“Never did the Empire look so good as when it was seen from the Republic, it was said of Napoleon III’s regime in the early years of the Third Republic. With slight modification, the statement might also stand for the French vision of Indochina and Algeria right after World War II.” 

                Torture was applied by the French Army during the guerrilla insurgency in Algeria from 1954-1962. It became a contentious feature of the war. In time, excesses attracted criticism.  France warred against an implacable foe, the Front de Liberation Nationale (FLN). The FLN is used in its wider sense as other nationalist movements also participated in their hostilities against the French.

Their avowed aims were similar. They had as their purpose to rid Algeria of the French. The nationalists sought independence and their atrocities against the French Army, the pied-noirs (French settlers), rival nationalist groups and the harkis (native collaborators) assumed a vicious cycle of insurgent terrorism, torture and reprisal against each other. French archives now witness that era. (2) France once adopted a form of official amnesia towards a conflict they only accepted as a war in 1999. Those reasons also related to a past amnesty for “war crimes.” Despite old sensitivities, the government has now shown more maturity as it has been forced to acknowledge that torture was a compelling function of military policy in Algeria.  

An historical perspective

From the first terrorist act, in late 1954, the campaign exponentially escalated from 1954-1962. There was little equivocation between the two major protagonists, the French Army and the FLN. France was determined to retain Algeria. In reaction, the FLN spear-headed commensurate violence, by remorseless atrocities, against its colonial power. Torture was used to elicit intelligence to counter further terrorist acts and to fold up militant cells. The use of torture was counter-productive. It radicalised many Algerians to support the insurgency. The hatred created by arbitrary arrests and the widespread use of torture against the rebels and suspected sympathizers was a determining factor. (3)  As the Le Monde journalist Jean Lacouture later recalled, France had won militarily but lost politically. (4) In France, the unleashed savagery incurred moral revulsion. Torture was seen as a problem and not a solution, despite the short tactical victories. The Army could not apply military solutions to what was an inherently political problem. 

            The latent point for unrest was the massacre at Setif in 1945. The Setif uprising broke out in colonial Algeria on VE-Day, 8 May 1945. Algerian nationalists may have lost the battle in May, 1945, but, thanks to colonial authority’s failings, they were already winning the war. (5)  France had colonized Algeria since 1830. It was time.   

Torture and the psychology of defeat

Having been defeated at Dien Bien Phu, in 1954, with the loss of French Indo China, these events emboldened the Algerian resistance against France. They bore with themselves, in addition, the emotional baggage of Indochina and the orders of their government.  (6) Kelly makes a well-founded case.  

Was France free to torture its Algerian subjects in order to suppress their quest for independence? In Paris, those nationalist yearnings were seen as a threat to the Republic. France had reclaimed the agency of power. In desperation, France wanted to recreate the idea of Empire. It was an image the Algerians sought to deny.   

Torture and law in warfare

            “Laws are silent in time of war” (From a Latin phrase attributed to Cicero).

What then, is torture? Pursuant to international law, “torture” is defined as: Any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him (sic) or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected as having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or person acting in an official capacity. (7)

International laws proscribe terrorism but they will never fully eradicate such acts. So it is with torture, even in its most repugnant form. For all purposes, the French Army was the law, and acted ultra vires. As were the FLN at war. Torture was not codified by French statute but justified in practice for operational reasons, nebulous as they were. The FLN claimed a similar extra judicial mandate.

 The politics of torture   

Terrorism adopts a similar rationality, despite its innate abhorrence. It is argued that the world will never abolish torture, when confessions are sought. The French military command was sanguine about torture. Their reasons for embracing torture were simple. Political terrorism could not be justified as an excuse to assault the French Republic. Torture was applied against insurgents for official reasons, and in doing so; these gratuitous acts politicised many Algerians as much as their own atrocities against the French emboldened further retribution against the FLN, and by extension, many of the indigenous Algerians who were innocent of any complicity. The truth is, wrote Temoignage Chretien  on June 26, 1959, in a discussion of the suppressed pamphlet Gangrene, “torture will never be conquered as long as war lasts … this is universally understood, General de Gaulle knows it”. (8) Torture continued until the French exited.

