France and the Algerian War: strategy, operations and diplomacy

Abstract

France's war in Algeria from 1954–62 has prompted new historical research and political polemics since 1992. Especially controversial has been an acknowledgement that torture was practised systematically, and the fact that French governments refused until 1999 to admit that Algeria was a real war, not just ‘a law and order problem’. Access to French archives, along with publication of memoirs and collections of letters by conscript troops, has permitted fresh social, cultural and literary perspectives, and new insights about the memory of this war in France and Algeria. The war's strategies and military operations, however, have been neglected. Yet these aspects illuminate the nature of the armed challenges by nationalist insurgents in the era of Cold War and European decolonizations. Algeria reveals the operational success of the responses by the French military forces and psychological warfare service. The war's international diplomacy suggests that another ‘operational theatre’ – that of the United Nations and world opinion – was where the Algerian National Liberation Front really outmanoeuvred France. This ensured that French Algeria's days were numbered by 1960, despite French success in defeating the armed insurrection within Algeria.