How Hitler Could Have Won World War II

16 THE WESTERN ALLIES STRIKE

IN JULY 1942, WITH ROMMEL STOPPED JUST SIXTY MILES FROM ALEXANDRIA AND the Germans advancing toward Stalingrad and the Caucasus, there were two major issues dividing the Allies: what the Americans and British were going to do to help defeat Hitler and whether Stalin would seek a separate peace.

American and British leaders were well aware that they could not overcome Germany without the Soviet Union. However, Joseph Stalin, complaining bitterly that they were leaving virtually all the fighting to the Red Army, was putting out peace feelers in Stockholm.

Western leaders didn’t think these feelers would amount to much if they attacked the Germans directly and took pressure off the Soviet Union, as Stalin had been demanding for months. But the British and Americans were virtually immobilized by an acrimonious dispute about what they should do. The Americans, led by George C. Marshall, army chief of staff, wanted a direct advance by a five-division amphibious landing around Cherbourg in Normandy in 1942 (Operation Sledgehammer). But the British pressed for an indirect or peripheral strategy, a combination of massive air attacks on German cities and smaller, less-dangerous invasions in the Mediterranean.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt saw more clearly than anyone that the western Allies must show Stalin that Russia was not being left to face Hitler alone. He decided that the Americans had to fight the Germans somewhere in 1942. Since an invasion of France was out, given British opposition, FDR cut the Gordian knot and ruled that the American strike had to be in North Africa.

Roosevelt left it to Marshall to decide where Americans would go in Africa—as reinforcements to the British 8th Army building strength to challenge Rommel at El Alamein or landings in French North Africa (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia), controlled by Vichy France. Marshall, knowing that 8th Army would remain under British General Sir Bernard Montgomery, chose French North Africa (code-named Gymnast), and was able to name his protégé, Lieutenant General Dwight D. Eisenhower, as commander.

Gymnast was an old British plan that called for a descent on Algeria if 8th Army won decisively in Libya and pushed for the Tunisian border. As Montgomery was now girding at El Alamein, the aim of Gymnast (its name changed to Torch because it sounded grander) was to seize Tunisia before the Germans got there and force Panzer Army Africa and the Italians to surrender.

Torch at once gained the advantage Roosevelt was hoping for: when Stalin heard about it, he stopped complaining about a second front. But the decision to turn to the Mediterranean aroused dark suspicions among American planners that Churchill was maneuvering the United States into the “soft underbelly” strategy. They feared this would lead to the invasion of Italy, and perhaps Greece, and fatally undermine the plan to collide with the Germans on the beaches of France.

President Roosevelt was less worried, because he hoped “an air war plus the Russians” could defeat Hitler, and a cross-Channel assault might not be necessary.

Western Allied military strength was not being concentrated in ground forces, as was the case for Russia and Germany. The United States and Britain put great emphasis on air and naval power, and Roosevelt set a limit of 90 army divisions for Europe and the Pacific, while the British mobilized 27. Many U.S. divisions had not even been formed, and only 70 ever got to Europe, yet Germany had 260 divisions actually in the field, and the Russians many more.

The Allies decided to invade French North Africa, but not when or where. Because of supply and troop transport problems, the American chiefs of staff set the date at November 8 and announced they planned to confine the landings to the west or Atlantic coast of Morocco, primarily around Casablanca. The British were shocked. The invasion, they said, should be made inside the Mediterranean on the Algerian coast, so troops could advance quickly to Tunisia.

The Americans chose Casablanca—1,100 miles from Tunis and Bizerte, the main Tunisian ports—because they feared the French would resist strongly in Algeria, while the Germans might rush through Spain, seize Gibraltar, block the Strait of Gibraltar, and prevent supplies from reaching the troops.

The British were dismayed at such extreme caution and argued that the American plan would allow the Germans to seize Tunisia, frustrating the entire purpose of the operation. Eisenhower came around to the British point of view, and proposed eliminating the Casablanca landings.

But Marshall would not take the chance of supplies being cut off at Gibraltar and FDR ruled the Americans had to land at Casablanca, to guarantee an Atlantic supply base, but could also land at Oran, 250 miles west of Algiers. He suggested that the British land a few days later at Algiers and points eastward. Roosevelt also wanted the British to keep a low profile, reasoning that the French were angry with them for attacking their ships after France surrendered in 1940 and for invading the French colony of Madagascar in May 1942. The 135,000 men in the French forces would probably resist the British, but perhaps not the Americans.

