Eighty years ago the allies win incomplete victories in North Africa

 

Axis resistance to General Montgomery's attack at El Alamein collapsed completely in the face of massive superiority of the British led forces and Rommel went into full retreat. Montgomery proved to be the 'lucky general' who reaped the rewards of the allies vastly greater economic resources, whilst the reputations of his predecessors who had far less to work with were flayed by Churchill. Montgomery was knighted immediately in recognition of the victory. Churchill saw a turning point but knew that there was still much to do, "Now is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."

President Franklin Roosevelt had always recognized that it was the European war that demanded the higher priority than the Pacific War and this strategy became a public fact when massive American forces invaded Vichy France's North African territories in the Torch landings. They encountered some military opposition but this was swiftly overcome as the Vichy leaders fell in line with a changed world. By coincidence Admiral Darlan, the Vichy armed forces commander and former deputy political leader, was in Algiers at the time. Astutely the allies presented Torch as an entirely American effort and direct British participation which might have provoked visceral hostility was disguised.

This even extended to one of Torch's political ramifications. The Americans vastly preferred General Giraud as a candidate to lead non-Vichy France to General de Gaulle, who operated under British aegis even though he was anything but a British puppet. In American eyes de Gaulle was tarred with traditionalist and imperialist affiliations. Giraud, who had been sprung from a German prison camp with British SOE assistance,  was smuggled to North Africa in a British submarine HMS Seraph under the pretence tht she was a USN boat. Giraud proceeded to broadcast an appeal to his countrymen, but they might have been somewhat puzzled when de Gaulle broadcast in similar terms. 

The Germans responded by occupying the south-east of France that had remained under direct Vichy control in the long-prepared Fall Anton. The reaction from the Vichy government was muted to say the least. In practice Laval was happy to continue as a German puppet shorn of any direct political authority. The kindest analysis of Petain's reaction was that he was catatonic with despair, albeit continuing to serve as figurehead for Laval's now undilutedly collaborationist regime. By some accounts Petain's intervention saved the Prince of Monaco from being deposed when the Italians carried out their part in Anton and invaded the principality.

Anton was symbolic and of little military importance, but it was matched by a far more important move. In a few days the Germans took control of French-ruled Tunisia creating a large buffer between the British advancing from Egypt through Libya and the Americans in Algeria. They faced even more token military resistance by the Vichy armed forces than the Americans had faced at Torch. The allies had been braced for significant resistance to Torch by Vichy and could not take the risk of landing further east than Algiers. This combined with what can most kindly be described as determined neutralism by the Vichy forces in Tunisia left the Allies with a major ground campaign on their hands.

The Church of England dropped its long-held insistence that women wear hats in church in what appears to be a sign of weakened traditionalist influence after the retirement of the conservative Cosmo Gordon Lang a few months before. The decision was effected by no more than a joint statement from the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, which suggests that grass-roots clergy or laity might have resisted the change had it come before the Synod.