On this day 70 years ago, a meeting vital to the future of the free world took place in Casablanca. One of the key players was an elderly British politician who had failed as a commander in the First World War and had subsequently become an ostracised member of parliament because of his extreme and eccentric opinions. Another was an American man who had been paralysed from the waist down as the result of polio.
This unlikely duo, Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt, sat down in Casablanca with the commanders of the Free French forces, Generals Charles de Gaulle and Henri Giraud, to work out a strategy to conquer the Axis powers and restore Europe to freedom. The conference covered a range of issues including the next phase of the war, the provision of aid to Russia, dealing with U-boats in the Atlantic, and negotiations with Russia and China.
The Casablanca Conference, which lasted from 14 January until 24 January 1943, resulted in plans for the invasion of France in early 1944, together with a lower-level campaign in Italy in 1943, in the hope of eliminating Italy from the war. Churchill and Roosevelt met frequently during the war, with further 1943 meetings in Washington, Quebec, Cairo, Tehran and Cairo.