From 1954 to 1962, over one and a half million young Frenchmen went to Algeria to do their military service. In reality they were plunged into an unacknowledged war declared by Algerian nationalists to free their country from the yoke of colonialism. Decades after these events, the silence around those who went to Algeria still exists and is a weight on many families. In this work, Raphaëlle Branche examines the question of this inter-generational transmission and, through a fascinating investigation, throws new light on the place of the Algerian war on French society.
Raphaëlle Branche is a professor of modern history at the Université de Paris-Nanterre and the author of La Torture et l’Armée pendant la guerre d’Algérie, 1954-1962 (Torture and the army during the Algerian war 1954 –1962 (Gallimard, 2001) and L’Embuscade de Palestro, Algérie 1956 (The Ambush of Palestro, Algeria 1956) (La Découverte, 2018).