As the Cold War descended over a Europe recovering from World War II, the French witnessed the dismantling of their colonial empire in the era of decolonization that followed. Refusing to relinquish illusions of imperial grandeur and to acknowledge the demands of colonial peoples for independence, the postwar French governments of the Fourth Republic were particularly stubborn in holding on to Indochina and Algeria, fighting long, brutal, and costly wars in a vain attempt to retain them. In her attempts to preserve her imperial estates, France could look to her long colonial experience. The strategy and techniques of pacification had been tried and tested during a number of campaigns fought by the French since the French Revolution, notably during the second half of the nineteenth century as a colonial empire second in size only to that of Britain was acquired and consolidated. During the Revolutionary and Napoleonic eras, notably in the Vendée, Calabria, and Spain, and while establishing their empire, the French faced a number of insurgent uprisings in which a peculiarly French approach to counterinsurgency was established. In particular, certain techniques of pacification emerged in Algeria in the 1840s, which were then further developed in Mexico, Indochina, Madagascar, and Morocco during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Although there was no doctrine that was taught in a systematic fashion, the French army developed a broad and well-established counterinsurgency practice as a result of its colonial experience.1
The “colonial school” of warfare developed by Bugeaud was later refined into a more methodical style of counterinsurgency, which replaced the rapid military thrusts through insurgent territory, which had been used in Algeria in the 1840s. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Indochina, Madagascar, and Morocco, Joseph-Simon Galliéni and Louis-Hubert-Gonzalve Lyautey were the two great French exponents of a dual military-political strategy of progressive pacification. This strategy, known as tache d’huile (oil stain, patch, or slick), was used to establish a slow and methodical expansion of French authority over conquered territory. Galliéni employed the technique of “progressive occupation” in Tonkin in Indochina and Madagascar, establishing bases from which control of the area could be progressively extended.2 Lyautey described the technique in a letter to Galliéni in November 1903. This stressed that the subjugation of colonies should be accomplished “not by mighty blows, but as a patch of oil spreads, through a step by step progression, playing alternately on all the local elements, utilising the divisions between tribes and between their chiefs.”3
The “Galliéni method” of warfare, or pacification as it was later called, placed as much emphasis on political and socioeconomic as on military measures. Attacks by converging mobile columns on rebel strongholds were followed up with the introduction of amenities such as markets as well as posts designed to protect the population from insurgent attacks into “cleared” areas. In every subjugated region, the French built a network of blockhouses commanding the roads and serving as bases for further operations by light columns. This combination of static territorial control and mobile reserves had a long tradition in the French army, having been employed against Royalist uprisings during the French Revolution. Against widely dispersed revolts or tribal forces, it was considerably successful. Galliéni’s methods were codified and elaborated by his enthusiastic subordinate, the cavalry officer, Lyautey, in a celebrated article, “Du Rôle Coloniale de L’armée” (“On the Army’s Colonial Role”), published in the prestigious journal Revue des Deux Mondes in January 1900, which provided the classic statement of this doctrine.4
The tache d’huile doctrine was to provide some continuity between French counterinsurgency methods employed prior to World War II and after 1945—being the strategy applied by the French in attempting to combat the Maoist-style insurgency of the Viet Minh in French Indochina between 1946 and 1954. However, there were a number of problems with the doctrine. Following Bugeaud, both Galliéni and Lyautey, believing that a division of powers constituted a weakness, advocated uniting both administrative and military authority in military hands at all levels of the hierarchy, a system of unified territorial command known as Cercles Militaires. French administration, which was to go hand in hand with a military presence, was placed in the hands of soldier administrators, causing disputes between the civilian and military authorities and ensuring that there was no real integration of the civil and military administrations. The theory and practice of the Colonial Army before 1914, notably unity of command (which resulted in military domination over civilian affairs), the importance of propaganda and of social and economic measures, and the system of close territorial control formed the backbone of guerre révolutionnaire in the 1950s.5
The brutal war against the Viet Minh in Indochina, which was to become the states of Vietnam—traditionally made up of the three kingdoms of Cochin-China (South Vietnam), Annam (Central Vietnam) and Tonkin (North Vietnam), Laos and Cambodia (Kampuchea)—broke out in earnest in December 1946. However, the attempt to reimpose French colonial rule did not progress according to plan. As the Dutch were to find out in modern-day Indonesia at the same time, the French discovered that the old colonial methods were no longer applicable. In the changed circumstances, which emerged in the aftermath of World War II, traditional French area-by-area methods of pacification no longer succeeded when facing continuous political subversion, which ensured escalating popular support, intelligence, recruits, sanctuaries, and supplies for the nationalist Viet Minh.6 The inept French campaign in Indochina was later summarized by a French journalist, Lucien Bodard, who reflected that “the French Army, like a Louis Quinze armchair, was the masterpiece of an extinct civilisation.”7 The army’s postwar analysis was more diplomatic, noting that:
The experience of eight years of war does, however, suggest that the rules inherited from Lyautey and other great colonial leaders should be modified slightly. … It is not possible to undertake a policy of pacification in regions where the inhabitants have fallen under Communist influence as long as the Marxist organisation remains there.8
But this was not immediately apparent following the triumphal entry of General Philippe Leclerc de Hauteclocque into Saigon in October 1945. Outwardly, Saigon was again the “Paris of the Far East,” providing a base for Leclerc to reestablish French control and to wipe out the Viet Minh. However, the French were on shaky ground, and Leclerc, a devout Catholic aristocrat, who had had a brilliant wartime career leading his division into Paris and Strasbourg, soon began to realize that the French lacked the men and equipment to achieve a decisive victory. Leclerc set about the reassertion of French control in the south, dispatching columns out into Cochin-China (one of the column leaders was Colonel, later General, Jacques Massu, who later served in Algeria), which were told to use minimum force and to avoid brutality or looting, wherever possible. Questioning whether a full military reconquest of Indochina was feasible before leaving in July 1946, Leclerc warned that France was heading for a guerrilla war that she could neither win nor afford. After a brief tour in early 1947, by which time there was fighting throughout Vietnam, he concluded that 500,000 troops would be required to subjugate such resistance, but he was ignored. Although the French had superior military organization and modern equipment, notably aircraft, helicopters, and tanks, it was soon apparent that they lacked both popular support and local knowledge of the terrain and had badly underestimated the Viet Minh. The French no longer confronted ill-organized colonial rebels but instead faced disciplined and tenacious revolutionaries, who showed formidable dedication and political will in following a political-military strategy based on that of Mao Tse-tung in China. Entering the vacuum of power in 1945 that followed the defeat of Japan, the Viet Minh had already established their own infrastructure and “safe bases” in the rural areas of Vietnam, notably in North Vietnam (the “Viet Bac”) and the Red River Delta. These sanctuaries made it possible to plan and organize for mobilizing the support of the population and for launching attritional guerrilla operations that wore down the French army prior to winning a conventional war to seize power.9
