America and Africa-A Survey of the mediterranean Front
NICOLAEVSKY, BORIS
America and Africa-A Survey of the mediterranean Front Roosevelt, Nous Voi/a.1 French Underground Press Hails America's War Rote By BORIS NICOLAEVSKY ?/HEN yon hear of French newspapers or "...
...At the same time Spain, an Axis satellite, is increasingly neutralized and drawn closer to the Anglo-American camp...
...Background of African Fighting — Morocco, Historic Land of Invasions ?? RALPH DE TOLEDANO THE French call Morocco "the nearest East...
...Instead of blindly accepting the popular notion that the tank is supreme in the desert, the British and their allies from occupied land* learned a lesson from Marshal Rommel's successful campaign of last spring...
...blow has fallen...
...Yet it should be realized that the war...
...e · THE method used to soften up the Axis f<* the tank drive later was by the employment of combat teams of infantry and artillery, which hit the enemy with enormous firepower, tested various sections of the Axis line, and cleared the ground of anti-tank weapons aad (Continued on Page Eight...
...Leaving the Italians to stave off the attacking Allies in the South as best they could under the circumstances, Rommel gathered his forces and began his retreat...
...Many of them settled in the Moroccan plains well before the Moslem hordes swept west from Arabia...
...The ground was cleared, and advances were at first slow but always well covered...
...To this artillery bombardment was added the overwhelming air superiority of the Allies...
...But as a part of the African land-mass, it has been cut off from the Latinizing influence of the northern Mediterranean...
...They tell you little about the...
...Then the British, seemingly on the point of success, lost a large part of their tank strength in an unprotected gap in the lines...
...All through the history of Morocco, they were a civilising and sabilis...
...In this battle, they used artillery as the Axis uses dive-bombers (which the British still apparently hardly use in Africa) to batter the enemy troops in the forward lines...
...Possession of Africa will enable the United Nations to stop scattering their forces on the periphery, to concentrate their strength around Germany, and to prevent the Axis from threatening lands vital to the democracies...
...First, securely set in North Africa, the United Nations could use that territory as a complementary base, with the British Isles, for a combined two-prpnged attack upon the Axis from the West...
...But the failure of their efforts was marked by the special system of...
...Morocco was suddenly flooded by "Armistice Commissioners," and German tourists who began inciting the natives against the French.Ahe British, and to a smaller extent against the United States—although this last was difficult since American prestige has always been high in Morocco...
...These have been complicated by further treaties among the European powers themselves, with all the ramifications of secret clauses and gentlemen's agreements...
...Second, to attempt such an attack while the Axis held North Africa would be to court disaster by exposing one flank for the Axis to move in for the attack at will...
...In 1934, after 27 years of intermittent warfare, the French authorities declared a state of law and order in Morocco...
...The British preferred to go on more slowly, and this allowed the Axis units to meet further west and to make minor stands now and then...
...The bUd-eiba whose attitude is:"come and get it," whose tribesmen frankly evade all legal restraint because no Sultan has been able to, subdue them...
...subject to the Sultan's law and taxation...
...The mopping up of Rommel in Libya becomes a mere aetail...
...As in the case of a landing in Spain, the French Moroccan invasion has the advantage of being against a weak point, thus avoiding heavy losses of men as in the Dieppe feint...
...America and Africa-A Survey of the mediterranean Front Roosevelt, Nous Voi/a.1 French Underground Press Hails America's War Rote By BORIS NICOLAEVSKY ?/HEN yon hear of French newspapers or " politicians bitterly condemning the landing of American troops in North Africa you should know that these are the voices of traitors...
...The most important groups in France, whose entire existence is predicated upon resistance to the Nazis, are represented...
...We shall soon see it side-by-side with our banner when we march towards freedom and victory...
...Failure to coordinate the air and land forces contributed heavily to the British defeat last spring...
...Americans, and until very recently British nationals, are subject only to their own law...
...Nou voila...
...What was suggested before was that the United Nations, pivoting their forces on Gibraltar, strike through the Iberian Peninsula as a first step . with a subsidiary stroke' through Spanish Morocco to the eastward to catch Rommel in the rear...
...The American Labor Archive and Research Institute has been able, with the aid of the "Europe Speaks" group, to gather a large collection of this underground Freich press...
...A child digging in the Caves of Hercules in ¦ what is now the International Zone, will pick up coins dating back to the days when Romans spoke of the region as Mauretania...
...And it has fallen in * North Africa...
...It would indeed be no exaggeration to say that foreign news in the underground French press is limited almost wholly to America...
...But the ice has...
...And Auguste Nogues, the Commissaire Resident General, who had been characterized by newspapermen as "well-meaning but weak," forced a series of dahir» on the Sultan which established a full set of the Nuremburg laws in Morocco...
...There is, however, one exception: the United States of America...
