Algiers under the O.A.S. suffered more daily violent deaths than Prohibition-era Chicago
Evidence
Cities that had once enjoyed the flashy late-night existence of an Alicante now became East Berlins — but East Berlins ruled by the mores of Chicago of the “Roaring Twenties”. (Indeed, the parallel of Chicago fixed itself on the minds of the French security forces so that an alerte Chicago become the standard code-name flashed between patrol cars to designate a strounga or a killing. But, as C. L. Sulzberger pointed out at the time, “more people in Algiers die violently each day than in the Midwestern city’s gaudiest era”.) — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 1506
Categorization
- XREF: The Chicago parallel underscores the reader’s interest in how the ‘savage war’ took on urban-terror permutations. — connects to: Daily mass killings in Algiers normalised death to the point of passers-by ignoring victims.; Algiers averaged thirty to forty killings a day in early 1962