The book that did as much as anything else to inform France and the world about these horrible practices was La Question (Judicial Torture) by Henri Alleg. (9)  Many soldiers were aware of torture even if they did not personally observe it. Some troops became morally blind to the unrestraint others committed.  All protagonists were both diminished and degraded by their actions. The FLN stressed the supposed legitimacy of their revolutionary struggle against France. War weary, in May of 1958, on assuming office, President Charles de Gaulle created the political conditions for independence, which Algeria achieved in 1962. It was in recognition that France was haemorrhaging and history was not on her side. International opinion moved against France. UN diplomacy also played a key role. Torture could no longer be accepted as an expression of French governance. The FLN maintained the political initiative and, through political action and propaganda, they effectively changed foreign perceptions towards France. Torture damaged its profile. Hill reinforces the political consequences of torture. The Battle of Algiers (1957) confirmed one important lesson for the FLN’s leaders – the absolute importance of international political and public opinion. (10)  They mobilized international diplomatic support.

 The Case for Torture

             It is claimed that information provided as a result of torture enabled the French to foil terrorist attacks in the Algiers. (11) This also leads to the theory of the so-called “ticking bomb.” Stephen Coleman was sceptical about its utility. One of the main criticisms of a ticking bomb case is that real-life situations are not as straightforward … reality is never so neat. (12) What can be said is that many soldiers were not unaffected by the indignities they either committed or witnessed. (13)  Efforts were made to shield the more impressionable young conscripts. Professional soldiers were ambivalent about torture, some having suffered as members of the Resistance under the Nazis or from being made prisoners of war by the Vietnamese after their defeat at Dien Bien Phu in 1954. The French, Vietnamese and Algerians were not unalike. They were an indigenous people resisting an occupying army. Many French were oblivious to an unconscious irony. Algeria was, after all, aggregated within. It, too, was “France”. 

 The case against torture

 Alistair Horne sheeted home the predicament that torture represents. He observed its pernicious effects, stating: In a civilised society, torture has no more counter-productive and insidious long-term effect than the way that it tends to demoralize the inflicter even more than his vicitim. Frantz Fanon, the militant Martiniquais psychiatrist, cites several examples of acute, lingering neurosis induced among the tortured. (14) One soldier was so disturbed by the cruelties he meted out that, at a psychological level, he felt it impacted on his professional ability to continue to work effectively in his assigned field.  True sadists had found their vocation and this was often recognised and acted against. (15) Fremeaux has isolated some cogent themes. They include; various categories of violence, the psychological trauma, willing sadists and the ethical dimensions over torture. The French Foreign Legion contained a proportion of German veterans of WWII. The Legion had an odious reputation for brutality, including torture followed by summary execution. Douglas Porch introduces other motivations which may have conditioned French soldiery. The French nevertheless acquired during their course of post-1945 wars in Indo-China and Algeria a reputation for impatience, racism, brutality and failure. (16)  Many enemies who fell into the hands of the French Army might indubitably agree. It may also be said, at least for those conscientious objectors in the field, that they were immersed in a culture of military and police torture which sullied the French nation and weakened its moral credibility.

            Bob Brecher attempts but fails to properly address the conundrum of torture. Torture cannot and need not be defined? (17) That subtlety would not be lost on a suspect undergoing torture. Brecher cites a related definition from the United Nations General Assembly’s Convention Against Torture (1984). That definition simplifies one given by Bargaric and Clarke in footnote 3. Brecher has offered a tortuous (no pun) and self-contradictory argument as his reasoning prevaricates on its utility.  He gives a for and against case without being forced to declare his position.

