The
First Indochina War (also known as the French
Indochina War, the The Anti-French War, the Franco-Vietnamese War,
the Franco-Vietminh War, the Indochina War, the Dirty War in
France
and as the Anti-French Resistance War in
contemporary Vietnam
) was fought
in French Indochina from December
19, 1946, until August 1, 1954, between the French Union’s French Far East
Expeditionary Corps, led by France and supported by Emperor
Bảo Đại’s Vietnamese National Army against
the Việt Minh, led by Hồ Chí Minh and Võ Nguyên Giáp.
Most of
the fighting took place in Tonkin in Northern
Vietnam, although the conflict engulfed the entire country and also
extended into the neighboring French Indochina protectorates of Laos
and Cambodia
.
Following
the reoccupation of Indochina by the French following the end of
World War II, the area having fallen to
the Japanese
, the Viet
Minh launched a rebellion against the French authority governing
the colonies of French Indochina. The first few years of the
war involved a low-level rural insurgency against French authority.
However,
after the Chinese communists reached the Northern border of Vietnam
in 1949, the conflict turned into a conventional war between two
armies equipped with modern weapons supplied by the United States
and the Soviet Union
.
French Union forces included colonial troops from the whole former
empire (Moroccan, Algerian, Tunisian, Laotian, Cambodian,
Vietnamese and Vietnamese ethnic minorities), French professional
troops and units of the French Foreign Legion. The use of
metropolitan recruits was forbidden by
the governments to prevent the war from becoming even more
unpopular at home. It was called the “dirty war” (
la sale
guerre) by supporters of the
Left in France and intellectuals
(including
Sartre) during the
Henri Martin Affair in
1950.
While the strategy of pushing the Viet Minh into attacking a well
defended base in a remote part of the country at the end of their
logistical trail was validated at the
Battle of Na San, the lack of construction
materials (especially concrete), tanks (because of lack of road
access and difficulty in the jungle terrain), and air cover
precluded an effective defense.
After the
war, the Geneva Conference
on July 21, 1954, made a provisional division of Vietnam
at the
17th parallel, with
control of the north given to the Viet Minh as the Democratic Republic of Vietnam under Ho Chi
Minh, and the south becoming the State of
Vietnam under Emperor Bảo Đại, in order to prevent Ho
Chi Minh from gaining control of the entire country. A year
later, Bảo Đại would be deposed by his
prime minister,
Ngô Đình Diệm, creating the
Republic of Vietnam. Diem's refusal to enter
into negotiations with North Vietnam about holding nationwide
elections in 1956, as had been stipulated by the Geneva Conference,
would eventually lead to war breaking out again in South Vietnam in
1959 - the
Second Indochina War.
Background
Vietnam was absorbed into
French
Indochina in stages between 1858 and 1887 with Western
influence and education.
Nationalism
grew until
World War II provided a
break in French control. Early Vietnamese resistance centered on
the intellectual
Phan Bội
Châu.
Chau looked to Japan
, which had
modernized and was one of the few Asian nations to resist European
colonization. With Prince
Cường Để, Châu started
two organizations in Japan, the
Duy Tân
Hội (Modernistic Association) and
Vietnam Cong Hien Hoi. Due to French
pressure, Japan deported Phan Bội Châu to China.
Witnessing Sun Yat-sen's 1911
nationalist revolution, Chau was inspired to commence the Việt
Nam Quang Phục Hội movement in Guangzhou
. From 1914 to 1917, he was imprisoned by
Yuan Shi Kai's counterrevolutionary
government. In 1925, he was captured by French agents in
Shanghai and spirited to Vietnam. Due to his
popularity, Châu was spared from execution and placed under house
arrest until his death in 1940.
In
September 1940, shortly after Phan Bội Châu's death, Japan launched
the First French Indochina
Campaign and invaded French
Indochina, mirroring their ally Germany
's conquest
of metropolitan France.
Keeping the French colonial administration, the Japanese ruled from
behind the scenes in a parallel of
Vichy
France. As far as Vietnamese nationalists were concerned, this
was a double-puppet government.
Emperor Bảo Đại collaborated with the
Japanese, just as he had with the French, ensuring his lifestyle
could continue.
From
October 1940 to May 1941, during the French-Thai War, the Vichy French in
Indochina were involved with defending the colony from the forces
of invading Thailand
while the Japanese sat on the sidelines. The
Thai forces generally did well on the ground. But Thai objectives
in the war were limited.
