GR Theory Final Draft

Guerre Revolutionnaire in French Algeria

How ‘Revolutionary Warfare’ Theory Altered the Landscape of French Counterinsurgency in

Algeria

Trevor Haubert

12/20/2012

Pledge: Trevor Haubert

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Surrounded and outgunned would be the best way to describe Colonel Marcel Bigeard’s

situation in 1954 at the Battle of Dien Bein Phu. One of the most distinguished French soldiers of the

First Indochinese War; he effectively organized the besieged defenders in fending off legions of

Vietminh insurgents attempting to overrun the French defensive positions. Bigeard was so effective that

several weeks after he had parachuted into the battle and assumed command of a strategic strong point,

entire Vietminh units refused to attack due to the exceptionally high casualties he inflicted.1 But

regardless of the strategic success, Dien Bein Phu fell. This battle was a microcosm of the French

experience because the French had superior technology and leadership but ultimately lost to the

guerrilla insurgents. The question is, why?

Warfare is as fluid as a river. With ever changing tactics, using static strategies is an effective

way to ensure defeat. Unfortunately for the French in Indochina in 1946 they brought ancient tactics to

a modern war. The military commanders who were schooled in 19th century Clausewitzian notions of

warfare engaged Vietminh communist guerrillas using Mao’s 20th century tactics. Because of

anachronistic notions of warfare, the French failed to decisively beat the Indochinese guerrillas and

were disgracefully thrown out of Asia. But fortunately for the French, necessity is the mother of

invention and it led them to rethink modern warfare.

Defeat led the best minds in the French army to come together to figure out how they lost

Indochina to a band of undersupplied, communist guerillas. This group of officers realized the problem

was not with their equipment or a lack of spirit-to-win, but with the ingrained tactics of the French army.

These men realized that warfare had entered a new era, and just as when armies had to switch out the

bow and arrow for the gun, the French nation had to revamp their military tactics. Born out of the fires

of the French defeat in Indochina, the officers believed there needed to be a bond between military

1 Telegraph Editors “General Marcel Bigeard- Obituary,” The Telegraph, June 20, 2010, accessed December 15,

2012, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/military-obituaries/army-obituaries/7841910/General-Marcel-Bigeard.html.

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operations and political ideology to control the outcome of the war. They believed the worldwide

subversive communist threat that attacked France in Indochina was mounting for another strike and

France needed to be ready. The ideas these men came up with were all aspects of something called

guerre revolutionnaire, revolutionary warfare. Simply put, they are a collection of strategies for fighting

guerillas who do not play by the Clausewitzian rule book.

The lessons gleamed from guerre revolutionnaire theorists were immediately applicable to the

French because as soon as Indochina was lost, the war in Algeria flared up. Unlike other countries

experiences’ fighting ‘dirty wars’ where there were gaps of years or decades that allowed the lessons of

guerrilla warfare to be forgotten, the French were thrown from one insurgency into another, fighting

guerrilla forces nonstop from 1945-1962. But a question arises; were the French successful in applying

the lessons learned in Indochina to Algeria? This is a critical question because there is no simple answer,

with the short answer being yes while the long answer is no. The French’s application of guerre

revolutionnaire theory helps to explain its short-term successes fighting insurgents in Algeria, while their

overall defeat shows that the theory had serious flaws pertaining to the use of insurgent strategies

which set up the French for long-term failures.

This paper is organized into 4 sections. The first part talks about French Indochina and how a

modern army lost to a band of untraditional Maoist guerillas. The second part talks about the lessons

learned from the Indochina War and how the men who created the guerre revolutionnaire doctrine

applied it to Algeria. The third part talks about how guerre revolutionnaire theory ultimately failed the

French commanders by sacrificing long-term stability for short-term operational gains. The fourth and

final part seeks to determine if any lessons can be gleamed from these guerre revolutionnaires and to

look at how the French could have applied it more effectively in Algeria.

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Part I.

‘Oriental Problems’

“Of those four winters which I passed in Indo-China, opium has left the happiest memory.”2

- Thomas Fowler, The Quiet American

To understand the evolution of guerre revolutionnaire doctrine, one needs to understand the

French mindset immediately following the end of the Indochina War. World War Two resulted in France

losing control of its colonial empire, which made up 5% of the world’s population. Once the French were

liberated by the Allies in 1945, the French government attempted to restore their former empire and

international prestige. Unfortunately for the French’s colonial aspirations, World War Two saw the

French defeated in Indochina by the Japanese much to the pleasure of the Vietnamese nationals. These

communist nationals, called the Vietminh, saw the seemingly invincible French who had “successfully

subjugated… [Indochina] for 60 years with a garrison force of only 15,000” attempting to reestablish

control and took the opportunity to strike at the weakened French.3 Led by the charismatic Ho Chi Minh,

the Vietminh staged a Maoist guerrilla insurgency to bleed the French colonists in a war of attrition.

