by Walter Reid
The fighting was finally brought to an end when the American general, Mark Clark, persuaded the Vichy commander, Darlan, to order an end to hostilities in Oran and Morocco, in return for which Darlan would head the Free French. It simplified things greatly that Germany now decided to occupy Vichy Metropolitan France. Darlan’s position had been very ambivalent until then, and there was even a fear that he might arrest his liberators. Indeed, when it looked as if Vichy might be able to safeguard the fleet he contemplated revoking his ceasefire. Clark stopped that and Darlan remained under house arrest until he concluded that Pétain was no longer a free agent. He ‘invited’ the Commander-in-Chief at Toulon to sail for North Africa. In the event the Toulon fleet scuttled. Godfroy’s fleet, holed up in Alexandria, had some difficulties in withdrawing from the amenities to which they had now become accustomed, and took six months to enter the war. The Vichy Army in North Africa was rather quicker in joining the Allies.
This was a huge relief: Churchill had said to Clark that, ‘If I could meet Darlan, much as I hate him, I would cheerfully crawl on my hands and knees for a mile if by so doing I could get him to bring that fleet of his into the circle of the Allied Forces’.4 The fleet was not in the circle, but at least it was now denied to Germany, and Churchill was saved an uncomfortable indignity.
Churchill’s vision, the idea of linking up Allied troops in French North Africa with Commonwealth troops in the Western Desert, proved the key to victory in the Mediterranean. Brooke and the British Chiefs had initially been at one with the Americans in regarding TORCH as impracticable, and the credit for ensuring that it went ahead in the face of their opposition goes to Churchill, and his skill in pressing the idea on FDR.5 Brooke’s supporters make much of his ‘Mediterranean Strategy’. He certainly believed the concept was his, and Churchill’s failure to say as much may have contributed to the CIGS’s decision to allow the publication of his diaries. In his annotations to the diary entries he certainly is at pains to suggest that from the start as CIGS he saw a logical progress through North Africa to the Mediterranean and Italy, and only then and only if Russia were still in the war, to the Atlantic coast.
But Brooke had opposed TORCH, and there could have been no Mediterranean Strategy if he had succeeded in killing the operation off. In reality, the Mediterranean Strategy was born when Churchill made the enormously courageous decision (which Brooke deplored) to send half of Britain’s armoured forces to the Middle East at the very time when the Battle of Britain was at its height. Even afterwards, the adoption of the strategy had more to do with Churchill’s preference for attack from the south rather than a confrontation on the Atlantic seaboard. Furthermore Brooke abandoned commitment to the Mediterranean before Churchill did: last in and first out.
The outcome of TORCH was critical to Churchill’s political future, and he was well aware of it. There continued to be significant machinations among potential successors. Eden was irritated by many aspects of Churchill’s thoughts on foreign policy and sometimes toyed with the idea of resignation. He was encouraged by his friends to declare clearly his claim to the succession, but he remained totally loyal. He felt ready to be Prime Minister, but would do nothing unless Churchill fell. Churchill was under no misapprehensions. He said that ‘If TORCH fails then I am done for and must hand over to one of you’.6
Realism was however always tempered by buoyancy and optimism, and the day after TORCH was launched, and long before there was any certainty about its outcome, Churchill opportunistically told the Chiefs of Staff that rather than limit a follow-up to the impending operations in Sicily and Sardinia, there should be an offensive on the mainland of Mediterranean Europe. He had the support of Eden, but not of the Chiefs.
He was being too optimistic. At a staff conference on 16 December 1942 the COS submitted a paper arguing that the slow rate of American build-up in Britain, BOLERO, because of the diversion of American resources to the Pacific, had made a cross-Channel landing in 1943 impossible. There was reference also to the fact that German rail routes would allow them to bring superior forces to the Atlantic front. The recommendation was to hold forty German divisions on that front by the threat of invasion, while eliminating Italy and possibly entering the Balkans.