In January, Vichy naval forces decisively
defeated Thai naval forces in the Battle of Koh Chang
. The war ended in May with the French
agreeing to minor territorial gains for Thailand.
Due to a
combination of ruthless Japanese
exploitation and poor weather, a famine broke out in which
approximately 2 million Vietnameses died. The Viet Minh
arranged a relief effort and won wide support in the north as a
result.
In March 1945, Japan launched the
Second French Indochina
Campaign and ousted the
Vichy
French and formally installed
Emperor Bảo Đại in the short-lived
Empire of Vietnam.
In August 1945, when Japanese forces surrendered in Vietnam, they
allowed the Viet Minh and other nationalist groups to take over
public buildings without resistance, which began the
August Revolution. In order to further
help the nationalists, the Japanese kept Vichy French officials and
military officers imprisoned for a month after the surrender.
Ho Chi Minh was able to persuade Emperor Bao Dai to
abdicate on August 25, 1945.
Bao Dai was appointed
"supreme adviser" to the new Vietminh-led government in Hanoi
, which
asserted independence on September 2. Deliberately borrowing
from the Declaration of Independence of the United States of
America, Ho Chi Minh proclaimed on September 2: "We hold the truth
that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their
Creator with certain unalienable rights, among them life, liberty
and the pursuit of happiness."
With the fall of the short lived Japanese colony of the
Empire of Vietnam, the
Provisional
Government of the French Republic wanted to restore its
colonial rule in French Indochina as the final step of the
Liberation of France. An armistice was
signed between Japan and the United States on August 20.
CEFEO Expeditionary
Corps leader General Leclerc signed the
armistice with Japan onboard the USS Missouri
on behalf of France, on September 2.
On
September 13, a Franco-British
task force landed in
Java
, capital of Sukarno's
Dutch East
Indies
, and Saigon, capital of Cochinchina (southern part
of French Indochina), both being occupied by the Japanese
and ruled by Field Marshal Hisaichi Terauchi, Commander-in-Chief of
Japan's Southern
Expeditionary Army Group based in Saigon. Allied troops in Saigon were an
airborne detachment, two British companies of the 20th Hindi
Division and the French 5th Colonial Infantry Regiment, with
British General Sir
Douglas Gracey as
supreme commander. The latter proclaimed
martial law on September 21. The following night
the Franco-British troops took control of Saigon.
Almost immediately afterward, the
Chinese
Government, as agreed to at the
Potsdam Conference, occupied French
Indochina as far south as the 16th parallel in order to supervise
the disarming and repatriation of the
Japanese Army. This effectively ended
Ho Chi Minh's nominal government in Hanoi.
General Leclerc arrived in Saigon in October 9, with him was French
Colonel Massu's March Group
(
Groupement de marche). Leclerc's primary objectives were
to restore public order in south Vietnam and to militarize Tonkin
(north Vietnam). Secondary objectives were to wait for French
backup in view to take back Chinese occupied Hanoi, then to
negotiate with the Viet Minh officials.
Timeline
Fighting
broke out in Haiphong
after a conflict of interest in import duty at the
port between the Viet Minh government and
the French. On November 23, 1946 the French fleet began a
naval bombardment of the city that killed over 6,000 Vietnamese
civilians in one afternoon according to one source or over 2,000
according to another. The Viet Minh quickly agreed to a cease-fire
and left the cities. There was never any intention among the
Vietnamese to give up as General
Vo
Nguyen Giap soon brought up 30,000 men to attack the city.
Although the French were outnumbered, their superior weaponry and
naval support made any Việt Minh's attack impossible.
In December,
hostilities also broke out in Hanoi
between the
Viet Minh and the French, and Ho Chi Minh was forced to evacuate
the capital in favor of remote mountain areas. Guerrilla
warfare ensued with the French controlling most of the country
except far flung areas.
In 1947, General
Võ Nguyên Giáp moved
his command to
Tân Trào. The French sent
military expeditions to attack his bases, but Giáp refused to meet
them head-on in battle. Wherever the French troops went, the Việt
Minh disappeared. Late in the year the French launched
Operation Lea to take out the Việt Minh
communications center at Bac Kan. They failed to capture Hồ Chí
Minh and his key lieutenants as intended, but 9,000 Việt Minh
soldiers were killed during the campaign which was a major blow for
the insurgency.
In 1948,
France started looking for means of opposing the Việt Minh
politically, with an alternative government in Saigon
. They began negotiations with the former
Vietnamese emperor
Bảo
Đại to lead an "autonomous" government within the
French Union of nations, the
State of Vietnam.
