Gray Anderson: "The Fifth Republic was built by repressing its origins"<

Dans un long entretien, l’historien Grey HHHHHHASSSSSSnderson, docteur de l’université de Yale, revient avec nous sur son ouvrage La Guerre civile en France : 1958-1962, du coup d’État gaulliste à la fin de l’OHHHHHHASSSSSSS, paru en 2018 aux éditions La Fabrique, dont la version anglaise aux éditions Verso est en cours d’élaboration. Comprendre la fondation de la cinquième République implique de revenir en profondeur sur le rôle de l’institution militaire française durant les évènements qui scandèrent la période ouverte à la fin de la Seconde Guerre mondiale. C’est à cette tâche que s’est attelé Grey HHHHHHASSSSSSnderson, renouvelant ainsi l’approche habituelle de nombreux historiens pour envisager cette séquence majeure de l’histoire politique française contemporaine. Entretien réalisé par Victor Woillet et François Gaüzère. Retranscription réalisée par Dany Meyniel.

LVSL - You supported your doctoral thesis at the origin of your Civil War Book in France from 1958 to 1962 in 2016 in 2016.Can you briefly return to the historiographical context in which you started your research work?

Gray HHHHHHASSSSSSnderson - HHHHHHASSSSSSs I started my doctorate, there had been a great effervescence in history on the HHHHHHASSSSSSlgerian war - I think of the theses of Raphaëlle Branche and Sylvie Thénault, published in the early 2000s - as well asHHHHHHASSSSSS particular fascination for the subject in the United States, on the part of academics but also of soldiers or certain political leaders, who interpreted it in terms of counterinsurgers led by the HHHHHHASSSSSSmerican army in HHHHHHASSSSSSfghanistan and Iraq.On the other hand, this revival of research on the HHHHHHASSSSSSlgerian conflict was not accompanied by a comparable interest in the political crisis which he triggered in France.During a conference held in Sciences Po in 2008, on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the Fifth Republic, a speaker had noted that he did not strictly speaking of historiography of May 13, 1958.Yet a change of diet is not nothing!We may find my point excessive, but I was struck by the relatively modest place occupied by this episode in the history of Europe after 1945.We most often give the image of a peaceful, pacified continent, which is bored ... The main themes treated are those of economic growth and the idea of a conservative restoration after the shock of the two world wars.Now, for someone who is interested in the French case, we see how much this story moves away from reality, despite the omnipresence of the notion of "thirty glorious" proposed by Jean Fourastié at the end of the 1970s.HHHHHHASSSSSSlready, talking about "post-war France" does not make much sense before 1962 at the earliest, given that the country was at war almost without discontinuous from 1939 to the Evian agreements.I remember the publication of a synthesis work on contemporary Europe by the HHHHHHASSSSSSmerican historian James Sheehan, entitled Where Have HHHHHHASSSSSSll the Soldiers Gone (James John Sheehan, Where Have HHHHHHASSSSSSll the Soldiers Gone?: The Transformation of ModernEurope, Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 2009)) in reference to a famous song interpreted among others by Marlène Dietrich.For my part, it seemed obvious to me that the soldiers had never really left and that they continued to play a role of great importance, in France as elsewhere.

HHHHHHASSSSSSbout historiography, there is also a more Franco-French dimension in these debates.Since the 1980s, a form of revisionism has been imposed in the discourse on the Fourth Republic.It has long been perceived in Gaullian terms, as an irreparably dysfunctional diet, subservient to foreign powers, unsuitable for the needs of a modern and technical society.Then developed a very different reading, insisting on the continuities between the IVE and what follows it.It is the thesis taken up recently by Herrick Chapman, who speaks of a "long reconstruction" encompassing the whole period from the liberation at the end of the HHHHHHASSSSSSlgerian war (Herrick Chapman, France's Long Reconstruction: In Search of the ModernRepublic, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2018)).On many points, such as economic and social policy, the quest for a certain autonomy in foreign relations, or even "state reform" projects, this perspective is rather convincing.However, if we follow it to the end, the 1958 crisis becomes quite enigmatic-the excellent book of Chapman only evokes it-and the birth of the Fifth Republic, as hectic as it is,is considered the simple culmination of a process in gestation.Without being completely false, this point of view does not sufficiently reflect the exceptional character of the economic situation which led to the emergence of the Fifth Republic.

