For 36 years, it was the war France wanted to forget. Mr Jean-Pierre Masseret, Secretary of State for War Veterans at the Defence Ministry, has finally pronounced the words "Algerian War".
This week, the government announced that a bronze plaque dedicated "to those who died for France during the Algerian War and battles in Tunisia and Morocco 1952-1962" will be placed under the Arc de Triomphe. France will build a memorial to the Algerian conflict in Paris in 2002.
So why did it take so long? "France couldn't recognise the term `war' because unlike other colonies, Algeria was France," Prof Benjamin Stora, France's foremost historian of Algeria, told The Irish Times.
"It is difficult for France to admit that she was at war with herself. We had a hard time ridding ourselves of this legal fiction."
When the war started in 1954, Algeria was composed of three French departments, where only the European minority enjoyed the privileges of citizenship. More than 1.4 million Frenchmen fought in Algeria, and 23,196 died there. The Algerians claim 1.5 million Arabs were killed, although French historians such as Mr Stora prefer to believe 300,000 is a more realistic figure. Among the Frenchmen wounded in Algeria was a Lieut Jacques Chirac.
Both sides tortured and committed atrocities. France was bitterly divided between those who supported independence for the Algerians and those who believed in Algerie francaise. When President Charles de Gaulle bowed to the inevitable and opted for independence, his generals revolted.
"The Algerian War caused an enormous trauma in French society," Mr Stora continues. "It was a lost war that forced one million pieds noirs into exile, that led to the abandonment of the harkis, the Muslim soldiers who fought with France."
For three decades, Algeria was a sort of black hole in the French collective memory. The war was referred to as "the events" and all who were linked to it were covered by six successive pardons. "The chain of amnesties created a form of amnesia," Mr Stora says. "The process of mourning, of accepting the loss of Algeria, of accepting defeat and separation, took 30 years."
Veterans of the Algerian war did not receive any benefits for 12 years after the war ended. Combat in Algeria still does not confer the same right to early retirement as combat in the world wars.
Algeria is a sensitive subject for eight million people in France who are pieds noirs, emigrants, harkis or veterans. The 1954-1962 war still divides them, but Mr Stora believes they should learn from it: "There is a problem of colonial racism that we must drive out of French society, particularly towards Algerians," he says. "That is the main lesson we should draw from this period."
