This outpouring of military energy to all points of the compass, this lava flow of violence, was awesome. In the face of it, Vichy France was folding up and negotiating a deal with the Nazis that would hand over North Africa to them, and perhaps the strong French fleet too. This was a brutal bloody nose for American diplomats trying to hold France neutral, and keep the Germans out of the African bulge at French Dakar, which dominated the whole south Atlantic.
