Following World War II, Fall worked as a research analyst at the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal. They can be lost just as conclusively through a series of very small engagements, such as those now fought in South Vietnam, if the local government and its population lose confidence in the eventual outcome of the contest — and that was the case both for the French and for their Vietnamese allies after Dien Bien Phu. Militarily, disaster had temporarily been averted. A Web site about Bernard Fall is at www.geocities.com/bernardbfall. You’re not going to shoot anymore? Belligerents: France & The State of Vietnam vs Viet Minh, ‘You were a kid in the fifties and everybody knows that nothing happened in the fifties.’. Communist forces, in human-wave attacks, were swarming over the last remaining defenses. At 1:50 a.m. on May 8, 1954, came the last message from the doomed garrison, relayed by the watchdog aircraft to Hanoi: Sortie failed — Stop — Can no longer communicate with you — Stop and end. At the same time, Vietnam was divided at the 17th Parallel into the Communist-controlled North Vietnam and the democratic South Vietnam and a particularly uneasy peace persisted for a little over a year until the Americans arrived. ‘Unstoppable waves’ of 25,000 machine gun-toting Việt Minh infantry engaged the last 3,000 able-bodied French garrison soldiers in brutal hand-to-hand combat in and around the trenches and ruined fortification and by the afternoon of May 7th, it was over. The Battle of Dien Bien Phu (French: Bataille de Diên Biên Phu pronounced [bataj də djɛn bjɛn fy]; Vietnamese: Chiến dịch Điện Biên Phủ, IPA: [ɗîəˀn ɓīən fû]) was a climactic confrontation of the First Indochina War that took place between 13 March and 7 May 1954. Not long after, the Americans rocked up but that’s for another time. In that case, I’ll fortify the command post, the signal center, and the X-ray room in the hospital; and let’s hope that the Viet has no artillery. Trip Historic was designed to give users a smooth and simple experience that will allow them to find the historic places they’re looking for, from the most well-known sites in the world to incredible historical locations that can’t be found in the guide books. Written by frankfob2@yahoo.com Plot Summary | Add Synopsis For all practical purposes the Indochina War was lost then and there. By 3 p.m., however, it had become obvious that the fortress would not last until nightfall. Battle of Dien Bien Phu, the decisive engagement in the First Indochina War (1946–54). Still, as the French themselves demonstrated in Algeria, where they never again let themselves be maneuvered into such desperate military straits, revolutionary wars are fought for political objectives, and big showdown battles are necessary neither for victory nor for defeat in that case. At 5pm, de Castries radioed the French forward HQ based in Hanoi and spoke to Major General René Cogny: de Castries: The Viets are everywhere. Historian Jean-Pierre Rioux said that Dien Bien Phu was ‘the only pitched battle to be lost by a European army in the history of decolonisation’ and it cost the French their Empire. We’re blowing up everything around here. At his untimely death in 1967, Bernard B. Over 55,000 soldiers were sent into battle, and 260,000 labourers and 27,400 tons of rice were put on standby. Lasting 55 days, the battle had French troops attempt to hold an armed camp against the Viet Minh, who greatly out-numbered them. He wrote this article in 1964, prior to the publication of Hell in a Very Small Place. 4. But as the position shrank every day (it finally was the size of a ballpark), the bulk of the supplies fell into Communist hands. During the night of March 14-15, he committed suicide by blowing himself up with a hand grenade, since he could not charge his pistol with one hand. Conrad Adenauer, first chancellor of post-World War II West Germany. On that day in May 1954 it had become apparent by 10 a.m. that Dien Bien Phu’s position was hopeless. As a former French soldier he was allowed to accompany French forces on combat operations in all sectors of the country. All Rights Reserved. Among his most important works are Street Without Joy, which became essential military reading about the war with no front lines, and Hell in a Very Small Place: The Siege of Dien Bien Phu. And as deputy to General de Castries, he felt he had contributed to the air of overconfidence that had prevailed in the valley prior to the attack. Bernard B. The battle was the culmination of Operation Castor, a larger plan by the French commander, General Navarre, to lure General Giap and his Peoples Army of Vietnam into a conventional battle to finally destroy their combat power and break the military resistance against French colonial rule. ©2020 AETN UK. Dien Bien Phu, 1954, was the final battle of the first Indo-China war. Au revoir. In 1965 Fall again spent the summer with American and Vietnamese forces in South Vietnam. In 1953, in order to engage in field research for his doctoral dissertation, he traveled to war-torn Indochina. Dien Bien Phu was situated in a valley in Northern Vietnam, surrounded by mountains. A conflict between Communist Viet Minh forces and a French-established garrison, it occurred in a town called ‘Seat of the Border County Prefecture or, in Vietnamese, Dien Bien Phu. Major André Sudrat, the chief engineer at Dien