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previous: Chapter 6 This webpage reproduces part of Giraud and the African Scene by G. Ward Price The Macmillan Company, 1944 The text is in the public domain. This text has been carefully proofread and I believe it to be free of errors. If you find a mistake though, please let me know! next: Chapter 8

 p138  Chapter VII

The Situation
after the Allied Landing

The military incidents of the actual landing in North Africa have been recorded in the last chapter. At two o'clock on the morning of November 8th, the young men belonging to the Chantiers de la Jeunesse began to arrest the senior officers and civilian officials in Algiers who had not declared their readiness to cooperate with the Liberation Movement. The police headquarters, Prefecture and telephone exchange were occupied without incident, the police and telephone operators being well-disposed towards the Allies.

At 11:30 on the night of November 7th, Mr. Murphy drove to the house of General Juin, French Military Commander in Algeria, to tell him that American troops were about to land.

Directly Murphy saw Juin, and imparted the momentous news he brought, the French military commander said, "We must tell Admiral Darlan at once." It was clear that the General wished to be covered by higher authority before deciding upon his attitude.

Soon after midnight, Murphy and he telephoned to the villa of Admiral Fenard where Darlan was staying. They asked Fenard to bring Darlan over to Juin's house.

When Darlan heard the news, he was furious, declaring that the landing would have the immediate effect of throwing French North Africa into the arms of the Germans.

As it got light, he looked out of the widow of the villa and saw the young men of the Chantiers de la Jeunesse posted in the grounds. "What are those boys doing there with rifles?" he asked, and Murphy explained with some embarrassment that Darlan would have to consider himself under the control of the Allied sympathisers in Algiers until the situation was cleared up.

Murphy had argued all night to convince Darlan that the only course was to adapt himself to the new circumstances. He pointed  p139 out that the Allies were arriving in overwhelming force, and he finally persuaded Darlan to send a telegram to Marshal Pétain asking him to give an order that there must be no resistance.

After this, the whole party went to the French Military Headquarters at the Fort de l'Empereur, to try to get into communication with the Allied command. This proved impossible, as everything was in a state of flux. The Allied troops were converging on the city, and a little sporadic shooting was still going on, though the coastal batteries had ceased to fire.

About midday, Pétain's reply to Darlan's suggestion arrived. It was a peremptory order that he should hand over the command of all French forces in North Africa to General Noguès in Morocco, who would continue resistance.

Darlan had been able by this time to think things over, and form some idea as to the scale on which the American operations were being conducted. He gave the order to "cease fire" at 5:15 P.M. on the afternoon of that day, November 8th. He telephoned this order to General Noguès at Rabat, who cautiously answered that he must have it in writing before he could comply. The result was that the fighting continued between French and American troops on the western shore of Morocco until November 11th.

Giraud's proclamation had come both as a surprise and a tonic. Nobody in Algiers, outside the small group of patriots, knew that the General had escaped from France. The bold adoption of a clear‑cut attitude by the military chief with the finest reputation in the French Army did much to decide the perplexed French troops, and to smother the effect of the radio appeals from Marshal Pétain to continue fighting.

It was not to Admiral Darlan and to the North African French alone that the Allied landing on the morning of November 8th came as a shattering surprise. Among those who shared their astonishment was General Charles de Gaulle, who knew nothing of these far‑reaching and long-prepared developments until, along with the rest of the world, he learnt of them from the news-bulletins published on November 8, 1942.

He was confronted with the fact that an alternative potential  p140 leader of the French nation had sprung suddenly into existence. And whereas De Gaulle was still in London, Giraud, after his romantic escapes, first from Germany and then from France, was in Algiers, obviously preparing to take over command of a French army many times larger than the forces that had rallied round De Gaulle, and likely soon to be in active operation against the enemy.

Simultaneously with the news of the Allied landing, General de Gaulle got an invitation to lunch with Mr. Winston Churchill and Mr. Anthony Eden, the British Foreign Secretary, on that same Sunday, November 8th.

At this private luncheon party the position was doubtless explained. General de Gaulle would be told why it had been impossible to share with him the secret of the Allied plans. He would be assured that the British Government was not withdrawing its support from the Free French Movement.

General de Gaulle, on his side, would be obliged to state his own views on the new situation. He did so publicly that same evening in a broadcast sent out over the B. B. C. radio service, in which he pledged full support to the Allied enterprise and called upon Frenchmen in North Africa to give their aid. There was no allusion to General Giraud in this address, which read as follows:

The warmth of the unreserved approval thus given by General de Gaulle to the Allied landing in North Africa aroused hopes that close cooperation would soon be assured between the Free French  p141 Movement based in London and the French Liberation Movement in Algiers.

The British Prime Minister seemed to have this in mind when, in his speech at the Lord Mayor's Day luncheon in the London Mansion House on Tuesday, November 10th, two days after the landing, he said: "While there are men like General de Gaulle and men like General Giraud — that gallant warrior whom no prison can hold — to stand forward in the name and in the cause of France, my confidence in the future of France is sure."

