Challe’s refusal to shed French blood fatally paralyzed his putsch

Evidence

But disquietingly enough even two of Lecomte’s three companies refused to move against the fortress of Mers-el-Kébir. To avert a tragic situation where it looked as if French troops were within an ace of firing on each other, General Pouilly, the loyal commander of Oranie, flew to Algiers for a remarkable confrontation with Challe. Knowing how Challe (who had been in his term at St Cyr) would shrink from any such danger, Pouilly put to him squarely just how close was civil war within the armed forces. … But Challe took the hint, pulling back his flying columns of paras and deciding to concentrate all on the region round Algiers. … At the same time he announced that any conscripts who wished to opt out would be freely repatriated back to France — but how? There would be no naval ships available, and soon no air transports. — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 1388

Categorization

• XREF: Directly echoes the ‘Savage War of Peace’ theme — a war against the enemy that becomes impossible when the enemy is one’s own brothers in arms.

Related

• Challe confined the coup to Algeria to keep fighting the ALN (similarity 0.84)
• Challe’s focus on battlefield offensives blinded him to his colonels’ plotting (similarity 0.82)
• Call of honour above pied-noir loyalty drove Challe’s doomed revolt (similarity 0.82)
• Challe aimed to change Gaullist policy, not remove de Gaulle (similarity 0.81)
• Challe’s revolt was driven by moral obligation to the harkis, not ideology. (similarity 0.81)
• Challe’s loyalty to the republic collapsed only when de Gaulle shifted toward Algerian self-determination (similarity 0.81)
• Challe came to believe de Gaulle had encouraged him to perjure himself (similarity 0.80)
• De Gaulle’s decolonisation rhetoric was the final trigger for Challe’s decision. (similarity 0.80)
• The Algerian army command openly threatened to replace de Gaulle over self-determination. (similarity 0.80)
• Dissident colonels threatened to replace de Gaulle with Challe. (similarity 0.80)
• Political crisis in Algiers interrupted Challe’s offensive just as the A.L.N. neared collapse (similarity 0.80)
• Challe planned a three-month military pacification and an oil-financed breakaway Algeria. (similarity 0.79)
• Challe aimed to disrupt rather than annihilate the F.L.N. (similarity 0.79)
• De Gaulle’s Algeria offensive aimed partly to distract the army from politics (similarity 0.78)