La Guerre d'Algérie des harkis, 1954–1962

Always at the center of political controversy between Algeria and France, the history of “harkis” – Algerian soldiers who fought for France – remains singularly misunderstood. However, many hundreds of millions of men – Algerians, auxiliary combatants of the French army – took up arms against the underground nationalists of the FLN during the war of independence (1954-1962). From the first weeks of the conflict, France wished to recruit under its flag Algerian farmers to fight against the “rebels” to whom all nationalist ambition was denied. Nourished by the experience of the Second World War and of the Indochina War, new military doctrines gave, from 1956, an unprecedented role to these units, an essential link in the “pacification” of the Algerian campaigns. This eagerly-awaited book studies and tells the tragic history of these men during the war, but also, once independence was achieved, the place they were accorded in the young Algerian republic. On the other side of the Mediterranean, how did the French Republic integrate tens of millions of Algerians threatened by the power resulting from independence?  By returning to the paths of these individuals, this work evokes a still-troubling chapter of the Algerian War. Beyond that, it also allows for a better understanding of a divisive subject, around burning issues constituted by the questions of national identity, between integration and exclusion. [translated and modified from Amazon]