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Shadows of Freedom recounts the story of the Jewish/Algerian and French resistance of 1942 which helped change the course of WWII, yet remains largely forgotten.
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00:00:21The World War II
00:00:43I only say so much, if I hear the word culture, then I'm going to get after my revolver.
00:00:53Adolf Hitler ist unser Rester, unser Herr, der edelste Führer auf der ganzen, ganzen Welt.
00:01:07Für Hitler leben wir und für den Sternen gerne wir, für den Führer bist du unser Rester.
00:01:22Das deutsches Volk hilft dir selbst. Jeder soll helfen.
00:01:47Untertitelung des ZDF für funk, 2017
00:02:10September 30
00:02:11British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain signs a peace treaty with Hitler.
00:02:16And the Anglo-German naval agreement, as symbolic of the desire of our two peoples never to go to war
00:02:23with one another again.
00:02:261939, March 15
00:02:28The Nazis invade Czechoslovakia.
00:03:00August 23
00:03:02Norway
00:03:03Denmark would fall within six hours.
00:03:05Norway bravely fights back, but ultimately surrenders on June 10, 1940.
00:03:11May 10
00:03:12Hitler invades France, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands.
00:03:17Within a month, all would surrender to Germany, except France.
00:03:23Also on this day, Winston Churchill becomes Prime Minister of the UK.
00:03:28June 14
00:03:29The Nazis march into Paris.
00:03:31Although he wanted to keep fighting, French Prime Minister Reynaud is outnumbered by those who want to make a deal
00:03:37with Hitler and is forced to resign.
00:03:40In his place, the 84-year-old Marshal Petard is appointed the new Prime Minister of France.
00:03:46June 22
00:03:47Germany and France sign an armistice deal.
00:03:51In a supreme act of revenge, Hitler chooses the same location and rail carriage where the Germans signed the treaty
00:03:57ending World War I.
00:03:58Under the terms of the deal, Germany now occupies northern and western France.
00:04:042 million French soldiers are taken as prisoners of war and put into war camps.
00:04:09France also agrees to pay 400 million francs per day to fund the German occupation.
00:04:14With the Nazis occupying Paris, the French government moved to the city of Vichy in central France.
00:04:21The new French state would thus come to be known simply as Vichy.
00:04:26Vichy, which is allied to the Nazis, controls non-occupied France and French North Africa.
00:04:38France was defeated on the mainland in May, June 1940.
00:04:44France was completely overrun in six weeks and an armistice was made with Germany.
00:04:50But France wasn't just France, it had an empire.
00:04:53It had an empire in Africa, it had an empire in the Middle East.
00:04:56And some people thought that the war should continue from the empire,
00:05:00and in particular the nearest part of the empire, which was French North Africa.
00:05:05Parliament basically decided to hand full powers to Marshal Petter to make a new constitution.
00:05:12That was the beginning of the Vichy regime, which was an authoritarian government.
00:05:17But under Vichy, the Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité was changed into Travail, Famille, Patrie.
00:05:26Labour, Family and Fatherland.
00:05:29And that was the great rhetoric.
00:05:33Well, in 1942, France was squeezed between Germany, which had occupied it,
00:05:40and which was fighting a desperate war with the Soviet Union
00:05:44and therefore clamping down very heavily on France to eradicate dissent and resistance.
00:05:51On the other hand, the British and the Americans.
00:05:53The Americans hadn't quite come into the war yet, but they were squeezing France from the other side.
00:05:59The Vichy regime, which was controlling France, was collaborating with the Germans.
00:06:04But you did also have the Free French under de Gaulle, and they were active.
00:06:09France in 1942 was in a very, very difficult position.
00:06:19My first experience with the Algerian Jewish resistance was through this book that was written by an Israeli woman.
00:06:27I came across this remarkable story of what happened in Algiers.
00:06:33The role that the Jewish resistance of Algiers played in assisting the Allied invasion in Operation Torch.
00:06:41And the unique experience of the Jews of Algiers, unique in many respects,
00:06:48unique in organizing themselves, unique in changing the course of the war.
00:06:54I had never heard of this before.
00:06:57I had never heard of any organized Jewish resistance in the entire North African theater.
00:07:04One doesn't read about this in books of Jewish resistance during World War II in general.
00:07:12And I dug deeper.
00:07:16Resistance fighters were, first of all, they were resisting the armistice of 1940.
00:07:21I mean, France had dropped out of the war.
00:07:23There was a small minority of people who said that the war was not over.
00:07:27A battle had been lost, but the war was not over, and they were continuing to fight,
00:07:31and they fought alongside the Free French and General de Gaulle.
00:07:35A lot of resistors were Jews, communists, foreigners, because they were particularly oppressed.
00:07:41They were rounded up, put in camps, and the Jews would obviously be deported.
00:07:46People were also resisting the Vichy regime, which clamped down on dissent.
00:07:52And so people resisted for a variety of reasons.
00:08:08By and large, these were young Jewish Frenchmen who were motivated to act
00:08:16because of the unique persecution that they suffered as Jews.
00:08:21Denied school, denied jobs, denied where they could live,
00:08:24denied citizenship because they were Jews.
00:08:31The Jewish community in Algeria had become citizens in 1870.
00:08:36The Muslims were rarely French citizens, but the Jewish community en bloc was made citizens.
00:08:42Vichy passed a decree which deprived them of citizenship.
00:08:45So they're a pariah group.
00:08:47They're not only a pariah group, a persecuted group, but their future had disappeared.
00:08:56Looking through the lens of today, one doesn't appreciate the extent to which
00:09:01Algerian Muslim authorities, religious authorities, worked side by side with the Jewish community in Algiers,
00:09:10protesting the imposition of Vichy laws.
