Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945

by Tony Judt

The government of liberated France showed little concern for Arab sentiment, and when this indifference resulted in an uprising in the Kabylia region east of Algiers in May 1945, the insurgents were uncompromisingly crushed. For the following decade Parisian attention was turned elsewhere. By the time these years of pent-up anger and thwarted expectations culminated in the outbreak of organized insurrection, on November 1st 1954, compromise was no longer on the agenda. The Algerian FLN—Front de Libération Nationale—was led by a younger generation of Arab nationalists who scorned the moderate, Francophile strategies of their elders. Their objective was not ‘home rule’ or reform but independence, a goal that successive French governments could not contemplate. The result was eight murderous years of civil war.