Monday, November 16, 1942. A string of Allied victories.

Operation Torch concluded with an Allied victory, which included the French in North Africa switching sides.

On the same day, the Kokoda Track campaign ended in an Allied victory.   The Battle of Buna-Gona in New Guinea, commenced.  That was noted by Sarah Sundin on her blog, who also noted:

Today in World War II History—November 16, 1942: British troops coming from Algeria first encounter German troops in Tunisia. In Papua New Guinea, US and Australians launch drive to clear the Buna-Gona area.

The Naval Battle of Guadalcanal completely stopped, with that also being an Allied victory.

November 10, 1942. The end of the beginning.

Admiral Darlan agreed to a ceasefire in French North Africa.

On the same day, Oran in Algeria surrendered to the Allies.  U.S. forces captured Porty Lyautey.

Following Darlan's declaration, the Germans launched Case Anton and occupied Vichy France, an operation which Italy particpated in. This ended Vichy's autonomy.  Darlan, in turn, declared that this move released him from any requirements of loyalty to Vichy and pleged cooperation with the Allies, with the condition that he be appointed French high commissioner for French North Africa.  While a hgly legalistic approach to thins, it 

Churchill used the occasion to give a speech which characteristically defined events with one of his most famous phrases of the war.

I notice, my Lord Mayor, by your speech you have reached the conclusion that news from the various fronts has been somewhat better lately.

In our wars, episodes are largely adverse but the final result has hitherto been satisfactory. Eddies swirl around us, but the tide bears us forward on its broad, restless flood.

In the last war we were uphill almost to the end. We met with continual disappointments and with disasters far more bloody than anything we have experienced so far in this. But in the end all oppositions fell together and our foes submitted themselves to our will.

We have not so far in this war taken as many German prisoners as they have taken British, but these German prisoners will, no doubt, come in in droves at the end, just as they did last time.

I have never promised anything but blood, tears, toil and sweat. Now, however, we have a new experience. We have victory-a remarkable and definite victory. The bright gleam has caught the helmets of our soldiers and warmed and cheered all our hearts.

The late M. Venizelos observed that in all her wars England-he should have said Britain, of course-always won one battle, the last. It would seem to have begun rather earlier this time.

General Alexander, with his brilliant comrade and lieutenant, General Montgomery, has made a glorious and decisive victory in what I think should be called the Battle of Egypt. Rommel's army has been defeated. It has been routed. It has been very largely destroyed as a fighting force.

This battle was not fought for the sake of gaining positions or so many square miles of desert territory. General Alexander and General Montgomery fought it with one single idea-to destroy the armed forces of the enemy and to destroy them at a place where the disaster would be most punishable and irrevocable.

All the various elements in our lines of battle played their part. Indian troops, Fighting French, Greeks, representatives of Czechoslovakia and others. Americans rendered powerful and invaluable service in the air. But as it happened, as the course of battle turned, it has been fought throughout almost entirely by men of British blood and from the dominions on the one side and by Germans on the other. The Italians were left to perish in the waterless desert. But the fighting between the British and Germans was intense and fierce in the extreme.

It was a deadly battle. The Germans have been outmatched and outfought with every kind of weapon with which they had beaten down so many small peoples and, also, larger, unprepared peoples. They have been beaten by many of the technical apparatus on which they counted to gain domination of the world. Especially is this true in the air, as of tanks and of artillery, which has come back into its own. The Germans have received that measure of fire and steel which they have so often meted out to others.

Now, this is not the end. It is not even the beginning to the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

Hitler's Nazis will be equally well armed and, perhaps, better armed. But henceforward they will have to face in many theatres that superiority in the air which they have so often used without mercy against others and of which they boasted all around the world that they were to be masters and which they intended to use as an instrument for convincing all other peoples that all resistance to them was hopeless.

When I read of the coastal road crammed with fleeing German vehicles under the blasting attacks of the R. A. F., I could not but remember those roads of France and Flanders crowded not with fighting men, but with helpless refugees, women and children, fleeing with their pitiful barrows and household goods upon whom such merciless havoc was wreaked. I have, I trust, a humane disposition, but I must say I could not help feeling that whatever was happening, however grievous, was only justice grimly repaid.

