In short
Episode 4 of Empire’s Algerian Revolution series focuses on the Battle of Algiers and how French tactics, torture, and political backlash shaped the path to Algerian independence.
Guests
none mentioned; hosts are Anita Arnand and William Durenpool. Key figures discussed include FLN leader Sadi Yasef (former Casbah baker who used women in French fashions to smuggle bombs), French General Jacques Massoud (paratroop commander given “unlimited” authority), and intelligence officer Colonel Roger Trinquier (informer network and “Oranigram” mapping).
Key claims
French “victory” militarily (capturing/neutralizing FLN leaders) failed politically because atrocities (electric shocks, waterboarding, sexual violence, disappearances, helicopter drownings) galvanized international opposition and undermined French legitimacy.
Notable examples
Labi Ben M’hidi’s secret hanging; Sadi Yasef’s capture; Ali La Pointe’s death after refusing surrender; Henri Alleg’s The Question; OAS terror; de Gaulle’s self-determination announcement and subsequent coups; Evian Accords (18 March 1962) and independence referendum (1 July 1962).
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOThe FLN and Philippeville Massacre
0:53 to 2:05
Understand the impact of the FLN and the brutal French response in Algeria.
“On our show, we trace how people, power and ideas move through history.”
The FLN and Philippeville Massacre
2:14 to 3:05
Understand the impact of the FLN and the brutal French response in Algeria.
“Now, in the last episode, we saw how this nationalist military group, the FLN, brought terror into the heart of the French settler community in Algeria.”
General Massoud's Tactics
3:05 to 3:38
Learn about General Massoud and his brutal tactics against the FLN.
“He transformed the Casbah's medieval warren of alleyways and flat-roofed mud houses into a genuine military asset, with hidden rooms and bomb factories concealed beneath ordinary workshops.”
Torture and Control in the Casbah
3:38 to 4:55
Explore the horrific torture methods used by French forces in Algiers.
“Yeah, let me tell you a bit about General Massoud.”
Disappearing Activists and Atrocities
4:55 to 7:07
Examine the chilling fate of Algerians during the Battle of Algiers.
“They drive armoured cars up to shuttered Muslim shops, rip off the shutters and then soldiers up into the apartments where they drag Algerian workers out of their homes and into trucks to force them to work.”
The Capture of Key FLN Leaders
7:07 to 9:21
Delve into the capture and fate of key FLN figures during the conflict.
“And the paras develop a new practice that they cheerfully nickname Big Eards Prawns.”
Political Turmoil in France
9:21 to 11:24
Understand the political upheaval in France regarding Algeria and General de Gaulle's return.
“He has a really interesting background as well.”
De Gaulle's Complicated Promise
11:24 to 14:01
Analyze De Gaulle's ambiguous promises to the Pied Noirs and its implications.
“It's one of the most extraordinary political moments in modern French history, I would say.”
Upcoming Show Announcement with Ali Ansari
14:01 to 15:50
Learn about an upcoming live show discussing Iranian history and contemporary issues in Iran.
“It's going to take four years and a great deal more blood, but their hearts will eventually be broken by de Gaulle.”
The Maurice Line and Military Strategies
16:50 to 19:03
Discuss the Maurice Line and how military strategies impacted the Algerian revolution.
“And it is an electrified fence which runs nearly 400 km along Algeria's borders with Tunisia and Morocco, heavily mined.”
Show all 17 chapters
De Gaulle's Shift in Policy and Backlash
19:03 to 22:46
Explore De Gaulle's decision for Algerian self-determination and the ensuing pushback.
“were sitting on the French, as we saw in the last episode, and were not committed one way or the other.”
The OAS and Acts of Violence
22:46 to 24:44
Learn about the OAS and their violent actions during the final months of French Algeria.
“We've seen a similar thing with Israel since the last couple of years.”
Evian Accords and Algeria's Independence
24:44 to 27:48
Discuss the Evian Accords and the events leading to Algeria's independence.
“You know, we are going to do this or we're going to die trying.”
Post-Independence Challenges and Future Episodes
27:48 to 28:04
Understand the challenges Algeria faced after independence and preview future discussions.
“The celebrations in Algiers were enormous and uncontrollable.”
Join the Empire Club for Early Access
28:14 to 28:39
Learn about early access and bonus episodes available in the Empire Club.
“link in the bio and join the Empire Club.”
Post-Independence Challenges and Future Episodes
28:52 to 29:04
Understand the challenges Algeria faced after independence and preview future discussions.
