Even before the victory in the North African campaign in May 1943, there was disagreement among the Allies on the best strategy to defeat the Axis.[citation needed] The British, especially the prime minister, Winston Churchill, advocated their traditional naval-based peripheral strategy. Even with a large army, but greater naval power, the traditional British answer against a continental enemy was to fight as part of a coalition and mount small peripheral operations designed to gradually weaken the enemy. The United States, with the larger U.S. Army, favoured a more direct method of fighting the main force of the German Army in northwestern Europe.