In 1947, the French removed the Viet Minh from the Hanoi area and were also able to reoccupy almost all of Laos. The French celebrated a decisive victory, but their euphoria proved to be misplaced. In reality, they lacked the manpower to prevent a Viet Minh withdrawal to their safe areas in the north from where they were able to relieve the sieges of Nam Dinh and Hué, and the situation in Cochin-China remained precarious. An uprising in Madagascar delayed the arrival of some badly needed reinforcements, which were rerouted while traveling to Indochina between April and July 1947. When the reinforcements finally arrived, pacification of Cochin-China was seen as the first priority. Thus, although suffering a setback, by withdrawing into the “safe bases,” the Viet Minh led by Ho Chi Minh and General Giap were able to rebuild their forces and strengthen their hold on the population in Tonkin and Cochin-China, concentrating on political education, recruitment, and training, while maintaining a guerrilla campaign against the French occupation in most areas, but particularly in Cochin-China. For nearly three years, the French, convinced that the rebels had been defeated, did nothing to contest the Viet Minh’s hold over the population, ignoring the implications of the successes of Mao’s identical strategy in China. Attempts by General Jean Étienne Valluy during late 1947 failed to destroy the Viet Minh, and French operations during 1948 and early 1949 continued to be restricted by limited manpower and hesitation in Paris. Blaizot, the new commander in chief, wanted to lead a powerful force into the Tonkin mountains, the Viet Minh stronghold, but the French government refused to denude Cochin-China, which was economically important, of troops. One commander, General Raoul Salan, was replaced because he was too outspoken in demanding reinforcements.10
Although some progress was made by the French in the Red River Delta and Cochin-China—where General Boyer de Latour du Moulin enjoyed success against the Viet Minh stronghold in the Plain of Reeds—overall, the French lost an opportunity in 1948 because of indecision and half-measures. Inadequate numbers of troops meant that the French were always faced by an ongoing dilemma of where to employ their meager forces as concentration in one area always risked defeat in others. The French were generally able to maintain control of the cities and roads, although ambushes became an increasing problem. They occupied the rice fields and jungle by day, but the insurgents ruled them by night. Indeed, when Mao emerged as the victor in China in October 1949, the French position in Indochina was already compromised, and once supplies began to flow into the Viet Bac from China, the strategic balance tilted decisively against the French. China provided the Viet Minh with international recognition and an external safe haven, allowing the Viet Minh to make the transition from a purely guerrilla force to the formation of regular units that received Chinese military equipment and Chinese training missions. By 1954, the Viet Minh had about 125,000 regulars and 350,000 militia. The Viet Minh were officially recognized by China in January 1950 and later by the Soviet Union. With the supply from their allies of enough trucks, artillery, and machine guns to equip three divisions, the Viet Minh were able to put some 30 regular units into the field. These forces were employed at first against the smaller frontier posts and then against the larger ones, notably on the Route Coloniale 4, which linked Lang Son and Cao Bang.11
Major General Edward G. Lansdale, visiting Indochina in 1953, “was amazed at the hundreds of forts … ranging from big complexes of bunkers and trench systems to little Beau Geste movie set forts that housed a squad, a platoon, or a company.” This resulted in a strategy in which “most of the French Union forces were manning static defense positions,” leaving “most of the countryside” in the hands of the enemy.12 A large percentage of the troops served as garrisons for forts of concrete and bamboo. Strongpoints, whether large like Cao Bang or Dien Bien Phu or small like the hundreds of postes established in Tonkin or the Red River Delta as part of the de Lattre Line, proved vulnerable to defeat in detail, being often overrun by human wave assaults. The tendency of the French to remain in static positions, especially at night, and to rely on sporadic large-scale search and destroy operations into Viet Minh base areas, although forcing the Viet Minh onto the defensive, permitted them to dominate the countryside and its population. French successes were usually the result of large-scale frontal assaults on defended positions by the Viet Minh, but these were the exception. Manning static defenses also reduced the available manpower for mobile operations. The French had totally misinterpreted the nature of the threat posed by the Viet Minh. Information about the organization and strength of guerrilla forces and, more important, the political infrastructure of the Communist Party was lacking, and, no serious attempts were made to rectify this. There were, for example, no policies designed to tempt deserters from the Viet Minh or to recruit captured guerrillas into “pseudo gangs” for deployment against their erstwhile colleagues. The lack of men knowledgeable in the local languages and customs and of good tactical intelligence meant that the troops were largely blind and often brutalized the population in an attempt to extract information. The French were thus vulnerable to ambushes by the elusive guerrillas, owing to the lack of intelligence, and their dependency on the roads for movement, owing to a lack of helicopters, which were still an undeveloped innovation. As a result, the French continued to employ inappropriate and outdated tactics, which resulted in them being outmaneuvered and outfought in a revolutionary war that they failed to comprehend.13
Thus, when in late 1949 the Viet Minh went on the offensive, the French were caught unprepared with their troops badly deployed in isolated garrisons. These had previously been employed successfully in North Africa to control and intimidate the local population but now merely tied down large numbers of troops in static defenses. These defenses, which ranged from major defensive complexes manned by large formations to small outposts garrisoned by small units, were largely static and failed to prevent the enemy from dominating the rural areas. The outposts in the jungle often consisted only of a squad of soldiers under a junior officer or NCO and, as is well described in Graham Greene’s novel, The Quiet American, were isolated and extremely vulnerable to attack, becoming death traps for their garrisons. Even where the garrisons were more substantial—such as “hedgehogs” or well-armed outposts that were considered militarily self-sufficient and impregnable—as along the Cao Bang-Lang Son Ridge in northeastern Vietnam, the French were unable to hold their positions. The logistical support for the French garrisons was reliant upon mechanized transport, which when traveling either through difficult terrain or along the Route Coloniale 4, linking Lang Son and Cao Bang, was often ambushed. As a result, casualties were high and French morale declined. Thus, when the Viet Minh switched to direct attacks on the ridge garrisons, the outpost of Dong Khe was captured in September 1950, forcing the French to evacuate Cao Bang while under constant attack. By the end of October, the French had lost over 6,000 casualties and had been driven out of the northeast of the country, leaving it to be developed as the strongest of the communist bases. By 1950, the French had lost any realistic opportunity for victory.14