Post-Independence Challenges and Future Episodes
29:13 to 30:07
Understand the challenges Algeria faced after independence and preview future discussions.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00William:If you want access to bonus episodes, reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community, discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast, ad-free listening, and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.empirepoduk.com. And we're live from the living room as Doug eyes up the matchday spread. He's reaching for the buffalo wing. Perfect! Hang on, what's this? Oh, he's gone for a can of Pepsi too. Incredible. What a finish. Sensational combination. Look at the delight on his face. There's no doubt about it. It just tastes better. Match days deserve Pepsi. Food deserves Pepsi.
0:44William:Grab a pack of Pepsi Zero Sugar for today's match. It's poetry in motion. This episode is brought to you by Atio, the CRM of the new way of going to the market. On our show, we trace how people, power and ideas move through history. Often, what changes the story is not ambition alone, but the system behind it. For businesses, a CRM has long kept a simple record. Who you spoke to, what was said and where things stood. Atio is the only agent-native CRM built for teams and AI agents to work together across every customer relationship. Revenue teams now have signals coming from everywhere, but signals only matter if you can act on them.
1:34William:You can ask Atio to prepare a meeting, draft outreach or surface the next step so your team can move with speed, scale and quality without losing the judgment that good customer relationships require. Try Atio for free at attio.com slash empire.
2:05Anita:Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnand.
2:09William:And me, William Durenpool. This is episode four of our Algerian series. Now, in the last episode, we saw how this nationalist military group, the FLN, brought terror into the heart of the French settler community in Algeria. with the Philippeville massacre, then the French response, which was even more brutal, and finally, the opening of a new front in the Casbah of Algiers. In today's episode, we reach for the most famous and morally complex chapter of the Algerian War of Independence. The Battle of Algiers is one of the greatest political films ever made, and here we are exploring the true history that it's based upon.
2:50William:Now, in the last episode, we introduced one of the key leaders of the FLN, Sadi Yasef. In the famous 1966 film, he actually played himself. As we said last time, Yasef was a former baker from the Casbah, the medieval citadel at the top of the city of Algiers. He transformed the Casbah's medieval warren of alleyways and flat-roofed mud houses into a genuine military asset, with hidden rooms and bomb factories concealed beneath ordinary workshops. And his most devastating tactical innovation was to use Algerian women dressed in French fashions to carry bombs past French checkpoints. But at the beginning of 1957, he was to meet a formidable new French adversary, the brutal General Massoud.
3:38Anita:Yeah, let me tell you a bit about General Massoud. So in January 1957, the French government handed police powers over the city of Algiers to General Jacques Massoud and his 10th paratroop division. He was 50 years old. He was a veteran of the Free French Forces and Indochina, Indochine, a bullneck man who believed the FLN's urban campaign could be broken by the application of sheer force. And if that didn't work, then more force. That was his attitude. And his mandate granted by the socialist French government of Guy Mollet was effectively unlimited. You can do what you want. That meant to him that his officers had carte blanche.
4:21Anita:And the kind of thing that they did, Willie, is shocking, frankly, isn't it? From those who are in uniform and who have a set of codes supposedly to live by, none of that was present in the response from him.
4:33William:Massoud plays his first card when the FLN calls a general strike across Algiers in late January 1957 to coincide with the United Nations debate on Algeria. Massoud unleashes his paratroopers, who break the strike in a way that leaves no one with any doubt on the nature of French authority. They drive armoured cars up to shuttered Muslim shops, rip off the shutters and then soldiers up into the apartments where they drag Algerian workers out of their homes and into trucks to force them to work. The message was simple. The FLN does not control the city. We do. And we have demonstrated this. And then Masoud turns to the harder problem of deconstructing the bombing network.
5:23Yeah.
5:24Anita:Now, I mean, we already described how complicated this network is. And the only way you're going to crack the cells or make people talk is torture. And masses, paras do exactly that. They systematically torture thousands of Algerians who they pick up in the Casbah. and look the um the methods are awful they're also well documented you have um this thing called a jejeine which is a field telephone without well you know one of those old ones with a hand crank that generates an electrical charge and instead of being attached to any apparatus they take those electrodes and they put them to victims fingers to their ears to their genitals frankly and then it is you know torture through electric shock they also have this thing called the bennoir which is you know, it's waterboarding.
6:10Anita:That's what we'd call it today. But it's simulated drowning. They hold the victim's head underwater until they lose consciousness. Then they get them up, revive them, and they repeat and repeat and repeat. And some of it is really positively medieval, you know, suspending human beings in stress positions by, you know, with ropes, the kind of thing you would see in sort of old manuscripts. And these things are being used on people.
