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Protectorat (1912–1956)
1/11/2020
by 
Karima
Karima
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Operation Torch and the Anfa Conference: Morocco at the Heart of World War II

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O

n September 3, 1939, Sultan Sidi Mohammed ben Youssef announced that Morocco would take part in the war on the side of the Allies. The Kingdom was then a French protectorate, and its soldiers went to war with the army of the protecting power. The goums, the units of Moroccan goumiers, numbered 57 in 1939. By May 1940 there would be 125 of them, and four of their groupings would be sent to the Mareth Line in Tunisia.

Then came the defeat of June 1940. Morocco passed under the authority of the Vichy government, represented in Rabat by the Resident General, General Nogues. The goums survived by hiding: renamed and disguised as police forces, they would keep training in secret in the Atlas, out of sight of the armistice commissions.

Two years later, it was on Morocco’s beaches that one of the turning points of the war would be played out: Operation Torch.

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A convoy from Virginia

On July 25, 1942, in London, the Anglo-American Combined Chiefs of Staff adopted the plan for a landing in French North Africa and gave it its code name: Torch. Supreme command would go to an American, General Dwight D. Eisenhower. Three forces were to strike together, at Algiers, at Oran and on the Atlantic coast of Morocco.

The Moroccan one, the Western Task Force, would be American from end to end. General George S. Patton commanded the troops and Rear Admiral Henry Kent Hewitt the fleet: close to 34,000 men in all. The transports left Hampton Roads, Virginia, on October 23 and 24, 1942. To mislead the enemy, they first steered northeast, as if bound for Britain, while the air group staged maneuvers off Bermuda. The covering battleships and cruisers sailed from Casco Bay, Maine. By October 28 the convoy was complete, with the carrier Ranger and its escort carriers.

Three beaches, one city

On November 7, nearing the coast, the fleet split into three groups. In the north, about 9,000 men under General Lucian Truscott were to land at Mehdia and seize the Port-Lyautey airfield, today’s Kenitra. In the center, General Jonathan Anderson’s main force, some 19,000 men, made for Fedala, now Mohammedia, about twenty kilometers from the port of Casablanca. In the south, about 6,400 men under General Ernest Harmon were to take Safi, because that was where the medium tanks would come ashore: the armored landing team carried 54 of them, along with 36 light tanks. Casablanca was not a landing beach. Too well defended, the city was to be taken by land.

On the morning of November 8, the big guns of the Jean Bart, an unfinished battleship moored in the harbor, and those of the El Hank battery opened fire on the American ships. In less than twenty minutes, the Jean Bart’s main battery was silenced. Seven French warships then left the harbor to attack the transports off Fedala. In the harbor, ships and a drydock were sunk. For three days the fighting would go on around Casablanca, at sea and on land, against the troops of General Nogues and the sailors of Admiral Michelier.

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The ceasefire of November 11

Late on the afternoon of November 10, General Nogues learned that Admiral Darlan had ordered, in Marshal Petain’s name, an end to fighting that had become useless. Patton, for his part, had set a general attack on Casablanca for dawn on November 11, by sea, by air and by land. At about two in the morning, a French car, headlights on and white flags flying, drew up at an American outpost near Fedala. The French reply, agreeing to cease fire and to negotiate that same afternoon, would reach Patton’s headquarters only a few minutes before the assault was due. The ships were already taking up their firing positions.

Shortly before noon, Admiral Ronarc’h and General Desre surrendered Casablanca to General Anderson. The Americans occupied the key positions, while the French troops stayed in their barracks and kept their arms. Nogues, and then Admiral Michelier, the naval commander in chief, would come to negotiate the armistice at Patton’s headquarters in the Hotel Miramar at Fedala.

A message in Arabic and French

In those days a leaflet printed on both sides was circulating, in French on one side and Arabic on the other, under the American flag and a portrait of Roosevelt. Signed by Eisenhower, it passed on a message from the President of the United States “to the peoples of French North Africa”. It carried this promise:

« Nous venons chez vous en vous assurant que nous partirons dès que la menace de l’Allemagne et de l’Italie aura été dissipée. » (“We come to you with the assurance that we will leave as soon as the threat of Germany and Italy has been removed.”)

Anfa, January 1943

Sixty-seven days after the landings, on January 14, 1943, Roosevelt and Churchill met at Anfa, on the heights of Casablanca. The conference would last until January 24. Generals de Gaulle and Giraud were invited so that the two men could meet, Roosevelt would explain to the press.

The final report of the Combined Chiefs of Staff, dated January 23, set the year’s priorities: the fight against the German submarines, continued deliveries to the Soviet Union, the invasion of Sicily with the favorable July moon as the target date, and the bomber offensive from the United Kingdom. On January 24, before the press, Roosevelt announced that the Allies would accept nothing less than the unconditional surrender of the Axis.

On the evening of January 22, Roosevelt had the Sultan Sidi Mohammed ben Youssef, the future Mohammed V, to dinner, with Crown Prince Moulay Hassan and the Grand Vizier Mohammed el-Mokri. Churchill, Patton and General Nogues were at the table. In Morocco, this dinner is often presented as a first step toward independence. Yet no official record of the conversation has been found, the published American diplomatic papers note. According to the recollections of the diplomat Robert Murphy, who was there that evening, Roosevelt told the Sultan of his sympathy for Morocco’s aspirations to independence. A year later, on January 11, 1944, the Independence Manifesto would be presented to the Sultan.

The goumiers, for their part, had gone back into battle in Tunisia by the end of 1942. They would be found in Sicily, in Corsica, in Italy, then in France and as far as Germany.

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References:
  1. Yassine Benargane, “The Anfa Conference: When Roosevelt and Churchill met in Casablanca to defeat the Axis powers,” Yabiladi, January 15, 2018. https://en.yabiladi.com/articles/details/60958/anfa-conference-when-roosevelt-churchill.html
  2. La Koumia, association des anciens des goums marocains et des affaires indigènes, « Historique ». https://lakoumia.fr/histoire
  3. George F. Howe, Northwest Africa: Seizing the Initiative in the West, United States Army in World War II, Office of the Chief of Military History, Washington, 1957 (chapters II to IX). https://archive.org/details/NorthwestAfrica-nsia
  4. Pierre Comtois, “Operation Torch: Sub-Task Force Goalpost’s Capture of Port Lyautey,” HistoryNet, June 12, 2006. https://historynet.com/operation-torch-sub-task-force-goalpost-capture-port-lyautey/
  5. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, leaflet « Message du Président des Etats Unis », November 1942, collection record. https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn522173
  6. Foreign Relations of the United States, Conferences at Washington, 1941–1942, and Casablanca, 1943, document 395: Roosevelt–Churchill press conference, January 24, 1943, 12:15 p.m. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1941-43/d395
  7. Foreign Relations of the United States, Conferences at Washington, 1941–1942, and Casablanca, 1943, document 416: Final Report of the Combined Chiefs of Staff to the President and the Prime Minister (C.C.S. 170/2), January 23, 1943. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1941-43/d416
  8. Foreign Relations of the United States, Conferences at Washington, 1941–1942, and Casablanca, 1943, document 376: Roosevelt dinner party, January 22, 1943, 7:40 p.m. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1941-43/d376
  9. Le360, « Manifeste de l’Indépendance: la célébration de tout un pan de l’histoire de la lutte contre le colonisateur », January 11, 2021. https://fr.le360.ma/politique/manifeste-de-lindependance-la-celebration-de-tout-un-pan-de-lhistoire-de-la-lutte-contre-le-231196/
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