A Savage War of Peace Read online

  ALISTAIR HORNE was educated in Switzerland, at Millbrook School, New York, and at Jesus College, Cambridge, where he played international ice hockey. In World War II, initially a volunteer in the RAF, he served with the Coldstream Guards between 1944 and 1947, ending as a captain attached to MI5 in the Middle East. In the 1950s he was a foreign correspondent for the Daily Telegraph until taking up a fulltime writing career in 1955.

  Horne's trilogy of Franco-German conflict comprises The Fall of Paris: The Siege and the Commune, 1870–71, The Price of Glory: Verdun 1916, and To Lose a Battle: France 1940. In 1963, The Price of Glory was awarded the prestigious Hawthornden Prize; when first published in 1977, A Savage War of Peace won both the Yorkshire Post Book of the Year Prize and the Wolfson Literary Award. Other books include The Lonely Leader, a biography of Field Marshal Montgomery; Small Earthquake in Chile; and, most recently, Seven Ages of Paris, La Belle France: A Short History, and The Age of Napoleon.

  In 1969 Horne founded the Alistair Horne Research Fellow-ship for young historians at St. Antony's College, Oxford. In 1993 he was made a Chevalier of the French Legion of Honor, and in 2003 he was knighted for his work in French history.

  Alistair Horne is a specialist on Anglo-American relations, to which his autobiographic A Bundle from Britain belongs. He is currently working on an authorized biography of Henry Kissinger in 1973 and a second volume of memoirs.

  A SAVAGE WAR OF PEACE

  Algeria 1954–1962

  ALISTAIR HORNE

  NEW YORK REVIEW BOOKS

  New York

  To

  A.D.M. and C.D.H.

  the only begetters

  Take up the White Man's Burden

  The Savage wars of peace—

  Fill the mouth full of famine

  And bid the sickness cease.

  —Rudyard Kipling

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Biographical Note

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Illustrations

  Map of Algeria

  Map of Algiers

  Preface

  PART ONE

  Prelude 1830–1954

  1 “A Town of no Great Interest”

  2 “Ici, c’est la France”

  3 In the Middle of the Ford

  PART TWO

  The War 1954–1958

  4 All Saint’s Day, 1954

  5 The Sorcerer’s Cauldron

  6 The FLN: From Bandung to Soummam

  7 The Second Fronts of Guy Mollet

  8 “Why We Must Win”

  9 The Battle of Algiers

  10 Lost Round for the FLN

  11 The World Takes Notice

  12 Le Dernier Quart d’Heure

  PART THREE

  The Hardest of All Victories 1958–1962

  13 A Kind of Resurrection

  14 “Je Vous Ai Compris”

  15 The FLN Holds Its Breath

  16 Neither the Djebel nor the Night

  17 “Aux Barricades!”

  18 “This Prince of Ambiguity”

  19 Revolution in the Revolution

  20 De Gaulle Caught in the Draught

  21 The Generals’ Putsch

  22 Overtures for Peace

  23 The Suitcase or the Coffin

  24 Exodus

  25 The Page Is Turned

  Afterword

  Colonel Godard’s Organogram

  Political and Military Abbreviations

  Chronology

  Bibliography

  Reference Notes

  Glossary

  Index

  Copyright

  Illustrations

  1. Kabylia (Keystone Press)

  2. The Aurès (Algerian Tourist Office)

  3. Zouaves search a Kabyle suspect (ECPA)

  4. Overcrowding and poverty in the Muslim towns (Keystone Press)

  5. The Philippeville massacres, 1955 (Paris-Match/Courrière)

  6 .Soustelle leaves Algiers, 1956 (Paris-Match/Courrière)

  7. The five detained members of the GPRA (Keystone Press)

  8. Ben Bella after his arrest, 1956 (Keystone Press)

  9. Belkacem Krim (AFP)

  10. Pierre Mendès-France and Edouard Daladier (Keystone Press)

  11. Paul Delouvrier (Keystone Press)

  12. Jacques Soustelle (Associated Press)

  13. Guy Mollet (Keystone Press)

  14. Maurice Challe (ECPA)

  15. Jacques Massu (Keystone Press)

  16. Bigeard’s paras in Algiers (Paris-Match/Camus)

  17., 18 The Battle of Algiers, 1957 (Paris-Match/Camus)