6:34William:In the Spanish Inquisition.
6:36Anita:In the Spanish Inquisition, exactly what I was thinking. So, you know, and then, and beatings and sleep deprivation and the extensive use of sexual violence against Muslim women, all of this to get them to talk, to tell them names, name names, name places, and, you know, by any means they were going to get this information. And Willie, some didn't make it through the torture, did they?
6:58William:Many didn't. Many die under torture. Others, an estimated 3000 in the Battle of Algiers alone, simply disappear. They're held in secret, killed and buried without record. And the paras develop a new practice that they cheerfully nickname Big Eards Prawns. When they take prisoners, they bind their arms and legs, and they drop them out of helicopters into the sea off Algiers where they drag.
7:23Anita:This is the kind of stuff that we hear from Pinochet and others. It's horrific. So you deny a person their life and you deny the family the right to mourn over a body. It's meant to strike terror into hearts. Massey's intelligence officer is a man called Colonel Roger Trinkie. And he sets up an informer network. And this informer network covers every street in Algiers. So you get one informer per block mapping the entire social fabric of the city. And then he's got sort of these colleagues taking the intelligence and drawing up this vast pyramid chart mapping the entire covert structure.
8:02William:Oranigram, they call it.
8:05Anita:Oranigram, very good, of the FLN network. And again, this also is reminiscent to me, Willie, of the way in which the Brits tried to get information on the IRA and what the IRA were doing. You take people in for questioning, sometimes using methods that you wouldn't want brought before Parliament, and you that way sort of map who is the hierarchy, who is where, and where do you hit?
8:29William:Yeah, I mean, this is now the mid-1950s. This is exactly what the Brits are doing at the same time in Malaya. They'll do later in Cyprus, in Kenya. This has become a sort of post-war book, but the French seem to be particularly brutal. In February 1957, they capture the FLN's political mastermind in Algiers, Labi Ben Mahidi. He was secretly hanged by a French death squad in such a way it looked like a suicide. And this is something the French government only acknowledged as recently as 2021. In September 1957, Yassaf Sadi himself is finally captured along with Zora Drift, the woman that let off the bomb in the milk bar.
9:15Anita:A few weeks later, French forces corner a man called Ali Lapoint. And this is actually Yassaf's deadliest enforcer. He has a really interesting background as well. Okay, so he's a former pimp. He's a street boxer. He is the man who Yassaf sends out to terrify anybody who needs either dragging into line or is suspected of being an informer. And he's hiding in his Casbah hideout. When he refuses to surrender, they blow the entire building apart. So Ali Lepant dies in the rubble, along with two associates and a 12-year-old boy who's just been sheltering with them. And then 17 of his neighbours. The bombings stop as a result of this.
10:01Anita:So France declares that it has won the Battle of Algiers, but the world does not yet know about the atrocities that the French have committed. And that is going to be a shock to the system, the international system.
10:15William:The photographs and testimonies that do eventually leak out. Above all, Henri Aleg's The Question, published in 1958, a first-hand account of torture methods used on the Algerian community newspaper by French paratroopers, is a book that is banned in France or est immediately, but sells nonetheless about hundreds of thousands of copies. And this is the thing that really galvanised opposition to the war among French intellectuals, French trade unions, and the international community.
10:44Anita:Yeah, the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre wrote that every Frenchman who didn't oppose the war was complicit in this torture. You've got the Catholic intellectual François Mauriac, who publicly says that, you know, how could France condemn Nazi methods while behaving exactly the same way? And within the French army's officer corps, the Battle of Algiers produces something maybe even more dangerous than bad publicity. It's a conviction that France's politicians will never make an honest peace in Algeria. And that's really important because when you have this, this doubt in the leadership, you have a crisis on the horizon.
11:24Anita:And that crisis hits in May 1958. It's one of the most extraordinary political moments in modern French history, I would say. Six prime ministers in four years consumed by the question of Algeria.
11:38William:Yeah, this is what I suppose Brexit has been over the last 10 years in British politics, the way we now go through our prime ministers. And in this case, it's the whole issue. You have a million pied-noir. It's not just a simple question like the British in India of pulling out. No one in British India has got farms, vineyards, businesses, but that's not the case in Algeria. And the pied-noirs are an enormous force. They have many sympathisers in France. And on the 13th of May, 1958, pied-noir settlers stormed the French government buildings in Algiers, furious at the execution of French prisoners by the FLN, convinced that the government in Paris was about to surrender to the nationalists.
