Hello and welcome to the History Hour podcast from the BBC World Service with me Max Pearson.

This week, 60 years after Algeria gained independence from France,

we look at what was a deeply traumatic birth of a nation's story. We'll hear how in the 1950s the struggle came

to Algiers with bomb attacks in the heart of the city.

The orders I got from my commanders were to plant this bomb in a place that really symbolized the arrogance

of the European population in Algeria.

How the French military responded with brutal tactics.

This old guy started running down the road and one of the

blackberries took out of Tommy gun and shot him in the back. I was absolutely

disgusted, you know?

Also how the Algerian question led to a massacre on the streets of Paris,

to reprisals against Algerians who fought alongside the French,

and to the flowering of a national spirit through football.

It's an atmosphere of player.

We were all weeping with emotion because it was the first time that the national anthem was played in a stadium and the Algerian flag was hoisted in a stadium.

That's a classic anti-colonial struggle because for a very long time Algeria was administratively part of France.

Well not just administratively but constitutionally and I think above all emotionally it was sometimes said that the Mediterranean flowed

through France like the Seen flowed through Paris. Algeria had its own depart more

like English counties it sent MPs to the Assembly in Paris. This is an

amazing fact which I only recently came across. It was at the beginning of the

20th century the world's biggest exporter of wine. of the

world's biggest exporter of wine. So it was deeply soaked in French culture,

...