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Friday, May 05, 2023

French Involvement in Vietnam and Dien Bien Phu

VIDEO HERE  (26:06 minutes)

This 1962 episode of the TV show "The 20th Century" presents the story of the French involvement in Indochina and the devastating collapse at Dien Bien Phu.

The program starts with a short history of the region, beginning with the French struggle to control its colonies in Indochina - Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos following WWII. Despite financial assistance from the United States, nationalist uprisings against French colonial rule began to take their toll. On May 7, 1954, the French-held garrison at Dien Bien Phu in Vietnam fell after a four month siege led by Vietnamese nationalist Ho Chi Minh. After the fall of Dien Bien Phu, the French pulled out of the region. Concerned about regional instability, the United States became increasingly committed to countering communist nationalists in Indochina. The United States would not pull out of Vietnam for another twenty years.


The Battle of Dien Bien Phu was the climactic confrontation of the First Indochina War between the French Union's French Far East Expeditionary Corps and Viet Minh communist-nationalist revolutionaries. It was, from the French view before the event, a set piece battle to draw out the Vietnamese and destroy them with superior firepower. The battle occurred between March and May 1954 and culminated in a comprehensive French defeat that influenced negotiations over the future of Indochina at Geneva. 

As a result of blunders in French decision-making, the French began an operation to insert then support the soldiers at Dien Bien Phu, deep in the hills of northwestern Vietnam. Its purpose was to cut off Viet Minh supply lines into the neighboring Kingdom of Laos, a French ally, and tactically draw the Viet Minh into a major confrontation that would cripple them. The Viet Minh, however, under General Vo Nguyen Giap, surrounded and besieged the French, who knew of the weapons but were unaware of the vast amounts of the Viet Minh's heavy artillery being brought in (including anti-aircraft guns) and their ability to move these weapons through difficult terrain up the rear slopes of the mountains surrounding the French positions, dig tunnels through the mountain, and place the artillery pieces overlooking the French encampment. This positioning of the artillery made it nearly impervious to counter-battery fire.

The Viet Minh proceeded to occupy the highlands around Dien Bien Phu and bombard the French positions. Tenacious fighting on the ground ensued, reminiscent of the trench warfare of World War I. The French repeatedly repulsed Viet Minh assaults on their positions. Supplies and reinforcements were delivered by air, though as the key French positions were overrun the French perimeter contracted and air resupply on which the French had placed their hopes became impossible, and as the anti-aircraft fire took its toll, fewer and fewer of those supplies reached them. The garrison was overrun after a two-month siege and most French forces surrendered. A few escaped to Laos. The French government resigned and the new Prime Minister, the left-of-centre Pierre Mendès France, supported French withdrawal from Indochina.

The war ended shortly after the Battle of Dien Bien Phu and the signing of the 1954 Geneva Accords. 


10 comments:

  1. On the Cau Do Bridge S of DaNang there was a six sided concrete French bunker. I lived in it for a couple weeks. The center was in essence a furnace. They threw there trash in there and burned it. I remember one steel door warpped bad probably from an RPG. I saw some other concrete French bunkers but those I was never inside.
    I remember being on patrol and walking out of the jungle and there in front of us white crosses about as far as you could see. All French. I think I ran into three or four of these graveyards.
    If memory serves the dinks called the French, Frap or something like that.

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    1. Fap. Michael Herr wrote of it in "Dispatches", said some correspondents had the name of their employer on the name tapes above their shirt pockets (his was "ESQUIRE"), some had BAO CHI, Vietnamese for "journalist", or BAO CHI FAP, "French journalist".

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    2. Welcome Home, Bright Eyes. Simple greeting we longed for but never received. Sez, 1st ANGLICO 7/71-12/71 QueSon Mtns. area with ROK Marines

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  2. m9777 says: Most people would be shocked to learn the Eisenhower Admin offered the French nuclear weapons but not a way to deliver them by air. John Foster Dulles was Secretary of State and his brother Allen (sp?) Dulles was CIA Director at that time. Both hated communism to that degree. JFK had differing thoughts about spending anymore US treasure in VietNam due to his personal insights due to time spent there in his past. LBJ was essentially clueless but easily misled by the types of McNamara and Army leadership. It was a Revolutionary War in the eyes of Vietnamese nationals aka VietMinh. And the US was akin to the British circa 1776-1789.

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    1. Nukes were a fantasy of Dulles' invention and "Iron Mike" O'Daniel's hopes.

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    2. When WWII ended and the Vietnamese wanted their independence, the US took the French side in an attempt to butter them up for a NATO membership. Why they thought the French would not do the usual perfidy thing...who knows.

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  3. I remember reading how Charles de Gaulle had threatened to join the Warsaw pact if the US did not help France reclaim her lost colonies. How true or apocryphal it is I don't know.

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  4. check out what L. F. Proudy has to say about it. back in 1945 we (the gov'T ) shipped a lot of military hardware to Nam from the base on Okanawa (?) he said half went there and the other half went to Korea. and the French never knew the Viets had 105 field guns or where they got them from. dave in pa.

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  5. Been a lot of years but I read a pretty detailed history of that area during and just after WWII. The gist of the history is that when the Japanese swept into that area in the late 30s, they needed rubber and forced the natives into virtual slavery to produce it. The French that owned the rubber plantations had all decamped to Australia to escape Japanese occupation. When the war was over and the French returned, they demanded lost rents and revenues they lost on account of the Japanese. The native population had suffered under the Japanese and now under onerous French rulers were susceptible to messages from Ho Chi Min and communist infiltraters. The rest is history. Another good read is how the West could have kept Ho Chi Min firmly in the western camp but didn't want irritate the French.

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  6. I highly recommend the book "Street Without Joy", by Bernard Fall. It tells the story of French Indochina from post-WWII through 1954. He doesn't go into a lot of detail on Dien Bien Phu, as he has a another book just on that. Which reminds me, I fully intended to read that as well, but didn't get around to it. Have to remedy that.
    - Mr. Mayo

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