12:23Anita:Yeah, and the army in Algeria is so shaken by all of this. They were now on the verge of a coup against the civilian government of France. In Paris, it's felt, and it is true, the politicians capitulate. You've got General Charles de Gaulle, the man who spent the war in London broadcasting to his Frenchmen to resist the Nazis during World War II. He's the one they turn to. They say, you know what, we don't trust this breed of politicians at all. We need you, General. We need you to come back. So just please take control because everything feels out of control. And with that, with de Gaulle coming back, the Fourth Republic, you could say is effectively over.
13:10Anita:And de Gaulle, what he does is very interesting. He flew over to Algiers and he tells the Pied Noir exactly what they want to hear. So he stood on the balcony of the Government General Building in Algiers on the 4th of June, 1958, looked out over this enormous crowd of European settlers and French soldiers who'd brought him to power. And he says, je vous ai compris, I have understood you. And the crowd goes nuts. They go wild. Now, what they hear, you can kind of hear what you want to hear in that. It's not explicit. But what they hear is a promise that Algeria will remain French. De Gaulle is one of them.
13:49Anita:He is, you know, But you know what? That is a really nebulous statement. I have understood you. And they are about to find out that he didn't mean that at all. It's going to take four years and a great deal more blood, but their hearts will eventually be broken by de Gaulle.
14:18Anita:so we've got some very exciting news for you we've sold out our first show but we've got a
14:25William:second show at the rest is fest in september and we have a brilliant lineup incredibly topical one two we're calling it three ayatollahs an iranian dynasty delighted to say we're going to be joined
14:39Anita:by a great friend of the show, Ali Ansari, one of Britain's foremost experts on Iranian history. He is an excellent storyteller. Ali, just tell us, what are we going to be chatting about?
14:50William:Well, we will be exploring big questions like how has the influence of the Ayatollah shaped Iran since the 1979 revolution? Does the Islamic Republic's grip appear to be fracturing? And what role have other nations played in shaping Iran's fate? And we're going to unpack one of the most fascinating and urgent stories in the world right now. As the regime faces economic pressures, regional setbacks, and a disillusioned younger generation, but in many ways a revitalised revolutionary guards core, what comes next for a great civilisation that has outlasted many, many empires?
15:23Anita:Ali, we always, always love having you on this podcast. Cannot wait to have you join us on stage.
15:29William:And I can't wait to get into the discussion.
15:31Anita:You can expect sharp analysis, You can expect vivid storytelling. And of course, you can expect the usual chaos that comes about when we're on stage chatting to each other.
15:40William:The Rest Is Fest runs from the 4th to the 6th of September at London's Southbank Centre.
15:48Anita:General sale is on now. Just head to southbankcentre.co.uk to find out more. I'm Mary Beard. And I'm Josephine Quinn. At the Rest is Fest this September, we're putting on a show that can only be described as an iconoclastic romp through the ancient world.
16:05William:We're talking about leaders behaving badly, emperors putting their horses in charge, cities built by asylum seekers and empires getting their comeuppance. There will be some proper myth busting. But we'll also be asking why these myths matter, even when we know they're wrong.
16:24Anita:So if you love your ancient history and you're free on September the 6th, get your ticket now and join us at London's South Bank Centre. Tickets are on sale now. Just visit southbankcentre.co.uk. That's southbankcentre.co.uk.
16:42William:Welcome back. Well, I suppose the next bit of the story is the whole episode of the Maurice line. Now, this is named after the French Defence Minister, André Maurice, And it is an electrified fence which runs nearly 400 km along Algeria's borders with Tunisia and Morocco, heavily mined. It's lit by floodlets, monitored by radar, patrolled continuously. And its purpose is to prevent the FLN's exterior army, the forces training and re-equipping in Tunisia, from reinforcing the fighters inside Algeria. And it effectively works. It does stop them getting through. And combined with General Maurice Charles' relentless military sweeps through the interior, the French army by 1960 have killed or captured the great majority of the FLN's fighters inside Algeria.
Read the full transcript
17:38Anita:So while France might have been winning the military war, the FLN and their provisional government, which is known as the GPRA, the provisional government of the Algerian Republic, it's winning something arguably much more important. It's winning international recognition. It's winning hearts and minds, if you like. And it's winning the argument with the United Nations because all these stories of torture are coming out. You've got the lack of faith in French political leaders. And with de Gaulle back on the scene, you've got a new man and a new mind in charge. And he understands something that other soldiers haven't been able to bring themselves to accept.