The French should have reappraised their strategy following this disaster, but a reluctance to admit defeat and subsequent events prevented this. Believing that the French were on the run, Giap launched an all-out assault on the Red River Delta, hoping to administer the coup de grace and take Hanoi. This was premature as the French refused to admit defeat and the French government responded to the débâcle of the so-called Battle of the Frontiers in 1950–51 by dispatching substantial reinforcements to Vietnam and appointing the exceptional General Jean Joseph Marie Gabriel de Lattre de Tassigny as both commander in chief and governor general. Arriving in December 1950, de Lattre at once reinvigorated and transformed his command, summarily dismissing many officers, and withdrew the remaining garrisons into the delta region. He then established garrisons on the approaches to Hanoi and reorganized the elite units of his forces such as the Paras, Marines, and Foreign Legion, into mobile groups, which with artillery, armor, and air support formed a general reserve. Thus, Giap’s large-scale conventional attacks between January and June 1951 were badly defeated by superior French firepower, losing approximately 12,000 casualties. This victory appeared to exonerate the principles of pacification and set a pattern for future French campaigns, which henceforth were designed to exploit the French technological superiority and employ the firepower of their artillery and air assets. The de Lattre Line—a complicated defensive system of mutually supporting concrete blockhouses—was built around the delta to defend the French base and its population against the Viet Minh.15
In accordance with Mao’s strategy of revolutionary warfare, Giap reverted to guerrilla warfare. French attempts to break out of the delta defenses with their mobile reserves failed in late 1951 (de Lattre’s capture of Hoa Binh) and in early 1952 (Operation “Lorraine” when Salan attacked the Viet Minh supply dumps at Phu Tho and Phu Doan, north of the Red River). This was the result of determined guerrilla attacks. By early 1953, Giap had recovered the military initiative, and the French were running short of options. A Viet Minh invasion of northern Laos in April 1953 forced Salan to commit a substantial part of his army to “hedgehog” positions on the Plain of Jars, further weakening his capabilities and limiting the reserves available for an offensive. With hindsight, it can be said that overall the strategy of pacification had failed, although in some areas there had been some initial success. For example, in the province of My Tho in the Mekong Delta, the French had reversed the years of nationalist dominance during 1947–50 by creating alliances with the local enemies, notably the political and religious competitors, of the Viet Minh, who persecuted officials, landlords, and religious groups and killed “collaborators.” During 1950–52, the area was almost completely “pacified” by the French as a result of their alliance with the religious sects (the Hoa Hao and the Cao Dai) in the Mekong Delta, and the local guerrillas and their cadres were exiled in the Plain of Reeds. However, during 1953–54, the situation changed, owing to the brutality and political weakness of the colonial regime and French military setbacks, which resulted in the demoralization of the French and their allies, and saw a resurgence of the insurgents, who became once again the dominant force.16
This, however, was not immediately apparent to the French. General Henri-Eugène Navarre, a cavalry officer with no previous experience of field command who became commander in chief in May 1953, replacing Salan, was instructed to adopt an overall defensive strategy in the north for a year. During this time, only minor tactical offensive operations were to be conducted to mop up the delta while preparing for a major campaign to bring the Viet Minh to the negotiating table. In November 1953, Navarre dropped paratroopers into the valley of Dien Bien Phu in Tonkin (Operation “Castor”) to establish a hedgehog, which would cut Viet Minh communications with northern Laos. The plan was to repeat the defeat inflicted on Giap at Na San in November 1952. Owing to poor French intelligence, the outpost at Dien Bien Phu, which was isolated and dependent upon air supply, was surprised by a concentration of overwhelming Viet Minh strength. The French had totally misinterpreted the threat posed by the Viet Minh. Although French intelligence, both tactical and strategic, was good, notably on the buildup of the regular formations of the Viet Minh and provided a good picture of their location and intentions, it was often unimaginative. The complacency and overconfidence of the high command, which was reluctant to accept the unpleasant reality that the war might be unwinnable with the limited resources available, often undermined clear analysis of the available intelligence. At Dien Bien Phu, the results of this attitude were disastrous. On May 7, 1954, Dien Bien Phu surrendered and, although the French regrouped, the war was in effect over. As the French were militarily bankrupt and la sale guerre was progressively more unpopular, the government of Pierre Mendès-France was forced to end the French presence in Indochina. The last troopship sailed from Saigon in November 1954, leaving both Laos and Cambodia as independent states and Vietnam divided arbitrarily along the seventeenth parallel.17
There were a number of reasons for the French defeat. There was little attempt by the French to coordinate their civil and military efforts. Political instability in France and constant changes of government prevented the implementation of consistent policies. Coming so soon after the shocks of 1940–45, the war in Indochina was highly unpopular, ensuring that politicians who were desperate for domestic support did little to provide adequate resources for the war. For example, an amendment to the Budget Law passed in 1950 restricted the deployment of conscripts to the “homeland” territory of France, Algeria, and the occupation zones of Germany. Conscripts could not be sent to Indochina unless they volunteered and very few did so. The fact that conscripts did not serve in Indochina meant that there was little real commitment to the war by ordinary French men and women. The war was increasingly unpopular in France, with the percentage of support in polls falling from 37 percent in July 1947 to 19 percent by July 1949. Many Socialists and the radical leader, Pierre Mendès-France, opposed the war. The substantial Communist Party was openly hostile, taking every opportunity to hamper the war effort, calling strikes in arsenals and ports, and even sabotaging equipment and stores waiting for transport to Indochina. Demonstrations and hostility meant that gendarmes had to be deployed to safeguard the embarkation of troops overseas, returning wounded could not return to Paris or receive blood from the national blood donor organization, and citations for bravery were not published. This caused a backlash from the Right, which contended that if Indochina was lost, the rest of the French Empire would soon follow.18
During the campaign in Indochina, some officers increasingly found themselves in dangerous conflict with their political masters of the Fourth Republic, who singularly failed to provide any sustained or well-directed leadership during the subsequent era of colonial disintegration. With such an essentially peripherally driven imperial policy, successive French governments were all but held hostage by colonial interests, which were highly resistant to the notion of making political concessions to indigenous groups. With no less than seven different political parties operating in the Fourth Republic within an unstable system of proportional representation, the influence of the colonial lobby was increased. This was particularly so in the case of the Catholic Right-of-Center Mouvement Republicain Populaire (Popular Republican Movement, MRP), whose adherents invariably secured the foreign overseas territories and Indochina ministries in successive coalitions and opposed any suggestion of independence. Moreover, the support for Ho Chi Minh by the French Communist Party tended to make it difficult for other parties to entertain negotiation with the Viet Minh and drove the Socialists into coalition with the imperially minded parties if they were to share the fruits of office.19
