Tactical Success is Not Enough: The French in Algeria 1954-1962

This paper focuses on why France, a country with tremendous advantages in resources and military strength was defeated by a group of poorly equipped and largely untrained Algerian insurgents who mainly operated in groups of ten to twenty men and probably never had over fifteen thousand active fighters inside the borders of Algeria.1 The crux of the issue is that France failed to understand the nature of the war and why the Algerians were fighting. This failure led the French to misidentify ...