Algiers Putsch of 1961 - Chronology

Chronology

On 22 April 1961, retired generals Maurice Challe, André Zeller and Raoul Salan, helped by colonels Antoine Argoud, Jean Gardes, and the civilians Joseph Ortiz and Jean-Jacques Susini (who would form the OAS terrorist group), took control of Algiers. General Challe criticised what he saw as the government's treason and lies toward French Algeria colonists and loyalist Muslims who trusted it, and stated that

the command reserves its right to extend its actions to the metropole and to reconstitute a constitutional and republican order seriously compromised by a government whose illegality is blatant in the eyes of the nation.

During the night, the 1st Foreign Parachute Regiment (1e REP), composed of a thousand men (3% of the military present in Algeria) and headed by Hélie de Saint Marc took control of all of Algiers' strategic points in three hours.

The head of the Parisian police, Maurice Papon, and the director of the Sûreté nationale, formed a crisis cell in a room of the Comédie-Française, where Charles De Gaulle was attending a presentation of Racine's Britannicus. The president was informed during the entracte of the coup by Jacques Foccart, his general secretary to African and Malagasy Affairs and closest collaborator, in charge of covert operations.

Algiers' population was awakened on 22 April at 7 am to a message read on the radio: "The army has seized control of Algeria and of the Sahara". The three rebel generals, Challe, Jouhaud and Zeller, had the government's general delegate, Jean Morin, arrested, as well as the National Minister of Public Transport, Robert Buron, who was visiting, and several civil and military authorities. Several regiments put themselves under the command of the insurrectionary generals.

General Jacques Faure, six other officers and several civilians were simultaneously arrested in Paris. At 5 pm, during the ministers' council, Charles De Gaulle declared: "Gentlemen, what is serious about this affair, is that it isn't serious". He then proclaimed a state of emergency in Algeria, while left wing parties, communist trade union CGT and the socialist supporter NGO Ligue des droits de l'homme (LDH, Human Rights League) called to demonstrate against the military's coup d'état.

The following day, on Sunday 23 April, General Salan arrived from Spain and refused to arm civilian activists. At 8 pm, General De Gaulle appeared in his uniform on television, calling on French military personnel and civilians, in the metropole or in Algeria, to oppose the putsch:

An insurrectionary power has established itself in Algeria by a military pronunciamento... This power has an appearance: a quartet of retired generals. It has a reality: a group of officers, partisan, ambitious and fanatic. This group and this quartet possess an expeditive and limited know-how. But they see and understand the Nation and the world only deformed through their frenzy. Their enterprise lead directly towards a national disaster ... I forbid any Frenchman, and, first of all, any soldier, to execute a single one of their orders ... Before the misfortune which hangs over the fatherland and the threat on the Republic, having taken advice from the Constitutional Council, the Prime Minister, the president of the Senate, the president of the National Assembly, I have decided to invoke article 16 of the Constitution . Starting from this day, I will take, directly if needs arise, the measures which seems to me demanded by circumstances ... Frenchwomen, Frenchmen! Help me!

Due to the popularity of a recent invention, transistor radio, De Gaulle's call was heard by the conscript soldiers, who refused en masse to follow the professional soldiers' call for insurgency. The putsch met with widespread opposition, largely in the form of civil resistance, including a one hour general strike called by the trade unions the day after De Gaulle's broadcast.

On Tuesday April 25 the French authorities in Paris ordered the explosion of the atomic bomb Gerboise Verte (lit. "green jerboa") in the Sahara to prevent it from falling into the putschists hands. Gerboise Verte exploded at 6:05 AM.

The few troops which had followed the generals progressively surrendered. General Challe also gave himself up to the authorities on 26 April, and was immediately transferred to the metropole. The putsch had been successfully opposed, but the article 16 on full and extraordinary powers given to De Gaulle was maintained for five months. "The Battle of the Transistors"—as it was called by the press—was quickly and definitely won by De Gaulle.