Retreat in Algeria

De Gaulle’s prestige and popularity with the Left in France and in the United States is in direct proportion to his tragic failure to give the Algerian problem a French solution. In 1958 the General had an opportunity, unique in history, to integrate Algeria with France, bring about the cooperation of Bourguiba and King Mohammed V, and isolate the FLN. One can only make a more or less intelligent guess as to why, with slow deliberation, he missed his chances one by one.

By the time he visited Algeria in December the population and the army were completely demoralized. He stepped on a soil which he had done everything to alienate; and at the same time, he also managed to humiliate the enemy whose peace-feelers he had scorned last summer at the inconclusive Melun conference. At that time he told them they had to “drop their knives” before negotiations could get started; now, as a Christmas present to the FLN, de Gaulle made it crystal clear that he was opposed to integration and even spoke of an “Algerian Republic.” Instead of dropping their knives, the FLN answered by calling out their terrorists and agitators to step into the vacuum created by thirty months’ ambiguities and misplaced Machia vellism. What they could not obtain at the conference table of Melun, the rebels took by force in the streets of Algiers. Even the New York Times recognized that de Gaulle’s policy had “been nothing but a very skillful retreat.”

TM

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Thomas Molnar

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De Gaulle’s prestige and popularity with the Left in France and in the United States is in direct proportion to his tragic failure to give the Algerian problem a French solution. In 1958 the General had an opportunity, unique in history, to integrate Algeria with France, bring about the cooperation of Bourguiba and King Mohammed V, and isolate the FLN. One can only make a more or less intelligent guess as to why, with slow deliberation, he missed his chances one by one.

By the time he visited Algeria in December the population and the army were completely demoralized. He stepped on a soil which he had done everything to alienate; and at the same time, he also managed to humiliate the enemy whose peace-feelers he had scorned last summer at the inconclusive Melun conference. At that time he told them they had to “drop their knives” before negotiations could get started; now, as a Christmas present to the FLN, de Gaulle made it crystal clear that he was opposed to integration and even spoke of an “Algerian Republic.” Instead of dropping their knives, the FLN answered by calling out their terrorists and agitators to step into the vacuum created by thirty months’ ambiguities and misplaced Machia vellism. What they could not obtain at the conference table of Melun, the rebels took by force in the streets of Algiers. Even the New York Times recognized that de Gaulle’s policy had “been nothing but a very skillful retreat.”