00:09:14They were opposed to what Vichy was doing to persecute the local Jews.
00:09:24Leaders of the Muslim community, leaders of the Algerian nationalist community publicly said,
00:09:29We take no joy in seeing what is happening to the Jews.
00:09:34What's happening to the Jews is what's happening today.
00:09:38First it'll be the Jews.
00:09:39Tomorrow it will be us.
00:09:43The Jewish community in Algiers also knew the bigger, darker story about what was going on in Europe.
00:09:52Look, for example, at the Vansi document, the conference held by the Nazi high command to determine the details of
00:10:02the final solution.
00:10:04Look at the list of all the Jewish populations that were to be exterminated by the Nazis.
00:10:11Look at the number ascribed for the number of French Jews.
00:10:15What is the number given? The number is 700,000.
00:10:19How many Jews lived in France at the time?
00:10:23Perhaps 200,000.
00:10:25That 700,000 number only makes sense if you include the Moroccan Jews, the Algerian Jews, and the Tunisian Jews.
00:10:33These Jewish communities were viewed as targets by the Nazis.
00:10:40Everyone knew about the terrible persecution of Jews in Nazi and Vichy controlled Europe.
00:10:48They knew it was coming to them.
00:10:50They could see it. They could feel it.
00:10:51They knew this was their future.
00:10:59I knew who the violating man was by Abulker.
00:11:03Who was known asまあobaric and the country of liberation at 23 years and very important.
00:11:12Abulker was the local leader of the Jewish resistance movement.
00:11:18He's the medical student at the time, about 20 years old.
00:11:21He is the son of one of the leading lights of the Algiers Jewish community,
00:11:26a very well-respected physician.
00:11:29Henri was a professor at the Faculty of Algiers.
00:11:33He was a Jewish activist.
00:11:34He was a radical socialist politician.
00:11:37The father of Joseph Lucas was a medical professor.
00:11:41He couldn't go to the hospital.
00:11:43He received all the people who needed to see him.
00:11:53José was a highly intelligent young man.
00:11:55He was well connected.
00:11:58He was a great networker.
00:12:00He was very politically astute.
00:12:04Hitler didn't talk about it.
00:12:06He had read in Algiers.
00:12:08He saw this text, translated,
00:12:13He himself is an organizer.
00:12:18He himself is the link between the Jewish resistance movement
00:12:25and sort of the higher ranks of the overall Algerian resistance.
00:12:31And in the long frame of history, I mean, he was the leader of this insurrection of the 8th of
00:12:38November 1942,
00:12:40which coincided with the torch landing.
00:12:44How did you find men to increase these movements of resistance?
00:12:48Well, we found them in the majority among the Algerian Jews.
00:12:54For obvious reasons, for them, the fight against Hitler was a fight for life.
00:13:02In addition to them, there were a certain number of black people who were quite brave to romper with their
00:13:07milieu and come with us.
00:13:09There was a group of patriots around Andrea Chiari.
00:13:13There were also a few officers, not very many.
00:13:17But one of them, the colonel Joust, played a decisive role in our success.
00:13:22And finally, there was a whole group of metropolitains who came from France in Algeria after the defeat to continue
00:13:30the fight.
00:13:31And there was also Henri d'Astier de la Luce.
00:13:36He was the man who was a kind of archangel.
00:13:41It's a word that is quite prostituted today.
00:13:44But at the time, it was really the archangel with the archangel.
00:13:47A beautiful man, by the way.
00:13:49A beautiful man, beautiful man.
00:13:52A great finesse.
00:13:53He had a little bit in his eyes that was absolutely amazing.
00:13:58He was a chief.
00:14:01Henri d'Astier, Henri d'Astier de la Vigerie, a rather exotic aristocratic name.
00:14:07He was one of three brothers, Henri, François and Emmanuel.
00:14:13He was a royalist.
00:14:14He was an oddity because, you know, France had been a republic since 1870.
00:14:18And the royalists were a bit curious.
00:14:22They were a bit out on a limb.
00:14:23They hated the French Republic and they wanted to bring back the monarchy.
00:14:27But although he was kind of right-wing, he was not the same as Vichy and Peta.
00:14:31He wanted to continue the war.
00:14:35He was in danger of arrest.
00:14:36In 1941, he decided to go to Algiers.
00:14:41He was an eccentric figure, but a key figure and a linking figure between these groups of resistors,
00:14:49which were very disparate.
00:14:51And the only thing they had in common was this idea that North Africa should be brought into the war
00:14:56against the Axis powers.
00:15:081941, June 22nd.
00:15:11Germany attacks the Soviet Union.
00:15:13The world is shocked since Hitler and Stalin, just two years prior, had formed an alliance.
00:15:19August 14th.
00:15:21Churchill and Roosevelt meet for the first time, in secret, off the coast of Newfoundland.
00:15:27Churchill unsuccessfully tries to coerce Roosevelt to join the war effort.
00:15:31This would be the first of 11 meetings between the two leaders.
00:15:36September 29th.
00:15:37Babi Yar.
00:15:39The first mass killing of Jews at the hands of the Nazis occurs in Kiev, Ukraine,
00:15:43as over 33,000 Jews are massacred by machine gun fire over two days in the Babi Yar ravine.
00:15:50December 7th.
00:15:51The Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.
00:15:54The next day, the US and Britain declare war on Japan.
00:15:57Three days later, Hitler declares war on America.
00:16:02December 22nd.
00:16:04The Arcadia Conference.
00:16:05With America now officially entering the war,
00:16:08the top military commanders of Britain and the United States meet for 23 days
00:16:13to craft a coordinated wartime strategy.
