of the Popular Front in 1937 permanently altered the climate of Algerian politics. The optimism and willingness of Ferhat Abbas, the ‘ulamā, and the Young Algerians to explore assimilation, reform, negotiation, and Algerian-French coexistence began to unravel, and a new generation of nationalists, many of whom fought in World War II, eclipsed the earlier guard and set their sights on total independence. This progression mirrored what then governor-general Maurice Viollette cautioned against in 1926 when he wrote to the minister of the interior about the educated elite, or évolués, claiming that “six out of ten … are ready to adopt the French fatherland without second thoughts, but if the French fatherland rejects them, raises itself so high that they cannot reach it, they will make their own fatherland, and we will have willed it.”37
World War II: Expanding the Political Discourse
World War II erupted on the heels of the recently dissolved Popular Front and its Algerian counterpart, the Muslim Congress, a 1936 coalition between the élus, the ‘ulamā, and the communists that worked with the Blum-Viollette government. It aroused a political hard-line and permanent disillusionment with French colonialism. By 1939, repressive French policies successfully weakened Algerian political parties by forcing them underground, arresting prominent figures such as Messali Hadj and banning the printing and circulation of newspapers advocating communist, leftist, or anticolonial views. Colonial suppression, however, did not halt nationalist pursuits. For example, Dr. Lamine Debaghine, clandestine Algerian People’s Party (PPA) leader while Messali was in prison and future Provisional Government of the Algerian Republic (GPRA) minister of foreign affairs (1958–1959), and additional members Filali Abdallah, Ahmed Bouda, and Ahmed Mezerna continued pursing Messali’s anticolonial objectives.38
Nazi Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, setting off a firestorm of territorial expansion throughout Europe, including the Nazi invasion of France in the summer of 1940. The German occupation and resulting Vichy regime (1940–1944) under Marshal Philippe Pétain temporarily suspended colonial authorities’ cracking down on Algerian political parties. Reflecting on “France’s misfortunes of 1940,” Algerian leaders Ferhat Abbas and Mohamed Bendjelloul, another advocate of Franco-Algerian integration, wrote that they thought “the settler [colon] … would reconsider the Algerian problem.” But “no more than the 1918 victory,” they lamented, “does the metropole’s defeat” inspire self-reflection.39 Even when faced with a humiliating foreign occupation, French administrators were unwilling to acknowledge their contradictory position on empire and claim to Algeria.
Beginning in November 1942, Algerian nationalists, spanning the full political spectrum, received an unexpected boost from the British and American presence in Algeria. The Allies’ landing in North Africa, aimed as a staging ground to attack Germany, had a huge impact on the future revolutionary guard, such as M’hamed Yazid, PPA member and GPRA minister of information (1958–1962), Ramdane Abane, Soummam Congress architect, and Benyoucef Benkhedda, second GPRA president (1961–1962), for not only did they encounter political alternatives and Western generosity, but they formed important contacts with foreigners upon which they later relied.
Hocine Aït Ahmed, a founding FLN member who traveled to New York in the late 1950s in preparation for United Nations sessions and served as GPRA minister of state (1958–1962), recalled in his memoirs the impact of the Allied landing. “One can say that opinion, as a whole, moved on to the Allied side … the population sympathized with the American army. There was a democratic side to the way in which the officers and soldiers behaved.”40 At the time, Ferhat Abbas thought the Americans would make Algeria “an American protectorate that Roosevelt would emancipate at the end of the war.”41 Their presence in North Africa inspired a spirit of optimism among Algerian leaders who hoped the Americans would at the very least support the idea of an Algeria federated with France. They would soon be disappointed to learn defeating Germany was the Allies’ priority, not liberating the Maghrib from the throes of French colonialism.42
In the ensuing fifteen months, a broader coalition of Algerian activists produced three critical documents that increasingly articulated a position for separation and independence. In December 1942, Ferhat Abbas, a former proponent of assimilation, and twenty-four other Algerian leaders wrote a “Message from the Algerian Muslim Representatives to the Responsible Authorities” to protest the governor-general’s conscription preparation, and they presented it to the Allies and French government officials. In it, Abbas recalled “the American President’s commitment to the liberation of peoples, drawing attention to the unfree status of Algerians, and calling for a Muslim conference to draft a new economic, social, and political status for Algeria. In return for its implementation,” the Algerian Muslim Representatives “committed Algerians to sacrifice themselves wholeheartedly for the liberation of metropolitan France.”43
The language Abbas included in this “Message” referenced American president Franklin Roosevelt and British prime minister Winston Churchill’s August 1941 Atlantic Charter. These towering wartime figures met to discuss postwar goals, which included limiting territorial expansion, economic cooperation, disarmament, and international peace and security. Yet, for anticolonial activists around the world, the charter’s most relevant and useful principle was number three, that the United States and the United Kingdom respect “the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they live; and they wish to see sovereign rights and self-government restored to those who have been forcibly deprived of them.”44 The Atlantic Charter targeted Western Europe and the United States, but as would become a frequent problem with post–World War II international doctrines, the language was vague. Therefore, African nationalists appropriated the content in these doctrines and argued that they applied to them, as well as to Europeans and Americans.45
Even though Abbas did not specifically cite the Atlantic Charter in his 1942 message, he reminded Allies and French government representatives that the Algerian people remained under forced colonial domination. Therefore, according to the charter’s third principle, they should be working toward Algerian self-government and sovereignty. Abbas’s appeal, based on a set of widely circulated and supposedly universal ideas at the time, shows the antecedents of the FLN’s strategy. By the mid-1950s, the FLN had additional universal discourses and international charters to choose from, as well as prominent international organizations at which to address their claims.
Abbas and his coauthors failed to receive the response they wanted and continued to lobby the colonial authorities for change. In February 1943, Abbas wrote the “Manifesto of the Algerian People,” a nine-page reflection on the realities of colonialism and the Algerian condition. He reminded his readers that “in his declaration [the Atlantic Charter],” President Roosevelt gave assurances that in a postwar world “the rights of all peoples, big and small, would be respected.”46 Based on Roosevelt and Churchill’s words, Abbas called for the “condemnation and abolition of colonization” and an Algerian constitution that guaranteed:
1. The absolute freedom and equality of all its inhabitants without distinction as to race or religion.
2. The abolition of feudal property by a major agrarian reform and the right to well-being of the immense agricultural proletariat.
3. The recognition of the Arabic language as official on the same basis as French.
4. Freedom of press and association.
5. Free compulsory education for children of both sexes.
6. Freedom of religion for all inhabitants and the application to all religions of the principle of separation of church and state.47
For Abbas, these were basic freedoms to which all people in Algeria, regardless of their ethnic or racial origins, were entitled. Even though the manifesto did not state independence as the ultimate goal, its language indicated that