Churchill and the Chiefs learned that the Americans had gone back on their undertakings and were putting what were known to be good engines in their own landing craft and what were known to be poor engines in the British landing craft. Eden and Churchill accepted the Chiefs’ recommendations. They made it clear that they accepted them with reluctance, and would have preferred a 1943 landing, and indeed Churchill asked the COS to look again at their figures. But the fact that Churchill did accept the recommendations meant the end of Britain’s commitment to ROUNDUP and the formal adoption of the Mediterranean Strategy.
Cancellation of a 1943 Continental landing was desperately disappointing to Churchill, who was trying hard to instil an offensive spirit into the Chiefs, arguing against too much ‘perfection’ or paralysis. But events were moving so slowly that it became obvious that there would be no cross-Channel attack in 1943. Tunis had not been captured before winter weather got in the way. Things might have been different if the Americans had been prepared to land more forces east of Gibraltar, but they did not do so because of the danger that Hitler might enter Spain and attack them from there; Britain did land troops to the east of the Pillars of Hercules. Vichy, still not at war with Britain, allowed the Germans to use their airfields in Tunisia. Reluctantly Churchill abandoned plans for a 35-division invasion of France in 1943.
Simultaneously he had anxious negotiations with his American allies about the shipping problem. He told the Cabinet that Britain needed ‘a solemn compact, almost a treaty, with the United States about the share of their new building we are to get in 1943 and 1944’. By the end of November he received the sort of assurance he needed from Roosevelt, although the undertaking was only implemented after delays and difficulties.
It was his additional complaint that British troops were being ‘misemployed’ in Burma in order to protect America’s air route to ‘their very over-rated China’. Churchill saw Burma as a country to reconquer. For America that smacked of imperialism: for them Burma was largely there to provide bases for the supply of their Chinese ally. Churchill was also upset to learn that at the first wave of TORCH landings at Algiers, a critical part of the war material brought ashore was a large number of dentists’ chairs.
34
The French Dimension
As 1942 drew to a close the French dimension took up more and more of Churchill’s time. Although America’s embracing of Darlan in Algiers had brought resistance in Vichy North Africa to an end, his chance recruitment opened up a long and difficult passage in Anglo-American relations in regard to the leadership of non-Vichy France. The tensions that were created contributed to the growing distance between the two allies.
Darlan had been Pétain’s deputy and his degree of his collaboration with the Germans made him distasteful to the British and unacceptable to the Gaullists. His name was almost synonymous with collaboration. In a broadcast speech on 24 August 1941 Churchill had addressed the French people: ‘Lift up your heads, gallant Frenchmen: not all the infamies of Darlan and Laval shall stand between you and the restoration of your birthright’.1 America was much less fastidious about Vichy collaborators. Darlan’s background presented no problem to the State Department, even if American public opinion found him pretty unappealing.
The installation of Darlan had been extraordinarily badly handled by the Americans. He was endorsed by Eisenhower pretty much on the basis that he happened to be there when the general arrived. Eisenhower justified the choice in a long cable to Roosevelt on 14 November, which displayed a considerable degree of naïvety. Roosevelt had some difficulty in extracting his general from the position in which he had placed himself, but gave him his support, while saying that Darlan’s appointment could be regarded only as ‘a temporary expediency’.
Roosevelt was not really in a position to be too hard on Eisenhower. Darlan’s accession to the Allies was not as adventitious as it appeared. The Americans had been courting him in preference to de Gaulle, and brought him out of occupied France. The reason that Darlan was in Algiers when the Americans arrived was that he was visiting his son who was in hospital suffering from polio. When Roosevelt, another polio victim, heard of the boy’s illness, he wrote a kind letter of support to Darlan and later invited his widow to bring the boy to the therapy centre that he had established at Warm Springs in Georgia.
