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Wolves in the City: The Death of French Algeria
Wolves In The The Death Of French Algeria by Henissart, Paul. 8vo. 1st ptg.
511 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1970
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January 28, 2023
Paul Henissart's Wolves in the City is a harrowing portrait of the conspirators - disillusioned soldiers, European settlers, student nationalists, far-right extremists - who resisted Charles de Gaulle’s efforts to grant independence to Algeria in the early ‘60s. Henissart’s book begins with a blow-by-blow recreation of the “General’s Putsch” in April 1961, where a quartet of mutinous French commanders came shockingly close to overthrowing de Gaulle’s government. The narrative then shifts to the exploits of the OAS (rendered in English as the Secret Army Organization), an extremist sect of disgruntled soldiers and settlers (pieds noirs) whose actions grew increasingly savage as the deadline for independence approached. Henissart provides an unflinching depiction of OAS terrorism: indiscriminate shootings of Arabs, assassinations of French officials, gun battles with police and soldiers, executions of “liberal” Europeans, bombings of government institutions, and most famously, their repeated attempts to kill de Gaulle. Henissart labels the Organization “an uncooked pudding of conflicting freakish ideas” without a clear goal or tactics beyond killing in defiance of Algerian independence. They mixed the rhetoric of the wartime Resistance, the traditional resentment of pieds noirs towards metropolitan France and the terror tactics of the FLN fighters they despised. Whatever idealism they initially possessed curdled into nihilistic violence that repulsed even the French Right. Nor does their leadership - young settlers Jean-Jacques Susini and Pierre Lagaillarde, the movement’s neofascist “intellectuals”; Colonels Antoine Argoud and Yves Godard, counter-insurgents turned revolutionaries; Roger Degueldre, the thuggish ex-Legionnaire whose Delta commandos committed the Organization’s worst crimes; Generals Salan and Jouhaud, the nominal leaders pressured by their younger, more violent subordinates - inspire much sympathy. Through their actions the denouement of French Algeria, sure to be violent in any case (the FLN and their allies conducted copious bloodletting themselves, culminating in the mass murder of Europeans in Oran), became even more harrowing, chaotic and bloody. And since independence was already a fait accompli when the OAS formed, all its efforts amounted to a pointless, shameful epitaph to France's "civilizing mission" in North Africa.
April 15, 2024
(I began this review on 14.4.24 and have finished it on 15.4.24 and part of it has already been uploaded. This is the final complete version. I apologise for its length but did not see any way of doing justice to this book without including some historical context, something I usually loath to do. I hope that also emphasises how much I thought of this difficult to get hold of book. It deserves to be republished.)
This is a splendidly and compulsively readable book (once I started the book I couldn't put it down and devoured its 470 odd pages in 48 hours) about the end of French Algeria and I emphasise 'French' Algeria because the Algerian people, as in those native to Algeria, have barely a walk on part in this story. For example, although it occurred in October 1961, which is within the time frame of this book, you will find no mention of the October 1961 massacre of Algerians in Paris (If this means nothing to youthen google it, if I even began to explain it would overwhelm the review) - and this is not a criticism because Henissart's book is the best account, in English, of the 'French' Algerians (which I use quotes for because what it means is 'white' Algerians most of whom were not of French descent but of Spanish, Maltese and Italian origin) attempts to prevent independence once the Fourth Republic collapsed in 1958 and de Gaulle returned to power and created the Fifth Republic. This is not an account of the Algerian war, for an understanding of that conflict the best book, in English, is still Alistair Horne's 'A Savage War for Peace'. But 'Wolves in the City' is still timely because, as even a cursory examination of various sites dealing with many episodes from the Algerian war and various blog posts reveals, the amount of subtle, but real, misinformation and skewered retellings of what happened in Algeria, is woefully high. This is going to a long review and, although I will try and keep historical exposition to a minimum, I cannot avoid it entirely because it is only by explaining the context that I can justify why this is a book worth reading - and it is not often that I will say that about a work of 'journalistic' history over fifty years old.
