Abstract
Jules Roy, pied-noir writer and veteran of the Second World War and Indochina, could have been speaking of Algeria when he claimed that: ‘It was hardly worth going to war against the Nazis only to become the Nazis of Indochina.’2
They had the taste for liberty, the sense of justice and the instinct for generosity. They wanted to create a multiracial, free, fraternal and prosperous society, to set an example for a world divided between rich and poor peoples. One word symbolised their ambition: ‘integration’! Opposite under the striking red and green banner of Islam, the enemy preached racial hatred and religious fanaticism, the arbitrary terrorism of a one-party dictatorship… To win the hearts of the population, they turned themselves into medical orderlies, administrators, water irrigation project managers, overseers of the rural economy… To protect them, they also became policemen, judges and executioners.3
I recognised the lump in my throat, that impotent and furious disgust: it was what I used to feel on catching sight of a member of the SS. French army uniforms today caused me to shudder just as I did at the sight of swastikas. I observed those young boys smiling in their camouflage uniform… Yes, I was living in a city under occupation, and I loathed the occupying forces with more distress than I did those of the 1940s [because of all the links I had with them].1
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Notes
Simone de Beauvoir, La Force des Choses (Paris: Gallimard, 1963).
J. Pouget, ‘L’honneur des capitaines’, in P. Héduy (ed.), Algérie française, 1942–1962 (Paris: Société de Production Littéraire, 1980), p. 366.
See M. Cornaton, Les Camps de regroupement de la guerre d’Algérie (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1998);
K. Sutton and R. I. Lawless, ‘Population regrouping in Algeria: traumatic change and the rural settlement pattern’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 3: 3 (1978), pp. 331–50.
See M. Evans, ‘La Lutte continue…? Contemporary history and Algeria’, History Today, 47: 2 (February 1997), pp. 10–12.
P. Oulmont, ‘Patriotisme et nationalisme au miroir de la guerre d’Algérie’, Historiens et géographes, 89 (1998), pp. 293–307.
By contrast, for less inhibited ways of teaching French colonial history in France, the USA and Britain, and for revealing how film, literature and history can be imaginatively combined, see A. L. Conklin, ‘Boundaries unbound: teaching French history as colonial history and colonial history as French history’, French Historical Studies, 23: 2 (Spring 2000), pp. 215–38.
See H. Remouan, ‘Pratiques historiographiques et mythes de fondation: le cas de la guerre de libération à travers les institutions algériennes d’éducation et de recherche’ in C.-R. Ageron (ed.), La guerre d’Algérie et les Algériens, 1954–1962 (Paris: Armand Colin, 1997), pp. 305–21 (esp. the section entitled ‘L’insurrection du 1er novembre comme mythe fondateur’, pp. 315–17).
As other recent ‘inconvenient’ aspects of French history had been, notably the Vichy period with its ambiguities of collaboration and survival. See H. Rousso, The Vichy Syndrome: History and Memory in France since 1944 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994). Rousso’s approach has also influenced Benjamin Stora’s methodologies in examining the Algerian case: see
B. Stora, La gangrène et l’oubli. La mémoire de la guerre d’Algérie (Paris: La Découverte, 1992).
Quoted in R. Vinen, France, 1934–1970 (Basingstoke: Macmillan — now Palgrave Macmillan, 1996), p. 163.
Cf. P. Éveno and J. Planchais, La guerre d’Algérie. Dossier et témoignages réunis et présentés par Patrick Éveno et Jean Planchais (Paris: Editions La Découverte and Le Monde Editions, 1989); also Trente ans après: Nouvelles de la guerre d’Algérie (Paris: Le Monde Editions, 1992).
See M. Touili, Le retentissement de la révolution algérienne. Colloque international d’Alger (24–28 novembre 1984) (Algiers: Entreprise National du Livre, 1985); also P. Bernard, ‘L’Algérie trente ans après’ Le Monde, 9 November 1984, p. 25.