Although Giraud's words had been heard in Algiers on the morning of November 8th, many listeners realised that it was not his voice that uttered them. At the time that St. Hardouin was reading the manifesto, and thereby pledging Giraud to a definite course of action, the General had only just made up his mind to fall in with General Dwight Eisenhower's representations that it would be impossible to place American troops under French command, and that the highest authority which could be entrusted to him was the civil and military control over French North Africa.

Having learnt, on the morning of November 9th, that an armistice had been concluded between the French and Americans in Algiers the night before, Eisenhower sent General Giraud over to North Africa from Gibraltar by airplane, to land at Blida airfield, •forty miles from the Algerian capital. He arrived there in the early afternoon.

A radio message had been sent to the French patriots in Algiers announcing that Giraud's plane would be distinguished by a white cross painted on each of its tricolour roundels, and that it was would fire three red lights as an identification-signal before landing.

Major d'Astier and Captain Lindsay Watson motored out to Blida aerodrome to receive the General and bring him in to Algiers. It was a good thing that they did so. On arriving at the airfield, they found that, owing to the fact that the French officers in charge had received contradictory orders, they were preparing to fire on any airplane attempting to land.

As he flew along the western Mediterranean in the brilliant light  p142 of that autumn morning, the General's heart rose as he saw the waters, as far as the eye could reach, dotted with transports bringing troops and munitions to give a fresh impetus to the Allied cause from territory which politically, if not geographically, forms part of metropolitan France.

A little later on that same day General Mark Clark crossed over in a seaplane direct from Gibraltar to Algiers. He arrived just before dusk in the midst of the first German air‑raid on the port, and made his way directly to the French headquarters at the Fort de l'Empereur.

The situation at Algiers was now all quiet, and Clark hoped that the armistice which had been signed there the evening before by General Charles Ryder, commanding the American troops that had landed near the city; General Alphonse Juin, commander of the French forces in Algeria; Admiral Raymond A. Fenard, the local naval commander, and Admiral François Darlan, Commander-in‑Chief of all French forces, would apply to the whole of French North Africa.

That was Darlan's intention, but it had not worked out that way. In Morocco, General Noguès had decided to follow his standing orders from the Vichy Government to resist all invaders of his territory, of whatever nationality. He had arrested his subordinate, General Béthouart, who wanted to join up with the Allies, and his troops were still opposing the Americans in the neighbourhood of Port Lyautey.

General Mark Clark had received orders from General Eisenhower to bring all fighting in French North Africa to an end as quickly as possible, so that the Allied landing forces might be free to push on rapidly into Tunisia.

For this purpose, Clark could use his own discretion as to the French authorities with whom he found it best to treat. He accordingly at once sought out Darlan, as the senior signatory of the armistice of the previous early evening, and demanded to know whether the Admiral interpreted that document as applying to the whole of French North Africa.

Darlan's answer was that he had cabled a report on the situation  p143 to Vichy, and that he could not take any decision until he got a reply.

To this General Clark rejoined that the United States Government no longer had any diplomatic relations with Vichy, and declared that he must find someone who could order French resistance in North Africa to cease. If Darlan, who had brought the fighting round Algiers to an end, could not make good his authority over Morocco, then Clark said that he would deal with Giraud.

Darlan protested that he could not take the responsibility of a step which might be allowed by a German invasion of the so far unoccupied zone of southern France. He said he hoped that Pétain would accept his view that hostilities in North Africa should cease.

General Clark refused, however, to have the decision depend upon Vichy in any way. He told Darlan that if he could not stop the fighting in Morocco the Americans would get General Giraud to do it.

Goaded by this challenge, Darlan replied that Giraud had no authority in North Africa. Clark's retort was: "If you will not order the 'cease fire,' I must put you under arrest."

After a private conference with the members of his staff, Darlan at last stated that he would, on his own responsibility and in the name of Marshal Pétain, give orders for the general cessation of hostilities and the adoption of an attitude of neutrality.

Next morning, Darlan issued the order to stop resistance, as he had promised. It was immediately countered by a radiographed statement from Marshal Pétain, cancelling Darlan's instructions, dismissing him from the post of Commander-in‑Chief of all French forces, and appointing General Noguès as his successor.

"In view of all this," said Darlan, "I shall have to revoke the orders which I issued this morning." General Clark replied vigorously that he would not stand for any revocation.

"Then," said Darlan, "I must be taken into custody."

So, on the afternoon of November 10th, American troops were posted round the house of Admiral Fenard, where Darlan was living.

With the following morning, however, the news arrived from Morocco that Darlan's order to stop fighting had been everywhere obeyed. It was fortunate that the end came when it did. The French  p144 naval forces at Casablanca had shown great determination in resisting the American landing, and the battle­ships and cruisers of the United States fleet escorting the transports were preparing within the next few hours to shell the port, which would have caused tremendous havoc of life and property.

Admiral Michelier, in command of the French squadron stationed there, which included the battle­ship Jean Bart, was very bitter about the American attack, which so short a time before he had treated as impossible. The captain of a United States battle­ship heard that one of his 15‑inch shells had fallen on a quay in Casablanca Harbour without exploding. Since he wanted to know why it had proved a dud, he rang up Admiral Michelier, as the port commander, to say that he would like to send a working-party to bring the unexploded shell off. Michelier refused to allow this, and sarcastically observed that, since the Americans had sent him a present, he was going to keep it." On ne demande pas le retour des cadeaux."