Bien Phu, was faced with a problem that he knew to be mathematically unsolvable. (Had not de Castries, in the manner of his ducal forebears, sent a written challenge to enemy commander Giap?). The siege occurred while the 1954 Geneva Conference was ironing out agreements between the major powers, including the future of Indochina. The victory of the Vietnamese precipitated the collapse of French colonial rule in Indochina and forever redefined the perception of what nonconventional armies could accomplish. De Castries ticked off a long list of 800-man battalions, which had been reduced to companies of 80 men, and of companies that were reduced to the size of weak platoons. Yes, I know. In fact, the Battle of Dien Bien Phu is one of the most significant, not just of the 1950s where supposedly nothing much happened, but of the entire 20th century. Gen. Christian de la Croix de Castries, reported the situation over the radiotelephone to General René Cogny, his theater commander 220 miles away in Hanoi, in a high-pitched but curiously impersonal voice, the end obviously had come for the fortress. The history of the Battle of Dien Bien Phu is utterly fascinating, as are the historic sites associated with it and you can read all about the most famous historic sites in Vietnam on TripHistoric. On May 7, 1954, the end of the battle for the jungle fortress of Dien Bien Phu marked the end of French military influence in Asia, just as the sieges of Port Arthur, Corregidor and Singapore had, to a certain extent, broken the spell of Russian, American and British hegemony in Asia. It may take a long time, but they can’t get out.’. What you have done is too magnificent to do such a thing. The surviving officers and men, many of whom had lived for 54 days on a steady diet of instant coffee and cigarettes, were in a catatonic state of exhaustion. This was approved by the French senior commander in Hanoi at about 5 p.m., but with the proviso that the men in Isabelle, the southernmost strongpoint closest to the jungle, and to friendly forces in Laos, should be given a chance to make a break for it. Yet, he said, that is exactly what it was. The Battle of Dien Bien Phu was fought from March 13 to May 7, 1954, and was the decisive engagement of the First Indochina War (1946-1954), the precursor to the Vietnam War. The offensive stabs for which Dien Bien Phu had been specifically planned became little else but desperate sorties against an invisible enemy. Dien Bien Phu: the battle that split Vietnam Save 50% on a BBC History Magazine or BBC History Revealed subscription France’s catastrophic defeat at Dien Bien Phu in northwest Vietnam in May 1954 ended its hopes of maintaining any influence in Indochina and set … But Navarre, an armor officer formed on the European battlefields, apparently (this was the judgment of the French government committee that later investigated the disaster) had failed to realize that there are no blocking positions in [a] country lacking European-type roads. Even the fact, which the unfortunate Navarre invoked later, that the attack on Dien Bien Phu cost the enemy close to 25,000 casualties and delayed its attack on the vital Red River Delta by four months, held little water in the face of the wave of defeatism that swept not only French public opinion at home but also that of her allies. In the spring of 1954, eight long and arduous years into the First Indochina War, the French suffered a defeat that was so shameful and shambolic, it remains barely spoken of. In the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, the Portuguese and Dutch had been milling around but both were driven out by the locals and then in 1615, the French arrived. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of the Terms and Conditions, Toussaint Louverture and the birth of Haiti. You understand, mon vieux. With the Allied invasion of Europe, Fall joined the French army, serving in the infantry and pack artillery of the 4th Moroccan Mountain Division. After many years of foreign subjugation and a burning desire for independence, the Việt Minh started a guerrilla war against the French in 1946. The airdrops were a harrowing experience in that narrow valley, which permitted only straight approaches. The outlying posts, which protected the key airfield, were captured within the first few days of the battle. Even the residence of the French governor was dismantled in order to make use of the bricks, for engineering materials were desperately short from the beginning. Dien Bien Phu was also to be the test for a new theory of Navarre’s. Essentially, the battle of Dien Bien Phu degenerated into a brutal artillery duel, which the enemy would have won sooner or later. As a French colonel surveyed the battlefield from a slit trench near his command post, a small white flag, probably a handkerchief, appeared on top of a rifle hardly 50 feet away from him, followed by the flat-helmeted head of a Viet Minh soldier. Umberto Eco, Italian novelist (The Name of the Rose). By the start of 1954, it had cost the French and Americans $3 billion – hardly pocket change so soon after World War II – and was referred to as la sale guerre, or ‘the dirty war.’ In addition, accusations of military incompetence, corruption, currency deals and arms trading blighted the war effort. Inside the fortress, the charming tribal village by the Nam Yum River had soon disappeared along with all the bushes and trees in the valley, to be used either as firewood or as construction materials for the bunkers. It is out of the question to run up the white flag after your heroic resistance. There are the French. His Hell in a Very Small Place: The Siege of Dien Bien Phu and Street Without Joy are still on the short list of the most essential books about the French phase of the war, and are indispensable to understanding the American phase. Originally, the fortress had been designed to protect its main airstrip against marauding Viet Minh units, not to withstand the onslaught of four Communist divisions. The Viet Minh victory in this battle effectively ended the eight-year-old war. There were other considerations also. The situation is very grave. When Viet Minh forces overran Dien Bien Phu on May 7, 1954, it was, according to Fall, the end of French military influence in Asia. From Phu Bai the group moved along the area the French had named La Rue Sans Joie, or Street Without Joy. But Cogny was adamant on that point: Mon vieux, of course you have to finish the whole thing now. There never was, as press maps of the time erroneously showed, a continuous battle line covering the whole valley. General Vo Nguyen Giap decided to take Dien Bien Phu by an extremely efficient mixture of 19th-century siege techniques (sinking TNT-laden mineshafts under French bunkers, for example) and modern artillery patterns plus human-wave attacks. It was becoming increasingly obvious that this war was unwinnable. Well, good-bye, mon vieux, said Cogny. The battle of Dien Bien Phu (DBP) was a decisive engagement during the Indochina War (1946-54). HistoryNet.com contains daily features, photo galleries and over 5,000 articles originally published in our various magazines. Then de Castries said his final words: Bien, mon général. You’re not going to shoot anymore? No, I’m not going to shoot anymore, said the colonel. Trip Historic is a community-based historic destinations site run by history enthusiasts who are passionate about the web. The Battle of Dien Bien Phu is seen as the decisive battle of the First Indochina War between French troops and the Viet Minh (League for the Independence of Vietnam), a nationalist, pro-Soviet Union movement of Ho Chi Minh. Soon after French forces arrived at Dien Bien Phu on November 20, 1953, two of General Vo Nguyen Giap’s regular 10,000-man divisions blocked the Dien Bien Phu garrison, while a third bypassed Dien Bien Phu and smashed deep into Laos. What changed the aspect of the war for a time was the influx of American aid, which began with the onset of the Korean War. This battle, of which the Viet-minh was victorious, marked the end of the Indochina War (1946-1954), but also that of French hegemony in this region. In 1954, French forces in French Indochina sought to cut the Viet Minh's supply lines to Laos. ‘Unstoppable waves’ of 25,000 machine gun-toting Việt Minh infantry engaged the last 3,000 able-bodied French garrison soldiers in brutal hand-to-hand combat. Independence, given too grudgingly to the Vietnamese nationalist regime, remained the catchword of the adversary. The French had nothing – and virtually no-one – left. VNA/VNS File Photo By early March 1954, enemy troops numbering more than 16,000 had gathered in Điện Biên Phủ, including the most elite military units in Indochina. The victory the French were so sure of was turning into a humiliating defeat. THE END OF FRENCH OCCUPATION Dien Bien Phu was the battle that finally ended the French occupation of Vietnam. The First Vietnam War, or Indochina War (1946–1954), was the result of hostilities between the communist Vietnamese and the French who were reluctant to … Their original aim was to spread the word of Christianity and as the 19th century came around, Vietnam’s independence had been gradually eroded until by 1884, the entire country – known then as French Indochina – had come under the rule of France. There was no clear prospect of victory for either side, no long-term vision and fewer and fewer military objectives. They became known as the ‘Rats of Nam Yum.’. Strongpoint Isabelle never had a chance. This article was originally published in the April 2004 issue of Vietnam Magazine. In amongst all theperma-famous culture references was the line ‘Dien Bien Phu falls, Rock Around the Clock’ and it’s probably fair to say that this one may have got some people stumped. Some of the American civilian pilots who flew the run said that Viet Minh flak was as dense as anything encountered during World War II over the Ruhr River. They ended up simply defending their positions and reacting to Việt Minh attacks when they occurred. The breakout had been detected. The Battle of Dien Bien Phu was fought from March 13th to May 8th 1954 near the Laotian Border. Stephen Decatur, American naval hero during actions against the Barbay pirates and the War of 1812. They were in a proper fight. That was the rationale for the creation of a garrison at Dien Bien Phu and for the battle that took place there. In one last push, the Việt Minh laid charges directly in front of the last of the French positions. Both his parents were killed by the Nazis in World War II. But as other revolutionary wars — from Algeria to the British defeats in Cyprus and Palestine — have conclusively shown, it does not take pitched, set-piece battles to lose such wars. These words were said