President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill at the press conference following the

end of the Casablanca conference in Hotel Anfa on 24 January 1943

On 9 January 1943, President Roosevelt at the start of the tenth year as America’s head of state boarded his special train at Washington DC’s Union Station and headed north.

This looked like a routine journey to the home where he had lived since birth in Hyde Park on the Hudson River two hours’ drive north of New York city.

He was actually on a secret mission to Casablanca which American forces led by General George Patton had captured just over two months earlier.

Instead of continuing through Maryland and New Jersey, Roosevelt changed trains at Baltimore and headed south to Miami in Florida. There he boarded a Pan American Airlines seaplane named Dixie Clipper and at 630am the next morning became the first US president to fly while in office.

The north Atlantic in the winter of 1942/43 was a hazardous place. It was too risky for Roosevelt to go to North Africa by sea.

But the air journey was not much safer. It was also physically demanding for a man aged 60 who had been invalided by polio for more than 20 years.

Roosevelt’s first stop was Port au Spain in Trinidad, then a part of the British Empire, where he spent the night after the 10-hour flight at the Maqueripe Hotel.

Before dawn the next morning, Dixie Clipper took off again and headed south to near Belem in north-east Brazil which had declared war against the Third Reich the previous August following U-boat attacks on its shipping.

In darkness on the evening of 13 January, Dixie Clipper set off on the most dangerous leg of the journey; a 2,100 mile, 19-hour flight across the Atlantic to Bathurst in Gambia, then part of the British Empire, in west Africa. Flying against the prevailing winds, Dixie Clipper’s altitude was rarely above 3,000 feet.

Waiting in Bathurst harbour was the USS Memphis, where Roosevelt dined that night. Early next morning, he boarded a C54 transport plane for the 1,600-mile final leg of the journey to Casablanca where he arrived at 5pm on 14 January. He was met at the airport by his third child Elliott Roosevelt, then a colonel in the US Army Air Corps.

Roosevelt was driven to the Anfa Hotel close to the centre of Casablanca. That night, he had dinner with UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who had arrived by plane two days earlier. They sat up until 3am drinking and smoking.

What is now known as the Casablanca conference opened at the hotel on the morning of 15 January with Churchill and the joint chiefs of staff of Britain and the US. It was to be a challenging but ultimately highly-successful gathering that marked the high-point in the wartime relationship between Britain and the US.

High point for Anglo-American relations

The atmosphere was helped by the fact that Joseph Stalin, leader of the Soviet Union, had declined an invitation to attend, citing the intensity of the fighting on the Eastern Front where the Battle of Stalingrad was coming to a climax. The city’s German garrison was to surrender on 2 February.

Stalin nevertheless loomed over the meeting. He had been pressing for Churchill and Roosevelt to open a second front in Europe. It was an option favoured by Roosevelt’s military advisers but deflected by Churchill who a year earlier had persuaded the US to invade French North Africa.

Little more 1,000 miles from the front line in Tunisia, Churchill pressed 1^st Army commander General Kenneth Anderson, who was then based in Algiers, to probe Axis defences south west of Tunisia.

The consequences for the Irish Brigade were almost instant. Two days after the Casablanca conference opened, the 6^th Battalion of the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers began an early morning advance to capture German high points near Bou Arada. In the next five days, the Irish Brigade lost almost 20 per cent of its original combat strength in unproductive attacks against formidable opponents enjoying air superiority.

It was a major setback for the men of the brigade.

Churchill was delighted with the outcome of Casablanca. He had secured approval that Sicily would be the next target in the Mediterranean. Liking nothing better than being close to the action, Churchill spent more than a week after the Casablanca conference visiting British forces in the southern Mediterranean.

Roosevelt was to return to the US in triumph, reaching the White House on 31 January. Hitler was clearly on the run. American arms, men and money were soon to become the dominant factor in the war against the Third Reich.

Stalin was at the next big power summit, held in Tehran in November 1943. Churchill was to find himself increasingly marginalised. The message was clear. The world that emerged after the Second World War was to be shaped by Moscow and Washington; not by Britain and America as Churchill had reason to believe in Casablanca 80 years ago this month.

The Sicily campaign and its consequences will be comprehensively investigated at the Sicily 1943: Peace, Security & Prosperity conference at the Museo Storico dello Sbarco in Sicilia 1943 in Catania on 7-8 July 2023. To find out more, click here.