Algerian War

The Algerian War (equivalent to the French Guerre d'Algérie; Arabic ثورة التحرير الجزائرية, literally Algerian Liberation Revolution) was an armed conflict for the independence of Algeria from France in the years 1954 to 1962. It was started in a planned manner by the Marxist-nationalist FLN, which resorted to means of terrorism. Unlike in the previous Indochina war, the French military succeeded in maintaining the upper hand militarily. However, war casualties and human rights violations, including torture, made the conflict so unpopular in France that it was ended politically and led to Algerian independence. As a result, France saw an unsuccessful coup attempt by senior military officers and the formation of the terrorist organization OAS. The war ended in March 1962 through the Évian Accords with a negotiated settlement that resulted in Algerian independence under the leadership of the FLN.

The War of Independence engulfed much of Algeria's population, with a minority of Muslim Algerians fighting for allegiance to France. Millions of people were forcibly relocated during this period. The European minority in the country fled almost entirely after the country's independence. The war also spread to the motherland in the form of political demonstrations and attacks. After the war, there was a power struggle within the FLN, from which the authoritarian regime of Houari Boumedienne emerged in 1965. For France, the defeat in the Algerian War meant the end of its colonial empire.

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French colonization

In 1830, French troops occupied Algiers, Oran and Bône and began conquering the country. The war was prompted by a diplomatic affair: the Algerian ruler Hussein Dey, nominally subject to the Ottoman Empire, struck the French consul with his fly-wing when the latter refused to repay French debts dating back to the Napoleonic Wars. Motives behind the declaration of war were the hoped-for gain of colonies, the belief in the superiority of one's own social system in terms of the opposition of "civilization" against "barbarism", and the ambition of the surviving monarchy to gain popularity through war.

After the conquest of the northern part of the country, the French National Assembly disagreed on how the new territory should be integrated into the state. Until 1848, the occupied part of Algeria therefore remained under military rule. French troops were able to occupy most of the country by 1870. The unoccupied territory was partially filled by state structures after the French intervention. Ahmed Bey bin Muhammad Sharif, the former Bey of the region, attempted to establish his own state on the Ottoman model in eastern Algeria. Abd el-Kader, a descendant of a family of religious notables, established a tribal-based theocracy in western Algeria. During this period, there was constant fighting due to rebellions by the local population against the French colonial power that flared up again and again in various regions. Abd el-Kader achieved nationwide fame as a champion against the French presence in the country. In 1847, both states came to a standstill after military defeats and the arrest of their leaders. The resulting power vacuum was gradually filled by the expansion of the French colonial state.

The settlement of a loyal group of European colonists was the declared goal of the changing French leadership. Immigration was massively encouraged through land grants and government aid. The government's goals were both to consolidate control over Algerian territory and to be able to divert increasing population pressure from the mother country in the course of industrialization and urbanization. In the beginning, the majority of colonists came from Spain and Italy. The main motive for emigration was the comparatively difficult economic situation there. In 1848, only 9% of the 100,000 European civilians in the country were French citizens. The majority of the French who came to Algeria were from the Mediterranean south of the country. By 1889, through immigration and naturalization, 220,000 of the 423,000 colonists were French. After the February Revolution of 1848, some 4,000 Parisian workers were deported to the colony. This practice was repeated several times by succeeding governments. Similarly, after the loss of Alsace-Lorraine in 1871, the French government set aside 100,000 hectares of land to settle 1,200 refugee families from the lost territories. In 1875, the territory was officially annexed as an integral part of France. The political disenfranchisement of the native population was codified in the Code de l'indigénat in the same year. Only European settlers were granted electoral and civil rights. The indigenous population was governed with the help of local tribal leaders.

