An Evolution of Thought: Albert Camus on Violence During World War II and the Algerian War (December 2018)

Albert Camus. Image from New Yorker.

World War II and the Algerian War were two significant conflicts that defined the 20th century French experience. World War II saw the rise of Vichy France, a government installed by Germans in the occupied northern and western areas of France after the Armistice of June 22, 1940. [1] The Vichy regime employed the Milice française (a paramilitary group that enlisted Frenchmen) to fight against the rising French Resistance to German oppression. Against the puppet government was Free France, which organized the French Resistance against Vichy France, aided by a dramatically increasing number of recruits from metropolitan France by 1944.[2] Aligned with the Resistance, Albert Camus was editor-in-chief to the clandestine paper, Combat, from 1943 to 1947. Combat and similar underground papers were used during this time both to circulate information about the Resistance and to rally national solidarity.[3] The French Resistance embodied French unity and identity for many who, like Camus, strove to fight against the oppression and violent measures of Vichy France. While France was liberated in 1944 and World War II ended one year later, it was plunged back into war only a decade later. The Algerian War, lasting from 1954 to 1962, marked a conflict between France and the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN), who represented France’s colony Algeria’s fight for independence. The war was a critical decolonization war and was known for its level of violence (the FLN was known for its terrorist attacks and the French for their equally disturbing counterterror attacks that often involved torture and even executions).[4] As was the case in World War II, Albert Camus made his voice heard in the midst of the conflict, particularly through his writing.

French Algerian writer and philosopher Albert Camus’ works during World War II and the Algerian War were largely informed by the experiences these events produced. Camus wrote several of his most well-known books during these periods, with perhaps his most prominent work, The Outsider, published in 1942 in the middle of World War II. During the Algerian War, He also wrote and The Fall and Exile and the Kingdom, published respectively in 1956 and 1957. These fictional works displayed Camus’ absurdist philosophy as he explored existential questions (although he rejected the label ‘existentialist’) and often paralleled issues such as identity faced by Camus (and, in his mind, France). Some of his other, nonfictional works correspond directly to historical developments in the mid 20th century. Albert Camus participated in the French Resistance through his writings in Combat, throughout which “He [Camus] envisaged a new France emerging out of the experience of occupation, liberated from the shame of defeat and collaboration” through purges of Nazi supporters.[5] Camus continued to write with Combat after the end of World War II, but in the aftermath World War II, he adopted a much more peaceful outlook, and by the time of the Algerian War he developed a set of beliefs in which every life was valued. Rejecting the violence and terror-centric values of both sides, he proposed a Civilian Truce, calling for a cease-fire and an end to the slaughter of civilians. While the proposal was seen as too radical and was rejected by both the Algerians and the French, it marked the crux of an evolution of his view on violence. Albert Camus’ view of violence evolved from a nationalized perspective biased toward France during World War II to a moral perspective in which the protection of every innocent (or civilian) life was essential to maintaining the freedom of the nation in the Algerian War.

In his Albert Camus: From the Absurd to Revolt, John Foley argues World War II left Camus with both a forceful nationalistic sentiment and a humanitarian stance against the legitimization of the death of one person at the hands of another. Foley states that “The experience of Nazi Occupation and indeed the very existence of Nazism itself required Camus to address with greater urgency the questions… regarding the possibility… of establishing an ethical code strong enough to both refute nihilism (of which Camus saw Nazism as exemplary) and justify political action.”[6] According to Foley, World War II provoked in Camus a sense of intense opposition to Nazi Germany so that his initial writings in Combat favored a purge of Nazi supporters in France.[7] This stance continued into the immediate aftermath of World War II, when Foley states that “Camus was among the many intellectuals and writers to advocate harsh and swift justice in cases involving those who had collaborated with the Nazis.”[8] In this, Foley demonstrated that the war inspired a deep sense of French nationalism in Camus (although only toward those who had remained loyal to France). However, Foley notes a different and sometimes contradictory humanitarian ethic that Albert Camus gained from the violent experience of the war. According to Foley, Camus actually “signed a letter appealing for clemency in the case of Robert Brasillach… who collaborated with the Nazis” in 1945, and that Camus stated that “he had signed the petition, not for Brasillach… but because of his opposition to the death penalty.”[9] Foley demonstrates that World War II had an intense impact on Camus’ views on nationalism and violence.

