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Authors: Donny Gluckstein
Fighting on all Fronts (12 page)
8
According to US diplomat Kenneth Pendar, in
Adventure in Diplomacy: The emergence of General de Gaulle in North Africa
(London: Cassel, 1966), p83.
9
L’Echo d’Oran in September 1942, quoted in Annie Rey-Goldzeiguer,
Aux origines de la guerre d’Algérie. De Mers-el-Kébir aux massacres du Nord-Constantinois, 1940-1945
(Découverte, 2002), p101.
10
Claude Paillat, “L’Echiquier d’Alger (Tome 1)”
Avantage à Vichy: Juin 1940-Novembre 1942
(Paris: Laffont, 1966), p247ff.
11
François Kersaudy,
Churchill and de Gaulle
(London: Fontana Press, 1981), p141.
12
Charles de Gaulle,
Mémoires de Guerre
(Tome 1),
L’Appel: 1940-1942
(Paris: Plon, 1954), p164.
13
The British-French conflict over the Levant came to a head at the end of the war in Europe. At the same time it opened up a space for the development of anti-colonial movements. In May 1945 the French army bombed Damascus, killing hundreds in retaliation to a wave of anti-colonial demonstrations. However, they were not able to crush the movement and Syria and Lebanon gained their independence the following year.
14
Peter Schunck,
Charles de Gaulle: Ein Leben für Frankreichs Größe
(Berlin: Propyläen, 1998), p212.
15
Kersaudy, 1981, p211.
16
Barnett Singer,
Maxime Weygand: A Biography of the French General in Two World Wars
(Jefferson N C: McFarland, 2008). General Weygand had been appointed supreme commander in May 1940 and as such was involved in the Armistice negotiations with the German Wehrmacht. In October he was appointed Delegate-General to French Africa as Pétain’s personal representative. From July on he was at the same time governor-general in Algiers. He deported political prisoners to concentration camps in Algeria and the South of Morocco, which he had set up especially for that purpose. Weygand was one of the principal architects of the “National Revolution”.
17
Jews, concentrated in the cities, made up 3 percent of the total population. The Crémieux
Bill, passed in 1870, granted Jews full citizen rights, whereas Muslims continued to be categorised as “French subjects”. The bill was rescinded in October 1940. Vichy’s minister of justice later upheld that this step was necessary to “protect the French organism from the microbe which was inducing mortal anaemia” (quoted in Michel Abitbol,
Les Juifs d’Afrique du Nord sous Vichy
(Maisonneuve et Larose, 1983), p61.
18
Robert Murphy, quoted in Anthony Verrier,
Assassination in Algiers: Roosevelt, Churchill, de Gaulle and the Murder of Admiral Darlan
(New York, 1990), p109.
19
This interpretation of events is taken up for instance by Jean-Louis Crémieux-Brilhac in “Jeux et enjeux d’Alger”, in Jean-Pierre Azéma, François Bédarida (eds),
La France des années noires
(Tome 2)
De l’Occupation à la Libération
(Paris: Seuil, 2000), p205ff.
20
Verrier, 1990, p108, 118f.
21
Schunck, 1998, p214ff.
22
Verrier, 1990, p172.
23
Rey-Goldzeiguer, 2002, p140.
24
Quoted in Verrier, p167. In reality Pétain had nowhere along the line condoned Darlan’s course of action. The latter’s room for manoeuvre was, however, completely ruined after Hitler, on 11 November 1942, in reaction to Operation Torch, ordered the Wehrmacht to occupy the areas of France hitherto governed by Vichy.
25
Verrier, 1990, p26.
26
Quoted in Gabriel Kolko,
The Politics of War: The World and United States Foreign Policy: 1943-1945
(New York, Random House, 1990), p67f.
27
Pierre Ordioni,
Tout commence à Alger: 1940-1944
(Paris: Stock, 1972), p560.
28
Quoted in Kolko, 1990, p71.
29
Georges Elgozy,
La vérité sur mon Corps Franc d’Afrique
(Monaco: Rocher, 1985), p64.
30
Elgozy, 1985, p64.
31
Elgozy, 1985, p203.
32
Ordioni, 1971, p375. The Italian First Army capitulated one day later. Two hundred and fifty thousand soldiers of the Axis Powers were taken prisoner in Tunisia.
33
No more than the black troops of West Africa, who also played an important part in the fight to liberate France.
