It's true that the character in the book and film kills some innocent people along the way (and who knows who else he is supposed to have killed), but de Gaulle deserved the hatred of those hiring the assassin. It is quite possible to see the film and still wish the assassin had been successful. (Especially when you look at Algeria...)
shareDe Gaulle was simply more realistic than the OAS rather than less patriotic and although he would have preferred to retain Algeria reckoned (probably correctly) that the effort required to do so - and this would have been a continuous effort not a one off - would have ruined France and caused massive upheaval in French society - possibly civil war.
If De Gaulle had been killed it’s still very unlikely that the OAS would have got what they wanted.
I agree about modern Algeria (and virtually all the other former European imperial possessions as well for that matter) but that’s freedom and democracy for you. It includes the freedom to make a complete mess of everything.
What exactly are you talking about? The Algerian War was lost when De Gaulle came to power, if indeed it was ever winnable. (Perhaps if the French army had hit harder, sooner, or if Mollet hadn't destroyed French credibility by getting tangled up in the Suez Crisis, but ifs and buts...) The actions of the pieds noirs, whom you can't really blame, and the OAS, whom you certainly can, only served to prolong the war and further poison an already toxic situation. Getting out of Algeria was the only sensible course De Gaulle could have taken.
So no, I don't wish the Jackal well at all. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that some do.
"You are, in your own idiom, a punk - and a second-rate punk at that!"
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All of that is true, but to that I'd add, so what? That's not why he was being assassinated and happened twenty years before the film's events.
"You are, in your own idiom, a punk - and a second-rate punk at that!"
Andrew, your response has nothing to do with the question at hand. You are mostly referring, accurately or not, to events 20 years earlier. The other responders hit the nail smack on the head: i.e., De Gaulle made the right choice regarding Algeria. Whatever else you think of De Gaulle as a person or president, he didn't repeat the mistake that France made in trying to keep Indochina French. Repeating that mistake would have denied the aspirations of a people to have their own country. And it might have torn France apart.
shareNone of the European powers were able to retain their African colonies for much longer. You have to remember the French experience in Indochina would have colored their view. You also have to remember DeGaulle's view of French resistance in WWII and what was required to subdue a local population.
Most notably, the early 1960's was the beginning of the Apartheid resistance in South Africa. The Afrikaner government grew increasingly more stringent and created an oppressive police state in order to subdue the majority population.
If looking at the events of the time from DeGaulle's perspective, you would have had rising evidence of the level of oppression needed to retain control, the continuation of the Vietcong movement in Indochina several years after the French loss and the knowledge of what a war would mean in terms of politcal capital and population weariness, and a rising influence of the Soviet Union in world affairs and sympathetic followers in France that would use the Algerian war for their means.
The Soviet/Communist aspect is something you need to consider. The French troops in WWI were close to the same level of mutiny and collapse that caused the Russian Revolution. In several parts of the line, French troops DID mutiny and revolt. France could have easily had their own 1917 revolution except that the Americans entering the war provided a relief that provided hope.
A drawn out guerilla war in Algeria, on the heals of the defeat in Indochina to Communists, combined with a rising Soviet influence and an imbedded Communist party in France could have led to another French government collapse.
No, DeGaulle played it smart. He folded when he had the chance, knowing that inevitably he would need to fold and did so before a long war that he would not have won.