            In condemning torture, French opponents against its depredations mount convincing arguments. As a corollary, the senior combat veterans also mount a case for torture which they themselves rationalise. On moral grounds, their claims are not persuasive. Who among the French spoke out against torture? There were several as one intellectual selectively quoted Maurice Audin. Torture is a terrible defect in the colonial regime. Torture will cease only with the end of the colonial regime. (18)  This was a polemical stand in that the French Left was antithetical towards colonialism. In contrast, the Right stressed the barbarity of terrorist attacks on the French presence.

The Empire strikes back

            The concept of a “blow back” effect in imperial policies has proved immutable. The “wider war” in Algeria also impacted on two successive French Republics. Torture entered the lexicon of French domestic politics. Indeed, torture and killings also visited the Algerian Diaspora in Metropolitan France. The recalcitrant Algerians might have compared their lot to Imperial Rome. Do they reply that the Roman empire could never have been so widely extended, nor so glorious, save by constant and unintermitting wars? A fit argument, truly! Why must a kingdom be distracted in order to be great? (19)  The events distracted the French Republic and they also tortured the idea of France. The Fourth French Republic fell and Charles de Gaulle had to preside over a further loss of Empire. Martin Evans accentuated an acute political problem, the distinction between foreign policy and domestic policy had blurred. Public indignation grew further in 1959 when it was revealed that torture was being practised on the mainland. Many (French) described this as the last straw because it showed the capacity of the Algerian war to cross the Mediterranean and do untold harm to democratic structures on mainland France. (20)  It enfeebled the body politic. Despite empowering liberty, equality and fraternity in France, its subjugated indigenous people in Algeria were not treated the same. The Algerians wanted to reclaim their country from the French. Torture and repression compromised the lofty ideals of a mission civilisatrice.

The Generals on torture

             How did the senior military officers stand on torture? One should be leery in accepting any post hoc ergo propter hoc arguments. Paris had tacitly condoned torture for they did not proscribe it. Could the Army then defend its actions in that they only sinned by omission (of laws) and thus had a free hand to commission torture? If so, then they cleaved to a fallacious argument. Had any soldiers not considered their moral culpability under the so-called Nuremberg laws? It was not enough to docilely follow instructions, as they had to answer to their own conscience. While one can acknowledge the ambiguity and complexity invested in colonial politics, where they are manifested, in the absence of readily available solutions, one should not excuse torture. The reason? It violates humanitarian rights and international law.  Consider General Jacques Massu, commander of the 10^th Parachute Division in Algeria, in the mid-fifties. In the colloquial, Massu (i.e., his subordinates) did “do” torture. It was initially unreported but it later shaped army doctrine, if not legally codified. Euphemisms about the inventory of torture may have given commanders a degree of latitude in war-like conditions, where “rights” had been suspended. Algerian civil society would become less so as the insurgency progressed.

Many French people soon became aware of the pervasive influence of torture in Algeria. The Algerians saw it as state oppression resisting their right for self-determination in an increasingly decolonized world. For the less conscionable, whether in France or its Algeria, they might have preferred not to dwell too deeply on it, lest their mute acquiescence be exposed. Massu admitted in print that that ‘institutionalized torture’ became routine. A systematic, scholarly inquiry into these events … remains blocked because the archives on the Battle of Algiers, the key episode in the torture controversy, are to remain closed until 2017. (21) The memoirs of a few veterans make an exculpatory appeal over their wartime role in “state torture.”  Massu attempted to trivialise the use of torture without success.

            The gegene (a small generator with electrodes which were attached to certain parts of the body) was used when we had to get information in a hurry, to prevent yet another bomb going off and killing innocent people. Europeans and Arabs. A Catholic monk told me I was right to sanction the use of this instrument, because in doing so we avoided a greater evil, Massu said. The Left wing in France, intellectuals and communists, all compared my paras to the SS, which was absurd. Anyway, I tried la gegene on myself, it was not so terrible … but I didn’t make a tragedy of it. (22) This was a false gesture, for he could control the pace and degree of any solicited pain.

