The Allied bet that they could reach Tunis ahead of Axis forces fell victim to hesitancy, delay, and confusion at the top of the French command, that communicated downward to subordinates. In a situation that combined uncertainty with pusillanimity in the French leadership, Axis forces flowed into Tunisia. The Allies viewed the resulting campaign as both costly and unnecessary. That said, the decision by the Axis leaders to defend Europe from Tunisia arguably made “Tunisgrad” more consequential than Stalingrad. It also marked an ambiguous entry of the hitherto Vichy French forces into an Allied coalition, that, in the view of French commander in chief Alphonse Juin, “erased the memory of Dunkirk.” Nevertheless, quickly exasperated by infighting between Gaullists and “Giraudists,” the Allies continued to suspect both the loyalty and the military potential of poorly armed French forces.

French North Africa (AFN), a complex constellation of tribes, cultures, and religions, was viewed as the Hexagon’s strategic hinterland. However, from 1942, the war’s momentum would thrust it into the front lines. Roosevelt’s policy had been to entice Vichy back into the war on the Allied side. When that collapsed, Washington’s target became Maxime Weygand, whose reputation as anti-German did not, alas, make him pro-Allied. When Weygand was recalled, both the Americans and the British looked for a French leader whom they could champion as a replacement for both Vichy and de Gaulle. Henri Giraud seemed to be the man who could bring together a conspiracy of Vichy dissidents in AFN orchestrated by American Consul in Algiers Robert Murphy, whose “actionable intelligence” that AFN stood ready to welcome the Allies with open arms helped to convince Roosevelt to launch Torch – the Allied invasion of AFN. Vichy counted on l’armée d’Afrique to defend AFN against an Allied invasion. However, that force had been undermined by defeat, honeycombed with Gaullist dissidence, and riven by racial and professional animosity. Darlan was utterly clueless about the looming Anglo-American invasion. More presciently, Juin believed that an Axis invasion of Tunisia was more likely. But Darlan forbade him to defend it, evoking the protection of the 1940 armistice. Vichy continued to view the war as deadlocked. As a result, Torch caught Vichy and AFN completely by surprise. Furthermore, their chain of command in AFN was reorganizing, which further confused the response.

Operation Torch, the 8 November 1942 Anglo-American landings in French North Africa (AFN), strengthened and ballooned the Mediterranean into a major “Second Front” and put the Anglo-Americans on the strategic offensive until the war’s end. Torch also crystallized the contradictions of Vichy’s wartime posture, and dispelled all ambiguity of “the order to defend against whomever.” The collapse of the Vichy formula of a French Army surviving within a sovereign, neutral France, an open invitation to Axis forces to enter Tunisia and Constantine, and the scuttling of the French High Seas Fleet at Toulon confirmed France’s descent to the status of a second-, if not third-tier power. Going forward, Torch removed any incentive for the Germans to cease to meddle in French internal politics, and ironically accelerated Vichy collaboration. Torch became the first instance in which resistance was integrated into operational planning. The Darlan deal alienated the resistance in France and drove them into the arms of de Gaulle, making it virtually impossible for the Allies to jettison the nettlesome French Leader. AFN supplied both a geopolitical “trampoline” to advance the Allies’ strategic agenda and a fragile venue for France’s resurrection. The French reaction to the Anglo-American invasion was undermined in part by confused command arrangements in AFN, made more complex by Darlan’s fortuitous presence in Algiers. This chapter traces the tortuous hesitations of the French command in Algiers and Rabat, which allowed Axis forces to gain a foothold in Tunisia. The so-called “Darlan deal” struck between Darlan and Eisenhower to cease French resistance in AFN was to have far-reaching consequences. In the wake of Torch, all the accouterments of Vichy independence disappeared – the zone libre, the empire, the armistice army, and the fleet.