11. Invasion of French northwest Africa

After the collapse of France in June 1940 the Allies had no effective land operation against Germany. A disastrous action against German troops in Narvik, the hectic evacuation of British and Allied troops from Dunkirk, a British withdrawal from Greece and the fall of Crete had a bad effect on British morale. Allied High Command realised that before they could invade continental Europe they must have a safe and secure point from which they could launch a successful attack.

One such viable area was French North Africa, which was run by the Vichy government. It had a thousand miles of shore line that could be used for the safe landing of Allied troops. Fearing that the French Navy might be taken over by the Germans, the British Navy gave them an ultimatum to join the Allies or to be sunk. When negotiations failed to convince the French to join the Allies, the British Navy had sunk several units in Dakar and in Mers-el-Kebir. Since this had made the French very anti-British, the operation had to be led mainly by American ground forces with the British providing Naval support. A plan to invade and occupy French North Africa, called "Operation Torch", was conceived and then approved in July 1942. The purpose of Operation Torch was to force the Axis forces out of Africa, invade Italy and pin down a large body of German troops on the Italian mainland. The operation called for the landing of about 100,000 troops in Casablanca, Oran and Algiers. For the operation to be successful the Allies needed intelligence information on major ports, air fields, strength and location of French troops and the attitude of French colonists and local population. Fortunately the Poles had already established a covert operation to gather intelligence of strategic and operational value to the Allies. To be out of reach of occupying German forces they had organised in Algiers under the cover name of "Rygor" comprising:

• its chief Maj. M. Z. Slowikowski
• one Naval intelligence officer
• six Army intelligence officers
• one civilian

Before leaving for Africa, Major Slowikowski met Colonel Langer to organise his radio contact with London. His contact was to be through the Franco-Polish field unit Kouba located on the outskirts of Algiers, as well as infrequent couriers. The first radio contact with London was established on the 24th July 1941 and all orders and intelligence summaries were transmitted daily by radio. Contact and close cooperation allowed Rygor to lay the foundation for a large intelligence operation that could quickly respond to specific requests and provide accurate summary reports in real time. To cover vast stretches of French North Africa they selected many field agents from the patriotic French nationals. This required a continuous inflow of funds and rapid shipment of a very large volume of documents, plans and maps had to be shipped safely, reliably and rapidly to London for the Operation Torch planners. The initial conduit for this operation was the Shell Oil Company in Algiers. Once the USA entered the war that function was taken over by the US consulate in Algiers.