Let us continue our story about the tragic events that followed de Gaulle's decision to leave Algeria.
Organization de l'Armee Secrete
On December 3, 1960, in the Spanish capital, General Raoul Salan, Colonel Charles Lasherua and the leaders of the "blackfoot" students Pierre Lagayard and Jean-Jacques Susini signed the Madrid (anti-Gollist) treaty, which proclaimed a course towards an armed struggle to preserve Algeria as part of France. This is how the famous Organization de l'Armee Secrete (Secret Armed Organization, OAS, this name was first pronounced on February 21, 1961), and later the famous Delta detachment, which began the hunt for de Gaulle and other "traitors" and continued the war against Algerian extremists. The OAS motto is L'Algérie est française et le restera: "Algeria belongs to France - so it will be in the future."
There were many World War II Resistance veterans in the OAS, who now actively used their experience in conspiratorial work, intelligence and sabotage activities. The posters of this organization stated: “OAS will not abandon” and called: “Not a suitcase, not a coffin! Rifle and Homeland!"
Organizationally, the OAS consisted of three departments.
The ODM (Organization Des Masses) was tasked with recruiting and training new members, raising funds, setting up conspiratorial centers, and preparing documents. Colonel Jean Garde became the head of this department.
ORO (Organization Renseignement Operation) was led by Colonel Yves Godard (it was he who in April 1961 ordered to block the Admiralty building with tanks, not allowing Admiral Kerville to lead the troops loyal to de Gaulle and forcing him to sail to Oran) and the writer Jean-Claude Perot. It included subdivisions of BCR (Intelligence Central Bureau) and BAO (Operational Action Bureau). This department was responsible for sabotage work, the Delta group was subordinate to it.
Jean-Jacques Suzini, whom we talked about recently (in the article "Time for parachutists" and "Je ne regrette rien"), headed APP (Action Psychologique Propagande), a department that was engaged in agitation and propaganda: two monthly magazines were published, brochures were printed, posters, leaflets and even radio broadcasts.
In addition to Algeria and France, OAS offices were in Belgium (there were depots of weapons and explosives), in Italy (training centers and printing houses, which produced, among other things, forged documents), Spain and Germany (there were conspiratorial centers in these countries).
Many active servicemen and law enforcement officers sympathized with the OAS, the chief of the French General Staff, General Charles Alleret, said in one of his reports that only 10% of the soldiers were ready to shoot at the "militants". Indeed, the local police did not intervene in Operation Delta, which destroyed 25 Barbouzes in one of the Algerian hotels (Les Barbouzes is a secret non-French Gaullist organization created by the French authorities, whose purpose was extrajudicial killings of identified OAS members).
The OAS had no problems with weapons, but much worse with money, and therefore several banks were robbed, including the Rothschild in Paris.
Among the very famous people who have become members of the OAS is the former General Secretary of the Gaullist Unification of the French People Party, Jacques Soustelle, who previously served as Governor General of Algeria and Minister of State for the Overseas Territories.
Member of the OAS was also MP Jean-Marie Le-Pen (founder of the National Front), who served in the legion since 1954 and knew many of the leaders of this organization well.
Le Pen began his service in the legion in Indochina, then, in 1956, during the Suez crisis, he was subordinate to Pierre Chateau-Jaubert, who was already mentioned in previous articles, and will be told a little later. In 1957, Le Pen took part in hostilities in Algeria.
The number of the military department of the OAS reached 4 thousand people, the direct perpetrators of the terrorist attacks - 500 (the "Delta" detachment under the command of Lieutenant Roger Degeldr), there were an order of magnitude more sympathizers. Historians note with surprise that the movement of this “new Resistance” turned out to be much more massive than during the years of World War II.
Pierre Chateau-Jaubert
One of the heroes of the French Resistance during World War II was Pierre Chateau-Jaubert, who, under the name of Conan, joined its ranks on June 1, 1940. In 1944, he led the SAS Third Parachute Regiment (SAS, Special Air Service), a French unit that was part of the British army, created in Algeria. In the summer and autumn of 1944, this regiment, abandoned in the rear of the German army, destroyed 5476 enemy soldiers and officers, captured 1390. In addition, 11 trains were derailed and 382 cars were burned. During this time, the regiment lost only 41 people. Colonel Château-Jaubert personally commanded the French paratroopers of the Second Parachute Regiment of the Legion, who landed at Port Fouad during the Suez Crisis on November 5, 1956.
Pierre Chateau-Jaubert was an active member of the OAS, during an attempted military coup, General Salan appointed him commander of the troops in Constantine (where there were three regiments). After leaving Algeria on June 30, Chateau-Jaubert continued to fight, and in 1965 de Gaulle's government was sentenced to death in absentia, but was pardoned in June 1968. In France he was called "the last irreconcilable." On May 16, 2001, his name was given to the Second Parachute Regiment.
