Operation Torch, the North African landings was a fantastic operation. New green American troops boarded ship in Norfolk Virginia, steamed across the U boat infested South Atlantic, landed on beaches all around North Africa, and with General Patton in command, smashed the Nazi forces. We caught the Germans in between the British 8th army coming west from Egypt, and the Americans coming east from Casablanca. Eventually the Germans surrendered and we took 250,000 prisoners, nearly as many as the Russians took at Stalingrad a few months earlier.
Torch only happened because of Winston Churchill. Right after Pearl Harbor the US Joint Chiefs of Staff agreed on "Germany First" as strategy and it was obvious that only a huge army landed as close to Germany as possible (Northern France) would do the job. The Chiefs wanted to concentrate everything on building up the huge army needed, which would take a couple of years, and not engage in wasteful side shows. In short ask the entire country to stand around, enduring war time shortages and hardships, while nothing much happened.
Churchill recognized that the Allies had to do something, anything would do, right now, in 1942, in order to maintain domestic support, both in Britain and in the US, for the war. Torch was doable, in 1942. The Germans didn't have all that many troops in North Africa, and the Allied navies were strong enough to hold off the U boats and lay serious naval gunfire on anything ashore that was giving trouble. Churchill managed to talk Franklin Roosevelt around to his way of thinking. Roosevelt turned around and ordered the US Joint Chiefs to do North Africa and do it now, and no quibbling.
After crushing German resistance in North Africa, one thing led to another. Sicily was not that far away and so it was invaded next. And with Sicily in hand, Italy was the obvious next step. That didn't work out as well as we had hoped but it gave a lot of green troops some combat experience before doing D-day in 1944.
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