34
Charles-André Julien,
L’Afrique du Nord en marche. Algérie—Tunisie—Maroc, 1880-1952
(Omnibus, 2002), p99. This exceptional piece was first published in 1952, ie before the start of the armed liberation struggle in the Maghreb. Julien was in fact a moderate socialist, but quite open towards national liberation movements, which at the time were practically tabooed.
35
Ferhat Abbas, in the paper
L’Entente
, 23.2.1936, quoted in Julien, 2002, p100.
36
Julien, 2002, p101.
37
Ibid, p103f.
38
Ibid, p94.
39
Jules Michel’s circular letter, February 1933, quoted in Julien, 2002, p104f.
40
Julien, 2002, p106.
41
The only political forces to speak out against the banning of ENA were the Trotskyists, a dissident current around Marceau Pivert within the French Socialist Party (SFIO), and the Parti Frontiste around Gaston Bergery, who at the time took a mid-position between the SFIO and the PCF.
42
Rey-Goldzeiguer, 2002, p55. Aumale is about 125 km south west of Algiers.
43
Ibid, p55.
44
Ibid, p170.
45
Bachaga is the title of a higher Qa’id (“leader”). Boualam finally became an MP in the French National Assembly. His most famous work is
Mon pays, la France
(Paris: Editions France-Empire, 1962).
46
Rey-Goldzeiguer, 2002, p54.
47
Emmanuel Sivan,
Communisme et nationalisme en Algérie, 1920-1962
, (Paris: Les Presses de Sciences Po, 1976), p129ff.
48
Henri Alleg,
Mémoire algérienne
(Paris: Stock, 2005), p91.
49
Ben Khedda,
Les Origines du 1er novembre 1954
(Algier: Dahlab, 1989), p90.
50
For the full text see
texturesdutemps.hypotheses.org/1458
. See also Paul-Emile Sarrasin,
La crise algérienne
(Paris: Le Cerf, 1949), p176ff.
51
Christine Levisse-Touzé,
L’Afrique du Nord: recours ou secours? Septembre 1939-Juin 1943
(Thesis) (Paris-I Sorbonne, 1991), p892; also in Jacques Marseille, “L’Empire”, in: Azéma, Bédarida, p298.
52
Charles-Robert Ageron, “Les troubles du Nord-Constantinois en mai 1945: une tentative insurrectionnelle?”; in Charles-Robert Ageron,
Genèse de l’Algérie algérienne
(Paris: Bouchène, Paris, 2005), p471.
53
Ferhat Abbas,
Guerre et révolution, I: La nuit coloniale
(Paris: Julliard, 1962), p152.
54
Report by Captain Fraisse, SHAT, 1H2887, quoted in Rey-Goldzeiguer, 2002, p242.
55
As a result the war of independence 1954-62, from the onset, involved very few Europeans. Instead it was fascist organisations which benefited as the conflict intensified, pouring yet more oil onto the flames so as to completely alienate the Europeans from the Muslims. By 1962 hate and mistrust had reached such dimensions that practically the whole European population fled Algeria out of their fear of independence.
56
M’hammed Yousfi,
L’Algérie en marche
(Tome 1) (Paris: Almarifa, 1983), p30.
57
Ibid, p40.
58
Rey-Goldzeiguer, 2002, p193f.
59
Mohammed Harbi,
Le FLN, mirage et réalité
(Paris: Jeunes Afrique, 1980), p28ff.
60
Quoted by Rey-Goldzeiguer, 2002, p238.
61
For a review of the diverging views on the circumstances of Messali’s arrest see Roger Benmebarek, “De Gaulle et les événements du Constantinois du 8 mai 1945”, at
www.clan-r.org/portail/IMG/pdf/De_gaulle_et_le_8_mai_1945.pdf
62
Quoted by Rey-Goldzeiguer, 2002, p251.
63
Rapport Essplass, in Henri Alleg,
La guerre d’Algérie
(Tome 2) (Paris: Temps actuels, 1981), p265f.
64
See investigation report 22 May 1945, quoted in Rey-Goldzeiguer, 2002, p284.
65
Edward Behr,
The Algerian Problem
(Penguin, 1961).
Ireland: They called it ‘The Emergency’
Kieran Allen
The former provost of Trinity College, FSL Lyons, once compared the population of Ireland during the Second World War to those “condemned to live in Plato’s cave, with their backs to the fire of life and deriving their only knowledge of what went on outside from the flickering shadows thrown on the wall”.