America’s ideal Frenchman was Giraud. His credentials were impeccable, as he had only recently escaped from a German prisoner of war camp. America wanted him, and Britain would have been delighted if their man, de Gaulle, could have worked with him. But de Gaulle’s egocentric concept of patriotism did not lead him to accept Giraud as his leader and he emphatically refused to subordinate himself to him.
Roosevelt was no more impressed by de Gaulle now than he had been at the time of the Affaire St. Pierre et Miquelon; indeed his prejudices were reinforced not only by Sumner Welles, but also by Admiral Leahy, who had recently come back from Vichy France, and by Alexis Léger, Washington’s principal French expert and a fierce opponent of de Gaulle from before the war.
Churchill had not discouraged contact between the United States and Vichy France – indeed in May 1941 he had told Roosevelt that Britain was ‘more than willing’ that the United States should take the lead in this area. But America’s relationship with Vichy was unrealistic. Britain’s position was that the fact that France was under duress was no justification for assisting Germany. Hull seems to have failed to see what ‘collaboration’ implied.
No one knew what de Gaulle’s response would be to TORCH, the invasion of what was after all a Département Outre-mer of metropolitan France. Left to himself, Churchill would have liked to tell the general what was afoot well ahead of the North African landings, but Roosevelt vetoed the suggestion and all Churchill could do was to give the general the Trusteeship of Madagascar as a consolation prize. It was not until 6 November Eden told de Gaulle what was happening and invited him to Chequers for 8 November, the start of TORCH. In a message of 11 November 1942, Roosevelt wrote to Churchill, deleting from his draft the words in brackets, ‘In regard to de Gaulle [it is my considered opinion that any association by him with the TORCH operation at the time would add serious difficulties to our efforts in that area.] I have hitherto enjoyed a quiet satisfaction in leaving him in your hands – apparently I have now acquired a similar problem in brother Giraud. [I trust it will not come to a meeting at thirty paces on the Field of Honour, each provided with a rifle.]’2
De Gaulle took the news of TORCH surprisingly well and his subsequent broadcast contained words that – from him – were remarkable: ‘Ignore the traitors who try to persuade you that the Allies want to take our Empire for themselves’. But the fact that he had not been taken into the confidence of his allies from the outset did sow seeds of future discord all the same.
What was very much more serious was the Darlan issue. Darlan, designated ‘High Commissioner for North Africa in the name of the Marshal [Pétain]’ with Giraud as Commander-in-Chief, could not have been more unacceptable to de Gaulle and the Free French. They could not believe what had happened. Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary sought to reassure de Gaulle that Roosevelt had said that Darlan’s position was entirely temporary, but bit by bit the temporary expedient began to look fairly permanent. Towards the end of November Churchill was beginning to warm to the man he had recently wanted shot. He told Eden that ‘Darlan has done more for us than de Gaulle’.
But Darlan’s continued place at the head of affairs in French West Africa became increasingly unacceptable in Britain. Press and Parliament were very unhappy about the connection. In the face of complaints, Churchill made an important Secret Session speech to the House of Commons in early December. He spoke of his own love for France and of his support for de Gaulle:
We have most scrupulously kept our engagements with him and have done everything in our power to help him. We finance his movement. We have helped his operations. But they have never recognised him as representing France … I cannot feel that de Gaulle is France, still less that Darlan and Vichy are France.
[Y]ou must not be led to believe that General de Gaulle is an unfaltering friend of Britain. On the contrary, I think he is one of those good Frenchmen who have a traditional antagonism ingrained in French hearts by centuries of war against the English.
He continued by referring to the mischief de Gaulle had brought in Syria and French central and West Africa. He referred to the Chicago Daily News interview and recommended the House not to build all their hopes and confidence on him. Like Roosevelt, they should try to base themselves ‘on the will of the entire French nation rather than any sectional manifestations, even the most worthy’. The critical references to de Gaulle were bravely made to a House which did not wish to hear such an appraisal of someone who had become a British icon, and they were excised from the text of the Secret Session speeches published in 1946. He tried to set the events in North Africa in a historical perspective: ‘I must say I think he is a poor creature with a jaundiced outlook and disorganized loyalties who in all this tremendous African episode, west and east alike, can find no point to excite his interests except the arrangements between General Eisenhower and Admiral Darlan’.3 Churchill regarded this speech as having changed the mood of the House more than any other he had given.