French colonial forces, composed of regular soldiers from La Coloniale, the Légion Etrangère, and North African Tirailleurs, suffered heavy casualties (3,500, of whom 352 were officers, killed since September 1945) and a drop in morale. As a result, they felt increasingly isolated by the perceived lack of domestic support in France for the war. Repulsed by the squalid and fractious nature of French politics, the army believed increasingly that French military efficiency in Indochina was undermined by the political instability of the Fourth Republic. There was a widely held perception among the officer corps that the major reason for defeat had been poor and irresolute leadership by the politicians. Failing to face or bring home to an indifferent general public the realities of the conflict, the politicians were felt by the army to have failed either to deploy adequate numbers of troops to Indochina or to mobilize the support of the Home Front for a more rigorous conduct of the war.20 One veteran noted bitterly that “now we know that a French Army, on no matter what territory it fights, will always be stabbed in the back.”21
This lack of political direction was also reflected in the failure to establish a unified command structure for both the civilian and military administrations serving in Indochina similar to that established by the British with the appointments of Templer in Malaya and Harding in Cyprus. De Lattre held the posts of both civil and military authority in late 1950, but in fact could make few decisions and was allowed to display very little initiative by his political masters at home. This dual appointment was not repeated, and de Lattre’s successors, Salan and Navarre, confronted not only intervention from Paris but also interference from a civilian governor general in Indochina. Following Dien Bien Phu, the commander in chief, Navarre, complained that he lacked not only clear instructions concerning the defense of Laos but also the necessary reinforcements, as a result of the failure to send conscripts to Indochina, and potential battle-winning equipment, notably helicopters. As la sale guerre dragged on, the officer corps blamed the politicians for the withdrawal from Indochina.22
There was little recognition that the insurgent threat was primarily a political one and little effort was made by the French to find a political solution or to counter Viet Minh efforts to mobilize popular support until it was too late. The old colonial mentality, notably the assumption that the indigenous population could be controlled, was difficult to alter. In fact, at the political level, the attractions of continuing the French role were undermined by the Viet Minh’s exploitation of nationalist sentiment. Traditional French area-by-area methods of pacification could no longer succeed in the face of continuous political subversion, which ensured escalating popular support, generating advantages such as intelligence, recruits, sanctuaries, and supplies for the Viet Minh, and denying them to the French. The war in Indochina was essentially a colonial campaign to reassert French rule and France’s position as a great, global power.23
The French solution for Indochina was to attempt to “divide and rule” by building an alternative to the Viet Minh during 1948–49 and peeling away noncommunist nationalists. The former Emperor Bao Dai returned to Indochina and proclaimed himself head of the state of Vietnam. But French officials could not yet countenance an independent Vietnamese nation-state and devolved only a limited measure of internal self-government, while maintaining control of diplomatic, economic, and military policy and continuing to employ military force to defeat the Viet Minh. Devolution of power was never extended to true independence, international standing, and a truly effective national Vietnamese army. Thus, although recognized as head of an “independent” and unified Vietnam in March 1949—something denied to Ho Chi Minh in 1946—Bao Dai was discredited in the eyes of his people, both communist and anticommunist. Vietnam’s “independence” was restricted by membership as an “associated state” of the French Union. Furthermore, although possessing ability, Bao Dai was known as the “emperor of the night clubs,” and none of his successive governments gained any genuine mass support or showed any administrative capabilities.24
At the political level, the attractions of continuing the French role were undermined by the Viet Minh’s exploitation of nationalist sentiment. Seeking support from Bao Dai and minority religious sects such as the Cao Dai and Hoa Hao gave the French little credibility, and the Viet Minh was able to establish a monopoly in terms of patriotism and nationalism, to which the French had no ideological reply. The failure of the Paris negotiations of 1947–49 had discredited French promises of independence, which were further damaged when it became apparent that they were not backed up by adequate force to secure their accomplishment. As a result, French propaganda lacked relevance to the cause of Vietnamese nationalism, being based almost exclusively upon the promise of continued French dominance. Similarly, the Viet Minh were able to exploit political unrest in Cambodia and Laos, establishing a united front with the two countries in 1950.25 Lansdale noted in 1953 that “French paternalism was turning over the controls of self-rule too slowly and grudgingly to the Vietnamese to generate any enthusiasm among Vietnamese nationalists,” who had little control over Vietnamese forces or the civilian administration.26
The French showed a marked reluctance to raise a national army in Vietnam. Although de Lattre was able after a struggle to coax Bao Dai into the rapid creation and expansion of a Vietnamese army, an initial target of an establishment of 115,000 men was not achieved until 1953. De Lattre himself supervised the formation of a cadre school and ordered each French unit in Vietnam to raise a second battalion from the local population. But this rapid expansion lost momentum under his successor, Salan, who distrusted both the Vietnamese army, which the Viet Minh were infiltrating, and its capabilities. Instead, French units were encouraged to recruit more Vietnamese into regular French units. For example, when the 2nd Battalion, 1st Parachute Light Infantry landed at Dien Bien Phu on November 20, 1953, nearly half their number was Vietnamese. The French were also reluctant to arm local militias, which could have freed the regulars from manning static defenses. There were moreover no policies designed to tempt deserters from the Viet Minh or to recruit captured guerrillas into pseudo gangs for deployment against their erstwhile colleagues.27
Some basic counterinsurgency lessons did emerge from the Indochina War. It was recognized, for example, that the guerrillas gained considerable strength from their support among the local population. Although the resettlement of the indigenous population was never adopted as a general policy in Vietnam, valuable experiments in this technique took place within defended zones in the border areas of Cambodia, notably in Svay Rieng in 1946 and in Kompong Chau in 1951. This deprived the Viet Minh of support and left these previously infiltrated areas in the control of the French. The aim was to deny food, shelter, and recruits to the Viet Minh, and some success was enjoyed. Some local tribesmen—principally from the T’ai mountains in the north—were organized, under French officers and NCOs, into groupements de Commandos Mixtes Aéroportés (GCMA), renamed as Groupements Mixes d’Intervention (GMI) in December 1953, for antiguerrilla operations in remote areas. These units, however, were generally distrusted and rarely operated with regular units. But although given little support or publicity, they demonstrated what could be achieved by employing antiguerrilla forces, capable of meeting the enemy on his own ground and with his own tactics. Mistakenly, the French felt unable to carry out similar schemes in Vietnam, owing to the difficulty and expense of implementation in a country whose densely populated arable land sharply limited the possibilities for creating new farming communities. These new methods contributed to the evolution of the new counterinsurgency doctrine of guerre révolutionnaire, which the French were subsequently able to apply in Algeria.28