Churchill was willing to play down British participation, but said Algiers—the biggest city and nerve center of French North Africa— should be occupied the same time as Oran and Casablanca. FDR and Churchill finally agreed to joint American-British landings at Algiers simultaneous with the others.

But in the exchanges, the idea of landings farther east was dropped— killing any chance for a quick Allied victory in North Africa and prolonging the diversion of Allied effort in the Mediterranean.

In the final plan, the Western Task Force, guarded by U.S. Navy ships with 24,500 Americans under Major General George S. Patton Jr., was to land at Casablanca. The 102 ships (29 transports) sailed directly from Hampton Roads, Virginia. Center Task Force, protected by the Royal Navy with 18,500 American troops under Major General Lloyd R. Fredenall, was to capture Oran. It sailed from the Firth of Clyde in Scotland. Eastern Task Force, also sailing from the Clyde and guarded by the Royal Navy with 9,000 British and 9,000 American troops, plus 2,000 British Commandos under American Major General Charles W. (Doc) Ryder, was to land at Algiers. Once ashore all Allied forces at Algiers were to come under a newly created British First Army commanded by Lieutenant General Kenneth A. Anderson and drive toward Tunisia.

Americans and Britons landed in North Africa on November 8, a couple weeks after General Montgomery’s 8th Army finally attacked Rommel’s weak and poorly supplied army at El Alamein. Resistance by the French army was symbolic in most cases, though not all, and the French air force was nowhere to be seen. But the French navy defended itself strongly.

The solely American landings of George Patton’s Western Task Force took place in three points on the Moroccan Atlantic coast: a main effort at Fedala, fifteen miles north of Casablanca; and subsidiary ones at Mehdia, fifty-five miles farther north; and at Safi, 140 miles south of Casablanca. Fedala was the nearest landing beach to Casablanca, the only large and well-equipped harbor in this part of Africa. Mehdia was the closest beach to Port Lyautey, whose airfield had the sole concrete runway in Morocco. Safi served to guard against intervention by a large French garrison at inland Marrakech, and also had a port where medium tanks could be unloaded. The new LSTs (Landing Ships Tanks) now being produced were not ready for Torch.

French army resistance was insignificant at Fedala and Safi, and by the afternoon of November 8, the Americans had attained their goals. Only at Mehdia did French troops resist strongly. Fighting ceased on November 11 after the senior French officer in North Africa, Admiral François Darlan, signed a cease-fire.

However, a sea fight broke out north of Casablanca at 7:04 A.M., November 8, between the American battleship Massachusetts and two French heavy cruisers, coastal batteries, and the battleship Jean Bart, which lay immobile in Casablanca harbor. American gunfire destroyed the main artillery batteries of the battleship. Other American warships warded off an attempted attack on troop transports by a French light cruiser and eight destroyers. Only one French ship returned undamaged, but the French made heavy hits on American warships.

The landings of the Center Task Force at Oran and the Eastern Task Force at Algiers took place with little resistance.

Eisenhower’s principal goal was to assemble his troops, build a supply line, and advance on Tunis, in hopes of getting there before the Germans. But the Atlas Mountains of eastern Algeria proved difficult, and bringing forward supplies a great problem. Now the extreme caution of the Americans in refusing to land closer to Tunisia began to exact its toll.

The German navy had held since 1940 that Tunisia was the key position in the Mediterranean—because it dominated Axis traffic routes to Africa and was an ideal base from which to invade Sicily and mainland Italy. The navy believed the Allies would try to seize Tunisia at the first opportunity.

The Axis had ample warning. The German foreign office was flooded with news, much of it dead on target. A report from the Vatican, for example, pinpointed the landings and said they would take place between mid-October and mid-November. A failed British-Canadian raid on Dieppe, France, on August 19 gave an even more certain sign. It showed that no landing would be made on the Continent in 1942, and this turned the arrow on French North Africa.

Adolf Hitler did nothing to prepare for the expected invasion. But, once it came, he moved fast, though not in great force, to hold a bridgehead in Tunisia. On the morning of November 9 he gave Albert Kesselring, German commander in the Mediterranean, a free hand, and the same day Kesselring sent in one fighter and two Stuka groups, and parts of the 5th Parachute Regiment, to occupy the Tunis airport, and, on the night of November 12, the city of Tunis.

