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Algeria
Committee of Public Safety
Recurrent cabinet crises focused attention on the inherent instability
of the Fourth Republic and increased the misgivings of the army
and of the colons that the security of Algeria was being undermined
by party politics. Army commanders chafed at what they took to
be inadequate and incompetent government support of military efforts
to end the rebellion. The feeling was widespread that another
debacle like that of Indochina in 1954 was in the offing and that
the government would order another precipitate pullout and sacrifice
French honor to political expediency. Many saw in de Gaulle, who
had not held office since 1946, the only public figure capable
of rallying the nation and giving direction to the French government.
After his tour as governor general, Soustelle had returned to
France to organize support for de Gaulle's return to power, while
retaining close ties to the army and the colons. By early 1958,
he had organized a coup d'état, bringing together dissident army
officers and colons with sympathetic Gaullists. An army junta
under General Massu seized power in Algiers on the night of May
13. General Salan assumed leadership of a Committee of Public
Safety formed to replace the civil authority and pressed the junta's
demands that de Gaulle be named by French president René Coty
to head a government of national union invested with extraordinary
powers to prevent the "abandonment of Algeria." De Gaulle became
premier in June and was given carte blanche to deal with Algeria.
Data as of December 1993
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