How Operation Torch in North Africa Helped Win World War II

The fight to defeat Nazi Germany in World War II began not on the beaches of Normandy but in the deserts of North Africa. By seizing control of the region, the Allies protected critical supply routes, secured access to Middle Eastern oil and established a launching point for the invasion of Europe. The campaign’s centerpiece, Operation Torch, marked the first major Anglo-American offensive against Germany and served as a crucial proving ground for U.S. troops.

Nearly a year after entering World War II, the United States had yet to confront Nazi Germany on the battlefield. Although America entered the war after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, it quickly embraced a “Germany first” strategy with Great Britain. The question was, where would GIs strike first?

America’s top military planners, including General Dwight D. Eisenhower, favored an invasion of France across the English Channel. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt believed such an assault would be premature and likely to fail. Overruling his generals, America’s commander-in-chief sided with Churchill and ordered Allied forces to open a second front in Axis-controlled North Africa.

North Africa sat at the crossroads of some of the war’s most important supply routes. Allied leaders believed that controlling the region would secure Mediterranean shipping lanes, protect access to Middle Eastern oil and safeguard the Suez Canal—the vital waterway linking Britain to its empire. Victory in North Africa would also provide a launching point for attacks on Italy and southern Europe while forcing Germany to divert troops and resources from the Eastern Front.

“The simplest way of defeating Nazi Germany was to attack them where they would be the weakest—in North Africa, where they were the furthest point from their industrial base,” says Nigel Hamilton, author of three books on Britain’s General Bernard Montgomery and the FDR at War trilogy.

By late 1942, the Allies planned a giant pincer movement across North Africa. In the East, Montgomery’s 8th Army advanced after its victory at El Alamein. In the West, Anglo-American forces prepared to land in French North Africa and push eastward. Their goal was to trap Nazi Field Marshal Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps between them.

Rommel had arrived in North Africa in February 1941 to rescue Italy’s faltering campaign against the British in Egypt. Over the next two years, the commander known as the “Desert Fox” built a reputation as one of Germany’s most dangerous battlefield leaders.

The untested American troops faced more than scorching heat, sandstorms and unfamiliar terrain. They were about to confront the Wehrmacht, arguably the world’s most battle-hardened army. “The Germans had become masters of ground warfare,” Hamilton says. “They had mechanized early and were famous for their discipline in military operations.”

Just as Montgomery’s critical victory at the Second Battle of El Alamein halted the Axis drive toward Egypt, the Allies opened a new front in North Africa. On November 8, 1942, Eisenhower launched Operation Torch, the Anglo-American invasion of French Morocco and Algeria. More than 100,000 troops—mostly American—came ashore in the war’s first joint U.S.-British operation. The landings quickly overcame token resistance from Vichy French forces, and the campaign gained momentum after Vichy leader François Darlan struck a deal to cooperate with the Allies.

Although initially plagued by supply and transportation problems, Allied forces pushed eastward over the desert’s unpaved roads into Tunisia. Their advance stalled at Kasserine Pass in February 1943, where Rommel delivered the Americans a harsh introduction to modern mechanized warfare. Germany’s battle-hardened ground forces and Mark IV tanks mauled the inexperienced American II Corps, forcing some units to retreat nearly 50 miles before regrouping to stage a tenacious defense. With his supply lines stretched thin and Allied reinforcements being rushed to the battlefield, the “Desert Fox” was unable to exploit the breakthrough and ultimately retreated.

The Battle of Kasserine Pass exposed serious weaknesses in American leadership, training and battlefield coordination. Like other British military brass, Lieutenant General Harold Alexander was unimpressed with the mettle of the Americans, declaring them “soft, green and quite untrained” from top to bottom. Yet the defeat also became a crucial learning experience for U.S. forces as they prepared for larger campaigns ahead.

Stung by the defeat at Kasserine Pass, Eisenhower moved quickly to address the weaknesses the battle had exposed. He revamped his intelligence operation, streamlined the Allied command structure and placed the hard-driving General George S. Patton, a daring tactician and master of tank warfare, in charge of the battered II Corps. Determined to restore discipline and morale, the swaggering general vowed to “kick the bastards out of Africa.”

While Allied supply networks improved, Axis logistics steadily deteriorated. Growing Allied air and naval superiority in the Mediterranean disrupted the vulnerable sea routes linking Italy and North Africa. With one-third of their supply ships sunk by the Allies, the German and Italian armies ran short on fuel, ammunition and spare parts.

The Allies soon regained the momentum on land. At the strategically important central Tunisian town of El Guettar, U.S. forces won their first major battle against German troops, demonstrating how quickly they had improved since Kasserine Pass. Six days after the port cities of Tunis and Bizerte fell on May 7, 1943, roughly 250,000 trapped Axis troops officially surrendered. Driving their own vehicles to prisoner-of-war camps, German and Italian soldiers formed a column 14 miles long.

The capture of North Africa came at a steep cost, with more than 18,000 American casualties in Tunisia alone. Yet the victory delivered huge military and psychological boosts to the Allied war effort. “In London there was, for the first time in the war, a real lifting of spirits,” Churchill recalled.

“The whole of the North African operations was a learning curve,” Hamilton says. By the campaign’s end, American forces operated more effectively alongside their British allies, and GIs had gained valuable combat experience against the Wehrmacht. As noted war correspondent Ernie Pyle observed, many GIs had undergone a profound transformation, adopting “a new professional outlook where killing is a craft.”

The North Africa campaign made Patton a national hero and put Eisenhower on the path to be named Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe. His success coordinating Operation Torch—and integrating naval, air and ground troops from multiple nations—helped prepare him for the far larger challenge of overseeing the D-Day invasion.

From their springboard in North Africa, the Allies invaded Sicily in July 1943, then mainland Italy, opening a new front against Hitler’s empire. The road to Berlin would remain long and bloody, but victory in North Africa secured the gateway to Europe and marked a decisive step toward the defeat of Nazi Germany.