But the French would not stand idly by while this happened. To them, Indochina was not just a

piece of a colonial empire 6,000 miles away from Paris, but rather an essential part of France, like

Corsica or Algeria. So for eight years, from 1946-1954, the French waged a bloody stalemate against the

Viet Minh. Just like in most classical counterinsurgencies, the French controlled the cities and never ‘lost’

a single battle while the Vietminh guerrillas controlled the countryside and were never decisively

‘defeated’. The French were struggling to fight a classical Clausewitzian battle by attempting to draw the

2 Graham Greene, The Quiet American (New York: Penguin Classics, 2004). Introduction.

3 Andrew Mack, “Counterinsurgency in the Third World: Theory and Practice,” British Journal of International

Studies (Oct. 1975): 230.

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insurgents into open combat while the Vietminh were successfully following Mao’s example in China, as

described by the American military historian Beebe as “recognize[ing] the superior strength and better

supply system of the [counterinsurgents]… the guerillas must try to prolong the war, avoid major

engagements, seek local numerical superiority, and select objectives for attacks within their capabilities,”

by waging a protected and ideology inspired guerrilla insurgency.4

The majority of the war consisted of small engagements, with the French failing to achieve the

decisive victory they so vainly pursued, until the last year of the war in 1954. French command decided

to cut off the outside aid the Vietminh were smuggling in through Laos and China by garrisoning a

strategic, yet isolated, valley on the Vietnam-Laos border called Dien Bien Phu. Here the French garrison

of 30,000 men, roughly 3% of all soldiers in Indochina, provided an obvious target for the Vietminh.5 To

an extent this was France’s strategy too since they were hoping this outpost would draw the Vietminh

into open warfare. Unfortunately the French did not realize they were at an immense disadvantage.

After eight years of fighting, the Vietminh were equipped with modern weapons and artillery

they had smuggled from China along a trail6 on the Vietnamese-Laotian border. This led to the

surrounded French defenders being shelled from up high in the valley. Whenever the French ventured

out of their defenses to attack and set traps for the Vietminh they were almost always ambushed, as if

the Vietminh knew their every move. This was due to the fact that the guerrillas had civilian spies in all

the surrounding villages as well as the support of most civilians. The French were completely

surrounded, outgunned, and short on allies. After almost three months of constant fighting the Vietminh

launched an all out siege, in the classical warfare sense, using the French army’s own tactics and came

4 John Beebe, “Beating the Guerrilla,” Military Review (Dec. 1955): 9

5 Mack, “Counterinsurgency in the Third World: Theory and Practice,” 239.

6 Soon to be called the Ho Chi Minh Trail during the Vietnam War

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out as victors. The result of this was the Geneva Accords, which established the sovereignty of Indochina

and removed the French from Asia.7

The loss of Indochina was a huge black eye for France that caused the equivalent of a concussion

to the French psyche. France had no idea how they had lost the jewel of their worldwide empire since

they won most of the military engagements and the majority of the French army was still in fighting

shape. The French defeat was best explained by French commander Roger Trinquier when he noted that:

“It is a fact that in Indochina, despite a marked superiority in materiel and in troops, we were

beaten. From one campaign to another, our commanders tried to drive the Vietminh into a

classic pitched battle, the only kind we knew how to fight, in hope that our superiority in

materiel would allow an easy victory. The Vietminh always knew how to elude such maneuvers.

When they finally accepted the conventional battle so vainly sought for several years, it was only

because they had assembled on the battlefield resources superior to our own. That was at Dien

Bien Phu in May, 1954”8

While Dien Bein Phu may have been a defeat for France, there was a silver lining to their

inglorious defeat. The youthful French officers’ corps had witnessed the disaster in Indochina and

became disgusted by the strategies of the war. They saw old strategies being applied to a new form of

warfare they had never studied at St. Cyr.9 The classical tactics of the French army had failed while the

nuanced and unorthodox maneuvers of the Vietminh guerrillas were extremely effective. These young

officers wanted to know how they, “a cadre of highly motivated and competent officers commanding

battle tested and well equipped crack forces,” could learn from the war in Indochina and apply these

7 , R. E. M. Irving, The First Indochina War (London: C Helms, 1975), 152.

8 Roger Trinquier, Modern Warfare (London: Pall Mall Press, 1964), 4.

9 The most prestigious military academy in France where almost all commissioned officers study

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lessons to France’s future conflicts.10 In their minds, Mao’s tactics had proved superior in both China and

Indochina so why should not his ideas on warfare be applicable to their situation?11 They commiserated

amongst themselves and created a series of strategies to fight a revolutionary war, or in French a ‘guerre

revolutionnaire.’

While these officers never formally collaborated to codify exactly what guerre revolutionnaire

theory specifically stood for, they laid down a “set of principles that might influence such operations” to

allow for flexibility on the battlefield.12 The concept of guerre revolutionnaire doctrine was to ensure

that the French never lost another ‘dirty war’ that traditional experience said they should win. In these

guerre revolutionnaire theorists eyes’, the French needed to combine their material advantages with the

tactics used by the guerrillas to ensure victory. There were many military lessons gleamed from the

Vietminh, such as the importance of superior intelligence, controlling foreign aid suppliers, and

conducting stealthy small unit operations; but at the most basic level the Vietminh’s key advantage was

their ability to control and manipulate the population. This factor completely negated the French’s

superior material and technology advantages because the Vietminh were always two steps ahead of any

French operation. The French military leaders wanted to apply this advantage to the French army and

did so by listening to the guerre revolutionnaire theorists and practitioners such as Colonel Trinquier,

General Alland, Colonel Lacheroy, and Colonel Bigeard. Fortunately for the guerre revolutionnaire

theorists, an opportunity was rapidly brewing to allow them to test their new theories on revolutionary

war in which “accepted norms” of conventional military strategy and tactics would be thrown out for

new tactics.13 The situation in French Algeria was beginning to look like a ripe location for another

10

Gil Merom, How Democracies Lose Small Wars (London: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 93. 11

Trinquier, Modern Warfare, 76. 12

Christopher Cradock & M. L. R. Smith, “No Fixed values,” Journal of Cold War Studies (Fall 2007): 80. 13

Cradock & Smith, “No Fixed values,” 75.