See F. Bédarida (ed.), La guerre d’Algérie et les chrétiens (Paris: Bulletin de l’IHTP, 1988);
J.-F. Sirinelli and J.-P. Rioux (eds), La guerre d’Algérie et les intellectuels (Brussels: Complexe, 1988);
J.-P. Rioux (ed.), La guerre d’Algérie et les français (Paris: Fayard, 1990).
See the illustrated commemorative 30th anniversary album by A. Tristan, Le silence du fleuve: octobre 1961 (Bezons: Au nom de la mémoire, 1991); also 17 octobre 1961. Mémoire d’une communauté (Paris: Editions d’Actualité de l’Emigration/Amicale des Algériens en Europe, 1987).
G. Boulanger, Papon, un intrus dans la République (Paris: Seuil, 1997), p. 240. Cf.
R. J. Golsan, ‘Memory’s bombes à retardement: Maurice Papon, crimes against humanity and 17 October 1961’, Journal of European Studies, 28: 1 (1998), pp. 153–72;
N. MacMaster and J. House, ‘“Une journée portée disparue”: the Paris massacre of 1961 and memory’, in K. Mouré and M. S. Alexander (eds), Crisis and Renewal in France, 1918–1962 (New York: Berghahn, 2002), pp. 267–90;
J.-L. Einaudi, La Bataille de Paris, 17 octobre 1961 (Paris: Seuil, 1991);
M. Levine, Les ratonnades d’Octobre. Un meurtre collectif à Paris en 1961 (Paris: Editions Ramsay, 1985);
B. Violet, Le Dossier Papon (Paris: Flammarion, 1997), pp. 107–37.
See M. Evans, ‘From colonialism to post-colonialism: the French empire since Napoleon’, in M. S. Alexander (ed.), French History since Napoleon (London: Arnold, 1999), pp. 391–415. Cf.
D. Schalk, ‘Has France’s marrying her century cured the Algerian syndrome?’, Historical Reflections, 25 (1999), pp. 149–64.
P. Aussaresses, Services spéciaux: Algérie, 1955–1957 (Paris: Perrin, 2001). This was extensively discussed on publication: see G. Elgey, ‘Crimes de la guerre d’Algérie: divulguer pour ne pas répéter’, Le Monde, 5 May 2001, pp. 1, 16; M. Tubiana, ‘Plus de décorations pour Aussaresses et ses pareils’, ibid., p. 16; P. Georges, ‘Pour la France’, ibid., p. 34; also (unattrib.), ‘Les aveux du général Aussaresses suscitent une grande émotion en Algérie’; N. Weill, ‘La torture en Algérie entre tabou, occultation et mémoire’; J. Isnard, ‘Le Service historique des armées veut protéger les militaires qui se confient à lui’, all in Le Monde, 8 May 2001, p. 5; P. Vidal-Naquet, ‘Arrière victoire’, Le Monde, 12 May 2001, pp. 1, 14; M. Harbi, ‘Un passé de tortures qui ne passe pas’, ibid., p. 14
Le Monde, 23 November 2000; also S. Thénault, ‘Armée et justice en guerre d’Algérie’, Vingtième Siècle, 57 (1998), pp. 104–14. Cf.
J. Massu, La vraie bataille d’Alger (Paris: Plon, 1971);
A.-G. Minella, Le soldat méconnu. Entretiens avec le général Massu (Paris: Marne, 1993);
J.-J. Jordi and G. Pervillé (eds), Alger 1940–1962. Une ville en guerre (Paris: Autrement, 1999), pp. 126–85.
A. Horne, A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954–1962 (London: Macmillan — now Palgrave Macmillan, 1977), p. 538;
J. Talbott, The War Without a Name. France in Algeria, 1954–1962 (London: Faber & Faber, 1981), p. 246.
See E. Michels, Deutsche in der Fremdenlegion 1870–1965. Mythen und Realitäten (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 1999).
