Commanded by General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the operation was designed as a pincer movement with American landings at Morocco’s Atlantic coast and Anglo-American landings on Algeria’s Mediterranean coast. The primary objective was to secure bridgeheads for opening a second front to the rear of German and Italian forces battling the British in Libya and Egypt.

On the night of November 8, after undetected crossings from the United States and the United Kingdom, a great Anglo-American fleet consisting of 350 warships and 500 transports carrying some 107,000 troops assembled off the coast of French North Africa. The following morning, the Allied assault commenced as three task forces sought to seize key ports and airports at Casablanca, Oran, and Algiers before advancing eastwards into Tunisia.

The invasion forces had to overcome French opposition in territories controlled by the Vichy Regime under Marshall Philippe Pétain. His government had some 125,000 soldiers stationed in Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria, as well as powerful coastal artillery, numerous tanks, aircraft, and warships. Optimistic British intelligence suggested that the French would offer minimal resistance. This would prove wrong.

On November 7, Vichy forces thwarted an attempted coup d’etat by pro-Allied General Antoine Béthouart against the French command in Morocco. Stiff French resistance then caused significant losses at several of the Moroccan assault points before the Western Task Force achieved its landing objectives. On November 10, the Allied troops readied to assault Casablanca. After a brief naval engagement, the French surrendered the city before an all-out attack was launched.

At Oran, the Center Task Force also encountered stubborn French resistance before Oran’s surrender on November 9.

On the other hand, the Eastern Task Force was aided by a successful coup by the French resistance in Algiers, which neutralized the French XIX Corps before the Allied landings there. Allied troops quickly pushed inland, and General Juin surrendered the city in the early evening of November 9. Urged by General Mark Clark, Eisenhower's deputy, Admiral Jean Francois Darlan, Vichy High Commissioner for North Africa, and General Juin also ordered French forces to cease armed resistance in Oran and Morocco on November 10–11.

Although U.S. planners had favored a direct assault on Europe, the British argued that this was too risky given the limited forces available. Operation Torch offered the opportunity to end the desert war and open the Mediterranean, while trying to meet Joseph Stalin’s demands for a second front. The operation was preceded by secret negotiations with Vichy representatives in a bid to minimize French and Allied bloodshed. Given French hostility to Britain, due to the Royal Navy’s attack on the French fleet in 1940, the first wave was mainly American. U.S. Lieutenant General Dwight Eisenhower was in command. The 33,000 U.S. troops that landed on the Moroccan coast came directly from the United States. The rest of the British and U.S. force were brought from Britain.

Although some Vichy French forces surrendered, others resisted fiercely. At Casablanca, several French warships were sunk, and the town surrendered only an hour before the final assault began. In Algiers and Oran, operations to seize the harbor facilities were repulsed with heavy loss of life, but in Algiers resistance evaporated soon afterward and the town surrendered. Capturing the port of Oran took two days and a heavy naval bombardment. On November 10 Marshal Philippe Pétain’s deputy, Admiral François Darlan, coincidentally in Algiers, concluded an armistice with the Allies, ending French resistance in North Africa and confirming the Allies’ victory but provoking the Germans into occupying the rest of metropolitan France. Allied losses totaled 500 dead and 700 wounded, and Vichy French losses numbered 1,500 dead and 2,000 wounded.