It became increasingly apparent between 1946 and 1954 that the tactics of pacification, employing the twin elements of static garrisons in fortified posts to intimidate the local population and mobile “flying columns” to crush any revolt, were no longer sufficient and were not designed to combat communist revolutionary warfare. Although tache d’huile had been applied successfully and extensively in North Africa, Equatorial and West Africa, Madagascar, and Indochina, its application after 1945 was not queried despite its intrinsic inadequacies. Prior to 1945, pacification had mostly been employed in circumstances that were highly favorable to the French against rebels who were divided by religious or tribal allegiance; were inadequately armed, equipped, and organized; and lacked either a sense of nationalism or a revolutionary communist organization. Pacification techniques proved effective notably in Indochina and Madagascar during the late nineteenth century and also in Morocco during the early twentieth century but proved to be ineffective in the changed circumstances from 1945 onward such as against the Viet Minh. In short, such successes were less easily achieved against a nationalist movement with a strong organization and widespread appeal. These deficiencies quickly became evident after the outbreak of hostilities in Indochina. The traditional French reliance on technology and firepower, although occasionally an asset, too often worked against the French, who lacked the mobility to engage the elusive guerrillas. Pacification relied on tactical mobility, but this was never achieved in a decisive way because the French lacked enough numbers of aircraft or helicopters for the transportation of troops or supply by air on a large scale as would be common when American troops later served in Vietnam. As a result, during the Indochina War, the French had to depend upon mobile columns of half-tracks, tanks, and trucks, which having to move by road were vulnerable to ambush. In short, pacification was no longer a viable counterinsurgency strategy with which to suppress the new types of insurgency, which emerged in the aftermath of World War II and bore little similarity to previous colonial revolts. As the first European power to confront a communist revolution organized along Maoist lines, France displayed a number of crucial weaknesses in its counterinsurgency.29
In response, the French army developed a number of other techniques, based on the “lessons” of Indochina as analyzed through the prism of the counterrevolutionary theory known as guerre révolutionnaire, to overcome the insurgent threat. The defeat in Indochina had been a seminal experience, a trauma, which had a profound effect upon the French army, acting as a catalyst for the evolution of guerre révolutionnaire, which sought new ways of countering anticolonial insurrection to replace that of tache d’huile. This doctrine of a total war against revolutionary movements had its origins in the writings of an influential group of thinkers within the French officer corps, which confronted yet another defeat after 1940. They became obsessed with learning the lessons of the war in Indochina to win future revolutionary wars, already imminent elsewhere in the French Empire. Many of the younger officers who evolved this new doctrine had fought in Indochina and in some cases had been captured by the Viet Minh, learning at firsthand about communist insurgency and Maoist revolutionary methods to formulate a new counterinsurgency doctrine.30
General Lionel-Max Chassin commanded the French Air Force, Colonel Lacheroy held a staff position, General Nemo commanded a battalion, while some of the more prominent theorists, notably Hogard, Piorier, and Souyris, were comparatively junior officers having served as platoon commanders or intelligence, civil affairs, or propaganda officers. Engaged in an energetic, almost passionate, inquiry into enemy doctrine, particularly into the writings of Mao Tse-tung and Giap, these officers were more concerned with obtaining quick answers to urgent operational problems rather than with objective historical analysis. Uninterested in understanding the complex origins of the Indochina War, the theorists of guerre révolutionnaire tended to be rather superficial in their analysis. They stressed that Mao’s writings provided a general theory of modern war, which in fact had not been his intention. More importantly, they emphasized that the army had been naïve in the ways of subversive war and, receiving insufficient support from the government and people at home, had been beaten by a more fanatical and united opponent. The operational lessons derived from the study of the Indochina War combined with a deep dissatisfaction within the army concerning the social and political realities of contemporary France to provide the impetus to formulate a new, controversial doctrine, which was to have a far-reaching impact and influence on the conduct of counterinsurgency operations in Algeria.31
From 1954, French officers studied the campaigns in China and Indochina and the new political strategic implications of Mao’s principles of revolutionary warfare on antiguerrilla warfare. At the core of guerre révolutionnaire was the belief that the army, without either domestic or international support, was the defender of the West and its values against communist revolution. It was believed that the Indochina War was the result of a worldwide conspiracy by dedicated communist revolutionaries to subvert the West and overthrow existing political structures using a unique mixture of psychological and military methods.32 As Colonel Antoine Argoud, one of Massu’s staff officers in Algeria, stated in 1960: “We want to halt the decadence of the West and the march of communism. That is our duty, the real duty of the army. That is why we must win in Algeria. Indo-China taught us to see the truth.”33
Following traditions from the 1930s and from Vichy, the enemy was now seen as being Soviet communism, and many officers were convinced that they were defending Western civilization against this threat. In Algeria, this belief in a communist conspiracy would blind many French officers to the real causes of the conflict, which were Muslim discontent with political and economic inferiority.34 Indeed, the FLN (Front de Libération Nationale) were often referred to as “Viets” even though communism had minimal influence over the FLN, which represented a nationalist movement. Nevertheless, the army tended to see the war in terms of an international conspiracy of the Left. General Raoul Salan represented the views of many officers when he declared that “I do not have to exonerate myself for having refused to allow Communism to be established an hour away from Marseilles.”35
Having recognized and dissected the nature of the threat, the theorists of guerre révolutionnaire went on to evoke a doctrine of counterrevolution based on what they pinpointed as the inbuilt Achilles’ heel of the Maoist model. This was identified as its vulnerability during the preliminary phases of the insurgency, when popular support had yet to be established; its dependence on a logistic base, often in an adjacent country; and its military weakness during the initial phases of the insurgency. Countermeasures were designed to exploit these factors by preventing or containing communist subversion, notably promoting education and reform, and closely monitoring the activities of the population. Above all, it was emphasized that, unlike the case in Indochina, the army should have the complete support of the government, despite the unpopularity or repressive nature of its methods. In other words, France had to be ready to implement a politico-military counter-doctrine with an equal ideological determination to be able to defeat the revolutionary strategy of the communists. The French theorists of guerre révolutionnaire advocated the doctrine of fighting fire with fire as the only answer to the revolutionary warfare waged by Mao and Ho Chi Minh. This was a development of tache d’huile, rather than any radical departure, recognizing that the highly integrated and structured Viet Minh had employed a new combination of political, military, and psychological techniques to win over the population and subvert the French colonial authorities. According to the doctrine of guerre révolutionnaire, the military campaign would be waged by both military and psychological means without restraint, as Total War.36