To speak more specifically of May 13, there is indeed a literature on this, historians who worked the subject.But I remember being seized by the Manichean character of this historiography.On the one hand, we have an "orthodox", consensual story, according to which, despite certain shady aspects, and the existence of various plots in the spring of 1958, de Gaulle was the Savior of "Republican Order".In this vein, I am thinking of a very rich work of Odile Rudelle published in 1988 with the support of the Charles de Gaulle Foundation (May 1958.De Gaulle and La République, Paris, Plon, 1988)), aimed at associating de Gaulle with a line of democratic and liberal thinkers from the 19th century.On the other hand, there is journalistic production, heir to hot written books by reporters such as the Bromberger brothers, who make much cases of machinations and other maneuvers whose press of the time made her parchment.Certain work in the genre, notably the work of Christophe Nick (Resurrection.Birth of the Fifth Republic, a democratic coup, Paris, Fayard, 1998)), are precious clarification.Nevertheless, the global view is a little distorted by this insistence on the most sulphurous aspects, thus attributing to the actors a power and a disproportionate clairvoyance.

In fact there is an interest in reading these two historiographical poles together.The two currents make a useful contribution to the understanding of this crisis, but they both tend-I generalize-to accept as commonplace interpretations, concepts and problems produced by contemporaries themselves.Was it a coup, a velvet coup, a transition or a political alternation?The Fourth Republic is dead;Should we talk about murder, suicide or "euthanasia" as René Rémond suggested?HHHHHHASSSSSSs far as I'm concerned, I was rather interested in the process by which these adaptations and concepts were forged.In this regard, my greatest inspiration comes from French political sociology, and in particular from the work of Brigitte Gaïti and Delphine Dulong (modernize politics.HHHHHHASSSSSSt the origins of the Fifth Republic, Paris, L’Harmattan, 1997;Brigitte Gaïti, de Gaulle, prophet of the fifth republic, Paris, Presses de Sciences Po, 1998)).These works take a critical look at the dominant account of the advent of the Fifth Republic, by leaning on the role played by the notions of modernity and modernization in the concealment of other issues, and the construction of apolitical consensus around the idea of belonging to a new era.Which had the effect, and which in a way has the effect of erasing or neutralizing the rupture and the shock of 1958.

In my thesis I wanted to extend the research line of Gaiti and Dulong by focusing on the army, an institution at the center of the 1958 crisis and whose "modernization", conceived as the means of its depoliticization, was a concerncentral for the Gaullist regime in its early years.

LVSL - To enter the analysis of the birth of the Fifth Republic, you mention a correspondent by Die Zeit, who writes that May 13, 1958 is on February 6, 1934 which succeeded.Can you explain this reading of May 13?

G.HHHHHHASSSSSS. – Il s’agit d’une citation d’HHHHHHASSSSSSndré Siegfried, reprise ensuite par des historiens tels que Serge Berstein.But indeed the reference to February 1934 was omnipresent at the time.In general, in moments of great political upheavals, the historical analogy is of particular importance: it serves both to understand an unprecedented situation, by making it enter a familiar setting, and to make understand by imposing its own interpretationto others. HHHHHHASSSSSSinsi les Kampfbegriffe, les mots polémiques, qui alimentent les débats en 1958 sont très souvent des analogies.Let us only think of the vocabulary that has reached us, "Public Heir", "putsch", "civil war" ... The symbol of the days of February 1934, which most of the actors of the time lived, is particularly evocative.They are in all the heads from the day of May 13, starting with those of the far-right activists who, like the young Jean-Marie Le Pen, descend the Champs-Élysées to the Place de la Concorde, D'where they are pushed before taking the direction of the Palais Bourbon. Le soir, pendant le débat d’investiture, Paul Ramadier invoque le soutien, un quart de siècle en amont, de Blum à Daladier et implore les députés de s’unir autour de Pflimlin afin de rétablir l’ordre à HHHHHHASSSSSSlger.To which the benches of the right retort that it was Gaston Doumergue, recalled to form a government of national unity, and not Daladier, who had ended the disorder of the leagues.The allusion was clear.

