174 e lusive v ictories
remain so for many months. More important, British planners pointed
out that the Germans could reinforce any invasion site in France much
faster than the Allies could build up a beachhead.
To postpone all U.S. military operations against German forces until
sometime in 1943, however, would have political repercussions. Th e
president hoped American troops would enter combat in the European
theater before the 1942 elections. More important, with American eyes
riveted on the Pacifi c, where U.S. troops from August 1942 onward
were already fi ghting the Japanese in savage battles on Guadalcanal and
New Guinea, popular pressure would mount to send greater resources
there, potentially undercutting the “Germany First” commitment. B y
accepting the British position, Roosevelt also gained a political advan-
tage in Allied war councils. He showed that he could rise above national
parochialism. Th is would enhance the legitimacy of his decision when
the time arrived to press for the land campaign in Northwest Europe.
Th ere were the Russians to consider, too. If the Anglo-Americans could
not open a true second front to satisfy Stalin, they needed to demon-
strate a commitment to broaden their operations against Germany as
the Soviets faced another major offensive in summer 1942. Last,
where a cross-Channel attack represented an irrevocable toss of the
dice, North Africa, though risky, meant an encounter with French
forces, which might not resist.
Instead of invading France, then, American and British troops landed
in Morocco and Algeria in November 1942 (Operation TORCH), a
campaign that drew American forces deeper into the Mediterranean
theater. (To the president’s credit, he did not insist the operation be
mounted before Election Day and raised no complaint when TORCH
came a week later.) Th e notion that TORCH would not compel a
particular subsequent path of operations proved, as Marshall had feared,
illusory. In early 1943, a combination of circumstances—the need to
continue active operations somewhere in the European theater after the
defeat of German-Italian forces in Tunisia, the impossibility of trans-
porting many Allied soldiers back to England, and the desire to force
Italian capitulation—led to the decision to invade Sicily (Operation
HUSKY). Th e American leadership again capitulated to the British
agenda: grand strategy at times, as one historian puts it, “has to be a
question of taking the least bad compromise alternative.”