...Third, by holding North Africa the United Nations shorten their supply lines to all the lands east of the Mediterranean, obviating the lengthy trip around Africa...
...For many years, the Jews were the only link between Morocco and the Western world...
...During September and October, raids were carried out in Axis rear areas, and for about two weeks before the opening of the main attack, Allied airmen pounded the Axis forward lines repeatedly...
...The Arab armies under Tank, who invaded Spain and gave his name to Gibraltar (Jebel Tank), only dented the surface of the country...
...Fortunately, the British desert campaign exceeded all hopes, thereby making the task of the newly-arrived Americans even easier...
...But though they apply to native Moroccans, French nationals, and citizens of other powers alike...
...In last spring's battle, the British suffered from lack of firepower upon the enemy's forward troops...
...The French African invasion via Gibraltar accomplishes practically all the things that the suggested Iberian invasion would accomplish, and at the same time^avoids some of the difficult political complications of the Spanish undertaking...
...None of these creatures, however, speaks for the people of France...
...For thtree strategic reasons it was important to clear the Axis out of North Africa...
...now fighting, a sort of double-standard of justice exists...
...Three subdivisions exist on the record: a demilitarised International Zone around the city of Tangier, a Spanish protectorate, and a French protectorate...
...When French Morocco came into its own, early in the twentieth century, these same Spanish-speaking Jews spread into the French eone, establishing bi-lingual colonies...
...Offensive in North Africa Suggests New Allied Master Plan for Victory By TOM W/NSLOW •THE landing of American troops at numerous * points in French North Africa stirred the whole democratic world last week...
...Meanwhile, the United Nations have given ample evidence of their alertness...
...For the citizens of the United States France is the guardian of great ideals...
...This time they adequately prepared the ground for the tank advance...
...An American archeologist, excavating there several years ago, discovered the remains of a prehistoric era and the bones of the "Tangier man," mailing the Peking man and the other specimens of Neanderthal man...
...In French Morocco, where American troops...
...This kind of planning and this kind of fighting will defeat the Axis...
...The Nazis will not only be unable to determine where the blow will fall in southern Europe...
...There are many political difficulties in the path cf> such a policy, although it is by no means impossible that a deal will be made with General Franco to allow the United Nations' armies to enter Spain in exchange for a promise to maintain his authority there...
...A nationalist group of French-educated Moors calling itself let jeunm maroe-ains, which had advocated independence and the establishment of an authoritarian Moorish state, suddenly and overtly declared an anti-Semitism which had previously been qualified...
...Naturally, it did not come with the warning that petitioners for a second front seemed to want...
...The Phoenicians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Visigoths, the Jews have poured down into the Moroccan interior and merged their blood and their traditions with those of the Islamic peoples who were able to set their culture as the predominant force...
...Another important French underground newspaper, Combat, writes in a similar vein (circulation 35,000...
...Byzantine Jews added to the dialects and the customs of the country...
...In the past these ideals served to make man free...
...This desert attack by the British deserves close study as a model for offensive operations in general and for adaptation to special circumstances...
...in Greece...
...What 1 laid down as.a subsidiary stroke to the-main effort through Spain has been made into the major stroke, thus avoiding the political difficulties that would be certain to follow an operation through Spain and Portugal...
...Rommel was really finished by Montgomery before the French African landings took place...
...This did not menu that the British were changing their minds about the separate air force issue...
...Spanish Jews, who had for years been part of the Iberian elite and now uprooted by the Inquisition, settled in Tangier and Tetuan...
...Further landings of men and material, first _ carried across the relatively safe South Atlantic, can be made with impunity...
...The magazine "93," published in Roneo by a group of "Young Jacobins" who seek to revirve the revolutionary traditions of the war of 1793, quoted sections of Roosevelt's speech and merely added: "To arms, citizens...
...Ostensibly, Morocco is under the control of His Shereefian Majesty, Sidi Mohammed...
...Gibraltar Seen as Key to Allied Strategy for Operations in Europe By STRATEGIST *1...
...For the suggested move through Spanish Morocco to the eastward obviously envisioned operations across Algeria and Tunisia to get at Rommel in the vichnity of Tripoli...
...Our troops are being eased slowly into battle...
...They came with the Romans...
...The police cannot touch them, even for ordinary crimes against the peace...
...Here, for instance, are a number of comments of the underground French press on President Roostevelt's speech of April in which, among other things, he expressed his attitude on the restoration of a free and independent France: "What clarity, what confidence," writes Liberation of May 18 (one of the most important underground newspapers which has a circulation of 30,000 copies), "how much truth there is in this great declaration when we compare it with last hysterical and frightened harrangue of Hitler...
...3. Give a firm jumping-off place all along the north African coast for landings in force on the Continent—in southern France, in Italy, in Yugoslavia or...
...ing force...