            That Massu sought religious absolution is at once both disingenuous and troubling. Of all institutions, the Church might have condemned torture. Kelly lends some construction to that spiritual challenge. “Between two evils”, argued an anonymous note circulated among the officers of the 10^th Parachute Division in April, 1957, “it is necessary to choose the least. So that innocent persons should not be unjustly put to death or mutilated, the criminals must be punished and put effectively out of harm’s way.” The note had a striking resemblance to words used earlier by Reverend Father Delarue, chaplain and confessor to the 10^th Parachute Division, and commended by General Massu. (23) However, some clerics nobly condemned torture. The Catholic clergy were the first to speak out. They had, after all, a moral stake in the conduct of their communicants and … an ecumenical stake in the future of the new Algeria. (24) Clearly, the predominantly Muslim indigenous population often felt the sword under the cross and crescent. The FLN used decapitation, throat-slitting and disembowelment; torture in itself. Both sides were locked in a “dirty war” which would be resolved politically.

            General Paul Aussaresses was an unabashed advocate of torture. He noted in his memoirs: Regarding the use of torture, it was tolerated if not actually recommended. The methods I used were always the same: beatings, electrical shocks, and, in particular, water torture. I had no regrets but I did make a wish that none of these young men would ever have to do the same for my country what I had to do over there, in Algeria. (25) His outspoken comments exposed the hypocrisy of the French governments during its last major colonial war. In 1968 the French parliament declared an amnesty for all crimes committed during the Algerian war of 1954-1962, that France’s statute of limitations for murder is a mere ten years; and that convictions for “crimes against humanity’ can only apply to crimes committed during the Nazi period … or after 1994. (26) The general had embarrassed and shamed French “honour”. General Marcel Bigeard was similarly tarnished, revealing that the French had used torture. In July 2000 he described it (torture) “as a mission given by political powers”. He never specified whether he had taken part. (27) The FLN were hardly innocent in their immoderation.

 Dissent on torture

The French Army did break ranks. One leader found it morally repugnant and he denounced la torture. He showed moral courage at a time when such certitudes were deemed unwelcome. When General Paris de Bollardiere grew anguished at the implicit order to pursue torture … and officially protested in 1957, he ran into a stone wall of incomprehension not only from General Massu but from the Fourth Republic government as well. His war was not being fought, and his career was over. (28)

French intellectuals denounced (or supported) the same war but for different reasons, privileging individual sides, depending on their political orientation.   Some, like Camus and Roy and Germaine Tillion, condemned the atrocities of both sides, while others like de Beauvoir and Sartre held that the revolutionaries fighting the full power of the colonizer-state were justified in using their poorer resources without moral restrictions. (29) Camus was a native of Algeria, a pied-noir and the son of a settler. He was a French Algerian yet he had some affinity for the Arabs and Berbers.

The Battle of Algiers 

“We had to get information.” (General Jacques Massu, The Spectator, 25 June, 1994).

             No discussion of torture would be complete without reference to the acclaimed Pontecorvo film of 1965. A neo-realist classic, it caused a sensation in France and was banned for public release until 1970. It was not une fantaisie des Arabes, as Massu once dismissed it, but a worthy attempt to understand the all-encompassing political nature of the conflict, and the use and abuse of torture. (30) Delving into political psychology, it is proportionate and not wholly propagandistic. (31) At its heart lies the fundamental premise of the torture in Algeria. Soldiers serve at their state’s dictate. They exist to discharge orders. Politically, they can also be returned to their barracks.

Counter-revolutionary warfare

                 Marnia Lazreg is the ne plus ultra of all theorists. She observed that torture against the FLN was the direct outcome of the la guerre revolutionnaire theory. (32) France was not fighting an enemy in a conventional war. The author presents an intelligent series of arguments as she attenuates and connects related themes which husband the sociology of torture with terrorism. Lazreg situates Frantz Fanon, Sartre and Camus in the debate. Her aetiology of the psychology of torture makes for disturbing and confronting reading about its perverted sexual quotient. The rape of female suspects gendered the conflict, creating heroines, being a propaganda disaster for the French. For the FLN, the ordeal of two of its women epitomised the debauchment of their “motherland” – a violated Algeria.  Things don’t always go better with coke. Ask Fatty Arbuckle.