Hitler also marched into unoccupied France and seized the French island of Corsica. The move (Operation Anton) began on November 11 and was finished in three days. The shock this gave did much to swing French officers in North Africa to the Allied side. The Germans did not immediately advance into the harbor of Toulon, where the vast bulk of the remaining French fleet lay at anchor. They hoped they could keep the fleet for Axis use, while Admiral Darlan was trying, without success, to get it to move to North Africa. On November 27, after having mined the harbor exits, German troops pressed into the base with the aim of seizing the ships. The French crews scuttled the entire fleet, including the battleship Strasbourg, before the eyes of the Germans.

General Walther Nehring, former commander of Africa Corps, took charge in Tunisia on November 15 as commander of 90th Corps, though he had only about 3,000 troops. Without waiting to concentrate, he thrust westward. The French division in Tunisia, under General George Barré, though much stronger, pulled back toward Algeria, hoping to join the Allies before clashing with the Germans.

General Anderson sent a British force to capture the port of Bougie, 110 miles east of Algiers, on November 11, and the next day seized the harbor and airfield of Bône, sixty miles from the Tunisian border. Coastal convoys began running in supplies and troops to both ports.

Anderson sent the British 78th and 6th Armored Divisions to take Tunisia. One part reached Djebel Abiod, fifty miles west of Bizerte, on November 17, where it collided with a small German parachute engineer battalion under Major Rudolf Witzig, the same officer who had seized Belgium’s fort Eben Emael in 1940. Another British force seized Tabarka, a few miles west. The day previously a British paratroop battalion took Souk el Arba, south of Tabarka and eighty miles from Tunis. Meanwhile the American 509th Parachute Battalion landed near Tébessa, close to the Tunisian border, to cover the southern flank and secure an airfield there. Two days later it made an eighty-mile bound southeast and seized Gafsa, only seventy miles from the Gulf of Gabès.

General Anderson delayed his advance to consolidate his forces, giving the Germans a chance to expand the bridgehead. On November 17, a German parachute battalion of 300 men under Captain Walter Koch pushed westward, against a French force under General Barré that withdrew to the road center of Medjez el Bab, thirty-five miles west of Tunis, with an important bridge over the Medjerda River. There the French were reinforced by a British parachute battalion and an American artillery battalion.

General Barré received an ultimatum to withdraw to the Algerian border. It was quite a bluff by Captain Koch, for he had only one-tenth the troops of the Allies. When Barré tried to play for time, the Germans opened fire. Soon afterward Stukas bombed the Allied positions, shaking up the defenders and adding weight to the deception. The German paratroopers made two small but noisy ground attacks, which gave an exaggerated idea of strength, then small parties swam the river and simulated an even bigger attack. It was too much for the Allies. They left the bridge undamaged and fled eight miles to the rear.

Meanwhile other fast-moving German units took Sousse and Sfax, while two Italian battalions from Libya came up the coast to Gabès on November 20, just in time to foil a move on the town by the American 509th Parachute Battalion. On November 22, a small German armored column evicted the French from the road junction of Sbeitla, a hundred miles into the Tunisian interior, turning it over to an Italian detachment—which in turn was expelled by a detachment of the 509th Parachute Battalion.

On November 25 Anderson finally began his offensive on Tunis in three columns, reinforced by tanks and motorized infantry of the U.S. 1st Armored Division, which had rushed 700 miles from Oran. By this time German forces had trebled, though they remained far weaker than the Allies. Major Witzig’s parachute engineers held up the northern column, finally stopping its advance by an ambush on November 30. The center column, with a hundred tanks, thrust to the Chouigui pass, a few miles north of Tebourba. Next morning, however, ten German tanks, supported by two infantry companies, pushed south against the Allied flank and led the command to break off the attack.

Meanwhile, the third column attacked Medjez el Bab, partially encircled Koch’s battle group there, and drove on toward Djedeida, only twelve miles from Tunis. In the afternoon seventeen American tanks reached the airfield at Djedeida and destroyed twenty aircraft.

German antiaircraft guns disabled three of the tanks, and the remainder fell back, but the unexpected strike unnerved Nehring, and he ordered his forces to pull back to a small bridgehead around Tunis, giving up Bizerte, everything west of Djedeida, and all the coast from just south of Tunis. This would cut off the connection with Libya and Rommel. A fuming Kesselring arrived on November 28 and ordered the decision reversed.

Nehring now sent all armored and reconnaissance vehicles into an attack westward toward Tebourba. Since parts of 10th Panzer Division had arrived, Nehring had 64 tanks, including five 56-ton Tigers with high-velocity 88-millimeter guns and 100 millimeters of armor—Hitler’s new “secret weapon,” the most formidable tank to come out of World War II, which he sent to Tunisia to test in combat.

The attack was aimed as a flanking move from the north toward Chouigui pass, with the intention of swinging onto the British rear around Tebourba. The Germans, in two converging columns, overran British forces guarding the flank and pushed on toward Tebourba, but were checked by artillery fire and bombing before they could get astride their objective, the Tebourba–Medjez el Bab road. But the threat caused Anderson to pull back his spearhead to Tebourba. Next day Nehring increased pressure, cutting off the road and forcing the Allies to evacuate Tebourba by a dirt track along the Medjerda River, leaving more than a thousand prisoners.

The Germans erected a new defensive line eight miles east of Medjez el Bab, running north to the sea and south to Libya. Nehring had built a solid line of resistance, but Hitler replaced him with Colonel General Hans-Jürgen von Arnim and renamed the forces in Tunisia 5th Panzer Army, though Arnim had fewer than 25,000 fighting men. The Allies deployed 40,000 in the line, and held many more in the rear.

By now the winter rainy season had begun, and General Eisenhower decided to give up the offensive till the weather improved. This gave Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini time to make a stupendous military error. They commenced shipping in more and more troops, altogether about 150,000 men. Yet the Allies had assembled overwhelming sea and air forces—many times more than had ever threatened Rommel—and could throttle the German-Italian army by cutting off its supplies. Sooner or later its fuel, ammunition, and food would be exhausted and it would have to surrender, leaving few Axis troops to defend Sicily and Italy.

Erwin Rommel noted dryly afterward that, if Hitler had sent him in the spring of 1942 only a fraction of the troops he poured into Tunisia, he could have conquered Egypt, the Suez, and the Middle East, and virtually ruled out an Allied invasion of northwest Africa.

After Rommel’s last offensive failed at El Alamein around the first of September 1942, it was obvious from Ultra intercepts of German messages that supplies and men were not getting to Rommel in any quantity. Therefore, the British 8th Army possessed overwhelming superiority and could push the Axis out of Egypt and Libya at any time.

But Bernard Law Montgomery, the new commander of 8th Army, was not only a difficult, eccentric man concerned with his own glory, he was also excessively methodical. For the next seven weeks Montgomery worked out details of a set-piece counteroffensive, assembling even more tanks, artillery, and men.

The attack was supposed to commence well before the Operation Torch landings, but Montgomery would not be hurried, and finally set the date at October 23.

By this time 8th Army’s fighting strength totaled 230,000 men, while Rommel had fewer than 80,000, of whom only 27,000 were German. The British committed 1,440 tanks, while Rommel had 210 German tanks and 280 obsolete Italian tanks. The RAF could send in 1,200 combat aircraft; the Luftwaffe and Italians could send in only 350.

Because of poor food, many Axis troops had become sick. Rommel was one of the casualties, and in September he went back to Europe for treatment and rest. He was replaced by General Georg Stumme, while General Wilhelm von Thoma took over Africa Corps. Both were from the Russian front and were unused to desert conditions. On the first day of the attack, Stumme drove to the front, ran into heavy fire, and died from a heart attack. Rommel, convalescing in Austria, flew back on October 25 and resumed command of a front already heaving from British attacks.

Montgomery took no advantage of his overwhelming strength by sweeping around the Axis positions. Instead, he launched a frontal attack near the coast, which led to a bloody, protracted struggle. British armor pushed a narrow six-mile wedge into the Axis line. The 15th Panzer Division lost three-fourths of its tanks resisting the advance, but also inflicted huge losses on the British. By October 26 the British armored wedge was stuck in a deep German antitank field. Stymied, Montgomery brought another armored division, the 7th, north to launch a secondary attack toward the coast from within the wedge on October 28. But this attack also hung up in a minefield. Rommel moved his 21st Panzer and Ariete Divisions to meet the new attack, and though his tanks achieved a knockout ratio of four to one, the British still ended up with eleven times as many tanks—800 to 90 German.

