A Savage War of Peace Quotes

“peoples who have been waiting for their independence for a century, fighting for it for a generation, can afford to sit out a presidential term, or a year or two in the life of an old man in a hurry;”
― Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace: Algeria, 1954-1962

“The sun beams down on Algiers — but the inhabitants do not smile back. It is a surly city, harrowed by the stresses of over-population and under-employment; with the architecture of Cannes, but the atmosphere of Aberdeen. During the day the cafés are thronged with all-male, typically Arab society. At night the city, responsive to President Boumedienne’s own personal brand of puritanism, closes down like wartime Toronto on a Sunday.”
― Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace: Algeria, 1954-1962

“I would suddenly be seized with a desire to go down to the beach for a swim. And merely to have imagined the sound of ripples at my feet, and then the smooth feel of the water on my body as I struck out, and the wonderful sensation of relief it gave,”
― Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace: Algeria, 1954-1962

“Consulting de Gaulle whether he should be present at the flag-lowering ceremony or not, Fouchet after a pause of several seconds had been told simply: “Je crois que ça serait inutile....”
― Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace: Algeria, 1954-1962

“The moment despair is alone, pure, sure of itself, pitiless in its consequences, it has a merciless power. Albert Camus”
― Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace: Algeria, 1954-1962

“Myself, and the majority of officers in a position of command, will not execute unconditionally the orders of the Head of State.”
― Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace: Algeria, 1954-1962

“We shall not have the Algerians with us, if they do not want that themselves.... The era of the European administration of the indigenous peoples has run its course.”
― Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace: Algeria, 1954-1962

“In real life “Boisfeuras” had his opposite number in Colonel Antoine Argoud, another para whose extremity in belief and deed were to bring him notoriety later on. “We want to halt the decadence of the West and the march of Communism,” declared Argoud in court during the Barricades Trial of November 1960: “That is our duty, the real duty of the army. That is why we must win the war in Algeria. Indo-China taught us to see the truth....” To men like “Boisfeuras” and Argoud the war against Communism was a permanent and unceasing phenomenon; while nationalism, in the Indo-Chinese and Algerian context, was largely equated with Communism. Theirs was a doctrine, says Edward Behr, “which, if carried to its logical conclusion, would have led to fascism not only in Algeria but in France as well”.”
― Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace: Algeria, 1954-1962

“General Jacques de Bollardière, a distinguished soldier who had fought in Norway, at El Alamein, with the maquis in the Ardennes as well as at Dien Bien Phu, and who was shortly to find himself seriously at odds with army policy in Algeria, criticises the professional army after Indo-China because: “instead of coldly analysing with courageous lucidity its strategic and tactical errors, it gave itself up to a too human inclination and tried — not without reason, however — to excuse its mistakes by the faults of civil authority and public opinion”. He was reminded of the young Germans of post-1918 seeking to justify a notion of a “generalised treachery”.”
― Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace: Algeria, 1954-1962

“In this admirable country in which a spring without equal covers it with flowers and its light, men are suffering hunger and demanding justice. Albert Camus, 1958”
― Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace: Algeria, 1954-1962

“the prosperity gap between very rich and very poor in France was less than that between the handful of most affluent grands colons of Algeria and the petit blanc; while between the latter and his Muslim competitor, the differential was, in contrast, extremely slender.”
― Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace: Algeria, 1954-1962

“From the Inquisition to the Gestapo and the “Battle of Algiers,” history teaches us that, in the production of reliable intelligence, regardless of the moral issue, torture is counter-productive. As a further footnote to my tenet, learned in Algeria, that torture should never, never, never be resorted to by any Western society, I draw readers once again to the testimony of Prefect Teitgen of Algiers (see) which —three decades on—I still find deeply moving. Teitgen had been informed by the Algiers police that they had intelligence of a bomb which could have caused appalling casualties. Could they put a suspect to “the question”?”
― Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace: Algeria, 1954-1962

“One of my earliest surprises in Algiers was that in the Casbah, where the highly emotive Battle of Algiers had been waged against Massu’s paras, there is not the smallest plaque or commemoration to indicate where such heroes of the Revolution as Ali la Pointe fought and died; and often it is hard to find residents who can guide or inform you, even though little more than a decade has elapsed.”
― Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace: Algeria, 1954-1962

“The history of France, a permanent miracle,” says André Maurois at the end of his Histoire de la France, “has the singular privilege of impassioning the peoples of the earth to the point where they all take part in French quarrels.”
― Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace: Algeria, 1954-1962

“De Gaulle at his iciest had reproached Challe: “One does not impose conditions on de Gaulle!”
― Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace: Algeria, 1954-1962

“One does not impose conditions on de Gaulle!”
― Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace: Algeria, 1954-1962

“Monsieur le Gouverneur-Général, you reason in the French of France, but we reason in the French of Algeria.” It was not at all the same language, as was to become tragically plain later, and in order to understand events from 1954 onwards it is necessary to accept the existence of three totally distinct peoples — the French of France, the French of Algeria, and the Muslims of Algeria.”
― Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace: Algeria, 1954-1962

“Qu’importe si cent mille coups de fusil partent en Afrique! L’Europe ne les entend pas. Louis-Philippe, 1835”
― Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace: Algeria, 1954-1962

“disposal of the “inconvenient”,”
― Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace: Algeria, 1954-1962