Prologue: May 8, 1945

When news of the surrender of the former Nazi occupier reached Paris on May 8, 1945, it set off two days of celebration: thousands went into the streets to revel in the victory over Germany. To this day, May 8 is remembered in France and Europe as the day when the bloodiest war in history came to an end. What followed was a “golden age,” as Eric Hobsbawm christened the unprecedented experience of both a relative absence of violence and tremendous economic growth in the Western world.

In the French colonies, too, the defeat of the Axis powers was greeted with cheers. For example, on May 8, 1945, in the northern Algerian town of Sétif, about 8,000 people marched to the World War I memorial, where they placed a wreath to commemorate the dead of the recent war and to celebrate victory. But the marchers were waving not only the flags of the Allies. Even though the subprefect had issued a ban, they were also carrying home-sewn pieces of fabric showing a red star and crescent against a green-and-white background: the symbol of an independent Algeria. And banners with slogans like Algérie libre! also left no doubt that the marchers in Sétif – many of whom belonged to the nationalist Parti du Peuple Algérien – were combining their victory celebration with demands for the time of peace that would now follow. After a policeman had shot and killed the young scout Bouzid Saal, who was marching with one of the Algerian flags, after more shots had been fired under murky circumstances, after the demonstrators had killed a total of twenty-one European men and women, and after the nascent uprising finally spread to Périgoville, Kherrata, Guelma, and other towns, the colonial power responded with brutal repression. On and after May 8, the police and the military arrested known and less well-known nationalists. Within six weeks, French soldiers and settler militias had killed thousands of Algerians in air attacks and executions.

This escalation of violence in Sétif puts a different frame around the prevailing memory in Europe of May 8 as the beginning of peace. France had found peace on the continent – in its colonies, however, the country found itself embroiled in constant war until 1962 (leaving aside a few months in 1945/46 and 1954).