  19. The GPRA proclaimed in Cairo, 1958 (Keystone Press)

  20. Generals Massu and Salan, with Jacques Soustelle (Keystone Press)

  21. De Gaulle visits Algiers, 1958 (Hillelson/Tikhomiroff)

  22. The Morice Line (Keystone Press)

  23. Ratonnade (Hillelson/Tikhomiroff)

  24. “Barricades Week.” Lagaillarde and Ortiz (Keystone Press)

  25. Demonstrators tear up cobbles for barricades (Keystone Press)

  26. Demonstrators in the Rue Michelet (Associated Press)

  27. A paratrooper guards the town hall (Keystone Press)

  28. Rounding up “pillagers” (Associated Press)

  29.–32. The four generals (Keystone Press)

  33. The generals’ putsch (Keystone Press)

  34. Tanks outside the National Assembly (AGIP)

  35. March 1962. Bomb attacks in Algiers (Keystone Press)

  36. Anti-OAS demonstration in Paris (Paris-Match/Courrière)

  37. “A solution of good sense.” De Gaulle announces the cease-fire (Associated Press)

  38. Pied noir refugees (Keystone Press)

  39. Leaders of the National Army, Algiers 1962

  40. President Giscard d’Estaing visits Algeria (Keystone Press)

  Preface to the 1977 edition

  I intend to write the history of a memorable revolution which pro-foundly disturbed men, and which still divides them today. I do not conceal from myself the difficulties of the enterprise…whereas we have the advantage of having heard and observed these old men who, still full of their memories, and still aroused by their impressions, reveal to us the spirit and the character of the causes, and teach us to understand them. The moment when the actors are about to expire is perhaps the suitable one to write history: one can glean their evidence without sharing all their passions…I have pitied the combatants, and I have freely applauded the generous spirits.

  Adolphe Thiers, preface to Histoire de la Révolution Française, 1838

  IN January 1960 I was in Paris, researching into World War I, when “Barricades Week” broke out in Algiers. The European settlers, or pieds noirs, were in revolt against de Gaulle and the elite “paras” were openly siding with them. For the first time the press began using the ugly word “insurgents,” menacingly evocative of Franco and the Spanish Civil War. Momentarily it looked as if the still-fragile structure of de Gaulle’s Fifth Republic might crack. Then de Gaulle delivered one of his magical appeals, and the crisis dissolved like a puff of smoke. What most vividly remains in my mind of that tense week in Paris was the passionate involvement of members of the foreign press; beyond the excitement of events and professional detachment they agonised at France’s dilemma and, during de Gaulle’s television appearance, tears of emotion were brought to more than one otherwise steely eye. “The history of France, a permanent miracle,” says André Maurois at the end of his Histoire de la France, “has the singular privilege of impassioning the peoples of the earth to the point where they all take part in French quarrels.” This is true. W
riting about the history of France has the elements of a love affair with an irresistible woman; inspiring in her beauty, often agonising and maddening, but always exciting, and from whom one escapes only to return again. After nearly ten years spent on writing about Franco-German conflicts I felt instinctively that, sooner or later, I would be lured back to “take part” in this latest drama of French history, in one form or another, once the dust had sufficiently settled. It took my publishers to propose the idea.

  I also happened to be in France on two other occasions when events in Algeria threatened the very existence of the Republic—in May 1958 and again in April 1961, the latter the most dangerous of all when ancient Sherman tanks were rolled out on to the Concorde to guard against a possible airborne coup mounted from Algiers. Each episode seemed to me, in retrospect, to bear a curious resemblance to the essential rhythm of other great crises in modern French history, whether in 1789, 1870, 1916 or even 1940: a headlong rush to the brink of disaster, or even beyond it, followed by an astounding recovery and eventually leading to a re-flowering of the creative energies and brilliance that are France. The war in Algeria (which lasted nearly eight years—almost twice as long as the “Great War” of 1914–18) toppled six French prime ministers and the Fourth Republic itself. It came close to bringing down General de Gaulle and his Fifth Republic and confronted metropolitan France with the threat of civil war. Yet, when defeat led to the cession of this corner-stone of her empire where she had been “chez elle” for 132 years, out of it arose an incomparably greater France than the world had seen for many a generation.