            To conclude, one must return to the underpinnings of the theme. A small war in Algeria became a big one. The loss of Algeria led to a serious retraction of Empire. Algeria shed France from its overseas department in North Africa. A small insurgent force defeated a larger conventional army. France sought a military victory but lost it on the political front to the FLN. Alex Bellamy underscored the corrosive impact of torture. Morally speaking, torture and terrorism both violate the important norms of non-combatant immunity. (33) Stritzke and Lewandowsky argued against torture. Torture is a mistake … because it corrupts the moral standing of the nation practising it. Torture arguably serves as a powerful recruiting tool for terrorist groups … and undermines counter-terrorism efforts. (34) Patrick Rotman asks a question which still troubles the French. What made it possible for them to do what they did? Ethical blindness? It is an uncomfortable moral quandary which the French will never satisfactorily resolve. (35) As inferred above, and as justified by some in France, the torture in Algeria, to chastise its unpatriotic ‘citizens’, never looked so bad. The dilemma continues, and will do so, until the French ultimately confront their tortured imperial history. The official archives have been released. It is timely that France should now search its conflicted colonial past in Algeria. Those soldiers complicit in torture might now also search their own troubled conscience.

Mike Fogarty is a former naval officer and diplomat. In 2016 he graduated with an MA (Military History) from UNSW (ADFA).

30 June, 2023

Footnotes:

1. Raymond F. Betts, France and Decolonisation 1900-1960, MacMillan, London, 1991, p.114.
2. Martin S. Alexander and J.F.V. Keiger, France and the Algerian War, 1954-62: Strategy Operations and Diplomacy, Frank Cass, London, 2002, pp. 2 and 3.
3. Alf Andrew Heggoy, Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in Algeria, Indiana University Press, London, 1972, p. 244.
4. Martin Evans and John Phillips, Algeria, Anger of the dispossessed, Yale University Press, New Hampshire, 2007, p. 61.
5. Martin Thomas, “Colonial Violence in Algeria and the Distorted Logic of State Retribution: The Setif Uprising of 1945”, Journal of Military History, Volume no. 75, January, 2011, p. 125 (Abstract).
6. George Armstrong Kelly, Lost Soldiers, The French Army and the Empire in Crisis, The M.I.T. Press, Cambridge, 1965, p. 200 (Torture, Appendix to Chapter X). Kelly analyses the psychology of defeat.
7. Mirko Bagaric and Julie Clarke, Torture: When the unthinkable is morally permissible, State University Press of New York, New York, 2007, p. 9. See article 1 of the UN Convention (1984). The authors note that real life is, of course, rarely this clear cut. Stephen Coleman agreed. See footnote 5.
8. Peter Paret, French Revolutionary Warfare from Indo China to Algeria, The analysis of a political and military doctrine, Frederick Praeger, New York, 1964, p. 150 (Notes), as footnote 27 quotes. Paret also noted the testimony of one captain that the ends justify the means. See p. 72.
9. Tanya Matthews, War in Algeria, Background for Crisis, Fordham University Press, Great Britain, 1961, p. 66. A communist, Alleg was tortured by parachutists in 1957. The author observed that the use of torture formed part of official French army policy.
10. J.N.C Hill, “Remembering the war of liberation: legitimacy and conflict in contemporary Algeria”, Small Wars and Insurgencies, Volume 23, Number 1, March, 2012, p. 9.
11. Bargaric and Clarke, p. 54. The authors cite this as an example of effective torture.
12. Stephen Coleman, Military Ethics, Oxford University Press, New York, 2012, p. 260. See footnote 3.
13. An attempt was made to interview a French veteran of the Algerian War now residing in Canberra. He was severely disturbed by the terrors he experienced during that campaign, it was a prime reason why he emigrated to Australia to escape his nightmares. Ethically, he will not be interviewed about it.
14. Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace, Algeria, 1954-1962, Penguin Books, London, 1985, p. 206. This is a major text, yet not without its limitations. Originally printed in 1977, this reprint is over thirty years old. More archives have since been released. France has also grudgingly accepted that it was a war and not a police operation. Despite that, Horne had produced a path-breaking history.
15. Jacques Fremeaux, “The French Experience in Algeria”, “Doctrine, Violence and Lessons Learnt”, Civil Wars, Volume 14:1, March 2012, pp. 49-62. The French needed victory to assuage their defeats.
16. Douglas Porch, “The dangerous myths and dubious promises of COIN”, Small Wars and Insurgencies, Volume 22, Number 2, May, 2011, pp. 246.
17. Bob Brecher, Torture and the Ticking Bomb, Blackwell, Oxford, 2007, p. 7. One can only agree with him that torture has been ubiquitous in the second half of the twentieth century.
18. Madame Maurice Audin, in Simone de Beauvoir and Gisele Halimi, Djamila Boupacha, The story of a young Algerian girl which shocked liberal French opinion, MacMillan, New York, 1960, pp. 208-09.
19. Augustine, City of God, III, 10.
20. Martin Evans, The Memory of Resistance, French opposition to the Algerian War, 1954-1960, Berg, New York, 1997, pp. 10-11.
21. Martin S. Alexander, Martin Evans and J.F.V. Keiger, The Algerian War and the French Army, 1954-1962, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2002, p. 5.
22. Simon Courtauld, “We had to get information”, The Spectator, 25 June, 1994, p. 12.
23. Kelly, Lost Soldiers, p. 202. Delarue was also known as “the parachuting padre”. To their credit, some fellow chaplains protested over torture feeling that it did not accord to humanitarian values.
24. Kelly, above, p. 198. The author notes that the Archbishop of Algiers, Monsignor Leon-Etienne Duval denounced, without reservation, all assaults on human dignity.
25. Paul Aussaresses, The Battle of the Casbah, Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism in Algeria, 1955-1957, Enigma Books, New York, 2005, pp. 127-28 and 164. An outspoken veteran, the author became a cause celebre. The general also claimed that summary executions were an inseparable part of the tasks associated with keeping law and order.
26. “France and Torture”, “An awkward case”, “Why a retired general’s admission about torture is embarrassing”, The Economist, November 29, 2001. www.economist.com/node/886928 President Jacques Chirac had him stripped of his legion d’honneur and from wearing his military uniform.
27. General Marcel Bigeard, Obituary, New York Times, June 19, 2010.
28. Kelly, Lost Soldiers, p. 200.
29. Rita Maran, The role of ideology in the French Algerian War, Praeger, New York, 1989, p. 84.
30. The Spectator, 25 June, 1994, p.12.
31. Alexander, Evans and Keiger, passim, see chapter 9, Hugh Roberts, “The image of the French Army in the Cinematic Representation of the Algerian War: the Revolutionary Politics of the Battle of Algiers” (pp. 152-162). Several veterans have also written accounts of their combat service in Algeria.
32. Marnia Lazreg, Torture and the Twilight of Empire, From Algiers to Baghdad, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2008. p. 15. See also chapter 11, on French intellectuals, p. 253. The sexualised torture of Djamila Boupacha and Djamila Bouhired enabled their reification of the Algerian nationalist cause.
33. Alex J. Bellamy, “The moral prohibition on killing non-combatants”, in Werner G.K. Stritzke, Terrorism and Torture, An interdisciplinary perspective, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2009, p. 27.
34. Werner G.K. Stritzke and Stephan Lewandowsky, “The terrorism-torture link: where evil begets evil”, in Stritzke above, p. 2.
35. Tzvetan Todorov and Arthur Denner, “Torture in the Algerian War”, On Torture, South Central Review, Volume 24, Number 1, Spring, 2007, p. 19. This fine study complements Lazreg above.

References

Augustine, City of God, III, 10, in Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren (eds.), Great Treasury of Western Thought, R.R. Bowker and Company, New York, 1977, War and Peace, 14-1-32, p. 926. 

