History That Doesn't Suck
200: The North African Campaign: Desert Rats, the Desert Fox, & Operation Torch
02 Mar 2026
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Ben Sawyer, how you doing, man? Greg Jackson, I'm doing great. And you got a book coming out. I do have a book coming out. You ever thought about the greatest way possible to celebrate your book coming out?
Yes, actually. And I think the best way to do that is on open waters. You want to go on a history cruise? I think that's a great idea. And you know what? We should record an episode of The Road to Now at sea. Okay, but you have to do your live show then. So you want me to do my live show and launch my book?
Okay. Yes. Guys, everything you just heard is real. We are going on a cruise May 18th through May 22nd. We're going to be on the open water. It is history. It is fun. It is nature. It is blue skies and blue seas.
Come hang out with me, come hang out with Ben, and have a great time in the Caribbean. Visit htdscruise.com slash 100 for $100 off per cabin. That's htdscruise.com slash 100.
It's an early Wednesday morning, July 3rd, 1940, and Captain Cedric Holland has a stern, tense face as his vessel, the Royal Navy destroyer HMS Foxman, cuts through the Mediterranean Sea, making its way to Al-Mars Al-Kabir, Algeria. Well, currently, that's Mars Al-Kabir, French Algeria.
See, for nearly a century, the French have considered this North African region just across the Mediterranean more than a simple colony within its vast worldwide empire. Rather, it's held to be an integral part of France itself. French Algeria is home to the French Foreign Legion, and right now, the bulk of the mighty French Navy, now lying at anchor in the harbor of Meuse-et-Cabille.
And it's the fleet's presence in this French Algerian harbor that brings us to Cedric Collin's mission. A mission that the trim, calm captain with a sense of discipline that exudes from his angular, serious face is very much not looking forward to. It's now around 9 a.m. The Foxhound is entering Merce-El-Kebir's waters.
Cedric sends word to the French Navy's highest-ranking officer here, Vice-Admiral Marcel Boulogne-Jeansoul, asking for an audience. The French Vice-Admiral knows Cedric fairly well from his days as British naval attaché in Paris, but as a man of propriety, he won't receive an officer at such a significantly lower rank than himself.
That said, the vice-admiral won't leave the request unanswered either. Aboard his flagship, the Dunkerque, he sends his flag aide, Lieutenant Bernard Dufay, to speak with the British captain instead. Yet another old friend of Cedric's, yes, also from those same bygone days in Paris, Lieutenant Dufay is quickly drawn into the discussion.
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Chapter 2: What events led to the North African Campaign in World War II?
Meanwhile, propriety is out the window. For the next few hours, he and Captain Cedric Holland have a long talk aboard the Dunkirk. But all the Vice Admiral's assurance is that his fleet was effectively being demilitarized already and would never fall into German hands or for naught. The sun is setting. It's too late.
Originally sailing from Gibraltar, a strike force from Vice Admiral Sir James Somerville's 27-vessel Force H begins its attack on French vessels in Mars-el-Kebir's harbor around 6 p.m. His flagship, battlecruiser HMS Hood, along with the battleships HMS Resolution and HMS Valiant, unleash their deadly guns. The destruction of French ships and life is nothing short of catastrophic.
A magazine on the French battleship Bretagne explodes. She capsizes within minutes, taking 977 Frenchmen to their watery graves. Vice Admiral Marcel Brunon-Jeansoul's great flagship, the battleship Dunkerque, suffers four hard hits and is disabled. She runs aground. Another battleship, the Provence, and the destroyer, Mogadour, are also heavily damaged and soon beached near the coast.
All of this in a mere 10 minutes. When the British guns fall silent, the French battleship, Strasbourg, and five destroyers swiftly set sail to escape the harbor. Other French warships join them, but as much as Sir James Somerville might want to let them go, he can't allow that. With a lump in his throat, he orders aircraft from the carrier HMS Arc Royal pursue the fleeing French warships.
The British attack from the air continues until the last rays of light disappear on the western horizon. Welcome to History That Doesn't Suck. I'm your professor, Greg Jackson, and I'd like to tell you a story. When all is said and done, Britain's July 3rd, 1940 attack on the French fleet at Merse-el-Kibir and neighboring Oran in French Algeria left 1,299 Frenchmen dead.
Nor is that the sum total of Britain's move against the French Navy. That same day, French warships in the English harbors of Plymouth and Portsmouth were seized. Two died as a result of the British seizing the French submarine, Surcouf, one British and one French.
Cool-headed naval officers on both sides managed to keep the neutralization of French ships bloodless in the British-controlled harbor of Alexandria, Egypt. But later that week, July 8th, the British do serious damage to the French battleship Richelieu at Dakar in French West Africa, or as you and I know it, Senegal. The French are devastated.
A long-time Anglophobe, Admiral of the Fleet, François Dallon, immediately orders his crippled navy to attack British warships and seize British merchant ships. Vichy France's head of state, Marshal Philippe Pétain, revokes those orders, but oh, is the relationship damaged.
Even the leader of the Free French, Charles de Gaulle, or anglicized as Charles de Gaulle, now in exile in London, struggles hard to swallow this bitter pill. Yet, he does. He'll continue to work with the British. And two decades later, when emotions have subsided a bit, the Frenchman will even say that he understands.
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