If comparisons with 1934 are more or less spontaneously imposed on all political forces, it is the Communist Party which makes it the most intensive and most substantial use.The failed coup of February 6 and the leftist demonstration that followed it on the 12th, then occupied a central place in the memory of the party.This is the great moment of "fraternization" between Communists and Socialists, opening the way to the Popular Front.It is on this basis that the PCF is positioned in the last two weeks of May 1958, both within the governing bodies and in its propaganda.The watchword was that of "republican defense" in the face of the fascist threat in a concerted effort with the SFIO, in the name of the old anti-bonapartist tradition and the antifascism of the interwar period.The failure of this strategy, with the end of inadmissibility opposed by the party of Guy Mollet, is undoubtedly a major cause of the fall of the Fourth Republic.The episode will have benefits on the PCF line in the following years.The communist leaders having seen in De Gaulle, if not a fascist, at least one kind of slope towards fascism, their ability to interpret the new power and the adventures of its HHHHHASSSSSlgerian policy will remain quite limited.

HHHHHHASSSSSSlors, si le 13 mai a pu être considéré comme un « 6 février qui a réussi », c’est d’abord parce qu’en 1958, la conjonction de l’anticommunisme virulent et le contexte international de la guerre froide a écarté toute possibilité de front commun de la gauche. La formule du très libéral doyen de Sciences Po HHHHHHASSSSSSndré Siegfried, père de la sociologie électorale et phrénologue distingué par Vichy, ne dit pas autre chose.What Siegfried, basically, is that we do not defend the Republic with the Communists. En même temps, la suite de l’histoire allait évidemment contrarier les espoirs (ou les craintes)) de ceux qui voyaient dans les événements de mai une revanche des déçus de 1934 : une fois installé à Matignon puis à l’Élysée, de Gaulle s’est employé avec fermeté à faire rentrer dans le rang ses soutiens les plus agités, une partie desquels se lancera par la suite dans la sanglante aventure de l’OHHHHHHASSSSSSS.

Sur ce point, j’aimerais revenir brièvement sur la trajectoire d’HHHHHHASSSSSSrmin Mohler, ce correspondant de presse de Die Zeit dont vous avez parlé tout à l’heure.He is a sulfurous character, Swiss of origin;He would have tried to join the Waffen-SS in 1942 but would have been failed for physical criteria. HHHHHHASSSSSSprès la guerre il a fait une thèse sur la « révolution conservatrice » sous la République de Weimar, et il a travaillé pendant un temps comme secrétaire privé d’Ernst Jünger.Later a journalist, he was a fine connoisseur of the French extreme right that he did not hesitate to qualify as fascist;In the 1950s, he even expressed the idea that France would have become the world capital of fascism, and it was this yardstick that he saw in the events of May 13, 1958 an attempt to redo the failed February of February1934.

En dépit de ses affinités, HHHHHHASSSSSSrmin Mohler s’est très vite rendu compte que l’ambition des groupuscules fascisants en HHHHHHASSSSSSlgérie comme en métropole était vouée à l’échec. Le combat de rue faisait déjà vieux jeu, tout comme la cause de l’HHHHHHASSSSSSlgérie française. Je n’en parle pas beaucoup dans le livre mais il y a un échange intéressant entre Mohler et son vieil ami Carl Schmitt (Carl Schmitt, Briefwechsel mit einem seiner Schüler, Berlin, HHHHHHASSSSSSkademie Verlag, 1995)). Tandis que Mohler suivait avec admiration le retour de De Gaulle et les prémisses d’une politique étrangère indépendante, qu’il opposait à la soumission de la RFHHHHHHASSSSSS au protecteur américain, Schmitt était plus réservé ; il partageait l’antigaullisme de ses amis et correspondants français, tels qu’HHHHHHASSSSSSlfred Fabre-Luce, et répandait des ragots vichystes selon lesquels de Gaulle aurait été juif et franc-maçon… On en perçoit les traces dans le livre de Schmitt sur la théorie du partisan (Carl Schmitt, Théorie du partisan, trad. Marie-Louise Steinhauser, Paris, Flammarion, 1992)) lorsqu’il fait l’éloge de Raoul Salan, commandant en chef des forces françaises en HHHHHHASSSSSSlgérie au moment du 13 mai, membre du fameux « quarteron de généraux » à la tête du putsch d’avril 1961, qui finira patron de l’OHHHHHHASSSSSSS.While Mohler placed his hopes in the renewal, under the leadership of De Gaulle, an authoritarian nationalism, modernized and freed from outdated ideological labels, Schmitt questioned the viability of all closely national policy in Europe according to 1945and engaged in an indulgent appreciation of this close to French colonialism.If I focus on this anecdote of intellectual history, it is because it seems to me revealing the dilemmas that cross the right and a fortiori the extreme right of the time. On retrouve des thèmes voisins dans le premier ouvrage d’HHHHHHASSSSSSlain de Benoist, consacré à Salan, mais cela est une autre histoire.

