Torch: North Africa and the Allied Path to Victory

by Vincent P. O'Hara

World War II had many superlatives, but none like Operation Torch--a series of simultaneous amphibious landings, audacious commando and paratroop assaults, and the Atlantic's biggest naval battle, fought across a two thousand mile span of coastline in French North Africa. The risk was enormous, the scale breathtaking, the preparations rushed, the training inadequate, and the ramifications profound.

Torch was the first combined Allied offensive and key to how the Second World War unfolded politically and militarily. Nonetheless, historians have treated the subject lightly, perhaps because of its many ambiguities. As a surprise invasion of a neutral nation, it recalled German attacks against countries like Belgium, Norway, and Yugoslavia. The operation's rationale was to aid Russia but did not do this. It was supposed to get Americans troops into the fight against Germany but did so only because it failed to achieve its short-term military goals. There is still debate whether Torch advanced the fight against the Axis, or was a wasteful dispersion of Allied strength and actually prolonged the war.

Torch: North Africa and the Allied Path to Victory is a fresh look at this complex and controversial operation. The book covers the fierce Anglo-American dispute about the operation and charts how it fits into the evolution of amphibious warfare. It recounts the story of the fighting, focusing on the five landings--Port Lyautey, Fédala, and Safi in Morocco, and Oran and Algiers in Algeria--and includes air and ground actions from the initial assault to the repulse of Allied forces on the outskirts of Tunis. Torch also considers the operation's context within the larger war and it incorporates the French perspective better than any English-language work on the subject. It shows how Torch brought France, as a power, back into the Allied camp; how it forced the English and the Americans to work together as true coalitions partners and forge a coherent amphibious doctrine. These skills were then applied to subsequent operations in the Mediterranean, in the English Channel, and in the Pacific. The story of how this was accomplished is the story of how the Allies brought their power to bear on the enemy's continental base and won World War II.

Genres: World War II

368 pages, Hardcover

First published September 15, 2015

About the author

Vincent P. O'Hara is a noted naval historian and the author, co-author, or editor of eight books and many articles that have appeared in publications like Naval War College Review, Warship, Seaforth Naval Review, and Military History Quarterly. O'Hara was a winner of the Shrout Short Contest awarded by the University of California, Berkeley. Ossa is his first published work of fiction.

Reviews

[Dave Ciskowski · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very technical look at the planning and execution of the landings in North Africa. Fully 80% of the book is focused on how Torch was conducted, with much less emphasis on the background, decision-making, and outcomes. Exhaustive in detail about every specific beach, down to individual landing craft in some cases. Focused much more on 'what' happened than 'why' or 'how'. Also far more of a naval focus, which results in far more detail about topics like naval gunnery and fleet command than similar topics for infantry, armor, artillery, or air corps. Very good at what it does, but not the book I was looking for. More for military analysts and historians than even interested and informed amateurs.

[Scott Stiglmeier · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very detailed overview of the logistics of operation torch. I found it choppy and tough to follow. Good information not great delivery.

[Charles McCain · Rating 5 out of 5]

Review of TORCH: North Africa and the Allied Path to Victory
by Vincent O’Hara.

