Organization de l'armée secrète

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Emblem of the OAS

The Organization de l'armée secrète ( OAS ; German  organization of the secret army ; also Organization armée secrète , German  secret armed organization ) was a French underground movement during the final phase of the Algerian war . The name is deliberately based on the Armée secrète , a group of the French Resistance during the Second World War. The OAS fought on the one hand Muslim Algerians who were striving for the independence of their people, on the other hand the French state, which no longer wanted to maintain the military suppression of this independence movement. Supported by troops from the military administration, the paratroopers and the Foreign Legion , it declared a coup d'état in Algiers on April 21, 1961 . The uprising collapsed after six days.

history

The OAS was founded in the winter of 1960/1961 by officers and generals who wanted to preserve the status of Algeria as part of mainland France by military means. The official founding date is a meeting in Madrid on January 20, 1961 between Jean-Jacques Susini , General Raoul Salan and Pierre Lagaillarde . The organization first addressed the public on April 10, 1961 with the propaganda slogan “The OAS strikes where and when it wants”, which was distributed on leaflets. The officers tried to put existing, spontaneously formed groups of irregulars from the ranks of the French Algeria under a central leadership. The OAS strategy was modeled on the Algerian independence movement and saw terror as a legitimate and promising means of achieving its political goals. The grouping never achieved a centralized organizational structure, rather it consisted of ideologically and organizationally separate sub-groups. The symbol of the OAS was the Celtic cross , its motto was "L'Algérie est française et le restera" ("Algeria is French and will remain so").

The organization consisted of around 1,500 underground activists around Algiers and 200 around Bône . In addition, the OAS had around 15,000 supporters who took on political and logistical tasks. The majority consisted of Catholic French Algerians and a small minority of Algerian Jews . According to the statements of its founders, the OAS should be modeled on the model of the Zionist Hagana . In fact, the OAS was never more than a loose organization of independently run terrorist cells. In addition to intense political agitation, terrorism was the declared means of the leadership's choice to achieve its political goals. The OAS was very popular among the French Algeria. In European France, however, the organization met with opposition across the political spectrum. The authorities themselves  fought the organization with the same methods - torture and enforced disappearance - as the independent guerrillas of the FLN ( Front de libération nationale , German: National Liberation Front). The regime of the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco supported the OAS and served it as a logistical retreat. The country provided three training camps for the group.

In view of the looming independence of Algeria, which was also advocated by the western leading power USA , their intention was to disturb the country through military actions and at the same time to become the most important political advocacy of the French patriots in Algeria. Acts of violence against Muslims should escalate on all sides and thus sabotage President Charles de Gaulle's policy of appeasement in Algeria . The OAS hoped that it would still be able to avert impending independence in this way. In addition to de Gaulle, the organization also targeted other representatives of the Fifth Republic such as François Mitterrand and intellectuals such as Jean-Paul Sartre . The main victims, however, were the Muslim Algerians: several thousand fell victim to the terror of the OAS.

The terror of the Algerian FLN, which was directed not only against Algerian French, but also against Algerian Muslims loyal to France, contributed to the explosiveness of the situation. On April 21, 1961, the OAS led the coup of four generals ( Raoul Salan , Maurice Challe , Edmond Jouhaud and André Zeller ) in Algiers to torpedo de Gaulle's policy of secession. This attempted coup failed on April 26, 1961.

The OAS tried to hold up negotiations on the secession of Algeria with assassinations and explosive attacks. The OAS aimed at the - in places assimilated - civilians from the Muslim educational and functional elite. One of the aims behind this was to make it impossible for Algeria to function independently without the pied noirs . During this campaign, the OAS detonated up to 120 bombs a day in Algiers alone. The OAS also carried out attacks in France itself. In an attack on the express train Strasbourg – Paris on June 18, 1961, commonly attributed to the OAS , 28 people died. De Gaulle narrowly escaped an OAS bombing attempt in September 1961 while passing through the town of Pont-sur-Seine .

This behavior earned the OAS the rejection of the French public. So there were mass demonstrations against the organization after a four-year-old girl was injured in an attack by the OAS on the war opponent and culture minister André Malraux on February 7, 1962.