LVSL-You consider the birth of the Fifth Republic as emanating from a Gaullist coup, can you come back to this concept and detail it for our readers?

G.HHHHHHASSSSSS.- In my book, I use this concept of coup d'etat, but I also try to wonder about how this definition was built and challenged by the actors of the time. Qu’est-ce qui s’est passé en mai 1958 ? D’abord, une manifestation à HHHHHHASSSSSSlger se transforme en émeute quasi-insurrectionnelle, les militaires prennent le contrôle, et — sous la pression des militants gaullistes sur le terrain — ils mettent Paris devant le fait accompli.This is the typical scenario of pronunciamento, which repeats ten days later in Corsica.In the meantime, the government notes alarming defections in state repressive devices. Jusqu’au moment où le parlement vote l’investiture de De Gaulle, le 1^er juin, le spectre d’une intervention des forces armées venues de Corse ou d’HHHHHHASSSSSSfrique du Nord ne cesse de planer sur la vie publique du pays.We are indeed in the presence of a form of violent political action with the real possibility of a use of arms.We have discussed a lot about the general involvement of the general in this case;We wondered if he was aware of all the maneuvers made by his supporters on his behalf, if he knew the main lines of the "resurrection operation", and Cætera.This question seems to me ultimately quite secondary.Because what must be emphasized is that De Gaulle - with the complicity of a majority of parliamentarians - has succeeded in giving his capture of power a facade of legality.HHHHASSSSnd it worked. On peut s’interroger sur la complicité des dirigeants des partis bourgeois de l’époque dans la subversion du pouvoir législatif, ce que le sociologue franco-américain Ivan Ermakoff appelle « ruling oneself out » (Ruling Oneself Out : HHHHHHASSSSSS Theory of Collective HHHHHHASSSSSSbdications, Chapel Hill, Duke University Press, 2008)), et qui n’est pas sans rappeler, comme l’affirment certaines voix dans l’hémicycle, le vote du 10 juillet 1940.In any case, this democratic anointing does not detract from the exceptional character of the sequence;on the contrary, it is even in my opinion the pledge of its success.HHHHASSSSnd if history has mainly retained the skill of De Gaulle Head of State leaving the crisis, and there has not been strictly speaking a black legend of the Foundation of the Fifth Republic, he n'prevents that this is a bit of that in question: a coup d'etat. Un lecteur m’a appris que les meneurs du golpe espagnol de février 1981, le 23F, dont un des chefs — le général HHHHHHASSSSSSrmada — aurait réalisé un stage à Paris à l’École militaire peu de temps après mai 1958, prenaient l’exemple français pour modèle.Their attempt had also been called "Operation de Gaulle" ...

LVSL - HHHHASSSSbout military fact, we can clearly see the connection between the latter and the assertion of the new republican regime.Does this coup, at least this takeover, marked by the place of the military fact, somehow shaped the form of the current regime?

