Algérie 1960 : la victoire trahie. Guerre psychologique en Algérie

Following the Indochina War, the French Army defined the Psychological Weapon to counter revolutionary warfare and implemented it to establish peace in Algeria.

Victory in Algeria required the participation of Muslims within the French troops. This participation was both a war goal and a means of waging it; the Algerian War, a revolutionary war, aimed as much at the conquest of a population as a territory.

The war goals officially set in 1957 – the permanence of the French presence, respect for communities, and Algerian personality – were supplemented in 1958 by the equality of all citizens within a single France.

Psychological action organizations, the delegation of civil powers to the Army, and Specialized Administrative Sections (S.A.S.) entrusted to officers to restore local administration – these were all means of pacification and occasions for conflict with civil authorities. Health and social action, youth training, and the revival of municipal life, which expressed a policy of integration and accompanied military reconquest and psychological operations, led to the formation, between 1960 and 1962, of a French Muslim armed force of 225,000 volunteers: 10% of the adult male population fought against the F.L.N., which was collapsing.

The last rebel leaders of the Algiers region proposed a separate peace to the Élysée that would have ended the war as early as the summer of 1960. However, De Gaulle preferred negotiation with the F.L.N. leaders exiled in Tunis. This was the Si Salah Affair, kept secret for the time necessary for the betrayal to be accomplished and to make the French people complicit through their vote in referendums.

Balance sheet of the Algerian genocide:

• nine million citizens denationalized;
• one million fellow citizens deported;
• one hundred thousand combatants handed over to the enemy by the Commander-in-Chief.