The Second World War ended, France enjoyed peace, and the Foreign Legion, along with other military units (among which were units of the Zouaves, Tyraliers and Gumiers) fought in Vietnam, suppressed the uprising in Madagascar, unsuccessfully tried to keep Tunisia as part of the empire (fighting in 1952- 1954), Morocco (1953-1956) and Algeria (1954-1962). For the period from 1945 to 1954. about 70 thousand people passed through the legion, 10 thousand of them died.
Uprising in Madagascar
Madagascar became a French colony in 1896. Contingents of several thousand Malagasy fought as part of the French army during the First and Second World Wars. Ironically, it was World War II veterans who were in the forefront of the fighters for the independence of Madagascar: having become closely acquainted with the colonialists in that war, they rated their fighting qualities low, not counting either strong warriors or brave men, and did not have much respect for them.
Let us recall, by the way, that only 16% of the soldiers and officers were ethnic French in the "Forces of the Free French", the rest were servicemen of the Foreign Legion and "colored" fighters of the Colonial Forces.
The incident with one of the former soldiers of the Second World War was the cause of the uprising in 1946.
On March 24 of that year, in a market in one of the cities, a police officer insulted a local veteran, and in response to the outrage of those around him, he opened fire, killing two people. On June 26, during the farewell ceremony for the dead, a mass brawl between local residents and the police took place, and on the night of March 29-30, an open uprising began.
About 1,200 Malagasy, armed mainly with spears and knives (for this reason, they were often called "spearmen" even in official documents), attacked a military unit in Muramanga, killing sixteen soldiers and sergeants and four officers, including the chief of the garrison. The assault on the military base in the city of Manakara was unsuccessful, but the rebels who seized the city played back on the French settlers - there were many women and children among the killed.
In Diego Suarez about 4 thousand "spearmen" tried to seize the arsenal of the French naval base, but, having suffered heavy losses, they were forced to retreat.
In the city of Fianarantsoa, the success of the rebels was limited to the destruction of power lines.
Despite some setbacks, the uprising developed rapidly, and soon the rebels controlled 20% of the island's territory, blocking some military units. But, since the rebels belonged to different tribes, they also fought among themselves, and a war of all against all began on the island.
The French were then surprised by the unprecedented fanaticism of the enemy fighters, who rushed to fortified positions and machine guns as if they considered themselves immortal and invulnerable. It turned out that this was the case: local shamans handed out amulets to the rebels, which were supposed to make the bullets of Europeans no more dangerous than raindrops.
The French authorities responded with brutal repression, not sparing the "natives" and not really bothering with the organization of trials. There is a known case when the captured rebels were thrown into their native village from an airplane without parachutes - to suppress the morale of their fellow countrymen. However, the partisan war did not subside; to communicate with the blocked military formations, it was necessary to use aircraft or improvised armored trains.
It was at this time that the units of the Foreign Legion arrived in Madagascar.
General Garbet, who commanded the French troops on the island, used the "oil slick" tactic, building a network of roads and fortifications on the territory of the rebels, which "crawled" like a drop of oil, depriving the enemy of freedom of maneuver and the possibility of receiving reinforcements
The last base of the rebels with the telling name "Tsiazombazakh" ("That which is inaccessible to Europeans") was taken in November 1948.
According to various estimates, in total, the Malagasy lost from 40 to 100 thousand people.
This victory of France only pushed back the timeline for Madagascar's gaining independence, which was proclaimed on June 26, 1960.
Suez Crisis
According to the British-Egyptian Treaty of 1936, the Suez Canal was to be guarded by 10,000 British soldiers. After the end of World War II, the Egyptian authorities tried to revise the terms of this treaty and achieve the withdrawal of British troops. But in 1948, Egypt was defeated in the war with Israel, and Britain expressed doubts "about Egypt's ability to defend the Suez Canal on its own." The situation changed after the July Revolution of 1952 and the declaration of Egypt as a republic (June 18, 1953). The new leaders of the country strongly demanded that Great Britain withdraw its military units from the Suez Canal zone. After long and difficult negotiations, an agreement was reached, according to which the British had to leave the territory of Egypt by mid-1956. And, indeed, the last British troops left this country on July 13 of that year. And on July 26, 1956, the Egyptian government of Gamal Abdel Nasser announced the nationalization of the Suez Canal.