  What in France is called “la guerre d’Algérie” and in Algeria “the Revolution” was one of the last and most historically important of the grand-style “colonial wars,” in the strictest sense of the words. Many a French leader, and especially the pieds noirs of Algeria, waged the war in the good faith that they were, indeed, shouldering the “White Man’s Burden.” Many a French para gave his life heroically, assured that he was defending a bastion of Western civilisation, and the bogey slogan of “the Soviet fleet at Mers-el-Kébir” retained its force right until the last days of the présence française. It was a “war of peace” in that no declaration of hostilities was ever made (unless one should recognise the first FLN proclamation of 1 November 1954 as such), and during most of the eight years the vast majority of Frenchmen lived unaffected by it. Equally, it was undeniably and horribly savage, bringing death to an estimated one million Muslim Algerians and the expulsion from their homes of approximately the same number of European settlers. If the one side practised unspeakable mutilations, the other tortured and, once it took hold, there seemed no halting the pitiless spread of violence. As at a certain moment in the Battle of Verdun in 1916, it seemed as if events had escaped all human control; often, in Algeria, the essential tragedy was heightened by the feeling that—with a little more magnanimity, a little more trust, moderation and compassion—the worst might have been avoided.

  Important as it was in the history of France, for Algerians the Revolution obviously meant far more. War, said General de Gaulle, “gives birth and brings death to nations.” To Algeria it brought birth. But, during that war, more was involved than simply the issue of whether nine million Muslims should gain their independence or not. Not merely one but several “revolutions” were taking place on a variety of distinct levels; there was, inter alia, a profound social revolution going on within the framework of Algerian Muslim society; and, on the French side, “revolutions” first by the army and later by the OAS against the political authority of France. Finally, there was the tug-of-war for the soul of Algeria as fought externally on the rostrum of the United Nations and the platforms of the Third World, and in the councils of both Western and Eastern blocs. For the West as a whole the Algerian War contained the lessons of two classic failures. First, the failure either to meet, or even comprehend, the aspirations of the Third World. This is with us today not least—or so it seems to me —because Boumedienne’s Algeria is very much a creature of its revolutionary experiences and, if the consequences of its powerful influence over the Third World are not always agreeable for the West, the reasons might well be sought in the years 1954–62. Secondly, the lesson of the sad, repeated failure of the moderates, or a “third force,” to compete against opposing extremes is one of constant relevance to the contemporary scene; whether it be in Northern Ireland, Southern Africa or Latin America. As in 1793 or 1917, in modern revolutions it is the Montagne that triumphs over the Gironde.

  The reader should not be plagued too much by the technical difficulties of the historian’s trade—except, perhaps, where they may affect his comprehension or confidence. The treatment of the Algerian War or Revolution does, however, present certain peculiar problems that require mention in passing. The sheer length of it, in months and years, with a huge dramatis personae constantly appearing, reappearing and disappearing, and with its multiple levels of action often out of phase with each other, presents a canvas of daunting size. There is no obvious single focus, or climax, and possibly only one obvious entr’acte: the coming of de Gaulle in 1958. There is also the major problem of perspective; in terms of time it falls between the two stools of being neither, strictly speaking, history nor non-vintage contemporary events. I am conscious of the warnings of several participants in the story, including President Bourguiba of Tunisia, that “un peu plus de recul” might be necessary before any definitive account of the Algerian War could be written. On the other hand, I was flattered by one of the five ex-premiers of France kind enough to see me, who felt that no countryman of his could yet write a truly objective study, and that maybe “only an Englishman could,” and I am equally encouraged by Thiers’s wise and apt preface to his Révolution Française with which I humbly associate myself. I have been greatly aided in my research, in the cross-checking of facts and the correct gauging of moods, by the “memories” of surviving participants of the Algerian War (many of them by no means yet “old men”), and I would have been helped still more had I had recourse to those—especially on the Algerian side—who are no longer alive, or (like Ahmed Ben Bella) simply “unavailable.” I have tried to emulate Thiers in pitying the combatants “without sharing all their passions.”

