V o L u m e I : a d

On 20 August 1955, the FLN attacked colon civilians in the Philippe-

ville Massacre, and colon reprisals resulted in the deaths of several thousand

Muslims. The year-long Battle of Algiers began in September 1956 with

FLN operative Saadi Yacef’s terrorist-style bombing campaign against colon

civilians. Meanwhile, other FLN leaders targeted governmental officials for

assassination. The FLN movement faced a setback on 22 October, however,

when Ben Bella was captured.

In December 1956 and January 1957, battle-tested French troops with

combat experience in Indochina arrived in Algeria to restore order in Algiers.

Among them were General Raoul Salan (commander in chief), paratrooper

commander Major General Jacques Massu, and Colonels Yves Goddard and

Marcel Bigeard, both of whom were adept at intelligence gathering and in-

filtration. Massu’s men made steady headway, and Goddard himself captured

Saadi Yacef in September 1957. The Battle of Algiers was now won. The

1965 film The Battle of Algiers, produced by Gillo Pontecorvo and Saadi Yacef

(with money provided by the FLN), garnered international support for the

FLN, as it depicted the French simply as brutal occupiers. The French

Algerian War

105

Members of the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN) pose before their World War II surplus machine guns in the

mountains of Algeria on 6 June 1957. The rebel group was formed by Ahmed Ben Bella and other nationalists in 1954 

to fight for Algerian independence from France. That goal was realized in 1962, following nearly eight years of warfare.

(Bettmann/Corbis)

---

employed torture to force FLN operatives to talk, while others were mur-

dered in the process. The FLN, on the other hand, also routinely murdered

captured French soldiers and colon civilians.

Despite victory in Algiers, French forces were not able to quell the

Algerian rebellion or gain the confidence of the colons. Some colons were

fearful that the French government was about to negotiate with the FLN. In

the spring of 1958, colon Ultra groups began to hatch a plan to change the

colonial government. Colon veteran Pierre Lagaillarde organized hundreds

of Ultra commandos and began a revolt on 13 May 1958. Soon, tens of thou-

sands of colons and Muslims arrived outside of the government building in

Algiers to protest French government policy. Massu quickly formed a Com-

mittee of Public Safety, and Salan assumed leadership of the body. Salan

then went before the throngs of protesters. Although the plotters would have

preferred someone more frankly authoritarian, Salan called for the return to

power of General Charles de Gaulle. Although de Gaulle had been out of

power for more than a decade, on 19 May he announced his willingness to

assume authority.

Massu was prepared to bring back de Gaulle by force if necessary, but

military options were not needed. On 1 June 1958, the French National

Assembly made de Gaulle premier, technically the last premier of the Fourth

Republic. Algeria had managed to change the political leadership of the

mother country.

De Gaulle visited Algeria five times between June and December 1958.

At Oran on 4 June, he said about France’s mission in Algeria that “she is here

forever.” A month later, he proposed a budget allocation of 15 billion francs

for Algerian housing, education, and public works, and that October he sug-

gested an even more sweeping proposal called the Constantine Plan. The

funding for the massive projects, however, was never forthcoming, and true

Algerian reform was never realized. It was probably too late, in any case, for

reform to impact the Muslim community of Algeria.

Algeria’s new military commander, General Maurice Challe, arrived in

Algeria on 12 December 1958 and launched a series of attacks on FLN posi-

tions in rural Kabylia in early 1959. Muslim troops loyal to the French guided

special mobile French troops called Commandos de Chasse. An aggressive

set of sorties deep in Kabylia made much headway, and Challe calculated

that by the end of October his men had killed half of the FLN operatives in

Kabylia. A second phase of the offensive was to occur in 1960, but by then

de Gaulle, who had gradually eliminated options, had decided that Algerian

independence was inevitable.

De Gaulle braced his generals for the decision to let go of Algeria in late

August 1959 and then addressed the nation on 19 September 1959, declaring

his support for Algerian self-determination. Fearing for their future, some

Ultras created the Front Nationale Français and fomented another revolt on

24 January 1960 in the so-called Barricades Week. Mayhem ensued when

policemen tried to restore order, and many people were killed or wounded.

General Challe and the colony’s governor, Paul Delouvrier, fled Algiers on

28 January, but the next day de Gaulle, wearing his old army uniform, turned

106

Algerian War

---

the tide via a televised address to the nation. On 1 February, army units

swore loyalty to the government. The revolt quickly collapsed. Early in 1961,

increasingly desperate Ultras formed a terrorist group called the Secret Army

Organization (OAS) that targeted colons whom they regarded as traitors.

The Generals’ Putsch of 20–26 April 1961 seriously threatened de

Gaulle’s regime. General Challe wanted a revolt limited to Algeria, but Salan

and his colleagues (Ground Forces Chief of Staff General André Zeller and

recently retired Inspector General of the Air Force Edmond Jouhaud) had all

prepared for a revolt in France as well. The generals had the support of many

frontline officers in addition to almost two divisions of troops. The Foreign

Legion arrested the colony’s commander in chief, General Fernand Gam-

biez, and paratroopers near Rambouillet prepared to march on Paris after

obtaining armored support. The coup collapsed, however, as police units

managed to convince the paratroopers to depart, and army units again swore

loyalty to de Gaulle.

On 10 June 1961 de Gaulle held secret meetings with FLN representa-

tives in Paris and then on 14 June made a televised appeal for the FLN’s so-

called Provisional Government to come to Paris to negotiate an end to the

war. Peace talks during 25–29 June failed to lead to resolution, but de Gaulle’s

mind was already made up. During his visit to Algeria in December, he was

greeted by large pro-FLN Muslim rallies and Muslim anticolon riots. The

United Nations recognized Algeria’s independence on 20 December, and on

8 January 1962 the French public voted in favor of Algerian independence.

After the failed coup, a massive exodus of colons commenced. Nearly

1 million returned to their ancestral homelands (half of them went to France,

and most of the rest went to Spain and Italy). Peace talks resumed in March

at Évian, and both sides reached a settlement on 18 May 1962.

The formal handover of power occurred on 4 July when the FLN’s Pro-

visional Committee took control of Algeria. In September, Ben Bella was

elected Algeria’s first president. The Algerian War resulted in some 18,000

French military deaths, 3,000 colon deaths, and about 300,000 Muslim

deaths. Some 30,000 colons remained behind, including the socialist mayor

of Algiers, Jacques Chevallier. They were ostensibly granted equal rights in

the peace treaty but instead faced official discrimination by the FLN gov-

ernment and the loss of much of their property. The FLN remained in

power until 1989, practicing a form of socialism until changes in Soviet for-

eign policy necessitated changes in Algerian internal affairs.

William E. Watson

See also

Africa; Algeria; Anticolonialism; Arab Nationalism; Bandung Conference; De Gaulle,

Charles; France; Ho Chi Minh; Murphy, Robert Daniel; Nasser, Gamal Abdel;

North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Origins and Formation of; Salan, Raoul

Albin-Louis; Sétif Uprising

References

Horne, Alistair. A Savage War of Peace: Algeria, 1954–1962. New York: Viking, 1977.

Kettle, Michael. De Gaulle and Algeria, 1940–1960. London: Quartet, 1993.

Algerian War

107

---