The destruction of Setif is a good example. Despite the fact that most of the fighting against the Axis forces and Vichy France in North Africa had been conducted with honour and dispatch by Algerian troops the French decided to celebrate the victory of the Allies (a small part of whom were French) by committing an act of barbarism and genocide that echoes to this day. In one weekend of violence they murdered 45,000 Algerians.

On May 8, 1945, a day chosen by the allies to celebrate their victory over Nazi Germany, thousands of Algerians gathered near the Abou Dher El-Ghafari mosque in Setif for a peaceful march - for which the sous-prefet had given permission. It was a market day. At 9am, led by a young scout Saal Bouzid, whose name had been drawn for the honour of carrying the national flag, the demonstrators set off. A few minutes later the crowd, chanting ‘vive l’independance’ and other nationalist slogans, came under fire from troops commanded by General Duval and brought in from Constantine.

Saal Bouzid fell dead, becoming a national martyr. The scene soon turned into a massacre - the streets and houses being littered with dead bodies. Witnesses claim terrible scenes, that legionnaires seized babies by their feet and dashed their heads against rocks, that pregnant mothers were disemboweled, that soldiers dropped grenades down chimneys to kill the occupants of homes, that mourners were machine gunned while taking the dead to the cemetery.

A public record states that the European inhabitants were so frightened by the events that they asked that all those responsible for the protest movement should be shot. The carnage spread and, during the days that followed, some 45,000 Algerians were killed. Villages were shelled by artillery and remote hamlets were bombed with aircraft.

A Colonel in charge of burials being criticized for slowness told another officer ‘You are killing them faster than I can bury them.’ These incidents led to the upsurge of the PPA and ultimately, 17 years later to the country’s independence. In the retaliatory violence that immediately followed 104 Europeans were assassinated, but by the end several thousands were to die.

These incidents were particularly hard for Algerians who had fought the Nazis alongside the French forces, some of whom came home to find that their families had been decimated by the troops of General de Gaulle.

The Middle East was not better. The Allies had already had the experience of De Gaulle’s behaviour in the campaign in the Levant. During the Second World War the Germans concentrated their Central Asian policies on supporting the regime of Rashid Ali and the colonels of the "Golden Square" in Iraq. They were trying to block British access to India and to the oil supplies of Iraq, then under British influence. In the spring of 1941 the French Government (Vichy) granted permission for German and Italian aircraft to refuel in the Levant en route to Iraq. The French were still the ‘Mandated’ rulers of Syria and Lebanon. The British were urged by the ‘Free French’ under de Gaulle to intervene against the Vichy French.

 British forces in the Middle East under Wavell invaded Syria and Lebanon from Palestine and Transjordan on Sunday, 8 June 1941 (with columns arriving from Iraq later in the campaign) under the codename "Operation Exporter". De Gaulle and the Allies. At that time the ‘Allies’ were only the members of the British Commonwealth. The Soviet Union had not yet been invaded and the Japanese had yet to bomb Pearl Harbor.

Instead of a quick victory, the Australian, Indian, British, and Free French forces slugged it out with the Vichy defenders and suffered several serious setbacks before the ceasefire on 12 July. The reason that the Free French and the Vichy French showed such valour was that they were both made up of Senegalese troops and Foreign Legionnaires. There were very few French actually involved, Free or otherwise. By July most of the Free French forces (especially the Senegalese), having had enough of killing their countrymen, were deemed of questionable value and regarded as unreliable by British headquarters.

When the campaign ended, with an Allied victory only some 5,700 (out of about 26,000) Vichy troops elected to join de Gaulle. The remainder were evacuated by sea to French North Africa under Allied supervision. The Senegalese were tired of fighting other Senegalese and went home. The War in the Lebanon was much quicker as the French soldiers quit after six days because they had few Senegalese and limited Legionnaires. An armistice was signed in Acre on July 14, 1941.

