De Gaulle’s calculated ambiguity prevented civil war and French collapse.

Evidence

When all is said and done, de Gaulle’s achievement was immense, and the gratitude owed him by France as well as the Western world no less. As ex-Premier Debré remarked to the author, “It was a miracle that we didn’t collapse into civil war after Algeria; and this we owed to de Gaulle.” The prosperous stability of post-1962 France stems to an important extent from the consequences of de Gaulle’s coolness and sense of timing in May 1958, and his steadfast refusal then to come back as the army’s man. If he had been strictly “straight” with the Massus, Challes and Salans all along, could the disastrous putsch of 1961 have been avoided? On the other hand, recalling the dangerously delicate balances of May 1958, might not such blinding honesty simply have brought about de Gaulle’s over-throw and replacement by a military junta in 1959 or 1960, or even late 1958 — leading possibly to civil war in France itself? — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 1658

Categorization

• QUESTION: Counterfactual: would honesty with the generals have provoked an earlier coup? Horne leaves this open.
• XREF: connects to: De Gaulle’s ambiguity made every faction believe he would serve their agenda; De Gaulle’s ambiguity to the army was deliberate deception for its own good.; De Gaulle’s true intentions on Algeria remain a fundamentally contested riddle. (+6 more)

Related

• De Gaulle’s ambiguity made every faction believe he would serve their agenda (similarity 0.94)
• De Gaulle’s ambiguity to the army was deliberate deception for its own good. (similarity 0.91)
• De Gaulle’s true intentions on Algeria remain a fundamentally contested riddle. (similarity 0.85)
• De Gaulle’s true intentions on Algeria remain irreducibly ambiguous even to his closest associates. (similarity 0.84)
• Gaulle concealed the pullout from the army to preserve it. (similarity 0.84)
• Gaulle hid his Algeria intentions to avoid capsizing French public opinion. (similarity 0.83)
• De Gaulle’s conciliatory gestures angered the army while winning no concessions from the F.L.N. (similarity 0.83)
• De Gaulle’s June 1958 Algiers rhetoric was deliberately ambiguous, hiding his pessimism (similarity 0.83)
• Algeria was only one element of de Gaulle’s larger ambitions. (similarity 0.81)
• The moderate French Left chose de Gaulle over facing civil war with paratroops (similarity 0.81)
• De Gaulle’s triumphant Algeria slogans masked his private conviction the colony was doomed (similarity 0.81)
• De Gaulle’s allies saw Algeria as subordinate to the French state’s crisis (similarity 0.81)
• De Gaulle hid his Algerian self-determination policy because public opinion was unready (similarity 0.81)
• De Gaulle’s mystical self-assurance blinded him to the F.L.N.’s political character. (similarity 0.81)
• De Gaulle’s political delays gave the F.L.N. a vital respite before Challe (similarity 0.80)