Algeria gained independence in March 1962 ( Treaties of Évian ). At the end of March, the OAS rebelled in an open fight against the French state: at the Battle of Bab El Oued , they occupied the Bab El Oued district of Algiers, where numerous working-class French Algerians lived. 35 people died in the fighting that lasted several days. On March 25th, the arrest of Edmond Jouhaud weakened the OAS. In the chaotic period of Algeria's independence, the OAS pursued a scorched earth policy: they did not want to leave any French achievements to the hated Muslims, and so the OAS Delta Commandos burned down the university library in Algiers and blew up the city hall, library and in Oran four schools. In Oran, the OAS bombings in May 1962 killed ten to 15 people a day. On May 31, 1962, the French police chief Roger Gavoury was murdered by members of the OAS. In June and July 1962 OAS members Roger Degueldre , Claude Piegts and Albert Dovecar were executed . On August 22, 1962, a command under Lieutenant Colonel Jean Bastien-Thiry carried out an assassination attempt on de Gaulle in Petit-Clamart . Bastien-Thiry was caught, sentenced to death, and executed on March 11, 1963.

additional

After Algeria's independence, numerous OAS members went via Spain to Latin America, where they excelled in the so-called dirty war . In 1968, President de Gaulle issued an amnesty that benefited senior members including Edmond Jouhaud, Pierre Lagaillarde, Raoul Salan and Georges Bidault .

Popular culture

See also

literature

  • Roger Buchard: Organization Armée Secrète. (Volume 1: "Février - 14 December 1961" Volume 2: "15 December 1961 - 10 July 1962"), Editions Albin Michel, 1963.
  • Fernand Carreras: L'accord FLN-OAS. Laffont, Paris 1967.
  • Rémi Kauffer: OAS. Histoire d'une organization secrète. Fayard, Paris 1986, ISBN 2-213-01726-3 .
  • Rémi Kauffer: OAS. Histoire d'une was franco-française. Seuil, Paris 2002, ISBN 2-02-054122-X .
  • Rémi Kauffer: OAS: la guerre franco-française d'Algérie. In: Benjamin Stora, Mohammed Harbi : La guerre d'Algérie: 1954-2004. Laffont, Paris 2004, ISBN 2-221-10024-7 , pp. 451-476.
  • Alexander Harrison: Challenging De Gaulle: The OAS and the Counter-Revolution in Algeria, 1954–1962. New York 1989, ISBN 0-275-92791-1 .
  • Organization de l'Armée Secrète (OAS). In: Ian FW Beckett: Encyclopedia of Guerilla Warfare. New York 2001, ISBN 0-8160-4601-8 , p. 176.
  • Paul Henissart: Wolves in the City. Simon and Schuster, London 1970, ISBN 0-671-20513-7 .
  • Dominique Manotti: Marseille. 73 Argument Verlag, Hamburg 2020, ISBN 9783867542470

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Bernard Michal, André Debatty, Eric de Goutel, Pierre Guillemot, Michel Honorin, Christian Houillion, Francis Mercury, Pierre Nouaille, Jean Renald, Gilles Schneider, Lucien Viéville: Histoire du drame algérien 1954-1962 . OMNIBUS, 2012, ISBN 978-2-258-09422-2 ( google.ch [accessed on May 29, 2019]).
  2. ^ A b Martin Evans: Algeria: France's undeclared War, Oxford, 2012 p. 291
  3. ↑ Tramor Quemeneur: La Discipline Jusqu'au L'Indiscipline in Mohamed Harbi, Benjamin Stora (eds.) La guerre d'Algérie , Paris, 2004, p 255; Original text of the quote in French: "L'OAS frappe où elle veut, quand elle veut."
  4. ↑ Georges Fleury: La Guerre en Algérie , 2nd edition, Paris, 1996, p. 480f
  5. ↑ Martin Evans: Algeria: France's undeclared War, Oxford, 2012 pp. 304-309
  6. ^ Raphaëlle branch: La torture pendant la guerre d'Algérie in Mohammed Harbi, Benjamin Stora (ed.): La guerre d'Algérie , Paris, 2004, pp. 576-578
  7. ↑ Tramor Quemeneur: La Discipline Jusqu'au L'Indiscipline in Mohammed Harbi, Benjamin Stora (ed.): La guerre d'Algérie , Paris, 2004, p. 261
  8. ↑ LES JOURNEES D'ALGER. on ina.fr
  9. ↑ Martin Evans: Algeria: France's undeclared War, Oxford, 2012, pp. 313f
  10. ^ Attaque contre Charlie Hebdo: ce que l'on sait. France info, January 7, 2014, accessed January 7, 2014 (French).
  11. ^ Meeting point Melilla , Der Spiegel 39/1961 of September 20, 1961.
  12. ^ Rémi Kauffer: L'OAS: La guerre franco-francaise d'Algérie in Benjamin Stora, Mohammed Harbi: La guerre d'Algérie , Paris, 2004, pp. 655f
  13. ↑ la fusillade de la rue d'Isly, l'exode des pieds-noirs, Oran ( Memento of the original dated August 4, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Ligue des droits de l'homme , March 2002 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.ldh-toulon.net
  14. ↑ Marie-Monique Robin , Escadrons de la mort, l'école française , 453 pages. La Découverte (September 15, 2004). Collection: Cahiers libres. ( ISBN 2707141631 ) Transl. Los Escuadrones De La Muerte / the Death Squadron 539 pages. Sudamericana (October 2005). ( ISBN 950072684X ) ( Presentation )