Desperate Venture: The Story of Operation Torch, the Allied Invasion of North Africa - Hardcover

For the 50th anniversary of one of WW II's pivotal campaigns, Gelb (Dunkirk, 1989, etc.) skillfully recounts the Allied invasion of North Africa, which--while itself of inherent strategic importance--became primarily significant as a testing ground for the fragile Anglo-American alliance. Operation Torch represented a compromise between British and American strategies for defeating Hitler. Gelb explains how the British--responding to setbacks early in the war--developed a strategy of engaging the Germans in peripheral conflicts in an effort to encircle and enervate the Nazi war machine, while the Americans sought an early invasion of Europe. Although Gelb questions the wisdom of the American decision to acquiesce to the British strategy--he theorizes that the more oblique approach may have unnecessarily prolonged the war--he shows that Operation Torch forged a firm alliance between British and American officers and gave the Allies a chance to develop skills in airborne and amphibious warfare and in intelligence techniques and land tactics- -skills that proved useful in the later invasions of Italy and France. Gelb also amply demonstrates the importance of interpersonal relationships to the success of the Allied cause. While relationships between British and American officers were tense at times--some Britons, such as Montgomery, viewed the Americans as militarily inept, while some Americans, such as Patton, saw the British as duplicitous--the presence of diplomatic personalities (like those of Roosevelt, Churchill, and Eisenhower) in key positions ensured the smooth functioning of the alliance. Engaging and well-researched. (Sixteen pages of b&w photos and two maps--not seen.) -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Operation Torch, the 1942 Allied invasion of North Africa, was the first major Allied offensive of WW II. Gen. Eisenhower, the overall commander, had grave misgivings about the undertaking, fearing the resistance of Vichy French troops ashore to the Anglo-American landings. As things transpired, the Vichy navy nearly ruined the U.S. landings near Casablanca, but the French capitulated within a week. The victorious Allies then turned eastward to try conclusions with Gen. Erwin Rommel and his formidable Afrika Korps in Tunisia. Gelb ( Dunkirk ) has much of interest to say about the thorny interplay between the British and American high commands and the even more difficult relations between Eisenhower and the French leaders (whom he privately called "little, selfish conceited worms"). The GIs in the field failed to win much glory in the North African campaign (one British general dismissed them as "merely a nuisance"), but, as Gelb points out, it was a superb training ground for the subsequent invasion of Sicily. A well-balanced look at one of the most important but often ignored campaigns of WW II. Photos. First serial to Quarterly Journal of Military History.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.