largest tank battle in ww2 operation torch

But their preferred date was spring 1943, when American ground forces would be better prepared, trained and equipped to fight the Wehrmacht on the European continent. Some American military planners believed that it might be necessary to invade northwestern Europe in 1942 to take the heat off the hard-pressed Soviets. In the summer of 1942 the plight of the Soviet Army seemed desperate, as Adolf Hitler’s panzer divisions pushed ever onward toward Stalingrad and the Caucasus. Army’s chief of staff, viewed the strategic problem in simple terms: The United States should concentrate its military might on achieving a successful lodgment on the European continent as soon as possible. In fact, this amphibious operation inevitably postponed the landing in France until 1944, but at the same time it allowed the United States to complete mobilization of its immense industrial and manpower resources for the titanic air and ground battles that characterized the Allied campaigns of 1944.Īmerican strategic thinking in early 1942 aimed at defeating Nazi Germany before turning to the problems that a flood of Japanese conquests and victories were raising in the Pacific.

It may have been the most important strategic decision that Allied leaders would make. In both a direct and an indirect sense, Torch’s impact was enormous on the course of Anglo-American strategy during the remainder of the war. That landing, code-named ‘Torch,’ reflected the results of long and contentious arguments between British and American planners about the future course of Allied strategy - arguments that were finally stilled by the intervention of the American president, Franklin D. On November 8, 1942, the military forces of the United States and the United Kingdom launched an amphibious operation against French North Africa, in particular the French-held territories of Algeria and Morocco. Operation Torch: Allied Invasion of North Africa Close

Largest tank battle in ww2 operation torch