Le Troisième Rubicon. Forces françaises libres. 13 mai 1958. OAS Oran. Récit historique romancé

The Third Rubicon: From the Resistance to the OAS

Daniel Pouilly dedicates this impressive account to the story of his father, who crossed the Rubicon three times:

first, by following De Gaulle's call to fight in General Leclerc's Free French Forces until the Liberation; then, during the May 1958 uprising in Algeria, to join the call to the "most illustrious of Frenchmen," supposedly to put an end to the FLN's totalitarian terrorism; finally, in the face of De Gaulle's betrayal, to participate in the fight of the OAS, the only way to defend his own against death and exile.

Against the falsification of history

Speaking about this period again was painful for my father. The bitterness of defeat, that of lost Algeria, but especially that of the falsification of history, shameful, abject, dishonorable: the lies and slander that portrayed the Pieds-Noirs as fascists and murderers, the French army as a band of torturers, colonization as a destructive work, and the FLN terrorists and their French supporters as paragons of virtue and humanism.

Daniel Pouilly: "This is what the OAS was..."

It is up to us to take up the pen to evoke the drama of the abandonment of Algeria, due to an unscrupulous power, in a hurry to finish at any price, while betraying its nationals and delivering them to its totalitarian and Islamist enemies.

I would like to make our suffering and our anguish in the face of FLN terrorism understood, but also our determination to defend ourselves to the end, since no one did it for us.

I would like those who read this account to never forget this: a people threatened with exile and death, men and women over whom slaughter, rape, and abduction loom, who gather to defend themselves, that is what the OAS was.

Fictionalized historical narrative

Foreword by Wolf Albes