Eisenhower becomes Supreme Commander in North Africa

On 11 February 1943 Lieutenant General Dwight Eisenhower received his fourth star and the rank of full general in the US Army. The same day the Combined Chiefs of Staff confirmed him as Commander-in-Chief of the Allied forces in North Africa and approved the new command structure agreed in January at the Casablanca Conference: under the American commander-in-chief, the land, air and naval forces were to be directed by British officers. A few days earlier, on 8 February according to chronicles of events, the headquarters of the American VI Corps had arrived in North Africa to prepare the next landings.

Contrary to an often repeated shorthand, Eisenhower was not then chosen as commander of the Allied forces in Europe. In February 1943 the appointment concerned only the Mediterranean theatre: finishing the fighting in Tunisia and the planned invasion of Sicily. He was given command of the invasion of France only in December 1943.

From Torch to Casablanca

Eisenhower had arrived in London in June 1942 as a little-known major general from the staff in Washington. In July he was promoted to lieutenant general (three stars), and in August he became commander of Operation Torch. On 8 November 1942 American and British troops landed in Morocco and Algeria. Eisenhower directed them from Allied Force Headquarters (AFHQ), first in Gibraltar and then in Algiers. It was the first joint headquarters of the war in which officers of both armies worked side by side at every level.

His first months brought him little glory. The agreement with Admiral François Darlan, until then a collaborator of the Germans, quickly ended the resistance of the Vichy forces but caused outrage in Britain and the United States. The problem went away only after Darlan’s assassination on 24 December, and his place was taken by General Henri Giraud. The run for Tunis failed as well: the Germans moved troops into Tunisia by air and sea, and General Kenneth Anderson’s weak British First Army bogged down in the winter mud after the fighting at Tebourba and for Longstop Hill. Eisenhower himself admitted that his headquarters had been dealing with too many political matters and too little with the front.

British commanders, especially the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, General Alan Brooke, regarded him as an able coordinator but an inexperienced field commander. At the Casablanca Conference (14–24 January 1943) they found a solution that satisfied both sides. The American would remain commander-in-chief, which reflected the growing share of the United States in the war and the expectations of American public opinion. Direct control of operations, however, would pass to experienced British officers. Once General Bernard Montgomery’s Eighth Army entered Tunisia, it was to come under Eisenhower’s command.

The fourth star

The promotion of 11 February was above all a practical matter. As a lieutenant general Eisenhower was junior in rank to the subordinates assigned to him at Casablanca: General Harold Alexander was a full general, and Admiral Andrew Cunningham an Admiral of the Fleet. The US Army Chief of Staff, General George Marshall, who had backed Eisenhower from the start, pushed the promotion through so that the commander-in-chief would not be outranked by anyone in his own headquarters. It was a temporary rank, conferred in the Army of the United States for the duration of the war; Eisenhower’s permanent rank in the Regular Army was still much lower. According to those present, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt at first would not hear of it at Casablanca until good news came from Tunisia, but in the end he gave way.

New headquarters were being set up in the same days. On 10 February AFHQ took over control of the Eighth Army, which, after Rommel’s withdrawal to the Mareth Line, was crossing the Libyan–Tunisian border. Alexander, until then Commander-in-Chief Middle East, became Eisenhower’s deputy and commander of the new 18th Army Group, comprising the British First Army, the Eighth Army, General Lloyd Fredendall’s US II Corps and the French XIX Corps. He formally took it over on 19–20 February. On 17 February Air Chief Marshal Arthur Tedder took charge of Mediterranean Air Command, which united the American and British air forces from Morocco to Egypt. Cunningham, naval commander of Operation Torch since November, again became Commander-in-Chief of the Mediterranean Fleet on 20 February, and naval commander for the whole theatre.

This created the model Eisenhower followed until the end of the war: he himself was responsible for strategy, policy and inter-Allied cooperation, while three commanders of the land, air and naval forces conducted operations. Critics on the American side pointed out that the British had taken all the key executive posts. Brooke, one of the authors of the arrangement, noted in his diary that Eisenhower had been pushed up “into the stratosphere” of supreme command, while the conduct of the fighting was entrusted to men of greater experience. Eisenhower was aware of such views but accepted the arrangement without protest – he believed that the unity of the alliance mattered more than national ambitions, and he tolerated no national animosities on his staff.

VI Corps in North Africa

At the same time new American headquarters were arriving in North Africa. Chronicles of events state that VI Corps arrived there on 8 February 1943. The precise date is hard to confirm in the available studies, which speak in general terms of the corps being moved to the Mediterranean theatre “in early 1943”; in any case it was the corps headquarters, not fighting troops. VI Corps, which dated back to the First World War and had been reactivated in August 1940 at Fort Sheridan, Illinois, had been commanded since April 1942 by Major General Ernest Dawley, an artilleryman and close acquaintance of General Lesley McNair, head of Army Ground Forces.

The corps became part of the Fifth Army, formed on 5 January 1943 under General Mark Clark, with its headquarters at Oujda in eastern Morocco. This army took no part in the fighting in Tunisia. Its tasks were to train the divisions arriving from the United States, to guard the rear against a German thrust through Spain and Spanish Morocco, and to plan further amphibious operations. For Dawley and his staff, February 1943 therefore marked the beginning of long preparations. The corps was originally meant to take part in the invasion of Sicily, but in the end it was assigned to the landing on the Italian mainland.

Place in the war

The new command structure was put to the test almost at once. A few days after Eisenhower’s promotion the Germans struck at the Americans at Sidi Bou Zid and then in the Kasserine Pass area, where II Corps suffered a painful defeat. Eisenhower – criticised for being too lenient with Fredendall – replaced him with General George Patton at the beginning of March. Alexander put the front in order, and on 13 May 1943 some 250,000 Axis soldiers surrendered in Tunisia. The same team of commanders – Eisenhower, Alexander, Tedder and Cunningham – carried out the invasion of Sicily in July and the landings in Italy in September. Dawley’s VI Corps landed at Salerno on 9 September 1943, where it was almost driven back into the sea; Dawley subsequently lost his command, and the corps went on to fight at Anzio and in southern France.

Only in December 1943 did Roosevelt choose Eisenhower – rather than Marshall – as supreme commander of the invasion of Western Europe. In January 1944 he took command of Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) in London. He carried over the experience of North Africa, gained in February 1943, almost in its entirety: Tedder became his deputy, and command of the land, air and naval forces was once again given to British officers. That is why February 1943 is sometimes seen as the moment when Eisenhower turned from the commander of a single amphibious operation into a coalition supreme commander.