THE ALGERIAN WAR: GUERRILLA WAR AND DECOLONIZATION week 2

• History
• Secondary Education

THE ALGERIAN WAR: GUERRILLA WAR

AND DECOLONIZATION

Week 2

Lesson plan

A Questionnaire

B 1.4 Strategy and tactics

C 1.5 research

D Present your research 

Last week:

1.1Guerrilla war

1.2 Causes of the Algerian War 

1.3 Combatants

1.4 Strategy and tactics

The FLN

• Strategy and tactics were always partially influenced by material concerns as well as the guerilla goal of controlling people over territory.
  
• The FLN aimed to show that the French government was unable to administer or protect the population, both Muslim and pied noirs
• involved: ambushing convoys and patrols, attacking small outposts and bombing

• Terrorist campaigns targeted French pied noir administrators and alleged Muslim sympathizers.
  
• Create parallel governments far from urban centers to undermine the sympathetic local leaders who served as the French administration in Algeria.
  
• The main operational doctrine of the ALN was to avoid a confrontation with larger, better armed French formations.
  

The French

• Sector forces made up of reservists and conscripts spread out across the country.
  
• Observe and restrict FLN movement and influence in their sector.
• 600 000 Algerians from entire villages were moved to camps.
•  Declared these abandoned villages and the surrounding areas "free fire zones," -> anyone discovered there must be a member of the guerilla movement.

• To stop the flow of men and supplies from the two neighboring countries of Morocco and Tunisia, extensive defensive lines were built.
  

1.5 Operations

• 1955, 1956
• The Battle of Algiers
• The Morice Line and the Battle of the Frontiers
• The Challe Plan
• Terror attacks and the Week of the Barricades

 

Work cited

Smith, David. Causes and Effects of 20th Century Wars. Oxford University Press, 2015.