Prof. Greg Jackson

And yet, Monty's quote-unquote rats and other soldiers are somehow succeeding.

But sweet as this victory at the Second Battle of El Alamein is, the fight in North Africa is far from over.

To quote Winston Churchill amid the battle's aftermath, This is not the end.

As we heard about in the previous episode, the big three, that is, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, U.S.

President Franklin Roosevelt, and Soviet General Secretary and Dictator Joseph Stalin, have spent much of 1942 talking about opening a second front against the Nazis.

And by late summer, they've decided to make that front a combined Anglo-American attack in North Africa.

With the British out of Egypt, hitting from the east, and a mostly American force striking from the west, this pincer-like strike on the axis in North Africa should pay off in three ways.

First, it will force the axis out of the region and open up the dangerous Mediterranean for more shipping.

Second, allied control of North Africa should pave the way for boots on the ground in continental Europe, likely via Italy.

And third, this action in the west ought to hamper Nazi efforts against the Soviets in the east.

Leading the invasion force that will strike the Desert Fox and his Africa Corps from the West is a good friend of ours from the last episode, the U.S.

Commanding General of the European Theater, now named Commander-in-Chief of the Allied Forces in North Africa, Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Under his command are 107,000 mostly American troops, making this invasion the first major American engagement in the Western Theater of World War II.

And their first step is an amphibious landing, codenamed Operation Torch.

His forces will make landfall at three points, one along the Atlantic coast at Casablanca in the French protectorate of Morocco, and two others from within the Mediterranean at Oran and Algiers in French Algeria.

Yes, their landing in French North Africa.

And what of the French?

Though not occupied by the Germans, French North Africa is, as we know, in the hands of the Nazi collaborationist Vichy French government.

So how will their 125,000 troops in North Africa respond?

Will these Frenchmen, allies of the British and Americans in the last world war, and engaged in the fight against Nazism until their government capitulated two years ago, fight back?