Two years before, the
French had refused Hồ's proposal of a similar status (albeit with
some restrictions on French power and the latter's eventual
withdrawal from Vietnam), however they were willing to give it to
Bảo Ðại as he had freely collaborated with French rule of Vietnam
in the past
and was in no position to seriously negotiate or impose demands
(Bảo Ðại had no military of his own, but soon he would have
one).
In 1949, France officially recognized the "independence" of the
State of Vietnam within the
French Union under Bảo Ðại. However,
France still controlled all foreign relations and every defense
issues as Vietnam was only nominally an independent state within
the
French Union . The Việt Minh
quickly denounced the government and stated that they wanted "real
independence, not Bảo Ðại independence". Later on, as a concession
to this new government and a way to increase their numbers, France
agreed to the formation of the
Vietnamese National Army to be
commanded by Vietnamese officers. These troops were used mostly to
garrison quiet sectors so French forces would be available for
combat. Private
Cao Dai,
Hoa Hao and the
Binh Xuyen
gangster armies were used in the same way.
The Vietnamese
Communists in return obtained support in 1949 when Chairman
Mao Zedong succeeded in taking control of
China
by defeating the Kuomintang, thus gaining a major political ally
and supply area just across the border. In the same year, the
French also granted independence (within the framework of the
French Union) to the other two nations
in Indochina, the Kingdoms of Laos
and Cambodia
.
The
United
States
recognized the South Vietnamese state, but many
other nations, even in the west, viewed it as simply a French
puppet regime and would not deal with it at all . The United
States began to give military aid to France in the form of weaponry
and military observers. By then with almost unlimited Chinese
military supplies entering Vietnam, General Giáp re-organized his
local irregular forces into five full conventional
infantry divisions, the 304th, 308th, 312th, 316th
and the 320th. The war began to intensify when Giáp went on the
offensive, attacking isolated French bases along the Chinese
border.
In February 1950, Giáp seized the vulnerable 150-strong French
garrison at
Lai Khe in Tonkin just south of
the border with China.
Then, on May 25, he attacked the garrison of
Cao
Bang
manned by 4,000 French-controlled Vietnamese
troops, but his forces were repulsed. Giáp launched his
second offense again against Cao Bang as well as
Dong Khe on September 15. Dong Khe fell
on September 18, and Cao Bang finally fell on October 3.
Lang Son
, with its 4,000-strong French Foreign Legion garrison, was
attacked immediately after. The
retreating French on Route 4,
together with the relief force coming from
That
Khe, were attacked all the way by ambushing Việt Minh forces.
The French air-dropped a paratroop battalion south of Dong Khe to
act as diversion only to see it surrounded and destroyed. On
October 17, Lang Son, after a week of intense fighting, finally
fell. By the time the remains of the garrisons reached the safety
of the
Red River Delta, 4,800 French
troops had been killed, captured or missing in action and 2,000
wounded out of a total garrison force of over 10,000. Also lost
were 13 artillery pieces, 125 mortars, 450 trucks, 940 machine
guns, 1,200 submachine guns and 8,000 rifles destroyed or captured
during the fighting. China and the Soviet Union recognized Hồ Chí
Minh as the legitimate ruler of Vietnam and sent him more and more
supplies and material aid. The year 1950 also marked the first time
that
napalm was ever used in Vietnam (this
type of weapon was supplied by the U.S. for the use of the French
Aeronovale at the time).
The
military situation improved for France when their new commander,
General Jean Marie de Lattre
de Tassigny, built a fortified line from Hanoi
to the
Gulf of
Tonkin
, across the Red River
Delta, to hold the Viet Minh in place and use his
troops to smash them against this barricade, which became known as
the "De Lattre Line". This led
to a period of success for the French.
On
January 13 1951, Giap moved the 308th and 312th Divisions, made up
of over 20,000 men, to attack Vinh Yen
, northwest of Hanoi which was manned by the 6,000
strong 9th Foreign Legion Brigade. The Viet Minh entered a
trap. Caught for the first time in the open, they were mowed down
by concentrated French artillery and machine gun fire. By January
16, Giap was forced to withdraw, having lost over 6,000 killed,
8,000 wounded and 500 captured. The
Battle of Vinh Yen had been a
catastrophe.