It will be my duty in the near future to give a particular and full account of these operations. All I say about them at present is that the victory which has already been gained gives good prospects of becoming decisive and final, so far as the defense of Egypt is concerned.

But this Battle of Egypt, in itself so important, was designed and timed as a prelude and a counterpart of the momentous enterprise undertaken by the United States at the western end of the Mediterranean, an enterprise under United States command and in which our army, air force and, above all, our navy are bearing an honorable and important share. A very full account has bee published of all that has been happening in Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia.

The President of the United States, who is Commander in Chief of the armed forces of America, is the author of this might undertaking and in all of it I have been his active and ardent lieutenant.

You have, no doubt, read the declaration of President Roosevelt, solemnly endorsed by His Majesty's Government, of the strict respect which will be paid to the rights and interests of Spain and Portugal, both by America and Great Britain.

To those countries, our only policy is that they shall be independent and free, prosperous and at peace. Britain and the United States will do all that we can to enrich the economic life of the Iberian Peninsula. The Spaniards, especially, with all their troubles, require and deserve peace and recuperation.

Our thoughts turn toward France, groaning in bondage under the German heel. Many ask themselves the question: Is France finished? Is that long and famous history, marked by so many manifestations of genius, bearing with it so much that is precious to culture, to civilization and, above all, to the liberties of mankind-is all that now to sink forever into the ocean of the past or will France rise again and resume her rightful place in the structure of what may one day be again the family of Europe?

I gladly say here, on this considerable occasion, even now when misguided or suborned Frenchmen are firing upon their rescuers, that I am prepared to stake my faith that France will rise again.

While there are men like General De Gaulle and all those who follow him-and they are legion throughout France-and men like General Giraud, that gallant warrior whom no prison can hold, while there are men like that to stand forward in the name and in the cause of France my confidence in the future of France is sure.

For ourselves we have no wish but to see France free and strong, with her empire gathered round her and with Alsace-Lorraine restored. We covet no French possession. We have no acquisitive designs or ambitions in North Africa or any other part of the world. We have not entered this war for profit or expansion but only for honor and to do our duty in defending the right.

Let me, however, make this clear, in case there should be any mistake about it in any quarter: we mean to hold our own. I have not become the King's First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire. For that task, if ever it were prescribed, some one else would have to be found, and under a democracy I suppose the nation would have to be consulted.

I am proud to be a member of that vast commonwealth and society of nations and communities gathered in and around the ancient British monarchy, without which the good cause might well have perished from the face of the earth.

Here we are and here we stand, a veritable rock of salvation in this drifting world. There was a time not long ago when for a whole year we stood all alone. Those days, thank God, have gone.

We now move forward in a great and gallant company. For our record we have nothing to fear. We have no need to make excuses or apologies. Our record pleads for us and we shall get gratitude in the breasts of every man and woman in every part of the world.

As I have said, in this war we have no territorial aims. We desire no commercial favors, we wish to alter no sovereignty or frontier for our own benefit.

We have come into North Africa shoulder to shoulder with our American friends and allies for one purpose and one purpose only. Namely, to gain a vantage ground from which to open a n ew front against Hitler and Hitlerism, to cleanse the shores of Africa from the stain of Nazi and Fascist tyranny, to open the Mediterranean to Allied sea power and air power, and thus effect the liberation of the peoples of Europe from the pit of misery into which they have been passed by their own improvidence and by the brutal violence of the enemy.

These two African undertakings, in the east and in the west, were part of a single strategic and political conception which we had labored long to bring to fruition and about which we are now justified in entertaining good and reasonable confidence. Taken together they were a grand design, vast in its scope, honorable in its motive and noble in its aim.

British and American forces continue to prosper in the Mediterranean. The whole event will be a new bond between the English-speaking people and a new hope for the whole world.