Background:
Let me begin by puncturing one of the most widely repeated bits of sophistry that bedeviled the whole Algerian conflict - that Algeria was 'part' of France. Originally Algeria was a part of the Ottoman empire in North Africa which, by the early 19th century, had drifted away from the direct control of Istanbul and into the effective control of local officials. In this it was no different to Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt or some of the Balkan provinces. In 1830 the last Bourbon King of France, Charles X, launched an invasion of Algeria in the hopes that overseas glory would counteract his unpopularity at home. It didn't but his Orleans replacement as King continued the conquest while in 1848 Louis Napoleon, having replaced the Orleans Bourgeoise Kingdom with a soon to be resurrected Bonaparte Empire proclaimed Algeria a department of France immediately removing it from a question of foreign to an internal affairs.
Algeria was a conquered colony, simply renaming it changed nothing. Calais was ruled by English Kings for 500 years but no one would say it was ever part of England. The Channel Islands although linked to the UK via the monarchy are still not part of the UK. The English invaded Ireland for the first time in 1169 and Henry VIII proclaimed himself King of Ireland in 1542 but no one ever thought Ireland became part of England, nor did Wales or Scotland. A more apposite example might be the 'Bantu homelands' that Apartheid South Africa transferred the citizenship of its black population to in order to create a 'White' South Africa. These places were as fictitious as French Algeria.
The example of apartheid South Africa also usefully clarifies the position of Algeria as 'part of ' France because although metropolitan France was happy to regard Algeria as an administrative department just like any in mainland France it did not recognise the native/black/muslim population as French only the white pied noirs. This meant that 90% of the population lived in 'France' but were not French citizens (I oversimplify but it is broadly true). Although there was never the legal/institutional discrimination such as was found at times in the USA or South Africa there was an analogous similarity between the position of whites in the USA and South Africa vis a vis their black populations and the position of white/French people in Algeria (who I will in future simply refer to as Pied Noirs) in regard to the majority Muslim population. Simplistically, but accurately, Whites had power, Muslims did not.
The position of 10% of the population having all the power and rights while 90% had none became untenable post WWII. Starting in Setif and Guelmag in May 1945 the Pied Noirs, supported by the French army, attempted to put the genie of optimism unleashed by WWII back in the bottle as they attempted to stop Algerian Muslims getting 'uppity' (although the parallels with the civil rights movement in the Southern States of the USA is not exact the resonances are inescapable. The only difference is that deaths like Emmett Till's were singular while in Algeria they were horrifically multiple). From the end of WWII various French governments refused to recognise that as long as 90% of the population of Algeria were not French then Algeria could not be said to be in any real sense part of France. By the time attempts were made to address some of the Muslim grievances with the Soustelle plan in 1955 to bring about greater 'integration' between Muslims and pied noirs ten years had been lost and Soustelle's 'plan' was launched in the same year that the FLN launched their 'liberation' campaign.
The Soustelle plan was never properly implemented because it came too late; which was fine as far as the Pied Noirs were concerned because they didn't want anything to change, certainly nothing that would either limit or lessen discrimination against or condescension towards the Muslim population. The government in Paris fought, from 1955 onwards, an increasingly brutal colonial war in Algeria which, though they won militarily, they could find no political solution to. French governments kept searching for an 'alternative' Muslim party to the FLN but their actions since 1945 had made that impossible (please see footnote * below).
Eventually in 1958 France's post WWII Fourth Republic collapsed because of its inability to deal with Algeria (and also Vietnam and other colonial issues). This brought de Gaulle back to power and he wrote a new constitution (the one that still operates in France today) and thus the Fifth Republic was born. The Pied Noirs thought that in de Gaulle they had a champion and that their intransient resistance to change or compromise had 'won'. That they so misread de Gaulle is less surprising than their belief that they had 'won' and that everything would carry on as they wanted.
De Gaulle is a complex and controversial figure but twice in his life he saved France, in 1940 and 1958, not many people can claim that. It doesn't make him a good person, it makes him wise because he recognised the compromises and lies necessary for France to survive. In 1958 he accepted that the age of colonies was over and that, no matter legal definitions, Algeria was not part of France and there was no possibility of metropolitan France absorbing, or accepting 6 million Muslims as co-equal citizens. Algeria was a gangrenous limb threatening to poison and destroy France so it needed to be removed. Everything de Gaulle did regarding Algeria was about ensuring that France was not destroyed by this inevitable removal.
This is the background to 'Wolves in the City' which really only covers the last two years of French Algeria (c. 1961-62) and deals exclusively with the attempts of the Pied Noirs via their own OAS terrorist organization which was led and backed by various retired French generals and others, to prevent what they refused to accept. Mr. Henissarnt's brilliant account of the Pied Noirs fruitless, pointless and ultimately self destructive acts amounts to a portrait of a society as an enraged infant screaming and defying what it does not want to accept. It is a portrait not of the death of the French Algeria of the Pied Noirs but of its suicide.
Although Henissart's book is not analytical it contains all the truth of those last two years of pointless resistance (although I have not done a comprehensive comparison between Henissart's account of these events in 'Wolves in the City' and works like 'A Savage War for Peace' those I have compared show that time has not challenged his version). Although I have mentioned and emphasised how little role Algerian Muslims have in this book it is not a criticism because Pied Noir resistance was peripheral to the story of Algerian independence. It was central to France's successful disengagement from the 'legend' and reality of French Algeria.
There have been many attempts by the exiled OAS members and leaders to try and recast the story of their actions as a more broad based resistance to the handing over of power to the FLN and to co-op the many Muslims who did not support the FLN to their side. This is entirely spurious. There were plenty of Muslims who did not support the FLN but the Pied Noirs never worked with them or accepted them. You can not indiscriminately shoot Muslim men, women and children and pretend that you are a Muslim/Pied Noir resistance movement. The Pied Noirs, and the OAS, never developed anything except negative ideas. Violence was supposed to make Algeria and if possible metropolitan France ungovernable and force the army to intervene to overthrow de Gaulle and then (see footnote **)? well it was supposed to mean the restoration of the situation anti everything that happened since 1955. The Pied Noirs would maybe accept a little bit more integration but what they wanted was impossible - to turn back time to a illusory prelapsarian world were they were the top dogs and Muslims knew their place. Henissart makes all this abundantly clear without belabouring the issue. He lets history speak for itself.
What Henissart also indirectly makes clear is the difference between a purely terrorist organisation and a political organization which uses terror. The OAS was never anything but a terrorist organization it had no political ideas or policies. If you have read any history of revolutionaries like Lenin's Bolsheviks (or Sein Fein/IRA in Ireland at any point in the early or late 20th century) and his insistence on discipline, organisation and political education then it becomes immediately apparent. OAS was only ever indiscriminate violence. It led nowhere (please see footnote ***).
'Wolves in the City' is a masterful account of the Pied Noirs attempt to ignore reality and de Gaulle's attempts to suppress it. The story is an ugly one and the way both the OAS and the French government ignored the horrific and indiscriminate deaths of thousands of Muslims is very unpleasant. When the de Gaulle's government put men like Rauol Salan, former commander in chief of French forces in Indochina and Algeria, and head of OAS on trial it was for defying the French government. His responsibility for the deaths of thousands of innocent men, women and children was not even mentioned at his trial. It is just another example of how little the non Pied Noir population meant (not all the OAS's victims were Muslims, there were also 'white' French Algerians who did not support OAS, but the overwhelming and usual indiscriminate deaths were of Muslims).