It was assumed that the proceeds from its operation will go to finance the construction of the Aswan Dam, while the shareholders were promised compensation at the current value of the shares. British politicians considered this circumstance a very convenient reason to return to Suez. In the shortest possible time, on the initiative of London, a coalition was created, which, in addition to Great Britain, included Israel, dissatisfied with the results of the 1948 war, and France, which did not like Egypt's support for the National Liberation Front of Algeria. It was decided not to devote the Americans to the plans for this campaign. The "allies" hoped to crush Egypt in just a few days and believed that the international community simply would not have time to intervene.
Israel was to attack Egyptian forces in the Sinai Peninsula (Operation Telescope). Britain and France sent a squadron of more than 130 military and transport ships to the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, supported by a powerful air group of 461 aircraft (as well as 195 aircraft and 34 helicopters on aircraft carriers), 45 thousand British, 20 thousand French soldiers, and three tank regiments, two British and French (Operation Musketeer).
Under the influence of such weighty arguments, Egypt had to agree to the "international occupation" of the canal zone - to ensure the safety of international shipping, of course.
The Israeli army launched an offensive on October 29, 1956, in the evening of the next day, Britain and France presented their ultimatum to Egypt, and on the evening of October 31, their aircraft struck Egyptian airfields. Egypt responded by blocking the channel, sinking several dozen ships in it.
On November 5, the British and French began an amphibious operation to capture Port Said.
The first to land were the soldiers of the British parachute battalion, who captured the El Hamil airfield. 15 minutes later, Raswu (southern area of Port Fuad) was attacked by 600 paratroopers of the Second Parachute Regiment of the Foreign Legion.
Among the paratroopers were the regiment commander Pierre Chateau-Jaubert and the 10th division commander Jacques Massu. These officers will play an important role both in the Algerian war and in the resistance movement against the government of Charles de Gaulle, who wanted to give independence to this country. This will be discussed in the following articles.
On November 6, the paratroopers of the Second Regiment were joined by "colleagues" from the First - 522 people, led by the already famous Pierre-Paul Jeanpierre, about whom a little was told in the article Foreign Legion against Viet Minh and the disaster at Dien Bien Phu.
Among his subordinates was Captain Jean-Marie Le Pen, at the time he was the youngest member of the French parliament, but took a long leave to continue serving in the legion.
Le Pen joined the legion in 1954 and even managed to fight a little in Vietnam, in 1972 he founded the National Front party, which since June 1, 2018 has been called the National Union.
With the help of the paratroopers of the First Regiment, Port Fuad and its harbor were taken, three commando companies and a company of light tanks of the Second Armored Cavalry Regiment of the Legion were landed from the ships.
Meanwhile, British troops continued to arrive in Port Said. Despite the landing of 25 thousand people, 76 tanks, 100 armored vehicles and over 50 large-caliber guns, they got bogged down in street battles, and did not manage to capture the city until November 7, when the "terrible" happened: the USSR and the USA entered the UN with a joint the demand to stop the aggression. The war ended before it really began, but the legionnaires lost 10 people killed and 33 wounded (the loss of British troops was 16 and 96 people, respectively).
On December 22, the British and French left Port Said, into which UN peacekeepers (from Denmark and Colombia) were brought in. And in the spring of 1957, a group of international rescuers unblocked the Suez Canal.
France's loss of Tunisia
Habib Bourguiba, who in 1934 founded the Neo Destour party, which played an important role in the events of those years, was a descendant of a noble Ottoman family who settled in the Tunisian city of Monastir in 1793. He received his law degree in France: first he studied in a class for low-performing students at Carnot College, then at the University of Paris.
It should be said that, like many nationalist politicians in modern Ukraine, Habib Bourguiba did not know the language of the "titular nation" well: in his youth (in 1917) he did not manage to get a state post in Tunisia due to the fact that he could not pass the exam for knowledge of the Arabic language. And therefore, at first, Bourguiba worked as a lawyer in France - he knew the language of this country very well. And least of all, this “revolutionary” thought about the “bright future” of ordinary compatriots: after Tunisia gained independence, the well-being of the nationalist elite who had access to the resources of the nationalist elite dramatically increased, the standard of living of ordinary people, on the contrary, dropped significantly. But let's not get ahead of ourselves.
