ABSTRACT
Churchill now saw the task before the Allied armies in North Africa as twofold. They must conquer the African shore of the Mediterranean and set up the naval and air bases needed to open up an effective passage through it for military traffic. They should then use these facilities to strike at the ‘underbelly of the Axis’ in effective strength as rapidly as possible. Within ten days of the TORCH landings he was already directing the attention of the British Chiefs of Staff to the second of these objectives: North Africa, he said, was to be regarded as a springboard, not a sofa.