On this day, November 11th, the news arrived that the Germans had crossed the frontier of unoccupied France, and were moving rapidly on the French naval base of Toulon.

Since Darlan's "cease fire" had worked in Morocco, Clark urged him to radio an order to the French Fleet at Toulon to sail for Africa, and also to instruct the French forces in Tunisia to oppose a German landing there.

After some hesitation this was done. Impressed by the influence which the Admiral seemed to have, General Clark got the idea that he might be worth trying out in the civilian as well as the military field. He urged Giraud to give up to Darlan the civil authority which had been promised him by Eisenhower and Clark himself at Gibraltar. This came on top of Giraud's resignation of the chief military command in favour of Eisenhower. Once more, Giraud sacrificed his personal position for the good of the Allied cause.

All was not to go so smoothly, however. Marshal Pétain's repudiation of Darlan had begun to operate upon some of the highly placed French officers and officials who had hitherto been content to take the Admiral's orders because they regarded him as the embodiment  p145 of Pétain's supreme authority. This newly disaffected element refused to take any more instructions from Darlan, and demanded that they should await the arrival in Algiers of General Noguès, who had been appointed by the Marshal to succeed him.

General Clark took up an uncompromising attitude, announcing that any French officers who did not conform to the directives which he issued in the name of the American Government would be arrested.

Noguès, however, arrived that afternoon in Algiers, and Darlan managed to convince him that Pétain, in dismissing him from his post, had acted under the misapprehension that he, the Admiral, was not a free agent. On this understanding Noguès agreed to the continuance of Darlan's de facto authority in North Africa.

This solution enabled General Clark to report to General Eisenhower and Admiral Cunningham, the British Naval Commander-in‑Chief, when they arrived by plane from Gibraltar on the morning of November 13th, that all was now working smoothly. Darlan had approved of General Giraud as Commander-in‑Chief of all the French forces in North Africa, while Giraud agreed to recognise the Admiral as the highest civil authority, accepting also the continuance of General Noguès and Yves Châtel in their respective posts as Resident-General of Morocco and Governor of Algeria.

General Clark was well satisfied with this arrangement, for he had come to the conclusion that Darlan was the only man whose authority would be recognised throughout North Africa.

Giraud's prestige as a soldier was great, but he did not possess the same ascendancy over the minds of the French people of North Africa, because he had not been a member of the French Government. For the same reason he, too, was ready to defer to Admiral Darlan directly the latter produced documentary evidence that his own powers were derived from the Marshal.

It is always difficult for Anglo-Saxons to make allowance for the great hold which "legality" possesses upon the minds of the French. We are pragmatical; they are canonical. The reason why even Giraud himself accepted Darlan as the natural depositary of governmental authority in North Africa was solely because he had  p146 been recognised in that position by a duly constituted French Government.

To Britons and Americans this sounds like empty formalism, but that is only because, for the last century and a half in the case of the United States, and the last two centuries and a half in the case of Great Britain, there has never been any conflict of opinion as to the "legality" of the established Government.

During the War of Independence in America and the Revolution against the Stuarts in England, it was different.

When the Dutch King William and his English wife, Queen Mary, replaced King James II on the throne in 1688, the British Parliament went on debating for three months as to whether or not James had actually abdicated by leaving the country and throwing the Great Seal of England into the Thames as he went.

But although it was decided that the King had duly abdicated, Parliament insisted upon confirming the legality of the succession by having King William's wife, Mary, who was also King James's daughter, crowned as a co‑sovereign with her husband.

Even then, there still remained in England a strong Legitimist movement, which lasted for over half a century, and caused two rebellions. To salve the uneasy Legitimist conscience, the story was invented that King James's son, the child who afterwards became the Old Pretender, was not of genuine Royal blood, but, as a baby, had been smuggled into the bed of the King's second wife, Mary of Modena, in a warming‑pan.

Similar preoccupation with "legality" led to the exercise of much dialectical skill by the North African Press in explaining that cooperation with the Allies did not invalidate loyalty to the Marshal. The oath of fidelity to Pétain, it was argued, had not been taken to him in his personal capacity, but in his capacity as an historical symbol of the immortality of France.​a

"The oath to Pétain," said Vaincre, a Moroccan weekly review, "is an oath to France itself, and to hope. The pledge we gave to the Marshal in no sense signified resignation to a German Europe. Standing as he does for the victory of Verdun, he can have no other aim than the liberation of France by every possible means."

 p147  The attitude of Darlan changed after November 11th, the day when the Germans invaded unoccupied France, disregarding Pétain's protest. From that time on, he felt entitled to regard the Marshal as a man acting under duress, and therefore not responsible for whatever edicts were issued in his name. To compare profane with sacred things, Darlan felt himself a member of the apostolical succession. Having himself been duly consecrated, his authority was not diminished by the fact that the source from which he derived his investiture had since been reduced to impotence.

The American landing in North Africa was probably quite congenial to Darlan's heart. After June, 1940, he had come to the conclusion the Germans had won the war, and he thought that the only chance of saving anything was to play the Germans' game.