The European colonization of the country led to the destruction of the previously existing rural and urban Muslim social structures. The artisans, who numbered around 100,000 before colonization, were largely destroyed by the opening of the Algerian market to France, so that in the course of colonization almost all consumer goods for daily use were imported from France. The associations of the craftsmen were more and more restricted by legislation of the colonial power, until they were finally banned altogether in 1868. The institutions of the pre-colonization religious education system, which was based on zawiyas and schools attached to mosques, fell into disrepair for lack of funding. The colonial state accelerated the decay by confiscating endowment land for these institutions. European settlers were significantly overrepresented in the colonial school system. The indigenous languages, Arabic and Berber, were taught little or not at all until 1936, when Arabic was again allowed as a foreign language. In 1944, only about 8% of native children of primary school age attended primary school. In 1954, 85% of the native population was illiterate, women about 95%. State-sponsored land purchases resulted in a massive redistribution of the most fertile lands from Muslim to European hands. By 1901, 45 percent of the land was owned by European settlers. Muslim peasants were thus subjected to pauperization, which eventually led to hundreds of thousands of Muslim agricultural laborers working in the colonists' fields for very low wages. Similarly, the food supply worsened, resulting in regular famines until the first half of the 20th century, with whole swathes of the country relying on emergency plant foods and carrion. Based on statistical back-calculations, it is believed that the country's native population fell from about 3 million in 1830 to 2.1 million in 1872 due to fighting, starvation, disease, or emigration.

In 1870, during the Franco-Prussian War, an uprising of 150,000 Berbers and Arabs occurred as part of the Mokrani Revolt, who saw the fight against the French as a religiously legitimized jihad. The uprising was put down by French troops. The social conflicts led to a traditional hatred of the Muslim population against the colonial rule. This led to latent hostility, often violent, between colonists and colonized within the country. This led to a social segregation in which the mountainous hinterland as well as the urban kasbahs were considered the Muslim domain and the fertile coastal areas the colonists' sphere of influence. The Third Republic, which emerged after the defeat of the French Empire in September 1870, elevated Algeria's hitherto economically marginalized small Jewish community to French citizenship, after the Empire had already taken steps to promote the assimilation of Algerian Jews into the colonial state. This is often seen as a compounding factor in the popular anger of the Mokrane revolt. Likewise, Jewish emancipation was met with rejection among many Algerian French due to fear of their own loss of privilege and anti-Semitism.

During World War I, 173,000 Arabs and Berbers served in the French army. 25,000 died and 57,000 were wounded. Likewise, several tens of thousands were brought to France as laborers. In all, more than a third of all Algerian men between the ages of 20 and 40 were in France during the war. Military and labor service led to an increased politicization of the local population. After the war, some benefits were granted to veterans, but far-reaching social reforms failed to materialize. During the World War, a localized guerrilla of deserters formed in the Aurès Mountains, comprising several thousand fighters. It was crushed by French colonial troops. During the first half of the twentieth century, there was further impoverishment of the rural population. The remaining indigenous land holdings became concentrated within a numerically very small stratum of native society. This led to a brisk labor migration of hundreds of thousands of Algerians to France and a mass exodus to the cities. There, in turn, the already existing social contrasts intensified. On average, a native had one eleventh of the income of a member of the middle class, which consisted of 92 % Europeans.

Beginning of Algerian nationalism

The 1920s and 1930s led to the formation of a specifically Algerian national consciousness among the elite cooperating with the French and among Muslim jurists. The Great Depression led to a surge of impoverishment and urbanization. Violent riots and a Jewish pogrom occurred in Algiers in 1933 and 1934. Attempts by local political elites to gain political concessions across organizations by creating the Congress of Algerian Muslims within the system failed due to rejection by the government of Léon Blum. In 1937, a famine occurred, further discrediting the legitimacy of French rule and the promises of economic development. This led to a massive influx of the newly founded Parti du peuple algérien under Messali Hadj. An assimilation of the population to a French identity hardly succeeded. Only a few thousand wanted French citizenship, which exempted them from Muslim Sharia law and thus isolated them from the Muslim social fabric. Only about two percent of the population changed their vernacular from Arabic or Berber to French. The party and its demand for national independence were suppressed by the French administration with police resources.