 Martin S. Alexander and J.F.V. Keiger, France and the Algerian War, 1954-62: Strategy, Operations and Diplomacy, Frank Cass, London, 2002.     

Martin S. Alexander, Martin Evans and J.F.V. Keiger, The Algerian War and the French Army, 1954-1962, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2002.   

Paul Aussaresses, The Battle of the Casbah, Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism in Algeria, 1955-1957, Enigma Books, New York, 2005.  

Mirko Bagaric and Julie Clarke, Torture: When the unthinkable is morally permissible, State University Press of New York, New York, 2007.

Alex J. Bellamy, “The moral prohibition on killing non-combatants”, (in) Werner G.K. Stritzke, Terrorism and Torture, An interdisciplinary perspective, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2009.  

Raymond F. Betts, France and Decolonisation 1900-1960, MacMillan, London, 1991. 

Bob Brecher, Torture and the Ticking Bomb, Blackwell, Oxford, 2007.

Stephen Coleman, Military Ethics, Oxford University Press, New York, 2012.

Simone de Beauvoir and Gisele Halimi, Djamila Boupacha, The story of a young Algerian girl which shocked liberal French opinion, MacMillan, New York, 1960.

“France and Torture”, “An awkward case”, “Why a retired general’s admission about torture is embarrassing”, The Economist, November 29, 2001. www.economist.com/node/886928

Martin Evans, The Memory of Resistance, French opposition to the Algerian War, 1954-1960, Berg, New York, 1997.

Martin Evans and John Phillips, Algeria, Anger of the dispossessed, Yale University Press, New Hampshire, 2007.  

Jacques Fremeaux, “The French Experience in Algeria”, “Doctrine, Violence and Lessons Learnt”, Civil Wars,  Volume 14:1, March 2012.

 Alf Andrew Heggoy, Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in Algeria, Indiana University Press, London, 1972.  

 J.N.C Hill, “Remembering the war of liberation: legitimacy and conflict in contemporary Algeria”, Small Wars and Insurgencies, Volume 23, Number 1, March, 2012.   

Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace, Algeria, 1954-1962, Penguin Books, London, 1985.

George Armstrong Kelly, Lost Soldiers, The French Army and the Empire in Crisis, The M.I.T. Press, Cambridge, 1965.

Marnia Lazreg, Torture and the Twilight of Empire, From Algiers to Baghdad, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2008.

Rita Maran, The role of ideology in the French Algerian War, Praeger, New York, 1989.

Tanya Matthews, War in Algeria, Background for Crisis, Fordham University Press, Great Britain, 1961.

General Marcel Bigeard, Obituary, New York Times, June 19, 2010. 

Peter Paret, French Revolutionary Warfare from Indo China to Algeria, The analysis of a political and military doctrine, Frederick Praeger, New York, 1964.

Douglas Porch, “The dangerous myths and dubious promises of COIN”, Small Wars and Insurgencies, Volume 22, Number 2, May, 2011, pp. 246.

Hugh Roberts, “The image of the French Army in the Cinematic Representation of the Algerian War: the Revolutionary Politics of the Battle of Algiers”, (in) Martin S. Alexander, Martin Evans and J.F.V. Keiger, The Algerian War and the French Army, 1954-1962, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2002.   

Simon Courtauld, “We had to get information”, The Spectator, 25 June, 1994.

Martin Thomas, “Colonial Violence in Algeria and the Distorted Logic of State Retribution: The Setif Uprising of 1945”, Journal of Military History, Volume no. 75, January, 2011.

Werner G.K. Stritzke and Stephan Lewandowsky, “The terrorism-torture link: where evil begets evil”, (in) Werner G.K. Stritzke, Terrorism and Torture, An interdisciplinary perspective, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2009.  

Tzvetan Todorov and Arthur Denner, “Torture in the Algerian War”, “On Torture”, South Central Review, Volume 24, Number 1, Spring, 2007.