At Algiers, he originally believed the landing to be only a commando raid, but directly he discovered that it was a mass-invasion, his attitude changed. Darlan was inclined to be pro‑American. He was definitely anti-British. Some say that this was due to the fact that his great-grandfather had been killed as a gunner in the French Fleet at the battle of Trafalgar, but the more likely explanation is that he bore a bitter grudge for the British bombardment of the French warships lying in the roadstead of Mers-el‑Kébir after the signature of the armistice with Germany.

He was eager to persuade the French ships at Toulon to come over to North Africa. Had these been able to get hold of fuel, they might well have obeyed his orders instead of scuttling themselves. About a dozen submarines, which were better supplied in this respect, tried to get away, but six of them were sunk by mines and German aircraft.

The announcement that Darlan had assumed control of the political administration in North Africa was made on the Algiers radio by Yves Châtel, Governor-General of Algeria, on Friday, November 13th.

He began by saying that General Noguès, Resident-General in Morocco, who, after the Allied landing, had been nominated by Marshal Pétain as Delegate-General for the whole of North Africa, had arrived in Algiers and conferred with Admiral Darlan.

 p148  From their discussion it resulted that they were agreed as to the future conduct of affairs, with the result that Noguès had put himself under Darlan's orders.

A proclamation by Admiral Darlan was then read by Governor Châtel. Its terms were as follows:

Marshal Pétain's rejoinder to this proclamation — despite its lip‑loyalty to himself — was another emphatic rejection of the Admiral Darlan's claim to exercise authority in North Africa.

"In accordance with my orders," situated Pétain, addressing Darlan, "you undertook to defend North Africa, but the decision you have taken violates and contravenes my orders."

Darlan's next step was to proclaim the appointment of General Giraud as Commander-in‑Chief of the French forces in North Africa under himself.

On this occasion he took the opportunity to advance publicly the argument that he was in fact still acting on behalf of Pétain, whom he represented as being under German constraint, and as a secret sympathiser with the turn which events in North Africa were taking. Darlan said:

To this adroit attempt on Darlan's part to keep in step with the hare, and at the same time join up with the Allied pack that was hunting him, Pétain replied with even greater violence.

That same night he sent the following message by radio to the French troops in Africa:

To complete this barrage and counter-barrage of proclamations and protests, General Giraud himself went on the air that same evening, announcing his acceptance of the command of the African land and air forces. He called on these troops to chase the Germans  p150 first out of Africa, then out of France, and ended with the words: "All united in love of France and of the Marshal have only one passion — victory."

On December 7th, the Havas Agency, working under the control of the Vichy Government, gave a version, from Pétain's point of view, of what had occurred between Darlan and Vichy. The suggestion was made that Darlan deceived the Marshal as to the actual facts of the situation in Algiers.

According to this account, on November 8th, Darlan had sent the Vichy Government a telegram foreshadowing the imminent fall of Algiers, without indicating what his position at the moment was. On the night of November 8‑9, he sent a second telegram alluding to the possibility of being able to open negotiations with the American authorities.

Pétain replied that there could be no question of negotiating. On November 9th Darlan answered that he would not negotiate, but would watch the course of events, and report on it. On November 10th, Darlan cabled that he had decided to come to terms with the Anglo-Americans and had ordered the "cease fire." Upon this, Pétain cabled an order to continue the defence of North Africa.

Darlan replied that he had cancelled the "cease fire" order, and had surrendered himself as a prisoner.

The Marshal then appointed General Noguès as his sole military delegate in North Africa.

On November 12th a new message arrived from Darlan that he had recovered his liberty, and had taken command of North Africa, and was treating with the American authorities.

Admiral Darlan was in cooperation with the American General Staff in Algiers for six weeks only, but during that time he complied with the terms of his understanding with the Allies, which were finally embodied in a formal document signed by him and General Clark on November 22nd.

He persuaded M. Boisson, the one‑legged Governor of French West Africa, to join up with the Liberation Movement, and to release the British and French internees who were held at Dakar.

If Darlan had lived, and had continued the same attitude towards  p151 the Allies as he maintained during the weeks when he was in close association with them, he might have redeemed the sinister reputation which his earlier eagerness to collaborate with the Germans in France had earned him. His chief fault was that he despaired too quickly of the Allied cause. It is some excuse that he had seen his country overrun, and that, on form, Germany looked a sure winner during the year when Britain, together with a few gallant fragments of the armies, navies and air forces of Germany's smaller victims, stood alone between Hitler and the dominion of Europe.

It may well be that Darlan believed himself to be acting like a patriot when he decided to stand by Pétain in trying to get the best terms out of Germany for defeated France by a policy of submission to the victor's will. It must be recorded, however, that he carried this pliability to extreme lengths. When he was Vice-Premier, holding the three portfolios of Marine, Foreign Affairs and the Interior, he visited Hitler at Berchtesgaden and expressed his gratitude to the Führer for not having "crushed and obliterated France from the map of the world."

