13. When French Settlers in Algeria Were Angered by the Natives’ Celebration of the End of WWII
WWII in Europe ended on May 8, 1945, with Germany’s surrender. It was a day of celebration in the victor nations, but the celebrations took a tragic turn in the French colony of Algeria. In the eastern Algerian town of Setif, thousands of native Algerian men, women, and children, held a parade to commemorate the victory. Over 200,000 Algerians had been conscripted by their French colonial overlords during the war, and the marchers planned to lay a wreath at a monument erected in honor of Algerians killed in the conflict.
However, the parade, whose numbers included many Algerian veterans recently returned from the front lines, angered French settlers and French police. The French feared both the march’s undertones of Algerian nationalism, and the assertion of a right to equality with French settlers. Algeria was considered a part of metropolitan France, but it was governed with a form of apartheid in which French white settlers were privileged above native Algerians. Any attempt by the natives to seek equality with French settlers was bound to upset the latter, and when that happened in Setif, things took a horrific turn.