居伊·摩勒

Guy Mollet was a French socialist premier whose time in office became inseparable from the Algerian War and the unraveling political credibility of the French Fourth Republic. His career connects democratic politics, colonial counterinsurgency, decolonization, and the way wars of national liberation can destabilize metropolitan governments as much as colonial territories. As an elected civilian leader rather than a barracks strongman, Mollet intensified war, widened coercive policy, and lost political control when the conflict exposed the limits of the regime, demonstrating how democratic institutions can become trapped by colonial war. His record shows that conflict escalation is often driven through cabinets, parties, and parliaments as much as through generals in the field, and the Algerian counterinsurgency contributed to the constitutional fragility and political exhaustion that helped bring the Fourth Republic to an end.