In July 1962, Algeria officially declared its independence. After years of bloody struggle, the Algerian military and civilians defeated France, a military power armed to the teeth, and wrote a glorious page in the history of the African people's resistance to aggression.
A survey of the entire history of the Algerian War of Independence shows that the Algerian and French wars were typical of the victory of the weak over the strong. Although the French army gradually increased its strength, the maximum strength was for President de Gaulle to come to power, and 800,000 French troops were invested in the war in Algeria. But France did not defeat Algeria. On the contrary, the resistance of algerian soldiers and civilians cost the French army a huge price of more than 100,000 casualties, allowing the French Republic to carry out a difficult transformation of the old colonial empire into a post-World War II non-colonial European country.
Why, then, did de Gaulle, who had invested 800,000 French troops in North Africa to fight, fail to defeat Algeria?
Above_ Algeria At the Label Office
First, Algeria's own mountainous terrain is suitable for Algerian soldiers and civilians to adopt guerrilla warfare and repeated maneuvers by the French army.
Weak countries rely on guerrilla warfare to defeat military powers, and the complex terrain of their own countries is a very important reason for weak countries to defeat strong countries. What does algeria's terrain look like? Algeria has the Taylor Atlas Mountains, the Sahara Atlas Mountains, and the plateau between the two mountains, such terrain is very suitable for mountain guerrilla warfare. Armies from Afghanistan, Yugoslavia and other countries defeated the British and Soviet armies, as well as the Nazi Germans, in mountain guerrilla warfare.
Guerrilla warfare in Algeria took a powerful toll on the French. This can be explained by the forced displacement of algerians by the French army: in the late 1950s, the French army moved millions of Algerian civilians from the mountains into civilian areas to prevent civilian support in the mountains to support the Algerian National Liberation Forces in the mountains.
Charles André Joseph Mari de Gaulle (22 November 1890 – 9 November 1970), founder of the French Fifth Republic
Secondly, the brutal atrocities committed by the French army in Algeria provoked a raging fire of resistance against aggression by the Algerian military and civilians.
As an established colonial empire, France had vast colonies in North Africa and Southeast Asia. During World War II, when the German army occupied all of France, the leader of Free France, de Gaulle, relied on the North African colonies as a springboard to form an army to recover the homeland. Coupled with the fact that there were many Algerians fighting in the French army during World War II, this made the French authorities extremely important to the North African colonies. When the Algerian people rebelled against colonial rule, the French army resorted to cruel measures to suppress the resistance of the Algerian military and civilians, and the French army even committed war atrocities in violation of international law.
There is little historical information about french atrocities in Algeria, but the French authorities have publicly mentioned the tip of the iceberg of French atrocities in Algeria. A French leader has said that an Algerian named Odin, a mathematician, was arrested by the French army during algeria's war against French colonial rule, tortured to the extreme, and disappeared in 1957 (most likely killed or tortured to death by the French army).
The French leader said that his (Odin's) disappearance was caused by france's torture system, and France has the right to arrest anyone in order to crack down anti-French people. ”
In the Algerian War of Democratic Liberation, France carried out a bloody crackdown
To be able to acknowledge the atrocities of the Algerian war is the progress of the French leadership. As can be seen from the description of the French leader, the French army committed a series of war crimes in Algeria that violated international law. When the French army fought in Algeria, World War II war criminals had been sent to the gallows by the anti-fascist allies, and crimes against international law had been tried by history. However, in the war of colonial aggression of small countries against the great powers after the war, the military powers, including France and the United States, committed war crimes committed by the Axis powers during World War II, and wrote a tragic page in human history.
According to historical information that has been made public, in order to suppress the resistance movement of the Algerian people, the French army, in addition to the means of eliminating the resistance forces by military combat, also used means such as torture on prisoners to obtain information. For example, the French army would make the captives beat each other, force the captives to watch the relatives of the captives be forcibly tortured by the French, and the French invented a punishment called "telephone call", that is, repeatedly hitting the victim's ear. Many civilians, including women and children, were brutally murdered by the French army.
From the perspective of the French authorities, the massacre and torture of the French army can effectively "intimidate" the resistance of the Algerian people. But the French did not know that after World War II, it was the general trend to resist the colonization for independence, and the atrocities and massacres of the French army could only arouse the fighting spirit of more Algerian people to resist.
Above_ Ben-Bela (see portrait) led the Nationalist movement in Algeria
Third, Algerian leaders Benbella, Boumedin and other leaders are outstanding leaders of guerrilla warfare.
First, the Algerian guerrilla Army, the National Liberation Army, used extremely flexible tactics to confuse the French.
The Algerian National Liberation Army's first battle against the French was a classic: in November 1954, a guerrilla force of 3,000 to 4,000 men suddenly attacked French police stations, garrison barracks, factories and posts in Algeria at the same time. The offensive fired the first shots of the Algerian War of Independence. After the algerian national liberation army operation began, the French army sent 50,000 troops from the mainland into Algeria to participate in the war, but the flexible guerrilla warfare of the Algerian National Liberation Army gave the French army a lot of headaches.
Above_ Algerian National Liberation War Old photo
Specifically from a tactical point of view, the National Liberation Army divided the country into 6 military regions, each of which was divided into military sub-districts, lots and villages, and carried out guerrilla operations in light of the actual local conditions, inflicting heavy casualties on the French army. The French army adopted a dragnet tactic to sweep the National Liberation Army, and the National Liberation Army seized the weakness of the French army's insufficient strength to attack the French weakly defended rear station, which gave the French army a great headache.
Moreover, in specific operations, the Algerian National Liberation Army (ALM) has made the transition from a guerrilla to a regular army, and its army has formed a regiment-battalion-company-platoon-squad combat structure in accordance with the regular unit structure, referring to the combat effectiveness of the troops.
Second, enlist international support.
At that time, Algeria received more than 70 million yuan of arms, cash and other kinds of assistance from China. Algeria has not yet formally become independent, and China has established diplomatic relations with the Algerian Provisional Government.
Above_ China supports commemorative stamps of the Algerian National Liberation Struggle
Fourth, the Algerian National Liberation Army recruited Algerian veterans who had participated in the French Army in World War II to fight in the People's Liberation Army, these veterans were familiar with the French army, so that the Algerian National Liberation Army carried out combat operations against the tactical characteristics of the French army and improved the operational efficiency of the National Liberation Army.
After continuous combat, by 1956, the Algerian National Liberation Army had become a powerful military force of 15,000 regular troops and 100,000 militias, and the French army had failed to eliminate the resistance of the Algerian National Liberation Army through a series of methods such as aircraft bombing, torture, and massacre of civilians. By 1960, de Gaulle had increased his French army in Algeria to 800,000 men, but the operations of 800,000 French troops were of no help to the resistance of the Algerian military and civilians.
Under the stubborn resistance of the Algerian people, de Gaulle finally decided to get rid of the "historical baggage" of the French colonial empire and conform to the reality of Algerian independence. In the spring of 1962, the Algerian Government and the French authorities signed the Evian Agreement. By July 1962, Algeria was officially independent.
Author: Military Handsome Guy Correction/Editor: Lilith
Resources:
[1] "The French President Recognizes French Military Atrocities in Algeria and Reflects on french Colonial History", Global Times, 2018
[2] History of Algeria, Fagabriel Eske People's Publishing House, 1974
[3] Algeria, Huang Hui, Social Sciences Literature Publishing House
The text was created by the History University Hall team, and the picture originated from the Internet and the copyright belongs to the original author