Martin S. Alexander

The Algerian War and the French Army, 1954–62

The Algerian War 1954-62 was one of the most prolonged and violent examples of decolonization. At times horribly savage, it was an undeclared war in the sense that no formal declaration of hostilities was ever made. Bringing to an end one hundred and thirty two years of French rule, the Algerian struggle caused the fall of six French prime ministers, the collapse of the Fourth Republic and expulsion of one million French settlers. This volume, bringing together leading experts in the field, focuses on one of the key actors in the drama - the French army. They show that the Algerian War was just as much about conflicts of ideas, beliefs and loyalties as it was about simple military operations. In this way, the collection goes beyond polemic and recrimination to explore the many and varied nuances of what was one of the historically most important of the grand style colonial wars.

Anglo-French defence relations between the wars

Alexander, Martin, Anglo-French defence relations between the Wars (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), pp.xiii+231 RAE2008

The ‘War without a Name’, the French Army and the Algerians: Recovering Experiences, Images and Testimonies

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

Journeys in Twilight

This is the third in a series of edited collections based on events held at the University of Wales Conference Centre at Gregynog, organized by scholars from the Centre for Intelligence and International Security Studies (CIISS) in the Department of International Politics at Aberystwyth University. A fourth conference will be held in the spring of 2009. The introduction to the second collection contains this statement from the first:

French Military Intelligence responds to the German Remilitarisation of the Rhineland, 1936 - The military consequences for France of the end of Locarno

This assessment presents a lengthy and substantive analysis from within the French politico-military apparatus as it reflected on the significance of Germany’s 7 March 1936 unilateral remilitarization of the Rhineland. Comprising the river’s west bank and a 50 kilometre deep slice of the east bank, the Rhineland zone had been demilitarized by the June 1919 Treaty of Versailles. The settlement was valued by France and Belgium for its provision of a protective buffer or glacis to the east of their borders, making it both easier for their armies to threaten Germany’s key Ruhr industrial basin and harder, or slower, for German forces to menace France and Belgium. The Rhineland’s demilitarization had been accepted by Germany’s Weimar Republic, who had joined Belgium and France in signing the October 1925 Treaty of Locarno pledging the three powers not to alter these border arrangements by force. The demilitarization was not accepted, however, by the National Socialist regime of Adolf Hitler that attained power in Germany in January 1933. Public statements by Hitler and other Nazi leaders, backed by the utterances of German army officers in private talks with the British and French military attachés in Berlin, had left no doubt that the Nazis comprehensively rejected a long-term continuation of the Rhineland’s status. The demilitarization, along with other clauses of Versailles, was condemned as an affront to German national honour and sovereignty. French, British and Belgian intelligence sources gleaned evidence from early 1935 onwards that Hitler planned to resume unfettered control over the territory when a timely opportunity presented itself. This opportunity came on 7 March 1936.