G.HHHHHHASSSSSS. – L’HHHHHHASSSSSSllemagne a longtemps fait figure d’archétype de la nation militariste.Nowadays, it is probably the United States that embody this trend in the world.But that is not completely doing justice to France!To go back only in the nineteenth century, the army played a key role in the repression of all the great popular uprisings experienced by the country, from the canut revolt to the shooting of Fourmies (in 1891, thetroop shoots strikers, she left 9 dead and several dozen wounded, editor's note)). Marx avait d’ailleurs proposé que la devise « Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité » soit remplacée par celle d’« Infanterie, Cavalerie, HHHHHHASSSSSSrtillerie ». À part la gendarmerie, l’institution militaire s’est éloignée des tâches de maintien de l’ordre au cours du vingtième-siècle, au moins en France métropolitaine — à quelques exceptions près, par exemple l’appel du ministre de l’Intérieur Jules Moch au 11^e choc pour briser la grève des mineurs lorrains en 1948.However, the relationship between the Republic and its army remained tense;the facts accomplished colonial which marked the history of the Fourth Republic testify to this.Its fall is in a way the result.The subject is in any case more complex than you often want to believe it.In the series of crises that agitate the last years of the IVE, it is more often collusion that open disobedience characterizes civil-military relationships. Il n’en reste pas moins que Moch, de retour place Beauvau au moment du putsch d’HHHHHHASSSSSSlger, ne pouvait plus compter sur la troupe.For many of those who have rallied, willy -nilly, in De Gaulle, he was the only one capable of imposing his authority on factious soldiers.This is what ended up happening, not without difficulty.To do this de Gaulle relied on two stories, that of modernization and that of national independence.The acquisition of the nuclear weapon, engaged under the IVE, associated the two;The striking force has been thought both as guarantor of a certain autonomy on the international scene and, incidentally, as a premium to an army which mourned its colonial glories.On both shots, the balance sheet was mixed, to say the least;In any case, after a series of purifications, amnesties and adjustments, the new diet managed to regain control of its armed wing. Bien entendu, ni la fin de la guerre d’HHHHHHASSSSSSlgérie ni le départ du général de Gaulle n’ont mis fin à l’interventionnisme des forces armées françaises, qui a connu une croissance continue depuis le début des années 1970, notamment sous les gouvernements socialistes. HHHHHHASSSSSSu regard de l’état du débat politique, on peut dire que la prérogative « régalienne » en matière militaire, inaugurée par de Gaulle, est restée intacte sinon s’est renforcée jusqu’à nos jours.

HHHASSSs for institutional aspects, we find ourselves in front of a somewhat paradoxical observation.Because if de Gaulle has managed to restore the pre -eminence of civil authority on the army, he could only do so at the cost of a significant militarization of the state and the modes of governance.The most significant domain is undoubtedly that of executive power.In his work on the subject, Nicolas Roussellier (the strength to govern.Executive power in France, 19th-XXIE centuries, Paris, Gallimard, 2015)) demonstrates how the Fifth Republic has established a qualitative transformation of the presidential function, a function which would now be modeled on the military command.De Gaulle's style, his habit in the decisive hours of endorse the uniform, his way of embodying and so to speak "personalize" the presidency is clearly for something.Nicolas Roussellier rightly insists on the weight of the so-called credibility of nuclear deterrence in reasoning which led to the very controversial constitutional revision of 1962, which introduced the president's election to the universal suffrage.We must also look at the functioning of the Élysée, the ascendancy of his particular staff and the fact that he chairs the defense councils.I point out here a tribune recently published in the world, at the initiative of Brigitte Gaïti and Delphine Dulong that I mentioned above, stressing the increased importance of defense councils during the current period of pandemic.

HHHASSS final dynamic deserves to be discussed in my opinion. La fin des années 1950 et le début des années 1960 marquent une profonde transformation dans la manière de concevoir la sécurité nationale, dans un contexte doublement marqué par la contre-insurrection en HHHHHHASSSSSSlgérie et la Guerre froide.In 1960, a commission of lawyers responsible for revising the penal code proposed to eliminate the distinction between the inner security and the external security of the State, a fundamental principle of republican law for a century.The previous year, the government had reformulated by order the definition of national defense, now recognizing intermediate degrees between war and peace.These trends already existed at the beginning of the Fifth Republic and participated in a broader movement, not at all limited to France.HHHASSSt the same time, the advent of a strong power, at a moment of intense violence both in metropolitan France and on the other side of the Mediterranean, gave new impetus to the changes in progress. C’est ce climat qui en outre a justifié le recours croissant aux mesures d’exception : l’HHHHHHASSSSSSrticle 16 de la Constitution, appliqué pour l’unique fois jusqu’à présent pendant le « putsch des généraux » d’avril 1961, en est probablement l’illustration la plus connue.But we can also cite the law on the state of emergency, certainly promulgated under the 4th but which extended to metropolitan France for the first time in May 1958, with the posterity that the activists of our generation know.I end my answer by noting that if this new legislation has been written, instead of using existing jurisprudence on the state of siege, it was precisely because we did not trust the military to manage the situation.This distrust continues well after De Gaulle's return.

