By waiting, de Gaulle had come back vested, first of all, in an acceptable degree of legitimacy; and secondly, he had not come back as the army's man. If it were not for these two factors, it can be doubted whether the Algerian war could have ended without civil war in France.

XREF: Connects to counterfactual history and the paradox that patience/legitimacy, not military force, resolved a colonial crisis.

Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Alge…, loc. 911