More than any other single factor, however, what really decided the issue on that Monday, 24 April, was the remarkable impact that de Gaulle's speech of the previous night had had upon the conscripts and reservists in Algeria. In their tens of thousands they huddled round their transistor radios (the rebel generals having failed, as with so much else, to jam broadcasts from France), listening to the President's uncompromising call for obedience and loyalty to the state. It was, says one expert on the French army, Paul-Marie de la Gorce, "the first time in French military history that a chief of state appealed to troops over the heads of their rebellious superiors". Unconsulted by their officers, many of the rank-and-file had felt at least apathetic towards the putsch in the first place; there were also many, in inverted snobbery, who bore a resentment against the braggadocio of the paras — who got all the girls, the decorations and the fame, and tended to treat the "line" regiments with all the arrogance of elitism. Now de Gaulle's clearcut orders to use "all means" to stop the rebels, with their underlying threat of civil war, gave them essential moral reinforcement in their opposition. The President had absolved them of all disciplinary requirements to obey their seniors. To the waverers, here was an excuse now to be firm, and they in turn carried along those of their officers who had hitherto vacillated. Like wild-fire a kind of passive resistance spread. All over Algeria slogans appeared painted on the walls and roofs of army barracks, warning: "Don't count on the rank-and-file!" Signal units refused to pass on messages between the rebels; in Constantine arms depots were seized; in one rebel regiment a grenade was actually thrown into the colonel's command post. By the afternoon, as the exhausted and unhappy Challe noted, "failure was developing with a chain reaction". It was no exaggeration to call this turning-point of the putsch the "victory of the transistors".

XREF: Connects to broader understanding of how senior leaders can appeal directly to lower ranks to undermine mutinies and coup attempts.

Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Alge…, loc. 1389