18:16Anita:You might get a military victory. You might do that. But a military victory is not the same as a political victory. And it is not the same as settling this issue. This issue will never go back to what it was. You're never going to have Algerians content with being this sort of satellite vassal state of France. It's not going to happen anymore that genie's out of the bottle. So in 1959, de Gaulle makes a really big decision.
18:41William:De Gaulle announces on television that Algerians would have the right of self-determination, the right to choose their own future. And I think his recognition is that, such is the polarisation in the country, that you cannot have one-tenth of the country ruling over nine-tenth majority. He just thinks that that is not sustainable. It was fine while many Algerians were sitting on the French, as we saw in the last episode, and were not committed one way or the other. But the sheer brutality, the killings, the extrajudicial murders and torture have turned all Algerians against France, and nine-tenths of a country will not accept the government of the one-tenths.
19:22William:So he announced his self-determination. And the reaction, of course, from the pied-noir and from the army officers who brought him to power was that de Gaulle had committed an act of pure, undiluted betrayal.
19:35Anita:Well, I mean, he's kind of cut their hearts out. That's not what they heard him say from the balcony. They were angry. That's not what they heard. So in January 1960, these furious Pien Noirs, they rise up and you've got barricades going up in Algiers. You've got French gendarmes being shot. And for a week, it looked as if the settlers might succeed in reversing de Gaulle's policy just by sheer force of violence. But you know what? This violence is short but sharp. It lasts about a week and then it collapses.
20:10William:And the generals try to rebel too. In April 1961, four retired generals seized Algiers, a proper coup d 'état. For 48 hours, it appears that France is about to experience its first successful military coup since the French Revolution. De Gaulle appears on television in uniform, his voice controlled and contemptuous, and he addresses the young conscripts directly. This, of course, is Greg Gamble. He says, I forbid every Frenchman and above all, every single soldier to execute any of their orders. He carries a transistor radio into the camera shot. The young conscripts in Algeria had their transistor radios and they heard their president.
20:55William:The putsch collapses in just 48 hours and the four generals go underground. I think it's worth pausing before we get to this final bit, the end game of the revolution, to take stock of what this war is actually costing the French because the numbers, when you add them up, will explain why even those who wanted to win were beginning to understand why that winning was impossible.
21:18Anita:Yeah, I mean, sort of in the height of the conflict, you've got 500 ,000 French troops being deployed in Algeria to fight a guerrilla war. And that is expensive. You know, you don't send these people out with their, you know, their equipment and transport and billeting and everything else. It isn't cheap. So I think the annual budget deficit, which was already severe after the war, it grows by 30 % during this conflict with the Algerian uprising. So, you know, you've got, I think it's sort of at one point reaches some 925 billion francs per year. That's how much it costs. So, you know, what does that do back at home in France?
21:58Anita:Well, it makes everything more expensive. You know, retail prices are going up, people, you know, grumbling about getting food in the markets that it costs so much. And we did already touch on the fact, Willie, that, you know, the political cost was even more dramatic. You know, six prime ministers swallowed up by this one issue. And you've got, you know, sort of no faith in the political classes from a country. This is what's really interesting. It's a country that has just thrown off the Nazis, that is just reestablishing what it is and what it is to be free French. Now, what does it mean? So you've got almost a nervous breakdown in identity.
22:33Anita:What are we? What are we for? And how much is that? You know, all of that stuff completely combined into a crisis.
22:41William:And of course, no country likes to see its reputation tarnished. And for people to be aware suddenly that a military is committing atrocities, that the prisons are full of torture. We've seen a similar thing with Israel since the last couple of years. It's a massive reputational damage that a massive campaign of repression and torture inflicts on a country. It gives a country a bad, bad name. You see this, for example, in the United States, which had initially supported France switching to abstaining on UN votes about Algeria. France's closest allies grew increasingly embarrassed by the association.
23:19William:The FLN has understood from the beginning that the war would be won not in the mountains of Camilia by guerrilla warfare at night, but in the court of international opinion. And every French atrocity was for them a victory. One thing we should talk about, though, Anita, and this is the true story behind the Day of the Jackals. Tell us about the OAS.
23:40Anita:OK, so the OAS is the Organisation de l 'Armée Secrète, the Organisation of the Secret Army, the OAS, which will spend the final months of French Algeria committing acts of violence that, you know what, made the FLN look like Boy Scouts, to be honest with you. And Frederick Forsyth's 1971 novel, The Day of the Jackal, is based on a real event in which this organisation, the OAS, so incensed by the betrayal of de Gaulle, contracts a professional killer to take him out.