Although not probing the more fundamental motivation for subversion, the doctrine of guerre révolutionnaire did provide soldiers with a helpful operational tool for studying revolutionary warfare. It was, however, a doctrine, which was rigid, almost dogmatic, in its ideas. It led eventually to a dangerous politicization of the army. The advocates of the new doctrine of guerre révolutionnaire felt that it was the duty of the French government and people to support the army unconditionally to ensure that any future insurgency would be resisted by identical ideological vigor, and resolve also had serious political ramifications. The conclusion drawn from Indochina by many French officers was that the resources of the entire nation, and not simply the cadres of regular officers and NCOs, must be committed to the struggle. A total war against the revolutionary enemy had to be waged, and when the politicians clearly failed to appreciate this, the only solution was for the army to assume the responsibility for political decisions.37
Inevitably, endorsement of guerre révolutionnaire by the army was not instantaneous. From the start, the arrogance of some theorists was perceived as being unwarranted by both the more conservative French senior officers and the more liberal, often Gaullist, officers. In 1954, students faced criticism from their instructors at the Ecole de Guerre for allowing their judgment to be “deformed” by their service in Indochina. Two years later, an influential portion of the officer corps had succumbed to the unceasing propaganda and demands of the Algerian campaign, which was being waged more and more according to the principles and techniques of guerre révolutionnaire. For example, the Centre d’Instruction de Pacification et de Contre-Guerrilla (Centre for the Teaching of Pacification and Counter-Guerrilla) was set up in Algeria at Arzew (Oran Province) in March 1956 to inculcate French officers in the new doctrine. The believers within the officer corps were distrustful of skeptical fellow officers, who frequently considered the enthusiasts to be extremely arrogant. The brief era of ascendancy enjoyed by the doctrine had started. But, in early 1961, one senior officer estimated that at most 20 percent of army officers wholly accepted the views of guerre révolutionnaire, as many accepted only the narrower, tactical theories of the doctrine, and either ignored or rejected its wider, political implications. Even fewer NCOs and privates were persuaded, as future events were to show. The Navy and Air Force remained largely unaffected by the doctrine.38
Nevertheless, defeat in Indochina was a bitter pill for the French army, increasing the officer corps’ scornful distrust of French politicians. This was further exacerbated by the new counterinsurgency doctrine, guerre révolutionnaire, which led increasingly to a politicization of the army when the lessons of Indochina were applied by the French during the insurgency in Algeria between 1954 and 1962. For many soldiers, the humiliation of Indochina confirmed that traditional esprit de corps and patriotism were ineffective defenses against revolutionary élan, particularly if the government failed to either understand or resource the counterinsurgency campaign. The concept of limited war was unacceptable, and the government and nation had to furnish total support to the armed forces.39 One officer who was quoted in the General Staff’s postwar analysis noted that “If we were unable to effectively fight Communist propaganda, it is because we did not offer a positive ideology as an alternative to Communism from which would have come a doctrine and a faith.”40
One lesson drawn from the experiences in Indochina by officers serving in Algeria was that the French army should not be allowed to suffer another ignoble defeat because of a lack of political and national will to overcome a modern insurgency.41 The doctrine of guerre révolutionnaire argued that if the politicians could not achieve the required ideological cohesion and unity of purpose between the army, the government, and the people, then the army had the right to impose it. As an article in Verbe argued, “the Army’s concept of the common good was superior to that of the state.”42 Many officers who extolled the tenets of guerre révolutionnaire came increasingly to believe that the doctrine could not be realized satisfactorily in the multiparty, liberal France of the Fourth and Fifth Republics.43 As early as 1958, Commandant Hogard contended that “it is time to realise that the democratic ideology has become powerless in the world today.”44 These assumptions reveal deep alienation from the métropole and, above all, a deep suspicion of politicians in mainland France, which had been exacerbated by the Suez Crisis and the ongoing squabbles with Paris over money and resources.45
For the theorists and adherents of guerre révolutionnaire, the war in Algeria was a crusade for the future of France itself. Algeria was not only to be rescued from communism and Pan-Arabism, but also France itself was to be revived from its inefficient and corrupt condition and restored as a disciplined, progressive world power. Implicit in the analysis of revolutionary warfare was the conviction that any new insurgency would assist communists who would hoodwink the leaders of the nationalist movement. In reality, however, the FLN was not communist, although it was socialist and anti-imperialist and willing to accept aid from the Soviet bloc.46
Following defeat in Indochina, the army saw itself as engaged in a wider conflict against a worldwide revolution, which supported anticolonialism, non-Western nationalism, and communism and could only be defeated by a total commitment of all resources at the disposal of the nation itself. Total War demanded a total defeat of the enemy, and any negotiations, compromise, or limited goals would undermine the all-embracing war against the insidious enemy. A counterinsurgency campaign had therefore to be fought without restraint, allowing semi-legalized brutality, such as the deportation or internment of local-level communities, and the detention and torture of individuals. The crusading ideology of guerre révolutionnaire with its insistence on a total politico-military effort and the rejection of compromise had an unfortunate influence on the subsequent conduct of operations in Algeria. It led the army, increasingly frustrated by its isolation, to advocate policies that were unsustainable both politically and militarily. In such circumstances, guerre révolutionnaire led to disaster, plunging the army into the treacherous waters of open involvement in French domestic politics and ruining its reputation and effectiveness.47
1. Ian F. W. Beckett, “Introduction,” in The Roots of Counter-Insurgency, 1900–1945 (London: Blandford, 1988), p. 14; Raymond F. Betts, France and Decolonisation, 1900–1960 (Basingstoke, Hampshire, UK: Macmillan, 1991), p. 6; John Chipman, French Power in Africa (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989), pp. 1–2, 4–9, 18–20; Jack Autrey Dabbs, The French Army in Mexico, 1861–1867 (The Hague: Mouton & Co., 1963), pp. 84–105, 113–21, 160–82, 261–73; Matthew J. Flynn, Contesting History (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2010), pp. 1–18; Michel L. Martin, “From Algiers to N’Djamena: France’s Adaptation to Low-Intensity Wars, 1830–1987,” in David Charters and Maurice Tugwell, eds., Armies in Low-Intensity Conflict: A Comparative Analysis (London: Brassey’s Defence, 1989), pp. 79–81; Francis Toase, “The French Experience,” in Ian F W Beckett, ed., The Roots of Counter-Insurgency: Armies and Guerrilla Warfare, 1900–1945 (London: Blandford Press, 1988), p. 41.
