The Torturer's Dilemma: Analyzing the Logic of Torture for Information

Jacques de Bollardière, recently posted back from Algiers, had published in L'Express 90 a letter warning
of “the terrible danger there would be for us to lose sight (…) of the moral values which (sic) alone
have, up until now, created the grandeur of our civilization and of our army,” an offense for which he
was sentenced to sixty days of 'fortress arrest.' (Horne, p. 203) Two days later, the chief of the Algiers
prefecture, Paul Teitgen, offered his resignation on March 29 th as his ability to ensure that the law
(which after all forbade torture) had become a casualty of the Battle; while he agreed to stay on as a
watchdog over the doings of the military, the continuance of torture, the 'disappearance' of over 3,000
suspects in military custody, and the formation of the DOP (created specifically as an interrogation
unit) eventually led him to resign once more in September. 91 Torture had also become a political issue
in the metropole, despite government harassment and seizure of newspapers that dealt too directly with
the subject, thanks to the publication of essays against torture, the memoirs of returning reservists who
had seen (and in some cases participated in) abuses, and the accounts of those who had undergone the
agonies themselves. 92
But while the fight over the use of torture was a major issue in the last months of the fourth
republic, it was in no way determinative of government policy. The basic problem lay in the nature of
the consensus on Algeria that dominated the republican elites: that Algeria must remain French, and
that any methods to that end would have to be accepted as legitimate. 93 This consensus was enforced
by the fact of the fourth republic's endemic weakness: with the average government lasting six months,
and the longest-serving government (under Mollet) lasting only 18, there existed a host of faultlines
that might (and often did) tear down a government. The Algerian question was one of these: because
governing coalitions tended to be centrist, and faced strong opposition on both sides (the Gaullists on
the right, and the Communists on the left), keeping the Algerian representatives and their allies on
board was a major concern, and gave the Algerian elites an effective veto on policies they did not
approve of. In addition to securing a 500,000 man army to control the colony, this veto also allowed
them to gut the provisions of each attempt by the metropole to reform and moderate colonialism.
90 This newspaper would be a major voice in the anti-torture movement under the editorship of Jean-Jacques Servan
Scheiber, whose semi-autobiographical novel, “Lieutenant in Algeria,” (1958) recounted his recent service in Algeria.
91 Needless to say, the 'disappeared' were in reality summarily executed by the military, usually through the method known
as the corvée de bois – the 'wood gathering party' – where captives were taken to the rural areas and shot 'while trying to
escape.' (Talbott, p. 92)
92 As an example of the latter, Henri Alleg, the editor of the Communist newspaper Alger Républicain, recounted his
month-long torture at the hands of the 10 th DP in La Question (1958). His book has the distinction of being 'the first
book banned in France since the eighteenth century.” (Le Seuer, p. xiv in the preface to Alleg, 1958)
93 For a discussion of this consensus, see Smith (1978)
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