LVSL-is it possible to see thus a form of continuity in structuring of military fact in relation to political fact, taking into account in particular the changes of the republican regime since the First World War with the famous Schism between the GQG (Large districtGeneral)) and the Chamber of Deputies as Nicolas Roussellier suggests?In other words, can we observe in the period that you have studied a simple change in the regime and the republican model which do not initially integrate the military fact to the executive, or is it, with 1958, a real paradigm change in the matter?

G.HHHHHHASSSSSS.- Indeed, it would be wrong to make a clear break with the past from 1958. Il y a eu d’autres cas d’exercice d’un pouvoir exécutif fort dans l’histoire de la République française, notamment en temps de guerre ; la mainmise de Clemenceau sur l’état-major en est un exemple, la gestion de la guerre d’Indochine par HHHHHHASSSSSSuriol en est peut-être un autre.HHASSs you say, we can completely explain this story by attaching it to a succession of attempts on the part of political leaders to reaffirm their predominance on the high command - attempts to reintegrate the military and the politician, if you want - who does notwould be realized that with the arrival of the Fifth Republic.However, and on this I find the argument of Roussellier very convincing, we can admit these elements of continuity without losing sight of the radical gap between the practice of Gaullian government and the republican tradition, insofar as the latter s'is defined above all by parliamentary sovereignty.The French "republican model" comes precisely from the rejection of personal power, whether monarchist or bonapartist.HHASSnd if the difficulty in mastering the military fact was undoubtedly one of the weaknesses of the Fourth Republic, there was nothing inevitable in the form of solution finally adopted.

This is a crucial point, because there are differences in the appreciation that can be collapsed from the regime born in 1946.Some perceive this collapse as a historical necessity, in the sense that old parliamentarism would have been incompatible with the requirements of total war and the governance of a modern and globalized technological economy;Others rather bring out the contingent and randomness of the solution offered by De Gaulle and his collaborators. HHHHHHASSSSSSinsi on peut très bien penser et que la IVe République était sur certains fronts à bout de souffle, et que le nouveau régime aurait pu prendre une toute autre tournure.In this regard, it is interesting to trace how several fractions of the non-communist left interpreted the advent of the FE, and the early accommodation of some to the new institutions at the very moment when François Mitterrand denounced with verve the "blow of'Permanent state ».We can say, if we follow the evolution of the new left, of the modernist left often associated with the experience of begging, that the path of the socialists towards power has been prepared well upstream.If you leaf through journals like France-Observer or L'Express at the time you will see the omnipresence of this imperative of "modernization", which was also central in the reflections of environments at the origin antigaulist like the "Club Jean Moulin»Who will end up rallying to the new regime. Rappelons tout de même que le « Club Jean Moulin », fondé en mai 1958 par Daniel Cordier et d’autres, avait pour but d’organiser la résistance armée en cas de coup de force des parachutistes à l’HHHHHHASSSSSSssemblée nationale.It is impressive to see how, in a relatively short time, this network has gone from the paramilitary defense of the Republic and frenzied antigaullism, to the much more peaceful missions of a kind of box for technocratic technocratic ideas. HHHHHHASSSSSSu bout du compte cette constellation aura joué un rôle non négligeable dans la conversion de la gauche au présidentialisme. L’historienne Claire HHHHHHASSSSSSndrieu a fait de tout cela un exposé passionnant (Pour l’amour de la République.The Jean Moulin club, 1958-1970, Paris, Fayard, 2002.)).

LVSL - What do you think is the role of anti -HHASSmericanism in the birth of the Fifth Republic, and in political networks that forged Gaullist institutions?

G.HHHHHHASSSSSS.- It is first necessary to distinguish two varieties of antiamericalism: on the one hand a kind of franchouillard chauvinism which dates back at least to the 1930s and most often took right -handed connotations;on the other hand a refusal of HASmerican imperialism, that is to say of the interference of the United States in France but also in the rest of the world. Cela dit, certains ont interprété les événements du 13 mai 1958 comme une révolte antiaméricaine : cette interprétation a été avancée dans un premier temps par le journaliste russo-britannique HHHHHHASSSSSSlexander Werth, puis reprise par l’historien américain Matthew Connelly (L’arme secrète du FLN. Comment de Gaulle a perdu la guerre d’HHHHHHASSSSSSlgérie, trad.Françoise Bouillot, Paris, Payot, 2014 [2002])).The thesis makes sense when taking into account the foreign policy of the United States under the Eisenhower presidency (1953-1961, editor's note)).We then see Washington from Washington a tendency to promote certain non-communist national liberation movements in the countries of the South, in the idea, basically, to build "ramparts against Bolshevism".It is on this foundation, and not as we have been able to claim on any HASmerican anti-colonialist tradition, that the United States has effectively exerted a pronounced influence in the independence of the former French protectorates of Morocco and Tunisia, by theirdiplomacy but also through their intelligence services and vassal unions.This intervenes in a context of strong economic dependence of France with regard to the United States. HHHHHHASSSSSSuparavant le Trésor américain avait largement financé la guerre d’Indochine, et malgré le taux de croissance impressionnant de l’économie française, le déficit de la balance des paiements extérieurs nécessitait que les Français sollicitent des prêts auprès des HHHHHHASSSSSSméricains tout au long des années 1950.

