Editing Algerian War of Independence (section)

=== Algerian Nationalism ===
[[File:Algier1954.ogg|thumb|1954 film about French Algeria]]

Both Muslim and European Algerians took part in World War II and fought for France. Algerian Muslims served as ''tirailleurs'' (such regiments were created as early as 1842) and spahis; and French settlers as Zouaves or Chasseurs d'Afrique. US President Woodrow Wilson's 1918 Fourteen Points had the fifth read: "A free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims, based upon a strict observance of the principle that in determining all such questions of [[sovereignty]] the interests of the populations concerned must have equal weight with the equitable claims of the government whose title is to be determined." Some Algerian intellectuals, dubbed ''oulémas'', began to nurture the desire for independence or, at the very least, autonomy and self-rule.

Within that context, a grandson of [[Emir Abdelkader|Abd el-Kadir]] spearheaded the resistance against the French in the first half of the 20th century and was a member of the directing committee of the French Communist Party. In 1926, he founded the ''Étoile Nord-Africaine'' ("North African Star"), to which [[Messali Hadj]], also a member of the Communist Party and of its affiliated trade union, the [[Confédération générale du travail unitaire]] (CGTU), joined the following year.

The North African Star broke from the Communist Party in 1928, before being dissolved in 1929 at Paris's demand. Amid growing discontent from the Algerian population, the French Third Republic|Third Republic (1871–1940) acknowledged some demands, and the Popular Front initiated the Blum-Viollette proposal in 1936, which was supposed to enlighten the Indigenous Code by giving French citizenship to a small number of Muslims. The ''pieds-noirs'' (Algerians of European origin) violently demonstrated against it and the North African Party also opposed it, leading to its abandonment. The pro-independence party was dissolved in 1937, and its leaders were charged with the illegal reconstitution of a dissolved league, leading to Messali Hadj's 1937 founding of the ''Parti du peuple algérien'' (Algerian People's Party, PPA), which, no longer espoused full independence but only extensive autonomy. This new party was dissolved in 1939. Under Vichy France, the French State attempted to abrogate the Crémieux Decree to suppress the Jews' French citizenship, but the measure was never implemented. December 2016

On the other hand, the nationalist leader [[Ferhat Abbas]] founded the Algerian Popular Union (''Union populaire algérienne'') in 1938. In 1943, Abbas wrote the Algerian People's Manifesto (''Manifeste du peuple algérien''). Arrested after the Sétif massacre of May 8, 1945, when the French Army and pieds-noirs mobs killed between 6,000 and 30,000 Algerians, Abbas founded the [[Democratic Union of the Algerian Manifesto]] (UDMA) in 1946 and was elected as a deputy. Founded in 1954, the [[National Liberation Front (Algeria)|National Liberation Front]] (FLN) created an armed wing, the ''Armée de Libération Nationale'' (National Liberation Army) to engage in an armed struggle against French authority. Many Algerian soldiers served for the French Army in the French Indochina War had strong sympathy to the Vietnamese fighting against France and took up their experience to support the ALN.

France, which had just lost French Indochina, was determined not to lose the next colonial war, particularly in its oldest and nearest major colony, which was regarded as a part of Metropolitan France (rather than a colony), by French law.