Author: Shane McGuire
Interviewer: Jacob Williams
From 1945-1962, the French Fourth and later Fifth Republics conducted a brutal war in Algeria against Algerian nationalists who wished for independence. From the start of the war, the French had British economic and moral support in their efforts to reign in the Algerians. Such support can be traced to the British desire to keep colonial empires intact, so as to provide bulwarks against the spread of communism and the Soviet Union’s influence in the Third World, where the British believed that the communist message would be well received.