David Carroll sees the ideas Camus began to develop at the end of the war reach fruition during the Algerian War in his article, "The End(s) of the Intellectual: Ethics, Politics, Terror.” Camus’ singular perspective on the violence in the Algerian War was likely influenced to some extent by his unique position as a pied-noir intellectual. The pieds-noirs were people of European, particularly French, descent born in Algeria during French colonial rule. With the Algerian War began came the possibility (which came to be reality at the end of the war) that the pieds-noirs would have to flee the country after the war.[10] Camus’ conflicting connections with both Algeria and France perhaps made themselves evident in his views and in his proposed Civilian Truce, which treated France and Algeria equally (despite his officially declared supported French colonial rule).[11] According to Carroll, Camus believed that the “cycle of violence in Algeria… was fueled not by FLN (Front de Libération Nationale) terrorism alone but also by the terror of the counterterrorist tactics used by the French army…. including torture, summary executions, incarcerations without proof of wrong doing or a trial…”[12] This illustrates the violent struggle that was the civil war as well as the prevalence of violent measures on both sides of the war. Carroll also demonstrates that Camus did not favor one or the other side of the Algerian War but found fault with the extremity of the violence caused by both sides, particularly against the innocent. Carroll argues that Camus eventually sought to reject the dichotomized choice of siding with aggressor or victim, leading him to invent his Civilian Truce to seek liberation for innocent people. The Algerian War broadened the scope of Albert Camus’ anti-violent sentiment from its nationalistic focus in World War II.

In the midst of World War II, Albert Camus’ 1944 article in Combat, “Outlaws,” attacks the Milice française for creating division and violence and gives Frenchmen a national choice: the French struggle for peace or German perpetuation of violence. The article criticizes French citizens who join the Milice française. He states, “...it [the Milice] also enlists crime on behalf of treason. For the past four years, the enemy has not let a single day go by without trying to turn some Frenchmen against others.”[13] Here, Camus claims that the Milice is a tool that the Germans are using stir up national division and violence amongst the French. He suggests that Germany is bringing its treasonous ways to France, and thus equates the Milice with criminal action. He creates a dichotomy: on the one hand, you can side with the Resistance and support France, and on the other, you can become a part of the Milice and support Germany. Camus further states, “The ‘hero of two wars’ claims to be carrying on an admirable French tradition. Apparently it consists in taking hostages, killing intellectuals and workers, and relying on a servile press to heap lies and insults on the victims of torture and humiliation.”[14] Camus argues that no central ground exists between German supporters and French supporters, and that Frenchmen in the Milice are hypocrites who become violent toward their own nation and towards innocent non-combatants. A rejection of violence, the statement also condemns the groups’ harsher methods including torture. He contends that joining the Milice (in effect, joining that Germans) renders a Frenchman barbarous and capable of committing terrible acts against the freedom, rights, and values of true Frenchmen. By identifying Frenchmen who reject the French Resistance as violent, barbarous Germans, Camus argues that the only option for people who are true Frenchmen is to join the French Resistance against the Germans. In this way, Camus negatively portrays any violence coming from a non-French (German) source. However, he sees the violence of the French Resistance as justified as France is portrayed as a victim fighting for peace rather than an antagonistic nation creating division. Coming just a few months before the end of German occupation of France, Camus employs this neatly divided national polarization to rally solidarity against Nazi Germany.

After the conclusion of World War II, Camus’ 1946 essay in Combat, “Toward Dialogue,” develops a similar theme of moral choice as he urges the French to choose to stand against murder. Although Combat would serve a primarily French audience, he defined the choice as being relevant to the “five continents” in which violence and conflict existed. He sets up the ethical dilemma: “in the midst of a murderous world, we must decide to reflect on murder and choose. If we can do this, we will divide ourselves into two groups: those who if need be would be willing to commit murder or become accomplices to murder, and those who would refuse to do so with every fiber of their being.[15] In this, Camus maintains that there are two categories of people: moral and amoral, murderous and opposed to murder. However, he discards earlier nationally defined positions in favor of the idea that one’s morality is determined by one’s stance on the issue of murder itself, rather than upon one’s national identity. In this way, Camus develops commonality from national solidarity to a sort of solidarity of humanity. This human communion is divided only by the fact that immoral people would promote murder (for instance, for the sake of war) and the morally upright would reject it. In this sense, there would be only one real or “honorable choice,” and that would be to delegitimize murder.[16]