I consider Vincent O'Hara to be the absolute best naval historian currently writing in America today. Each of his books is concise, meticulously researched, and well organized. He takes pains to dissect classic historical myths and throw the tripe overboard. He sets each of his books within their appropriate historical/political context and explains why the events which take place are important and how they affected other key events in World War Two
"Torch: North Africa and the Allied Path to Victory is O’Hara at his best. Unlike most American and British historians, O'Hara writes without nationalistic prejudice. If you want hagiography about Anglo-American efforts, then don't read this book since O'Hara never writes such bilge.
Operation Torch is one of the most confusing military operations of World War Two. The plan moved up and down the Anglo-American priority list. It was off then on, then off and then on again. It came together haphazardly. O'Hara quotes General Eisenhower's postwar description of the process: "The situation was vague, the amount of resources unknown, the final objective indeterminate and the only firm factor in the whole business [were] our instructions to attack."
From a practical standpoint, with the Russians being pounded by the Germans and the rest of the world watching, the Allies had to attack Axis forces somewhere. French North Africa became the locus of the first Anglo-American attack of the war because it was the least objectionable place the Brits and the Americans could agree on. That there were no German soldiers there was beside the point since the Anglo-Americans considered France under Petain as a puppet of Nazi Germany.
Historian O'Hara first gives a broad survey and explanation of the players, paying particular attention to Vichy France, whose territory, after all, the Anglo-Americans were attacking. This is an afterthought in most histories of Torch which undermines their utility. Fortunately, O'Hara takes the time to walk the reader through the relationship between Vichy and Nazi Germany along with identifying the principal actors of Vichy regime both in France and French North Africa during Torch. This is important because the actions of these men—or inaction—made Allied victory possible.
Mr. O'Hara makes a slightly more sympathetic figure out of Admiral Darlan than I think is warranted and I also don't agree with his interpretation of the Royal Navy's actions at Mers-El-Kébir. But these are minor quibbles. If you read a book on a subject you are relatively well-informed about and don’t have a few disagreements with the author then you are a zombie instead of a discerning reader.
The French leaders O’Hara describes come across as far more human than they do in other histories I have read. French in senior military and civil positions under Vichy regarded de Gaulle as a traitor to France and Petain as the savior of France. At the same time, most of them hated the Germans. This placed these men in a triangle of anger which they often took out on one another. There were men who could not abide the presence of other leaders. One had his men arrest a ranking officer who, upon being rescued by troops loyal to him, put the other officer under arrest.
The bitter inter-service rivalries within the French military continued to play out in the face of the Allied invasion. The chain of command was not altogether clear since there were both Vichy civilian and military administrations in these colonies. Communications between the various headquarters either in France or North Africa were poor and orders that did get through were often ignored or interpreted in such a way as to suit the local commander on the ground.
One of the many things I learned from O'Hara's book was this: the major hesitation of French commanders and prefects openly coming over to the Allied side was their justifiable fear that if they didn't mount a credible resistance to the Anglo-Americans, the Germans would invade and occupy Vichy France. And this the Germans did while Operation Torch was still underway.
The Vichy French forces in French North Africa which did resist the Anglo-American attack put up a good fight. They were brave and determined men and of those ordered to resist, many did so, although many did not. In spite of being taken completely by surprise, they did fight back in many places with planes, ships large and small, and aircraft. Fortunately for the Allies, many of the French commanders on the ground who did not have orders of how to react to an Anglo-American invasion chose to take no action and surrendered or just didn't open fire.
O'Hara explains in detail the key reason why massive and determined French resistance would have been disastrous: the Americans and the British had only a vague idea of what they were doing. Training and rehearsal had been minimal across the board. The Allies had very little experience in amphibious landings and those they had attempted heretofore had not worked.
With only scant training, young sailors found themselves dumped aboard warships for the first time in their lives. Army soldiers had never trained for this type of assault and many had not yet received even the rudiments of combat training. The only trained amphibious force in the US military were the US Marines but they were consumed by the war in the Pacific. Inter-allied communications were inadequate. Merchant ships carrying important cargo or troops were not adequately protected from air attack which no one had thought much about. Few of the merchant ships were combat loaded. Planning was hurried, inadequate and in the classic military phrase, the Allied invasion known as Torch can be characterized as "order, counter-order, disorder."
Of particular note in Operation Torch was the employment of the new Higgins landing craft. These were to have an immense impact on subsequent Allied amphibious operations since they were specifically designed to run up on the beach and discharge men or stores. Historian O'Hara explains the different types of landing craft in detail, notes that many of the coxswains had no experience with these types of craft--and some had no experience with small craft at all-- and seemed to ram each other a lot.
Several models of landing craft turned out to not be appropriate for the area, pathfinder boats lost their way, beach reconnaissance had not been conducted and lots of small craft ended up on the rocks. Due to the relatively heavy surf on some beaches and inexperience of coxswains, many of these precious but not strongly build landing craft broached to and broke up.
If this all sounds confusing, it is. Torch was a very, very confusing campaign. O'Hara brings order to the confusion by organizing his material by event rather than timeline. Since there were many landings at relatively the same time at different beaches often separated by hundreds of miles, he takes each major event and examines that event in detail instead of trying to write about every single thing which happened on each day. This is especially useful because a reader who wants to re-read the specifics of a particular key event, such as Oran, for instance, doesn't have to look through the entire book. He or she can just turn to the chapter on Oran.
Since O'Hara is a naval historian, much of this work is focused on the naval and maritime aspects of the invasion of North Africa. There were far more naval engagements between the French and the Royal Navy and the US Navy than I was aware of and I have read a fair amount about this operation. This included French submarine attacks, a plethora of coastal artillery which fired large barrages at Allied ships and more French warships that I thought sacrificing themselves by order of their officers to "preserve their honor." I'm not sure if the French sailors who survived with terrible wounds including large patches of burnt skin felt that way. A strange oddity were French civilian convoys which became entangled in the naval battles.
While the high-level aspects are intriguing, O'Hara's detailed explanation of the actions of Royal Navy and US warships gives one a sense of a key reason the Anglo-Americans prevailed besides French confusion, or specific orders not to resist from local commanders or indifference. Both the Royal Navy and the US navy performed at a high standard given how haphazard the entire affair was. Captains took initiative and closed the beaches to fire at French shore batteries and machine guns firing on Allied troops.
Heavy ships moved in to provide cover for destroyers being targeted by coastal batteries and undertook the barrages themselves. One of the things I like that Mr. O'Hara does is provide the number and size of shells fired by each ship. When trying to hit a shore battery or French ships, it always amazes me how many shells various ships fired and at times it is astonishing how many they fired in such short periods of time. While the inaccuracy of naval gunnery in World War Two never ceases to puzzle me, ships firing during Operation Torch had a better hit rate than in most other engagements.
Of particular note is O'Hara's recounting of the critical role played by naval spotting aircraft. These planes were carried on catapults aboard larger warships but this is one of the few times when they actually seemed to have played a major role. (As the war went on, most spotter aircraft were removed from warships once enough small carriers were available to provide spotting for warship barrages). Were it not for the performance of the Allied warships, the situation would have been immeasurably worse.
An especially important addition Mr. O'Hara brings to this book is a painstaking explanation of the historical context within which Torch took place along with his point by point summation of why Torch was such a critical victory for the Allies even though they actually didn't achieve their stated objectives.
As an amateur historian and student of this period of time, I can think of no better book on Torch than this one. If you have an interest in naval actions in World War Two generally, and Operation Torch specifically, I respectfully suggest you buy this book.
[[ASIN:1612518230 TORCH: North Africa and the Allied Path to Victory]]

