Editing History of France (section)

=== Vietnam and Algeria ===
[[Pierre Mendès France]], was a [[Radical Party (France)|Radical party leader]] who was Prime Minister for eight months in 1954–55, working with the support of the Socialist and Communist parties. His top priority was ending the deadly war in Indochina in the wake of the humiliating defeat at the [[Battle of Dien Bien Phu]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Windrow |first=Martin |title=The French Indochina War 1946–54 |date=2013 |publisher=Osprey Publishing |isbn=978-1-4728-0430-3}}</ref> The U.S. had paid most of the costs of the war, but its support inside France had collapsed. In February 1954, only 7% of the French people wanted to continue the fight to keep Indochina out of [[Ho Chi Minh]] and his [[Viet Minh]] movement.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Larkin |first=Maurice |title=France since the Popular Front: Government and People 1936–1996 |date=1997 |publisher=Clarendon Press |isbn=978-0-1987-3151-1 |edition=2nd revised |pages=240–241}}</ref> At the [[Geneva Conference (1954)|Geneva Conference in July 1954]], Pierre France made a deal that gave the Viet Minh control of Vietnam north of the 17th parallel, and allowed France to pull out all its forces.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Young |first=Kenneth T. |title=The 1954 Geneva Conference: Indo-China and Korea |date=1968 |publisher=Greenwood Press}}</ref> That left South Vietnam standing alone, and the U.S. would provide support for it afterwards.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Christensen |first=Thomas J. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Z1v2pqaOmuEC&pg=PA123 |title=Worse Than a Monolith: Alliance Politics and Problems of Coercive Diplomacy in Asia |date=2011 |publisher=Princeton University Press |isbn=978-1-4008-3881-3 |pages=123–125}}</ref> Pierre France next came to an agreement with [[Habib Bourguiba]], the nationalist leader in Tunisia, for the independence of that colony by 1956, and began discussions with Moroccan nationalists for a French withdrawal.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Werth |first=Alexander |title=The Strange History of Pierre Mendès France and the Great Conflict over French North Africa |date=1957 |publisher=Barrie Books |location=London}}</ref>

With over a million European residents in Algeria (the [[Pied-Noir|Pieds-Noirs]]), France refused to grant independence until the [[Algerian War of Independence]] had turned into a French political and civil crisis. Algeria won its independence in 1962, unleashing a massive wave of immigration from the former colony back to France of both Pied-Noir and Algerians who had supported France.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Evans |first=Martin |title=Algeria: France's Undeclared War |date=2011 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-1928-0350-4 |location=Oxford}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=McDougall |first=James |date=December 2017 |title=The Impossible Republic: The Reconquest of Algeria and the Decolonization of France, 1945–1962 |url=https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:3fcec5a2-738d-4cc7-ae7d-0e8acd9adae7 |journal=The Journal of Modern History |volume=89 |pages=772–811 |doi=10.1086/694427 |s2cid=148602270 |number=4}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Shepard |first=Todd |title=The Invention of Decolonization: The Algerian War and the Remaking of France |date=2006 |publisher=Cornell University Press |isbn=978-0-8014-4360-2 |location=Ithaca, NY}}</ref>