![]() Click the link to confirm your subscription and begin receiving our newsletters. The whirling of film and clicking of cameras quickly replaced the murmurs of disbelief.įor your security, we've sent a confirmation email to the address you entered. Shortly after noon, the door to the villa opened, and Churchill, de Gaulle, and Giraud walked out, while Roosevelt was carried to his chair. Four white chairs sat empty before the scrum of reporters. On January 24, the final day of the conference, the journalists assembled on the lawn behind Roosevelt’s villa. Army temporarily took over the hotel’s switchboard and kitchen. The Excelsior’s bar had been a favorite hangout for the German Armistice Commission, and the current extent of Nazi infiltration of the hotel staff remained unclear. They were also told to behave as if their rooms were bugged. They were instructed not to talk about their assignment in front of hotel employees or others in Casablanca. With space short in Anfa, the journalists received lodgings at the Excelsior, an upscale hotel on Casablanca’s main thoroughfare across from the entrance to the old medina. (Stalin had been invited but declined to attend.) Roosevelt and Churchill excluded the press from the conference-partly for safety reasons and partly to allow them to work without scrutiny of their every move.īut, toward the end of the conference, Allied Forces Headquarters invited a group of approximately 50 journalists to Casablanca, promising them a history-making event. They were also joined by Henri Giraud and Charles de Gaulle, who headed up opposing factions of the French resistance. on January 9, Roosevelt’s train departed Washington from the underground station at the Bureau of Engraving and headed north-before doubling back and heading south for Miami, where two Pan Am Clippers waited to carry the American delegation across the Atlantic Ocean.įrom January 14 to 24, 1943, Roosevelt, Churchill, and Anglo-American military planners met in Casablanca to hash out their priorities for the coming year. British military officers were given cover stories, and in Washington the Secret Service picked up the baggage of people traveling with Roosevelt at their homes to avoid it accumulating in their offices or at the White House. ![]() “I don’t like mosquitoes.”Īfter settling on Casablanca as the conference location, Roosevelt and Churchill decided their meeting should remain secret until its conclusion, requiring extreme subterfuge to assemble everyone in French Morocco. “I should prefer a secure place south of Algiers or in or near Khartoum,” wrote the president. Roosevelt, however, had no interest in going anywhere cold. Now that the United States and Britain had a toehold in North Africa thanks to the success of Operation Torch, what should they do next? The president suggested meeting in Cairo or Moscow. At the end of November 1942, Franklin Roosevelt suggested to Winston Churchill that a meeting between the Allied leaders to discuss strategy would be in order.
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