I recall to you some lines of Byron which seem to me to fit event and theme:

"Millions of tongues record thee, and anew

Their children's lips shall echo them and say,

Here where sword the united nations drew

Our countrymen were warring on that day.

And this is much and all which will not pass away."

Somewhat oddly, this date was the date on which the movie Road To Morocco was released.

And there's this:

Women lumberjacks at the Northwestern Timber Salvage Administration’s lumber mill at Turkey Pond, N.H. get $4 a day, 11/10/1942. 

Thank you to NARA staff member Shannon Kerner for the document suggestion!

File Unit: [Women Operating Sawmill, Turkey Pond, New Hampshire], 1938 - 1943

Series: Records Relating to Timber Salvage, 1938 - 1943

Record Group 95: Records of the Forest Service, 1870 - 2022

Image description: Three women in heavy work clothes and kerchiefs over their hair carry a log on their shoulders. In the background is a pond filled with logs.

Source: catalog.archives.gov

Monday, November 9, 1942. The Germans invade Tunisia

In reaction to yesterday's landings in French North Africa and Morocco, the Germans invaded French Tunisia.  Vichy forces offered no resistance.  They were offering little resistance to the Allies further to the West, but they had resisted in Syria and Madagascar.

The Germans had no choice, as with the Allies at their back, they had to attempt to protect their rear.  This meant, however, that the Germans were fighting a two front war in North Africa, more or less protected from the south by desert, but open to flank attacks from the sea.

Sarah Sundin, on her blog, notes:

80 Years Ago—Nov. 9, 1942: German planes transport troops to El Aouina Airfield in (Vichy) French Tunisia to combat Allied landings in Algeria.

This means of transportation was frankly remarkable.

It ought to also be noted that at this point in the war, the Western Allies were fighting in Africa and Asia, and therefore overall involved in a massive two front war on the ground.  The Soviets, who were constantly arguing for a second front in Europe, failed to appreciate that there already was one, effectively.   The Western Allies let this go unnoticed.

The French had occupied Tunisia since 1881, governing it as a protectorate.  Its status was at least technically different, therefore, than other African colonies held by the French, and it would ultimately be very much different than Algeria, which became an overseas department of France.

Tunisia had independence movements that predated the war, but it wisely avoided using the war as a means to argue for a change in government, as it did not want Axis control of the country.  The Free French would, however, mess with its government and depose its popular nationalist bey.  The country became independent in 1956.

Sundin also noted:

Germans force Danish King Christian X to appoint collaborator Erik Scavenius as prime minister.

Scavenius was not a Nazi, but took a down key approach, hoping not to create controversy with the occupying Germans.  He remains a controversial figure in Denmark.

Canada, Cuba and Mexico broke off diplomatic relations with Vichy France.

Another thing noted by Sundin: 

German spy Werner von Janowski is landed by U-boat U-518 at New Carlisle, Québec, but is arrested within hours on a tip from a suspicious hotel clerk.

Von Janowksi was  an odd figure the Canadians tried to turn, and there's some indication he may have ended up a triple agent.  He was eventually sent to the UK in 1943 and repatriated to Germany after the war. As he was from Prussia, he was then homeless, and ultimately ended up working as an interpreter for the German Navy once it was reconstituted.

And on a topic other than the war:

Charles Courtney Curran, noted for his highly romanticized paintings of women, passed away.

November 8, 1942. Operation Torch commences.

 Operation Torch commenced, that being the Anglo American invasion of French North Africa.

The landings were a compromise between British and American concerns, designed to knock the Axis out of North Africa by opening up the territory of theoretically neutral French North Africa. While it tends to be obliquely noted, it was an active of aggression against a party that had resisted going into war fully and which was not a declared belligerent.

The Western Task and Center Tasks Forces were made up of all American troops, while the Eastern Task Force included some British troops as well as Americans. The naval contingent was Anglo-American.  French loyalty to Vichy was already wavering and Admiral Duran, in Algiers, quickly convinced the Vichy authorities not to oppose the landings.  Duran was in Algiers at the time, visiting his son, which worked out freakishly well given that it was soon clear that Giraud did not have sufficient command over Vichy forces to influence them.  Casualties would be overall low for the operation, which lasted a little over a week.