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Maoist style insurgency and the French military that had betrayed a scared trust to their colonists in

Indochina swore they were not going to let that happen to the Pied-Noir14 in Algeria.

14

Literally means ‘black-foot.’ This was the name of the white French colonists in Algeria.

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Part II.

Algeria: 1830 to 1954

“A dull, decent people, cherishing and fortifying their dullness behind a quarter of a million

bayonets.”15

― George Orwell, Burmese Days

Occupied in 1830, Algeria was integrated as an essential part of the French state. Hundreds of

thousands of white Europeans immigrated to Algeria over the course of the century and became known

as the Pied-Noir. In the early history of French Algeria there was no such thing as Algerian nationalism,

since the geopolitical boundaries of Algeria included scattered tribes that the French kept divided. With

the locals controlled, the French ruled Algeria as the landed elite, controlling the fertile farmland and

the economically important coastal cities. This status quo was maintained from 1830 until the day World

War Two ended.

During an Arab parade celebrating the end of World War Two in 1945, on VE Day, the town of

Sétif became the catalyst for the first hint of nationalistic trouble. The Muslims were celebrating the

event by parading around with anti-colonial signs and Algerian nationalist flags. This angered the French

gendarmerie16 and they attempted to take these nationalist objects away from the marchers. This led to

confrontations where minor altercations between the gendarmerie and the Arabs spiraled out of control

and turned into a full scale riot. The Arabs became a marauding band, roaming the countryside and

killing over 100 French civilians.17 The attacks were vicious, brutal, and caught the French completely off

guard. These massacres led to a scared and particularly brutal French reprisal where the French hastily

15

George Orwell, Burmese Days (London: Mariner Books, 1974), 9. 16

The French police 17

John Talbott, The War Without a Name (New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1980), 74.

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organized militias and indiscriminately killed an estimated 6,000 Arabs.18 These events marked a turning

point in French-Algerian relations and created a tense state. These tensions came to a boil in November

of 1954 when the Front de Libération Nationale19, an Algerian nationalist movement, organized a

country wide uprising that led to the outbreak of open warfare. When this happened, the French

military was confidant in their ability to deal with the situation. The French had fewer colonies to deal

with, legions of experienced soldiers returning from Indochina, and a devoted corps of officers rallying

around a new military doctrine, guerre revolutionnaire.

‘A New Theory of Warfare’

“There just isn’t a simple answer” Tex said. “We’re fighting a kind of war here that I never read

about at Command and Staff College. Conventional weapons just don’t work out here. Neither

do conventional tactics.”

“Well why don’t we start using unconventional tactics?” MacWhite asked. “Apparently the

communists have some theory behind what they’re doing.”20

- Eugene Burdick and William Lederer, The Ugly American

One of the most influential proponents of guerre revolutionnaire doctrine was Roger Trinquier.

Called the “Indo-China expert on subversive warfare,” Roger Trinquier ran special-ops as a commando in

a parachute battalion in Indochina from 1946-1953.21&22 Trinquier spent several tours in Indochina

where he organized some of the most effective counterinsurgent operations of the war. Learning from

18

Talbott, The War Without a Name, 74. 19

The National Liberation Front 20

Eugene Burdick and William Lederer, The Ugly American (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1958), 124. 21

Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace (New York: New York Review Classics, 1977), 198. 22

Also to give cadence to his ‘action hero’ persona, after the French defeat in Algeria almost all upper level officers returned to France to take early retirements. He decided instead to take a ‘job offer’ with a group in the State of Katanga (modern day DR Congo) to train guerrilla forces for a group trying to overthrow the newly established government until he was thrown out by the UN.

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his experiences in Indochina, he recognized that this new kind of war involved fighting a guerrilla whose

“political, economic, psychological, [and] military aims [were to] overthrow the established authority in

a country and replace [it with] another regime” and whose method of accomplishing this was through

the absolute and uncompromising control of the civilian population.23 Trinquier gleamed that the most

important aspect of counterinsurgency was to take that advantage away from the insurgents and

establish a counterinsurgents’ own absolute control over the population.

Trinquier emphasized the importance of controlling the population, recognizing that this new

kind of warfare did not compartmentalize civilian from military targets. Through subterfuge and deceit,

the enemy would blend in with the civilian population, making the identification and apprehension of

the guerrillas nearly impossible. Because of this tactic, guerrillas could not be viewed like traditional

enemy combatants since they did not abide by the accepted rules of warfare. So when a guerrilla is

captured he cannot be treated as an ordinary military prisoner since the goal of guerre revolutionnaire

theory, according to Trinquier, is the “destruction of the enemy.”24 This leads to the conclusion that the

whole country is a battlefield, so to establish control of the population a counterinsurgency needs to

separate the civilians from the guerrillas. This causes the guerre revolutionnaire theorists to destroy the

notion of a ‘clean’ war removed from civilians. When guerrillas claim the same “honors [of a soldier]

while rejecting the same obligations” by not separating themselves from the innocent population, it is

the obligation of the counterinsurgents to separate the civilians from the enemy combatants.25

Because of the difficulty in finding and punishing an armed group that operates as a ghost, it is

paramount to attack the organization rather than focus on individuals. Trinquier characterizes it as

warfare against an “armed clandestine organization whose essential role is to impose its will upon the

23



Trinquier, Modern Warfare, 21.

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population.”26 These organizations, which were the Vietminh in Indochina and the FLN in Algeria,

provide the leadership and economic support to wage an insurgency. Knocking them out of commission

is imperative to running a successful counterinsurgency since without a coherent leadership or

mechanisms to raise funds, an insurgency is largely toothless. These organizations become ingrained in a

society because “fund collectors, activists, and terrorists… live in permanent contact with the population”

meaning a counterinsurgency will never have the support of the population unless it can actively root

out and destroy the organizations.27 The guerrillas thrive on the chaos and paranoia they create in a

society, so as long as a counterinsurgent fights a defensive war the guerrilla force will continue to grow

and become strong.28 Because of the unorthodox methods of the insurgents who created an

environment of insecurity, the guerre revolutionnaire doctrine of Trinquier advocated adopting some of

the unsavory tactics of the insurgents to combat them, such as terrorism and torture.29

Trinquier realized the French were fighting a new kind of combatant; a combatant who

understood Mao’s idea that “[support of the population] is as essential to the combatant as water to the

fish,” that without the support of the population, an insurgency would wither away and die.30 Because of

this it is imperative for the counterinsurgents to garner local support whatever the costs, even when the

most effective route is terrorism. While the Viet Minh rarely used terrorism as a weapon31, there was a

brutal effectiveness that terror had in forcing the support of the population giving credence to its use in

future conflicts.32

Trinquier, along with other guerre revolutionnaire theorists saw the war in Indochina as a loss

because the generals “hesitated to take the necessary measures or took them too late” against the

26



Beebe, “Beating the Guerrilla,” 12. 29



As seen in the Quiet American when the terrorist turned out to be the American 32


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Vietminh.33 The necessary measure he speaks of is devoting the proper resources to control the

population. Trinquier make sure the French would never make the same mistake twice.

‘A Global Communist Threat’

“Many people think it impossible for guerrillas to exist for long in the enemy’s rear. Such a

belief reveals lack of comprehension of the relationship that should exist between the people

and the troops. The former may be likened to water and the latter to the fish who inhabit it.

How may it be said that these two cannot exist together?”34

-Mao Tse-tung, On Guerrilla Warfare

An important tenant of guerre revolutionnaire theory is the fact that it is based on an extreme

paranoia of communism. Guerre revolutionnaire theorists saw the monolith of communism as a united

force that had beaten the French in Indochina and was biding its time to strike France again. But these

theorists also had an ‘academic’ fear of communism, meaning they were willing learn from and adopt

certain parts to form a stronger French army. In communism, the guerre revolutionnaire theorists saw

what the French military was missing, an ideology to unite the military and civilians. If communism took

hold in a community, it should be up to the army to change the populations’ minds by “provide a

promising alternative ideology to the population.”35 By doing this the army would win the support of the

people while at the same time depriving the enemy of support.36 The need for this new ideology was

articulated by Indochina veteran and guerre revolutionnaire theorist General Alland.

33


Samuel B Griffith, trans., On Guerrilla Warfare. (New York: Praeger Publishing, 1961), 92. 35

Lou DiMacro, “Losing the Moral Compass: Torture and Guerre Revolutionnaire in the Algerian War.” US Army War College (Summer 2006): 67. 36

Beebe, “Beating the Guerrilla,” 12.

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Alland saw the main problem with the French army in Indochina as a lack of a coherent ideology.

The military never succeeded in uniting the French forces and the Vietnamese population under one

banner. The French were united through a common struggle against the communist nationals, but this

did not appeal to the Vietnamese population. This was in opposition to the Vietminh who were united

under a common ideology of communism and liberation that appealed to the nationalistic tendencies of

the local population. Because of this bond, the Vietminh were able to more tightly control the country

and ultimately win local support. Alland saw this and declared that the Vietminh had “two main

advantages over conventional military forces: organization and ideology.”37 So Alland, along with other

guerre revolutionnaire theorists, formulated an ideology to unite the French and the locals in a common

fight, a focused fight against communists.

The genius behind Alland’s ideology is its universal applicability. Given the times, late 1950s,

communist paranoia was en vogue and the idea that communists might attack metropolitan France was

a real threat.38 By channeling this fear, Alland could unite the entire French army and give the native

populations a convincing narrative for supporting the French counterinsurgents. To the Arabs in Algeria

he could say that the war being waged was not against patriotic freedom fighters, but rather against the

FLN communists trying to create a new global order of repression. This was an ideology that everyone

could get behind, both civilian and counterinsurgent.

