| Algiers putsch | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
From left to right: French Generals André Zeller, Edmond Jouhaud, Raoul Salan and Maurice Challe during the coup (Gouvernement General building, Algiers, April 23, 1961). |
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| Belligerents | |||||||
| France | French nationalists | ||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||
| President Charles De Gaulle Michel Debré |
Generals Maurice Challe Edmond Jouhaud André Zeller Raoul Salan |
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| Strength | |||||||
| Government-loyal army | 1st Foreign Parachute Regiment French Airforce Commandos 00/541 |
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The Algiers putsch (French: Putsch d'Alger or Coup d'État d'Alger), also known as the Generals' putsch (Putsch des Généraux), was a failed coup d'état to overthrow French President Charles De Gaulle (70) and establish an anti-communist military junta. Organised in French Algeria by retired French army generals Maurice Challe (55, former Commander-in-chief in French Algeria), Edmond Jouhaud (56, former Inspector General of the French Air Force), André Zeller (63, former Chief of staff of the French Ground Army) and Raoul Salan (61, former Commander-in-chief in French Algeria), it took place from the afternoon of 21 April to 26 April 1961 in the midst of the Algerian War (1954–1962).[1]
The organisers of the putsch were opposed to the secret negotiations that French Prime Minister Michel Debré's government had started with the anti-colonialist National Liberation Front (FLN). General Raoul Salan argued that he joined the coup without concerning himself with its technical planning; however, it has always been considered a four-man coup d'état, or as De Gaulle famously put it, "un quarteron de généraux en retraite" (a quartet of retired generals).
The coup was to come in two phases: an assertion of control in French Algeria's major cities Algiers, Oran and Constantine, followed by the seizure of Paris. The metropolitan operation would be led by Colonel Antoine Argoud, with French paratroopers descending on strategic airfields. The commanders in Oran and Constantine, however, refused to follow Challe's demand that they join the coup. At the same time, information about the metropolitan phase came to Prime Minister Debré's attention through the intelligence service.
On 22 April, all flights and landings were forbidden in Parisian airfields, and an order was given to the army to resist the coup "by all means".[2] The following day, President Charles De Gaulle made a famous speech on television, dressed with his 1940s-vintage general's uniform (he was 71 and long retired from the army) ordering the French people and army to help him.[3]
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The majority of the French people had voted in favour of French Algeria's self determination during the disputed referendum of 8 January 1961 organised in metropolitan France. French citizens living abroad or serving abroad in the military were allowed to vote, but non-citizens in Algeria—who comprised the vast majority of the Muslim population—did not participate in the election.
Michel Debré's government started secret negotiations with the GPRA (Provisional Government of the Algerian Republic), the political arm of the FLN. On 25 January 1961, Colonel Antoine Argoud visited with Premier Debré and threatened him with a coup directed by a "colonels' junta"; the French Army was in no way disposed to let the French Algerian départements created in 1848 after the 1830 conquest become independent.
On 22 April 1961, retired generals Maurice Challe, André Zeller and Raoul Salan, helped by colonels Antoine Argoud, Jean Gardes, and the civilians Joseph Ortiz and Jean-Jacques Susini (who would form the OAS terrorist group), took control of Algiers. General Challe criticised what he saw as the government's treason and lies toward French Algeria colonists and loyalist Muslims who trusted it, and stated that
the command reserves its right to extend its actions to the metropole and to reconstitute a constitutional and republican order seriously compromised by a government the illegality of which is blatant in the eyes of the nation.[4]
During the night, the 1st Foreign Parachute Regiment (1e REP), composed of a thousand men (3% of the military present in Algeria) and headed by Hélie de Saint Marc took control of all of Algiers' strategic points in three hours.
The head of the Parisian police, Maurice Papon, and the director of the Sûreté nationale, formed a crisis cell in a room of the Comédie-Française, where Charles De Gaulle was attending a presentation of Racine's Britannicus. The president was informed during the entracte of the coup by Jacques Foccart, his general secretary to African and Malagasy Affairs and closest collaborator, in charge of covert operations.
Algiers' population was awakened on 22 April at 7 am to a message read on the radio: "The army has seized control of Algeria and of the Sahara". The three rebel generals, Challe, Jouhaud and Zeller, had the government's general delegate, Jean Morin, arrested, as well as the National Minister of Public Transport, Robert Buron, who was visiting, and several civil and military authorities. Several regiments put themselves under the command of the insurrectionary generals.