Pierre Sergeant
The last head of the French department of the OAS was Captain Pierre Sergeant, who in 1943-1944. in Paris he was a member of the armed group "Liberty", and then - a partisan in the provinces. Since 1950 he served in the legion: first in the First Infantry Regiment, then in the first parachute regiment, as part of which he took part in Operation Marion - the landing of troops (2350 people) in the rear of the Viet Minh troops.
He continued his service in Algeria. After an unsuccessful attempt at a military coup, he became a member of the OAS, was twice sentenced to death (in 1962 and 1964), but was able to avoid arrest. After the amnesty in July 1968, he joined the National Front (1972) and became a member of parliament from this party (1986-1988). In addition to political activities, he was engaged in the history of the Foreign Legion, became the author of the book "The Legion Lands in Kolwezi: Operation Leopard" ", on which the film of the same name was shot in France in 1980.
This film is about a military operation to liberate the Zaire city, captured by the rebels of the National Liberation Front of the Congo, who held about three thousand Europeans hostage (this will be described in detail in one of the following articles).
In addition to Chateau-Jaubert and Pierre Serzhan, there were many other veterans of the Foreign Legion in the Delta squadron.
Delta Group ("Delta")
Only 500 people of the Delta group spoke out against de Gaulle and the state machine completely subordinate to him, against a million soldiers, gendarmes and policemen. Funny? Not really, because, without any exaggeration, they were the best soldiers in France, the last real and great warriors of this country. United by a common goal, passionate young veterans of numerous wars were very serious opponents and were ready to die if they could not win.
The leader of the Delta Combat Group, Roger Degeldre, fled south from German-occupied northern France at the age of 15 in 1940 at the age of 15. Already in 1942, the 17-year-old anti-fascist returned to join the ranks of one of the Resistance units, and with the arrival of the Allies in January 1945, he fought as part of the 10th Mechanized Rifle Division. Since French citizens were forbidden to enroll as privates in the Foreign Legion, he served in the first armored cavalry and first parachute regiments of the legion under the name Roger Legeldre, becoming according to "legend" a Swiss from the city of Gruyeres (the French-speaking canton of Friborg), fought in Indochina, rose to the rank of lieutenant, became a Knight of the Legion of Honor. On December 11, 1960, he became illegal, in 1961 he became the leader of the Delta Detachment.
On April 7, 1962, he was arrested and executed on July 6 of the same year.
Another famous Delta legionnaire is Croat Albert Dovekar, who since 1957 served in the first parachute regiment under the name of Paul Dodevart (he chose Vienna as his “place of birth” when he entered the legion, probably because he knew German well, but “a native of Germany Did not want to become). Dovekar led the group that assassinated Algerian Chief Police Commissioner Roger Gavoury. To avoid accidental casualties among the population, he and Claude Piegz (direct executors) were armed only with knives. Both were executed on June 7, 1962.
At various times, the Delta Detachment consisted of up to 33 groups. The commander of Delta 1 was the aforementioned Albert Dovecar, Delta 2 was led by Wilfried Silbermann, Delta 3 - Jean-Pierre Ramos, Delta 4 - former Lieutenant Jean-Paul Blanchy, Delta 9 - Joe Rizza, Delta 11 - Paul Mansilla, Delta 24 - Marcel Ligier …
Judging by the surnames, the commanders of these groups, in addition to the Croatian legionnaire, were the "black-footed" of Algeria. Two of them are clearly French, who were equally likely to have been natives of France or Algeria. Two are Spaniards, probably from Oran, where many immigrants from this country lived. One Italian (or Corsican) and one Jew.
After Roger Degeldre's arrest, the fight against de Gaulle was led by Colonel Antoine Argo, formerly the head of the Spanish branch of the OAS - a World War II veteran who served as a lieutenant in the Free French troops, who since 1954 served as military adviser for Algerian affairs, since the end of 1958 - was the chief of staff of General Massu.
He began preparations for a new assassination attempt on de Gaulle, which was to take place on February 15, 1963 at the military academy, where the president's speech was planned. The conspirators were betrayed by a frightened guard who agreed to let three members of the OAS inside. Ten days later, agents of the Fifth Division of French intelligence abducted Antoine Argaud in Munich. He was smuggled to France and tied up, left with traces of torture in a minivan near the police headquarters in Paris. Such methods of the French shocked even their American and Western European allies.
In 1966, one of the former Delta commanders, captain of the 1st parachute regiment of the Foreign Legion, Jean Reichaud (fictional character), became the main character of the film "Goal: 500 Million", which was directed by the famous film director Pierre Schönderffer. In the story, he agreed to become an accomplice in the robbery of a mail plane to help his colleagues start a new life in Brazil.
