Algerian War of Independence 1954-1962: France Loses Algeria

The Algerian War of Independence was the conflict fought from 1954 to 1962 between the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN) and France, which had ruled Algeria since 1830. It combined guerrilla war, urban terrorism, mass resettlement and the systematic use of torture, and it caused a political crisis that brought down the French Fourth Republic. The war ended with the Évian Accords and Algerian independence in July 1962, closing one of the most painful chapters of European decolonisation.

Background

France invaded Algeria in 1830 (see French Conquest of Algeria) and later made its northern territory part of France itself, divided into départements. Around a million European settlers, known as pieds-noirs, lived there by the 1950s, alongside roughly nine million Muslim Algerians.

Political and economic power rested firmly with the settlers. Most Muslim Algerians lacked full citizenship, voted in a separate, weaker electoral college and faced poverty, land loss and discrimination. Reformist and nationalist movements, led by figures such as Messali Hadj and Ferhat Abbas, grew between the wars.

On 8 May 1945, as Europe celebrated victory over Germany, a nationalist demonstration in Sétif turned into riots in which about 100 Europeans were killed. French repression killed far more Algerians: French officials admitted to about 1,000 to 1,500 deaths, historians’ estimates run from several thousand to over 20,000, and Algeria cites 45,000. Many future FLN leaders later said that Sétif convinced them that only armed struggle could end colonial rule.

The outbreak: 1 November 1954

A group of young militants who had broken with Messali Hadj formed the FLN in October 1954. In the early hours of 1 November 1954, a date later called the “Toussaint Rouge” (Red All Saints’ Day), it carried out around 70 attacks on police posts, military targets and infrastructure across Algeria. The FLN issued a proclamation calling for national independence.

France’s government, led by Pierre Mendès France, insisted that Algeria was part of France and could not be given up. The interior minister, François Mitterrand, famously declared that Algeria was France. Troops were sent, and the conflict was officially described as “operations to maintain order”.

Escalation, 1955–1957

In August 1955 the FLN organised an uprising around Philippeville (now Skikda), in which 123 people, including 71 Europeans, were killed. French forces and settler militias responded with reprisals that killed at least 1,273 Algerians according to official figures, and thousands according to the FLN. The cycle of atrocity and reprisal deepened the divide between the communities.

France raised troop numbers sharply, eventually deploying around 400,000 to 500,000 soldiers, many of them conscripts. The army forcibly moved some two million rural Algerians into regroupment camps to separate them from the guerrillas. In August 1956 the FLN held the Soummam Congress, which set up a national leadership and political programme.

In January 1957 the government gave the 10th Parachute Division under General Jacques Massu police powers in Algiers. During the Battle of Algiers, which lasted most of 1957, paratroopers dismantled the FLN’s urban network after a wave of bombings in cafés and public places. They did so through mass arrests, torture and summary executions. The FLN leader Larbi Ben M’hidi died in French custody in March 1957, and the mathematician Maurice Audin disappeared after his arrest in June.

Women played a visible part in the FLN’s urban campaign. Militants such as Djamila Bouhired, Zohra Drif and Hassiba Ben Bouali carried messages, weapons and bombs, because European-looking or veiled women could pass through checkpoints more easily. Bouhired’s death sentence in 1957, later commuted, became an international cause.

The FLN also used violence against Algerian rivals and those it considered traitors. It fought a bitter struggle with Messali Hadj’s rival nationalist movement, the MNA, in Algeria and among Algerian workers in France, where thousands were killed in the so-called café wars. In May 1957 FLN fighters killed around 300 men in the village of Melouza, accused of supporting the MNA.

The army won the battle militarily, but revelations about torture, such as Henri Alleg’s book La Question (1958), turned many in France against the war.

De Gaulle and the road to self-determination

To cut off supplies from Tunisia and Morocco, France built fortified, electrified barriers along the borders, notably the Morice Line. In February 1958 a French air raid on the Tunisian village of Sakiet Sidi Youssef caused international outrage.

On 13 May 1958 settlers and army officers seized government buildings in Algiers, fearing that Paris would negotiate with the FLN, and formed a committee of public safety. Threatened with a possible military coup, the Fourth Republic turned to Charles de Gaulle, who became prime minister on 1 June. On 4 June he told a cheering crowd in Algiers “Je vous ai compris” (“I have understood you”), words that each side interpreted in its own favour. A new constitution created the Fifth Republic in October 1958.

