For most people, all that they remember of it is President Charles De Gaulle's dismissive reference to a rebellion led by “a handful of retired generals”. But for those on the extreme right still fixated on the Algerian War, the attempted coup d'état or putsch of April 1961 by a number of senior French generals is a source of inspiration. Indeed, in the summer of 2017 a small extreme right-wing group in Marseille in southern France was broken up as it plotted terrorist acts. The group, mainly made up of the sons of gendarmes and police officers, had chosen as its name the 'Organisation de l’Armée Secrète' (OAS), the name of the paramilitary terrorist group set up by extreme right-wing activists during the Algerian War.
Recently Mediapart revealed how France's domestic intelligence agency, the Direction Générale de la Sécurité Intérieure (DGSI), were investigating the creation of networks of activists inside the forces of law and order. And that was precisely what its predecessor body, the Direction des Renseignements Généraux (DRG), was doing ahead of the 1961 attempted coup. It gives a topical importance to the question as to how the French intelligence services and police handled an attempted overthrow of the state.
Any serious coup d'état requires time to organise. Back in November 1960 the far-right activists behind the 1961 plot were waiting for the order for a general insurrection. That order was due to come from recently-retired General Raoul Salan, who had taken refuge in Spain since October 31st of that year and who was, according to French intelligence, being closely watched by their Spanish counterparts, in particular with the help of “two strong, beautiful women”.
By this point the French intelligence services were convinced that the key issue for the plotters was no longer France holding on to Algeria against the demands of Algerian separatists, and that instead they had a wider goal.
“The final aim of the plot is not to keep Algeria in the French Republic,” warns a DRG report dated December 9th, 1960. “Algeria is only the pretext. The aim is the overthrow of the republican regime and its replacement by a fascist-type regime.” The next day the French police carried out a number of arrests and seized radios transmitters in mainland France, disrupting the organisation of the coup. Some groups, such as the neo-fascist Jeune Nation ('Young Nation'), were also disinclined to believe that such a coup was really viable. The plot was delayed.
At the end of 1960 a “very secret” DRG report noted that the subversion activity had increased with the creation of a terrorist organisation. “It's called the Organisation Secrète de l’Armée en France (OSAF) in the metropolitan area [editor's note, mainland France], and the Organisation Secrète de l’armée en Algérie (OSAA) on Algerian soil,” it said. The document stated that the groups were organised in units, bringing together civilians from nationalist groups “such as Jeune Nation”, and soldiers who would be supplied by French officer and counter-insurgency specialist Colonel Roger Trinquier. The aim was to carry out attacks with plastic explosives and targeted assassinations of key figures.
The presence of Colonel Trinquier says a great deal about a certain extreme right military culture. Having served as a parachutist in Indochina – Vietnam - he became an expert in insurgency warfare. Indeed, under pressure from various officers who had drawn lessons from France's defeat at the hands of a revolutionary army in Indochina, after 1955 the French Army as a whole had adopted the “psychological action” approach. Accordingly the techniques and methods of “revolutionary warfare” were to be used to bolster one's own troops and weaken the enemy's troops.
At the request of officers who backed the 'psychological action' approach, police powers were granted to the French army in January 1957 to combat insurgency in the so-called Battle of Algiers. The military success of this operation led to calls for these counter-insurgency methods to be extended, transforming the army into a political entity inside the state itself. So when in May 1958 France's Fourth Republic collapsed and General De Gaulle came to power, he promptly disbanded the 'psychological action' services to put the army back in its place.
Colonel Trinquier was second-in-command to General Jacques Massu in Algeria and became a member of the committee for public safety set up after May 13th 1958 as crisis gripped Algeria. He had close links with all potentially seditious soldiers and civilian groups at the time. Reports from the French national police force in October 1960 show that he went to meet the government minister for the French armies, Pierre Messmer, to inform him that he wanted a post in Paris. During this meeting, at which another officer, a Colonel Meyer, was present, the trio “reviewed the civilian elements liable to take part in subversive action”, the reports states. “Trinquier declared that he could count on 1,500 to 2,000 members of Jeune Nation from the Paris region alone.” Putting to one side the fact that it seems strange that a colonel should discuss with his minister a plot that he is involved in, the exaggeration of the figures seems to suggest almost an attempt at brainwashing.