There is not a word of support or sympathy in this account for OAS but nor does it really acknowledge the horrors of what was done. This is perhaps inevitable in an account published barely 8 years after these events but this closely also gives the book its force. In 1970 French Algeria was a world rapidly receding into oblivion. All it had was its violent demise, this was not a vanished culture, they had no Ivan Bunin. The greatest post-independence Pied Noir poet was Jean Senac and he remained in Algeria.
Henissart's account of the self destruction of the Pied Noirs is horrifying, well worth reading and thought provoking. No one will write another account of their demise anytime soon. There will be many more accounts of Algeria's path to independence, and the Pied Noirs, will be mentioned, but I can't see them holding centre stage as they do in this brilliant book. They probably don't need to, they certainly don't deserve to, but it was a tale worth telling and in Henissart the Pied Noirs have got a finer obituarist then they deserved.
*The story of so much decolonisation reads remarkably similar over the years; an Imperial power is faced first with moderates asking for slight changes and adoptions which it rejects and in response attempts to crush. The result is that moderates are pushed aside and extremists come to the fore. Eventually the Imperial power recognises that it must make compromises and attempts to go back and accept too late, those first minor, moderate demands not recognising that their time has long past and that they have, through their refusal to change, destroyed all alternatives except extreme ones. The parallels between the UK in Ireland pre WWI and France in Algeria post WWII are staggeringly, and depressingly, similar.
**The OAS in its use of violence was remarkably similar to those revolutionary and anarchist groups who in pre WWI Europe went about assassinating various royalties in the belief that the deaths of these ornamental nonentities would somehow provide the spark to ignite their longed for revolution.
***Please do not read these statements as my approving of terrorist tactics by either thee Bolsheviks, IRA or anyone else.
This is a splendidly and compulsively readable book (once I started the book I couldn't put it down and devoured its 470 odd pages in 48 hours) about the end of French Algeria and I emphasise 'French' Algeria because the Algerian people, as in those native to Algeria, have barely a walk on part in this story. For example, although it occurred in October 1961, which is within the time frame of this book, you will find no mention of the October 1961 massacre of Algerians in Paris (If this means nothing to youthen google it, if I even began to explain it would overwhelm the review) - and this is not a criticism because Henissart's book is the best account, in English, of the 'French' Algerians (which I use quotes for because what it means is 'white' Algerians most of whom were not of French descent but of Spanish, Maltese and Italian origin) attempts to prevent independence once the Fourth Republic collapsed in 1958 and de Gaulle returned to power and created the Fifth Republic. This is not an account of the Algerian war, for an understanding of that conflict the best book, in English, is still Alistair Horne's 'A Savage War for Peace'. But 'Wolves in the City' is still timely because, as even a cursory examination of various sites dealing with many episodes from the Algerian war and various blog posts reveals, the amount of subtle, but real, misinformation and skewered retellings of what happened in Algeria, is woefully high. This is going to a long review and, although I will try and keep historical exposition to a minimum, I cannot avoid it entirely because it is only by explaining the context that I can justify why this is a book worth reading - and it is not often that I will say that about a work of 'journalistic' history over fifty years old.
Background:
Let me begin by puncturing one of the most widely repeated bits of sophistry that bedeviled the whole Algerian conflict - that Algeria was 'part' of France. Originally Algeria was a part of the Ottoman empire in North Africa which, by the early 19th century, had drifted away from the direct control of Istanbul and into the effective control of local officials. In this it was no different to Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt or some of the Balkan provinces. In 1830 the last Bourbon King of France, Charles X, launched an invasion of Algeria in the hopes that overseas glory would counteract his unpopularity at home. It didn't but his Orleans replacement as King continued the conquest while in 1848 Louis Napoleon, having replaced the Orleans Bourgeoise Kingdom with a soon to be resurrected Bonaparte Empire proclaimed Algeria a department of France immediately removing it from a question of foreign to an internal affairs.