...There is no doubt that these, too, were the sentiments of all true- Frenchmen when they learned of the landing of American troops in North Africa...
...Under the heading Oncle Sam a compri (Uncle Sam Understood) it comments as follows on the President's speech of April 23: "The banner with the stars and stripes waves in the sky of freedom...
...Anti-fascist refugees were eeized by the French police and turned over to the Germans...
...THE capitulation of France and the complete * surrender to the Nazi system left Morroeco in the tender mercies of Hitler and the Gestapo...
...The average American loves France...
...T'HE opening of the campaign in Africa has * started anew the speculation about the point selected for invasion in Europe...
...The beautiful network of motor roads, railways, and narrowgauge military railroads were used to the utmost to extract from Morocco large quantities of the phosphates in which the mounmiues...
...2. Force Hitler to deploy men and material all along the South European coast as he has along the Atlantic coast, thus dispersing his strength...
...But here too, there are exceptions...
...Several dynasties of Sultans fought to subjugate the wild tribes in the Rif and the Sits, the unconquerable Berbers...
...To the Arabs plunging through North Africa in their advance on Europe, it was "a...
...The French African operation bids fairs to accomplish the following: 1. Make the Mediterranean indisputably a British-American sea highway so that materials of war can easily be sent to the Middle East and to Russia...
...French officers who were known to have strong anti-German or pro-British sentiment were removed from the French colonial army and replaced by Croix-de-Feu members or reliable collaborationists...
...When Moulay Ismail, who in the sixteenth century as Sultan was able to bring some sort of unity to the country, sent ambassadors to the courts of Europe, the men he sent were for the most part Jews...
...they will be unable to decide whether, after all, it may not still fall along the Atlantic coast...
...Together with us the Americans sang in the past and will do so in the future: 'Liberty, sweet liberty, we shall fight in your ranks.' To arms, citizens...
...The Sultan's government is administered by bashas and kaids, most of them rich and some of them more powerful than the Sultan himself...
...events from the very outbreak of the * main push on October 23rd showed the careful planning of the British...
...The main contact with the Axis has not yet been made, but we can expect the real fireworks before much of 1943 has gone by...
...pr obvious reasons this independent French press has given most of its space to internal problems such as the struggle against the Vichy government and its collaborationist policies...
...JThus, tremendous firepower was brought to bear upon the Axis until the mobile forces of the Allies could safely move in and add their firepower...
...But more important than terror and subjugation, the Nazis were interested in what they could take from the land...
...The Rome radio stated, two days before the Americans landed in Africa, that the Allies intended to invade Italy once they took over the Axis in the Mediterranean area...
...At one point the Allies could have leaped in swiftly and separated the Axis armies, but this occurred while the fighting was still so close to the Quattara depression that the armies of both sides were quite bunched together...
...on our side and from the standpoint 6f the strategic offensive, has just begun...
...And all these forces melted into a large body of Arabic-speaking Jews, living around Fez and Marakesh or moving deeper into the middle Atlas region...
...It was effected with reasonable secrecy, though it was not altogether unforeseen...
...N the organized portiojas of Morocco, a strange * conglomeration of political and judicial systems exist, the product of the many treaties and conventions between the Sultan's government and the various European powers who have interested themselves in the country...
...independent French press—the true voice * of free Frenchmen—is full of sympathy and solidarity toward the United States...
...During Spain's Visigothic period some of them drifted across the Gibraltar Straits...
...It never fails to react to important American events favorably...
...In 1492, a new wave of Jewish colonisation swept over the coastal areas...
...Form our battalions...
...What is true of Doriot holds also for the other French politicians who-in the name of the "people" shed crocodile tears over America's action...
...Petain's capitulation in June 1940...
...Unfortunately, many of the natives nerver heard of this and continued to do as they pleased, making it unsafe for any French official to venture beyond certain points...
...They were among the Phoenician settlers...
...and it is even likely that the Axis will continue to defend its holdinir there for some time...
...As a cultural link between the Moors and the Europeans, the Jews of Morocco play a very-important role...
...The Gestapo had its own particular purposes...
...How comforting it is to all free French to hear the President of the great free republic speak thus to our downtrodden, oppressed nation which is hoping against hope...
...We are here...
...This still remains a possibility, but the supreme advantage we now have is that there are many possibilities and that the Nazis cannot defend themselves adequately against all...
...One always met this banner on the path of honor and justice...
...1, 1942), it is essentially the same operation...
...taxation in Morocco which divides the country into two regions, the bled-makhzen and the bUd-siba...
...During the colonization by the French which followed their first landing at Casablanca in 1907, the Jews were the liaison factor and in many cases were able to prevent the massacre of the occupying forces...
...Once clear of the Quattara depression, the British could bring into play all the tricks of maneuver and speed which tanks can perform...