Montgomery reverted to his original line of thrust, but it took till November 2 to shift the armor. Minefields again caused delay. While the tanks were immobilized, Rommel launched a counterstrike with the last of his armor. He destroyed 200 British tanks, but lost three-quarters of his own. Rommel was now at the end of his resources. Africa Corps, which started with 9,000 men, was down to 2,000 and thirty tanks. The British still had 600.

Rommel decided to fall back to Fuka, 55 miles west, but Hitler issued his familiar call to hold existing positions at all costs. Rommel recalled the columns already on the way—a decision he regretted bitterly, writing that if he had evaded Hitler’s “victory or death” order he could have saved the army.

Two British infantry divisions opened a breach on the southwest, and on the morning of November 4 three armored divisions passed through it with orders to swing north and block retreat along the coast road.

It was now possible to cut off Rommel’s entire army, especially as General Thoma was captured during the morning and an order to retreat that Rommel now issued—in defiance of Hitler—was not sent out till the afternoon.

But as soon as they heard the order, Rommel’s men moved fast, piled into any vehicles remaining, and escaped to the west, since the British were advancing slowly and hesitantly. Nevertheless, the delay imposed by Hitler caused Rommel to lose most of his remaining armor and a large number of the nonmotorized Italian infantry (about 20,000), who could not escape the British mobile columns.

Over the next few days, British attempts to cut off the retreating Axis troops failed because the turning movements were too narrow and too slow. The final blow to British hopes came on November 6, when heavy rain stopped pursuit. From this point on, 8th Army could not catch Rommel, and he slowly withdrew toward Tripolitania.

The British lost 13,500 men, but captured 7,900 Germans and 20,000 Italians, and killed about 2,000. Most of the remainder got away, though only 5,000 Germans and fewer Italians were able to keep their weapons.

Rommel proposed the correct strategic solution to his superiors—withdraw at once all the way to Wadi Akarit, 225 miles west of Tripoli near Gabès, Tunisia, and 45 miles beyond the Mareth line, a fortified barrier built by the French in 1939–1940. Wadi Akarit was much more defensible than the Mareth line, having only a fourteen-mile frontage between the sea and a salt marsh inland. But Mussolini and Hitler rejected the recommendation and insisted on holding one defensive line after another— Mersa el Brega, Buerat, and Tarhuna-Homs. Yet the work of fortifying these lines was useless, because the British could swing around the flank of all of them.

“If only the Italian infantry had gone straight back to the Gabès line and begun immediately with its construction, if only all those useless mines we laid in Libya had been put down at Gabès, all this work and material could ultimately have been of very great value,” Rommel wrote.

In hopes of getting the Fuehrer to face reality, Rommel flew to his headquarters at Rastenburg on November 28, 1942. He got a chilly reception, and when he suggested that the wisest course would be to evacuate North Africa, in order to save the soldiers to fight again, “the mere broaching of this strategic question had the effect of a spark in a powder keg.” Hitler flew into a rage, accusing members of the panzer army of throwing away their weapons.

“I protested strongly, and said in straight terms that it was impossible to judge the weight of the battle from here in Europe,” Rommel wrote afterward. “Our weapons had simply been battered to pieces by the British bombers, tanks, and artillery, and it was nothing short of a miracle that we had been able to escape with all the German motorized forces, especially in view of the desperate fuel shortage.”

But Hitler would listen to no further argument.

“I began to realize that Adolf Hitler simply did not want to see the situation as it was,” Rommel wrote in his journal.

Hitler finally said he would do everything possible to get supplies to Rommel, and Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring would accompany him to Italy to work things out. Rommel rode with Göring in his private train to Rome.

“The situation did not seem to trouble him in the slightest,” Rommel wrote. “He plumed himself, beaming broadly at the primitive flattery heaped on him by imbeciles from his own court, and talked of nothing but jewelry and pictures.” Göring had stolen hundreds of masterpieces from art museums all over occupied Europe.

As Rommel suspected, Göring did nothing to induce the Italians to make greater efforts to supply the army in Africa. But Rommel, by the time he turned back to Africa on December 2, had gained permission from Mussolini to withdraw his forces to Buerat, 240 miles west of Mersa and 180 miles east of Tripoli. This improved the supply situation and saved the army for the moment, but Mussolini and Hitler resolved that Buerat “must be held under all circumstances and with all means.”

This was unrealistic because Buerat could be flanked on the south. Rommel, after much pressure, secured from Marshal Ettore Bastico, the Axis supreme commander in Africa, authorization to retreat to Tarhuna-Homs, sixty miles east of Tripoli, when the British attack finally came on January 15, 1943.