In September 1958 the FLN formed the Provisional Government of the Algerian Republic (GPRA) in Cairo, with Ferhat Abbas as its first president.

De Gaulle at first pursued both military pressure and reform. In October 1958 he announced the Constantine Plan, a five-year programme of investment, housing, land distribution and jobs for Muslim Algerians, and he offered the FLN a “peace of the brave”, which it rejected as a call to surrender.

The army’s Challe Plan of 1959 inflicted heavy losses on the guerrillas inside Algeria. Yet de Gaulle concluded that the war could not be won politically. On 16 September 1959 he announced that Algerians would be offered self-determination.

Settler extremists rebelled in Algiers in January 1960 (the “Week of the Barricades”). In a referendum on 8 January 1961, about 75 per cent of voters in France and Algeria approved self-determination. On 21 April 1961 four retired generals, Maurice Challe, André Zeller, Edmond Jouhaud and Raoul Salan, attempted a putsch in Algiers, but it collapsed within days when conscripts and most of the army stayed loyal.

Diehards then formed the Organisation armée secrète (OAS), which waged a campaign of bombings and assassinations in Algeria and France. In Paris, a peaceful demonstration by Algerians on 17 October 1961 was violently suppressed by police under Maurice Papon; estimates of the dead range from several dozen to more than 200.

The Évian Accords and independence

After long negotiations, French and GPRA representatives signed the Évian Accords on 18 March 1962, and a ceasefire took effect the next day. French voters approved the accords by about 90 per cent in a referendum on 8 April. In Algeria, a referendum on 1 July 1962 approved independence by an overwhelming majority, and France recognised it on 3 July. Algeria celebrates independence on 5 July, the anniversary of the French capture of Algiers in 1830.

In the final months, OAS violence and fear of reprisals drove an exodus of around 800,000 to 900,000 pieds-noirs to France. Many harkis, Algerian Muslims who had fought with the French, were abandoned and killed. Ahmed Ben Bella, one of the FLN’s founders, became Algeria’s first prime minister in September 1962 and president in 1963.

By the numbers

Key people

• Ahmed Ben Bella (1916–2012), FLN founder, captured by the French in 1956, Algeria’s first leader after independence.
• Ferhat Abbas (1899–1985), moderate nationalist who became president of the GPRA.
• Charles de Gaulle (1890–1970), French leader who accepted Algerian self-determination.
• Jacques Massu (1908–2002), paratroop general who commanded during the Battle of Algiers.
• Larbi Ben M’hidi (1923–1957), FLN leader in Algiers who died in French custody.

Timeline

• 1945, 8 May: The Sétif uprising and repression.
• 1954, 1 November: The FLN launches the war with coordinated attacks.
• 1955, 20 August: The Philippeville uprising and reprisals.
• 1957, January–October: The Battle of Algiers.
• 1958, 13 May: Crisis in Algiers brings de Gaulle back to power.
• 1959, 16 September: De Gaulle offers self-determination.
• 1961, 21–26 April: The generals’ putsch in Algiers fails.
• 1961, 17 October: Police repression of Algerian demonstrators in Paris.
• 1962, 18–19 March: The Évian Accords and ceasefire.
• 1962, 5 July: Algeria celebrates independence.

Legacy

The war left deep scars in both countries. In Algeria the FLN became the single ruling party, and the war of liberation became the foundation of national identity. In France it was officially recognised as a “war” only by a law of 1999, and debates continue over torture, the fate of the harkis and the events of 17 October 1961. Recent French presidents have acknowledged state responsibility in the cases of Maurice Audin (2018) and Larbi Ben M’hidi (2024).

The war has also had a long cultural afterlife. Gillo Pontecorvo’s film The Battle of Algiers (1966), made with Algerian participation, became one of the most influential political films ever made and was even screened by military planners studying insurgency. Writers such as Albert Camus, born in Algeria, and Frantz Fanon, who worked as a psychiatrist in Blida and joined the FLN, shaped how intellectuals around the world understood the conflict.

The conflict, coming soon after France’s defeat at Dien Bien Phu, also inspired anti-colonial movements worldwide and influenced theories of guerrilla and counter-insurgency warfare.

Why it matters

The Algerian War ended France’s largest settler colony, transformed French politics through the birth of the Fifth Republic and became a symbol of decolonisation for the developing world. Its memory still shapes relations between France and Algeria and debates about migration and identity in France today.