The Vietminh fought with such fervor for their beliefs that the guerre revolutionnaire theorists

had to include ideology in their new doctrine. By creating “a similarly attractive and accessible ideology

to help combat the insurgents” they could steal the local support away from the insurgents and

37



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ultimately win the war.39 By combining Alland’s ideas on ideology and Trinquier’s ideas on population

control, the French were ready to launch an effective counterinsurgency in Algeria.

Operant Conditioning and Insurgents

“Military operations alone are not sufficient, for there are actually two objectives: the

destruction of the guerrilla force and the elimination of Communist influence on the civilian

population.”40

-Lieutenant Colonel John E. Beebe, “Beating the Guerrilla”

To apply the lessons of Trinquier’s control of the population and Alland’s theory of a coherent

ideology there needed to be a way to co-opt the civilian population’s support. Many officers in

Indochina had seen how the Vietminh had manipulated the population and captured French POWs

through propaganda and brainwashing with startlingly effective results. The guerre revolutionnaire

theorists wanted to exploit this guerrilla tactic of control; so when war broke out in Algeria, guerre

revolutionnaire practitioner Colonel Lacheroy was put in charge of the 5es Bureaux, the army division in

charge of guerre psychologique41.

The methods of guerre psychologique created by guerre revolutionnaire theorists were

developed to attack the insurgent organizations in a threefold approach. All psychological operations

would attempt to focus on destroying the enemy’s political network, destroying the enemy’s armed

39


Beebe, “Beating the Guerrilla,” 12. 41

Psychological warfare

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forces, and, most importantly, reeducating captured enemy personnel through psychological means.42

Colonel Lacheroy assigned men from the 5es Bureaux to every French army unit43 so they could be

involved in the preparation and execution of all operations. These men were there to make sure that the

military missions had psychological aspects to them that would further “the cohesion of the whole of

the nation and develop the will to fight in everyone.”44 The guerre revolutionnaire leaders were on a

mission to use propaganda to keep the French army on their side and at the same time keep the FLN

questioning their own.

For the French soldiers, the members of the 5es Bureaux presented training films and pro-army

periodicals, to the Algerian civilians they broadcast music and distributed leaflets in conjunction with

military operations, and for the captured guerrillas; they were reeducated. Lacheroy wanted a method

to stop FLN members from supporting their nationalist cause and to fix their ‘faulty’ thinking. So when

the French president gave special powers to the army to pursue whatever avenues they deemed

appropriate for executing operations in Algeria, it led to the creation of centres d’hébergement45.

Officially they were used to help expedite the “judicial process [which] was too cumbersome to meet

the conditions of civil war” but these camps were dominated by members of the 5es Bureaux who used

them for indoctrination purposes.46

42

Paret, Peter. French Revolutionary Warfare from Indochina to Algeria. (New York: Frederick A. Paeger, 1964), 56-57. 43

A point that’s not very germane to my focus on counterinsurgency, but a very interesting point nonetheless is that the 5es Bureaux were also assigned to operate in Paris. The army saw the benefit of engaging in propaganda in a major Parisian metropolitan area, which wouldn’t seem too unusual until you realize that one of the reasons Guerre Revolutionnaire theory failed in the political sense was the fear that these men caused the politicians in Paris. 44

Paret. French Revolutionary Warfare from Indochina to Algeria, 57. 45

Internment camps 46

Paret. French Revolutionary Warfare from Indochina to Algeria, 62.

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The goal of these centres d’hébergement was to brainwash enemy combatants of the new

French ideology and convince them of the righteousness of France’s involvement in Algeria.47 To

accomplish this, the internment camps took the FLN, or in some cases Arab civilians, and put them in

isolation to break them down psychologically. Then trained psychologists48 would lavage de crâne49 the

insurgents through psychological stresses and propaganda indoctrination. The psychologists were

continually drilling into the guerrillas’ heads that the French were involved in a “permanent world-wide

struggle” against the communists and not interested in punishing Algerian nationalists and that there

was little “difference between anti-colonialism and communism.”50 These methods were a direct result

of the experience of the French in Indochina where the Vietminh had attempted to reeducate French

prisoners in communist ideology. 51 Lacheroy understood the importance of controlling the population

and turning ones enemy into an asset.

‘An Algerian Problem with a Maoist solution: fighting fire with fire…’

“The problem is this: The FLN wants to throw us out of Algeria, and we want to stay… We are

soldiers. Our duty is to win… Should France stay in Algeria? If your answer is still yes then you

must accept all the consequences”52

-Colonel Marcel Bigeard, Battle of Algiers

47


According to the military, only psychologists were supposed to do this stage of the indoctrination. But many times it was untrained soldiers. 49

Brainwash 50



Gillo Pontecorvo, Battle of Algiers, (1966).

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The theorists’ ideas on guerre revolutionnaire were applied by the French ground commanders

in Algeria starting at the outbreak of the Algerian conflict in 1954. Due to their strategies, the French

counterinsurgency being waged in the bled53 was wildly successful with the FLN failing to bleed the

French dry. Deciding to change up their tactics, the FLN started an urban guerrilla conflict in the city of

Algiers in the Casbah district, a slum of 80,000 Arabs that was autonomous and outside of French rule.