General Jacques Faure, six other officers and several civilians were simultaneously arrested in Paris. At 5 pm, during the ministers' council, Charles De Gaulle declared: "Gentlemen, what is serious about this affair, is that it isn't serious".[5] He then proclaimed a state of emergency in Algeria, while left wing parties, communist trade union CGT and the socialist supporter[6] NGO Ligue des droits de l'homme (LDH, Human Rights League) called to demonstrate against the military's coup d'état.
The following day, on Sunday 23 April, General Salan arrived from Spain and refused to arm civilian activists. At 8 pm, General De Gaulle appeared in his uniform on television, calling on French military personnel and civilians, in the metropole or in Algeria, to oppose the putsch:
An insurrectionary power has established itself in Algeria by a military pronunciamento... This power has an appearance: a quartet of retired generals. It has a reality: a group of officers, partisan, ambitious and fanatic. This group and this quartet possess an expeditive and limited know-how. But they see and understand the Nation and the world only deformed through their frenzy. Their enterprise lead directly towards a national disaster ... I forbid any Frenchman, and, first of all, any soldier, to execute a single one of their orders ... Before the misfortune which hangs over the fatherland and the threat on the Republic, having taken advice from the Constitutional Council, the Prime Minister, the president of the Senate, the president of the National Assembly, I have decided to invoke article 16 of the Constitution [on the state of emergency and full special powers given to the head of state in case of a crisis]. Starting from this day, I will take, directly if needs arise, the measures which seems to me demanded by circumstances ... Frenchwomen, Frenchmen! Help me![7]
Due to the popularity of a recent invention, transistor radio, De Gaulle's call was heard by the conscript soldiers, who refused en masse to follow the professional soldiers' call for insurgency. Trade unions decided for the next day a one hour general strike against the putsch, which met with widespread opposition, largely in the form of civil resistance.[8]
On Tuesday April 25 the French authorities in Paris ordered the explosion of the atomic bomb Gerboise Verte (lit. "green jerboa") in the Sahara to prevent it from falling into the putschists hands. Gerboise Verte exploded at 6:05 AM.
The few troops which had followed the generals progressively surrendered. General Challe also gave himself up to the authorities on 26 April, and was immediately transferred to the metropole. The putsch had been successfully opposed, but the article 16 on full and extraordinary powers given to De Gaulle was maintained for five months. "The Battle of the Transistors"—as it was called by the press—was quickly and definitely won by De Gaulle.[9]
French Army Sergeant Pierre Brillant was killed by the putschists while defending the radio transmitter at Ouled Fayet, Algiers. Brillant was aiming at 1st REP 3rd Company Captain Estoup when he was shot by a legionnaire.
A military court condemned Challe and André Zeller to fifteen years of prison. However, they were granted an amnesty and had their military positions restored five years later. Raoul Salan and Jouhaud escaped. Salan was condemned in absentia to the death penalty (later commuted to life sentence) as was Jouhaud. Salan and others later founded the OAS, a far right terrorist group which attempted to disrupt the April 1962 Peace Evian Accords. A July 1968 act granted amnesty; a November 1982 law reintegrated the surviving generals into the Army. Raoul Salan, Edmond Jouhaud, and six other generals benefitted from this law.
There had been rumours in France, and in some other countries, that individuals within the CIA supported the coup.[10] A number of authors, such as British historian Alistair Horne (A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962), French journalist Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber, French historian and journalist Geneviève Tabouis and American journalist Joseph Alsop (New York Herald Tribune April 25, 1961 editorial) claimed General Maurice Challe had been encouraged by anti-Gaullist friends in the CIA-who he had met while serving with NATO-concerned about both a possible rise in Communism in North Africa and General de Gaulle's ambiguous policy.[11] Only two days before the Algiers putsch, the CIA staged a failed coup in Cuba against its leader Fidel Castro, known as the Bay of Pigs Invasion. French journalist Patrick Pesnot[11] claimed that the French generals also had the support of the West German Federal Intelligence Service Bundesnachrichtendienst leader Reinhard Gehlen. Regardless, the CIA did not support Challe's coup attempt and US President Kennedy contacted de Gaulle assuring him of his support, including military assistance if needed.[11] President de Gaulle rejected Kennedy's support and General Challe always claimed he had never been in contact with foreign countries in this affair.[11]