A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962 (72 page)

Colonels in revolt

In October 1959 the only surviving
maréchal de France
, the
pied noir
Alphonse Juin, pungently criticised de Gaulle’s Algerian policy in
L’Aurore
and was reprimanded for meddling in politics. The attack, however, was symptomatic of the tense disaffection within the army which had mounted rapidly since de Gaulle’s speech of 16 September, especially among the élite para units that had borne so much of the brunt of the recent fighting under the Challe offensive. 1960, says Captain Sergent of the 1st R.E.P., was to be “the year of divorce”. To understand what to other Western minds may seem incomprehensible and shocking, the disaffection within the French army which was to culminate in full-scale revolt in less than eighteen months’ time, one needs to consider the stresses imposed by French history beyond merely the unbroken chain of humiliation that stretched from 1940 up to the Algerian war. Since the execution of Louis XVI in 1793, the French army had been subject to the First Republic, the Directory, the Consulate, the First Empire, the First and Second Restorations, the “Bourgeois Monarchy” of Louis-Philippe, the Second Republic, the Second Empire, the Commune, the Third Republic, Pétain’s Vichy and de Gaulle’s Free French Committee, the Fourth Republic, and now the Fifth Republic. Each change of regime had contributed fresh divisions within the army, and added new confusion as to where loyalties were ultimately due—a compound of experience shared by no other army in the world (outside, perhaps, Latin America). By the autumn of 1959 the Brombergers likened the situation in Algiers to “Three furnaces, one within the other, a sort of Japanese cabinet—a series of boxes enclosed inside each other—but they were metallic boxes heated red hot…three high temperatures working on each other.” At the heart of the army furnace were three colonels in positions of power close to General Massu, who was one of the very few senior officers not to be transferred from Algeria in de Gaulle’s 1958 “purge” but who had been promoted and placed in command of the corps controlling the whole Algiers sector. There was Antoine Argoud, Massu’s chief-of-staff; Jean Gardes, who had succeeded Colonel Yves Godard as head of the Cinquième Bureau; and, more prudently keeping to the background, Godard himself, Massu’s right-hand during the Battle of Algiers, and now chief of security.

Small and nervy, a superb horseman and
polytechnicien
, Argoud at forty-two had been the youngest colonel in the service when singled out to be on his staff by Marshal de Lattre, the Inspector-General of the army. He was also regarded by many as being the army’s finest intellect, one of its foremost strategic thinkers, and if there was a general criticism among his peers of this secretive, ascetic and fanatical personality, it would have been that he was “too clever by half”. The late General André Beaufre, with whom Argoud served on de Lattre’s staff, claimed that there was a flaw in his brilliance: “He could never see things objectively. Once, when asked by de Lattre to draft a brief, he produced something quite brilliant, but totally different from what de Lattre wanted. He was just expounding his own ideas.” Sometimes Argoud would set out deliberately to affront the orthodoxy of his superiors, with such a display of independence as wearing bright yellow-ochre shoes with uniform. Like the colonels from the Indo-China school (though, in fact, he was one of the few never to have been through it), Argoud was an expert on subversive warfare but perhaps prepared to go farther in ruthlessness than most. During the Battle of Algiers, Argoud had achieved notoriety by his harsh measures in pacifying L’Arba, just outside the capital. These had included public executions, and breaking the general strike by firing tank cannon at point-blank range into the shuttered shops. Sent back to France, he returned to become Massu’s chief-of-staff only in the autumn of 1959. An outspoken critic of de Gaulle’s policy, Argoud soon came to exert a powerful influence over his boss, Massu. Through Argoud, Gardes and Godard, Massu maintained close contact with Ortiz and his movement, feeling that he had them under his control; but perhaps the boot was on the other foot.

