Operation Torch, 8 November 1942: America’s Encounter with a Divided France and Africa and the Middle East in Transformation

Abstract

The Maghreb Review, Vol. 42, 2, 2017 © The Maghreb Review 2017 This publication is printed on FSC Mix paper from responsible sources OPERATION TORCH, 8 NOVEMBER 1942: AMERICA’S ENCOUNTER WITH A DIVIDED FRANCE AND AFRICA AND THE MIDDLE EAST IN TRANSFORMATION ALLAN CHRISTELOW* On 8 November, 1942, American and British troops landed in Morocco and Algeria. It was the first step toward an Allied victory in Europe. But it also marked the beginning of the end of the French colonial empire. Studies of Operation Torch by Western scholars have largely focused on how it fit into the conflict between the Allied and the Axis powers.1 Yet it was less than three years later that we see the first event of the conflict leading to Algerian independence – the brutal suppression of Algerians calling for independence following VE Day in May of 1945.2 American President Franklin D. Roosevelt stressed the importance of self-determination, but he was ambivalent about where and how soon this principle should come into effect. One needs to recognise that Operation Torch was not a single, isolated event. It fit into other military campaigns in Africa: the movement of British forces into the Italian colonial territories of Ethiopia and Libya, and the movement of Free French forces from Equatorial Africa through Chad into Libya.3 Also, just three years after Operation Torch, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima in Japan. The uranium used to make it had come from the Belgian Congo, just to the south of the Free French base in Equatorial Africa – a story fully examined only recently.4 Part of the problem is that scholars focusing on the European conflict and using conventional sources fail to recognise the magnitude of the social and cultural changes that took place among French colonial populations in the early 1940s – in Africa, Indochina, and the West Indies. This includes looking at the psychological impact of new military technology, above all aeroplanes, on these * Idaho State University, Idaho, USA 1 Among such studies are Rick Atkinson, An Army at Dawn: the War in North Africa, 1942– 1943. New York: Picador, 2002; Andrew Buchanan, America’s Grand Strategy in the Mediterranean During World War II. Cambridge University Press, 2004 and Anthony Verrier, Assassination in Algiers: Roosevelt, Churchill, De Gaulle and the Murder of Admiral Darlan. New York: W.W. Norton, 1990. 2 Studies focusing on how this period helped pave the way for the Algerian revolution include Annie Rey-Goldzeiguer, Aux origines de la guerre d’Algérie, 1940–1945: de Mers-El-Kebir aux massacres du Nord Constantinois. Paris: Éditions La Découverte, 2001; and Mahfoud Kaddache, Histoire du Nationalisme Algérien: Question Nationale et Politique, 1919–1951. Algiers: Société Nationale d’Édition et de Diffusion, 1980. 3 Eric T. Jennings, Free French Africa in World War II: the African Resistance. Cambridge University Press, 2014. 4 Susan Williams, Spies in the Congo: America’s Atomic Mission in World War II. New York: Public Affairs, 2016. 100 ALLAN CHRISTELOW populations. Another part of the problem is that these scholars tend to view Algeria and Morocco as individual ‘nations’ separate from others, rather than considering their connections to other parts of the Arab world through migration, study, travel, and Arabic language media – which became a lot more important with the development of printed material in Arabic starting in the late 1800s. Also, there is a lack of historical perspective. To understand Operation Torch it can be useful to go back to the early 1900s when the French and the British finally ended their rivalry in Africa, and began building the Entente Cordiale, and when the United States made its first appearance on the scene with President Teddy Roosevelt sending battleships to Tangier, and America helping to promote a solution to Morocco’s problems at the Algeciras Conference in Spain in 1906. Morocco had become, in effect, the door through which America entered North Africa as a mediator. Algeria’s most important ties were with Syria, where there was a large population of Algerian refugees centred on the family of Amir `Abd al-Qadir, leader of the Algerian resistance against the French invasion...