On March
23, Giap tried again, launching an attack against Mao Khe, north of Haiphong
. The 316th Division, composed of 11,000 men,
with the partly rebuilt 308th and 312th Divisions in reserve, went
forward and were repulsed in bitter hand-to-hand fighting against
French troops backed up by aircraft using napalm and rockets as
well as gunfire from navy ships off the coast. Giap, having lost
over 3,000 dead and wounded by March 28, withdrew.
Giap
launched yet another attack on May 29 with the 304th Division at
Phu
Ly
, the 308th Division at Ninh Binh
, and the main attack delivered by the 320th
Division at Phat Diem south of
Hanoi. The attacks fared no better and the three divisions
lost heavily. Taking advantage of this, de Lattre mounted his
counter offensive against the demoralized Việt Minh, driving them
back into the jungle and eliminating the enemy pockets in the Red
River Delta by June 18 costing the Viet Minh over 10,000
killed.
Every effort by Vo Nguyen Giap to break the line failed and every
attack he made was answered by a French counter-attack that
destroyed his forces. Viet Minh casualties rose alarmingly during
this period, leading some to question the leadership of the
Communist government, even within the party. However, any benefit
this may have reaped for France was negated by the increasing
domestic opposition to the war in France. Although all of their
forces in Indochina were volunteers, French officers were being
killed faster than they could train new ones . Their only response
was to ask for more millions of dollars from America .
On July
31, French General Chanson was assassinated during a kamikaze attentat at Sa
Đéc
in South Vietnam that was blamed on the Viet Minh
although it was argued in some quarters that Cao
Dai nationalist Trinh Minh The
could have been involved in its planning.
On November 14, 1951, the
French
seized Hòa Bình, west of the De Lattre line, by a parachute
drop and expanded their perimeter. But Việt Minh launched attacks
on Hòa Binh forcing the French to withdraw back to their main
positions on the De Lattre line by February 22, 1952. Each side
lost nearly 5,000 men in this campaign and it showed that the war
was far from over. In January, General de Lattre fell ill from
cancer and had to return to France for treatment; he died there
shortly thereafter and was replaced by General
Raoul Salan as the overall commander of French
forces in Indochina. Within that year, throughout the war theater,
the Việt Minh cut French supply lines and began to seriously wear
down the resolve of the French forces. There were continued raids,
skirmishes and guerrilla attacks, but through most of the rest of
the year each side withdrew to prepare itself for larger
operations.
On
October 17, 1952, Giáp launched attacks against the French
garrisons along Nghia
Lo
, northwest of Hanoi, breaking off only when a
French parachute battalion intervened. Giáp by now had
control over most of Tonkin beyond the
De
Lattre line. Raoul Salan, seeing the situation as critical,
launched
Operation Lorraine along
the Clear river to force Giáp to relieve pressure from the Nghia Lo
outposts.
On 29 October 1952, in the largest operation
in Indochina to date, 30,000 French Union soldiers moved out from
the De Lattre line to attack the Viet Minh supply dumps at Phu
Yen
. Salan took Phu Tho
on 5 November, and Phu Doan
on 9 November by a parachute drop, and
finally Phu Yen on 13 November. Giap at first did not react
to the French offensive. He planned to wait until their supply
lines were over extended and then cut them off from the Red River
Delta. Salan correctly guessed what the Viet Minh were up to and
cancelled the operation on 14 November, beginning to withdraw back
to the de Lattre line. The only major fighting during the operation
came during the withdrawal, when the Viet Minh ambushed the French
column at
Chan Muong on 17 November. The
road was cleared after a bayonet charge by the Indochinese March
Battalion and the withdrawal could continue. Though the operation
was partially successful, it proved that although the French could
strike out at any target outside the De Lattre line, it failed to
divert the Viet Minh offensive or serious damage its logistical
network.
On April
9, 1953, Giáp, after having failed repeatedly in direct attacks on
French positions in Vietnam, changed strategy and began to pressure
the French by invading Laos
, surrounding
and defeating several French outposts such as Muong Khoua. The only real
change came in May when
General
Navarre replaced
General Salan as
supreme commander in Indochina. He reported to the government
"…that there was no possibility of winning the war in Indo-China"
saying that the best the French could hope for was a stalemate.
Navarre, in response to the Việt Minh attacking Laos, concluded
that "hedgehog" centers of defense were the best plan.
Looking at a map of
the area, Navarre chose the small town of Ðiện Biên Phủ
, located about north of the Lao border and west of
Hanoi as a target to block the Việt Minh from invading Laos.