The French were still as devious and unprincipled as ever. After signing the Acre Armistice, General Charles de Gaulle visited Lebanon, officially ending Vichy control. Lebanese national leaders took the opportunity to ask de Gaulle to end the French Mandate and unconditionally recognize Lebanon's independence. As a result of national and international pressure, on November 26, 1941, General Georges Catroux, delegate general under de Gaulle, proclaimed the independence of Lebanon in the name of his government. The United States, Britain, the Soviet Union, the Arab states, and certain Asian countries recognized this independence. Some of them exchanged ambassadors with Beirut. However, even though the French technically recognized Lebanon's independence, they continued to exercise authority.

General elections were held, and on September 21, 1943, the new Chamber of Deputies elected Bishara al Khoury as president. He appointed Riyad as Solh as prime minister and asked him to form the first government of independent Lebanon. On November 8, 1943, the Chamber of Deputies amended the Constitution, abolishing the articles that referred to the Mandate and modifying those that specified the powers of the high commissioner, thus unilaterally ending the Mandate. The French authorities responded by arresting a number of prominent Lebanese politicians, including the president, the prime minister, and other cabinet members, and exiling them to the Castle of Rashayya, located about sixty-five kilometres east of Sidon. This action united the Christian and Muslim leaders in their determination to get rid of the French. France, finally yielding to mounting internal pressure and to the influence of Britain, the United States, and the Arab countries, released the prisoners at Rashayya on November 22, 1943; since then, this day has been celebrated as Independence Day.

There was one positive effect of the French defeat by the British in the Syria-Lebanon Mandate; the creation of the Palmach. Throughout the Second World War many Palestinian Jews fought for Britain against the Axis.  Many units were raised including pioneer and transport companies.  Some Jews served with the TJFF and an infantry brigade was raised and fought in the latter stages of the Italian campaign.  Special, commando type units were also raised and played an important role in Operation Exporter, the British invasion of Vichy French Syria in 1941.

On 15th May 1941, the leadership of the Yishuv (the Jewish community in Palestine), in consultation with the British military command in Palestine, established nine pelugot machaz ("strike companies") and so the Palmach was born.  Palmach is the Hebrew acronym for pelugot machaz.  These nine companies were comprised of experienced guerrilla fighters, most of them veterans of the 1936-39 Arab rebellion and many of them had been trained by Captain Orde Wingate, later commander of the Chindits in Burma.  These new units were trained and armed by the British Army in Palestine. 

Six hundred Palmachniks participated in the invasion of Syria.  Others also supported the invasion of Lebanon.  Forty hand-picked men, including Yitzhak Rabin, went in to Vichy held territory on June 7th 1941, the day before the invasion proper, to reconnoitre the western approach from Palestine and to sabotage transportation and communications infrastructure.  They blew up bridges and rail lines and cut telephone and electricity lines. This is where Moshe Dayan lost his eye. 

The rest of the Palmachniks went in the next day to serve as pathfinders or guides for the Allies.  The frontier country was well known to the Palmachniks for many had operated along the Syrian frontier. Captain Orde Wingate's Special Night Squads engaged in counterinsurgency actions during the '36-'39 Arab rebellion, striking at Arab insurgents in the Syrian and Lebanese border villages they used as jumping off points.  Operation Exporter forced the surrender of Vichy forces in Syria after only six days.  The Palmach became the first elements of the Haganah and later the Israeli Defence Force. Many of its earliest military commandos were participants in the War in Syria.

However, the area which caused the most difficulty for the U.S. in particular, was the continued French meddling in Vietnam, long after its disastrous defeat and withdrawal from that country after Dien Bien Phu. The French, which had long ties to the Vietnamese military, whose officer corps it had trained in France, and had a large business colony in Saigon and Hanoi, were determined that the U.S. would not be allowed to establish a presence in the country. A contemporary analysis of the French role spells this out in detail.

Despite an expanding U.S. military presence in Vietnam, the French used its ties to elements in the military (among them ‘Big Minh’) and the political (the ambivalent Dr. Sung) to meddle in Vietnamese politics and to thwart U.S. efforts towards stability.

It is important to understand these themes in any evaluation of French policy towards the U.S. efforts in Iraq, the search for autochthonous self-determination in the Ivory Coast and the Cameroons; and in the genocide in Rwanda.

I may be, as some say, anti-French, but I come by this view legitimately.