Bourguiba met the beginning of World War II in a French prison, from where he was released during the German occupation of this country in 1942. In 1943, he even met with Mussolini, who hoped to cooperate with the nationalist circles of Tunisia, but showed rare discernment, telling his supporters that he was confident in the defeat of the Axis powers.
After the end of the war he was in exile (until 1949). Returning to Tunisia, after the outbreak of unrest in 1952, he again ended up in prison. Then, after the mass arrest of members of the New Destour party, an armed uprising began in Tunisia, to suppress which French troops totaling 70 thousand people, including units of the Foreign Legion, were thrown. Fighting against the rebels continued until July 31, 1954, when an agreement was reached on the autonomy of Tunisia. Bourguiba was released almost a year after these events - on June 1, 1955. After the signing in March 1956 of the Franco-Tunisian protocol on the abolition of the French protectorate and the official proclamation of independence (March 20, 1956), Bey Muhammad VIII declared himself king, and Bourguiba recklessly appointed Prime Minister. But on July 15, 1957, Bourguiba led a coup d'état that ended with the proclamation of Tunisia as a republic.
A sharp aggravation of relations between Tunisia and France took place on February 27, 1961, when a dizzy spell from the successes of Bourguiba demanded that Charles de Gaulle not use the naval base in Bizerte in the Algerian war.
Work to expand the runway at Bizerte, begun by the French on April 15, provoked an acute crisis and the outbreak of hostilities. On April 19, clearly not realizing the true balance of forces, Bourguiba ordered three Tunisian battalions to blockade the base in Bizerte. On the same day, the French deployed soldiers of the Second Parachute Regiment of the Foreign Legion there, and on July 20, paratroopers of the Third Marine Regiment were added to them. With the support of aviation, the French drove the Tunisians out of Bizerte on July 22, losing only 21 troops, while their opponents - 1300. The base in Bizerte, which lost its military significance after the end of the Algerian war, was left by the French only in 1963.
Bourguiba was President of Tunisia for 30 years, until in 1987 he was removed from this post by younger and more greedy "associates".
Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, who replaced Bourguiba, lasted "only" 23 years as president, during which time the family clans of his two wives took over practically all the branches of the economy that brought at least some profit, and Ben Ali himself and his second wife Leila was called "Tunisian Ceausescu". By December 2010, they had successfully driven Tunisia into the second jasmine revolution.
Independence of Morocco
The "home" of the 4th Infantry Regiment of the Foreign Legion was Morocco.
The aggravation of the situation in this country dates back to January 1951, when Sultan Muhammad V refused to sign a petition of his loyalty to the French protectorate authorities.
French authorities responded by arresting five leaders of the nationalist Istiklal (Independence) party, banning gatherings and imposing censorship. The Sultan actually ended up under house arrest, and on August 19, 1953, he was completely removed from power and exiled first to Corsica, then to Madagascar.
The French "appointed" his uncle, Sidi Muhammad Ben Araf, the new sultan, but he did not rule for long: in August 1955, unrest began in Rabat, ending with barricade battles. The uprising soon spread throughout the country. On September 30, Sidi Muhammad was forced to abdicate and go to Tangier, and on November 18, the former sultan, Muhammad V.
On March 2, 1956, the treaty on the French protectorate concluded in 1912 was annulled, on April 7, the Spanish-Moroccan agreement on the recognition of the independence of Morocco by Spain was signed, according to which the Spaniards retained control over Ceuta, Melilla, Ifni, the islands of Alusemas, Chafarinas and the Velesde peninsula la Gomera. In 1957, Mohammed V changed the title of Sultan to royal.
The fourth regiment of the Foreign Legion also left Morocco. Now he is housed in the Danjou barracks in the French city of Castelnaudary. Look at the 1980 photo:
Tragic events in Algeria in 1954-1962 fundamentally different from what happened in Tunisia and Morocco, because in this French department for more than 100 years there was a significant French diaspora and many local Arabs (they were called evolvés, "evolved") did not support the nationalists. The war in Algeria was not so much a national liberation war as a civil one.