to Billy Joel by a friend of John Lennon’s son Sean, so the 40-year old New Yorker decided to write a song to prove him wrong. Fall was widely considered the greatest civilian expert on the war in Vietnam. It ended with victory to the Viet Minh, the surrender of French colonial forces and … At 9:40 p.m., a French surveillance aircraft reported to Hanoi that it saw the strongpoint’s depots blowing up and that heavy artillery fire was visible close by. From then onward the struggle for Dien Bien Phu became a battle of attrition. Soon the combination of monsoon rains, which set in around mid-April, and Viet Minh artillery fire smashed to rubble the neatly arranged dugouts and trenches shown to eminent visitors and journalists during the early days of the siege. Until Red China’s victorious forces arrived on Vietnam’s borders in December 1949, there had been at least a small hope that the French-supported Vietnamese nationalist government, headed by ex-emperor Bao Dai, could wean away from the Communist-led Viet Minh the allegiance of much of Vietnam’s population. The Indochina War, which had broken out in December 1946 after Ho Chi Minh’s Viet Minh forces felt that France would not agree to Vietnam’s eventual independence, had bogged down into a hopeless seesaw. Immediately after the battle ended, the Việt Minh counted 11,721 prisoners which included 4,436 wounded. The combat is confused and goes on all about. The massive crater they made remains visible to this day. The defence of Dien Bien Phu was a gamble, whose odds were not understood by the French. As the final assault began on May 1st and, one by one the French positions were falling, Giap established trenches in the valley until there was only Elaine left and on May 6th Giap unleashed the full might of his infantry force upon it and the French within it. After eight years of fighting and with the French strategists propped up by American money, they tried tactic after unsuccessful tactic but eventually ran out of ideas. In the spring of 1954, eight long and arduous years into the First Indochina War, the French suffered a defeat that was so shameful and shambolic, it remains barely spoken of. An American reporter finds himself in the middle of the 57-day battle of Dien Bien Phu in Vietnam between the French army and the Vietminh, which finally resulted in the defeat and surrender of the French forces and France's eventual withdrawal from Vietnam. HistoryNet.com is brought to you by Historynet LLC, the world's largest publisher of history magazines. A conflict between Communist Viet Minh forces and a French-established garrison, it occurred in a town called Seat of the Border County Prefecture or, in Vietnamese, Dien Bien Phu. One may only hope that the lesson has been learned in time. He estimated that to protect the 12 battalions there initially (five others were parachuted in during the battle), he would need 36,000 tons of engineering materials — which would mean using all available transport aircraft for a period of five months. De Castries polled the surviving unit commanders within reach, and the consensus was that a breakout would only lead to a senseless piecemeal massacre in the jungle. Mr and Mrs Christmas: A short history of a very festive surname, Strictly plague dancing: The dancing mania of 1518, Curse of Oak Island recap and what’s coming up in season 8, Lesser known facts about The Battle of the Somme. to act for themselves. But with the existence of a Red Chinese sanctuary for the Viet Minh forces, that became militarily impossible. Composer Hoang Van, who wrote the song Ho Keo Phao (The Song of Cannon Pulling), will join a pilgimage to the historic site. In an effort to bring the war to an end, both sides threw everything into one final and ultimately decisive fight – the Battle of Dien Bien Phu. Anyway, the idea was to cut off enemy lines through the mountains into Laos and draw the Việt Minh out into open battle. Victory in Battle of Dien Bien Phu. The French gun crews and artillery pieces, working entirely in the open so as to allow the pieces all-around fields of fire, were destroyed one by one; replaced, they were destroyed once more, and at last fell silent. It proved little else but that an encircled force, no matter how valiant, will succumb if its support system fails. The battle of Dien Bien Phu opposed in 1954 the French army and the Vietnamese communist forces of Viêt-minh in the deep plain of Diên Biên Phu, located in the north-west of Vietnam, near the border with Laos. When the siege began, it had about eight days’ worth of supplies on hand but required 200 tons a day to maintain minimum levels. But ultimately, it would not end the fighting immediately or in the long term, with decades of war in Vietnam yet to come To compound matters, almost 6,000 soldiers fighting for France (made up of French, Foreign Legion and Africans of French descent) deserted to caves along the banks of the Nam Yum River, occasionally popping their heads up to steal supplies dropped for the men who stood and fought. There had been suggestions that an orderly surrender be arranged, to save the wounded the added anguish of falling into enemy hands as isolated individuals. Today, 10 years after Dien Bien Phu, Viet Cong guerrillas in South Vietnam again challenge the West’s ability to withstand a potent combination of political and military pressure in a totally alien environment. The