00:16:16Germany first is agreed upon as being the best way forward.
00:16:19Thus the first and most important goal is to defeat Nazi Germany.
00:16:23An assault on North Africa is proposed by the British, but initially opposed by the Americans.
00:16:29Churchill would not give up on this plan,
00:16:31and eventually his vision would become known as Operation Torch.
00:16:49Operation Torch is essential to the war in Europe and the Mediterranean.
00:16:53It's the first blow, the first Anglo-American blow against the Germans and the Italians,
00:16:58and in many ways it's the essential first step on the road first to Rome and then ultimately to Berlin.
00:17:06From Torch follows the invasion of Sicily, then the invasion of Italy at Salerno, Anzio, southern France, and Normandy.
00:17:13And the techniques initially pioneered in Torch will play a very important role in those invasions
00:17:20and making those invasions further invasions successful.
00:17:22The Americans wanted to invade France in 1943, and they would have been doing it with an army that was
00:17:29completely inexperienced.
00:17:31The British managed to almost cajole the Americans into going to French North Africa instead.
00:17:37While the American high command tended to think that it was almost a waste,
00:17:40they thought it had pushed back the defeat of Germany almost a whole year,
00:17:44it did allow the American army to get badly needed combat experience and operational experience.
00:17:51Operation Torch is very significant in world history because it's the longest invasion ever mounted in the history of the
00:17:58world.
00:17:59The three invasion convoys, two from the United Kingdom and one directly here from Norfolk and Hampton Roads in Virginia,
00:18:06each traveled about 2,800 miles to get to their beaches in Oran and Algiers.
00:18:11The one that aimed directly for Morocco sailed from the United States 4,500 miles across the Atlantic.
00:18:19There was never anything that had ever been attempted like that before in modern military history.
00:18:23There was never anything like it afterwards.
00:18:30In terms of the ability of the Allies to be able to move that many troops to the right place
00:18:35at the right time over that distance,
00:18:39speaks volumes about what the potential was and what the power they were able to bring to bear to start
00:18:44defeating Germany and Italy.
00:18:48Torch was kind of an accident. The Americans thought it was completely the wrong thing to do and they never
00:18:53really got over it.
00:18:56It was the first large joint operation between the Americans and the British.
00:19:00And one of the major success stories for the Allies, I think, is how well the Americans and the British
00:19:04worked together and integrated,
00:19:06even though they didn't see eye to eye as much as it might seem.
00:19:10An invasion of North Africa had been on the books for the Western Allies, had been under consideration since January
00:19:17of 1942.
00:19:19The Americans and the British get together and start figuring out how are we going to fight Germany,
00:19:23because Germany first is the essential Allied strategy.
00:19:26We're going to beat the Germans. They're the priority first.
00:19:29The Americans believe the best way to do that is to go for the jugular,
00:19:33go across the channel into France in 1942 and begin to fight the German army,
00:19:37however long and however bloody it takes.
00:19:40The British, who are already engaged with the Germans in North Africa,
00:19:44particularly in Egypt at this point against Rommel's Africa Corps,
00:19:47believe that the best way to approach this is to start by going through the Mediterranean,
00:19:53knocking out the Italians, taking care of kind of the southern flank of Europe, if you will,
00:19:59and securing that essential area, and then going across the channel.
00:20:05What ensues over the spring and summer of 1942 is what's been termed the transatlantic essay contest,
00:20:11as they go back and forth.
00:20:15Torch is an essential test of the Anglo-American alliance,
00:20:18because if they can't get this operation, this complex operation involving troop convoys
00:20:24from the United Kingdom and the United States coming together all at the same time with lightning precision,
00:20:30if they can't do that in November of 1942, they're not going to be able to do it again in
00:20:36the Mediterranean in 1943,
00:20:38or crossing the English Channel to Normandy in 1944.
00:20:53Torch was really the perfect wartime leader.
00:20:56He was quite bullish, he had a strong sense of where the nation needed to be at critical moments throughout
00:21:03the Second World War.
00:21:05He was quite enigmatic and charismatic, and largely due to him, I think, that Britain held out.
00:21:13And, of course, he's very well known for his famous speeches.
00:21:16We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be.
00:21:22We shall fight, landing grounds, in views, in streets, and on the hills, we shall never surrender.
00:21:33Well, Churchill realised that, you know, this tiny island had been fighting and struggling in 1940.
00:21:42But, ultimately, the war could not be won and the invasion of the mainland without the support and the physical
00:21:50forces of America.
00:21:52I mean, we managed to hold out in Britain for long enough, but, ultimately, we couldn't have mounted those huge
00:21:59campaigns
00:22:00and the war wouldn't have, I don't believe, ended in 1945 without the Americans.
00:22:05So, that relationship was absolutely crucial.
00:22:09It's not only the commanders working together, but the intelligence services, the planners.
00:22:15It was a massive operation behind the scenes.
00:22:18I think Churchill got on very well with Roosevelt. I mean, they were both fighters.
00:22:24Roosevelt was an immensely powerful person. He was elected four times President of the United States.
00:22:29Initially, he was reluctant to bring America into the war, the United States into the war.
00:22:35But, you know, Churchill worked on him a great deal.
00:22:38Here is the answer which I will give to President Roosevelt.
00:22:44Put your confidence in us. Give us your faith and your blessing.
00:22:50And under providence, all will be well. We shall not fail or falter.
00:22:56Here, give us the tools and we will finish the job.
00:23:03Finally, George Marshall, the U.S. Army Chief of Staff, has to go to President Franklin Roosevelt and say,
00:23:08We were at an impasse. And the British do not want to support going across the channel.
00:23:13I'm not interested in going to the Mediterranean.
