From Vichy to Algiers and Back Again: The Algerian Extreme Right, the Organisation armée secrete, and Resistance to Decolonization

There was a voluminous extreme Right in Algeria from 1945-1962, and its goals and ideals permeated the OAS and its campaigns.  These organizations contained 179,530 members and hundreds of thousands of sympathizers, and a constant stream of authoritarian invective, including references to corporatism, the cult of youth, extreme militarism, ultramontane Catholicism, and strident anti-Communism/anti-parliamentarism.  Police believed that the OAS had allied themselves with local Fascist groups, while their intentions toward the existing authorities were clear: They were to be shot and replaced following an insurrection in both France and Algeria, followed by the construction of an authoritarian regime.  Publications lionized the wartime Vichy government, and they frequently engaged in racism, violently calling for the destruction of “anti-national” forces.  Finally, to avoid arrest and dissolution, the OAS made its headquarters in Madrid, the capital of Francisco Franco’s Fascist regime in Spain.  All of this served only one aim: To violently resist Algerian independence by any means necessary.