artillery duel became the great tragedy of the battle. The Battle of Dien Bien Phu signaled the end of a French presence in Vietnam. All of that rode on Dien Bien Phu: the freedom of Laos, a senior commander’s reputation, the survival of some of France’s best troops and — above all — a last chance to come out of that frustrating eight-year-long jungle war with something other than a total defeat. Notwithstanding the embarrassment of such a shambolic defeat littered from start to finish with basic strategic errors, the political fallout was equally as shameful. The day after the battle ended, the Geneva Conference convened with the intention, amongst other geopolitical issues, to settle the outstanding issues brought about by the Korean and First Indochina Wars. Within weeks, the French position in northern Vietnam had shrunk to a fortified perimeter around the Red River Delta, a continuous belt of Communist-held territory from the Chinese border to within 100 miles of Saigon. By normal military engineering standards, the materials necessary to protect a battalion against the fire of the 105mm howitzers the Viet Minh now possessed amounted to 2,550 tons, plus 500 tons of barbed wire. Rabindra Hazari. World. A few figures tell how murderous the air war around Dien Bien Phu was: Of the 420 aircraft available in all of Indochina then, 62 were lost in connection with Dien Bien Phu and 167 sustained hits. Then the rains came, and don’t think April showers on a spring day. 08/May/2020. Fall will be remembered by history as one of the foremost authorities on the Vietnam War. As it turned out, the Viet Minh had more than 200 artillery pieces, reinforced during the last week of the siege by Russian Katyusha multiple rocket launchers. French artillery and mortars had been progressively silenced by murderously accurate Communist Viet Minh artillery fire, and the monsoon rains had slowed down supply drops to a trickle and transformed the French trenches and dugouts into bottomless quagmires. A unit joins the battle to gain control of the Muong Thanh Bridge. All he could hope for was to hold out until nightfall in order to give the surviving members of his command a chance to break out into the jungle under the cover of darkness, while he himself would stay with the more than 5,000 severely wounded (out of a total of 15,094 men inside the valley) and face the enemy. A French newspaper from 1954, with the headline ‘Dien Bien Phu is a tomb’. The garrison’s only hope lay in the breakthrough of a relief column from Laos or Hanoi (a hopeless concept in view of the terrain and distances involved) or in the destruction of the siege force through massive aerial bombardment. They were divided into groups dependent on their health and those who could were marched on foot 600 km (roughly the distance from London to Edinburgh) to prison camps in the north and east of the country – intermingled with Việt Minh soldiers to discourage the French from attempting bombing raids. The Vietnamese targeted Béatrice in the northern quadrant which fell in hours. Well, do as best you can, leaving it to your [static: subordinate units?] The Red Cross took about 850 of the most badly wounded and of the 8,000 or so who walked, less than half survived the journey through a mixture of disease, starvation and then the horrific prison conditions when they finally arrived. General Navarre felt that the way to achieve this was by offering the Communists a target sufficiently tempting for their regular divisions to pounce at, but sufficiently strong to resist the onslaught once it came. For more great articles be sure to subscribe to Vietnam Magazine today! I am responsible. It proved little else but that an encircled force, no matter how valiant, will succumb if its support system fails.’. Simultaneously, Navarre had been searching for a way to stop the Viet Minh threat to Laos. Only 73 made good their escape from the various shattered strongpoints to be rescued by the pro-French guerrilla units awaiting them in the Laotian jungle. There was a silence. Historically, Dien Bien Phu was, as one French senior officer masterfully understated, never more than an unfortunate accident. For a time, a U.S. Air Force strike was considered, but the idea was dropped for about the same reasons that make a similar attack against North Vietnam today rather risky. Awarded a grant from the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) for field study of Communist infiltration in Southeast Asia, Fall witnessed the outbreak of Communist hostilities in Laos. Dien Bien Phu was the decisive battle of the First Indochina War. Bernard Fall wrote that in comparison with other world battles, Dien Bien Phu could hardly qualify as a major battle, let alone a decisive one. By the time the battle started in earnest on March 13, 1954, the garrison already had suffered 1,037 casualties without any tangible result. The interlocking fire of their artillery and mortars, supplemented by a squadron of 10 tanks (flown in piecemeal and reassembled on the spot), was to prevent them from being picked off one by one. Cogny’s last conversation with de Castries dealt with the problem of what to do with the wounded piled up under the incredible conditions in the various strongpoints and in the fortress’ central hospital — originally built to contain 42 wounded.

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