France was in a really bad political situation during the Algerian War. If De Gaulle had died before the war, what would happen to France? Would it have collapsed or would it have turned into a military dictatorship? What would the USA do? Also, from what I've read, France did not lose the Algerian War militarily, it won militarily, the FLN was largely destroyed, but the brutal tactics, that, it employed to achieve that alienated both the French, the Algerians and the international community. Of couse, a militarily dictatorship wouldn't have cared about that.