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Participating troops were inexperienced and did not speak the local languages. The affair was steeped in uncertainty from the start. British soldiers and sailors stand with American soldiers on the beach near Algiers. Hoping to give French soldiers an opportunity to cooperate with the Allies and relieve pressure on British armies fighting in Egypt, American domestic pressure, British strategic interests in the Mediterranean, and Soviet pleas to open a second front also played a major role in the decision.

Thrashing out the particulars in a six-week “ transatlantic essay contest ,” by July 1942, Anglo-American leaders agreed to invade Vichy French North Africa by year’s end. Months of prolonged-often acrimonious-debate followed. America’s commitment to the Allied war effort after Pearl Harbor brought relief to many British military leaders, but with it came the lingering questions of when, where, and how their combined forces would engage German forces in the west? The path to Northwest Africa, however, was never a foregone conclusion.

Image courtesy of Cassowary Colorizations.

American servicemen pose for the camera aboard an Oran-bound LST during Operation Torch. Officially opening a long-awaited second front against the Axis, operation Torch constituted the biggest and most complex amphibious landing to that point in world history. On November 8, 1942, American and British forces invaded beaches and ports across French North Africa.