The Germans themselves seem to have grown suspicious of Darlan's reliability, for, in April, 1942, when Laval became Premier, his lost his post in the Vichy Cabinet. He continued, however, to be Commander-in‑Chief of all the armed forces in the country, and in May, 1942, ordered the French troops in Madagascar to resist the British occupation.

Against this must be set the fact that, when he came over to the Allies, Darlan did his best to help them. Besides inducing French West Africa to adopt the same policy as Morocco and Algeria, he tried unsuccessfully to persuade Admiral Godefroy, the French Admiral commanding a squadron of warships which had been interned in Alexandria Harbour ever since the Franco-German armistice, to put his ships at the disposition of the Allies, and he also attempted to induce Admiral Robert, in charge of the French West Indian island of Martinique, to throw off the restraining hand of Vichy and join the fight against Germany.

A letter was published after Darlan's death which he is reported to have addressed to a British acquaintance about a fortnight before  p152 his assassination. This document, if genuine, sets forth his own statement of his case.

He begins by recalling that when, on June 12, 1940, Winston Churchill flew to France to see whether anything could be done to save that country from complete surrender, he met Darlan and Weygand at the latter's headquarters, and, taking Darlan aside, said to him, "I hope you will never surrender the French fleet." Darlan said that he assured the British Prime Minister that, whatever happened, he would never hand the Fleet over to the Germans. After the scuttling of the French Fleet at Toulon, which he claimed was done in execution of his orders, Darlan asserted that he had kept his word.

Dealing with the collaborationist policy which he had adopted as a member of the Vichy Government, he declared that this was designed to prevent France from being completely occupied and crushed.

"Supposing we had taken a different course," Darlan asked, "what help could England have given to us then? If we had done as the British wanted us to do, the British First Army would be in Tunisia today."

He justified his conduct at the time of the Allied landing in North Africa as follows:

Darlan was perhaps sincere in believing that his adherence to the Allied cause in North Africa was secretly approved by Pétain. He seems to have received a code message from a friend in France purporting to convey this information from the Marshal himself.

It has been necessary to quote this series of contradictory statements  p153 in order that the reader may have documentary evidence of the political complications under which the Allies began their occupation of North Africa, and General Giraud started his association with them.

Such a situation of cross-purposes is more familiar in farcical comedy on the stage than in serious political relations. Here was Darlan claiming to have the first place in Pétain's heart. He admitted indeed, having lost that position to General Noguès for a few hours as the result of a misunderstanding on the part of the Marshal. He now professed, however, to have been restored to it.

In this capacity, and in the name of the Marshal, Darlan appoints General Giraud to command the French troops in North Africa, and the General, also invoking the name of the Marshal, though with less emphasis, accepts that position, only to be denounced by the Marshal in a most abusive manner.

Among the three actors in this complicated situation, General Giraud's role is the most straightforward and intelligible. He had come over from France to Algiers for the sole purpose of fighting the Germans, whether with Marshal Pétain's approval or without it.

Pétain's attitude is also reasonably clear, unless one accepts the theory, advanced by Darlan, that his published statements were made under German pressure, and ran directly counter to his personal feelings.

The simplest explanation of these confused circumstances is that Darlan was playing a game of bluff. He was trying to build up his own authority, after his desertion from the Vichy camp, by claiming to be the keeper of the Marshal's conscience. It is not surprising that so involved a state of affairs should have puzzled the American and British publics.

Pétain himself ended by coupling both Darlan and Giraud in a final denunciation, asserting that the Admiral had not only double-crossed and betrayed him, but had insulted him by suggesting that he was acting under constraint.

At this time, just over a week after the landing, there occurred the first sign of that discord between General de Gaulle and General  p154 Giraud which was to last for the ensuing six months.

De Gaulle had been watching the developments in North Africa with much misgiving. In this new Allied enterprise, the greatest since the start of the war, which had been as much of a surprise to him as to the rest of the world, there appeared to be no share reserved for the Fighting French Movement, and the "National Committee" which he had formed.

On the contrary, the American High Command in North Africa, with the approval of the State Department, seemed to be conniving at the installation in authority over French territory of Admiral Darlan, whom the Fighting French regarded as one of the most guilty collaborators with the enemy. This dubious character was even claiming to act in the name of the head of the Vichy Government.

De Gaulle began to suspect that he and his followers might be elbowed out of the international picture. It looked to him as though the nucleus of a future French Government was being set up at Algiers, largely composed of men whom he regarded as defeatists and traitors to the cause of his nation.

If he failed to assert himself, it appeared possible that his authority would be disputed over the large areas of the French Colonial Empire which had accepted his leader­ship. In that event, De Gaulle would find himself reduced to the status of the commander of a numerically small body of Fighting French troops, equipped by and brigaded with the British Army, and having rather the character of auxiliaries than of an independent national force.

He determined to make it clear that he was not a consenting party to the peculiar political activities going on in Algiers.

For this purpose the General sought another interview with the British Prime Minister, which took place at luncheon on Monday, November 16th. Its sequel was the publication of the following statement:

The sudden blossoming of Darlan in Algiers perplexed onlookers in other countries besides De Gaulle. Those "know-alls" who explain every political situation in terms of intrigue denounced the occult influences which they held responsible for the peculiar fact that a highly placed French Minister, suspected of anti-Ally zeal, should, by a simple air-passage across the Mediterranean, have been converted into a cooperator with the Allied cause. They attributed this development to the "reactionary ideology" of some of President Roosevelt's advisers.