The FLN planned to show their power by staging a city wide strike and terrorizing the native Peid-Noir

population through bombings of civilian targets. The FLN tactics scared and angered the Pied-Noir, and

the Peid-Noir petitioned the French government to take drastic action.54 The French had no intention of

losing Algiers to the insurgents, so with the memory of Indochina still fresh in their minds they brought

in Colonel Marcel Bigeard.

Colonel Bigeard was as close to a ‘super-soldier’ as the French could muster. A World War Two

veteran who escaped a Nazi POW camp in Poland, commanded a parachute battalion in Indochina, and

was one of the most effectual commanders at the Battle of Dien Bein Phu; he used his experiences to

conduct one of the most efficient counterinsurgent operations ever launched. 55 Called “the ace of all

para[troopers],” he applied the more unsightly aspects of the Vietminh’s tactics to fight the FLN: mainly

terrorism and torture. 56 As the quote that opens this section mentions, the French wanted to stay in

Algeria and there were certain consequences to that action.

Bigeard marched into Algiers with his crack troop of highly trained counterinsurgents, the 3rd

Regiment de Chasseurs Parachutistes, ready to not just maintain the safety of the city but, in true guerre

revolutionnaire fashion, to annihilate the insurgent threat.57 The FLN was fighting a war based “mainly

53

The sparsely populated countryside/desert in the interior of Algeria 54

Horne, Savage War of Peace, 187. 55

John Towers, “The French in Algeria, 1954-1962 Military Successes Failure of Grand Strategy,” US Army War College (Apr. 2002): 6. 56

Horne, Savage War of Peace, 551. 57

Paul Aussaresses The Battle of the Casbah (New York: Enigma books, 2004), 95.

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on sabotage, guerrilla raids, and terrorism” so he was ready to stop them at any cost. Wielding absolute

power over the city of Algiers and its inhabitants, Bigeard began to fight an all-out counterinsurgency

employing unscrupulous tactics learned in the maelstrom of Indochina. One lesson he learned was that

urban terrorism could be used as a means of establishing control over the population.58&59 Bigeard

helped destroy the FLN and in relation to guerre revolutionnaire doctrine, he took it to its logical

conclusion, controlling the population through torture.

Bigeard was quoted as saying that “torture [was] the particular bane of the terrorist, just as anti-

aircraft artillery is that of the airman” and this perfectly describes his devotion to the guerre

revolutionnaire inspired tactics.60 To stop bomb attacks that were threatening Peid-Noir civilians,

Bigeard’s men had a limited window of opportunity to extract the information from captured prisoners

about bomb locations and makers. While the jury is still out on whether torture was institutionalized by

Bigeard, it is shown that his men were willing to do anything to stop the terrorist attacks. To gain this

information “torture was deemed essential” by Bigeard since he believed that “the innocent deserve

more protection than the guilty.”61

By bringing torture into consideration, Bigeard struck a fatal blow against the FLN. Because "we

are no longer protected by legality," wrote a commander of the F.L.N. in 1957, "we [need] to have

legality re-established; otherwise we are lost.”62 From January to March of 1957 Bigeard led his

paratroopers in counterinsurgent operations throughout Algiers where his troops were responsible for

58

Cradock & Smith, “No Fixed values,” 78. 59

Towers, “The French in Algeria, 1954-1962 Military Successes Failure of Grand Strategy,” 6. 60

Trinquier, Modern Warfare, XV. 61



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acquiring a wealth of intelligence through torture that was used to stop bombings and dismantle the

FLN organization.63

Bigeard effectively applied the lessons of guerre revolutionnaire theory and succeeded in one of

the most effective counterinsurgency operations ever launched. The French victory was absolute, the

FLN was utterly destroyed and the city of Algiers was safe for the rest of the war in large part due to the

success of torture. Bigeard isolated the insurgency from support, provided local security, and built a

robust intelligence network, bringing the FLN to its knees.64 But the victory came at a very high cost.

While the loss of life for the French was minimal, according to Alistair Horne, “[Bigeard] won the battle

of Algiers, but that meant losing the war.”65 While the use of torture was successful in Algiers, its use as

a long term strategy would prove to be flawed.

63


Lou DiMacro, “Losing the Moral Compass: Torture and Guerre Revolutionnaire in the Algerian War,” 68. 65

Horne, A Saavage War of Peace, 207

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Part III.

‘…sometimes just burns the building down: An Empire in Flux’

“A problem confronts us: Will we in modern warfare make use of all necessary resources to win,

as we have always done in the traditional wars of the past?”66

-Roger Trinquier, Modern Warfare

Under guerre revolutionnaire theory “a non-believer had to be converted, punished, or killed,”

there was no middle ground.67 This is a prime example of how guerre revolutionnaire theory

encapsulated a totalitarian notion of control and surrendering to an ideology that caused it to look very

unattractive to the French at home and the Arabs abroad. But a main flaw with guerre revolutionnaire

doctrine was that torture became accepted and the French could never control the hearts and minds of

the Arabs. When stories of torture reached the FLN, they had the perfect form of propaganda which

sowed the seeds for France’s eventual defeat.

