Indeed, though some officers,notably in the paras and Legion Cavalry, saved thousands, in direct defiance of orders from their government. Indeed, the treatment of the harkis was one of the reasons the OAS operated in such a no-quarter fashion against de Gaulle and the Fifth Republic, to the extent that tanks were deployed at the Chamber of Deputies in Paris against the possibility of a mass airdrop by 1er REP.
At the end of the years 1990, during a maintenance on Europe 1 , Pierre Messmer , who at the time, had been a Minister for the Armies of General de Gaulle, has advanced the figure of 80 000 harkis killed. <,br>
The national Committee of connection of the surviving harkis advances the figure of 120 000 harkis killed, and 16,000 saved by their French officers who disobeyed the orders.
The historian Gilbert Meynier declared in an interview published in the daily newspaper El Watan , March 10, 2005, that the massacres had been less significant and more localised than than certain historians French like George-Marc Benamou declare.
George-Marc Benamou, in his book a French Lie , advances the figure of 70 000 victims.
The newspaper the World in November 1962 advanced the figure of 10 000 victims.
In an article published in January 2002 in World wars and contemporary conflicts, Maurice Faivre thus summarized the estimates of the historians on the number of the harkis and other Algerian back-up troops massacred in the years which followed independence:
"the historians do not agree on the number of the massacred harkis. J Lacouture having stated 10 000 victims, in the World of November 13, this figure was retained by the ambassador. The general Controller of Saint-Salvy (approved by colonel Schoen) made an evaluation of 150 000, starting from an equalization based on the district of Akbou. The historical Service did not make any estimate and was satisfied to quote that of Saint-Salvy. The historian of Algiers X Yacono, having calculated that the losses due to the war were lower than 300 000, considered to be unacceptable the figure of 150 000. Nicolas d' Andoque, old SAS, retained 60 000, which appears to be a short limit. The method of calculation per difference between the total of the losses and the number of the victims due to actions of war leads to a fork from 60 to 80 000 harkis killed in 1962-63. It seems, written J-C. Jauffret in Historiens and geographers , that a consensus gathers little by little the French historians, and that an evaluation from 60 to 80 000 victims is retained. Using the same method, Jean-Jacques Jordi proposes 70 000. But the truth will never be known, because a precise evaluation is impossible today"