2. Douglas Porch, “Bugeaud, Galliéni, Lyautey: The Development of French Colonial Warfare,” in Peter Paret, ed., Makers of Modern Strategy: From Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), pp. 377, 388–89; Toase, “The French Experience,” pp. 44, 57.
3. Toase, “The French Experience,” in Roots of Counter-Insurgency, p. 57.
4. Ian F. W. Beckett, Modern Insurgencies and Counter-Insurgencies: Guerrillas and Their Opponents since 1750 (London: Routledge, 2001), pp. 40–41; Jean Gottman, “ Bugeaud, Galliéni, Lyautey: The Development of French Colonial Warfare,” in Edward Mead Earle, ed., Makers of Modern Strategy: Military Thought from Machiavelli to Hitler (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1971), p. 237; Peter Paret, French Revolutionary Warfare from Indochina to Algeria: The Analysis of a Political and Military Doctrine (London: Pall Mall Press for Princeton University, 1964), p. 35; Toase, “The French Experience,” p. 44.
5. Beckett, Modern Insurgencies and Counter-Insurgencies, p. 29; Jean Gottman, “Bugeaud, Galliéni, Lyautey,” p. 245; Martin, “From Algiers to N’Djamena,” p. 86; Paret, French Revolutionary Warfare from Indochina to Algeria, pp. 105–6; Douglas Porch, Counterinsurgency: Exposing the Myths of the New Way of War (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 30; Toase, “The French Experience,” pp. 42–43.
6. Beckett, Modern Insurgencies and Counter-Insurgencies, p. 110; Anthony Clayton, The Wars of French Decolonization (London: Longman, 1994), pp. 57–58; David W. P. Elliott, The Vietnamese War (Armonk, NY, and London: M. E. Sharpe, 2007), p. xvii; John Pimlott, “The French Army: From Indochina to Chad, 1946–1984,” in Ian F. W. Beckett and John Pimlott, eds., Armed Forces and Modern Counter-Insurgency (London: Croom Helm, 1985), p. 49; Toase, “The French Experience,” p. 58.
7. Lucien Bodard, The Quicksand War: Prelude to Vietnam (New York: Little, Brown, 1967), p. 3, quoted in Betts, France and Decolonisation, 1900–1960, p. 81.
8. Colonel V. J. Croizat, Lessons of the War in Indochina, vol. 2 (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 1967), p. 112.
9. Betts, France and Decolonisation, 1900–1960, pp. 80, 87; Clayton, The Wars of French Decolonization, fn. 3, pp. 42–45; Fredrik Logevall, Embers of War, pp. 117–20, 131–33, 140, 163, 178; Pimlott, “The French Army,” pp. 51–52.
10. Clayton, The Wars of French Decolonization, pp. 48, 84–85; Logevall, Embers of War, pp. 154–55, 170–76, 201–4, 206–9; Pimlott, “The French Army,” pp. 51–52.
11. Beckett, Modern Insurgencies and Counter-Insurgencies, p. 114; Betts, France and Decolonisation, 1900–1960, p. 87; Clayton, The Wars of French Decolonization, p. 52; Logevall, Embers of War, pp. 238–39; Pimlott, “The French Army,” pp. 51–52; Alexander Zervoudakis, “Nihil mirare, nihil contemptare, omnia intelligere: Franco-Vietnamese Intelligence in Indochina, 1950–1954,” Intelligence and National Security 13, no. 1 (Spring 1998), pp. 195–231 at 199.
12. Edward Geary Lansdale, In the Midst of Wars: An American’s Mission to Southeast Asia (New York: Fordham University Press, 1991), p. 111.
13. Robert M. Cassidy, “The Long Small War: Indigenous Forces for Counterinsurgency,” Parameters (Summer 2006), pp. 47–62 at 51–52; Clayton, The Wars of French Decolonization, pp. 56, 62–64, 75–76; Croizat, Lessons of the War in Indochina, pp. 34–35, 40, 56–58, 91–93; Elliott, The Vietnamese War, pp. 63–67, 71–73; Bernard Fall, Hell in a Very Small Place (London: Pall Mall Press, 1966), p. 8; Logevall, Embers of War, pp. 177–78, 268–69; Pimlott, “The French Army,” pp. 56–57, 210; Douglas Porch, The French Secret Service: From the Dreyfus Affair to the Gulf War (London: Macmillan, 1996), pp. 302–4; Zervoudakis, “Nihil mirare, nihil contemptare, omnia intelligere,” p. 199.
14. Betts, France and Decolonisation, 1900–1960, p. 88; Christopher C. Harmon, “Illustrations of ‘Learning’ in Counterinsurgency,” in Ian Beckett, ed., Modern Counter-Insurgency (Aldershot, Hampshire, and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2007), p. 354; Lansdale, In the Midst of Wars, p. 111; Logevall, Embers of War, pp. 236–55; Pimlott, “The French Army,” p. 52.
15. Logevall, Embers of War, pp. 260–73; Lieutenant Colonel Michel Goya and Lieutenant Colonel Philippe François, “The Man Who Beat Events: ‘King John’ in Indochina,” Military Review (September–October 2007), pp. 52–61 at 55–56; Pimlott, “The French Army: From Indochina to Chad, 1946–1984,” pp. 52–53.
16. Croizat, Lessons of the War in Indochina, p. 114; Elliott, The Vietnamese War, pp. 41–84; Pimlott, “The French Army: From Indochina to Chad, 1946–1984,” pp. 52–53.
17. Clayton, The Wars of French Decolonization, pp. 67–76; Fall, Hell in a Very Small Place, p. 8; Logevall, Embers of War, pp. 327–29, 381–94, 403–25, 442–53, 510–19, 524–46; Pimlott, “The French Army,” pp. 53–55; Zervoudakis, “Nihil mirare, nihil contemptare, omnia intelligere,” pp. 209–25.