The slender St Cyrien, Jean Gardes, was—though he may not have looked it—every bit as dedicated as Argoud, and almost as militant as Ortiz. The only son of a Parisian heroine of the Resistance, who had run a cell through her well-known Restaurant des Ministères on the Rue du Bac, Gardes himself had won no less than twenty-four citations for bravery and been severely wounded with the Tirailleurs Marocains in Italy. From Indo-China he had derived lessons and expertise similar to that of his colleagues, as well as serving as Salan’s Press officer; all of which usefully supplemented what he had learned of underground warfare through his mother’s experiences. Posted to Morocco with the Deuxième Bureau, it was Gardes whose information had sparked off the hijacking of Ben Bella in 1956. Regarding himself an expert on Muslim affairs, he had a mystical attachment to the ideal of integration; he desired the Muslims to have genuine equality with the
pieds noirs
. Immediately on hearing de Gaulle’s pronouncement of 16 September, Gardes made up his own mind to fight “self-determination” by every means—including open revolt. Through being in charge of the Cinquième Bureau, with its potent functions of propaganda and psychological warfare, Gardes had a powerful weapon and he now used it unhesitatingly to further the cause of
francisation
—regardless of the objurgations of Delouvrier. Already on 18 September Gardes had taken up contacts with Susini and Dr Pérez, and from then on the F.N.F. leaders became weekly visitors to army headquarters in the Quartier Rignot. Gardes impressed upon them the need to co-ordinate activities between the army and themselves, and encouraged them, exaggeratedly, to believe that they could expect full backing from the paras—if not the whole army. It was Gardes who shared considerable responsibility for uniting all the various “ultra” factions and their para-military ancillaries under the F.N.F. of Ortiz, and between them they agreed that, if there was to be a revolt, it should take place under the guise of a “spontaneous demonstration”, as had happened on 13 May 1958.

It remained for de Gaulle to help them by providing a suitable
casus belli
, or detonator to explode the critical mass.

Delouvrier’s isolation

By not concealing his own lack of enthusiasm for “self-determination”, General Challe had more or less given tacit support for Gardes’ Cinquième Bureau to put its weight behind the option of Francisation. But with his thoughts eternally concentrated on the offensive still continuing out in the
bled
, Challe seems to have been largely unaware of the extent to which his colonels were becoming committed to Ortiz and his fellow-hotheads in Algiers. Meanwhile, as the year went on the position of Delegate-General Paul Delouvrier was growing more and more unsatisfactory. When it came to advancing the Constantine Plan, the financial expertise of the technocrat was unexcelled. But there were so many other aspects of the job where Delouvrier felt frankly out of his depth; and he received distressingly little guidance or support from de Gaulle. When, under pressure from Sérigny, Delouvrier had begged de Gaulle to go slower on his clemency measures for convicted terrorists, he had received a disagreeable dressing-down for his troubles. On more than one occasion since 16 September Delouvrier had tried to press de Gaulle to reveal which of the three options he preferred, and what he expected the role of the army to be in fulfilling it. But each time de Gaulle had either changed the subject, or been maddeningly evasive. Finally, a few days before the end of the year, Delouvrier on one of his fortnightly visits to Paris had attempted to draw out de Gaulle by warning him that the army might not obey. “But they will, Delouvrier,” de Gaulle replied impatiently, “the military will obey. When a soldier gets mixed up in politics he only commits stupidities [
conneries
]. Look at Dreyfus. Their job is to fight on the ground.”

With the
pieds noirs
, as well as the army, Delouvrier was neither popular nor unpopular; in general he was regarded simply as a
fonctionnaire
, a mouthpiece with no real power of his own. His isolation was increasing with every day. When he tried to warn Massu of the activities of his colonels, Massu turned a deaf ear, and he concluded that the general was now virtually their prisoner. At one meeting an angry Colonel Argoud had adopted a positively insulting tone in addressing the Delegate-General:

You are giving us a lecture worthy of a political science professor and not that of the person responsible for the government in Algeria. Your arguments referring to world opinion…are those of a professor of history, of an intellectual. It’s all very moving, but in no way does it correspond with reality. You’re not in contact with the population as we are.

By the end of 1959, as Yves Courrière remarks: “Challe had confidence in Massu, who had confidence in Argoud, who had confidence in Ortiz. Delouvrier was perhaps the only one to have confidence in no one at all!” Moreover, he was not well. An old automobile injury had left him with a badly knitted femur and Delouvrier had had to have it re-set. By the second week in January he had just returned from convalescing in the desert but was still on crutches.

Delouvrier found his relations particularly strained with General Massu. As a result of de Gaulle’s clemency measures, which enraged Massu as being too dangerously liberal (he would have preferred summary military justice, including the retention of capital punishment for acts of terrorism), the two men were barely on speaking terms any longer. Massu’s actual power was immense, and his potential, had he chosen to use it, even greater. He was super-prefect of Algiers city; and his command, the most important in Algeria, extended southwards to the edge of the Sahara and eastwards to Kabylia, while his role in the Battle of Algiers and, later, in May 1958, made him still the darling of the
pieds noirs
. Despite occasional growls, Massu had remained the immaculate Gaullist—which was why he alone, as one of the few generals de Gaulle knew he could trust implicitly, had kept his post in Algeria; otherwise, he was as distrustful of politics and politicians as ever. Even Massu’s loyalty, however, had been sorely tested by the “self-determination” pronouncement, and he was never one to keep his feelings to himself. Massu claimed that he was “the lid on the Algiers cauldron”, though, as one of his senior colleagues remarked at the time, it looked as if it might easily all blow up in his face. Massu was confident that he could contain the pressure exerted by the simmering “ultras”. He even felt that Lagaillarde was sufficiently in his pocket for him to invite the fiery young deputy to join him at a Beethoven concert on 13 January, although Delouvrier had warned him, in prophetic terms: “General, you think you control these people, but watch out. The day will come when they will declare to you: ‘We are at the mercy of our troops; we have to march, will you march with us?’ ”

