Operation Torch, the 8 November 1942 Anglo-American landings in French North Africa (AFN), strengthened and ballooned the Mediterranean into a major “Second Front” and put the Anglo-Americans on the strategic offensive until the war’s end. Torch also crystallized the contradictions of Vichy’s wartime posture, and dispelled all ambiguity of “the order to defend against whomever.” The collapse of the Vichy formula of a French Army surviving within a sovereign, neutral France, an open invitation to Axis forces to enter Tunisia and Constantine, and the scuttling of the French High Seas Fleet at Toulon confirmed France’s descent to the status of a second-, if not third-tier power. Going forward, Torch removed any incentive for the Germans to cease to meddle in French internal politics, and ironically accelerated Vichy collaboration. Torch became the first instance in which resistance was integrated into operational planning. The Darlan deal alienated the resistance in France and drove them into the arms of de Gaulle, making it virtually impossible for the Allies to jettison the nettlesome French Leader. AFN supplied both a geopolitical “trampoline” to advance the Allies’ strategic agenda and a fragile venue for France’s resurrection. The French reaction to the Anglo-American invasion was undermined in part by confused command arrangements in AFN, made more complex by Darlan’s fortuitous presence in Algiers. This chapter traces the tortuous hesitations of the French command in Algiers and Rabat, which allowed Axis forces to gain a foothold in Tunisia. The so-called “Darlan deal” struck between Darlan and Eisenhower to cease French resistance in AFN was to have far-reaching consequences. In the wake of Torch, all the accouterments of Vichy independence disappeared – the zone libre, the empire, the armistice army, and the fleet.