00:23:15I think it's a sideshow from the main effort to go to Berlin.
00:23:19Let's reorient our operations to the Pacific.
00:23:23Roosevelt says, that's like picking up our dishes and going home.
00:23:26And we're not going to do that.
00:23:28And so he sends Marshall and the Chief of Naval Operations, Ernest King, back to London and says,
00:23:33Work out a deal. We're going to go to North Africa.
00:23:42Roosevelt knows we have to fight the Germans and the Italians somewhere in 1942.
00:23:47We have to get the Army engaged, particularly with visions of Dunkirk, which is only two years in the past.
00:23:53With visions of World War I, it could very easily bog down into a stalemate.
00:23:56We have to have a success when we go after them.
00:23:59North Africa is the place to do it.
00:24:03Eisenhower was fairly junior.
00:24:06He wasn't a very popular choice, but he had the advantage that George Marshall, the Army Chief of Staff, liked
00:24:11him.
00:24:12And so Marshall put Eisenhower in charge.
00:24:15Eisenhower was commander of Torch and he eventually would command almost every major operation after that,
00:24:21including Normandy and the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe.
00:24:24In addition to Eisenhower, there was also Patton, of course, in Morocco.
00:24:28That was his first World War II combat command.
00:24:30There was also Eisenhower's deputy commander, Mark Clark, who would later command the 5th Army in Italy.
00:24:36Especially on the American side, there were quite a few commanders that went into action for the first time.
00:24:42So a lot of firsts with Operation Torch.
00:24:46In retrospect, we all assume, oh, it was smooth, easy, and they could go on and just fight in Europe.
00:24:53Well, it wasn't smooth and it wasn't easy.
00:24:55It was full of obstacles, full of mistakes.
00:25:00Commanders on the scene proved incompetent and they got fired right away by Eisenhower.
00:25:06It was a huge deal.
00:25:08The American army needed the lessons of North Africa to effectively go forward.
00:25:15As one of the veterans I've read about said, we needed a place to be lousy.
00:25:20We needed a place to try out techniques.
00:25:22We needed a place to be able to work out some of the issues, some of the doctrinal issues,
00:25:26in terms of developing ourselves and techniques to go defeat the Germans in battle.
00:25:32Without the initial proving ground of North Africa, I don't know if the American army would have been ready to
00:25:39take on the Germans in France.
00:25:45We hope that one day a superior mechanical force
00:25:52De Gaulle's broadcast in 1940 was absolutely pivotal in motivating, in giving permission, if you like, for the French to
00:26:03rise up.
00:26:08Pétain secured a majority for bidding for an armistice,
00:26:12at which point De Gaulle decided to leave the country.
00:26:14He decided to go to London to continue the struggle,
00:26:17and he made his famous broadcast of the 18th of June 1940,
00:26:21saying that the struggle must continue.
00:26:37He managed to secure the confidence of Winston Churchill,
00:26:41and slowly he put together the Free French forces in order to continue the struggle.
00:26:46It was a long, long battle, there were lots of setbacks,
00:26:49but gradually he managed to get the Free French back into the war.
00:26:53He makes this speech to his nation via the BBC,
00:26:58rallying the resistance against Nazi occupation,
00:27:01and that's something which I think for the nation,
00:27:05for France as a nation, is hugely significant,
00:27:09because for your leader to actually give you permission to rise up,
00:27:14it's psychologically incredibly important.
00:27:17And we mustn't forget that for those that did resist Nazi occupation,
00:27:22their families could also die.
00:27:36This was the wholesale atmosphere in which we, the resistors, found ourselves.
00:27:41The Algiers resistance was a lone endeavor, born in solitude,
00:27:45and it had to be done in complete secrecy.
00:27:55How did they organize?
00:27:56How did they meet each other?
00:27:58How did they prepare?
00:28:00How did they train?
00:28:01How did they arm?
00:28:02All of these were huge obstacles.
00:28:05So groups of them met in health clubs, gyms,
00:28:10for fear that Vichy and their local intelligence would find them out.
00:28:16And one of the things they did, I mean, having been thrown out of universities,
00:28:18they turned up at this gym and they did a lot of, you know, bodybuilding and working out.
00:28:25In Algiers, the use of the Géogras gym by a group of friends,
00:28:30Émile Atlant, André Termime, and Charles Bouchara,
00:28:33was destined to lead to the creation of a Jewish self-defense group.
00:28:40They recruited other members under the guise of a fitness club,
00:28:43while the owner of the gym, Géogras, would teach boxing.
00:28:49They hid weapons in various locations in the gym, right under the nose of Géogras,
00:28:54who pretended to ignore his students' activities.
00:29:03Later on, near the end of 1940, my cousin Raphael and his brother, Stefan,
00:29:09became the leaders of the group.
00:29:13In theory, they were passing the time of day,
00:29:15but they were also forming a group of people who could resist.
00:29:17And I think they were also, to some extent,
00:29:20conquering this idea that, you know, the Jewish people was not particularly vigorous,
00:29:27not particularly physical, it was more intellectual, it was more urban,
00:29:30it was a bit fae, it was a bit dilettante,
00:29:33but they were going to be solid, you know, muscular Jewish resistors.
00:29:40Aboucao says, resistance was survival.
00:29:42We had to survive against the people who were trying to destroy us.
00:29:47Henry Destier me says,
00:29:50I have an agreement with the Americans
00:29:55who prepare a departure in the North Africa.
00:29:59Do you know people to help it?
00:30:02In Algeria, they came from Iran.
00:30:04And I thought to these little groups,
00:30:06which were groups of resistance,
00:30:08but of resistance, we didn't know why,
00:30:12since we didn't have the German army.
