Collective responsibility led French units to execute innocent Arab farmhands

Evidence

In his book Les Français d’Algérie, Pierre Nora recounts an episode that was to become, depressingly enough, perhaps not so exceptional as the war dragged on: near Sidi-Bel-Abbès a Foreign Legion patrol systematically searched a pied noir farm where they believed fellaghas were hiding, and discovered two in the corner of a barn. They were interrogated, with blows of rifle butts, but appeared not to understand French. This enraged the Foreign Legion lieutenant, who accused nine agricultural workers on the farm of complicity. After further interrogation had produced nothing, the two rebels, plus the nine farmhands, were put against a wall forthwith and shot in the presence of wives and children, according to the pied noir proprietor (who told the story). — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 360

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Military commanders privately authorized bombing and collective responsibility in Algeria.; France’s collective responsibility doctrine mirrored the principle behind Nazi massacres.; French soldiers retaliated against Arab civilians with mass killing after rebel attacks — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 516 (+4 more)

Related

• France’s collective responsibility doctrine mirrored the principle behind Nazi massacres. (similarity 0.92)
• French soldiers retaliated against Arab civilians with mass killing after rebel attacks (similarity 0.86)
• Military commanders privately authorized bombing and collective responsibility in Algeria. (similarity 0.85)
• Collective responsibility backfired by giving the F.L.N. a key propaganda weapon. (similarity 0.84)
• The F.L.N. mirrored French collective responsibility with collective reprisals (similarity 0.84)
• The F.L.N. justified civilian massacre as reprisal for collective repression (similarity 0.82)
• The F.L.N. massacred 301 peasants at Mélouza and blamed the French paras (similarity 0.82)
• Collective responsibility backfired by handing the F.L.N. a psychological advantage (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Collective responsibility shifted from punishing villages to destroying them #expands (0.75)
• The F.L.N. mirrored French collective responsibility with collective reprisals #expands (0.70)
• French retaliation massacres played directly into the F.L.N.’s strategy #responds-to (0.60) — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 521
• Stranded mercenary invalids were commonly killed by resentful French peasants #corroborates (0.50) — Garrett Mattingly, The Defeat of the Spanish Armada, 377