Jamal Awil

← A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962

De Gaulle preempted a coup by rejecting paramilitary seizure of power. [causal]

On the morning of the 27th the crisis reached its peak. Parisians looked up nervously at every plane passing overhead; Simone de Beauvoir had Freudian nightmares about a python dropping on her from the sky; and in the Ministry of the Interior Jules Moch received an intelligence report that “Résurrection” was now scheduled to take place on the following night. He ordered his C.R.S. force to prepare to defend government buildings. Meanwhile, young para officers were arriving in the capital in civilian clothes, carrying suspiciously heavy suitcases. Among their targets was the kidnapping of Jules Moch himself, and with them—on his own mission—came Lagaillarde. Then, early in the afternoon, de Gaulle—apparently as a result of the mounting pressures upon him—issued a communiqué announcing that he had begun the “regular process” of forming a legitimate republican government, and condemning any threat to public order. At the same time he sent a signal to Salan couched in even more categoric terms, and astutely sent via official channels, in which he called for the dropping of all thoughts of “Résurrection”. … I want to be summoned as an arbiter coming at the demand of the whole country, to take over direction of the country so as to spare it useless rendings. I must appear as the man of reconciliation and not as the champion of one of the factions currently confronting each other.

XREF: Connects to the broader May 1958 Algerian crisis and de Gaulle's return to power, a pivotal moment in French postwar political history.

Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Alge…, loc. 899