...There were many indications of impending activity in North Africa, About three weeks before the invasion there were reports from Paris that the United Nations would begin an offensive in Africa before the end of the year...
...Justice for Europeans is administered by the Resident General and his civil controllers...
...The people of bled-makhzen live in the plains and the foothills of the three mountain systems and are...
...This is America's second front for this year—the essential prelude to major operations on the European continent designed to bring the Axis to its knees with the final series of blows from many sides...
...Especially, no doubt, was it meant to form » wall against which the British could push the Axis armies in North Africa...
...There is only one fact which has remained constant in the ebb and flow of Morocco's history, the shifting fortunes of the endless wars which have made up its chronicles: No man and no people has been able to conquer the country completely...
...But this time the British established air-ground unity in September by giving the army commander authority over the air commander...
...The country was "pacified...
...The landings were obviously well-planned in all respects...
...From now on air operations against Italy, Greece and Crete can begin with full fury, softening up the southern invasion coast...
...To understand the sentiments of true Frenchmen one must turn to the independent (and for this very reason illegal and underground) French press which having first arisen at the end of 1940 has grown tremendously within recent months-until it'represents today a powerful political force in France's political life...
...This they did in trapping the Italian divisions in the South and pursuing Rommel along the coastal rocd through Libya in association with the American and British air forces...
...For this the British and American governments must be complimented...
...It was masterfully conceived and carried out, and each arm was used to its utmost specific capacity, while lessons learned from bitter experiences were well applied...
...birken—America is in the war in Europe too...
...Their consular officials stand between them and the government and they are responsible to consular courts...
...In short, if we listen to the geopoliticians and imagine a series of concentric circles in Europe with Germany at the center and the United Nations on the circumference of the outermost circle, then our forces have now begun to break through to the inner circles nearer the dynamite causing all the trouble...
...they merely placed all the forces available under one man...
...Here, the Sultan rules by dahir (decree), but all his orders must be countersigned by the French Commissaire Resident General...
...Preparations should be complete by next Spring, when the Nazis would like to be able- to return unhampered to the assault against Russia, for a full-scale drive...
...Historically, Morocco is a cross section of peoples and races which have had their day of power in the Mediterranean...
...When, for instance, Jacques Doriot, in Paris, demands the immediate declaration of war upon the United States it is understood that he is a paid Nazi agent, that two years ago this former member of the Executive Committee of the Communist International admitted that he had been working for the Germans since 1935—that as late as March-April 1935, according to the Free French press, he had received 150 million francs from the Germans...
...Greater point was given to these conjectures by persistent German radio claims of a large concentration of warships and transports at Gibraltar a few days before the great day of November 7. The significance of this campaign has hardly been overestimated by democratic partisans...
...The wave of optimism which has broken out is justified, and the democracies have long needed just such a bracer...
...But the key to this drive, as indicated before in The New Leader, is Gibraltar, the British strong point on the Continent...
...in.- this underground press which, taken as a whole, paints an unforgettable picture of the sentiments of those groups of Frenchmen who were never reconciled to...
...The next blow can be prepared, at leisure, under favorable winter conditions...
...Foreign soldiers who had fought with the French against the common enemy were immobilized in Morroeco, many of them destitute, and then seized by the Vichy authorities to work in the Trans-Sahara railroad—a death penalty, in fact...
...The job won't be so easy as this African camnaign seems to be...
...At the same time, the enemy was subjected to incessant air bombardment by the Royal Air Force and the United States desert ait task force...
...Although this is not the precise operation suggested in my last word on the subject of a new front (New Leader, Aug...
...As for Italy, it is likewise possible that a deal may be made with conservative elements to abandon resistance against our forces at the price of supporting their ambitions to succeed Mussolini and his more vocal Fascists...
...The Sultan, who is also religious head of the state, delegates this side of his administration to the kadis...
...Moghreb el aksa"—the farthest West Yet this historic country of invasions is the bridge between East and West, the Hnk between European and Oriental culture., Geographically, the Moroccan Atlas mountains are part of Spain's Sierra Nevada, cut off from the Iberian peninsula by a deep valley which became the Straits of Gibraltar...
...At the same time, the "Armistice Commission" which had moved into Morocco to supervise its demilitarization, swarmed over the French zone like a swarm of locusts...
...policies of other governments or about life outside of France in general...
...The hinge of the entire move was Gibraltar, and the door can still swing open toward Spain although it is increasingly doubtful that it will do so unless the Nazis successfully prepare the ground against a landing all along the south European coast bordering on the Meditteranean from France eastward...
...Although Southern Europe is doubtless the Axis soft spot, the invasion of Africa does not commit the United Nations to an attempt to land there...
...Actually, Spain has occupied the Tangier zone, and both France and Spain run their protectorates as if they were colonies...
Vol. 25 • November 1942 • No. 46