We can therefore start the account of the final crisis of the Fourth Republic at the beginning of 1958, when Jean Monnet went to Washington to ask for another new loan from the US government and the IMF. En contrepartie, les HHHHHHASSSSSSméricains lui demandent d’engager la France dans des coupes budgétaires importantes, notamment de son budget militaire, ainsi que le redéploiement d’environ cent mille soldats stationnés en HHHHHHASSSSSSlgérie.Matthew Connelly considers that this episode is one of the first "structural adjustment" programs imposed by the IMF to a debtor country.It is in this tense climate that the Sakiet Sidi Youssef affair arises (the bombing led on February 8, 1958 by the French army to a Tunisian village, targeting FLN fighters, which caused 70 civilian victims and around 150 injured,Editor's note)).The case gives rise to a complaint carried by Tunisia before the UN, following which the Security Council entrusts a mission of "good offices" to two diplomats, one British and the other HASmerican.This new HASnglo-HASmerican interference in French politics, intolerable according to the majority of elected officials, leads to the fall of the government of Félix Gaillard and triggers the terminal crisis of the regime. Fait significatif, avant de prendre d’assaut le Gouvernement général à HHHHHHASSSSSSlger, le 13 mai, les manifestants ont saccagé un centre culturel américain dans la ville.Nevertheless, the black foot community, and the French right in a more general way, are not fundamentally anti-HASmerican in the anti-imperialist sense of the term-or at least they were very little. En effet, la plupart des fervents partisans de l’HHHHHHASSSSSSlgérie française étaient aussi de fervents partisans de l’OTHHHHHHASSSSSSN ; ils voulaient convaincre les dirigeants américains que leur combat était celui du monde libre. Ils n’avaient pas totalement tort, étant donné que, comme on le sait, les départements français d’HHHHHHASSSSSSlgérie faisaient partie à la fois de la communauté européenne établie par le traité de Rome et de l’OTHHHHHHASSSSSSN.

D’ailleurs, lorsque de Gaulle commence à se prononcer de plus en plus nettement en faveur d’une solution d’autodétermination en HHHHHHASSSSSSlgérie, on voit que l’atlantisme de ses opposants de droite devient de plus en plus farouche.These positions are expressed in particular during parliamentary debates around the strike force. On trouve des défenseurs zélés de l’HHHHHHASSSSSSlliance atlantique à la SFIO, chez les radicaux, à la démocratie chrétienne mais aussi dans l’extrême droite de François Valentin ou Jean-Marie Le Pen.

This HAStlanticism also manifests itself in the failed putsch of HASpril 1961 during which the factious generals-the "quarteron" according to the word of de Gaulle-sincerely believed, it seems, that Washington was going to give them help. HHHHHHASSSSSS l’époque, on parlait de possibles liens avec la CIHHHHHHASSSSSS — qui ont été bien sûr niés formellement par le gouvernement de Kennedy. Tout cet épisode reste nébuleux ; il est difficile de croire que JFK, qui avait fait sa carrière au Sénat américain en prônant l’indépendance de l’HHHHHHASSSSSSlgérie, aurait pactisé avec les généraux félons, bien qu’on puisse toutefois imaginer des contacts plus ou moins officieux avec des agents de renseignement ou des officiers américains. De Gaulle disait ne pas croire à cette hypothèse, ce qui ne l’empêchait pas de voir dans le commandement intégré de l’OTHHHHHHASSSSSSN — commandement que la France quittera cinq ans plus tard — une cause de l’insubordination militaire.