1
It was a condescending remark that stuck for decades afterwards. Writers like Max Hastings who extolled Britain’s war effort also took up the theme of an isolated and misguided people. He complained that “many lives and much tonnage were lost in consequence of the fanatical loathing of the Irish Prime Minister Eamon de Valera for his British neighbours”.
2
This charge echoed that of Winston Churchill who contrasted de Valera’s stab in the back with the manner in which Northern Ireland “made good in blood its pledge to stand by Britain”.
3
To this day Irish neutrality is a significant obstacle to those who want the country to join in imperialist campaigns, often fought under the guise of “humanitarian interventions”. The former German chancellor has described it as an “irrational policy”
4
while many home-grown opponents denounce it as a “sacred cow” in need of slaughter.
5
Yet despite the denunciations, 78 percent of people in a recent poll continue to support a policy of Irish neutrality.
6
The concept of Irish neutrality was first mooted during the First World War when James Connolly, the famous Irish socialist, constructed a broad front to oppose Irish support for Britain’s war effort.
7
The leader of the Home Rule Party, John Redmond, supported Britain’s war effort and urged members of the Irish Volunteer movement to enlist. In return for this support Redmond claimed that he had been promised an Irish parliament once the war was over. Connolly, however, rejected this argument and set up an Irish Neutrality League alongside more militant republicans. The impetus for the alliance came from the threat of conscription, but so big was the scale of popular opposition that the British authorities deferred it.
When the Second World War was declared on 1 September 1939, it was only 17 years since the Irish Free State had gained independence. In the previous two years the country had been subjected to a bitter colonial war, spearheaded by British auxiliary forces, colloquially known as the Black and Tans. These were the brainchild of Winston Churchill and were recruited from the ranks of demobbed soldiers for “a rough and dangerous task” of putting down the Irish Republic Army (IRA). Their brutality became legendary as they sacked and burnt towns such as Tuam, Trim, Balbriggan and Cork as collective reprisals for IRA activity. This recent memory meant that few people had any illusions about Churchill’s role in fighting for the freedom of small nations.
Nor did the recent “economic war” endear the Irish population to Britain’s pretensions as a freedom loving nation. In 1932 the Fianna Fail party had been elected to power on a militant programme of breaking from Ireland’s neocolonial relationship with its former master and undoing a humiliating treaty that had ended the War of Independence in 1922. De Valera, the leader of the party, claimed that the country had become “an out garden of Britain” essentially supplying agricultural produce to feed its industries.
8
He tore up aspects of the original Anglo-Irish Treaty by appointing one of his own supporters to the office of governor-general and by refusing to pay land purchase annuities—which amounted to one eighth of his state’s budget—to the British Exchequer. Britain responded by launching an “economic war” on the new republican government, imposing punitive tariffs on Irish imports. This effort at destabilisation failed and in 1938 Britain not only withdrew its demand for annuity payments (in return for a once-off down payment) but also handed back three main “Treaty ports” to the Irish authorities.
This then was the background for Fianna Fail’s assertion of Irish independence from its old empire. Three main considerations lay behind the adoption of a neutrality policy.
The first and most frequently cited reason was the partition that had been imposed on Ireland as part of the Anglo-Irish treaty. Fianna Fail, and the population more generally, regarded the division of Ireland as a historic wrong. Their sympathies lay with the nationalist population in the North whom they regarded as being oppressed by the Unionist party and the Orange Order. Military support for a colonial power that had imposed partition was, therefore, unthinkable. Inside Fianna Fail there were those who wanted to peddle the nostrum that “England’s difficulty is Ireland’s opportunity”. At the first Fianna Fail conference after the outbreak of the war there were calls from delegates to employ force to
take back the six counties under British rule. The Fianna Fail minister and former IRA leader Frank Aiken was demoted because, it was suggested, he believed “that the army should be ready to march into Ulster at any time”.
9
The salience of the partition issue grew when a proposal to introduce conscription into Northern Ireland was mooted by James Craig, the Unionist prime minister of the province in April 1939. Craig, also known as Lord Craigavon, was an arch imperialist who secretly called on Churchill to overrun the South with soldiers drawn from Scottish regiments.
10
His motivation in calling for the conscription was to demonstrate how loyal and staunch little Ulster was. Nationalists, however, regarded conscription as a crime because it meant forcing those who disagreed with empire to fight for it. Memories of the 1918 mass movement against conscription were also still fresh in the collective memory. Therefore when Craig declared his intention to extend national service to the North, there was an explosion of anger on both sides of the border.