18. Beckett, Modern Insurgencies and Counter-Insurgencies, pp. 113–14; Clayton, The Wars of French Decolonization, pp. 55–56; Pimlott, “The French Army,” pp. 55–56.
19. Beckett, Modern Insurgencies and Counter-Insurgencies, pp. 113–14; Betts, France and Decolonisation, 1900–1960, p. 68; Alistair Horne, The French Army and Politics, 1870–1970 (New York: Peter Bedrick Books, 1984), pp. 2, 65; Logevall, Embers of War, pp. 164–65; Robert Paxton, Parades and Politics at Vichy: The French Officer Corps under Marshal Pétain (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1966), pp. 423, 426.
20. Betts, France and Decolonisation, 1900–1960, p. 92; Clayton, The Wars of French Decolonization, p. 75.
21. J. S. Ambler, The French Army in Politics, 1945–1962 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press. 1966), p. 109.
22. Ibid.; Beckett, Modern Insurgencies and Counter-Insurgencies, p. 160; Clayton, The Wars of French Decolonization, p. 75; Horne, The French Army and Politics, 1870–1970, p. 75; Pimlott, “The French Army,” p. 56.
23. Betts, France and Decolonisation, 1900–1960, pp. 81, 87; Clayton, The Wars of French Decolonization, pp. 51, 55–57; Toase, “The French Experience,” p. 58.
24. Clayton, The Wars of French Decolonization, pp. 51, 55–57; Logevall, Embers of War, pp. xviii, 197–201, 204–6, 210–12, 275–78; Edward Miller, Misalliance: Ngo Dinh Diem, the United States, and the Fate of South Vietnam (Cambridge, MA, and London: 2013), pp. 1, 35–36, 49–51.
25. Beckett, Modern Insurgencies and Counter-Insurgencies, pp. 112–13; Betts, France and Decolonisation, 1900–1960, p. 92; Pimlott, “The French Army,” pp. 55–56.
26. Lansdale, In the Midst of Wars, p. 111.
27. Clayton, The Wars of French Decolonization, pp. 62–64, 75–76; Croizat, Lessons of the War in Indochina, pp. 156–59, 231–35; Elliott, The Vietnamese War, pp. 74–75; Fall, Hell in a Very Small Place, p. 8; Goya and François, “The Man Who Beat Events,” p. 69; Logevall, Embers of War, pp. 255–56, 277–88; Pimlott, “The French Army,” pp. 56–57.
28. Beckett, Modern Insurgencies and Counter-Insurgencies, p. 115; Cassidy, “The Long Small War,” pp. 51–52; Clayton, The Wars of French Decolonization, fn. 23, p. 76; Croizat, Lessons of the War in Indochina, pp. 158–59; Fall, Hell in a Very Small Place, p. 8; Paret, French Revolutionary Warfare from Indochina to Algeria, p. 43; Pimlott, “The French Army,” pp. 56–57; Porch, The French Secret Service, pp. 326–34; Philippe Pottier, “GCMA/GMI: A French Experience in Counterinsurgency during the French Indochina War,” Small Wars and Insurgencies 16, no. 2 (June 2005), pp. 125–45; Captain André Souyris, “An Effective Counterguerrilla Procedure,” Military Review XXXVI, no. 12 (March 1957), pp. 86–90 at 87–89.
29. Beckett, Modern Insurgencies and Counter-Insurgencies, pp. 114–15; Croizat, Lessons of the War in Indochina, pp. 303–5, 332–33; Pimlott, “The French Army,” pp. 47, 49, 52, 55, 57; Toase, “The French Experience,” p. 58.
30. Beckett, Modern Insurgencies and Counter-Insurgencies, p. 159; Paret, French Revolutionary Warfare from Indochina to Algeria, pp. 6–8, 100; Pimlott, “The French Army: From Indochina to Chad, 1946–1984,” pp. 58–74; John Shy and Thomas W. Collier, “Revolutionary War,” in Peter Paret, ed., Makers of Modern Strategy: From Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), pp. 852–53.
31. Paret, French Revolutionary Warfare from Indochina to Algeria, pp. 6–8, 101.
32. Pimlott, “The French Army: From Indochina to Chad, 1946–1984,” pp. 58, 66.
33. Quoted in Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954–1962 (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, UK: Peregrine Books, 1979), p. 165.
34. Horne, The French Army and Politics, 1870–1970, p. 74; Paret, French Revolutionary Warfare from Indochina to Algeria, pp. 6, 21–22.
35. Quoted in Philip C. F. Bankwitz, Maxime Weygand and Civil-Military Relations in Modern France (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967), p. 372.
36. Beckett, Modern Insurgencies and Counter-Insurgencies, p. 159; Shy and Collier, “Revolutionary War,” p. 853.
37. Beckett, Modern Insurgencies and Counter-Insurgencies, p. 160; Clayton, The Wars of French Decolonization, p. 76; Paret, French Revolutionary Warfare from Indochina to Algeria, pp. 16–17; Pimlott, “The French Army: From Indochina to Chad, 1946–1984,” pp. 59–80, 66.
38. Beckett, Modern Insurgencies and Counter-Insurgencies, p. 160; Clayton, The Wars of French Decolonization, p. 131; Paret, French Revolutionary Warfare from Indochina to Algeria, p. 8 and fn. 4, p. 143.
39. Beckett, Modern Insurgencies and Counter-Insurgencies, p. 117; Paret, French Revolutionary Warfare from Indochina to Algeria, p. 26.
40. Croizat, Lessons of the War in Indochina, p. 38.
41. Beckett, Modern Insurgencies and Counter-Insurgencies, p. 159.
42. Paret, French Revolutionary Warfare from Indochina to Algeria, pp. 111–12.
43. Ibid., pp. 27–28.
44. Commandant J. Hogard, “Cette guerre de notre temps,” Revue de Défense Nationale XII (June 1956), p. 1317, quoted by Paret, French Revolutionary Warfare from Indochina to Algeria, p. 28.
45. Clayton, The Wars of French Decolonization, p. 131.
46. Beckett, Modern Insurgencies and Counter-Insurgencies, pp. 160–61; Paret, French Revolutionary Warfare from Indochina to Algeria, p. 28.
47. Clayton, The Wars of French Decolonization, pp. 129–30; Paret, French Revolutionary Warfare from Indochina to Algeria, p. 29; Pimlott, “The French Army: From Indochina to Chad, 1946–1984,” pp. 60, 67.