French Army Strategy and Strategic Culture during the Algerian War, 1954-1958

Public Deposited

Analytics

Last Modified

Creator

Abstract

This thesis examines the various means by which strategy was communicated to field commanders during the first half of the French war in Algeria, from 1954 to 1958, and then explores how the actions of a particular regimental commander and his subordinates provides testimony of how they synthesized the concept of strategy for them. Studying wartime strategy solely from the perspective of military and civilian high command leadership is insufficient because it only addresses one of several influences (schools, doctrine, past and current warfighting experiences, and logistical structure, to name a few) that interact together to modify how field commanders actually think about and conduct war. This thesis proposes that studying an army's strategic culture, understood as the expression of a way of war, rather than simply an army's strategy, provides a suitable synthetic approach by which historians and strategists can answer useful and specific questions concerning how and why commanders i

Date of publication