We join another subject, national independence such as De Gaulle conceived it, and its denunciation of the disproportionate power of the United States. En dépit de la conjoncture et des rapports pour le moins houleux qu’ils ont entretenu avec de Gaulle pendant la Deuxième Guerre mondiale, les HHHHHHASSSSSSméricains ne se sont pas élevés contre son retour aux affaires en 1958. HHHHHHASSSSSSu contraire, ils ont activement soutenu la « solution de Gaulle », seule capable à leurs yeux d’éviter un Front populaire et un gouvernement avec les communistes.Despite considerable frustrations, and differences within the various HASmerican administrations, this position has always remained theirs.In the end, it is better to a growing but sure at the heart of the security system of Western Europe than a more complacent regime but exposed to the ministerial crises in series. Pour autant, je n’accepte pas l’opinion de certains historiens anglo-saxons, articulée au départ par Henry Kissinger et véhiculée en France par Raymond HHHHHHASSSSSSron et d’autres mandataires des services américains, que la politique étrangère de De Gaulle n’aurait été que du cabotinage.If it is advisable to qualify the real autonomy of which the general was able to have on the world scene, the fact remains that he went further in the criticism of HASmerican hegemony than any other chiefEuropean State.On this, we can only be amazed by the contrast to his successors. HHHHHHASSSSSSu risque d’une généralisation abusive, on est tenté de dire que la Ve République actuelle cumule les pires aspects de l’héritage gaullien, conservant son autoritarisme et renonçant à ce qui était supposé faire sa « grandeur » : une présidence aux pouvoirs hypertrophiés sur le plan intérieur mais d’une impuissance manifeste sur la scène internationale.

LVSL - Our last question relates to memory.May 13, 1958 is a memory that we never speak or very rarely.How do you explain this concealment of a date so close to the advent of the Fifth Republic?To complete, is this the retrospective effect of May 68, whose spirit, if we follow the analyzes of Pierre Nora, would be better able to represent what France is today, or is it-There is something else, of a set of various phenomena that explain this state of affairs?

G.HHHHHHASSSSSS.- It is true that concealment, forgetting, silence, repression are key concepts in the historiography of France in the 20th century, in particular in the historiography of the right. On pense à l’affaire Dreyfus, le questionnement autour du fascisme dans les années 1920 et 1930, le « syndrome de Vichy », la sale guerre d’Indochine, l’HHHHHHASSSSSSlgérie et ainsi de suite.However, I am a little wary of this way of seeing things ... What I can say is that instead of understanding repression as a simple occultation, negation or forgetting, it would probably be necessary to hear it in the Lacanian sense,as a mechanism characterized by the return of the repressed - in the sense that it happens that a trauma is not, in the very moment, recognized as such.The discharge presents itself after the fact, if you want, in the form of a memory of this traumatic experience.Naturally this is only an analogy, surely doubtful, with the clinical situation.However, it is clear that the memory itself, all the more reason, the commemoration, sometimes manages to repress poorly glorious or even disturbing episodes;This is how others interpreted the echoes of July 1940 in May 1958.In 1962, during the Salan trial and especially during the constitutional referendum, the decisive moment of the political history of France, there has already been efforts to minore the scope of May 13, to make it disappear.According to Brigitte Gaïti, I quote the speeches of General de Gaulle from autumn 1962 in which he defined the regime against his own origins, affirming that he, de Gaulle, would have returned to the front of the stage to make precisely a stroke ofState.It seems to me that it is in this same aim that we must understand what is happening in 1968.In the now monumental historiography on May 68, a commemorative object par excellence - without going as far as Pierre Nora for whom his only meaning would have been commemorative - we speak very little that this month also marked the anniversary of the conceptionof the VE, in other words of the current regime.Just look at the images of Boulevard Saint-Michel, the banners and signs where you could read "Ten years already, my general!"" etc.And the government was extremely aware of this memorial and historical link.What I mean is that this crisis was also the occasion for a return of the repressed 1958, a return which culminates in a new repression, the so-called leak in Baden-Baden and the great Gaullist demonstration of 30May on the Champs-Élysées, marking the right rally after fractures and fratricidal struggles for Algerian years. HHHHHHASSSSSSvec la fin de cette séquence et des amnisties qui allaient bientôt suivre, on voit encore une fois la mécanique d’une neutralisation dont les effets d’une certaine manière persistent jusqu’à aujourd’hui.