Algeria was a conquered colony, simply renaming it changed nothing. Calais was ruled by English Kings for 500 years but no one would say it was ever part of England. The Channel Islands although linked to the UK via the monarchy are still not part of the UK. The English invaded Ireland for the first time in 1169 and Henry VIII proclaimed himself King of Ireland in 1542 but no one ever thought Ireland became part of England, nor did Wales or Scotland. A more apposite example might be the 'Bantu homelands' that Apartheid South Africa transferred the citizenship of its black population to in order to create a 'White' South Africa. These places were as fictitious as French Algeria.
The example of apartheid South Africa also usefully clarifies the position of Algeria as 'part of ' France because although metropolitan France was happy to regard Algeria as an administrative department just like any in mainland France it did not recognise the native/black/muslim population as French only the white pied noirs. This meant that 90% of the population lived in 'France' but were not French citizens (I oversimplify but it is broadly true). Although there was never the legal/institutional discrimination such as was found at times in the USA or South Africa there was an analogous similarity between the position of whites in the USA and South Africa vis a vis their black populations and the position of white/French people in Algeria (who I will in future simply refer to as Pied Noirs) in regard to the majority Muslim population. Simplistically, but accurately, Whites had power, Muslims did not.
The position of 10% of the population having all the power and rights while 90% had none became untenable post WWII. Starting in Setif and Guelmag in May 1945 the Pied Noirs, supported by the French army, attempted to put the genie of optimism unleashed by WWII back in the bottle as they attempted to stop Algerian Muslims getting 'uppity' (although the parallels with the civil rights movement in the Southern States of the USA is not exact the resonances are inescapable. The only difference is that deaths like Emmett Till's were singular while in Algeria they were horrifically multiple). From the end of WWII various French governments refused to recognise that as long as 90% of the population of Algeria were not French then Algeria could not be said to be in any real sense part of France. By the time attempts were made to address some of the Muslim grievances with the Soustelle plan in 1955 to bring about greater 'integration' between Muslims and pied noirs ten years had been lost and Soustelle's 'plan' was launched in the same year that the FLN launched their 'liberation' campaign.
The Soustelle plan was never properly implemented because it came too late; which was fine as far as the Pied Noirs were concerned because they didn't want anything to change, certainly nothing that would either limit or lessen discrimination against or condescension towards the Muslim population. The government in Paris fought, from 1955 onwards, an increasingly brutal colonial war in Algeria which, though they won militarily, they could find no political solution to. French governments kept searching for an 'alternative' Muslim party to the FLN but their actions since 1945 had made that impossible (please see footnote * below).
Eventually in 1958 France's post WWII Fourth Republic collapsed because of its inability to deal with Algeria (and also Vietnam and other colonial issues). This brought de Gaulle back to power and he wrote a new constitution (the one that still operates in France today) and thus the Fifth Republic was born. The Pied Noirs thought that in de Gaulle they had a champion and that their intransient resistance to change or compromise had 'won'. That they so misread de Gaulle is less surprising than their belief that they had 'won' and that everything would carry on as they wanted.
De Gaulle is a complex and controversial figure but twice in his life he saved France, in 1940 and 1958, not many people can claim that. It doesn't make him a good person, it makes him wise because he recognised the compromises and lies necessary for France to survive. In 1958 he accepted that the age of colonies was over and that, no matter legal definitions, Algeria was not part of France and there was no possibility of metropolitan France absorbing, or accepting 6 million Muslims as co-equal citizens. Algeria was a gangrenous limb threatening to poison and destroy France so it needed to be removed. Everything de Gaulle did regarding Algeria was about ensuring that France was not destroyed by this inevitable removal.
This is the background to 'Wolves in the City' which really only covers the last two years of French Algeria (c. 1961-62) and deals exclusively with the attempts of the Pied Noirs via their own OAS terrorist organization which was led and backed by various retired French generals and others, to prevent what they refused to accept. Mr. Henissarnt's brilliant account of the Pied Noirs fruitless, pointless and ultimately self destructive acts amounts to a portrait of a society as an enraged infant screaming and defying what it does not want to accept. It is a portrait not of the death of the French Algeria of the Pied Noirs but of its suicide.