In hindsight, torture completely backfired on the French. It destroyed the French army’s moral

imperative by having them conduct interrogations that involved the “most barbaric tortures [like]

sensory deprivation.”68 Many times the brutal treatment of prisoners had nothing to do with intelligence

gathering for an operation but as a method to control the population.69 Torture ended up “corrupting

the torturer as much as it [broke] the victim” creating instances when the French army started to

question its own motives in Algeria.70 In the end, the boost the FLN had from exploiting the abuses by

the French far outweighed the tactical advantage the French gained from torture. The instances of

torture were never formally admitted by the French army, but many of the officers wrote revealing

66



Mack, “Counterinsurgency in the Third World: Theory and Practice,” 250. 69


Horne, Savage War of Peace, 200

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memoirs after leaving Algeria, with the most famous written by General Aussaresses. Aussaresses goes

into terrifying accounts of torture, including a time when he ordered the water boarding of a prisoner

who died in the process. A catholic priest who was watching an interrogation under Aussaresses

commented:

“Our conscience tells us that this war…is a war opposed to all Christian principles, to all the

principles of the French constitution… to all the values of a civilization in which our country

rightly takes pride in.”71

The use of torture exposed a primary reason for the failure of guerre revolutionnaire when it

exposed a division of power in French Algeria. This problem emerged when the Arabs could not

differentiate the French military from the French government. The fact that the same arm of the French

government that was shooting at the Algerians one day would be helping construct a water well the

next day was wildly confusing to the Algerians. Simply put, “the emphasis of guerre revolutionnaire [was]

the primacy of the military over the civil authorities” leading to a militaristic environment lacking the

softer powers of civilian leadership.72 The civil bureaucrats who run a country are more effective at

winning hearts and minds, but were completely subordinate to the military establishment. By repressing

the FLN through overwhelming military force the French unwillingly fostered the “politicization of the

mass of Muslim population against the French.”73 So in effect, the military policies of guerre

revolutionnaire worked against the political policies of the French government. Torture had contributed

directly to the strategic failure of the French counterinsurgency and the success of the insurgency by

empowering the enemy with a powerful bond against the occupying force. This allowed for a nationalist

revolutionary movement to have fertile ground to grow and prosper.74 The most important aspects of

71

Merom, How Democracies Lose Small Wars,112. 72


Mack, “Counterinsurgency in the Third World: Theory and Practice,” 238. 74

Lou DiMacro, “Losing the Moral Compass: Torture and Guerre Revolutionnaire in the Algerian War,” 64.

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guerre revolutionnaire theory are the integration of political, military and psychological efforts, and the

French army fell short on integrating the political part.75

The ideology failed too because the vehement anti-communism espoused by the guerre

revolutionnaire theorists did not apply to Algeria since the movement was nationalistic in nature. No

matter how hard the army pushed the communist conspiracy ideas, the French soldiers never fully

endorsed it. This counted doubly for the native Algerians who were even less susceptible to the French

propaganda because they saw through to the French’s true motives and that their ideology was nothing

but a lie. France was a democratic state that was accountable to the French people, and the French

people could not stand the lax morals of the French army.76

75


Merom, How Democracies Lose Small Wars, 250.

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Part IV.

‘A Modern War’

“The army’s failure to accurately review its performance in Indochina, to access lessons from

the application of different approached by colonial powers… did not mark it as an effective

learning organization [where the] tactical success undercut the French political aims.”77

- -Lou DiMarco, “Losing the Moral Compass”

This was a new breed of warfare for a new era. The military academies still preached the old

school warfare of set nations, with set uniforms, fighting over a state to accomplish a victory; at which

point the other side would retreat and plan for another war. The concept of a non-state enemy that

would never give up until death frightened and shocked the French. A people from the homeland of

French philosopher Descartes’ logic who famously said, ‘I think therefore I am,’ had no place in total

warfare. But it all comes back to the Clausewitzian idea that the one who is willing to go all the way, be

the most bloodthirsty, takes the most lives, will win. Mao took Clausewitz to the extreme, insomuch that

there was very little room for the beauty that Western military historians and generals saw in war78 and

only the nitty-gritty of total and absolute war. No western general could ever have successfully fought

the wars that were required of them without applying the lessons learned from Indochina and guerre

revolutionnaire theory. It is a doctrine of total war, where anything goes, and gives license for the

counterinsurgents to act as insurgents. With a theory that “offered no compromise, no negotiation, and

no quarter given,” the conflicts become a fight to the death.79

77

DiMacro, “Losing the Moral Compass: Torture and Guerre Revolutionnaire in the Algerian War,” 75. 78

I myself am no military expert but there is a thing of beauty when reading about the Battle Cannae, a crushing Carthaginian victory during the Second Punic War, or the Battle of Austerlitz, when Napoleon routed the Russians and Austrians. 79

Cradock & Smith, “No Fixed values,”84.

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But given the fact that guerre revolutionnaire theory only directly influenced the French army

for less than a decade, it shows the intrinsic flaws in its practice and, more importantly, its logic. This is

an inherent ‘catch-22’ in guerre revolutionnaire theory that attempts to use guerrilla tactics to

accomplish counterinsurgent goals. Unfortunately the goals of the insurgent and counterinsurgent are

almost complete polar opposites. One side wants to throw out the ruling party while the other wants to

retain power. Using tactics that emphasize chaos and fear is great for an insurgency but as the French

showed in Algeria, fails for the counterinsurgents. The ever true axiom that it’s easier to break down

then build up holds true here, unfortunately for the French they did not realize this until too late.

