General Jacques de Bollardière, a distinguished soldier who had fought in Norway, at El Alamein, with the maquis in the Ardennes as well as at Dien Bien Phu, and who was shortly to find himself seriously at odds with army policy in Algeria, criticises the professional army after Indo-China because: "instead of coldly analysing with courageous lucidity its strategic and tactical errors, it gave itself up to a too human inclination and tried - not without reason, however - to excuse its mistakes by the faults of civil authority and public opinion". He was reminded of the young Germans of post-1918 seeking to justify a notion of a "generalised treachery".
( Alistair Horne )
[ A Savage War of Peace: ]
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