In modern politics, ideology is "big medicine." Such political jargon belongs to the totalitarian Powers. Under the Nazi regime it is as needful to have a State-approved "ideology" as to possess a police-pass.

Democratic nations do not draw these "ideological" distinctions. Realism, rather than theory, is the governing principle of their politics. They distrust theoretical and academic systems. The motive of governmental action in the United States and Great Britain is the desire to solve a practical problem in the most effective and convenient way, rather than respect for any basic principle.

But the wiseacres would not be satisfied with a reasonable explanation of the line taken by the American Government in North Africa. They insisted that it was inspired by prejudice against communism. Critics of the State Department asserted that in Algiers it was deliberately laying the foundations of an ultra-conservative, if not reactionary French regime. With this, they suggested, the Vichy Government itself would ultimately be amalgamated in the same way as Admiral Darlan had been allowed to assume responsibility for the administration of North Africa.

This suspicion had been voiced by De Gaulle. The next day, however, the President put out a statement which should have satisfied those who imagined that, amid all the responsibilities and preoccupations of a great military campaign, the American Government  p156 was trying to mould the future of France according to its own supposed partialities.

The President said that he understood and approved the feeling in the United States and Great Britain, and among all the United Nations, that in view of the history of the past few years no permanent arrangements should be made with Admiral Darlan. He declared that the people of the United States would never stand for the recognition of any reconstituted Vichy Government.

"No one in the American Army," he went on, "has any authority to discuss the future Government of France. The future of the French Government will be established not by any individual in France or overseas but by the French people themselves, when they had been set free."

He described the arrangement under which Darlan had assumed responsibility for the internal administration of French North Africa as "a temporary expedient, justified solely by the stress of battle." He claimed that it had saved American, British and French lives, and had saved vital time. He added that he had requested the liberation of all persons in North Africa who had been imprisoned because they opposed the Nazis, and had asked for the abrogation of all Nazi-inspired laws and decrees.

There can be little doubt that future historians of the present war will accept this explanation as justifying the American Government's policy under circumstances of great complexity and urgency. If Admiral Darlan had survived to the end of the war, the anomalous and equivocal part which he had played might have made it difficult to determine what share, if any, he was entitled to take in French public affairs. The hand of Fate intervened to remove this disturbing factor from the political scene.

While the Vichy Government, through the mouth of Admiral Platon, was still calling on the French troops in North Africa to resist the "felonious leaders," such as Admiral Darlan and General Giraud, who had "placed the troops in North Africa under the command of their Anglo-Saxon masters," Darlan himself assumed "the rights and responsibilities of a Government in all territories where our flag still flies freely."

 p157  He defined this Government as consisting of himself, as High Commissioner, representing the French State, assisted by an Imperial Council formed of the Governors and Residents of French Africa, together with the senior military officers.

Its members were, in fact, General Giraud, as French Commander-in‑Chief; General Noguès, Resident-General of Algeria; M. Boisson, Governor-General of French West Africa; and General Bergeret, Deputy High Commissioner. The composition of this Council revived the suspicions of many people in the United States and Britain that Admiral Darlan was rebuilding Vichy in Algiers. There was even a secret debate on the subject in the House of Commons, and Mr. Eden, the Foreign Secretary, announced that the British Government did not consider themselves in any way bound by Admiral Darlan's announcement of the creation of a new French regime in North Africa.

A great deal of this anxiety was a reflection of the apprehensions expressed by the Fighting French.

General Catroux, ranking after General de Gaulle in that organisation, put out a statement in London comparing the arrival of Darlan in Algiers with the story of the Trojan horse.

"The agreement with Admiral Darlan," he said, "was concluded on military grounds, and, speaking on military grounds, I say that Darlan is dangerous.

"Hitler might well make an attack upon Gibraltar. You would have Gibraltar on one side, Tunisia on the other, and in the middle Admiral Darlan. I have absolutely no trust in Darlan, and I knew him very well. If I were fighting in Tunisia, I should not like to feel that I had Admiral Darlan in my rear."

The Fighting French were, of course, lobbying for the repudiation of Darlan by the United States Government and High Command, and the substitution for him of General de Gaulle and the Free French Movement. While admitting that the unexpected circumstances of the presence of Darlan in Algiers had made it necessary for General Eisenhower to take a rapid decision about the Admiral's status, the Fighting French urged that, after the Allied  p158 occupation had lasted a month, any agreement come to between them might be revised.

Reasonable people on both sides of the Atlantic, however, realised that the importance of Admiral Darlan's doings could be exaggerated, and that the main thing was to get on with the war in North Africa without becoming involved in secondary matters like local politics, provided that these did not interfere with our main purpose.

The London Times expressed the more sober section of British public opinion when it wrote on December 7, 1942:

To this standard Admiral Darlan's regime conformed for the brief period of its duration.