See M. Faivre, ‘Les Français musulmans dans la guerre d’Algérie. 1. De l’engagement à la mobilisation’, and M. Bodin, ‘D’une guerre à l’autre: l’évolution de l’état d’esprit des soldats algériens (1947–1956)’, Guerres mondiales et conflits contemporains, 177 (January 1994), pp. 139–65, 166–83 respectively; also
M. Faivre, Les combattants musulmans de la guerre d’Algérie, des soldats sacrifiés (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1995), pp. 159–61.
P. Messmer, Les Blancs s’en vont. Récits de décolonisation (Paris: Albin Michel, 1998), p. 172.
See C.-R. Ageron, ‘Complots et purges dans l’armée de libération algérienne (1958–1961)’, Vingtième Siècle, 59 (1998), pp. 15–27.
The personal testimonies recorded for the film are published in P. Rotman and B. Tavernier, La guerre sans nom. Les appelés d’Algérie, 1954–1962 (Paris: Seuil, 1992).
F. Field, Three French Writers and the Great War: Studies in the Rise of Communism and Fascism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975).
See R. Dalisson, ‘La célébration du 11 novembre ou l’enjeu de la mémoire combattante dans l’entre-deux-guerres (1918–1939)’, Guerres mondiales et conflits contemporains, 192 (1998), pp. 5–23.
See A. Thomson, Anzac Memories (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), which explores the way in which the image of the damaged Vietnam veterans facilitated a more receptive mood to alternative perspectives on the impact of war experiences in place of previously dominant masculine narratives. Cf.
D. M. Shafer, ‘The Vietnam combat experience: the human legacy’, in Shafer (ed.), The Legacy: The Vietnam War in the American Imagination (Boston: Beacon Press, 1990); and S. Hoffmann, ‘Algérie et Vietnam’, Le Monde, 11 May 1990, p. 27.
See M. Evans ‘Rehabilitating the traumatized war veteran: the case of French conscripts from the Algerian War, 1954–1962’, in M. Evans and K. Lunn (eds), War and Memory in the Twentieth Century (Oxford; Berg: 1997), pp. 73–85; also Internet site ‘Collectif National “Justice pour les Harkis” et leurs families’, http://www.chez.com/justiceharkis.
J. Winter, ‘The generation of memory: reflections on the “memory boom” in contemporary historical studies’, Bulletin of the German Historical Institute, 27 (Fall 2000), pp. 69–92;
P. Nora, Realms of Memory: The Construction of the French Past (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996); see also G. Eley, foreword to Evans and Lunn, War and Memory, pp. vii-xiii.
See J. Bourke, An Intimate History of Killing: Face to Face Killing in 20th Century Warfare (London: Granta, 1999); also
J. Bourke, Dismembering the Male. Men’s Bodies, Britain and the Great War (London: Reaktion Books, 1996).
See C. R. Browning, Ordinary Men. Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (New York: Harper Collins, 1992).
See M. Evans, The Memory of Resistance. French Opposition to the Algerian War (1954–1962) (Oxford: Berg, 1997), pp. 105–8.
See M. S. Alexander, ‘Seeking France’s “Lost Soldiers”: reflections on the French military crisis in Algeria’, in Mouré and Alexander (eds), Crisis and Renewal in France, pp. 242–66; M. S. Alexander, ‘Duty, discipline and authority: the French officer elites between professionalism and politics, 1900–1962’, in N. Atkin and F. Tallett (eds), The Right in France since 1789 (London: I. B. Tauris, 1998), pp. 129–59.
FLN supporters in France who clandestinely smuggled documents, leaflets and money between the metropole and Algeria. See D. Djerbal, ‘La question des voies et moyens de la Guerre de libération nationale en territoire français’, in Ageron (ed.), La guerre d’Algérie et les Algériens, pp. 111–35; and L. Hamon and P. Rotman, Les porteurs de valise (Paris: Albin Michel, 1979).
See M. Thomas, ‘Order before reform: the spread of French military operations in Algeria, 1954–1958’, in D. Killingray and D. Omissi (eds), Guardians of Empire (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999), pp. 198–220.
