[3] Winston Churchill, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, preferred a strategy of attacking the Wehrmacht, the German forces, in the Mediterranean Sea instead (which he referred to as the "soft underbelly").
[2] Churchill's plan would allow relatively-inexperienced American forces to gain experience in a less risky theatre of war while they gradually built up to be overwhelming before they engaged Germany head on.
[4][5] After Churchill pressed for a landing in French North Africa in 1942, General George Marshall, the U.S. Army Chief of Staff, suggested instead to U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt for the United States to abandon the Germany-first strategy and take the offensive in the Pacific War.
[6] Instead, with Roosevelt's support and Marshall unable to persuade the British to change their minds, the decision was made at the Second Claridge Conference in late July 1942 to carry out Operation Torch, the Allied invasion of French North Africa.
[7] That was a compromise by allowing the U.S. to engage in the fight against Nazi Germany on a limited scale and to meet the British objective of securing victory in North Africa.