00:30:14And that's how I found a connection between these little groups of young people
00:30:19who had organized a departure, or a departure attempt,
00:30:23for London, and Henry Destier, who arrived with the contact with Murphy.
00:30:28In the difficult and confusing game of deception and intrigue that preceded the landings,
00:30:33it was Mr. Murphy, Roosevelt's North African attaché,
00:30:37who skillfully played the American hand.
00:30:52I was told that the U.S. command was sent in a delegation to secretly meet the leaders of our
00:31:04resistance.
00:31:07I was told that the U.S. command was sent in a delegation to secretly meet the leaders of our
00:31:08resistance.
00:31:08It was best if I don't attend this meeting, since if it turned out badly,
00:31:12I was the only one to know of our plans against the Vichy army and the men ready to lead
00:31:16it.
00:31:18My Parisian cousin, Bernard Carcenti, who was living with us,
00:31:23would go instead to assist with the military discussions.
00:31:28The meeting would take place at a seaside villa near Cherchelle, west of Algiers.
00:31:44Just a couple of weeks before the Allied invasion, the famous secret meeting in Cherchelle
00:31:50between Allied officers, General Mark Clark, and sort of the higher ranks of the overall Algerian resistance.
00:32:17The American submarine arrived at 1am.
00:32:23Four kayaks took the officers to shore and the meeting started.
00:32:27Later that night, the Vichy police and the coast guards noticed something strange and prepared to circle the villa.
00:32:34Running out of time, our men tried to get their guests back on the submarine, but the sea was too
00:32:39rough.
00:32:41They hid behind the rocks and waited until the wind and the waves subsided.
00:32:49The younger men undressed and entered the sea again.
00:32:53Bernard said he would never forget the sight of those five men in their boxers,
00:32:58at night, balancing a kayak into which climbed General Clark and the captain of the American Navy in underwear.
00:33:07It took three hours and much effort to launch the other kayaks into the sea.
00:33:15And what we wanted to ask, before all, is that the Americans do not do a military military
00:33:24orthodox flight, but a flight that corresponds to the possibilities that we brought them,
00:33:31to the border, that means to arrive there where they could assure them,
00:33:36to help them, to help them.
00:33:39At Cherchelle, Colonel Jousse came up with the protection plan,
00:33:43giving the resistors a reason to disguise themselves as soldiers.
00:33:48We began to put his plan in action.
00:33:53C'est un plan dans lequel sont définis les conditions dans lesquelles la défense peut s'assurer
00:34:01qu'on ait des troupes intérieures ou éventuellement une intervention extérieure, n'est-ce pas?
00:34:06Et c'est moi qui les faisais.
00:34:07Quand Jousse nous avait parlé de ce plan, nous avons sauté sur l'occasion en nous disant
00:34:13mais on va appliquer le plan de maintien de l'ordre et personne ne pourra se rendre compte
00:34:17qu'il y a un soulèvement ou qu'il y a un putsch, puisque nous appliquons une chose qui est
00:34:19prévue.
00:34:21Les autorités ne pourront pas s'étonner de voir des gens relever des gardes en faction
00:34:25ou des officiers en poste, puisque c'est dans l'application d'un plan de défense
00:34:28pour le cas où quelque chose d'imprévu se passerait.
00:34:37Les autorités ne pourront pas s'assurer qu'il n'y a pas d'imprévu.
00:34:38Les Américains, à un point, promis-le.
00:34:40Thousands d'up-to-date rifles, handguns, grenades,
00:34:44n'avaient pas d'intention de délivrer et n'avaient jamais délivrer.
00:34:48A few days before, Murphy told me that the invasion
00:34:52would be on the 7th or 8th of November.
00:34:54Two days later, in a more precise manner,
00:34:57he confirmed those dates.
00:35:00So everything accelerated.
00:35:04We waited many nights for the delivery of better weapons
00:35:07than the old Lebel rifles that Jules gave us,
00:35:10but they never arrived.
00:35:12We were still determined.
00:35:14Il dit forcément que les Américains vont vouloir
00:35:18débarquer ici pour pouvoir faire telle ou telle action.
00:35:23On doit préparer cette arrivée.
00:35:26These were largely young Jewish men who were not professionally trained soldiers,
00:35:34professionally trained military officers.
00:35:37There were supposed to be about 800 or so insurgents show up that night for the uprising.
00:35:43Only a few hundred showed up.
00:35:45Of the 388, 315 were Jewish.
00:35:50Albuquer and the rest of the resistance leaders,
00:35:52they went through with their plan anyway.
00:35:54Our plan was to stop the most possible officers and the head of the administration,
00:36:00to occupy the locations in which they were located,
00:36:02to cut their communications with the exterior,
00:36:05in North Africa and with France.
00:36:09One day, we learned, by accident,
00:36:11about the connections of the military and civil telephone lines in Algiers.
00:36:17There was a special line connecting the central police station to the local stations,
00:36:22and the idea came to me that we could intercept this line
00:36:25and have all communications coming through the same connection.
00:36:33We secretly gained access to the underground tunnels,
00:36:36cutting the telephone wires linking Algiers to France.
00:36:42I was now able to gain full control of the telephone system.
00:36:47I could communicate with my comrades, and more importantly,
00:36:51the military, the local police, and all government officials
00:36:54were now connected to me, and only me.
00:36:58We had to maintain these authorities in a state of paralysis,
00:37:02of anesthesia total,
00:37:04for a certain number of hours,
00:37:06allowing the Americans to leave without a doubt,
00:37:08to invest in the city, to take care of these places,
00:37:11to take care of our place, to take care of our lives,
00:37:13and to tell the authorities,
00:37:15my children, we are here,
00:37:16and now the war continues with the French at the side of the allies.
