At the end of World War II France was immediately confronted with the beginnings of the decolonisation movement . The French army , which had employed indigenous North African spahis and tirailleurs in almost all of its campaigns since 1830 , was the leading force in opposition to decolonization , which was perceived as a humiliation . In Algeria the Army repressed an extensive rising in and around Sétif in May 1945 with heavy fire : figures for Algerian deaths vary between 45,000 as claimed by Radio Cairo at the time and the official French figure of 1,020 . The Army saw maintaining control of Algeria as a high priority . By this time , one million French settlers had established themselves , alongside an indigenous population of nine million . When it decided that politicians were about to sell them out and give independence to Algeria , the Army engineered a military coup that toppled the civilian government and put General de Gaulle back in power in the May 1958 crisis . De Gaulle , however , recognized that Algeria was a dead weight and had to be cut free . Four retired generals then launched the Algiers putsch of 1961 against de Gaulle himself , but it failed . After 400,000 deaths , Algeria finally became independent . Hundreds of thousands of Harkis , Moslems loyal to Paris , went into exile in France , where they and their children and grandchildren remain in poorly assimilated " banlieue " suburbs
Sétif
Sétif and Guelma massacre
French Army