A decade later, during the Algerian War, Camus expanded on this choice in his lecture, "Appeal for a Civilian Truce in Algeria,” in which he calls for Algerians and Frenchmen to support his truce to protect innocent civilian lives during the Algerian War, arguing that such a truce would not only prevent further deaths but would liberate the French nation. Camus states that “Whatever the ancient and deep origins of the Algerian tragedy, one fact remains: no cause justifies the death of the innocent.”[17] In this, Camus appeals to French citizens’ sense of humanity or moral awareness, urging them to recognize the unnatural and wrong nature of death by war. He further states that, should the war continue and should one side fail, “We should have to face a definitive break, the destruction of all hope, and a carnage of which we have so far had only a slight foretaste.”[18] Camus calls upon a sense of French nationalism that is extended to the Algerians, and argues for unity and peace between Frenchmen and Algerians founded in both their common nationality and the commonality of the existence of innocents (noncombatants). It also implies the negative effects of war to a country’s morale, and even to its progress. He further states:

The task of men of culture and faith… [is] to remain what they are, to help man against what is oppressing him, to favor freedom against the fatalities that close in upon it. That is the condition under which history really progresses, innovates—in a word, creates…. In order someday to reach those world-wide perspectives, we must now gather together… without making any other claims yet, that on a single spot of the globe a handful of innocent victims be spared. But since that is our task, however obscure and ungrateful it may be, we must tackle it decisively in order to deserve living someday as free men—in other words, as men who refuse either to practice or to suffer terror.

Here, Camus argues that by keeping the war fought by murderers (not innocent) separate from civilians (innocent), the battle against oppression could be continued. Significantly, he does not reject the Algerian War, but argues that freedom is jeopardized by the mistreatment of the innocent. Camus also invokes the idea of progress. He argues that national freedom is essential to allowing progress to occur and argues that even a few innocent people were killed, neither side of a war would be completely free. In this way, Camus identifies French citizens (and individuals in general) very closely with their nation, because what happens to one citizen affects the entire nation. Similarly, Camus implies that the health of the nation is crucial to individual citizens, and suggests that a nation at war does ill for its citizens. Combining a nationalistic lens with a rejection of death and the sacrifices it entails, Camus attempts to convince the French and Algerian forces to call for a cease-fire.

During World War II, between the wars, and during the Algerian War, Albert Camus’ view on violence shifted from a derogatory stance toward Germans in World War II, to a moral stance against violence after World War II, to a campaign for the lives of innocent non-combatants in the Algerian War. In each case, Camus’ perspective held and innocent and guilty party, respectively: France versus Germany, morality versus immorality and finally civilians versus soldiers. These contrasting parties are significant, as each contrast offers a choice, perhaps a nod to existential thinking demonstrated by Camus as in many of his absurdist works. In the final case, both Algeria and France chose not to accept his Civilian Truce to protect non-combatants. While Albert Camus died of a car accident in 1960 and did not live to see the end of the war, in March of 1962, the Évian Accords were signed, and France withdrew from Algeria. 900,000 pieds-noirs (European-Algerians like Camus himself) fled to France in the following months out of fear of the FLN, and many terrorist attacks were carried out by the Organisation armée secrete (OAS), which were underground French troops trying to prevent Algerian independence.[19] Even as France began to take on Camus’ liberal values of freedom and peace that favored the citizen, Algeria came to represent the reverse – a descent into disorder, with many Algerian citizens living in fear. This continued on into through the century, and Patricia Lorcin notes in an article that “During the 1990s Algeria tore itself apart, echoing the violence of the Algerian War of Independence and the anti-violent message of Camus undoubtedly struck a chord.”[20] Certainly the Algerian civil war, other revolutionary movements, and even recent imperialism have shifted the light Camus sheds on such issues. Although his humanitarian ideals may not have been realized in Algeria, the spirit of some of Camus’ concepts lived on in Algeria in the following years. Algeria found support in the Third-World movement, an interesting parallel to Camus’ position in the Civilian Truce of rejecting two majority parties in favor of a third, alternative route. Although Albert Camus was unsuccessful at inspiring policy change in Algeria, his intellectual legacy continues to inspire conversation even to the present.

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———. "Combat, Underground No. 57, May 1944: 'For Three Hours They Shot Frenchmen,'" translated by Arthur Goldhammer. In Camus at Combat: Writing 1944-1947, edited by Jacqueline Lévi-Valensi and David Carroll, 5-6. Translated by Arthur Goldhammer. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007. Accessed October 20, 2018. http://assets.press.princeton.edu/chapters/s8020.pdf.