Vichy France broke off diplomatic relations with the United States on this day, but as a practical matter this was the beginning of the end for Vichy, which had been fighting the British nearly continually in Africa for most of the year, and had been beaten by Japan in the Pacific.  It was reduced to a rump state after this, with the Free French increasingly being the legitimate French authority.

Sarah Sundin noted the day on her blog, of course, and included the naval Battle of Casablanca:

Today in World War II History—November 8, 1942: Operation Torch: 400,000 American and British troops land in Morocco and Algeria. In Naval Battle of Casablanca, US ships sink nine Vichy French warships.

The operation proved to be a masterful strategic and logistical success.  In very short order, it became clear that the tide that was already turning was rapidly rising.  And at that, it's worth noting that rolling back the Axis in Europe really started with British successes in North Africa, followed by Operation Torch, prior to the Red Army commencing to advance in any meaningful manner.  Having said that, simply holding the line by the fall of 1942 was a major Soviet success.

Torch, by the way, pitted 107,000 Allied troops against 125,000 mostly Vichy troops.  It was, therefore, spread out over a long axis and while the landing forces were concentrated, they were actually outnumbered in terms of overall numbers.  Armor landing in support of Torch was, moreover, weak.

Hitler, in a speech in Munich, declared Stalingrad to be in German hands.  The speech was his annual one to his "old fighters".

The Germans eliminated the Piaski ghetto, spreading their genocide further.

1942  Two United States Army Air Corp fighters conducted a demonstration over Lusk, with one of them being flown by a resident of Lusk, now in the USAAC.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

Saturday, November 7, 1942. Giraud escapes France.

The British submarine Seraph smuggled French general Henri Giraud out of France.

Giraud was an opponent of the Vichy regime and had escaped German captivity, for Switzerland, back in April.  Vichy tried to lure him back, but he demurred.

While all in anticipation of Torch, the submarine took Giraud to Gibraltar, where he remained until November 9.  Relationships between the Free French officers were always highly complicated and tense, in part because their legitimacy was really legally questionable, which their organization, supported by the Allies, reflected. The Allies always tried to split the difference between outright firebrand rebels, like DeGaulle, and those who still held some ties to Vichy as the legal government.  Those in a position in between, like Giraud, were in an odd spot.

Stalin issued his Order of the Day proclaiming, on the 25th anniversary of the October Revolution, that Germany had "yet to feel the weight" of the Red Army, a promise which turned out to be true.

The Australians flanked the Japanese on the Kokoda Track.

Johnny Rivers, blues influenced rock musician, was born in New York City.

Saturday, October 24, 1942. Lighting The Torch

A naval task force departed the United Kingdom for North Africa containing the invasion force for Operation Torch.  At the same time, the main Task Force, which included one of my late partners who was a naval officer, left Hampton Roads, VA and Casco Bay, ME.

USS Charles Carroll on which one of my late partners served. She's see action all over the globe.

They were all bound for landing sites in North Africa.

Wilhelm Ritter von Thoma took command of the Afrika Korps after George Stumme was reported missing. Stumme would be found later, dead, but without wounds, although it was learned that his car had been attacked by the British and his chief signals officer killed in the attack.

Stumme had high blood pressure and may have had a heart attack during the stressful event.

Stumme did not take the precautionary measures that Rommel did while traveling in North Africa, and may ultimately have paid for it with his life.

The Japanese launched attacks on the Lunga perimeter on Guadalcanal. The attacks were unsuccessful.

The Saturday Evening Post went to the stands with an illustration by Mead Schaeffer of an American soldier carrying a Thompson Submachine Gun, in a jungle.  Starting in November, the focus of the American Press would very much switch to the war against the Germans.

Friday, October 16, 1942. Reaching out towards Vichy.

