Is it true that France nearly won militarily in Algeria....

[BeBMan]

....but lost "politically" mainly due to lack of support at the "home front"?

[Drake Tungsten]

Yes.

[Arrian]

War IS political, though.

Algeria... Vietnam... Afganistan (Soviets, maybe us too)...

Killing lots of enemies =! winning the war.

-Arrian

[Drake Tungsten]

I'm not saying we actually won. I'm just saying we lost for political reasons.

[Arrian]

I wasn't really taking issue with what you said. More with this:

Is it true that France nearly won militarily in Algeria.... Avatar Enlargement: We've got the solution


....but lost "politically"

And, more generally, to the notion that you can separate the two. I've seen it a lot lately. Oh, we really won in Vietnam, because we killed lotsa VC/NVA, but the damned press/hippies/etc screwed us.

-Arrian

[Ekmek]

IIRC the military almost pulled a coup d'etat on De Gaulle for backing out. The military kind of went rogue and created the OAS. They basically won, but at a huge cost not just militarily but morally. Writings like Trinquier showed that the military really went down a dark hole and was doing bad stuff, stuff that makes abu ghraib sound acceptable. A good fictional account is the book The Centurions by Jean Larteguy

I'm not going to ruin the story but essentailly after dien bien phu a few french officers are determined to restore the reputation of the french army after the losses in 1940 and 1954. So they are determined to win in Algeria at any cost.

[Patroklos]

They basically won, but at a huge cost not just militarily but morally. Writings like Trinquier showed that the military really went down a dark hole and was doing bad stuff, stuff that makes abu ghraib sound acceptable.

You mean they did what was required to stamp out a murderous insurgency? SHOCK

[Ekmek]

I wouldn't say its "required"

Insurgency come it a lot of varieties. i'll be the first to admit that you'll need some dark elements but its a fine line. At some point being heavy handed against rebels makes your own undoing..i.e, The Turks and Armenian Genocide, effective but its been a cloud ever since. or the russian in afghanistan, making bombs designed to kill kids (the next generation of terrorists). Sometimes the "dark hole" goes to far and cuts not only your troops support, but the nation's, and your allies. So its a tricky game at best.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by E
or the russian in afghanistan, making bombs designed to kill kids (the next generation of terrorists).

That's a myth.

Also, there were two Algerian insurrections, the 2nd a few ears after the failure of the first. The French won the first, lost the 2nd handily.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten
I'm not saying we actually won. I'm just saying we lost for political reasons.

All wars are lost for political reasons then. Even the most total military defeat requires th other side to give up. Look at the enormity of the Ba'athist defeat in Iraq, and yet, they refuse to quit.

[BeBMan]

Originally posted by Arrian
War IS political, though.

Agreed, teh Clausewitz

I wrote "politically" though, just to indicate that it wasn't primarily a military loss as a result of being thrown out of Algeria by insurgents or so.

[DAVOUT]

I was in Algeria from january 1961 to september 1962 at the headquarter of the army corps in charge of the barrage built between Tunisia and Algeria. The military situation was totally under control, which is not strange considering that 500 000 soldiers were spread all over the country and only a few elite units doing operations in the field when needed, which became not frequent in those times.
Therefore, unless we were decided to keep half a million men in Algeria for the years to come, a political issue must be found.