A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962
Read A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962 Online
Authors: Alistair Horne
Tags: #History, #Politics, #bought-and-paid-for, #Non-Fiction, #War
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
1 “A Town of no Great Interest”
6 The FLN: From Bandung to Soummam
7 The Second Fronts of Guy Mollet
PART THREE
The Hardest of All Victories 1958–1962
16 Neither the Djebel nor the Night
19 Revolution in the Revolution
20 De Gaulle Caught in the Draught
Political and Military Abbreviations
Illustrations
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)
10.
Pierre Mendès-France and Edouard Daladier (Keystone Press)
11.
Paul Delouvrier (Keystone Press)
12.
Jacques Soustelle (Associated Press)
13.
Guy Mollet (Keystone Press)
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. Writing 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.