The African Way?

Perhaps the "military idiots" of London and Washington were merely inciting Adolf Hitler to further rage and bafflement (see p. 23). Perhaps the Germans were merely inciting the Vichyfrench to open war on Hitler's side. Or perhaps the many signs of visible preparation last week meant what they seemed to mean: that the Allies, unwilling to risk a second front in Western Europe this year, were getting ready to move in Africa instead.

>Axis broadcasters reported, with a great air of knowledge, that U.S. combat forces were massing in western Africa (see map): in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Nigeria, Cameroon. If so, then the U.S., for all military purposes, had taken over the great coastal belt embracing the Allied ports of Freetown, Takoradi, Lagos and Accra, feeding the new air and surface supply routes to Egypt, the rest of the Middle East and Russia. Furthermore, if the Axis was right, U.S. forces were moving into positions from which they could attack Dakar by air or sea.

> Dakar's Governor Pierre Boisson prepared to evacuate European (mostly French) women and children. (Dakar's military commander, General Paul Felix Barrau, was in Algiers burying his wife and son, who were killed in a French plane crash last fortnight.)

> Dispatches "from the French border" reported that Vichy submarines had sneaked past Gibraltar and reinforced strong French naval forces in Dakar's harbor.

> Moscow's Tass said that Berlin had given Vichy permission to reinforce its North African garrisons with three new infantry divisions, a tank regiment, two artillery regiments and one air group.

> Vichy's War Secretary, Lieut. General Eugene Bridoux, referred bitterly to the British conquest of Madagascar (see p.21) and said: "Tomorrow new assaults may be conducted against certain of our territories. These assaults, if they should occur, must find us strong and in a position to fight."

Why Dakar? Allied seizure of Dakar alone would be mainly a defensive measure, depriving the Germans of a position from which they could attack the Allies' trans-African routes and the Atlantic waterway feeding those routes. But Allied action, once begun, need not stop at Dakar. A really effective African offensive might include simultaneous or successive moves against Casablanca and other key points on the long French African coast between Dakar and the Mediterranean. Every move up that coast would be a move to: 1) cut off Rommel's forces in their rear; 2) bar the Germans' way to complete conquest of North Africa; 3) restore Allied control of the western Mediterranean; 4) assist a thrust into Germany's southern Europe.

Africa is divided by two great military barriers: the jungles of the Congo, which isolate British South Africa from most of the continent, and the Sahara desert, which divides the Mediterranean littoral (now mostly Vichy-and Axis-held) from the more habitable portion of the tropics lying north of the Congo (see map). By cleaning out Dakar, Timbuktu and other small holdings, the United Nations would have this central belt within their grasp.

But if the Allies were planning offensive action in Africa, and intended it to disrupt Germany's military plans, then an attack on Dakar alone made none too much sense. What would make more sense: a simultaneous attempt to roll back and wipe out Rommel's forces in Egypt and Libya--an action which the British at long last may have been preparing last week (see p. 31). In that event, the assault on the Mediterranean littoral would be essentially a British show, the move to take Dakar essentially a U.S. show.

What Price Africa? The Vichyfrench said that their defenses in West Africa were much stronger than in feebly defended Madagascar. Furthermore, they knew in advance how the attack would have to come--by sea or air or both. The jungle of the African coast below Dakar is unsuited to the overland movement of large forces. If the Vichyfrench naval forces at Dakar were disposed to fight, they could make real trouble for a strong Allied fleet. Allied planes from bases south of Dakar would have such opposition as the Luftwaffe can provide, if it has moved on to the big, modern airport two miles from the city and occupied other airfields in the Vichyfrench area.

Yet the real cost of taking Dakar, or of a general African offensive, could not be measured in losses on the spot. What Allied strategists had to decide was whether the prospective gains were worth the diversion of further men & materiel from Western Europe and a real second front. If such a front .in Europe is actually impossible and unplanned this year--something that London and Washington have never said--then action in Africa is a logical alternative. It might even hasten the day of European action, by removing, with Rommel, a terrific drain on total Allied strength. It might even fulfill the obligations of which Joseph Stalin spoke (see p. 23).

London censors last week let a U.P. correspondent cable: "It is no secret that large squadrons of heavy bombers--both British and American--have been diverted to Egypt from Britain, which explains the tapering off of the R.A.F.'s 1,000-plane raids on German territory and the failure of American air forces to develop an offensive." A few days after this dispatch appeared, Flying Fortresses, raiding St. Omer, dispelled any idea that Britain had been stripped of U.S. bombers. But the net impression remained that the Allied High Command still rated an all-out air offensive on Germany well below the demands and possibilities of other theaters, Africa included. In a year of great decisions, it was a decision which only great events in Africa or elsewhere could justify.

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