FDR - Jean Edward Smith [353]
“We agree with the military layout as you propose it,” Churchill replied. “It is imperative now to drive straight ahead and save every hour.”79 What General Eisenhower referred to as a “transatlantic essay contest” ended with a boisterous exchange of cables.80
“Hurray!” said FDR on September 5.
“Okay full blast,” Churchill rejoined.81
U.S. and British troops went ashore near Casablanca, Oran, and Algiers in the early-morning hours of Sunday, November 8. Resistance was slight. French units offered token resistance but negotiations with local commanders quickly brought the fighting to a close. Many in the United States and Great Britain criticized Allied military authorities for collaborating with Vichy’s representatives, but the consequences of not doing so would have been catastrophic. Not only would the casualties have been heavy (there were nearly 120,000 French troops in North Africa), but the specter of American and British forces in pitched battle against the French would have poisoned public opinion in France. By November 12 all of Morocco and Algeria were under Allied control.*
Roosevelt provided direct support. He prerecorded a message to the people of France and North Africa that was broadcast as the troops came ashore. In his accented but elegant French FDR noted his personal familiarity with France (“I know your farms, your villages, your cities”), his admiration for the Republic (“I salute again and reiterate my faith in Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity”), and the historic bonds between France and the United States (“No two nations are more united by friendly ties”). He pledged immediate withdrawal once the Germans were defeated, and evoked the image of French grandeur. “Vive la France éternelle!”82
To ensure regional support and head off possible intervention by neighboring powers Roosevelt dispatched personal letters to the Sultan of Morocco, the Bey of Tunis, the President of Portugal, and Generalissimo Francisco Franco. FDR had kept the United States neutral during the Spanish Civil War, much to the chagrin and discomfiture of many Americans, and now he collected his IOU. “The presence of American military forces in North Africa presages in no manner whatsoever a move against the people or Government of Spain,” he told Franco.83
Franco’s response relieved whatever fears American military planners may have had of Spanish intervention. “I accept with pleasure and I thank you for the assurances which Your Excellency offers the Government and the people of Spain,” said Franco. “I can assure you that Spain knows the value of peace and sincerely desires peace for itself and all other peoples.”84
Hitler responded to the Allied invasion by seizing what remained of unoccupied France. German mechanized forces quickly overran the southern part of the country, six Italian divisions marched in from the east, and the Luftwaffe set up shop in Tunisia, quickly joined by two panzer divisions. When the Germans attempted to capture the French fleet at Toulon (they had mined the harbor exit to prevent its escape), the Navy scuttled it. The Allies regretted that the French admirals had not sailed to North Africa earlier but could rejoice that the fleet had not fallen into German hands.85
In January 1943 Roosevelt and Churchill met again, this time at Casablanca. The tide had turned ever so slightly. Heavy fighting was under way in Tunisia, but Montgomery had broken Rommel’s Afrika Korps at El Alamein and was driving westward across Libya; Zhukov, now a Marshal of the Soviet Union, had mounted a massive counterattack at Stalingrad, isolating the German Sixth Army Group and subtracting 350,000 soldiers from the Wehrmacht; in the Pacific the Allies’ laborious island-hopping campaign had begun with the capture of Guadalcanal.
Hitler’s defeat in Africa was a matter of time. The problem for Churchill and Roosevelt was the next step. As in June, Marshall argued for a cross-Channel attack; Admiral King pressed the Navy’s case for the Pacific; and the British insisted on the invasion of Sicily. That would clear the