[Joseph Guido · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Torch: North Africa and the Allied Path to Victory” takes us on the finest written account to get inside of the largest amphibious assault in history, Operation Torch. Independent Naval Historian Vincent P. O’Hara in clear, direct, and concise prose provides an outstanding and readable military history of the events leading up to, as well as performance throughout, Operation Torch. O’Hara deftly challenges several longstanding stereotypes about Operation Torch through original research, most of it from the French perspective, and the political intrigues between the Axis Powers and Vichy France in North Africa. O’Hara, a noteworthy Naval scholar of World War II, has presented us the best and most complete narrative yet of this incredible and formative battle which combined amphibious landings, commando raids, and airborne assaults which were fought across two thousand miles of enemy held coastline.

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book gave me a much better appreciation of Operation Torch, and of the French perspective of both the Axis and Allies countries. The invasions were more difficult, and the fighting tougher, than I had understood it to be. Well worth reading.

[Nishant Pappireddi · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent and detailed account of the origins, progression, and results of Operation Torch.

[Shrike58 · Rating 4 out of 5]

As is the case of most of O'Hara's studies the particular attraction is the detailed examination of the operational matters at hand that he provides. This is certainly the most careful accounting I have yet seen of how the French defended their neutrality, and it was a sufficiently stiff fight that one is grateful that there was no emergency effort to crash Northwest Europe in 1942; it would have simply been a bigger Dieppe. This is not to say that the critics of a Mediterranean adventure didn't have a point, as nothing short of full-fledged assault on France was really going to do the job of beating the Germans, but sometimes you have no good options.

Another plus of this book, because O'Hara takes the French seriously, is to consider what the real French options were, whereupon the notion that Vichy should have just jumped at the Allied intervention looks much less much inviting considering the realities. As dubious as the regime of Laval and Petain now looks, one can appreciate their desire to save an at least semi-sovereign France from a full-blown Axis occupation, with all that entailed. O'Hara's further suggestion is that Admiral Darlan deserves some appreciation from a distance, as it took his influence to allow for a full-blown French participation in the liberation of France.

Originally written: February 24, 2020.