Before dawn on November 8, 1942, Allied task forces landed simultaneously near Casablanca, Oran, and Algiers, opening Operation Torch, the first joint American-British invasion of the war. The operation aimed to trap German and Italian forces in North Africa between Allied troops and the British Eighth Army advancing from Egypt, and it marked the first time American soldiers fought against Axis forces in the European theater.
Operation Torch was a compromise born of strategic disagreement. American commanders wanted a direct cross-Channel invasion of France as early as 1942, but British leaders, wary of a premature assault after the disastrous Dieppe raid, convinced Roosevelt and Churchill that North Africa offered a more achievable target. The plan called for over 100,000 troops landing across three widely separated points along more than 900 miles of coastline, an extraordinary logistical undertaking for a force with no previous experience in large-scale amphibious warfare.
Complicating matters, the landings were against Vichy French forces, nominally neutral but controlled by a government collaborating with Germany. Allied planners hoped French troops in Morocco and Algeria would not resist, and secret negotiations were conducted with sympathetic French officers beforehand. Resistance was in fact significant in places, particularly at Casablanca, where French naval vessels fought Allied ships for two days before a ceasefire was arranged.
General Dwight Eisenhower commanded the operation from Gibraltar, his first major combat command, a role that would propel him toward Supreme Allied Command in Europe. Within days, a ceasefire was negotiated through Admiral François Darlan, and Allied forces pushed east toward Tunisia. The campaign that followed, though slower and bloodier than planned, ultimately destroyed Axis forces in Africa by May 1943 and gave green American troops, badly mauled at Kasserine Pass, the hard experience that prepared them for Sicily and Normandy.
Key people: Dwight Eisenhower, François Darlan, George Patton