Algerian War of Independence

The Algerian War of Independence began on 1 November 1954, when the Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) launched coordinated attacks across Algeria in what became known as the Toussaint Rouge ("Red All Saints' Day"). Unlike most French colonies, Algeria had been administratively integrated into France since 1848 and was home to roughly one million European settlers (pieds-noirs), which made decolonization politically explosive in Paris.

The conflict combined rural guerrilla warfare, urban terrorism, and large-scale French counterinsurgency. The Battle of Algiers (1956–1957), in which General Jacques Massu's paratroopers dismantled the FLN's urban network using systematic torture, became internationally notorious and was later dramatized in Gillo Pontecorvo's 1966 film. French forces also relied on forced population resettlement (regroupement) of an estimated two million rural Algerians.

The war destabilized metropolitan France itself. The May 1958 crisis brought down the Fourth Republic, returning Charles de Gaulle to power and producing the Fifth Republic's constitution. Although initially ambiguous, de Gaulle moved toward negotiations, offering self-determination in a September 1959 speech. Hardline settlers and army officers responded with the 1961 Algiers putsch and the formation of the Organisation Armée Secrète (OAS), which waged a bombing campaign against both Algerians and pro-independence French.

The war ended with the Évian Accords, signed on 18 March 1962, followed by a referendum in which Algerians overwhelmingly approved independence on 1 July 1962. Algeria became formally independent on 5 July 1962.

Casualty figures remain disputed: French sources commonly cite around 250,000–400,000 Algerian dead, while official Algerian figures claim 1.5 million. Nearly the entire pied-noir population and many harkis (Algerians who served with France) fled or were killed in the aftermath. The war shaped subsequent debates on counterinsurgency, torture, and decolonization, and Franco-Algerian memory politics remain contested today.