What was Operation Torch?
Operation Torch was the Anglo-American invasion of Vichy French Morocco and Algeria that began on 8 November 1942. Three task forces under Dwight D. Eisenhower landed around Casablanca, Oran and Algiers; after up to three days of fighting the French ceased fire and the Allies won a base for the campaign in Tunisia.1
On 8 November 1942 American and British troops landed in French Morocco and Algeria, territories loyal to Marshal Pétain's Vichy regime. Operation Torch put roughly 107,000 to 112,000 soldiers ashore around Casablanca, Oran and Algiers, and within three days the French had stopped fighting. The Navy's historians call it the largest American campaign to date in the Atlantic theater.2
Who won Operation Torch and why?
The Allies won. Some 107,000 American and British troops landed at three widely separated points at once, and within three days Vichy's commanders saw that further resistance was hopeless. Admiral Darlan, commander of all Vichy forces, ordered a ceasefire on 10 November, and French North Africa changed sides.3
Background: the argument over a second front
In the summer of 1942 Rommel had taken Tobruk, German armies were driving toward Stalingrad, and Moscow demanded a second front. American planners under George Marshall wanted to cross the Channel; the British judged that premature and pressed for North Africa. Roosevelt, keen for early action, overruled his own advisers and sided with Churchill, and on 24 July the Combined Chiefs of Staff committed to an autumn landing. Dwight D. Eisenhower was named commander in chief in mid-August, and the whole operation was planned and carried out within about three months.4
Why the landings wore an American face
Vichy's army in Africa was ordered to defend its territory against any attacker, and it resented Britain: in July 1940 the Royal Navy had attacked the French fleet at Mers-el-Kébir to keep it from Germany, killing many French sailors. Torch was therefore given as American a look as possible, and even the mostly British force at Algiers landed under an American general. De Gaulle's Free French were kept out of the secret.5
Where to land
Choosing the landing sites was the hardest decision of the planning, and the argument went on for weeks. Should the weight of the expedition go east, inside the Mediterranean and as close to Tunis as possible, or west, starting at Casablanca? The Americans wanted Casablanca to keep a line of communications open to the United States in case Spain turned hostile and the Strait of Gibraltar was closed; the danger was that Morocco's Atlantic surf could make a landing impossible. The answer was three simultaneous landings at Casablanca, Oran and Algiers, which left Tunis beyond the reach of the first wave.6
Three task forces
The Western Task Force sailed straight from the United States: nearly 35,000 men under Major General George S. Patton, carried by Rear Admiral Kent Hewitt's 102 ships to Safi, Fedala and Mehdia around Casablanca. Major General Lloyd Fredendall's Center Task Force sailed from Britain for Oran. The Eastern Task Force, about 33,000 men of whom 23,000 were British, went ashore at Algiers under Major General Charles Ryder, with Lieutenant General Kenneth Anderson to lead the later drive into Tunisia.7
Vichy had about 125,000 soldiers in Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. General Charles Noguès and Vice Admiral Félix Michelier held Morocco, General Alphonse Juin commanded the army in North Africa from Algiers, and above them stood Admiral François Darlan, commander in chief of all Vichy forces.8
Allied planners also drew on Polish intelligence. Major Mieczysław Słowikowski, code name Rygor, ran a network called Agencja Afryka (Africa Agency) from Algiers; according to both the Polish portal dzieje.pl and Notes from Poland, it passed the Allies more than 1,200 reports on Morocco and Algeria, and the US armed forces awarded him the Legion of Merit for his part in Torch in 1943.9
8 November: the Algiers putsch
Pro-Allied plotters were a small minority; in Morocco loyalists foiled General Antoine Béthouart's attempt to seize control, but in Algiers the plan worked. During the night of 7 to 8 November about 400 young volunteers led by the medical student José Aboulker, many of them Jewish, occupied the city's command and communication centers. The French historian Christine Levisse-Touzé writes that they also held Juin and Darlan, who happened to be visiting his sick son. With their help, the Ordre de la Libération notes, the Allies took Algiers within fifteen hours, its port intact, and the city agreed to a ceasefire that evening.10
Reservist and Terminal: the harbor raids
Two raids straight into the harbors failed. In Operation Reservist two British cutters carried 393 men of the US 6th Armored Infantry into Oran harbor; shore batteries and French destroyers wrecked both, and the Army's history records that only 47 of the Americans eventually landed. At Algiers, Operation Terminal landed part of the 3rd Battalion, 135th Infantry from a Royal Navy destroyer; surrounded, the men surrendered that afternoon, the same history adds.11
Morocco: surf, batteries and a river raid
On the Atlantic coast surf and green boat crews did more harm than French fire: at Fedala, the Army's history counts, 57 of the first wave's 119 landing craft were lost. At Port Lyautey French and Foreign Legion troops held out until the old destroyer Dallas forced its way up the Sebou River with raiders who took the airfield; a ceasefire there began at 4 a.m. on 11 November.12
The Naval Battle of Casablanca
On the morning of 8 November the unfinished battleship Jean Bart, moored in Casablanca harbor, opened fire with its 15-inch guns. The new battleship Massachusetts replied and, the Navy's history records, jammed the French ship's only working turret for 48 hours; the Army's historian puts the damage at about two days out of action. A French cruiser, destroyers and submarines then sortied toward the transports and were driven back by gunfire and carrier aircraft, at heavy cost.13