At the beginning of the Second World War in 1939, the mobilisation of the French armed forces also included the North African colonies. The army raised eight colonial divisions, each with about 75% of Muslims, the majority of whom came from Algeria. At the beginning of the war, the colonial government recorded few events against the mobilization and was sure of the loyalty of the Muslim population, as in the First World War. During the defeat of France in 1940, three North African divisions were deployed in Belgium. Some 12,000 Algerians became German prisoners of war. During the Second World War, discontent among the Algerian population continued to grow. The Vichy government intensified political repression. After the conquest of the territory in Operation Torch, Algeria came under the rule of the Forces françaises libres. US troops and the US administration's demand that the peoples' right to self-determination be upheld raised hopes of independence in the eyes of the population. In 1942-1943, in some regions, around 50% of conscripts did not show up for conscription. In Kabylia, the nationalist PPA succeeded in building up a political organization. In 1944, of 560,000 soldiers in the Free French army, 230,000 were Muslim North Africans. 129,920 of these were from Algeria. However, the Free French government drafted only about 1.2% of the Algerian population, while 14.2% of the Algerian French were drafted for military service. About 11,000 Muslim North Africans died during the war. The Free French government granted Muslim soldiers and officers equal pay with their French comrades in August 1943, but North African officers remained significantly limited, particularly in terms of their opportunities for advancement. In 1943, Algerian politician Ferhat Abbas called for an autonomous Algeria within a federation with France. The Free French government - directly confronted with the problem by the location of its headquarters in Algiers under Charles de Gaulle - implemented a hesitant reform program. A major point of the program was the naturalization of 65,000 Muslims as full French citizens, and fell short of Algerian expectations. However, it radicalized the settlers, who opposed any reform.

Victory celebrations were also held in Algeria in May 1945 to mark the end of the Second World War in Europe. Algerian nationalists used these celebrations to illegally carry Algerian national symbols, which was tolerated by the authorities in most regions of the country. However, in Sétif, the capital of the colony's Muslim life, a shooting occurred while attempting to take down the flags. This event is also known as the Sétif Massacre. This resulted in riots in the region, with large sections of the Muslim population indiscriminately attacking the European population. 102 Europeans lost their lives. In Guelma, the settlers' paramilitary militia then massacred one in four Muslim men of gun age, some 1500 people. The French military responded with a campaign of repression involving 10,000 soldiers. Again, thousands of Algerians fell victim to this - the exact numbers are unclear. In terms of security, the French authorities were again able to pacify the country, but the events created a political climate in which a large part of the Muslim population vehemently rejected French rule. In particular, the 136,000 Algerians returning home after the riots, who had fought on the Allied side in Europe, were motivated by this to join nationalist movements. In the aftermath of the violence and related political repression, the Algerian political spectrum constituted itself into two parties - the Movement for the Triumph of Democracy (Mouvement pour le triomphe des libertés démocratiques, abbreviated : MTLD), founded by Messali, and the Democratic Union of the Algerian Manifesto (Union Démocratique du Manifeste Algérien, abbreviated : UDMA), led by Ferhat Abbas. Both parties publicly professed non-violence and legality. However, in Messali's party, younger members insisted to the party leadership in May 1947 on the creation of an armed cell, the Organisation Spéciale (OS), which would specialize in armed action. The organisation comprised 1000 to 1500 members and was largely crushed by the French authorities by 1950. In 1947, the French authorities regulated democratic representation in Algeria in the Statute of Algeria. This involved the convening of a Legislative Assembly which, because of the division into a European-origin chamber and a native-origin chamber, gave the vote of a settler eight times the weight of an Algerian vote. During the election of the Assembly, massive electoral fraud and intimidation of political counter-candidates were committed under the auspices of Governor Marcel-Edmont Naegelen. As a result, a majority of 41 of the 60 seats in the indigenous chamber were held by state-sponsored individuals who did not belong to the nationalist party spectrum. The population felt unrepresented by these candidates, who were labeled as yes-men (beni oui-oui).

Egypt, a center of Algerian nationalist exiles along with neighboring countries, became a supporter of Algerian nationalists after Gamal Abdel Nasser came to power in 1952. The Egyptian government initially supported the nationalists through diplomacy as well as through radio broadcasts broadcast to North Africa, which were intended to spread pan-Arabism. However, the Egyptian leadership, like the governments of Morocco and Tunisia, subordinated its involvement in North Africa to its own diplomatic interests vis-à-vis France.