Cf. G. Mattéi, La guerre des gusses (Paris: Balland, 1982; reissued by Editions de l’Aube, 1995);
J. Roy, La guerre d’Algérie (Paris: Julliard, 1960); also
J. Roy, Mémoires barbares (Paris: Albin Michel, 1989);
J.-J. Servan-Schreiber, Lieutenant in Algeria (London: Faber, 1958);
J.-J. Servan-Schreiber, Lieutenant in Algeria (London: Faber, 1958); also J.-J. Servan-Schreiber, Passions (Paris: Fayard, 1993).
See A.-M. Duranton-Crabol, Le temps de l’OAS (Brussels: Complexe, 1995);
J.-J. Susini, Histoire de l’OAS (Paris: La Table Ronde, 1963);
R. Kauffer, L’OAS. Histoire d’une Organisation secrète (Paris: Fayard, 1986).
A. Derradji, The Algerian Guerrilla Campaign Strategy and Tactics (Lewiston, NY and Lampeter: Edwin Mellen Press, 1997); cf. J. G., ‘L’organisation de base de l’Armée de Libération Nationale’, Les Temps Modernes, 175–6 (October-November 1960), pp. 531–7.
B. Stora, Histoire de la guerre d’Algérie (1954–1962) (Paris: Editions La Découverte, 1993), p. 89; the high mortality from accidents is also drawn out in the film La Guerre sans nom.
See J. Kessler, ‘La surveillance des frontières maritimes de l’Algérie, 1954–1962’, RHA, 187 (June 1992), pp. 94–101;
B. Estival, De Port Said à Port Say (Paris: Editions les 7 Vents, 1991), pp. 129–41; also B. Estival, The role of the Navy in littoral defence in the Algerian War’, Journal of Strategic Studies, 25: 2 (2002);
P. Boureille, ‘La marine et la guerre d’Algérie: périodisation et typologie des actions’ in J.-C. Jauffret and M. Vaïsse, Militaires et guérillas dans la guerre d’Algérie (Brussels: Editions Complexe, 2001), pp. 91–114.
On Perrault see the interview in Stora’s documentary Les Années algériennes broadcast on TFI in 1991; on de Saint-Marc see his Mémoires. Les champs de braises (Paris: Perrin, 1995); Helie de Saint-Marc, Les sentinelles du soir (Paris: Editions des Arènes, 1999);
L. Beccaria, Hélie de Saint-Marc (Paris: Perrin, 1988).
J. Lartéguy, Les Centurions (Paris: Presses de la Cité, 1959).
See D. Joly, The French Communist Party and the Algerian War (Basingstoke: Macmillan — now Palgrave Macmillan, 1991).
See M. Bloch, L’Etrange Défaite. Témoignage écrit en 1940 (Paris: Editions Franc-Tireur, 1946); English trans, by
G. Hopkins as Strange Defeat: A Statement of Evidence Written in 1940 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1968).
X. Grall, La Génération du Djebel (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1962).
M. Matéos-Ruiz, L’Algérie des appelés, (Biarritz: Editions Atlantica, 1998), p. 48.
See M. Péju, ‘Mourir pour de Gaulle?’, Les Temps Modernes, 175–6 (October–November 1960), pp. 481–502.
See R. Delpard, 20 ans pendant la guerre d’Algérie: générations sacrifiées (Neuilly-sur-Seine: Editions Michel Lafon, 2001).
NSC Policy No. 5911/1, 4 November 1959, National Archives, Suitland/College Park, Maryland, in Y. H. Zoubir, ‘The United States, the Soviet Union and decolonisation of the Maghreb, 1945–1962’, Middle Eastern Studies, 31: 1 (January 1995), pp. 58–84 (quotation p. 75).
See Y. H. Zoubir, ‘US and Soviet policies towards France’s struggle with anti-colonial nationalism in North Africa’, Canadian Journal of History, 30: 4 (December 1995), pp. 439–66.