Yet though the French secret service reports of the time highlighted the central role of Colonel Trinquier in the subversive networks, they also noted “the Service is currently in a position to control Colonel Trinquier's activities effectively. It appears desirable that no measure should be taken in relation to him so that this control continues to be exercised.”
Meanwhile the actions that were taken by the intelligence agencies allowed them to limit the effectiveness of the approaching coup attempt. Jeune Nation's strategist, Dominique Venner, was arrested two days before it took place. Then on April 20th, 1961, an informer told the DRG that the coup attempt was imminent in Algeria; as a result plastic explosives and weapons were seized in France and some 130 nationalist figures were arrested as a preventative measure. At the time the intelligence agencies estimated that there were around 7,600 extreme-right activists prepared to take action, against a backdrop of an estimated 138,630 political sympathisers in total.
On April 21st, 1961, just a few hours before the start of the attempted putsch, an intelligence service note revealed: “It's Algeria which is expected to give the signal for the extremist uprising. Metropolitan [France] will follow shortly afterwards, then the army of occupation in Germany … Secret contacts have taken place between Algiers, Madrid and Paris, as well as between Paris, Belgium, the Federal German [Republic – editor's note, West Germany] and Switzerland [carried out by] agents who are not yet politically identified, so that they can cross frontiers without any worries.” The report said that “a close collaboration at all levels” apparently existed between military and civilian activists, some of them from Jeune Nation whose members “included career soldiers”.
Events began to unfold: in Algiers, generals Maurice Challe, Edmond Jouhaud, Raoul Salan and André Zeller assumed power. President De Gaulle reacted by assuming full powers on April, 23rd, citing article 16 of France's Constitution.
The desire to politicise the army in the context of a “counter-insurgency war” had in fact made it easier to build links between political activists and army officers, who were attracted first and foremost by the nationalist-Catholic line, but also to a lesser degree by the neo-fascist groups. In the files on radicals that were created by the national police the Direction Générale de la Sûreté Nationale (DGSN) after the attempted coup there were 21 members of Jeune Nation, most of them military officers. The files also included 348 members of the Centre d’Études de Défense Nationale (CEDN), a research centre set up in 1960 by young officers hostile to the government.
The day after the putsch attempt in Algiers, and while accomplices in Paris were being arrested, police chiefs gave the following orders: “The contacts that military [personnel] maintain with extreme-right movements must be watched and monitored more than ever, as closely as possible, to detect the officers and non-commissioned officers who belong to these movements; the links with the activists from Algeria must be discovered.”
These army connections, as well as OAS links in the police, were a constant source of concern for the intelligence service in the following years. As late as 1965 military security was still sharing a list of around 50 subversive Catholic nationalist officers with various intelligence agencies and asking them to pass on any information they had about them.
One result of the suppression of the OAS was that the leaders of Jeune Nation told their OAS counterparts that they were ending any involvement in plans for an armed struggle, and would focus instead on developing their political movement among students. In the ensuring years French universities witnessed a growing number of clashes between 'fascist' and 'anti-fascist' students.
In 1967 these conflicts led to a police presence on the campus at Nanterre, west of Paris, which at the same time provoked rumours that files were being kept on left-wing students by the university. It was this climate of tension that led one of the leaders of the student protests in 1968, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, to challenge in public the minister for youth and sport François Missoffe, and not just the issue of male and female students being able to visit each other's dormitories, as is always reported.
The failed coup of April 1961 is, therefore, of fundamental importance to understanding the events of May 1968. Angry students, the forces of law and order disrupted by rebellious elements … the story did not end so badly. As long as it is watched over calmly.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
- The French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter.