The French Problem and Operation “Torch” (cont.)
8-16 NOVEMBER 1942
THE FRENCH PROBLEM AND OPERATION “TORCH” (cont.)
The landing of 84,000 American troops in French North Africa brought the full rage of Vichy President Marshal Philippe Pétain against President Franklin Roosevelt. “It is with stupor and sadness that I learned tonight of the aggression of your troops against North Africa… France and her honor are at stake. We are attacked; we shall defend ourselves; this is the order I am giving,” Pétain railed, as Vichy broke diplomatic relations with the United States. Clearly any invasion of French soil was to be opposed, even if by a staunch ally! Off Casablanca French resistance sank 40 Allied landing craft, but despite these losses the Allies secured a foothold. On November 9th, US forces attempting to flank the city of Oran met heavy French resistance. (History may well forgive Pétain. Holding no love for Hitler, Pétain was nevertheless almost powerless, caught between the violent Axis and the worried Allies).
But Allied-leaning French Admiral François Darlan, commanding all French forces in North Africa, broke with Vichy on November 10th, ordering all French forces to lay down their arms. Darlan had been the target of intense US pressure in the pre-invasion months, even being encouraged to stage a coup against Pétain. Oran and Casablanca were successfully occupied, and on the 13th, American military commander MGEN Dwight D. Eisenhower flew to Algiers to meet with Darlan, among other matters, to discuss the fate of the French fleet that still lay in Toulon.
The entry of the first Americans into the European theater spiked Hitler’s ire as well. On November 11th his troops overran the rest of “free” France, claiming a desire to “protect France” and “arrest the continuation of the Anglo-British [sic] aggression.” An autonomous defensive zone was established around Toulon, where the guns of the free French fleet at anchor were still respected by Nazi troops ashore. For two weeks German soldiers and French sailors stared each other down. Then on November 27th the Nazi’s stormed into Toulon.
French sailors had generally been the most anti-Hitler element in the French armed forces, and true to this persuasion, they opened the seacocks on their warships. One by one the vaunted warriors of the French fleet slipped below the water. Rather than surrender to the Germans, the fleet was scuttled. Indeed, the Germans had mined the exits to Toulon harbor, and their Stuka dive bombers would have likely finished off any ships escaping the mines. Three battleships, 7 cruisers, 15 destroyers, and 92 smaller ships and auxiliaries were destroyed. The fleet lay on the bottom of Toulon harbor for the remainder of the war in Europe.
Watch for more “Today in Naval History” 16 NOV 23
CAPT James Bloom, Ret.
Breuer, William B. Operation Torch: The Allied Gamble to Invade North Africa. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press, 1985.
Goralski, Robert. World War II Almanac, 1931-1945: A Political and Military Record. New York, NY: Bonanza Books, 1981, pp. 215, 242, 243, 244, 245.
Langer, William L. Our Vichy Gamble. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1947.
Morison, Samuel Eliot. History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, Vol II Operations in North African Waters. Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Co., 1950, pp. 88-114.
Sweetman, Jack. American Naval History: An Illustrated Chronology of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps, 1775-Present, 3rd ed. Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 2002, pp. 155-56.
ADDITIONAL NOTES: The scuttling of the French fleet was effective in denying its use by Hitler. Only the submarine CASABLANCA escaped Toulon to reach Allied forces in Algiers. The Axis managed to salvage only two guns from the battleship PROVENCE during the rest of the war. These were mounted in a coastal fortification guarding the entrance to Toulon. When they saw action against the southern D-Day forces in June 1944, it represented the only element of the French Navy to be employed by Hitler against the Allies.
Operation “Torch” was a success. Coupled with the October 1942 victory of British LGEN Bernard Montgomery over Rommel at El Alamein, Anglo-American forces finally evicted the Germans from North Africa in April 1943, setting the stage for the next step, the Allied invasion of nearby Sicily in July 1943.
Though the Vichy puppet government “talked” a good pro-Nazi line, Hitler was never really satisfied with their true support for his war efforts. On the same day he overran Toulon, Hitler dissolved the Vichy military, subsuming France into the Third Reich. With the liberation of France in 1944 the remaining officials of the Vichy government were discredited and tried for treason.