Establishment of the FLN

In the mid-1950s, numerous MTLD cadres split from the party and its leader Messali as the Front de Libération Nationale. The main motive for the split was Messali's distancing himself from the OS guerrillas after their crushing. This was seen by dissident OS veterans as an admission of his disinterest in the armed struggle, which they saw as the only promising path to independence. The FLN was founded in the summer of 1954 and claimed political supremacy and subordination to the armed struggle as a means of achieving independence from France. It saw itself as the only legitimate political representation of the non-European population and asserted this claim by force against more moderate political forces. The FLN publicly announced a socialist, democratic republic that also complied with Islamic principles as its future form of government. The FLN also committed itself to promoting unity among the North African states on the basis of their cultural similarity.

With the National Liberation Army (ALN), the organization created a guerrilla association that was to implement its goals militarily. The ALN divided the territory of Algeria into six districts (Wilayat) and established centralized underground fighters there. At the beginning of its existence in 1954, the ALN could count on only about one to two percent of the population as supporters and possible combatants. The units were correspondingly small, comprising only a few hundred armed men per district. Overall, the total number of FLN combatants at this time is estimated at between 900 and 3,000 men. From the beginning, the FLN was divided organizationally into an Inner Organization in Algeria itself and an Outer Organization operating abroad. The Outer Organization comprised the political leadership, which was the supreme authority of the organization vis-à-vis the military leadership in the country. Its headquarters were established in the Egyptian capital Cairo in 1954 with the approval of the Egyptian head of state Gamal Abdel Nasser. Nasser, as an anti-colonialist and pan-Arabist, was ideologically close to the goals of the FLN and hoped for an eventual role for Algeria in the pan-Arab state he promoted as a political goal.

The six members of the FLN's collective leadership before the start of the revolution they commanded on November 1, 1954; back row from left to right: Rabah Bitat, Mostefa Ben Boulaïd, Didouche Mourad, Mohammed Boudiaf; seated from left to right: Belkacem Krim, Larbi Ben M'Hidi.

Movies and TV shows

• Harkis, German title: Leila - Die Tochter des Harki, director: Alain Tasma, France 2006.
• Caché, German title: Caché, director: Michael Haneke, actors: Daniel Auteuil/Juliette Binoche, France/Austria/Germany/Italy 2005.
• Les Déracinés, Eng. title: Escape to Corsica, Director: Jacques Renard, TV film ARTE F, France 2001.
• La Guerre Sans Nom, Eng. title: The War Without a Name
• La Battaglia di Algeri, Eng. title: Battle for Algiers, directed by Gillo Pontecorvo, Italy/Algeria 1965.
• Lost Command, Eng. title: They Fear Neither Death Nor the Devil, Director: Mark Robson, USA 1966, Starring: Anthony Quinn.
• L'Ennemi intime, Eng. title: Intimate Enemies - Der Feind in den eigenen Reihen, directed by Florent Emilio Siri, France 2007.
• Avant l'oubli, Engl. title: The Sympathizer, directed by Augustin Burger, France 2005.
• The Red Hand (BRD 1960, Director: Kurt Meisel)
• Flucht aus der Hölle (Escape from Hell, GDR 1960, German Television DFF, Director: Hans-Erich Korbschmitt, 4 parts, first broadcast 11 October 1960, starring Armin Mueller-Stahl)
• Avoir 20 ans dans les Aurès, Eng. title: At 20 in the Aurès, Director: René Vautier, Tunisia/France 1972. (International Critics' Prize at Cannes 1972)
• Outside The Law, fr. title: Hors-la-loi, 2010, directed by Rachid Bouchareb, France | Algeria | Belgium | Tunisia | Italy.
• Marschier oder krepier (Marcia o crepa), BRD/I/E 1962, directed by Frank Wisbar, with Stewart Granger, Dietmar Schönherr and Peter Carsten.
• Documentaries about Si Mustapha-Müller, who set up and ran the repatriation service for foreign legionnaires during the Algerian war:
• Mustapha Müller, Deserter, directed by Lorenz Findeisen. The film was broadcast on Arte on 10 February 2018. The half-hour film is not available in public media libraries. A German version can be obtained from Lichblick Film in Cologne; a French version is available on youtube: Les oubliés de l'histoire: Winfried Muller dit Si Mustapha Muller.
• Si Mustapha-Müller - Short Time of Fame, directed by Erika Fehse. This film was awarded the German-French Journalism Prize in 1993 and broadcast by WDR and arte.