  Apart from these problems of perspective, perhaps the greatest obstacle lies in the inequality of source material. The number of books relating to the Algerian War published in France alone runs into four figures, varying widely in quality, while the periodicals and other printed sources can be more readily measured by the cubic metre. As Le Nouvel Observateur remarked of this profusion, “still, and despite this, the Algerian War is the little historical eczema of every Frenchman.” In interviewing French participants—Gaullists and anti-Gaullists, OAS and barbouzes, rebel generals and serving soldiers, right-wingers and left-wingers—I expected to encounter inhibitions about discussing the war, if not total refusals. In fact I found almost an embarras de richesses of frankness and helpfulness, with only one downright rebuff: an eminent lady writer, who indicated that the last word on Algeria had been written in her own memoirs, and there thus remained nothing more of value to be said.

  The solution on the Algerian side, however, was quite different. At an early stage in my research, a senior Algerian diplomat, who had played an important part in the Revolution, while expressing personal enthusiasm for my project, warned me that in his country I might be discouraged by the shortage of written source material and also by a reluctance, both private and official, to talk. In fact, I was received with courtesy, interest and hospitality—and was not discouraged; but otherwise he was right, and for reasons that demand sympathetic understanding. First of all, on the purely military level, the style of guerrilla warfare was such that, with the FLN constantly on the move, few men in the field had either the time or circumstances to keep coherent journals.[1] And, it must be remembered, many were illiterate. Unlike the Yugoslav partisan war of 1942–5, with its rich literature, there was no centralised command
. Many of the records that would normally have found their way into the archives of the new state were (so Algerian officials claim) either destroyed, or “removed” in the last desperate days of the OAS, and in the exigencies of creating a new state the work of collating the archives that exist is also not very far advanced.

  The high walls that surround the houses in Algeria, the delightful courtyards concealed in total privacy behind squalid exteriors in the Casbah, hint at an Algerian characteristic that also does not ease the path of an historian. This natural instinct for secretiveness, developed over the five generations of French suzerainty, was further heightened to the point where few inklings leaked out during the eight years of clandestine warfare of the many internal splits that repeatedly threatened to rive the FLN leadership. It is no less difficult to discover the truth of such divisions today. Compounded with secretiveness there also remains some degree of apprehension. Factionalism of the Revolution continued long after Independence in 1962, and as late as 1967 there was an abortive coup against Boumedienne. Two of the neuf historiques founders of the revolt against France have been mysteriously murdered in exile in Europe; Ben Bella remains in prison, who knows where? Several other former revolutionary leaders live, like Trotsky, nervously in disfavour abroad. Though Algeria is today far from being a police-state on the Soviet model, it is an authoritarian regime, and the risk of a fall from grace can be incalculable.

  One of my earliest surprises in Algiers was that in the Casbah, where the highly emotive Battle of Algiers had been waged against Massu’s paras, there is not the smallest plaque or commemoration to indicate where such heroes of the Revolution as Ali la Pointe fought and died; and often it is hard to find residents who can guide or inform you, even though little more than a decade has elapsed. The same applies elsewhere in Algeria, and the explanation is, in part, that the Algerian Revolution was, from the beginning, a movement of collectivity: of collective leadership, of collective suffering, and collective anonymity. Thus, deliberate efforts have been made to veer away from anything resembling a cult of the individual hero or martyr. There is, additionally, a more general factor in that the Arab tradition holds a concept of history that is rather different from the European. It rates altogether lower priority, insofar as the essential fatalism of religious teaching suggests that man is strictly limited in his capacity to shape his destiny. Thus there is a tendency to write off the past, relegating its events—whether they occurred yesterday or in A.D. 600—to the same vast limbo.