War has played a key role in the history of the United States, from the nation's founding

right down to the present. War made the U.S. independent, kept it together, increased its

size, and established it as a global superpower. Understanding America's wars is essential for understanding American history.

Welcome to Key Battles of American History,

a podcast in which we discuss American history through the lens of the most important battles of America's wars.

Here is your host, James Early.

Thank you. host, James Early. Hello, and welcome back to Key Battles of World War II in Europe, our 10,000-foot survey of the

Second World War in Europe and the areas around it. I'm your host, James Early, as always,

and my co-host, as always, is Sean McIver.

In our last episode, our last regular episode, at least, you may recall that we talked about the latter part of the Battle of the Atlantic. We saw how eventually the Allied navies prevailed,

but at great cost. Now, we are going to go back to North Africa,

where we had been previously, and we're going to pick up the story of the battle between the Germans

and Italians on one side and the British and Americans, and some French on the other side.

We're going to look at the first major American amphibious assault of the war, and that is Operation Torch.

So let's kind of recap for a minute of what we talked about the last time we were in North Africa,

and then we'll plunge on ahead.

You ready, Sean?

Yes.

Sean is always ready to talk about World War II.

So in the final days of the great defeat of Rommel's Panzer Army Africa at El Alamein,

see Episode 12, a new enemy appeared to threaten the Axis position in North Africa.

For the first time of the war, America took the field against the Nazis

...