Operation Torch: The Moment the U.S. and U.K. Learned to Fight Together

Our American Stories

iHeartPodcasts

Society & Culture, Documentary

4.3 • 737 Ratings

🗓️ 26 November 2025

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On this episode of Our American Stories, in the early years of the war, the United States was preparing its soldiers and building an army that was not yet ready for a direct fight in Europe. Britain, still recovering from being pushed off the continent, knew it could not return to France without risking another disaster. Both nations wanted to stop Germany, yet neither could strike at its center. The opening they needed appeared in North Africa, a place that allowed them to enter the conflict on land while learning how to operate as partners.

Years later, the late historian Stephen Ambrose would trace how this moment taught both nations what cooperation in wartime actually looked like.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This is an I-Heart podcast.
0:02.3	Guaranteed Human.
0:14.0	And we continue with our American stories.
0:17.7	Stephen Ambrose was one of America's leading biographers and historians. Ambrose passed in 2002,
0:24.4	but his epic storytelling accounts can now be heard here at Our American Stories, thanks to those
0:30.3	who run his estate. Our next story is about the first Allied command in history. Here's Stephen
0:37.2	Ambrose with the story.
0:39.3	The first thing it stands out about
0:42.3	1942 is that although America was now fully into the war
0:46.3	on two fronts in the Pacific and in the Atlantic,
0:50.3	except in Guadalcanal after August of 1942,
0:53.3	no American ground troops were in contact with the enemy until almost the end of the year.
0:58.0	The first attack that the Americans made on German forces was done on the 4th of July, obviously only for symbolic importance, using British bombers
1:13.6	and American crews to bomb French targets, that is to say, ports in France that held German
1:20.6	submarines.
1:21.6	Other than that, the United States was at war with Germany, was helping to supply Russia and the United Kingdom, was committed to an all-out
1:31.2	war against Germany, but wasn't making war against Germany.
1:36.5	Nor, as I said, were we fighting the Japanese on the ground, the naval forces and the air
1:40.2	forces, of course, were very much involved at Coral Sea and at Midway in
1:45.5	tremendously big battles. But on the ground, we weren't doing anything. So that's the
1:48.6	first thing that stands out. The United States basically was not at war in 1942, because
1:56.3	we just didn't have an army yet. That army had to be built. And of course it took time. It took time
	...

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