France's Crimes on 8 May 1945: A Statistical Study Based on Historical Sources

Abstract

The massacres of 8 May 1945 are among the important issues in the history of contemporary Algeria during the period of French occupation — issues that have remained lodged in the national memory and bound up with colonial France's tragic past. Historical sources have addressed them, and they continue to attract the interest of researchers and those concerned with the file of national memory, given their importance, their far-reaching repercussions, and the disagreements surrounding the final toll of victims.

The French military and civilian authorities put forward divergent statistics through which they sought to minimize the scale of the extermination, whereas the Algerian estimates were closer to the truth of the colonial repression, while foreign figures (British, American, and even Arab) presented a more neutral toll that highlighted the atrocity of what the French committed against an unarmed people who had come out in peaceful demonstrations calling for the application of the principle of peoples' right to self-determination.