00:37:21My plan and that of Jus and Henri Dastier was completely reliant on the element of surprise.
00:37:27We needed cars to move uniformed men and artillery
00:37:30to 20 different targets in Algiers, without raising suspicion.
00:37:35I approached Louis and Raymond Lavaillis,
00:37:37who owned a garage down the street from me,
00:37:39where I housed my Citroën.
00:37:41They agreed to help us with 20 or 30 cars at our disposal.
00:37:50On November 7, at about 10.30 p.m., the resistance leaders go,
00:37:55one after the other, to the Lavaillis garage,
00:37:59say the password, whiskey soda, and are let in.
00:38:06Jus gives everyone the mission orders signed by him as the local commander.
00:38:10The order states that all the major guard posts are to be replaced.
00:38:16He strongly insists to not use our guns.
00:38:20I give out the official, VP, volunteer militia armbands.
00:38:28With the mission orders gathered during the day from our headquarters at 26 Michele Street,
00:38:34with the Lebel rifles that were in the cars, and with the armbands,
00:38:38the resistance leaders take their men,
00:38:40and each group goes off to their designated target.
00:38:58Wartime teaches us that everything can change for the military and its leaders in days.
00:39:03For the fighters on the ground, it can change in mere minutes.
00:39:10At midnight, we roll out of the garage, ready to fight.
00:39:17And so, on November 8, between midnight and one in the morning,
00:39:22400 civilians and some reserve officers wearing their old uniforms,
00:39:27in small groups, managed to replace the guard posts of all the major targets.
00:39:33The post office, the telephone centers, the army and the living quarters of the main vision leaders.
00:39:49Shortly after midnight, I leave our headquarters with about 20 men and two senior policemen.
00:39:58We address those in charge of the central police station and show them the mission orders.
00:40:07The station is now under our control.
00:40:16I take my place, not at the main desk, but at the central telephone booth.
00:40:20For the next hour, I receive a number of calls, and then I know, at one in the morning,
00:40:25through various short conversations, that everything had gone exactly as planned.
00:40:31They show up at the homes of Vichy admirals and generals and officers and arrest them in the middle of
00:40:38the night.
00:40:38Maybe one of them had a gun. Three of them would be having fake guns or would be simulating having
00:40:44weapons.
00:40:45In the minutes that follow, we are in relation with the group that was led by Henry Dastier and
00:40:52led by Bernard Paufilet, where, accompanied by Murphy, we stopped General Jean and Admiral Darland.
00:41:00Shortly after midnight, the group led by Bernard Paufilet and accompanied by Robert Murphy was able
00:41:07to enter the Olive Palace with your submission orders.
00:41:13This was where General Jean, commander of the French land forces in Northern Africa, lived.
00:41:24Jean was promptly arrested.
00:41:28To everyone's surprise, Admiral François Darland, the commander-in-chief of all the French forces,
00:41:34happened to be in the residence as well.
00:41:38He was also harassed.
00:41:41Soon after, Murphy started to negotiate a treaty with Darland and Jouin.
00:41:48In fact, at three hours of the morning,
00:41:50we knew at the central commissariat
00:41:53that the total of the plan proposed by the colonel Jouz has been applied
00:41:59everywhere, without the slightest difficulty and without a shot of fire.
00:42:03He had to be fired.
00:42:05The land belongs to us.
00:42:13Our mission was only supposed to be to neutralize Algiers for two hours before the Americans landed,
00:42:19and two hours after.
00:42:21Because they were late, we needed to hold our posts for longer than we had planned.
00:42:26They held the city of Algiers for six hours.
00:42:31This is an amazing thought. Fewer than 400 people took the entire city of Algiers and kept it under their
00:42:39control.
00:42:44Operation Torch is a very complicated operation. Just the technical aspects of getting those convoys
00:42:51from the United Kingdom and from the United States to get there.
00:42:54There are three task forces. There's the Eastern Task Force and the Center Task Force that came from Britain.
00:43:00The Western Task Force, which came from the United States, had the longest voyage to get to the invasion
00:43:05beaches of any invasion of history to that point. Between the three of them, they carried 107,000
00:43:12American and British troops. The Western Task Force was entirely American.
00:43:17Algiers was the most important target because it was closest to Tunisia. It was closest to the Axis bases.
00:43:24And it was also the largest city in French North Africa and the de facto capital.
00:43:30The landings were coordinated to take place at midnight.
00:43:34The Allied forces, they're the ones who missed the mark in some respects.
00:44:01They landed many kilometers away from their landing zones. It took a while for them to get to Algiers.
00:44:07By the time they got to Algiers, the Vichy was already back in control.
00:44:12The return of Algiers was done by the army, under the commandant of Orange command,
00:44:20essentially by the mobile guard and then by other troops who were associated with them,
00:44:25and who took first the central post, by killing one of ours, the Vietnam Dreyfus, who commanded the post,
00:44:32and then, little by little, all the other post. And at that time, it was very difficult.
00:44:42And at 4 o'clock in the morning, I received the commissariat sentencing,
00:44:45the telephone calls, the guys who are in the different corners. The army arrived and we invested.
00:44:50What are we doing? Are we shooting?
00:44:54We didn't want to shoot on the French army. It wasn't this army that we saw the war.
00:44:59We wanted to shoot on the war. I don't know if the instructions that I gave were very clear, because
00:45:05I was very bored.
00:45:08I said that we had to do everything to not shoot. And in fact, we did not shoot. They shot
00:45:13on us.
