Frenchmen killing Frenchmen in Algeria crossed a civil-war threshold for France.
Evidence
Whatever the findings of any post-mortem, however, the fact of outstanding gravity was that, for France, a catastrophic frontier in the Algerian war had been crossed. For the first time Frenchmen had fired upon, and killed, other Frenchmen; to the historically minded the dreadful spectre of the 1940s and, farther back, of 1871 presented itself. Across the breadth of France would echo the dying words of one of the Algiers gendarmerie lieutenants: “For two years I’ve been fighting against the fellagha. Now I’m dying at the hands of people who cry Algérie française! I don’t understand…!” — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 1100
Categorization
- XREF: Connects to the 1871 Commune and 1940 reference points the reader is tracking about France’s internal fractures. — connects to: French metropolitan democracy attenuated, while colonial Algeria criminalized, dissent against empire.; The barricades marked the first killing of Frenchmen by Frenchmen in the war.
Related
- The barricades marked the first killing of Frenchmen by Frenchmen in the war. (similarity 0.92)
- French metropolitan democracy attenuated, while colonial Algeria criminalized, dissent against empire. (similarity 0.83)
- The barricade massacre crossed a catastrophic frontier in the Algerian war. (similarity 0.80)
- French military deaths in Algeria remained lower than peacetime road accident deaths. (similarity 0.80)
- Algeria’s 1990s civil war killed roughly 100,000 people. (similarity 0.79)
- Algeria’s official war-dead figure of one million exceeds all credible estimates (similarity 0.79)
- Torture in Algeria threatened France with state self-destruction (similarity 0.78)
- The Algerian war fit no declared-war category yet killed a million people (similarity 0.78)