Fighting on all Fronts (8 page)

The time slot granted by the Americans permitted Darlan to take the initiative and organise a successful counter-coup. The pro-Allies uprising was already collapsing during the morning of 8 November. By the time a US advance unit had entered Algiers in the evening, Darlan was the strongman of the city. The US troops didn’t take him prisoner; instead they made him their negotiating partner.

Major General Mark Clark, deputy commander-in-chief under General Eisenhower, led the negotiations for the US. He demanded a ceasefire. Darlan, however, moved to improve his bargaining position by ordering the French troops to continue resisting. As a result 1,500 soldiers on both sides met their death in a three-day long battle along the Moroccan coast. In the vicinity of Oran 750 men were killed or injured.

On 10 November Clark and Darlan finally reached an agreement which demanded practically no concessions from the French admiral. Darlan announced the ceasefire and in return was appointed High Commissioner for North Africa. Darlan declared: “I assume authority over North Africa in the name of the Marshal [Pétain]. The present senior officers retain their commands and the political and administrative organisations remain in force. No change will be made without fresh orders from me”.
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Darlan demanded from “everybody the strictest obedience”.

In North Africa the Vichy regime lived on, albeit now in the shape of a US protectorate. This is confirmed by the personnel. The commanding heights remained firmly in the hands of those who had faithfully served Pétain. Giraud was appointed Chief-of-Staff of the Armed Forces. General Juin was happy to play second fiddle and retain operational command of the troops. On 24 November Darlan instituted an Imperial Council headed by himself and Giraud and which included the governor-generals of Algeria, Morocco and French West-Africa to secure control of the remaining colonial territories. Roosevelt was of the opinion that
cooperation with Darlan would last for “a very long time…at least until the end of the war in Europe”.
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Although having participated in Operation Torch, the British government was not pleased with the new ruler in Algiers. Initially it went along with Clark and his deal with Darlan because he had the necessary following amongst French officials throughout the region. But Darlan, who, as Commander-in-Chief of the French Navy, had been in direct military conflict with the British between 1940 and 1941, further provoked London. In various speeches he hinted that he would welcome anti-British revolts in Syria and even Egypt. The British government reacted by conniving to remove Darlan.

Fernand Bonnier, a young man from the entourage of the anti-German groups in Algiers, assassinated Darlan in his office on 24 December. He had obtained his gun during a two-week small arms and sabotage course organised by the British secret service. What Bonnier was not expecting was, mission completed, to be dropped by his sponsors. Eisenhower spread the word that Darlan had been killed by agents of the Axis powers and the British government kept quiet. A military tribunal was improvised and Bonnier executed two days later. The Allies didn’t protest. Instead Allied troops mounted a guard of honour as Darlan, Hitler’s former collaborator, lay in state, while General Consul Murphy and US Commander in Chief Eisenhower looked on.

The Imperial Council then nominated General Giraud, the Allies’ second option after Darlan, as the new High Commissioner for North Africa. Roosevelt gave his assent just hours after Bonnier’s execution. Giraud grasped the opportunity to arrest the Aboulker family. They, and many others who had actively assisted the Allied landing, were deported to a prisoners’ camp in the desert.

On 19 January 1943 Marcel Peyrouton, none other than Vichy’s first interior minister, who had Jews, Communists and Gaullists hunted down by his police, was appointed Governor-General of Algeria. His nomination too was approved by Murphy and Eisenhower, with blessings from the State Department and the White House. Eisenhower argued: “Abrupt, sweeping or radical changes, bringing into office little known or unqualified administrators, could create serious difficulties for us.” He could not make decisions “on the basis of prejudice or past political affiliations in France”.
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Were these liberators? Roosevelt displayed complete disinterest for the political regime in North Africa, as long as it remained stable and ensured an operational basis from which the Allies could carry on their
war against the Axis Powers. The SOL kept marching on Algeria’s streets and none of the Vichy laws were rescinded. Anti-fascists were still being condemned by military courts just as if the US Army had never landed in Algeria.