00:45:15We had two morts and two injured. We lost time. The last post repris was the prefecture,
00:45:26which I was in the morning morning, and which was repris at 11 o'clock in the morning,
00:45:32which the mobile guard was repris after a long discussion and negotiation with me,
00:45:36where I received, quite bizarrely, the honor of the war, that we came out with the weapons.
00:45:47There is a single American who was entered in Algeria at 3 o'clock in the morning,
00:45:50and who was installed in my bedroom, and who hit a rope because he was tired of fatigue,
00:45:56thanks to what I could tell to all our men, there is an American in Algeria.
00:46:15I heard that an American soldier, a young bright-eyed farm boy from the Midwest, had arrived at my house,
00:46:21and so I made my way there. I did my best to make him feel at home. I told him
00:46:31that the rest of his
00:46:32regiment was not far behind. I smile today, proudly remembering that he was the first to take a city
00:46:40for the United States of America in World War II, and he was hidden in our house.
00:46:49I think the resistance in Algiers did help to neutralize the Vichy regime.
00:46:56Delon and Anjouin were taken prisoner briefly. I think they were demoralized, and I suppose that
00:47:01strengthened the arm of the Americans to beat them into submission.
00:47:15I think you see that with Algiers, it was the most successful of the three major landings.
00:47:21It had the fewest allied casualties. Algiers was taken the quickest of the three major cities.
00:47:28I think the main thing that made the Algiers resistance successful is they were decisive.
00:47:34It still worked even with just a fraction of the fighters showing up that they expected.
00:47:39It's also true to say that the ceasefire in Algiers happened a lot sooner than the ceasefire for
00:47:45the whole of North Africa. So in that sense, I think the movement in Algiers was very significant.
00:47:51That six hours that they controlled the city was absolutely essential to distracting Vichy and
00:47:59providing the Allies entry into the most important piece of territory in the European theater of war at that moment.
00:48:09I have never promised anything about blood, tears, toil, and sweat.
00:48:18Now, however, we have a new experience. We have victory.
00:48:26Ah, this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is perhaps the
00:48:36end of the beginning.
00:48:45The Dalong deal was the deal the Americans did with Admiral Dalong, who had been the prime minister of the
00:48:52Vichy regime in 1941.
00:48:53He was an extremely powerful Vichy figure. And that meant that the resistors were marginalized.
00:49:00They were cast to one side and indeed some of them finished up in prison.
00:49:07Jean-Francois Darlon happened to be in Algiers by coincidence visiting his son. He was ill with polio.
00:49:13The Allies managed to work out a deal with Darlon, at least for a ceasefire.
00:49:18It took Dalong a few days to decide to go with the Americans. Initially, he ordered resistance against the Allied
00:49:25forces.
00:49:27The terms between the Allies and the French were pretty decent.
00:49:31The Allies didn't want to treat the French as an enemy or a conquered belligerent.
00:49:36So once that was done, the Americans had their man in place who could bring Vichy into the war.
00:49:47They were happy for Dalong to have the military control, control of the government, control of the French Empire from
00:49:52Algiers.
00:49:56The poor little resistors were basically eliminated, eliminated politically, and as I say, some of them finished up in prison.
00:50:06At 5 o'clock, we were free. The fire stopped. And we came home, happy to have achieved this movement.
00:50:15The deception, by the way, is alive the day. We learn that Darlon is in power with Giraud.
00:50:20And we didn't understand it. We had the impression that it was floured, that it was played, that it was
00:50:27used for us.
00:50:28Because we expected to have arrived at De Gaulle. We were members of the Libre France.
00:50:33But there was a huge amount of opposition in Britain to the Dalong deal.
00:50:38This was a deal with rats. You know, why are we making deal with rats?
00:50:43We're fighting for freedom. We're fighting for liberation. We're fighting for a better world.
00:50:46We're not supposed to be doing deals with horrible people like Dalong.
00:50:54Then, on Christmas Eve 1942, Dalong was assassinated.
00:51:01Mr. Jacquet, Henry d'Astier-Lavigerie, has-t-il been mêlé, as some say, to this affair?
00:51:10I can't answer you on that. I've been, as everyone knows, mêlé to this affair.
00:51:29After the Dalong deal, power passed to General Giraud. General Giraud was the man who the
00:51:36Americans were actually going to bring into North Africa. He was a general who had escaped from a
00:51:40German POW camp, and he was a very right-wing, almost pro-Vichy general. He saw no reason why
00:51:48he should not continue the repressive regime of Vichy in North Africa. He regarded the rebels,
00:51:55the resistors of the 8th of November, as, you know, Jewish, communists, who should be chucked into prison.
00:52:01And it wasn't until the Americans got wind of this that they said, well, look,
00:52:05you know, these people are actually on our side. They may be Jewish, they may be communists,
00:52:09but actually they're on our side in the war against the Axis. And so pressure was put on Giraud
00:52:14to let them out of prison.
00:52:19After the success of the Allied invasion, Aboukère goes on to very high rank in the French resistance,
00:52:28serves as an important official for de Gaulle, eventually recognized by the French government
00:52:36for his contribution to the French resistance.
00:52:40He went to London, he was recruited by SOE, the Special Operations Executive.
00:52:47This was an organization which basically trained agents, usually agents with very interesting hybrid
00:52:54backgrounds who could speak local languages, and who would be parachuted into France or Yugoslavia,
00:53:00or wherever it happened to be, to work with the local resistance on the ground.
00:53:06Aboukère was parachuted into France on one of these missions.
00:53:16Why don't more Jews know about the resistance? Well, first of all, it's a piece of the larger
00:53:22question. Why don't people in general know about the war in North Africa? Why don't people know about
00:53:30the persecution of Jews in North Africa? And why don't people know about the Jewish resistance to
00:53:37persecution and the Jewish contribution to the war effort against persecution, against Vichy,
00:53:45against the Nazis, against the fascists in North Africa?
