History of the Second World War (54 page)

On the question of time the British Chiefs of Staff, spurred by Churchill, proposed October 7 as the target date. But the American Chiefs of Staff recommended November 7, as being ‘the earliest reasonable date for landing of the forces based on availability of combat loaders’.

On the question of site, the respective views were even wider apart. The British urged that the landings should be made on the north coast of Africa, inside the Mediterranean, so that a quick advance to Tunisia would be possible. But the American Chiefs of Staff stuck to the limited objective of the ‘Gymnast’ plan, as modified in June, when it was envisaged as a purely American operation, and were anxious to confine the landings to the Casablanca area on the west coast — the Atlantic coast — of Morocco. They feared not only the dangers of French opposition but of hostile Spanish reaction and a German counterstroke to block the gateway into the Mediterranean by seizing Gibraltar. The British on this issue were dismayed by such a cautious approach to the strategic problem. They argued that it would allow the Germans time to seize Tunisia, stiffen or replace French opposition in Algeria and Morocco, and thus frustrate the aim of the Allied operation.*

* I was asked for my views on the question of the North-west Africa Project on June 28, immediately after the Washington Conference when its revival was mooted. On being told that the main landing was then intended to be at Casablanca, on the Atlantic coast, I pointed out that this site was 1,100 miles distant from Bizerta and Tunis, the strategic keys, and that the best chance of early success lay in capturing them as quickly as possible, which meant that the landings should he made as near them as possible. I also emphasised the importance of landing on the north coast, in Algeria, ‘on the backs of the French’ as a means to diminish the opposition that was likely to develop in face of a frontal attack at, and slow advance from. Casablanca.

Eisenhower and his staff were inclined to agree with the British view. His first outline plan, formulated on August 9, was devised as a compromise. It proposed simultaneous landings inside and outside the Mediterranean, but not farther eastward than Algiers — because of the risk of enemy air attacks from Sicily and Sardinia — except for a minor one at Bone to seize the airfield there (Bone is 270 miles east of Algiers but 130 miles short of Bizerta). This compromise did not satisfy the British planners, as it did not seem likely to fulfil the principal condition of success, which they defined as being: ‘We must have occupied the key points of Tunisia within 26 days of passing Gibraltar and preferably within 14 days.’ In their view, a major landing at Bone, or even farther east, was essential to achieve a quick enough advance to Tunisia.

These arguments impressed the President, who directed Marshall and King to restudy the project. They had also impressed Eisenhower, who reported to Washington that the American members of his staff were now convinced of the soundness of the British reasoning, and that he was now drawing up a new plan that would eliminate the Casablanca landings, and advance the date of the others.

His staff produced (on August 21) a second outline plan which largely followed the British idea. Discarding the Casablanca landing, it provided for an American landing at Oran (250 miles east of Gibraltar) as well as for British landings at Algiers and Bone. But Eisenhower’s own endorsement of it was tepid, and emphasised that such an expedition, wholly inside the Mediterranean, would be badly exposed on its flank. That conclusion tuned in with Marshall’s opinion.

The second outline plan was as unpalatable to the American Chiefs of Staff as the first had been to the British. Marshall told the President that ‘a single line of communication through the Straits is far too hazardous’ and he was against any landing being made inside the Mediterranean farther east than Oran (600 miles short of Bizerta).

Churchill received the news of this cautious turn after returning from his visit with General Brooke to Egypt and Moscow — where Stalin had taunted them about the failure of the Western Powers to open a ‘Second Front’, with such scornful questions as ‘Are you going to let us do all the work while you look on? Are you never going to start fighting? You will find it is not too bad when once you start!’ That had, naturally, stung Churchill, but he had managed to arouse Stalin’s interest in the potentialities of ‘Torch’, and had vividly depicted how it could indirectly relieve the pressure on Russia. So he was shocked to find that the Americans were proposing to whittle down the plan.

On August 27 he sent off a long cable to Roosevelt protesting that the changes which the American Chiefs of Staff suggested might be ‘fatal to the whole plan’, and that ‘the whole pith of the operation will be lost if we do not take Algiers as well as Oran on the first day’. He emphasised the bad impression that a narrowing of the aim would have on Stalin.