See L. S. Kaplan, D. Artaud and M. R. Rubin (eds), Dien Bien Phu and the Crisis of Franco-American Relations, 1954–1955 (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1990).
M. Harbi, Aux origines du FLN (Paris: Editions Bourgois, 1975); Le FLN: mirage et réalité, des origines à la prise du pouvoir (1945–1962) (Paris: Editions Jeune Afrique, 1980); Les Archives de la Révolution algérienne (Paris: Editions Jeune Afrique, 1981).
C.-R. Ageron, ‘Un aspect de la guerre d’Algérie: la propagande radiophonique du FLN et des Etats arabes’, in Ageron (ed.), La guerre d’Algérie et les Algériens, pp. 245–59; R. J. Bookmiller, ‘The Algerian war of words: broadcasting and revolution, 1954–62’, Maghreb Review, 14: 3–4 (1989), pp. 196–213.
See P.-A. Léger, Aux carrefours de la guerre (Paris: Plon, 1983).
See M. Thomas, ‘France accused: French North Africa before the United Nations, 1952–1962’, Contemporary European History, 10:1 (March 2001), pp. 91–121; also M. Vai’sse, ‘La Guerre perdue à l’ONU ?’, in Rioux (ed.), La Guerre d’Algérie et les Français, pp. 451–62.
See A. Haroun, La 7e wilaya. La guerre du FLN en France (Paris: Seuil, 1986).
On the Soummam Congress see M. Kettle, De Gaulle and Algeria 1940–60 (London: Quartet Books, 1993), pp. 67–9.
See C.-R. Ageron, ‘Une dimension de la guerre d’Algérie: les “regroupements” des populations’, in Jauffret and Vaïsse (eds), Militaires et guérilla dans la guerre d’Algérie, pp. 327–62; K. Sutton, ‘The influence of military policy on Algerian rural settlement’, Geographical Review, 71: 4 (October 1981), pp. 379–94; also
K. Sutton, ‘Army administration tensions over Algeria’s Centres de Regroupement, 1954–1962’, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 26: 2 (1999), pp. 243–70; and
K. Sutton, ‘The Centres de Regroupement: the French Army’s final legacy to Algeria’s settlement geography’, in A. G. Hargreaves and M. J. Heffernan (eds), French and Algerian Identities from Colonial Times to the Present (Lampeter: Edwin Mellen Press, 1993), pp. 163–88.
P. Bourdieu, The Algerians (Boston: Beacon Press, 1962, preface by Raymond Aron), p. 184; this book is a translation of Bourdieu’s Sociologie de l’Algérie (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1958).
G. Tillion, L’Algérie en 1957 (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1957), esp. pp. 68–9.
See Talbott, War Without a Name, pp. 10–36; J. K. Gosnell, The Politics of Frenchness in Colonial Algeria, 1930–1954, (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI dissertation services, 1999);
B. Stora, Histoire de l’Algérie coloniale 1830–1954 (Paris: La Découverte, 1991).
See I. Backouche, ‘L’Algérie et les actualités cinématographiques Gaumont: analyse et perception d’une crise’, Historiens et Géographes, 89 (1998), pp. 373–90.
P. Dine, Images of the Algerian War: French Fiction and Film, 1954–1992 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), p. 132.
For a pioneering methodological approach on this issue see, N. Aggoun, ‘L’opinion publique algérienne du Chélif algérois à la veille de l’insurrection de 1954 par les sources orales ou la vision des colonisés’, in R. Goutalier (ed.), Mémoires de la colonisation: relations colonisateurs-colonisés (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1994), pp. 35–47.
See G. Carreras, On les appelait les Harkis … (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1997); Algérie 1954–1962, pp. 165–6; Minella, Le Soldat méconnu, pp. 213–17;
G. Fleury, Le Combat des Harkis (Paris: Editions Les 7 Vents, 1989).
M. Challe, Notre révolte (Paris: Presses de la Cité, 1974).
P. Hovette, Capitaine en Algérie (Paris: Presses de la Cité, 1978), p. 12.
See V. Ortuno, Mort pour une chose morte (Paris: Julliard, 1971).
