On 25 July 1958, an extraordinary, top-secret meeting occurred just outside of Cologne at a Falken-owned conference centre, though not a single member of the socialist youth organisation was present, nor any other German. The assembled delegates were all leaders of the Fédération de France who had sought sanctuary in West Germany in April 1958. They were assembled now to finalise preparations for the launch of the FLN's long-awaited second front. The onset of this offensive exactly one month later marked a watershed in the Franco-Algerian confrontation in the metropole, one that rapidly accentuated West Germany's importance as an extraterritorial sanctuary. How did the French and German authorities respond to the mounting Algerian presence on federal territory? In what manner did the authorities seek to contain or combat the presence of Algerians in the FRG? This chapter illustrates how French officials, in their efforts to domesticate the Algerian war and crush the FLN, attempted to export to West Germany some of the core tenets of guerre révolutionnaire, notably their colonial ‘policy of complete human management and control’. Encumbered though they were by resistance on the part of German domestic authorities and by the inherent contradictions of French counterinsurgency strategy, these efforts ultimately resulted in close, even unprecedented, cooperation between the French and German security and intelligence services. As the FLN's sanctuary expanded, the Adenauer government's Diktat of supporting the French war effort transformed the West German police and security services into proxies in France's counterinsurgency. The country itself now became a contested site in the Algerian war.

An ‘Algerian psychosis’

If the appointment in March 1958 of Maurice Papon as police prefect in Paris had signalled the ‘militarisation’ of policing in the metropole, the outbreak of the FLN's second front radicalised this process still further. With the new wave of terrorism, the search for accurate and actionable intelligence again constituted ‘the sinews of war’. Though unwilling to go as far as they had in Algeria in effacing civic rights and judicial controls, the de Gaulle government agreed to extend discretionary measures such as curfews or spot searches to help obtain this intelligence. An ordinance dated 8 October empowered the metropolitan security forces to detain Algerians for two weeks without charges, providing ample time for interrogations.