“Snakes in Our Midst”: The Media, the Military and American Policy toward Vichy North Africa

Abstract

This article recounts the media's role in one of the more controversial military and diplomatic actions of the Second World War, the American decision to install Admiral Jean Darlan as head of the Vichyite administration in North Africa in the wake of the Allied landings in 1942. Darlan's administration continued to enforce anti-Jewish directives, persecute political enemies, and indeed lock up many of those who had—at great personal risk—aided the Allies.

Journalists learned of these actions, but their initial attempts to report on them were spiked by military censors. Eventually several correspondents were able to get word of these injustices into their reports from the field, and American policy began to change. Drawing on the published memoirs of several of the main actors, as well as State Department, U.S. Army and other archival material, this article traces these events in more detail as reported by four correspondents on the scene—A.J. Liebling, Ernie Pyle, John MacVane, and Drew Middleton. It calls into question the assumed amity between the media and the military during World War II.