———. "Combat, Underground No. 56, April 1944: 'Outlaws,'" translated by Arthur Goldhammer. In Camus at Combat: Writing 1944-1947, edited by Jacqueline Lévi-Valensi and David Carroll, 3-4. Translated by Arthur Goldhammer. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007. Accessed October 20, 2018. http://assets.press.princeton.edu/chapters/s8020.pdf. 

———. The Fall. Translated by Justin O'Brien. New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1991.

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———. "November 30, 1946: 'Neither Victims nor Executioners: Toward Dialogue,'" translated by Arthur Goldhammer. In Camus at Combat: Writing 1944-1947, edited by Jacqueline Lévi-Valensi and David Carroll, 274-76. Translated by Arthur Goldhammer. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007. Accessed December 14, 2018. https://adamgomez.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/camus-neither-victims-nor-executioners.pdf.

———. The Plague. Translated by Stuart Gilbert. New York, NY: Random House US, 2012.

———. The Rebel. Translated by Oliver Todd. London, England: Penguin, 2013. Accessed September 7, 2018. http://www.worldcat.org/title/rebel/oclc/864998730&referer=brief_results.

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 Notes:

[1] Joshua Cole and Carol Symes, Western Civilizations: Their History and Their Cultures, 18th ed. (New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 2017), 2: 707.

[2] Thomas R. Christofferson and Michael S. Christofferson, "Resistance," in France during World War II: From Defeat to Liberation (New York, NY: Fordham University, 2006), 134, http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt13x0b92.10.

[3] Jonathan H. King, "Emmanuel D'Astier and the Nature of the French Resistance," Journal of Contemporary History 8, no. 4 (1973): 27, http://www.jstor.org/stable/260126.

[4] David Carroll, "The End(s) of the Intellectual: Ethics, Politics, Terror," South Central Review 25, no. 3 (Fall 2008): 118-119, https://search.proquest.com/docview/226841135?accountid=2996.

[5] Foley, "Camus and Combat," 34.

[6] John Foley, "Camus and Combat," in Albert Camus: From the Absurd to Revolt (London, England: Routledge, 2014), 30 https://www.questiaschool.com/read/126020807/albert-camus-from-the-absurd-to-revolt.

[7] Ibid., 34.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid., 35.

[10] Patricia M E Lorcin, "Politics, Artistic Merit, and the Posthumous Reputation of Albert Camus," South Central School 31, no. 3 (Fall 2014): 17, accessed September 18, 2018, https://search.proquest.com/docview/1629602165?accountid=2996.

[11] Ibid., 120.

[12] David Carroll, "The End(s) of the Intellectual: Ethics, Politics, Terror," South Central Review 25, no. 3 (Fall 2008): 118-119, https://search.proquest.com/docview/226841135?accountid=2996.

[13] Albert Appeal for a Civilian Truce

, "Combat, Underground No. 56, April 1944: 'Outlaws,'" trans. Arthur Goldhammer, in Camus at Combat: Writing 1944-1947, ed. Jacqueline Lévi-Valensi and David Carroll, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007), 3-4, accessed October 20, 2018, http://assets.press.princeton.edu/chapters/s8020.pdf.

[14] Ibid., 4.

[15] Albert Camus, "November 30, 1946: 'Neither Victims nor Executioners: Toward Dialogue,'" trans. Arthur Goldhammer, in Camus at Combat: Writing 1944-1947, ed. Jacqueline Lévi-Valensi and David Carroll, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007), 275, accessed December 14, 2018, https://adamgomez.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/camus-neither-victims-nor-executioners.pdf.

[16] Ibid., 276.

[17] Albert Camus, "Appeal for a Civilian Truce in Algeria," lecture, February 1956, Prague Writer's Festival, last modified January 1, 2010, accessed November 2, 2018, http://www.pwf.cz/archivy/texts/readings/albert-camus-appeal-for-a-civilian-truce-in-algeria_2881.html.

[18] Ibid.

[19] John Foley, "Camus and Combat," in Albert Camus: From the Absurd to Revolt (London, England: Routledge, 2014), 169, https://www.questiaschool.com/read/126020807/albert-camus-from-the-absurd-to-revolt.

[20] Patricia M E Lorcin, "Politics, Artistic Merit, and the Posthumous Reputation of Albert Camus," South Central School 31, no. 3 (Fall 2014): 18, accessed September 18, 2018, https://search.proquest.com/docview/1629602165?accountid=2996.