Although Henissart's book is not analytical it contains all the truth of those last two years of pointless resistance (although I have not done a comprehensive comparison between Henissart's account of these events in 'Wolves in the City' and works like 'A Savage War for Peace' those I have compared show that time has not challenged his version). Although I have mentioned and emphasised how little role Algerian Muslims have in this book it is not a criticism because Pied Noir resistance was peripheral to the story of Algerian independence. It was central to France's successful disengagement from the 'legend' and reality of French Algeria.
There have been many attempts by the exiled OAS members and leaders to try and recast the story of their actions as a more broad based resistance to the handing over of power to the FLN and to co-op the many Muslims who did not support the FLN to their side. This is entirely spurious. There were plenty of Muslims who did not support the FLN but the Pied Noirs never worked with them or accepted them. You can not indiscriminately shoot Muslim men, women and children and pretend that you are a Muslim/Pied Noir resistance movement. The Pied Noirs, and the OAS, never developed anything except negative ideas. Violence was supposed to make Algeria and if possible metropolitan France ungovernable and force the army to intervene to overthrow de Gaulle and then (see footnote **)? well it was supposed to mean the restoration of the situation anti everything that happened since 1955. The Pied Noirs would maybe accept a little bit more integration but what they wanted was impossible - to turn back time to a illusory prelapsarian world were they were the top dogs and Muslims knew their place. Henissart makes all this abundantly clear without belabouring the issue. He lets history speak for itself.
What Henissart also indirectly makes clear is the difference between a purely terrorist organisation and a political organization which uses terror. The OAS was never anything but a terrorist organization it had no political ideas or policies. If you have read any history of revolutionaries like Lenin's Bolsheviks (or Sein Fein/IRA in Ireland at any point in the early or late 20th century) and his insistence on discipline, organisation and political education then it becomes immediately apparent. OAS was only ever indiscriminate violence. It led nowhere (please see footnote ***).
'Wolves in the City' is a masterful account of the Pied Noirs attempt to ignore reality and de Gaulle's attempts to suppress it. The story is an ugly one and the way both the OAS and the French government ignored the horrific and indiscriminate deaths of thousands of Muslims is very unpleasant. When the de Gaulle's government put men like Rauol Salan, former commander in chief of French forces in Indochina and Algeria, and head of OAS on trial it was for defying the French government. His responsibility for the deaths of thousands of innocent men, women and children was not even mentioned at his trial. It is just another example of how little the non Pied Noir population meant (not all the OAS's victims were Muslims, there were also 'white' French Algerians who did not support OAS, but the overwhelming and usual indiscriminate deaths were of Muslims).
There is not a word of support or sympathy in this account for OAS but nor does it really acknowledge the horrors of what was done. This is perhaps inevitable in an account published barely 8 years after these events but this closely also gives the book its force. In 1970 French Algeria was a world rapidly receding into oblivion. All it had was its violent demise, this was not a vanished culture, they had no Ivan Bunin. The greatest post-independence Pied Noir poet was Jean Senac and he remained in Algeria.
Henissart's account of the self destruction of the Pied Noirs is horrifying, well worth reading and thought provoking. No one will write another account of their demise anytime soon. There will be many more accounts of Algeria's path to independence, and the Pied Noirs, will be mentioned, but I can't see them holding centre stage as they do in this brilliant book. They probably don't need to, they certainly don't deserve to, but it was a tale worth telling and in Henissart the Pied Noirs have got a finer obituarist then they deserved.
