Short History of World War II - James L. Stokesbury [120]
Things went best at Algiers. The Anglo-American Eastern Task Force, commanded by the American general Charles Ryder, arrived on the morning of November 8, just as pro-Allied officers had seized temporary control of the city. By chance, Admiral Darlan was in Algiers, visiting his son, and the Vichy forces under his overall direction regained command of Algiers at mid-morning. The damage was already done, however, and the British and Americans were securely ashore by then. They had landed on both sides of the city and were rapidly closing in on it. Fighting ended at nightfall, when the Vichy remnants surrendered. Darlan was taken by the Allies, and he then ordered all French units to cease fighting. When this order was received in metropolitan France an angry Pétain quickly disavowed it and ordered the French to continue the struggle. This sort of confusion continued for the next three days.
The Central Task Force under General Lloyd Fredendall landed at Oran. The plan here was the same as at Algiers, landings on both sides of the city and a pincer movement to isolate and capture it. The flank landings were both made successfully; an attempt to push two destroyers loaded with troops straight into the harbor was practically wiped out. The Americans also made parachute drops against the inland French airfields, but the paratroops missed their target by nearly twenty miles. Nonetheless, the Allies had naval and air superiority; the French made some fairly determined counterattacks on the 9th, and surrendered at midday on the 10th.
The heaviest fighting was on the ocean side, where General George S. Patton’s Western Task Force, coming all the way across the Atlantic, went ashore near Casablanca. Again the landings flanked the city, and the assault waves, in one of the few instances of the war, waded ashore carrying American flags, in the hope that the French would not fire on them. The hope proved illusory, and the defenders, mostly French colonial troops, fought hard before they were pushed back and the landings secured. There were substantial French naval units in Casablanca, and trapped as they were, they fought. Five ships were sunk, and the incompleted battleship Jean Bart engaged in a losing gunnery duel with the American Massachusetts. Allied planes raked the harbor and took on the obsolete Vichy Air Force—American pilots in American planes versus French pilots in American planes bought back in 1940. Finally, after hard fighting, the French surrendered on orders from Algiers early on November 11.
The landings were but a prelude to a whole series of problems: What would the Germans do to France, what would happen to the French fleet, what sort of deal would the Allies make with the French in the empire, and what would the Germans do about that? The answers were not long in coming.
In Metropolitan France the German response was a quick takeover. Disregarding the protestations of loyalty by the Vichy government, the Germans immediately moved troops across the demarcation line, and swept south over hitherto unoccupied France. Vichy collapsed precipitately, its little remaining credit gone forever. The army, known as the Armistice Army, dissolved with no show of resistance. From now on, the facade was stripped away, and France, like all the other defeated territories, was laid open to the direct rule of the Germans. The Vichy hand had been played out.
The French fleet in its southern base at Toulon, however, remained true to its chief. It takes several hours to fire off boilers and raise enough steam for a ship to get underway. The French ships were helpless, unable to move. Rather than have the vessels fall into the hands of the Germans, the crews scuttled the ships. It was a sad, negative act of self-destruction, but it kept the fleet out of German hands.
Difficult as the decision to scuttle the fleet was, it was nothing compared to the complexities of the power situation in North Africa. The French