Stills from the movie "Goal: 500 million":
The song "Tell your captain", which sounded in this film, was at one time very popular in France:
You have a nondescript jacket
Your trousers are badly cut
And your creepy shoes
They very much interfere with my dancing.
It makes me sad
Because I love you.
The first known politician to fall victim to the OAS was liberal Pierre Popier, who on January 24, 1961, stated in a television interview:
“French Algeria is dead! I tell you this, Pierre Popier."
On January 25, he was killed, a note was found next to his body:
“Pierre Popier is dead! I tell you this, French Algeria!"
Attempts were organized against 38 deputies of the National Assembly and 9 senators who were in favor of granting independence to Algeria. On de Gaulle, the OAS organized from 13 to 15 (according to various sources) assassination attempts - all unsuccessful. The attempt on the life of Prime Minister Georges Pompidou was also unsuccessful.
In total, over the years of its existence, the OAS organized 12,290 assassination attempts (239 Europeans and 1,383 Arabs were killed, 1,062 Europeans and 3,986 Arabs were injured).
The authorities responded with terror to terror, by order of de Gaulle, torture was used against the arrested members of the OAS. The fight against the OAS was handled by the Countermeasures Division (the Fifth Division - it was its officers who kidnapped Colonel Argo in Germany) of the French DGSE (Directorate General for External Security). The training of its employees took place in the camp, which, in the area, was often called the "Satori nursery". There were bad rumors about his "graduates" in France: they were suspected of illegal methods of investigation and even extrajudicial killings of opponents of Charles de Gaulle.
You may remember the films The Tall Blonde in the Black Boot and The Return of the Tall Blonde, starring Pierre Richard. Oddly enough, in France, in these comedies, filmed in 1972 and 1974, many then saw not only the funny adventures of an unlucky musician, but also a clear and very transparent hint of the dirty working methods and arbitrariness of the special services under Charles de Gaulle.
As you know, de Gaulle resigned from the presidency on April 28, 1969 after the failure of the referendum he initiated on the creation of economic regions and the reform of the Senate. By this time, his relations with Georges Pompidou, the former prime minister who had been dismissed for the fact that, against the background of the events of the spring of 1968, he had become more popular than the president, had finally deteriorated. Having assumed the post of head of state, Pompidou did not particularly stand on ceremony, raking de Gaulle's "Augean stables". A purge was also carried out in the special services, which under de Gaulle began to turn into a "state within a state" and entertained as they wanted, without denying themselves anything: they listened to everyone in a row, collected tribute from criminal syndicates, "covered" the drug trade. The main investigations, of course, were carried out behind closed doors, but something got on the pages of newspapers, and the action of the first film begins with the exposure of the heroin smuggling scam ("they confused counterintelligence with smuggling" is an everyday matter). The main anti-hero is Colonel Louis Toulouse, who, in order to save his place, calmly sacrifices his subordinates, arranges the murder of his deputy and tries to get rid of Richard's hero (Monsieur Perrin - it was from this film that all Richard's heroes traditionally began to bear this surname), who accidentally ended up in the center of this intrigue.
Shot from the movie "Tall blond in a black shoe":
And in the second film, Captain Cambrai, in order to expose Toulouse, no less calmly again puts Perrin under attack - and receives a slap in the face in the final as a "gratitude" from a "little man" whose life the special services "dispose of at their own discretion."
Still from the movie "The Return of the Tall Blonde":
But we digress a little, let's go back - at a time when, trying to save French Algeria, both the OAS and the "Old Army Headquarters" were fighting on two fronts (a little was told about this organization in the article "The Time of Parachutists" and "Je ne regrette rien ").
At that time, not only the police, the national gendarmerie and the special services of France waged their war against the OAS, but also the terrorist units of the FLN, which killed alleged members of this organization, and also staged attacks on the homes and businesses of those who sympathized with the ideas of "French Algeria" - the civilian population suffered at both sides. The degree of insanity grew every year.
In June 1961, OAS agents blew up a railroad track while a fast train en route from Strasbourg to Paris was passing - 28 people were killed and more than a hundred were injured.
Algerian militants in September of the same year killed 11 police officers in Paris and wounded 17. Parisian police prefect Maurice Papon, trying to control the situation, on October 5 of the same year declared a curfew for "Algerian workers, French Muslims and French Muslims from Algeria."
The FLN leaders responded by calling on all Parisians from Algeria, "starting on Saturday October 14, 1961 … to leave their homes in droves, with their wives and children … to walk along the main streets of Paris." And on October 17, they even scheduled a demonstration, without making even the slightest effort to get permission from the authorities.
