Then suddenly the bail-jumpers from the “Barricades Trial”, Lagaillarde and Susini, arrived in Madrid. The “Mandarin” was immediately alienated by the extravaganzas of Lagaillarde, striking poses in front of the Press, and promptly placing himself — the ex-lieutenant and former student leader — on a par with the five-star general and former Commander-in-Chief. “I would indeed like to be shot,” declared Lagaillarde at an early stage, “but I want a general at my side!” Lagaillarde’s horizons were widening rapidly. He produced ideas for a full-scale reform of the army, gave a large cocktail party for the France—Spain football match, and expressed positive disappointment on hearing that he had been sentenced to only ten years imprisonment (in absentia) at the “Barricades Trial” — which, commented, Salan’s loyal adjutant, Captain Ferrandi, “is really very little for a future head-of-state!” By March Salan was hardly on speaking terms with Lagaillarde, and determined to exclude him at all costs from any military coup. Susini, however, the pale and deadly earnest young “ultra” who had been the éminence grise of Ortiz during “Barricades Week”, was a different kettle of fish — even though his political antecedents had hardly predisposed the “Mandarin” towards him. Says Ferrandi:
We discovered in this young man an intense intellectual agility, at the same time as a very real sense of mesure and nuances. His judgements are lively, rapid, admittedly peremptory, but finally always sharp and rarely unreasonable. This young man is made for politics…. It’s a loss for the Gaullists that they were unable to keep him.
Salan, noted Ferrandi, seemed “literally conquered” by Susini and admitted that “with young men of this class we could finally achieve something”. It was under Susini’s pressure that Salan, in February, agreed to an extraordinary meeting between himself and two “ultras” currently also in refuge in Spain: Castille and Fechoz, two of the principal instigators of the nearly fatal bazooka attack on him just four years previously. Susini now became Salan’s “political director”, thereby beginning an association fraught with most baneful consequences for Algeria, and most especially its pieds noirs.
Birth of the O.A.S.
On 25 January a distinguished young pied noir lawyer, Maître Pierre Popie, was stabbed to death in his Algiers office by two young Europeans. The son of a magistrate, Popie was an outspoken liberal — almost the last of them — who had recently aroused indignation by a widely broadcast speech in which he had declared “L’Algérie française ets morte!” and by placards he had distributed depicting pieds noirs shaking hands with the F.L.N. The assassins, who were soon picked up by the Algiers police, turned out to be a recently demobilised para, Claude Peintre, and a former Legionnaire, Léon Dauvergne. Both were sentenced to life imprisonment. But behind them was a newly-created “ultra” terrorist organisation. The killing was apparently intended to mark the anniversary of the beginning of “Barricades Week” but had had to be postponed twenty-four hours.
Sparked no doubt by it, two weeks later in Madrid Susini and Lagaillarde sat down to devise a new body which, composed of civilians and military deserters, would continue to fight for Algérie française by underground techniques of terrorism. After some discussion they decided upon the title of Organisation Armée Secrète: O.A.S. When the details were reported to the “Mandarin” at the Princesa two days later, he sighed contemptuously: “Poor pieds noirs! They’ve already had the U.S.R.A.F., the F.A.F. and the F.N.F.! Now with this O.A.S. they’ll never manage to recognise it! Nevertheless, if it amuses them and helps them pass the time waiting for better things, then let them get on with it.”
At the beginning of March the walls of Algiers suddenly erupted with posters bearing this new set of initials; but the early operations ordered by the O.A.S. were hardly noteworthy for their success. The first, involving the “elimination” of a Gaullist leader and personal friend of the General’s in Algiers, Dr Merrot, resulted only in wounding the victim, while his assailant was subsequently executed. On 2 April a bomb exploded near François Mitterrand’s apartment, causing little damage; two days later another exploded in the Bourse, injuring fourteen. Then it was decided to tackle de Gaulle himself.[2] Susini moved in, backing an ex-Legionnaire who proposed in early April to kill de Gaulle with a telescopic rifle for the modest fee of forty million francs. But the would-be killer, having received fifty per cent on account, apparently tipped off the police, and then disappeared. Nevertheless, the O.A.S. had started its rein of terror.
“Challe marche…!”
Towards the end of March General Faure arrived in Madrid with the news that three senior generals were planning a putsch for the following month. The “Mandarin” ’s role in it had not yet been defined. The generals were Jouhaud, Zeller — and Challe. The first two names (although, ironically, they had both been selected by de Gaulle as being reliably loyal to himself to replace officers purged from Algeria in the wake of May 1958) were a foregone conclusion; but Challe! Salan asked himself the same question that would perplex Frenchmen from de Gaulle down when the putsch broke on them: “Mais, pourquoi Challe?” The news was in fact somewhat premature; although Challe was on the brink, he did not take the final plunge until 12 April.