Eisenhower’s recognition of the admiral had been much resented in Britain not just because of what Darlan had stood for, but also because de Gaulle himself was the idol of the popular press and public opinion. While Churchill was able to check this mood and minimise the significance of what Eisenhower had done in regard to Darlan by putting it in the context of the great and crucial events that were taking place in North Africa, his warnings about de Gaulle were less well received.
Fortunately, as far as is known, de Gaulle never heard of this speech. In any event the situation soon changed dramatically. On 24 December Darlan was assassinated. The circumstances of his assassination remain unclear. It has been suggested but never proved that the assassin, Fernand Bonnier de la Chapelle, was a Gaullist, possibly aided by Britain. At the time care was taken not to examine Britain’s role, if any. Bonnier was tried in camera and executed in less than forty-eight hours. Whoever was responsible for the assassination, it made life much easier for the Allies. SOE’s Controller for Western Europe and the Free French Navy’s Chief of Intelligence celebrated with a bottle of champagne.4
Darlan’s replacement was America’s favourite, Giraud. When Giraud had emerged as one of the key players in the new North African arrangements, de Gaulle had spoken of him as being a good general, but there was now increasing tension between them. Giraud had been appointed by Vichy Imperial Council (under intense background pressure from America) but he had an impeccable record and de Gaulle was quite happy that he should command the Free French troops. On this occasion it was not de Gaulle who was to blame for the breakdown of the relationship. It was Giraud who repulsed de Gaulle’s overtures.
The consequent feud soon came out into the open. De Gaulle went public and was supported by a wave of indignation in the British press. A corresponding but contrary wave started to roll in the United States and Cordell Hull crested it with statements on 5 and 7 January 1943 to the British Foreign Office complaining that British press and government officials were stirring up propaganda with the direct aim of arousing bitterness against the United States. Eden responded by saying fairly frankly that Hull did not know what he was talking about. ‘I have no idea what Mr. Hull meant when he spoke of persons in the British government who are associated with de Gaulle publicity. No such person existed. Indeed most of our time was spent in trying to damp down de Gaulle’s activities and his publicity’.5
While these political manoeuvres took place, the fighting c
ontinued. In hindsight, the flow from TORCH to the surrender of Axis troops in Tunisia seems obvious and inevitable; at the time that was not the case. Unlike Libya, Tunisia was eminently defensible. There are limited passes through the Atlas mountains, and in the plain between the Atlas range and the Matmata Hills there was a substantial defensive work which the French had already built, known as the Mareth Line. Moreover, Rommel had ports at Tunis and Bizerta, which could be supplied at night from accessible Italian bases on Sicily. Hitler imagined that Tunisia would hold out for a very long time and put paid to any early Second Front.
There was indeed a huge increase of German forces in Tunisia, which contributed to the threat to the 1943 cross-Channel landings. The Prime Minister told Alexander that it might be a good idea to give a friendly hint to Monty that he was unwise to make too many confident noises before a decisive battle with Rommel had been fought. He warned that Montgomery might seem ‘foolish’ if Rommel slipped away, rather than submitting to a confrontation at Agheila.
During the last weeks of 1942, it looked as if Hitler might well be correct about the impregnability of Tunisia. Despite a significant numerical superiority, the Allies faced repeated reverses and by 26 December 1942 were no further forward than they had been two weeks earlier. In 1943 the untried American troops did not perform well. At the Battle of the Kasserine Pass, at the cost of few casualties, Rommel was able to inflict serious losses on the Americans – 6,000 men and two-thirds of their tanks. The Americans had to be strengthened by British troops withdrawn from fighting the Germans at Sbiba.