“For Our Generation There Are No Fixed Values.”1 So Said Major
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CraGuerredoc Révok andlutionnaire Smith and the Battle of Algiers “No Fixed Values” A Reinterpretation of the Influence of the Theory of Guerre Révolutionnaire and the Battle of Algiers, 1956–1957 ✣ Christopher Cradock and M. L. R. Smith “For our generation there are no ªxed values.”1 So said Major Denoix de Saint-Marc, a Légionnaire, St. Cyrian, wartime resistance veteran, Buchenwald survivor, and veteran of Indochina, Suez, and the Battle of Al- giers, at his trial in 1962 for conspiring in the so-called Generals’ Putsch. Few people familiar with the events in Algeria from 1954 to 1962 could deny that “ªxed values” were rare during that period. This lacuna is what inspired Saint- Marc and his confrères in the French Army to attempt to codify a new set of operational and strategic “ªxed values” by developing the theory of guerre rév- olutionnaire (revolutionary war, though frequently rendered in English trans- lation as “counterrevolutionary war”),2 which reached its most graphic expres- sion in the Battle of Algiers. The Battle of Algiers was controversial at the time and has remained the subject of often heated debate. The dearth of systematic analysis of guerre révolutionnaire, which formed the strategic backdrop against which the Battle of Algiers was conducted, is therefore surprising. The neglect is evident in French-language sources, though the paucity of analysis of guerre révolution- naire in English is even starker. A notable gap exists in the historiography be- tween the publication of General Jacques Massu’s two memoirs in 1971 and 1972 and the body of work produced when debate about the Battle of Algiers 1. Philip M. Williams, Plots and Scandals in Post-War France (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1970), p. 192. 2. See, for example, John J. McCuen, The Art of Counter-Revolutionary War: The Strategy of Counter- Insurgency (London: Faber, 1966). McCuen’s work was heavily inºuenced by French writings of the period. Journal of Cold War Studies Vol. 9, No. 4, Fall 2007, pp. 68–105 © 2007 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 68 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/jcws.2007.9.4.68 by guest on 29 September 2021 Guerre Révolutionnaire and the Battle of Algiers and the use of torture was reignited by the publication of an interview with a former member of the Front de Libération Nationale (FLN), Louisette Ighila- hriz, in Le Monde in June 2000.3 The interview implicated Massu and other French ofªcers in the use of torture during the battle and set the scene for the publication in 2001 of General Paul Aussaresses’s memoir, for which he was subsequently prosecuted for publishing an apologia for war crimes.4 Over the years, the focus on torture and other abuses has tended to nar- row the scope of research, with the Battle of Algiers being used largely as a morality tale about what happens when a state exceeds permissible limits in its pursuit of a counterterrorist policy. This narrow focus has militated against a broader appreciation of guerre révolutionnaire. Massu’s memoirs were written in the aftermath of the release of Gillo Pontecorvo’s ªlm, The Battle of Algiers (1966), which, though by no means entirely one-sided, was largely pro-FLN and even used the former Armée de Libération Nationale (ALN) commander in Algiers, Saadi Yacef, to reprise his real-life role in the ªlm. That Massu’s memoir was written in response to the ªlm can be seen in his choice of title (the real or true battle of Algiers), and Massu spent large sections of the book refuting the accusations of torture and mistreatment. When interest in the war in Algeria revived in 2000, the debate was again restricted to the issue of torture and summary executions. Even Aussaresses gave little space to explain- ing the context of torture in Algeria or examining how the military and civil- ian authorities came to believe that such harsh measures were justiªed. In- stead, he wrote less a justiªcation and more a bald account of what took place and why it was effective. Until 2002, a major obstacle to historians of the war was the lack of ac- cess to archival material. This situation changed after the trial of Aussaresses, when French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin agreed to accelerate the opening of state archives. Even so, many of the new works based on this material con- tinue to focus on torture and its human impact and do not provide much at- tention to the historical and military context or assess the overall contribution of torture to French successes and failures in Algeria.5 This focus was shared by the rash of veterans who took the opportunity to exorcise the demons of their past in print, reºecting an anxious need by many to acknowledge more openly what happened in Algeria. These ªrst-hand accounts represented a 3. Jacques Massu, La vraie Bataille d’Alger [The Real Battle of Algiers] (Paris: Plon, 1971); Jacques Massu, Le torrent et la digue [The Torrent and the Dam] (Paris: Plon, 1972); and “Torturée par l’armée française en Algérie, ‘Lila’ recherche l’homme qui l’a sauvée,” Le monde (Paris), 19–20 June 2000, p. 1. 