When he did take his grave decision to revolt, sudden though it was, it came at the end of a long odyssey incorporating various steps and motivations. Back in 1958, at the time of confusion preceding de Gaulle’s takeover, Challe had seemed the embodiment of the ideal republican general, leaning if anything towards the Socialists. To his friend Guy Mollet he had remarked, “If this business goes on any longer, only de Gaulle will be capable of putting things back into order,” concluding emphatically: “For my part, I will never fire on my comrades in arms.” The series of disillusions that he had suffered as de Gaulle’s Commander-in-Chief in Algeria have already been amply traced; then had come the President’s “Algérie algérienne” speech of 4 November 1960, while Challe was commanding N.A.T.O.’s Central Europe theatre at Fontainebleau. Switching off the television, he confided to his diary: “From this moment I shall begin to think deeply about the sense of my remaining in the army.” Feeling increasingly a sense of futility at Fontainebleau, on 30 December Challe had offered his resignation. In giving his reasons to Debré, Challe had condemned the prospect of any Algerian government being formed by the G.P.R.A. — which was where he felt de Gaulle’s policy was leading. This would inevitably result in a “blood bath” and his conscience would not permit him to remain in the army. The announcement of the popular Challe’s retirement caused a far greater stir within the armed forces than had Salan’s departure.
From now on Challe came under steadily mounting pressure from dissidents like Argoud, Broizat and de Blignières to join their ranks. He continued to refuse. Then, some time in March after Massu’s sturdy non, possibly on the suggestion of Gardes, the idea was mooted that Challe should be approached actually to lead the putsch. Jouhaud, Challe’s fellow airman, assumed the task and tackled Challe at a wedding service in Lyon on 25 March. Enumerating the officers and units who were “ready to go”, Jouhaud assured Challe that, with his great prestige and popularity, he had but to raise his hand and the whole army would follow. (It would never, hinted Jouhaud, follow “Chinese” Salan.) Three days later in Paris, with Georges Bidault and General Faure present, Jouhaud resumed the attack. Two of Challe’s former subordinates, aware of the pressure he was under, offered cautionary advice; no more than ten per cent of the army would, in the event, follow him, said one; metropolitan France, “hypnotised by de Gaulle, would oppose any civil or military uprising”, said the other. Challe, already a thoroughly tortured man, hesitated. Then fresh events occurred in quick succession. At the end of March simultaneous communiqués were published from both Paris and Tunis announcing forthcoming bilateral peace talks at Evian between the French government and the F.L.N. — just what, a year ago, de Gaulle had promised Delouvrier and Challe he would never entertain. Next, in Algeria, the new French Commander-in-Chief, the pacific and clerical-looking General
Gambiez, was relaying orders for a “unilateral truce”. To persuade the F.L.N. of France’s good intentions, all aggressive combat operations were to cease henceforth on the French side. A sense of fresh outrage ran through the units which had born the lion’s share of the murderous fighting in Algeria, and which, in the Challe offensive, had felt they had come within an inch of crushing the life out of the A.L.N. Ominously, there were mass desertions from the harkis, those “loyal” Muslim units whose expansion had been one of the chief ingredients of the Challe Plan. Then, twenty-four hours after the first communiqué, the G.P.R.A. (for reasons that will be seen shortly) announced that it was opting out of the negotiations. To the plotters there was now a particular urgency to act while anger was still at red-heat in the army and before the fateful talks could be rescheduled. Challe now said, yes, in principle; the final proviso was that he should just wait to see what de Gaulle had to say at his forthcoming Press conference on 11 April.
The fall of Challe, than whom no more estimable and honourable officer could be found in any army, remains one of the great human tragedies of the Algerian war. It is also a tragedy that should perhaps be pondered by the leaders of other modern democratic armies should they ever come to impose too great a burden upon the consciences of their generals. Among Challe’s several motives, it was first and foremost the call of honour that drove him to an act that in his heart he half felt was doomed from the start. Unlike the Algerian-born Jouhaud, Challe was in no way dedicated to the pieds noirs. Unlike Salan, he had not been at the centre of the 1958 coup, and therefore did not suffer Salan’s sentiments of betrayal of purpose there — namely the safeguarding of Algérie française — nor did he share to the same extent Salan’s sense of personal aggrievement against de Gaulle. Professionally he had deplored the premature suspension of his offensive against the A.L.N.; as General Étienne Valluy said of Challe, he was “like a craftsman who does the best work he can; it is almost done…then it is taken away from him and given to another”. That had been a factor and, ideologically, like so many of the French military brotherhood, he too shared to the full the “reds under the bed” obsession that an independent Algeria would bring the “Soviet fleet to Mers-el-Kébir”. What he considered to be the disastrously missed opportunity of Si Salah, and de Gaulle’s double-dealing with the breakaway leaders of Wilaya 4, had deeply influenced him on his road to revolt. But most of all he was haunted by what he felt to be his crushing moral responsibility to the harkis he had levied, and to the other thousands of pro-French Muslims to whom — on de Gaulle’s instructions — he had given the repeated assurance: “France will never abandon you.” This was what, to Challe, really pushed him over the edge. “We were committed,” he told the author. “We had given our promises to the Arabs who had worked for us, and we simply could not let them down….We would have acted, even if I had thought there had been no chance of success — but I did think we had a chance of success.” Massu corroborates that Challe “had a feeling of having betrayed his Algerian compatriots. He had, very sincerely, an ideal of honour.” In view of the terrible fate that was to befall the harkis after Algerian independence, who can judge that this “ideal of honour” was misplaced?
