Jean Baillard
French Consul General

There is nobody in Algeria to take what you call independence. It would become a mess.

Upon coming to power in France in early 1956, Socialist Premier Guy Mollet took major steps to quell the Muslim rebellion against French rule in Algeria. Half a million troops were sent to crush the forces of the National Liberation Front (FLN), whose guerrillas were threatening to overrun the colonial cites, home to Algeria's sizable European settler population. To isolate the FLN and its area of operations, Tunisia and Morocco were granted independence and their borders with Algeria were militarized with barbed wire and electric fencing. When FLN leaders attempted to travel to Tunisia in October to discuss the Algerian War, French forces diverted their plane and jailed the men. Then, just over a week later, France joined Britain and Israel in invading Egypt. In addition to barring French ships from the Suez Canal, France suspected Egypt of aiding the Algerian rebels. In December, the Egyptian adventure, which had severely depleted the French budget, ended in diplomatic failure, and the FLN launched a new campaign of terrorism in the colonial capital of Algiers. General Jacques Massu, head of France's crack parachute unit, was given extraordinary powers to act in the city, and through torture and assassination, the FLN presence in Algiers was destroyed. By the end of 1957, the rebels had been pushed back into rural areas, and it seemed the tide had turned in the Algerian War. However, in May 1958, a new crisis began when European Algerians launched massive demonstrations calling for the integration of Algeria with France and for the return of Charles De Gaulle to power. Four years later, President De Gaulle would oversee the granting of independence to Algeria. Over 100,000 Muslim and 10,000 French soldiers were killed in the seven-year Algeria War, along with thousands of Muslim civilians and scores of European colonists.