The Allies agree on Operation Flagpole, the clandestine meeting of Allied officers with Vichy officers in North Africa in order to attempt to explore their cooperation in advance of Operation Torch.  The meeting would take place a few days later and secure the cooperation of significant elements of the Vichy forces.  The principal Allied delegee was Mark Clark, and the principal Vichy one, Charles Mast.

Charles Mast.

This showed the degree to which it was already known that officers in the French military had think loyalty to Vichy, which was the legal government of the country, and were ready, depending upon the circumstances, to switch sides, even while the French had been fairly consistently fighting the British in one location or another in Africa since the fall of France.

The Allies also started to form a commission to investigate war crimes.

A cyclone hit the Bay of Bengal, causing very heavy damage, and setting the region up for famine the following year.

Mighty Mouse debuted in The Mouse of Tomorrow.

Wednesday, September 2, 1942. The carrier escorted PQ-18

The escort carrier, the HMS Avenger.  She'd be sunk by a German submarine in November 1942, following Operation Torch, which would take all but 12 of her crew of over 500.

Today in World War II History—September 2, 1942: Allied convoy PQ-18 departs Scotland for USSR, the first Arctic convoy with an escort carrier and the first since the PQ-17 disaster; 13/40 ships will be lost.

From Sarah Sundin's blog.

Escort carriers were game changers.  While losing 13 out of 40 ships wasn't good, it was better than what the PQ-17 had experienced. With air cover, submarines were at a disadvantage.  The PQ-18 task force was, in fact, the largest and most successful Arctic run up to that time.

The carrier was the HMS Avenger, as Sundin's blog entry notes.

The U-222 and the U-626, German training submarines, collided in the Baltic sinking the U-222 which took 42 of her crew with her.

The German 46th Infantry Division, which had been dishonored following an unauthorized withdrawal due to Soviet landings on the Kerch peninsula in December 1941, crossed the Kerch Straits while the German 17th Army advanced into Novorossisk, putting Soviet positions on the Eastern Black Sea coast at extreme risk.  The Soviets began, on this night, evacuations from Black Sea ports which were harassed by German and Italian patrol boats.

The Germans sustained heavy material losses at Alam el Halfa resulting in an Afrika Korps withdrawal.

British commandos took a lighthouse and its occupants near Alderny without the Germans noticing and without loss in Operation Dryad.

Tom Williams of the Irish Republican Army was executed for the felony murder of Royal Ulster Constabulary officer Patrick Murphy.  This occurred when an IRA unit Williams was in command of staged a diversionary action against the RUC in order to allow parades commemorating the Easter Rebellion to occur.  Who killed Murphy is actually not known, but Williams was the acknowledged commander of the unit.

Movies In History: Casablanca

First of all, let me note that I made an error in my review of The Maltese Falcon.  The 41 variant of that film was released first, not Casablanca.  I don't know why I reversed the order, but I did.

Casablanca was released for general circulation on January 23, 1943.

At that time, Morocco was just recently brought into the Allied orbit.  Allied troops had landed there in November, 1942 with the landings being part of Operation Torch.  The Moroccan landings, much less discussed than the Algerian ones, actually took place at Casablanca.  French forces resisted the Allies briefly in Algeria and Morocco, before formally switching sides as part of a negotiated turn about in early November, 1942.  Casablanca was the host that January to the Casablanca Conference between Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt, where the policy of unconditional surrender was announced and agreed upon.

So how's the film hold up?

Well, the movie doesn't take place in 1943, it takes place in December, 1941, just before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The US isn't yet in the war.  Morocco is in the hands of the Vichy French, although at the end of the movie we learn about a Free French garrison in Brazzaville, a city in French Equatorial Africa.  Casablanca is, as the movie depicts it, as sweaty den of vice, filled with refugees seeking desperately to get out of Morocco and on to freedom somewhere else.  In the center of it is Rick's Cafe American, where everyone goes.  Working into this, we have Victor Laszlo, a Central European resistance leader and his beautiful wife Ilsa Lund, played by Ingrid Bergman.  Lund, we learn, was the girlfriend of Rick of Rick's Cafe, who proposed to her just as Paris was set to fall, not knowing that she was already married to Laszlo.  Laszlo and Lund need "letters of transit" to leave Morocco, and Vichy French control, and the cynical world-weary Rick is believed to have obtained them from the oily Signor Ugarte, played by Peter Lorre.  Through it all a charmingly corrupt Inspector Renault, played by Claude Rains, weaves his way.