But US policies on the ground so openly contradicted the stated democratic ideals that the US and British press created a scandal. This was one of the reasons prompting the US government to put more pressure on Giraud. Another was the unsatisfactory military situation on the North African front. After having reached such a quick settlement in Algiers, Eisenhower was hoping to pre-empt German efforts to reinforce its positions in Tunisia. However, the Vichy-loyal officers’ corps in East Algeria and Tunisia remained aloof if not openly hostile towards the Allies. General Barré, the French commanding general in Tunisia, was, at the end of 1942, definitely reported to be in negotiation with the German commander in Tunis. Thus the US plans to take Tunisia within six weeks following Operation Torch misfired.

Roosevelt took the decision to henceforth provide the French troops with weapons only in return for tangible political services. Giraud backed down, but only very reluctantly and in stages. Among the concessions he had to make was to ease the level of repression so as to give the US willingness to cooperate with the regime in Algiers greater legitimacy. At the beginning of February 27 Communist MPs of the dissolved French National Assembly, together with 300 other prisoners, among whom was the Aboulker family, were set free from the internment camp in the desert. On 14 March Giraud made a speech disputing the legitimacy of the ceasefire accord with the Nazis and hence the constitutional basis of the Vichy regime in its entirety. However, the institutional framework put into place by Vichy was only dismantled after de Gaulle succeeded in overcoming the resistance of the US leaders, and establishing a provisional government in Algiers under his own leadership in the latter half of the year. On 9 August 1943 all Vichy laws, decrees and treaties were annulled, and only a few days later, on 18 August, under increasing pressure from the Communists, a Cleansing Committee was installed. The Jews finally regained full citizen rights on 20 October, almost a year after the start of Operation Torch.

For three whole months after the allied landing the Gaullists remained underground. Undeterred, de Gaulle continued issuing calls for support
for the Allies in North Africa. He was banking on further developments working out to his benefit; which is exactly how things turned out. At a conference in Moroccan Anfa in January 1943 called by Roosevelt and Churchill, de Gaulle got permission for General Catroux to open a representation of the London Committee in Algiers.

This provided the hitherto illegal movement with an operational base. A Gaullist network grouped around the newspaper
Combat
covered the European quarters in Algerian cities with the Lorraine Cross, the symbol of Gaullist resistance. Other leading Gaullists such as Louis Joxe and René Capitant joined forces with Catroux. Their goal was to prepare the ground for de Gaulle to establish his headquarters in Algiers. Their main argument was: France needs a united army and a united leadership to take part in the war against Germany.

Several factors shaped the dynamics of the situation. The extension of Nazi occupation to the whole of France in November 1942 and the introduction of forced labour, the “Service du travail obligatoire”, in February 1943 gave the Résistance an enormous boost which also affected Algeria. The defeat of the Wehrmacht at Stalingrad, on the other hand, raised hopes that Nazi Germany could be beaten after all. And finally the 8th British Army together with Gaullist troops were advancing from the east in the direction of Tunisia. The ensuing optimism increasingly constrained Giraud’s room for manoeuvre. With his Vichy-critical speech on 14 March, meant only as a verbal concession, Giraud succeeded in further hastening the rot by infuriating the convinced Pétainists. He did get his weapons from the Americans, but the price he had to pay was growing isolation.
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The writing on the wall was there for all to see when de Gaulle arrived in Algiers on 31 May 1943 and Governor-General Peyrouton tendered his resignation, without even bothering to inform Giraud. The erstwhile collaborators sought leniency from the incoming champion. The Allied attempt to steer Algeria’s political course and through it France’s was falling apart.

On 3 June 1943 the Comité Français de la Libération Nationale (CFLN) was founded in Algiers and soon took on the contours of a provisional government. Due to Allied pressures it initially operated under the joint presidency of Giraud and de Gaulle. Washington was hoping to hem in de Gaulle’s ascension. But from the start his supporters dominated the committee. Political developments combined with Giraud’s dilettantism enabled de Gaulle to bolster his own position, eventually forcing Giraud to withdraw before the CFLN was officially
declared Provisional Government of the French Republic in June 1944 with de Gaulle as sole president.