The French were not willing to see their ‘dirty war’ all the way through by engaging in total war.

A democracy has real issues with destroying entire countries, thus the Clausewitzian idea that “he who

uses forces unsparingly, without reference to the bloodshed involved, must obtain a superiority if his

adversary uses less vigor in its application… to introduce into philosophy of war itself a principle of

moderation would be an absurdity” still rings true 150 years after the fact.80 France was not willing or

able to torture, manipulate, and kill enough Algerians to win. The morality of many French soldiers did

not allow them to reconcile their participation in their brutalities, so they lost.81 They believed in their

cause but were not willing to do all that was necessary to win.

But could France have done anything different? The short answer is yes, but the long answer is

no. There were numerous examples where guerre revolutionnaire doctrine distanced the French from

the native Algerians, but the problems that plagued French Algeria were long run institutional and

nationalistic in nature that guerre revolutionnaire doctrine did nothing to address. Proponents of guerre

revolutionnaire theory thought they just needed to force their ideology on the edge of a bayonet.

Barring the French stationing hundreds of thousands more troops in Algeria and turning their colony

80

Carl von Clausewitz, On Warfare (New York : Penguin Classics, 2009), I 2-3. 81

Paret. French Revolutionary Warfare from Indochina to Algeria, 73.

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into a totalitarian state, what guerre revolutionnaire theorists wanted to do, there was no way for

France to achieve the victory they wanted. The French were trying to have the best of both worlds, a

light counterinsurgency that was popular with the local population, but failed at both. The effective

strategy would have been to disregard the draconian guerre revolutionnaire theory, partner with the

moderate Arabs, and devise a dual France-Algerian rule. Unfortunately guerre revolutionnaire theory

deals only in dichotomies and absolutes, so the issue was moot. The barbarism that caused the French

to lose the support of the people was not a part of guerre revolutionnaire theory, but it was its logical

end.

Adherence to guerre revolutionnaire theory was quite remarkable. The French applied what

they learned from their enemies in Indochina and took this knowledge to the conflict in Algeria. The

French borrowed almost exclusively from Mao to create guerre revolutionnaire doctrine. They adopted

the good, like winning the support of the population, but also embraced the darker side, forced

reeducation and torture. In the end the Algerian conflict, just like in Indochina, came down to who won

the hearts and minds of the population82 and when all was said and done, the insurgents won.

82

But saying this by no means equates the FLN nationalists with being on the side of compassion and gentleness, they were equally if not more nasty than the French, they just happened to have a cultural and racial bond with the Arabs that the French could never match.

Haubert 26

Bibliography

Aussaresses, Paul. The Battle of the Casbah. New York: Enigma Books, 2004.

Beebe, John. “Beating the Guerrilla.” Military Review. (Dec. 1955): 3-18.

Burdick, Eugene & Lederer, William. The Ugly American. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1958.

Clausewitz, Carl von. On Warfare. New York : Penguin Classics, 2009.

Cradock, Christopher & Smith, M. L. R. “No Fixed values.” Journal of Cold War Studies. (Fall 2007):

68-105.

DiMacro, Lou. “Losing the Moral Compass: Torture and Guerre Revolutionnaire in the Algerian War.”

US Army War College. (Summer 2006): 63-76.

Greene, Graham. The Quiet American. New York: Penguin Classics, 2004.

Horne, Alistair. A Savage War of Peace. New York: New York Review Classics, 1977.

Irving, R. E. M. The First Indochina War. London: C Helms, 1975.

Mack, Andrew. “Counterinsurgency in the Third World: Theory and Practice.” British Journal of

International Studies. (Oct. 1975): 226-253.

Martin, Jean. "Battle of Algiers" Directed by Gillo Pontecorvo. Rome: Rialto Pictures, 1966.

Merom, Gil. How Democracies Lose Small Wars. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

Orwell, George, Burmese Days. London: Mariner Books, 1974.

Paret, Peter. French Revolutionary Warfare from Indochina to Algeria. New York: Frederick A.

Paeger, 1964.

Samuel B Griffith, trans., On Guerrilla Warfare. New York: Praeger Publishing, 1961.

Talbott, John. The War Without a Name. New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1980.

Telegraph Editors. “General Marcel Bigeard- Obituary.” The Telegragh, June 20, 2010, accessed

December 15, 2012, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/military-obituaries/army-

obituaries/7841910/General-Marcel-Bigeard.html.

Towers, John. “The French in Algeria, 1954-1962 Military Successes Failure of Grand Strategy.”

US Army War College: (09 Apr. 2002): 1-18.

Trinquier, Roger. Modern Warfare. London : Pall Mall Press, 1964.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/military-obituaries/army-obituaries/7841910/General-Marcel-Bigeard.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/military-obituaries/army-obituaries/7841910/General-Marcel-Bigeard.html

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Important Guerre Revolutionnaire Figures

General Bigeard- Battle of Algiers General Alland- Ideology

General Trinquier- Control of Population Colonel Lacheroy-Psychological Warfare

Documents

GR Theory Final Draft