From small wars to la guerre subversive: the radicalization and collapse of French counterinsurgency

Abstract

France’s adjustment to the post-World War II counterinsurgency challenges proved more traumatic than for the British for several reasons. First, France’s defeat in 1940, followed by the bitter struggle between Vichy and Free French forces had seriously undermined Paris’ legitimacy in its imperial possessions. Second, two world wars had sharpened the debate in France over the value of the empire. In 1914–1918, the million or so imperial conscripts and workers who flowed into France made a critical contribution to national survival through four years of war. In World War II, empire provided the strategic depth and a springboard for the return of Charles de Gaulle and the Western allies to the European continent. The post-1945 colonial wars in Indochina and Algeria also found French soldiers determined to redeem on colonial battlefields France’s honor and military reputation forfeited in Europe. These debates proved particularly caustic in France’s bifurcated metropolitan/colonial army, where separate traditions, perspectives, and mentalities were eventually to produce insoluble tensions of organization, manpower, and resource allocation. The War for Algerian Independence also revived the civil war dimensions of the occupation, as Vichy loyalists ostracized after the liberation of 1944 sought rehabilitation via imperial nostalgia and the resistance against Charles de Gaulle of the Organisation armee secrete (OAS). By 1958 if not before, rival political outlooks and strategic choices had created serious rifts within the military that eventually drove a portion of the army into open rebellion against the French government.