If that weren't significant enough, Torch also deserves to be remembered for the critical role it played in setting the terms of America's long-term relationship with the rulers and peoples of the Middle East.Īmong those peoples not least are the Jews, whose role in this story is central in more ways than one.
And yet, aside from rivaling Overlord in terms of its enormity, complexity, and peril, Torch was also vastly consequential, for it helped to determine the future course and ultimately successful conclusion of the war. This was Operation Torch, America's first offensive operation in the European theater of war and, until Operation Overlord's Normandy landings, the greatest amphibious attack in history. and British ports, sailed for up to 4,500 miles through treacherous Atlantic waters teeming with Nazi U-boats, and, once at their destination, put ashore in three landing zones spread across more than 900 miles of coastline, from south of Casablanca to east of Algiers. They had set out in more than 850 ships from U.S.
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On November 8, 1942, a full year-and-a-half before the Allies invaded Normandy, about 110,000 American and British troops invaded North Africa. leaders made with Vichy French officers after Allied troops landed in North Africa during World War II.
Middle East policy, Robert Satloff suggests that two key ideas guiding Washington's actions in the region for the past three-quarters of a century were born in the bargain U.S. In a radical rethinking of the origins of U.S.