Nineteen months before the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt sent twelve "vice consuls" to Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia on a classified assignment. Their objective? To prepare the groundwork for what eventually became Operation TORCH - the Anglo-American invasion of North Africa that repelled the Nazis and also enabled the liberation of Italy.The twelve Americans included an ex-Cartier jewel salesman and wine merchant from a patrician family; a madcap Harvard anthropologist; a Coca-Cola salesman and Paris playboy who ran with Ernest Hemingway and the Lost Generation crowd; a rather Elizabethan adventurer-cum-interpreter; a construction expert; a distinguished lawyer; some American ex-French Foreign Legionnaires and Paris bankers; and an Annapolis graduate and hero of WWI. These vice consuls were soon caught up in a web of espionage and treachery that included double-dealing mistresses, Gaullist and Vichy agents, and a homicidal French monk.Based on recently declassified foreign records, as well as the memoirs of Ridgeway Brewster Knight (one of the twelve "apostles"), FDR'S 12 Apostles is a fascinating account of international intrigue.Set in exotic locales from Paris to Casablanca to Tangier, the story takes us through the pivotal TORCH invasion and the eventual assassination of Vichy French leader Francois Darlan. Hal Vaughan's fast-paced narrative is a potent cocktail of heroic acts and bizarre twists and turns - involving Christians, Muslims, and Jews - in an arena of conspiracy and backstabbing. Hal Vaughan provides the first true look at the intricate and covert planning that planted the seeds of victory in the Mediterranean Theater.