Rommel told everybody in authority that the Axis should abandon Libya and retreat to the Mareth line, since Hitler and Mussolini would not consider the better Wadi Akarit position. There Rommel could link up with Axis forces in Tunisia, and, because of the mountains, would be secure from encirclement. On the new line the army could revive itself and, should the occasion arise, go over to the offensive—“be it to the west or the east.” But once again he got no response.

The British overran the Buerat position in two days, but were stopped at Tarhuna-Homs on January 19 by Axis artillery fire. When the British swung around to the south to encircle the position, Rommel sent his motorized forces to shield the flank and ordered all his infantry out of Tarhuna-Homs. Within hours the foot soldiers were gone.

The British continued on westward, aiming to encircle Tripoli from the west and to close the entire German-Italian Panzer Army Africa into a caldron.

Seeing this, Rommel on January 23 ordered all forces to withdraw west of Tripoli, to take all war material possible, and to destroy the rest. Rommel’s attention now focused on getting the 30,000 men in the nonmotorized Italian infantry divisions and his supplies to the Mareth line. He didn’t wait for approval from Mussolini or Hitler.

Rommel’s desperate bid succeeded, primarily because Montgomery stopped at Tripoli to bring up new supplies. The Germans and Italians had time to withdraw the last of their armor and motorized forces into the Mareth line.

On January 26, Rommel received a signal from the Italian high command relieving him of duty at such time as he himself was to determine. The reason cited was Rommel’s physical condition—he was suffering violent headaches and “nervous exhaustion”—but the real reason was pay-back for his defiance of Hitler and Mussolini, and for telling them the truth about the situation in Africa. Italian General Giovanni Messe was to take command.

But Rommel had one more trick up his sleeve. And before he left Africa, he was going to show it.

With the Tunisian campaign stalled in winter mud, Roosevelt and Churchill decided on a meeting to plot future operations.

When Stalin said he could not come to a conference, Churchill pushed for a meeting at Marrakech, a favorite haunt of his in the Atlas Mountains in southern Morocco. But Roosevelt insisted on Casablanca, close to American troops. The conference began on January 14, 1943.

At the conference, Britain and the United States agreed on a strategic bombing campaign against German industry and cities, which fitted in with British ideas of a war of attrition. Top RAF and U.S. air commanders saw strategic bombing as possibly decisive, leading to German surrender and fewer battlefield losses. There was no disguising that the campaign was aimed at civilian targets to undermine the morale of the German people.

While the British continued to concentrate on heavy nighttime area raids that laid down massive loads, especially of incendiaries, burning huge portions of German cities, the Americans put much faith in precision bombing of specific targets with their four-engine B-17 Flying Fortresses, which air enthusiasts claimed could fend off German fighters with their .50-caliber machine guns, and could bomb far into the depths of Germany in daylight.

But as the raids extended into Germany beyond the range of fighter protection, the bomber fanatics were found to be wrong: the B-17s were highly vulnerable to German fighters, and losses became prohibitive. In time the Americans hit upon a solution: the P-51 Mustang fighter with extra fuel tanks on the wings, which could be dropped off in flight. The Mustang was the best fighter to come out of the war, and it made long-range daylight bombing feasible. The campaign commenced in 1943, but did not reach its zenith until autumn 1944, when increasing aircraft production allowed full implementation of the theory.

Actually, strategic bombing did not have a decisive effect on the war. German production was not crippled. Though German morale declined, the bombs did not bring about a demand for surrender. In sum, Germany was devastated by the bombing, but the war was decided by the Allied armies, not the air forces.

The Allies were also concerned about German U-boat attacks on Atlantic convoys, and they intensified efforts to defeat the submarine menace.

Three other events took place at Casablanca with wide implications for the future. On December 2, 1942, scientists at the University of Chicago induced a nuclear chain reaction, which proved that the atomic bomb was possible. The Allies decided at Casablanca to go all out to produce the bomb.

On the final day of the conference, January 24, 1943, Roosevelt announced that the Allies would demand unconditional surrender from the Axis powers. Although there was much argument later that this lengthened the war by strengthening the enemies’ will to resist, there is no evidence this was true. Unconditional surrender was an assurance to Stalin that he would not be left alone to fight the Germans.

Finally, the Allies agreed to invade Sicily. This would lead to an assault on Italy. There was going to be a Mediterranean strategy, after all.