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BACKGROUND
Victory at Casablanca, Oran, and Algiers gave the Allies solid toeholds in the western Mediterranean. But it offered no guarantee of easy access to Italy or southern Europe, or even to the eastern end of the Mediterranean.Pressed between the veteran British Eighth Army on the East, and the green but eager U.S. forces on the West, the Afrika Korps fights the final delaying action.
Even before the fighting in northwest Africa ended, intense negotiations between American and French officials began. On the morning of 10 November in Algiers Lt. Gen. Mark W. Clark, deputy to Lt. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Commander in Chief, Allied Force, met Admiral Jean Francois Darlan, commander in chief of the collaborationist Vichy government's military forces. The different motives and needs of the two sides made these sessions difficult for all. The Allies were in a hurry to gain French help in fighting the Germans and Italians before the Axis could reinforce its units in Africa. On the same day talks in Algiers opened, British Lt. Gen. Kenneth A. N. Anderson began moving his Eastern Task Force into position off Tunisia for the next series of landings. With Clark and Darlan still in the early stages of negotiations, the enemy acted. On 11-12 November German submarines fired several near-misses at the American aircraft carrier Ranger, scored hits against three ships, and sank three transports off Casablanca. Intelligence sources reported Axis aircraft and transports en route to Tunis. Meanwhile, across the negotiating table General Clark found a frustrating lack of urgency in his French counterparts.