*The story of so much decolonisation reads remarkably similar over the years; an Imperial power is faced first with moderates asking for slight changes and adoptions which it rejects and in response attempts to crush. The result is that moderates are pushed aside and extremists come to the fore. Eventually the Imperial power recognises that it must make compromises and attempts to go back and accept too late, those first minor, moderate demands not recognising that their time has long past and that they have, through their refusal to change, destroyed all alternatives except extreme ones. The parallels between the UK in Ireland pre WWI and France in Algeria post WWII are staggeringly, and depressingly, similar.
**The OAS in its use of violence was remarkably similar to those revolutionary and anarchist groups who in pre WWI Europe went about assassinating various royalties in the belief that the deaths of these ornamental nonentities would somehow provide the spark to ignite their longed for revolution.
***Please do not read these statements as my approving of terrorist tactics by either thee Bolsheviks, IRA or anyone else.
July 19, 2007
This books covers the crises in French Algeria roughly a year before independence from France. It goes into great detail about the OAS, DeGaulle, and Pied Noirs...french citizens who familes had live most, if not all of their lives in Algeria and sought to stay with France(who, in the end betrayed them as a political liability). It is well written and one can see similar happenings(G-d forbid) here in Israel. The book I read is the abridged paperback version and I understand the hardcover is much more extensive. I also have a personal interest in this as my mothers family is French. There was a rift in the family over this issue and there was a great money loss. To the day of my mothers death zt'l...she spoke little of the rest of family.
August 18, 2023
I watched "The Day of the Jackal" and didn't understand why those guys were trying to kill Charles de Gaulle. This book answered my questions and provided a lot of useful context.
October 24, 2012
If you like history with exact details and a cast of characters that reads like headlines from an old newspaper, WOLVES IN THE CITY is a book for you.
This is a mirror of what has taken place in the Middle East over the past five decades since the Algerian Revolution first shook the alleyways in the Casbah of Algiers. It might give you some deeper insights into what has gone on in Beirut, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, The Sudan, Somalia, Afghanistan, LIbya and currently in Syria. Rather creepy, huh?
This may be too detailed for some.
May 13, 2023
This book does a good job of explaining the situation in french algeria at the time of the OAS. How various quirks of history have led to a powder keg that goes off in a spectacular way.
The author is able to explain both the broad political and social movements that have lead to the birth of the OAS and its subsequent downfall. While also regaling the reader with stories of the various unique characters that made their mark on history during this time.
Even if you have little knowledge of Algeria I recommend this book for the interesting characters and situations that it reveals.
The author is able to explain both the broad political and social movements that have lead to the birth of the OAS and its subsequent downfall. While also regaling the reader with stories of the various unique characters that made their mark on history during this time.
Even if you have little knowledge of Algeria I recommend this book for the interesting characters and situations that it reveals.
October 17, 2020
Insight into what happens when the political situation devolves into chaos. Rebel generals, rouge army factions, revolutionaries, communists and fascist street gangs turn Algeria into a mad house during the final days of French colonial rule.
July 25, 2014
A well written account of the French exit from Algeria.
November 22, 2021
There are very few English language books concerning the OAS in the final days of French Algeria and not only was this an informative, well researched, and thorough account of the Organisation, it was also a gripping read which explained the complex political events of the OAS in an enjoyable and story-like manner.
June 17, 2021
This is an interesting book of it's subject, however I could not get over this novelist/armchair historian/amateur snide remarks and passé comparisons to the third reich of the OAS, as a much better book on the subject as described(See/Read Geoffrey Bocca's The Secret War) the organiztion was not just Pied Dnors, but other loyalists and ran the gamut from a Socialist(Susini) to every spectrum of politics, the writer seems more sympathetic to the other side despite trying even-handness at saying how bad both sides were. The book almost seems DeFacto DeGaulle.
July 28, 2025
I have read several books on this topic, in English and French. This is an excellent starting point. It is an easy step to see how Algeria fell apart as decolonialisation progressed and the seeds of the problem France now has managing the outcome were planted in Algeria. A textbook on the results of managing the process badly.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews