cohen-Addad observes every day: “I conducted a study on textbooks in France. When we talk about it, there is only one line. Otherwise there is nothing.” According to this daughter of a “group of 400”, this oversight is due to the exclusion of General de Gaulle from this operation: “He did not take part in it and was not informed about it.”
An opinion shared by Tramor Quemeneur. “These events disturbed the Gaullist reading of World War II: General de Gaulle played a minor role there. It has not yet been recognized by the Allies,” he explains. “On the other hand, some very controversial figures took part, notably André Achiary (a commissioner responsible for the neutralization of collaborative civilians in Algiers, ed.). He played a central role in the May–June 1945 repression in Guelma, in eastern Algeria, which resulted in the deaths of nearly 20,000 Algerians OAS waved and these partially discredited resistance fighters when the vast majority of them are non-sulphurous.”
For the North Africa specialist, Operation Torch also suffers from the marginalization of colonial history: “In the national imagination, it referred to decolonization, the loss of the colonies and the associated heartbreak. The resistance fighters even had difficulty in being recognized as such.” Just as the internees in the many camps in North Africa, with hindsight, totally failed to appreciate the tragedy that befell them, so we are beginning to see the significance of these events. It’s time for things to change and this ‘global history of colonial France,’ to paraphrase the title of a recent book.’