On 12 April General Faure brought to his fellow conspirators, gathered in a darkened room, the simple message: “Challe marche!”[3] The previous day Challe in disgust had heard de Gaulle deliver an “inhuman homily” to the Press, declaring, “Decolonisation is our interest and, therefore, our policy. Why should we remain caught up in colonisations that are costly, bloody and without end, when our own country needs to be renewed from top to bottom?” Algeria, he was now convinced, “will be sovereign, both within and without”, and France would place no obstacle in its way. That was it! Without even informing his wife, Challe decided to act. Planning for the putsch now moved into top gear with Challe at the helm. D-Day was to be the night of 20 April — only eight days away.
Over-hasty planning
As Clemenceau once remarked, for anyone about to revolt “the first day is the best day”. But, as unsuccessful putschists — such as Germany’s Stauffenberg — have also discovered through the ages, the twin necessities of secrecy and speed, hampered by the inevitability of faulty communication, make precipitate planning the greatest and least escapable enemy of conspiracy. The first move was for the four leaders — Challe, Jouhaud, Salan and Zeller — to reach Algeria by various means and set up the standard of revolt there. Key units, such as the 1st R.E.P., would act simultaneously to seize vital centres and officials in authority; then, by snowball effect, the rest of the army in Algeria would follow suit. But, says Challe sadly in his memoirs, though all but one sector commander had declared himself “for us…unhappily this was only true in theory, while nothing had been fixed in practice. We were going to have a sad experience here.” With typically careless improvidence, for instance, the plotters had neglected to consider that, in Oranie, where General Pouilly was hostile, his deputy, General Lhermitte, on whose support they vitally counted, would be away on leave.
There was also, as usual, inadequate thought (and considerable unresolved disagreement owing to the problem of communication) as to what to do next once the military act had been consummated in Algeria. Challe’s programme was to declare solemnly that the French army’s unshakable intention was to remain in Algeria, and then re-launch a new flat-out “Challe Offensive” against the A.L.N., mobilising eight classes of Algerians of both races for this purpose. In three months he would present France a pacified Algeria, sur le plateau. He hoped, in effect (comments Jacques Fauvet): “to finish what two regimes, four commanders-in-chief and seven governments were unable to finish in seven years”. During this period of three months, a breakaway Algeria could exist economically off the fat of its oil resources, an embargo being placed on their export to France. For the long-term political future of Algeria, Challe basically supported a return to the principles of Lacoste’s abandoned loi-cadre. As regards allies, though known to be more left-wing than either of the other two services, the air force was reckoned to be in the bag — largely on account of the presence in the putsch of both Challe and Jouhaud; as for the navy, Challe relied on an out-of-context remark made by Admiral Querville some months previously: “With the navy you have no problem. Whatever happens, it’s always one government behind!” On the eve of the putsch, Jouhaud seemed even to have half-deluded himself that Premier Debré might prove sympathetic.
The putsch and the C.I.A.?
In few ways did the generals’ self-deception, their interpretation of desires as realities, reach a higher peak than in their almost total lack of thought as to how the outside world might react. To this day Challe insists most emphatically that he “had no contact personally with any foreign countries”, and that in fact he had deliberately avoided all such contacts so as not to incur any possible charge of having been brought in on foreign bayonets. Nevertheless, some of his subordinates appear to have made informal, and highly tentative, soundings with representatives of various countries that might be considered sympathetic, among them Portugal, Spain, Israel and South Africa. But nothing more encouraging or positive had been received than offers of “hang on as long as you can, and then we’ll see” — beyond a commitment allegedly made by a South African contact promising material aid after eight days. The promise was never to be invoked.
One of the more curious illusions of the putschists (especially in the light of subsequent revelations of the far-ranging activities of the C.I.A.) concerns the possibility of an American role. At the time, rumours of clandestine United States involvement ran extremely strong in France. Undeniably, during his time at N.A.T.O. headquarters the popular Challe did make firm friends of a number of high-ranking United States generals, who made no secret of their aversion to what de Gaulle was doing to N.A.T.O., going so far — over a plethora of Scotch — as to express enthusiasm for anyone who might rid France of her turbulent president, or, at least, force him to change his tune. If Challe and his
colleagues can be excused for taking these utterances at more than face value, one needs to recall the prevailing atmosphere at the time; just four days before the unleashing of the Algiers revolt, the untried and unproved new Kennedy regime had itself launched its own putsch — the “Bay of Pigs” adventure against Castro’s Cuba. Writing in 1967 and noting how “only belatedly did President Kennedy declare for de Gaulle and openly condemn the rebel generals”, Major Edgar O’Ballance claimed that it was then firmly believed,
that the American Central Intelligence was actually involved in, and had knowledge of some aspects of the planning and preparation, and perhaps also of the revolt itself, but nowadays this is firmly discounted. This is mentioned to show that there might have been sound reasons for Challe expecting American aid that was not forthcoming.
A Savage War of Peace Page 65