Hello and welcome back to the Battleground podcast with me, Roger Mawhouse and Saul David.

Today we're on the second of our four-part miniseries looking at Saul's new book

Tunis Grad. You'll recall that on our first episode we talked about the background to the

Desert War, September 1940, up to November 1942 with the Battle of El Alamein. And now we're

looking in the second episode. We'll be looking at Operation Torch, the

US-Uk invasion of North Africa, and then the race for Tunis, so the period roughly from November

to the end of December, 1942. Welcome, Saul. Welcome back. Thanks, Roger. Much enjoyed the first episode. I think you set the scene wonderfully well.

Last time we talked about the sort of grand strategic reasoning behind Operation Torch

and also the sort of tactical operation to essentially cut off Rommel's rear.

How does Torch actually sort of progress? Talk us through Torch

in terms of its planning, in terms of how it was carried out and the degree to which it was successful.

Yeah, so Torch is much debated, actually, as to where they're going to land. Now, if we just

kind of explain French, North Africa, you've got Morocco to the West, then you've

got Algeria, and then finally you've got Tunisia. And of course, we're ultimately going to be

talking chiefly about Tunisia when we get into the story of the campaign proper. And the Western

allies, that is, the British and the Americans, were fully aware that the further east they can

go, therefore the closer to Tunisia they can go,

the more likely they are to capture those vital ports, Tunis and Berserta, that the Germans

have already been using for helping to supply their army fighting in Libya. It's withdrawing,

of course, after Alamein, but nevertheless, it's still a serious proposition.

So it's ultimately going to become a race for Tunis, and we'll come on to that.

But they are hampered by the lack of air power and also sea power to a certain extent in the Mediterranean.

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