an unsuccessful military putsch in April 1961, inspired by the newly formed OAS (Organisation de l’Armée Secrète). But the conspirators failed to shift De Gaulle, who went on French national radio to denounce the ‘military pronunciamento by a handful of retired generals’. The chief victim of the coup was the morale and the international image (what remained of it) of the French Army. An overwhelming majority of Frenchmen and women, many of them with sons serving in Algeria, drew the conclusion that Algerian independence was not just inevitable but desirable—and for the sake of France, the
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