De Gaulle privately favored negotiating with the Algerian rebels as early as 1957

Evidence

Then, on either his fourth or fifth flight between Paris and Algiers, with the inspiration that altitude sometimes brings, “an unprecedented idea” occurred to Bernard Tricot; why not confound the doubters by whisking Si Salah to Paris for a meeting with the president himself? Surprisingly, de Gaulle immediately said “Yes”. — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 1186 (#expands, via linked claim)

During his visit to “Binoculars”, after Kabyle village children had dutifully chanted the Marseillaise, Just as I was leaving, the Muslim town clerk stopped me, bowing and trembling, and murmured: “Mon général, don’t be taken in! Everyone here wants independence.” At Saida, where the heroic Bigeard introduced me to a commando unit who had been won over, I caught sight of a young Arab doctor attached to their group. “Well, doctor, what do you think of it all?” “What we Arabs want, and what we need,” he replied, his eyes filled with tears, “is to be responsible for ourselves instead of others being responsible for us.” — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 1025 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: European liberals and Muslim Algerians shared hopes for a negotiated peace before 1956.; De Gaulle took power in June 1958 offering no Algerian solution.; De Gaulle restructured Algerian governance into a two-tier hierarchy to tighten control. (+7 more)

Related

• De Gaulle agreed at once to meet secretly with a rebel commander (similarity 0.89)
• De Gaulle took power in June 1958 offering no Algerian solution. (similarity 0.89)
• De Gaulle was privately warned that even loyal-looking Algerians wanted independence (similarity 0.89)
• Algerians privately told de Gaulle they all wanted independence. (similarity 0.88)
• Delouvrier told de Gaulle that Algerian independence was inevitable (similarity 0.86)
• European liberals and Muslim Algerians shared hopes for a negotiated peace before 1956. (similarity 0.86)
• De Gaulle offered amnesties and an honorable truce to the Algerian rebels in 1958. (similarity 0.85)
• De Gaulle’s true intentions on Algeria remain a fundamentally contested riddle. (similarity 0.84)
• De Gaulle paired Muslim representation guarantees with a peace offer to the FLN (similarity 0.83)
• Algeria was only one element of de Gaulle’s larger ambitions. (similarity 0.83)
• Interior fighters threatened to break from the G.P.R.A. and negotiate directly with de Gaulle. (similarity 0.83)
• De Gaulle’s triumphant Algeria slogans masked his private conviction the colony was doomed (similarity 0.83)
• By late 1958 Muslim sentiment had hardened toward independence (similarity 0.82)
• Gaulle hid his Algeria intentions to avoid capsizing French public opinion. (similarity 0.82)
• De Gaulle’s true intentions on Algeria remain irreducibly ambiguous even to his closest associates. (similarity 0.82)

Broader Connections

• De Gaulle was privately warned that even loyal-looking Algerians wanted independence #corroborates (0.50) — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 1025
• De Gaulle agreed at once to meet secretly with a rebel commander #expands (0.50) — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 1186
• De Gaulle’s Algerian programme initially resembled previous policy #qualifies (0.45)
• De Gaulle offered amnesties and an honorable truce to the Algerian rebels in 1958. #responds-to (0.40) — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 940
• De Gaulle concealed his Algerian aims to avoid capsizing public passions #complicates (0.40) — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 1155