Mattéi, La guerre des gusses; D. Zimmermann, Nouvelles de la zone interdite (Paris: L’Instant, 1988).
G. Périot, Deuxième classe en Algérie (Paris: Flammarion, 1962), p. 219.
See, for instance, J. Blanchard, Le Problème Algérien. Réalités et perspectives (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1955); Tillion, L’Algérie en 1957, pp. 55–9, 71–4, 111–21.
See E. Behr, The Algerian Problem (London: Hodder & Stoughton and Penguin Books, 1961).
See M. Connelly, ‘Taking off the Cold War lens: visions of North-South conflict during the Algerian War for independence’, American Historical Review, 105: 3 (June 2000), pp. 739–69; also
I. M. Wall, ‘The United States, Algeria and the fall of the Fourth French Republic’, Diplomatic History, 18: 4 (Fall 1994), pp. 489–511; also
I. M. Wall, France, the United States and the Algerian War (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2001);
M. Thomas, The French North African Crisis: Colonial Breakdown and Anglo-French Relations, 1945–62 (Basingstoke: Macmillan — now Palgrave Macmillan, 2000), pp. 158–78.
See J. Frémeaux, ‘La guerre d’Algérie et le Sahara’, in Ageron (ed.), La guerre d’Algérie et les Algériens, pp. 93–109; Frémeaux, Le monde arabe et la sécurité de la France depuis 1958 (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1995), pp. 13–15, 24–8, 34–49. Cf.
T. Smith, The French Stake in Algeria, 1945–1962 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1978); also
T. Smith, ‘The French economic stake in colonial Algeria’, French Historical Studies, IX: 1 (Spring 1975), pp. 184–9.
See Thomas, The French North African Crisis, esp. pp. 138–56; and M. Thomas, ‘The dilemmas of an ally of France: Britain’s policy towards the Algerian rebellion 1954–62’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 23: 1 (January 1995), pp. 129–54.
See, however, C.-R. Ageron, ‘L’opinion française à travers les sondages’ in Rioux, La Guerre d’Algérie et les Français, pp. 25–44; J. Talbott, ‘French public opinion and the Algerian War: a research note’, French Historical Studies, IX: 2 (Fall 1975), pp. 354–61.
M. Lemalet, Lettres d’Algérie, 1954–1962. La guerre des appelés. La mémoire d’une génération (Paris: J.-C. Lattès, 1992).
P. Videlier, ‘Tardive redécouverte de la guerre d’Algérie’, Le maghreb face à la contestation islamiste. Manière de voir, 24 (November 1994), pp. 92–4.
C. Mauss-Copeaux, Appelés en Algérie. La parole confisquée (Paris: Hachette, 1998).
The French army, navy and air force archives of the Algerian War have been progressively released since 1992, while foreign ministry documents and many collections of private papers are also becoming steadily more accessible (albeit some still dependent on ministerial dérogation). See Introduction à l’étude des Archives de l’Algérie (Vincennes: Service Historique de l’Armée de Terre [SHAT], 1992); and J. Nicot, P. Schillinger and C. Obert, Inventaire des Archives de l’Algérie. Sous-série 1H. Tome II (1945–1967) (Vincennes: SHAT, 1994). Particularly helpful are the volumes of original documents appearing under the editorship of
J.-C. Jauffret: La Guerre d’Algérie par les Documents. Tome 1. L’Avertissement, 1943–1946 (Vincennes: Publications du SHAT, 1990); Tôme 2. Les Portes de la Guerre, 1946–1954 (Vincennes: Publications du SHAT, 1998).
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Alexander, M.S., Evans, M., Keiger, J.F.V. (2002). The ‘War without a Name’, the French Army and the Algerians: Recovering Experiences, Images and Testimonies. In: Alexander, M.S., Evans, M., Keiger, J.F.V. (eds) The Algerian War and the French Army, 1954–62. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230500952_1
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