The “bombe Massu”

Because of the intriguing of his colonels, Argoud and Gardes, on whom he most depended, and because of his own political naïveté, Massu was in fact being duped, and his mood of disenchantment was skilfully exploited by Ortiz and his associates. This disenchantment reached a peak in mid-January when Massu received word that one of his officers during the Battle of Algiers, Lieutenant Charbonnier, currently in hospital recovering from wounds had been summoned to appear before a civil judge on grounds of implication in the Audin affair. What he held to be an affront against military honour (and for which he held de Gaulle personally responsible) threw Massu into a violent rage lasting several days.

Just at this time Massu received in his office a West German correspondent, Hans Ulrich Kempski, of the Munich
Süddeutsche Zeitung
. The event in itself was an exception because Massu disliked and distrusted journalists hardly less than politicians. At first he had refused categorically to see Kempski, but Challe pressed him, noting that he had already himself granted an interview to Kempski, who had come fortified with a strong recommendation from the French Embassy in Bonn. Kempski, one of the most skilful of German journalists, dispelled Massu’s reservations by revealing that he too had been a paratrooper, dropped in Crete in the Second World War. Speaking as one professional to another, Kempski soon had Massu letting his hair down in the most unrestrained manner. When asked what the army’s principal concern was, Massu, according to Kempski, replied: “That the government should help us to see the future clearly, in order that we can succeed in maintaining
Algérie française
.” From there on Massu waxed warmer and warmer in his criticism of de Gaulle: “We no longer understand the policy of President de Gaulle. The army could not have anticipated that he would adopt such a policy…. Our greatest disillusion has been to see General de Gaulle become a man of the Left.” When the German pointed out that “It was, after all, you and your friends who brought him back to power,” Massu replied bitterly: “De Gaulle was the only man available. Perhaps the army made a mistake.” Finally, when asked whether the army would obey, Massu was quoted as declaring: “Myself, and the majority of officers in a position of command, will not execute unconditionally the orders of the Head of State.”

Massu had plunged headlong into an elephant-trap, baited as much by the “ultras” as by Kempski. Far from being the “lid”, he himself provided that extra head of steam to blow up the whole cauldron. Kempski’s scoop was published with maximum prominence on 18 January. At that time the French Press was still preoccupied with news of the new “heavy” franc which had been launched on 1 January to replace the old franc at a ratio of one to 100, by the Jaccoud murder trial in Geneva, by the tragic death of Albert Camus, killed in a car accident, and by the appalling disaster on the Riviera where, on 3 December, the Fréjus dam had burst, killing over 300 people and causing milliards of francs’ worth of damage. But the
bombe Massu
swept all else aside almost as devastatingly as the flood waters at Fréjus. Massu denied the words attributed to him and claimed (rather diminishing his own case) that, in any event, the interview had been off the record. But it was too late. France was staggered; it was unbelievable that such damning criticism should have come from the faithful
grognard
, Massu, of all people. According to the military aide at the Elysée, General Grout de Beaufort, at seven o’clock that morning he was in the middle of shaving when de Gaulle, in a towering rage, telephoned to announce that he had been “insulted” by Massu and that he should be relieved of his command forthwith. De Gaulle brushed aside de Beaufort’s intercession that Massu should first be allowed to offer his own explanation, and the offending general was recalled to Paris. Summoned to de Gaulle, a wrathful and stupefied Massu, who had no thought then of retirement, was told imperiously: “I’m keeping you; I ask you not to leave the army. I’m going to give you a good post!” Eventually, after a prolonged period on ice, Massu was sent to command the garrison of the dreary city of Metz—hardly a blue-chip job for a fighting soldier of his calibre, and a little reminiscent of Salan’s earlier relegation as Governor of Paris. But he regained his composure, and his loyalty to de Gaulle, to remain, in essence, “
toujours con…et toujours Gaulliste
”.