Un Quarteron de Généraux avant le Putsch

On 22 April 1961, Generals Challe, Zeller, and Jouhaud — soon joined by Salan — launched a putsch in Algiers. The following day, General de Gaulle addressed the nation: "An insurrectional power has established itself in Algeria [...]. This power has an outward appearance: a handful of retired generals. It has a reality: a group of partisan, ambitious and fanatical officers…"

This group and this handful possessed an expedient and limited know-how. While the event has been widely described, the motivations of the putschists have remained obscure. How could these men — called to the highest responsibilities by General de Gaulle at the end of careers marked by discipline and service — have been brought to trigger such a movement, entirely at odds with French military tradition?

Drawing on previously unexploited sources and having gained access to the private archives of the protagonists, the author retraces their trajectories from their enlistment in the army to the summit of the hierarchy, and provides the threads that explain how, despite their differences in background and temperament, they decided to cross the Rubicon. In doing so, he restores an entire chapter of French military history, from the war of 1914 — in which Zeller and Salan participated — to the Algerian War, by way of Syria, French West Africa, the Italian campaign, the Provence landings, the liberation of Alsace and the Indochina War.

A journey like no other, from the battlefields to the prison at Tulle. A major and essential work that challenges many a received idea head-on.