De Gaulle was privately warned that even loyal-looking Algerians wanted independence

Evidence

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

Categorization

• SEED: The tension between staged loyalty displays and genuine popular sentiment is an essay-worthy microcosm of how colonialists misread local allegiance.
• XREF: connects to: Algerians privately told de Gaulle they all wanted independence.; De Gaulle privately favored negotiating with the Algerian rebels as early as 1957; Delouvrier told de Gaulle that Algerian independence was inevitable

Related

• Algerians privately told de Gaulle they all wanted independence. (similarity 0.95)
• Delouvrier told de Gaulle that Algerian independence was inevitable (similarity 0.94)
• De Gaulle privately favored negotiating with the Algerian rebels as early as 1957 (similarity 0.89)
• De Gaulle privately told the army the era of European colonial administration was over. (similarity 0.83)
• De Gaulle privately judged the era of European colonial administration over. (similarity 0.80)
• De Gaulle’s triumphant Algeria slogans masked his private conviction the colony was doomed (similarity 0.80)
• De Gaulle’s true intentions on Algeria remain a fundamentally contested riddle. (similarity 0.79)
• De Gaulle’s true intentions on Algeria remain irreducibly ambiguous even to his closest associates. (similarity 0.79)
• De Gaulle’s personal authority rallied France against the Algerian insurrection without any new concession. (similarity 0.79)
• Algeria was only one element of de Gaulle’s larger ambitions. (similarity 0.79)
• De Gaulle personally favored the association option over secession or integration. (similarity 0.79)
• De Gaulle’s decolonisation rhetoric was the final trigger for Challe’s decision. (similarity 0.79)
• Junior officers saw Algerian independence immediately in de Gaulle’s self-determination speech (similarity 0.79)
• By late 1958 Muslim sentiment had hardened toward independence (similarity 0.78)
• De Gaulle’s pursuit of national grandeur required sacrificing Algeria. (similarity 0.78)