France Used Chemical Weapons On A large Scale Against Algerians 

The movie “Algeria: France used chemical weapons”  banned by the 1925 Geneva Protocol in its war against Algeria from 1954 to 1959, making France, which was the first of the 135 countries to sign the convention against such weapons, the country that used them the most.

The film exposes this shameful secret as Claire Pierre, its director, evokes the memories and personal archives of French soldiers and Algerian combatants or civilians based on a presentation based on the work of historian Christophe Lafaye, who is engaged in an accreditation thesis dedicated to this topic.

Despite many administrative obstacles, Christophe Lafaye, who specializes in military history, extracted several documents describing how the political decision was made in March 1956, as evidenced by the letter of the Joint Supreme Commander of the 10th Military Region (covering Algeria) to Maurice Bourges-Maunoury, Secretary of State for the Armed Forces (Land), entitled: “Use of Chemical Means”. “The Colonel of Special Weapons visited me and informed me that he had obtained your approval in principle for the use of chemical means in Algeria.”

In September 1956, the minutes of a meeting at the General Staff showed a “study of the general policy for the use of chemical weapons in Algeria,” which was aimed at destroying caves where “revolutionaries” were hiding – The documents then described them as “outlaws” – capturing or killing the occupants and rendering them unusable.

From then on, the military conducted tests to determine the “product to be used in each particular case,” as well as the methods of use and the personnel who would carry out these tasks, and the Special Weapons Unit was created in December 1956.

General Salan distributed about a hundred divisions across the entire Algerian territory before the Schall Plan revisited this organization in 1959. The material was taken from World War I stockpiles of CN2D, which was packaged in bombs and canisters, a toxic combination of Arsenic (Adamcet or DM) and highly poisonous chloroacetophenone (CN).

The film also recounts the testimonies of Algerian survivors of the massacre at Ghar Ben Chtouh in the Auras, which was gassed on March 22, 1959, with about 150 local residents inside.

According to historian Christophe Lafaye, between 8,000 and 10,000 gassings were carried out during the war. The historian was able to document and map 440 of them, although a full inventory of these operations has yet to be finalized. It is worth noting that it was not until 1993 that France finally banned chemical weapons and their manufacture.