24:14William:I had no idea that this was. Did you know this was based on a true story? I did.
24:18Anita:I did. I did know this. But you know what? But I didn't realise just how organised the OAS was, you know. So they are organised. They planted bombs across Algeria and France, targeting anybody who was sympathetic to the FLN. And that included, by the way, French officials, you know, so their own countrymen, they're blowing them up. They are attempting to destroy anything that might survive independence. They have this horrible, horrible motto, the suitcase or the coffin. You know, we are going to do this or we're going to die trying. And in the final weeks before what is known as the Evian Accords, where, you know, this kind of negotiated peace and withdrawal is actually made real.
25:02Anita:The OAS goes into overdrive. They are scorching earth wherever they go. They're burning universities, libraries, infrastructure. and there are just indiscriminate killings of Muslim Algerians in the street at random. It is like a rampage of violence and terror.
25:23William:So peace is finally agreed in 1962. After nearly two years of on and off negotiations, this peace is signed at Evian-le-Bah, where Evian water comes from, on 18th of March 1962. France recognises Algerian sovereignty, including over the Sahara, which is something they wanted to hold on to because oil had just been found there.
25:45Anita:After an eight-year campaign, tremendous violence, blood and coin spent in such, I mean, extraordinary and horrific amounts, a line is drawn. But it's not a line, is it? It's more of a dotted line.
25:59William:It's a very jagged line. So again, this is something that I didn't know until I did the reading for this series. And to me, this is the single most fascinating thing of the whole story. Because on a plane to Algiers in 1962, at the end of this episode of the story, is a certain young paratrooper, a 34-year-old soldier named Jeanne-Marie Le Pen. He boards the plane at Algiers and he brings with him the resentments of an entire generation that believes France betrayed its soldiers and settlers. He also brings with him the political ambitions of a man who has already served in the National Assembly and knew precisely what to do with the moment that was gathering among the pied-noir, who are now flooding back to South, finding themselves in poor suburbs of France, some of them finding their way to the South Coast, which is the kind of landscape they'd left behind in Algeria.
26:55William:And the story of what Le Pen builds and what his daughter is continuing to do today as we speak, as the new election comes into view.
27:05Anita:So, I mean, you're talking about Marine Le Pen, Marine Le Pen, who is standing and is gaining a lot of momentum.
27:11William:Now, this is the subject of our final two episodes in this series. And I have to say that when I was originally planning this series, I thought we were going to be ending it with the end of the Battle of Algeria. But actually, the most important and the most fascinating parts of the story lie ahead. A referendum, of course, follows on the 1st of July 1962. Algeria's vote for independence by nearly 6 million votes to 16 ,000. That's how polarized things have become by this stage. And on the 5th of July, 1962, the anniversary of the 1830 French invasion, Algeria is finally independent. The celebrations in Algiers were enormous and uncontrollable.
27:54William:The eight-year war was over.
27:56Anita:Yeah, but despite the celebrations, Algeria is going to suffer some more because the FLN immediately begins its own civil war, if you like, about who's going to be in charge, who's going to be running this new state. And we'll explore that in more detail in the next episode. If you don't want to wait, if you want to hear that episode right now, just head to the link in the bio and join the Empire Club. You'll get early access, you'll get special bonus episodes. And if you want extra insights into this really fascinating period of history, join the Empire Club because you will get a very special bonus episode on the experience of Algerians who are living in the Banyos of Paris.
28:35Anita:So I really honestly urge you to listen to that. It's a fantastic listen. Till the next time we meet, it's goodbye from me, Anita Arnon.
28:43William:And goodbye from me, William de Rompol.
28:51William:a quick word for our empire listeners for a limited time only we are running a discount
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From the publisher
How did the French use systemic torture during the Battle of Algiers? Which army generals plotted to overthrow the French president? Why did the bloody birth of an independent Algeria herald further trouble to come?
In the fourth episode of this series, William and Anita explore the bloody road to the declaration of Algerian Independence. They discuss France’s horrifying use of torture, the collapse of the Fourth Republic, and the historic 1962 Évian Accords.
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Email: empire@goalhanger.com
Instagram: @empirepoduk
Blue Sky: @empirepoduk
X: @empirepoduk
Assistant Producer: Imogen Marriott
Editor: Charlie Rodwell
Social Producer: Charlie Johnson
Producer: Anouska Lewis
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