The fight off Casablanca lasted most of the morning. By the Army's count the French sent out a cruiser, seven destroyers and two submarines, and American cruisers and destroyers spent more than three hours weaving to avoid torpedoes while returning fire. Patton watched it all from the cruiser Augusta: she was about to put him ashore when the French ships came out, and the landing craft waiting for him had to be cut adrift so that she could join the fight.14
Oran: three days of fighting
Around Oran the Center Task Force came ashore on beaches east and west of the city. Lieutenant Colonel William O. Darby's 1st Ranger Battalion caught the batteries at Arzew by surprise, and an armored column raced inland to Tafaraoui airfield, where Spitfires from Gibraltar were landing by 4:30 that afternoon. The airborne part of the plan miscarried: the C-47s carrying the 2nd Battalion, 509th Parachute Infantry from England were scattered by bad weather and faulty communications, and the paratroopers came down far apart, many of them nowhere near the airfields they were meant to take.15
The French made their stand at Saint-Cloud, east of the city, where American attacks failed on the first day. Fredendall and Major General Terry Allen of the 1st Infantry Division left troops to pin the village down and sent infantry and armor around it. Around Oran, where most French losses in Algeria fell, the US 1st Infantry Division and its armor met stubborn resistance until, by the Army's account, a tank column broke into the city on 10 November; the ceasefire order was issued at 12:15 that day.16
The Darlan deal and the ceasefire
Pétain, under German supervision, refused Roosevelt's appeal but left Darlan free to act. Pressed by Eisenhower's deputy Mark Clark, Darlan and Juin ordered French forces in Oran and Morocco to stop fighting on 10 and 11 November. In return Darlan stayed at the head of French North Africa, under accords signed on 22 November. The deal shocked opinion in Britain and the United States and angered the Free French, since Darlan was a leading figure of collaboration. On 24 December Fernand Bonnier de La Chapelle assassinated him.17
In Morocco the order came just in time. Patton had set a full assault on Casablanca for the morning of 11 November, with warships taking up firing positions, aircraft assembling and artillery ready. In the early hours French officers came through the American lines under a white flag, and the French agreement to stop fighting reached Patton's headquarters only minutes before the attack was due to begin.18
Why was Operation Torch important?
Torch was the first major operation carried out jointly by the United States and Britain, and it handed the Western Allies the initiative. It opened a second front in Africa that trapped the Axis armies between two Allied forces, brought French North Africa over to the Allies and taught hard lessons before Sicily and Normandy.19
How many died in Operation Torch?
The US Army lost 526 killed, 837 wounded and 41 missing. The US Navy lost 472 killed and 17 who died of wounds, including men lost when German submarines sank transports off Fedala on 11 and 12 November. The Army's history puts Allied ground casualties at 1,469, 96 percent of them American. For the French, Levisse-Touzé gives 1,346 dead, 347 in Algeria and 999 in Morocco; Tristan Lecoq counts over 1,300 French sailors dead or missing.20
The Vichy French side
For most French officers, fighting was obedience to Pétain's government, and memories of Mers-el-Kébir and of fighting British and Free French troops in Syria were fresh. Officers who leaned toward the Allies were overruled: near Algiers, the Army's history notes, a commander who welcomed American troops was replaced at midday and his men opened fire. Free France felt sidelined as the Americans backed General Henri Giraud and then Darlan. In October 1943 de Gaulle made Aboulker and other Algiers resisters Companions of the Liberation. North African nationalists saw it differently: Levisse-Touzé records that Messali Hadj called it the first great defeat of the French colonial army since 1830.21
The American side
The Army's campaign history calls the landings "operations for which its history offered no preparation." Boats got lost, vehicles drowned in the surf and supplies piled up offshore; both services' historians admit that a tougher enemy could have punished this.22
Aftermath: Germany strikes back
Declaring the 1940 armistice void, Hitler sent troops into the unoccupied zone of southern France on 11 November in Operation Anton. Vichy let the Luftwaffe into Tunisia, and German and Italian reinforcements poured in. On 27 November, as German troops reached Toulon, the French fleet scuttled nearly ninety ships, the French Ministry of the Armed Forces records.23
The race for Tunis
The first Allied push on Tunis, on 25 November, failed. In February 1943 German and Italian troops routed the US II Corps at Kasserine Pass. Caught between the Allies and Montgomery's Eighth Army advancing from Libya after El Alamein, the Axis armies in Africa surrendered on 13 May 1943; 240,000 to 267,000 men laid down their arms, depending on the source.24 › Operation Ochsenkopf, 1943
Myths and debates
Torch was meant to draw German divisions from the Eastern Front, but the Navy's historians and the Holocaust Memorial Museum both note that it failed to draw away large numbers. The Darlan deal ended the fighting within days, but left Vichy laws in force in Algiers into 1943.25
Remembering Torch today
France remembers Torch through the Algiers resisters, the Darlan affair and Toulon; American historians study it as the rehearsal for Sicily and Normandy. For context, see the greatest battles of World War II.26
