The most traumatic event in recent French history was unquestionably, the Algerian war, which claimed the lives of 20,000 French soldiers and an estimated 1,000,000 Algerians between 1954 and 1962. French memories of the war are still bitter, but passions have recently cooled enough to permit a few uncensored examinations of a conflict that brought France perilously close to civil war. First to "bring the skeleton out of the closet," as one reviewer put it, was General Jacques Massu, whose book La Vraie Balaille d'Alger (The Real Battle of Algiers) describes in chilling detail the tortures carried out by French paratroopers...
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