His last public statement was made at a conference of war correspondents in Algiers, to whom he declared that French Africa was energetically cooperating with the Allies, while the abuses which German and Italian restrictions had created in the internal administration of the country were being rapidly repaired.

"On the practical military side," said the Admiral, "General Giraud has organized the most active participation of the armed forces of North and West Africa in the Allied war effort. Units of substantial size, under the leader­ship of General Giraud, are fighting side by side with the United Nations in Tunisia against the Germans and Italians. . . . Everything that North Africa has to give has been freely offered to the Allied forces whenever a military need exists.

 p159  "I have stated emphatically and repeatedly to the Commander-in‑Chief, General Eisenhower," went on Darlan, "that, in leading North and West Africa against Germany and Italy and into the ranks of the United Nations, I seek no assistance or support for any personal ambition. I have announced that my sole purpose is to save French Africa, to help in liberating France, and then to retire into private life with the hope that the further leaders of France may be selected by the French people themselves, and by no one else."

It will remain for postwar investigators, with the fuller material then available, to judge of Admiral Darlan's sincerity. One fault with which they cannot reproach him is lack of adaptability. His ardour as a collaborationist with the Germans in France was only equalled by sudden zeal that he displayed in a similar relation with the Allies in North Africa.

To the war correspondents in Algiers, Darlan asserted, a week before his death, that cooperation with the Germans had been forced upon him as the only way to protect the French against more severe repressive measures. "The Germans had me by the throat," he said. "There were spies about me all the time."

For the first few days after the landing in Algiers, the fact that General Eisenhower, through his subordinate, General Clark, had entered into negotiations with Admiral Darlan raised a storm of protest in the United States and Britain which obscured for the moment the immense importance of the achievement of getting the Allied Expeditionary Force ashore with the minimum of casualties.

It was to end the loss of life still continuing, though on a small scale, in Morocco, that General Eisenhower made up his mind to deal with any Frenchman in North Africa who could deliver the goods by stopping the fighting, whatever his political past might be. This resolve on the part of the Commander-in‑Chief was backed up by the United States government, which described the agreement to recognise Darlan's authority as being "a temporary military expedient."

The British Government also accepted the new arrangement in North Africa, though it urged that representatives of the Free French Movement in London should go out there at once. This  p160 was impossible, since the American Government had already promised General Giraud that it would deal with no other Frenchmen than himself and his friends. He had already been asked to modify in so many respects the understanding made with him that a further concession on his part could hardly be demanded.

The position was finally summed up on November 16th, when General Clark, as Deputy-Commander-in‑Chief of the Allied forces, spoke on the Morocco radio as follows:

It may, indeed, be said that Eisenhower and Clark took the only course open to them. It was a gift from the gods that the one man capable of bringing the whole of French North Africa under his authority in cooperation with the Allies should have been in Algiers at the time of the landing.

The need of a rapid settlement was explained by General Eisenhower on the first occasion that I had an opportunity of hearing his views, two months after the landing.

At this first contact, General Eisenhower's personality impressed me by its mental alertness.

Even in uniform he looked more like the president of some big American corporation than a soldier. He is of sturdy build and medium height, with thin, sandy hair brushed across a broad head. Mobile and prominent blue eyes; clean-shaven face; strong teeth; forehead deeply wrinkled. His bearing suggests vigor, frankness and vitality. His manner is natural and unconstrained. He leans back, tilting his chair on two legs as he talks, inhaling the smoke from a cigarette held in a hand that wears a heavy gold signet-ring.​b

General Dwight D. Eisenhower was an excellent choice for Commander-in‑Chief in North Africa. What was needed there was not so much a soldier as a diplomat — a "fixer," who could coordinate the efforts and reconcile the discords of the men at the head of three armies of different nationalities, systems and vocabularies.

This was a difficult task; no one could have discharged it more successfully.

His headquarters were in a tourist caravansary of Algiers, standing in a subtropical garden.​c In the same building were Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham, the British Naval Commander-in‑Chief, and Air Chief-Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder, in command of the Allied Air Forces.

 p162  General Sir Harold Alexander, the British officer who came from Egypt to take charge of operations, had his headquarters up the line, generally under canvas.

Little did the elderly maiden-ladies who used to spend their pre‑war winters amid the fretted arches, Moorish tiles, and Arab plaster-work of the hotel imagine that their quiet retreat would ever become the nerve-centre of an international headquarters. A British naval officer, watching American doughboys hacking down thick-stemmed date-palms to make a road for military cars up to the door, was heard to mutter sadly, "there goes the tree under which I proposed fifteen years ago."

As wars get more complicated, staffs expand. The Allied Headquarters in Algiers of all ranks numbered 9,000 officers and men. The duties of a large proportion of these had only a remote connection with the fighting-line. A General Staff proliferates like a microbe-culture. As someone said, "never were so few commanded by so many."

Every new branch requires more men to supply its members with food and transport. The variety of non‑combatant jobs at the base and along the lines of communication of a modern army is so great that the man‑power consumed in rear organisation, which in the last war stood in proportion to the strength of the fighting-line at about 3 to 1, is now nearly treble that figure.