Roosevelt’s reply, on the 30th, insisted that ‘under any circumstances one of our landings must be on the Atlantic’. So he proposed that the Americans should carry out the Casablanca and Oran landings, leaving the British to make the eastward ones. Moreover, mindful of British military action against Vichy French forces in North Africa, Syria and elsewhere, he raised a fresh issue:

I feel very strongly that the initial attacks must be made by an exclusively American ground force. . . . I would even go so far as to say I am reasonably sure a simultaneous landing by British and Americans would result in full resistance by all French in Africa, whereas an initial American landing without British ground forces offers a real chance that there would be no French resistance, or only a token resistance . . . . It is our belief that German air or parachute troops cannot get to Algiers or Tunis in any large force for at least two weeks after the initial attack. *

* Churchill:
The Second World War,
vol. IV, p. 477.

The British were appalled at the idea of a week’s pause before making eastward landings, more important and urgent for the strategic goal than the westerly ones, and were far from happy about the Americans’ optimistic estimate that the Germans could not intervene effectively in less than two weeks.

Churchill was very willing to profit from the persuasive influence of the American Ambassador to the Vichy Government, Admiral Leahy, towards easing the way politically and psychologically. While he was ‘anxious to preserve the American character of the expedition’, and therefore willing to keep the British forces ‘as much in the background as was physically possible’, he did not believe it possible to conceal the fact that the larger part of the shipping, the air support, and the naval forces would be British — and these elements would become visible first, before the ground forces. He touched on these points in a tactful reply to Roosevelt on September 1, and emphasised that if ‘the political bloodless victory, for which I agree with you there is a good chance, should go amiss, a military disaster of very great consequences would ensue’. He continued:

Finally, in spite of the difficulties it seems to us vital that Algiers should be occupied simultaneously with Casablanca and Oran. Here is the most friendly and hopeful spot where the political reaction would be most decisive throughout North Africa. To give up Algiers for the sake of the doubtfully practicable landing at Casablanca seems to us a very serious decision. If it led to the Germans forestalling us not only in Tunis but in Algeria, the results on balance would be lamentable throughout the Mediterranean. †

†
ibid.,
pp. 479-80.

This good argument for maintaining the landing at Algiers as part of the plan did not mention the importance of landings farther east, and nearer Bizerta — an omission, and concession, which was of fateful consequence to the chances of early strategic success.

Replying to Churchill’s cable, on September 3, Roosevelt agreed that a landing at Algiers should be included in the plan, while suggesting that American troops should land first ‘followed within an hour by British troops’. Churchill immediately accepted this solution, provided that there was such a reduction in the force earmarked for Casablanca as to make the Algiers landing effective. To this Roosevelt agreed, in a modified form, suggesting a reduction of ‘one regimental combat team’ at Casablanca, and another at Oran, to provide ‘10,000 men for use at Algiers’. Churchill cabled back on September 5: ‘We agree to the military lay-out you propose. We have plenty of troops highly trained for landing. If convenient they can wear your uniform. They will be proud to do so. Shipping will be all right.’ That same day, Roosevelt replied in a one word cable ‘Hurrah!’

Thus the matter was finally settled in this exchange of cables between Roosevelt and Churchill. Three days later Eisenhower specified November 8 as the date of the landings, while declining Churchill’s offer to put the British Commandos in American uniform, as he was anxious to preserve an all-American look to the initial landings. Churchill reconciled himself to the delay, and to the modification of the plan. Indeed, in a subsequent cable to Roosevelt on September 15, he submissively said: ‘In the whole of “Torch”, military and political, I consider myself your lieutenant, asking only to put my view-point plainly before you.’*

* Churchill:
The Second World War,
vol. IV, p. 488.