00:53:49And thank you for joining us as we mark the 75th anniversary of Operation Torch.
00:53:58Operation Torch was a jointly planned U.S. and British amphibious operation in Algeria and Morocco,
00:54:04which marked the... I feel the reason more people don't know about Operation Torch is because I don't
00:54:10think the Americans were terribly proud of it since they were killing Frenchmen and Frenchmen were
00:54:15killing Americans. I believe it was embarrassing to be fighting the French instead of fighting the
00:54:20Nazis or the Japanese. I think it's lost for a couple of reasons. It's a very complicated operation,
00:54:29but then on top of it all, there's the political maneuvers in terms of the free French, the Vichy
00:54:35French. And then the other big thing is we're not... and Torch, we're not fighting the Germans.
00:54:41We're fighting the French. And I don't think it's something that the French necessarily want to
00:54:45remember. I don't think it's something a lot of people necessarily want to remember. And it's kind of
00:54:51skipped over because of that to focus on the Tunisia campaign, the Sicily campaign, and the other ones that
00:54:56follow after that. So it's a complicated fight. It's a complicated campaign. Politically, it's very
00:55:03murky and muddy, but that doesn't mean it's not essential. If we lost in North Africa almost a year
00:55:11after Pearl Harbor, then it would have been truly demoralizing. And one of the critical things to
00:55:17come out of Operation Torch was the fact that we took prisoners of war, our first large-scale
00:55:23prisoners of war, and they were brought back to England. And we gleaned intelligence from that
00:55:30that was absolutely crucial to the outcome of the war. If Torch had failed, we would have had to either
00:55:37go back against a stronger defense in North Africa, or we would have then had no choice but to go
00:55:42across
00:55:42the channel right into the teeth of the German army in 1942-43, before it had been severely weakened
00:55:48like it was by 1944. A case can certainly be made for those resistance fighters shortening the North
00:55:56Africa campaign, and of course the American forces and British forces ultimately outflanking the German
00:56:02forces, Rommel asking for reinforcements, and of course Hitler not taking any notice of him. That's
00:56:09interestingly one of the things that comes out of some of the bugged conversations. Those generals
00:56:14in North Africa, they said once in captivity, you know, if Hitler would listen to us we wouldn't have
00:56:20lost North Africa. And so Operation Torch and the 8th of November is a turning point. It was a dramatic
00:56:28movement of resistance and it was a statement. This is a very interesting document drafted by Heinz Rothko,
00:56:37who was head of the Jewish department in Paris.
00:56:46This is quite good evidence of how wary and indeed concerned the Nazis were about the magnitude and
00:56:54the importance of Jewish resistance in France and in North Africa.
00:56:58Generally, North Africa is a sideshow. Generally, World War II is viewed in the European theater as a
00:57:05solely European story. But one doesn't appreciate, one doesn't understand the European story without
00:57:12understanding what happened in North Africa. North Africa was integral to the war effort.
00:57:18Algiers actually had an impact on the war effort. Indeed, it's the only Jewish resistance movement
00:57:25that really had an impact on the war effort and in the process saved American lives. That's a sort of
00:57:34a
00:57:34double impact that certainly no other Jewish resistance movement can claim.
00:57:45What perception do we have of Jewish resistance fighters? I mean, do we even think there were any?
00:57:52It's a very interesting thing because we often think of Jews as the victims. And of course,
00:57:57they absolutely were six million. But ultimately, this is important. You know, there would have been more
00:58:04than six million Jews, for example, who would have been murdered had the resistance fighters not done their bit.
00:58:14Aboukher, over time, he doesn't achieve the status of well-recognized hero among Jewish historians or
00:58:24people looking back on this episode.
00:58:29Aboukher, over time, he was a companion. He was recognized. But the 8th November 1942,
00:58:35he was considered as secondary, if you want, and he did nothing to put forward.
00:58:46Chance put me in charge of four of the five major resistance groups. After the fact, I got called their
00:58:52leader.
00:58:53In fact, I wasn't the leader of anything. I was in the middle of a bunch of guys whom I
00:58:59helped and
00:58:59consulted with. Some said that I was a natural leader. I would disagree.
00:59:08My understanding is that, over the years, Aboukher took a different political path,
00:59:15which isolated him from the main thrust of the French Jewish community. And so,
00:59:21lots of things came together to marginalize the contribution that he played in this very important
00:59:32moment in time.
00:59:34When De Gaulle was buried with his companions, he said that he cried.
00:59:47What was important for him? It was really being a companion of liberation.
00:59:55What motivated the Resisters? Were they acting as Frenchmen? Or were they acting as Jews?
01:00:02My view is, yes, they acted as Frenchmen, French patriots. Their French patriotism
01:00:09was insulted and was persecuted because of their Jewishness.
01:00:20On November 8, 1942, for one night and one day, 400 volunteers of different classes and backgrounds,
01:00:29but united in their love of France, held off the Vichy army until the Americans arrived.
01:00:38These patriots sacrificed without prejudice or hostility. Patriots of all opinions love their country.
01:00:49Nationalism, on the other hand, is a competitive patriotism.
01:00:54Love for country is expressed inversely, through the hatred of others. Other countries, other people,
01:01:04other races. It is the far right, led by someone like Hitler or Mussolini, that will use aggression against those
01:01:13it hates.
01:01:18Patriotism, nationalism, they are like day and night, love and hate.
01:01:27It was true French patriotism that gave birth to the Algerian resistance of the Second World War.
01:01:34if you
01:02:03had people a mind
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