4. Paul Aussaresses, Services spéciaux: Algérie, 1955–1957 (Paris: Perrin, 2001). The book was pub- lished in English translation under the title The Battle of the Casbah: Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism in Algeria, 1955–1957, trans. by Robert Miller (New York: Enigma, 2002). 5. See, for example, Raphaëlle Branche, La torture et l’armée pendant la guerre d’Algérie, 1956–1962 (Paris: Gallimard, 2002); and Patrick Rotman, L’ennemi intime (Paris: Seuil, 2002). 69 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/jcws.2007.9.4.68 by guest on 29 September 2021 Cradock and Smith French obsession with the war—a guerre-franco-française—and consequently the memoirs’ largely anecdotal accounts rarely transcended what Neil MacMaster refers to as “travail de mémoire.”6 In the decade following the French withdrawal from Algeria, a number of scholars attempted to understand the French strategy of guerre révolutionnaire in the context of the history of the French Army and to assess the validity of the doctrine in military terms. Of these studies, the most comprehensive were Peter Paret’s French Revolutionary Warfare from Indochina to Algeria and George Armstrong Kelly’s Lost Soldiers, both of which sought to explain guerre révolutionnaire and the actions of the French Army in Algeria, even though the authors were unable to consult either ofªcial material that was closely guarded by the French state or the testimonies of men involved who often were in prison, on the run, marginalized, or wary of jeopardizing their current positions in an army whose direction had changed radically from the apparent doctrinaire zealotry of the 1950s.7 Of those that did offer their views, their in- sights most likely had not yet acquired that measure of detachment that comes with time. Furthermore, although much was known about French methods during the Battle of Algiers, the full extent of torture and extrajudi- cial killing, as well as certain other crucial details that have come to light only recently, were unknown to commentators in the early 1960s.8 As a result, Paret, Kelly, and other authors relied heavily on the theoretical output of guerre révolutionnaire devotees from 1954 to 1961 as a guide to interpreting the army’s actions in Algeria, whereas the actual inºuences and considerations were, as we show here, somewhat more diffuse.9 In assessing the actions and motivations of the French military in Algeria, our article avoids being unduly swayed either by the thinking and radical in- novations of an inºuential minority in the armed services establishment or by the trauma of torture. Undoubtedly, both of these issues have considerable 6. Neil MacMaster, “The Torture Controversy (1998–2002): Towards a “New History” of the Alge- rian War?” Modern and Contemporary France, Vol. 10, No. 4 (2002), p. 449. 7. Peter Paret, French Revolutionary Warfare from Indochina to Algeria: The Analysis of a Political and Military Doctrine (New York: F. A. Praeger, 1964); and George Armstrong Kelly, Lost Soldiers: The French Army and Empire in Crisis, 1945–1962 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1965). 8. For example, one of the most remarkable aspects of Aussaresses’s revelations was the exposure of Aussaresses himself, of whom almost no reference can be found in the secondary source literature pub- lished before 2001. Only in specialized academic circles was Aussaresses known, although even there only obliquely. He was referred to as “Commandant O” in Yves Couriére’s La guerre d’Algérie (Paris: François Maspero, 1968), and as “the head of a clandestine group of killers” in Pierre Vidal-Naquet’s Les crimes de l’Armée Française (Paris: Fayard, 1975). See Jo McCormack, “Torture during the Algerian War,” Modern and Contemporary France, Vol. 10, No. 3 (2002), pp. 392–395. 9. For other texts, see Paul Henissart, Wolves in the City: The Death of French Algeria (New York: Si- mon and Schuster, 1970); Alf Andrew Heggoy, Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in Algeria (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1972); and John Talbott, The War Without a Name: France in Algeria, 1954–62 (New York: Knopf, 1980). 70 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/jcws.2007.9.4.68 by guest on 29 September 2021 Guerre Révolutionnaire and the Battle of Algiers relevance to the conduct and understanding of the Battle of Algiers, and it would be perverse to suggest otherwise, but they must be placed in a broader consideration of other factors.