FDR's 12 Apostles: The Spies Who Paved The Way For The Invasion Of North Africa

by Hal Vaughan  (Author)
Publisher: Lyons Press; Illustrated edition (2006)
ISBN-10: 1592289169
ISBN-13: : 9781592289165
Hardcover: 336 pages
Item Weight: 1.52 ounces
Dimensions: 6 x 1.19 x 9 inches

Nineteen months before the attack on Pearl Harbor, FDR sent twelve "vice
consuls" to Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia on a secret mission. Their objective? To prepare the groundwork for what eventually became Operation TORCH, the Allied invasion of North Africa that repelled the Nazis and also enabled the liberation of Italy. This spy network included an ex-Cartier jewel salesman and wine merchant, a madcap Harvard anthropologist, a Parisian playboy who ran with Hemingway, ex-French Foreign Legionnaires and Paris bankers, and a WWI hero.
Based on recently declassified foreign records, as well as the memoirs of Ridgeway Brewster Knight (one of the twelve “apostles”), this fast-paced historical account gives the first behind-the-scenes look at FDR's top-secret plan. . 
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America's first complicated diplomatic challenge of WW II involved its relations with the Vichy government of French North Africa. Should the United States negotiate at all with Hitler's client? How best to navigate the labyrinth of double- and triple-dealing? Vaughan, a Foreign Service officer turned journalist, uses newly available sources to describe a triumph of amateur diplomacy. After the fall of France in 1940, President Roosevelt bypassed the State Department to appoint a dozen new vice consuls to North Africa. They were quintessential amateurs: "well-mannered gentlemen with outsized personalities" and Ivy League backgrounds, fluent in French and at home in the culture. While ostensibly looking after U.S. interests, North Africa Minister Robert D. Murphy and the "Twelve Apostles" also nurtured opposition to Vichy and the Axis. Developing an embryonic resistance network with flair, they transmitted up-to-date military and political information to woefully uninformed Washington. Their greatest breakthrough came when they prepared the ground for the November 1942 Anglo-American landings in Morocco and Algeria, opening the way for a French change of sides. Negotiations with Vichy commander Jean Darlan were, however, sharply criticized for putting pragmatism above principle—one of many times that charge has been leveled against U.S. diplomacy.