ABSTRACT
This chapter challenges the idea that the intensification of French influence and the beginnings of state terrorism in Argentina should be taken as a mere spatio-temporal coincidence. It explores the reasons for the departure of the French military mission from the Escuela Superior de Guerra in 1962. The chapter explains how the rise of armed organisations in Argentina at the beginning of the 1970s and the return of Peronism to government encouraged the Argentine military to prepare decisive action – and how, to this end, they again sought military advice from the French. The continuous training in ideological extremism would ultimately function effectively in the reactionary education of the cadres involved in Argentine state terrorism. By sharing its specific savoir-faire in Revolutionary War prior to and during the Argentine Dirty War, the French prepared the ground for the institutionalisation of torture that was implemented between 1976 and 1983 in Argentina.