The "ministers" of the Provisional Government of Algeria, who were sitting in cozy Cairo offices, were well aware that such "walks" could be deadly, especially for women and children.which, during clashes with the police and possible panic, could simply be trampled or thrown from bridges into the river. Moreover, they hoped that this would happen. The killed militants and terrorists did not cause much pity in anyone, and even the democratic and communist "sponsors" frowned when giving money. And the sponsors of the Algerian militants and terrorists were not only Beijing and Moscow, but also the United States and France's Western European allies. American newspapers wrote:
"The war in Algeria pits all of North Africa against the West … The continuation of the war will leave the West in North Africa without friends and the United States without bases."
What was needed was the mass death of absolutely innocent and obviously not dangerous people for the French authorities, and not in distant Algeria, but in Paris - in front of the "world community". The wives and children of Algerian migrants were to become these "sacred" victims.
This was not the first attempt by the FLN to destabilize the situation in Paris. In 1958, numerous attacks were organized on police officers in the French capital, four were killed and many were injured. The authorities reacted adequately and harshly, defeating 60 underground groups, which caused a hysterical reaction from liberals led by Sartre, who burst into tears, calling the police Gestapo and demanding that the detention of the arrested militants be improved and made "worthy". However, the times then were still not sufficiently "tolerant", making sure that few people pay attention to their cries, liberal intellectuals took up more familiar, urgent and interesting things - prostitutes of both sexes, drugs and alcohol. Sartre's biographer Annie Cohen-Solal claimed that every day he took "two packs of cigarettes, several pipes of tobacco, more than a quart (946 ml!) Of alcohol, two hundred milligrams of amphetamines, fifteen grams of aspirin, a bunch of barbiturates, some coffee, tea, and several" heavy meals. "".
This lady did not want to go to prison for the propaganda of drugs and therefore did not indicate the recipe for these "dishes".
In 1971, in an interview with political science professor John Gerassi, Sartre complained that he was constantly pursued by giant crabs:
“I'm used to them. Woke up in the morning and said: "Good morning, my little ones, how did you sleep?" I could chat with them all the time or say, "Okay guys, we're going to the audience now, so you have to be quiet and calm." They surrounded my desk and did not move at all until the bell rang.
But back to October 17, 1961. The French security forces found themselves between Scylla and Charybdis: they had to literally walk on the razor's edge, preventing the defeat of the country's capital, but at the same time avoiding mass casualties among aggressive demonstrators. And I must admit that they succeeded then. Maurice Papon turned out to be a very courageous man who was not afraid to take responsibility for himself. He addressed his subordinates:
“Do your duty and ignore what the newspapers say. I am responsible for all your actions, and only I."
It was his principled position that actually saved Paris then.
In 1998, France thanked him by condemning the 88-year-old man to 10 years for serving in the Vichy administration of Bordeaux during World War II, from which 1690 Jews were deported by Pétain's order - and, of course, Papon's signatures were found on the documents. (as the chief secretary of the prefecture. How could they not be there?).
"Beautiful France, when will you die"?
The slogans carried on that day by the provocateurs appointed by the FLN were as follows:
Already…
By the way, back in 1956, a song was written in Algeria, which contains the following words:
France! The ranting time is over
We turned this page like the last page
read book
France! The day of reckoning has come!
Get ready! Here's our answer!
Our revolution will deliver its verdict.
It would seem nothing special? Of course, if you do not know that in 1963 this song became the anthem of Algeria, whose citizens to this day, when performing it at official ceremonies, threaten France.
But back to October 17, 1961.
From 30 to 40 thousand Algerians, breaking windows on their way and burning cars (well, robbing shops along the way, of course) tried to break into the center of Paris. They were opposed by 7 thousand policemen and about one and a half thousand soldiers of the republican security detachments. The danger was really great: on the streets of Paris, later, about 2 thousand firearms were found thrown by "peaceful demonstrators", but Papon's employees acted so decisively and professionally that the militants simply did not have time to use them. In mass fights, according to the latest official figures, 48 people were killed. Ten thousand Arabs were arrested, many of them were deported, and this served as a serious lesson for the rest, who literally walked along the wall for some time after that, politely smiling at all the French they met.
In 2001, Parisian authorities apologized to the Arabs, and Mayor Bertrand Delaunay unveiled a plaque on the Pont Saint-Michel. But the "siloviki" are still convinced that the protesters were going on the sly to burn Notre Dame and the Palace of Justice.
In March 1962, realizing that they had unexpectedly won, the FLN fighters "took heart": in order to put pressure on the French government, the FLN terrorists staged a hundred explosions a day. When the desperate "Blackfeet" and evolves of Algeria on March 26, 1962, went to an authorized peaceful demonstration (in support of the OAS and against Islamic terror), they were shot by units of the Algerian tyraliers - 85 people were killed and 200 were injured.
In preparing the article, information about Pierre Chateau-Jaubert from the blog of Ekaterina Urzova and two photos from the same blog were used:
The story of Pierre Chateau-Jaubert.
Monument to Chateau-Jaubert.