Roosevelt’s ‘Hurrah!’ cable on September 5 settled what was aptly called ‘the transatlantic essay competition’ — although Marshall continued to express doubts, while his immediate political chief, Henry Stimson, the Secretary for War (i.e. for the Army) made a bitter complaint to the President about the decision to land in North Africa. But the President’s decision enabled detailed planning to be pushed on in a hurried effort to remedy the effects of procrastination. The plan, however, carried the two-edged effects of a compromise. By diminishing the chances of a quickly decisive success in North Africa it made more certain the prolonged diversion of Allied effort in the Mediterranean — as American official historians have recognised and emphasised.†

† See, in particular, the very able and penetrating analysis in
Strategic Planning for Coalition Warfare
1941-1942, by Maurice Matloff and Edwin M. Snell.

In the final plan, the Atlantic coast landing to capture Casablanca was to be made by the all-American force under Major-General George S. Patton, with 24, 500 troops, carried by the Western Naval Task Force under Rear-Admiral H. Kent Hewitt. It sailed direct from America — the main part from Hampton Roads in Virginia — and consisted of 102 ships, of which twenty-nine were transports.

The capture of Oran was entrusted to the Centre Task Force, which comprised 18,500 American troops under Major-General Lloyd R. Fredendall, but was escorted by a British naval force under Commodore Thomas Troubridge. It sailed from the Clyde, as it was composed of American troops who had been brought over to Scotland and Northern Ireland early in August.

For the operation against Algiers, the Eastern Naval Task Force was also entirely British, commanded by Rear-Admiral Sir Harold Burroughs, but the Assault Force consisted of 9,000 British and 9,000 American troops, and its commander, Major-General Charles Ryder, was American. Moreover, American troops were incorporated in the 2,000-strong British Commando units. This curiously mixed composition was inspired by the hope that putting Americans in the front of the shop-window would lead the French to assume that the assault force was all-American. On November 9, the day after the landings, overall command of all the Allied troops in Algeria was taken over by the commander of the newly created British First Army, Lieutenant-General Kenneth Anderson.

The assault forces for both Oran and Algiers sailed together from Britain in two large convoys, a slow one starting on October 22 and a fast one four days later. This timing was arranged so that they could pass through the Straits of Gibraltar simultaneously during the night of November 5, and from there they were covered by part of the British Mediterranean Fleet under Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham. Its presence sufficed to deter the Italian fleet from interfering, even after the landings — so that, as Cunningham regretfully remarked, his powerful force had ‘to be kept cruising idly’. But he had plenty of work on his hands, as he was Allied Naval Commander, under Eisenhower, and thus responsible for the whole of the maritime side of ‘Torch’. Including storeships that had come in advance convoys early in October, over 250 merchantmen sailed from Britain, of which some forty were transports (including three American), while the British naval force employed in the operation, as escort and cover, amounted to 160 warships of various types.

The diplomatic prelude to the landings was akin to a mixture of a spy story and a ‘Western’, with comic interludes, carried into the field of history. Robert Murphy, the chief American diplomatic representative in North Africa, had been active in preparing the way for the landings by discreet sounding among French officers whom he felt were likely to be in sympathy with, and to give aid to, the project. He relied particularly 011 General Mast, commander of the troops in the Algiers sector (and previously Chief of Staff to General Juin, the Commander-in-Chief) and General Bethouart who commanded the troops in the Casablanca sector — although that sector as a whole was under the command of Admiral Michelier, a fact that the Americans failed to realise.

Mast had urged that a senior Allied military representative should come secretly to Algiers for back-stage talks, and discussion of plans, with Juin and others. Accordingly General Mark Clark (who had just been appointed Deputy Commander-in-Chief for ‘Torch’), flew to Gibraltar with four key staff officers, and the party were carried on by a British submarine, H.M.S.
Seraph
(Lieutenant N. A. A. Jewell), to a rendezvous at a villa on the coast some sixty miles west of Algiers. The submarine arrived off the coast early on October 21 but too late to land Mark Clark’s party before daylight, so had to stay submerged all day, while the puzzled and disappointed French party went home. A message from the submarine to Gibraltar, relayed to Algiers over a secret radio chain, brought Murphy and some of the French back to the villa the next night, when Clarke’s party came ashore in four canvas canoes — one of which upset when they embarked. They had been guided to the meeting place by a lamp, with a white blanket behind, shining through a window.