These developments were very much to the dismay of the US government. Washington had placed its bets on Vichy but not just out of tactical-military considerations. What was at stake was the post-war order in France proper. In summer 1943 when it became clear that de Gaulle wasn’t going to be kettled by the CFLN, Roosevelt lost his temper and ordered Eisenhower to give “no arms to any military bodies not recognising the supremacy of his authority” and in future not to permit “any government or committee” to rule France over the Allied military government’s head until such a time as the French people held elections.
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Events turned out very differently. Washington begrudgingly acknowledged de Gaulle’s access to power in the summer of 1944 when he entered a jubilant Paris at the head of an unelected coalition government including leftists and the French Communist Party. This outcome cannot be explained on the basis of the military balance of forces. De Gaulle was able to browbeat Washington politically despite the US’s overwhelming military might because the resistance against the Vichy regime, propelled by the desire to beat the Nazis, had unleashed a social dynamic first in Algeria then in France and finally within the ranks of the French Army, which frustrated all Washington’s preferred options.

The political struggle in Algeria was interwoven with what could, in part, be termed a people’s war against the Nazis in Tunisia between November 1942 and May 1943. No sooner were the preparations for the Allied landing in North Africa under way than the opponents of the Vichy regime came up with the idea of creating a voluntary force so that “the Anglo-Saxon allies may not claim the glory of having liberated North Africa all to themselves”.
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Darlan and Giraud took up the idea. They saw the opportunity of ridding Algeria of Gaullists and other subversive elements, and preventing them at the same time from coming into contact with regular troops by packing them off to Tunisia in a separate unit.

Thus came into being the Corps Franc d’Afrique (CFA) under General Monsabert on 25 November 1942. According to Georges Elgozy’s personal account this corps was composed of those Algerian French who wanted to rid themselves of their Pétainist past, plus Gaullists, Spanish Republicans, escapees from France’s prison camps, but also Jews “originating from France or North Africa, who made up almost a third of the
force…they were willing to die upright and free rather than passively submit to the bullying and atrocities meted out by the Germans or, even worse, by the French”.
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Badly equipped, they engaged in their first battle on 2 February 1943 only to discover that their machine guns didn’t work. Eventually, with better equipment provided by the Allies, the corps was able to raise its military effectiveness. Its willingness to fight despite all odds was quite extraordinary. Out of a total of 5,000 men only 2,000 were left when the CFA in advance of all other corps entered the strategic seaport Bizerte. There they met up with the Gaullist troops of the Second Armoured Division. The scene was radically different to what had happened in the summer of 1941 in Syria, when Vichy officers in collusion with the British army had succeeded in keeping the French soldiers apart from each other. This time more than half the CFA men went over to the Gaullist troops “delighted to have at last rid themselves of their ‘Collabos’”.
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But it wasn’t just the CFA; the regular army in Tunisia too showed signs of disintegration. Young Algerian French were joining the armed forces in their droves to fight against Nazi Germany in Tunisia. Sixty five thousand soldiers under regular French command participated in the battle for Tunisia, which only came to an end after six months when the German army finally capitulated on 13 May. Eight thousand six hundred men had lost their lives, a further 7,500 wounded and 2,000 men temporarily taken into captivity.
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Politically it was a period of transition. In the armed forces led by General Juin, Jews, Communists and adherents of de Gaulle still had to keep their heads down. But for many the war represented an opportunity to quench their impatience until the day of reckoning with the Nazis and their collaborators would finally come. In the end military discipline was not enough to keep the regular troops together. The 4th Unit of the Spahis and the 7th Chasseurs d’Afrique, both predominantly of Muslim composition, went over to the Gaullist forces. The tide was turning. The military victory over the Wehrmacht in Tunisia helped de Gaulle to triumph politically over the regime set up by the US government in Algiers.