If you haven't seen it, see it.  This is another film which, by some people's measure, is the "greatest" movie ever made, although it isn't as great as the film commonly taking that prize, in my view, that being Citizen Kane.  It's a great movie, however.  And it's all the more amazingly great when you realize how much the making of the film was beset by all sorts of difficulties.

But what of its place in history. Was Casablanca of 1941 like the way it was portrayed in this 1942/43 film?

Well, probably surprisingly close.

Places under European colonial administration were bizarrely reservoirs of traditional cultures, advancement of European ideas, and massive corruption.  All three are shown to exist in the film and, if in exaggerated fashion, probably not too exaggerated really.  Morocco was controlled by Vichy at the time.  Brazzaville actually was beyond Vichy control and French Equatorial Africa was held by France Libre, a Free French movement.  Portugal was a neutral and a destination for people trying to get to the United Kingdom and beyond, or for that matter into Spain and then Nazi Germany through France.

Letters of Transit?  Nope, no such thing.  It is, after all, fiction.

In terms of material details, well the film was a contemporary picture, and it has the pluses and the minuses noted in our review of the Maltese Falcon.  Male costumes, more or less correct, with Bogar again wearing a Borsolino fedora, maybe the same one. Women's fashion?  Well, women refugees probably almost never traveled with a radiant wardrobe.

Well worth seeing, however.

Tuesday, June 10, 1941. Words and Deeds.

The United States contracted to purchase Bolivia's entire production run of tungsten, thereby depriving the Japanese of the same, which was the goal.

Bolivia was the largest supplier of tin to the Allies during World War Two.

Today in World War II History—June 10, 1941

Mussolini delivered a speech in which he stated that the United States was effectively already at war with the Axis powers, which while an exaggeration, had some measure of truth to it, given that the US was clearly acting beyond what strict neutrality would provide for.  He claimed not to be worried and stated that the United Kingdom would fall anyhow.

At this point in time its debated on whether or not Mussolini was aware that Germany was just days away from launching at attack on the Soviet Union.

French  vice premier Darlan delivered a speech in which he warned Frenchmen not to listen to the words of the leaders of the Free French, whom he felt were merely disrupting and disquieting the French.

At this point in time Admiral Darlan, who retained his office in the French navy, was the de facto head of the Vichy government.  He would relinquish that position to Laval the following year.  He was in Algiers when Operation Torch commenced and quickly struck a deal with the Allies which effectively caused the French in North Africa to switch sides.

Darlan has been referred to as a man of "failed destiny" in that he was clearly opposed to the Germans and threatened to take the French navy over to the British during the time of the French collapse.  He was a loyal officer, however, and personally loyal to Petain and therefore collaborated with the Germans in his role as vice premier, at which time he seems to have been resigned to a German victory in Europe.  Personally a republican, when the Allies landed in North Africa his sentiments came back out and he fairly quickly negotiated a French defection to the Allies which would have long lasting as well as immediate consequences.

He wouldn't live to see them as he was assassinated by monarchist Fernand Bonnier de La Chapelle, a member of the resistance, who hadn't forgiven Darlan his Vichy role. 

The ironies, and indeed the tragedy, of Darlan are simply epic.  A believer in the French republican and republican values, he ended up serving in the government that opposed them,  A loyal servant of the French navy, he'd end up essentially leading a coup against Vichy that would in the end cause it to become more of a puppet than it already was and which would lead, in part, to the full German occupation of France.  His most significant opponent after switching sides was DeGaulle, who saw the Free French cause as personally belonging to him, which the republican Darlan did not, and DeGaulle was a monarchist at heart.