Cities are the curse of G. H. Q.'s. Their conveniences facilitate, but their confused background complicates. Military sub‑organizations that have lost their utility can disappear beneath the surface of a city's life and continue in existence, useless but half forgotten.

Oddly enough, the men who do the actual fighting — living in the rain, mud, cold and isolation of the front — seldom express any jealousy of their comrades at the base, who, in many cases, lead lives of greater comfort than at home.

In the history of war there was never a more crowded and cosmopolitan headquarters city than Algiers during the first half of 1943. Napoleon's Grande Armée was made up of many nationalities, but it can hardly have displayed a greater variety of dress than filled the streets, cafés, bars and restaurants of Algiers.

 p163  There were soldiers, sailors and airmen of the American, British, French, Dutch, and Polish forces, together with officers and seamen of their Mercantile Marines, members of the Red Cross and other organisations, even including shipwrecked nurses wearing men's clothes — all mixed up with the veiled Arab women of Algiers and the rest of its cosmopolitan population in every kind of costume. The result was that, when missions of Mexican or Turkish officials arrived, their unfamiliar attire did not attract a glance.

The huge American bars of the Hotel Aletti were full every evening with a polyglot mob of soldiers, sailors, airmen, civilians and nondescripts, drinking, jostling, shouting, singing, talking to each other in broken French, or showing each other photographs, all excited and many of them tight. Algiers must have been a nightmare-problem for the Allied Security Service.

All the time the North African campaign was going on, radio transmitters were heard working from the city, obviously in communication with the enemy. Detector-apparatus was sent out to locate these enemy information centres. One naval officer assured me that an old‑fashioned Morse transmitter used to work at midnight in the hotel room immediately below his own, which, upon enquiry, he found to be occupied by an Italian citizen. He reported it to the authorities, but the results of their investigation in such matters are not published.

The reception of the Allied troops by the local people was very cordial after the first period of surprise and misgiving had passed. Enlisted men would often be invited home to meals by complete strangers whom they met in the street, and, in view of the scarcity of provisions for civilians, such hospitality was generous.

On the other hand, some of it may have been inspired by cupboard love, for the soldiers could obtain from the N. A. A. F. I. and P. EX. canteens such things as soap and candies, now rare luxuries in North Africa.

In the narrow alleys of the old quarter of the city, down by the harbour, drunken seamen used occasionally to have an experience they will long remember. A gang of Arabs would hustle them into a dark court, strip them to the buff, and carry off every stitch of  p164 their clothing, leaving them to face the chill of dawn in a highly embarrassing condition. Apart from a few knifings, however, and some grim Arab mutilations of men who had attacked their women, Algeria was on the whole a safe place.

The occupation of North Africa by the Allies produced effects upon the Axis Powers both immediate and remote.

The remoter effect was the invasion-threat to southern Europe, across a coastline which the Germans could not fortify with concrete defences similar to those along the northern and western shores of that continent.

But though the Allies had now secured the best possible base for carrying out such an invasion, they could not launch it before all enemy forces had been cleared out of Africa.

The Germans and Italians still possessed a power­ful army standing on the western frontier of Egypt, and they had begun to pour fresh forces into Tunisia. It was thus obvious that any attempt to invade Europe from the south could only come after a success­ful campaign in North Africa.

There was another consequence of the Allied occupation of all French ports on the southern shores of the Mediterranean with the exception of those on the eastern coast of Tunisia. This deprived the enemy of a source of food supplies.

Darlan himself, when still a member of the Vichy Government, stated that seventy-five ships left Algerian and Tunisian ports each week for France.

Certain raw materials were imported into France from North Africa, of which some doubtless reached Germany.

Iron ore, phosphates, wool and cotton were substances for which the German war effort had hitherto been partly dependent on North Africa.

Phosphates were the principal export. Four million tons of this fertiliser were annually shipped from French North Africa, constituting nearly a quarter of the total world supply.

Two million tons of wheat were sent each year to France, together with enormous quantities of a somewhat rough, highly alcoholic  p165 wine, which was largely used for blending with the products of the poorer French vineyards.

The Germans tried to put as good a face as possible on the Allied seizure of North Africa by representing it as a blow to French national pride, which they alleged had filled the people of France with sorrow and indignation.

"The brutal invasion of North Africa has finally discredited De Gaullism," said the Nazi Press. "The Anglophile tradition has ended. Now everyone thinks of Germany."

When, after a few days, it became evident that, on the contrary, the French in North Africa were welcoming the arrival of the Allied troops, the Germans found comfort in the fact that this Anglo-American invasion would end in a blind alley unless it could be made a starting-point for the invasion of the European continent, which they professed to regard as impossible.

The Italians, for their part, tried to alarm the North African French by representing them as the victims of American expansionist schemes.

Signoretti, the leading writer of the Stampa, declared:

---

Thayer's Notes:

a Giraud himself, writing after the war, explicitly says the contrary: that he viewed the oath to Pétain not as an oath but as a statement of loyalty to Pétain in his personal capacity — and that it was overridden as soon as Laval, Pétain's prime minister, made a radio address in which he wished for a German victory. (Giraud, Mes évasions, pp191 f., 198.)

b His West Point class ring.

c The Hôtel St‑Georges: see my earlier note.

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