Ðiện Biên Phủ had a number of advantages; it was on a Việt Minh
supply route into Laos on the
Nam Yum
River, it had an old Japanese airstrip built in the late 1930s
for supply and it was situated in the
T'ai hills where the T'ai tribesmen, still loyal
to the French, operated.
Operation
Castor was launched on November 20, 1953 with 1,800 men of the
French 1st and 2nd Airborne Battalions dropping into the valley of
Ðiện Biên Phủ and sweeping aside the local Việt Minh garrison. The
paratroopers managed control of a heart-shaped valley long and
eight miles (13 km) wide surrounded by heavily wooded hills.
Encountering little opposition, the French
and T'ai units operating from Lai Châu
to the north patrolled the hills. The
operation was a tactical success for the French. However, Giáp,
seeing the weakness of the French position, started moving most of
his forces from the De Lattre line to Ðiện Biên Phủ. By
mid-December, most of the French and T'ai patrols in the hills
around the town were wiped out by Việt Minh ambushes. The fight for
control of this position would be the longest and hardest battle
for the
French Far
East Expeditionary Corps and would be remembered by the
veterans as "57 Days of Hell".
By 1954, despite official propaganda presenting the war as a
"
crusade against communism", the war in Indochina was
still growing unpopular with the French public. The political
stagnation of the
Fourth
Republic meant that France was unable to extract itself from
the conflict. The United States initially sought to remain neutral,
viewing the conflict as chiefly a
decolonization war.
The Battle of
Dien Bien Phu
occurred in 1954 between Viet
Minh forces under Vo Nguyen Giap
supported by China
and the
Soviet
Union
and the French Union's
French Far East
Expeditionary Corps supported by Indochinese allies and the
United
States
. The battle was fought near the village of
Dien Bien
Phu
in northern Vietnam
and became
the last major battle between the French and the Vietnamese in the
First Indochina War. The battle began on March 13 when
preemptive Việt Minh attack surprised the French with heavy
artillery. Their supply lines interrupted, the French position
became untenable, particularly when the advent of the
monsoon season made dropping supplies and
reinforcements by parachute difficult. With defeat imminent, the
French sought to hold on till the opening of the
Geneva peace meeting on April 26.
The last French offensive took place on May 4, but it was
ineffective. The Viet Minh then began to hammer the outpost with
newly supplied
Katyusha
rockets. The final fall took two days, May 6 and 7th, during which
the French fought on but were eventually overrun by a huge frontal
assault. General Cogny based in Hanoi ordered General de Castries,
who was commanding the outpost to cease fire at 5:30PM and to
destroy all material (weapons, transmissions, etc.) to deny their
use to the enemy. A formal order was given to not use the
white flag so that it would not be considered to
be a surrender but a ceasefire. Much of the fighting ended on May
7, however a ceasefire was not respected on Isabelle, the isolated
southern position, where the battle lasted until May 8 1:00AM. At
least 2,200 members of the 20,000-strong French forces died during
the battle. Of the 100,000 or so Vietnamese thought to be involved,
there were an estimated 8,000 killed and another 15,000 wounded.
The prisoners taken at Dien Bien Phu were the greatest number the
Viet Minh had ever captured: one-third of the total captured during
the entire war.
One month after Dien Bien Phu, the composite
Groupe Mobile 100 (GM100) of the French Union forces evacuated the
An
Khe
outpost and was ambushed by a larger Viet Minh
force at the Battle of Mang
Yang Pass from June 24 to July 17. On the same time,
Giap launched some offensives against the delta but they all
failed. The Viet Minh victory at Dien Bien Phu heavily influenced
the outcome of the
1954 Geneva
accords that took place on July 21. In August began
Operation Passage to Freedom
consisting of the evacuation of catholic and loyalist Vietnamese
civilians from communist North Vietnamese persecution.
Geneva Conference and Partition
Negotiations between France and the Viet-minh started in Geneva in
April 1954 at the
Geneva
Conference. During this time the French Union and the Viet Minh
were fighting the most epic battle of the war at Dien Bien Phu. In
France,
Pierre
Mendès-France, opponent of the war since 1950, had been
invested on June 17, 1954, on a promise to put an end to the war,
reaching a
ceasefire in four months:
"Today it seems we can be reunited in a will for
peace that may express the aspirations of our
country...
Since already several years, a compromise peace, a
peace negotiated with the opponent seemed to me commanded by the
facts, while it commanded, in return, to put back in order our
finances, the recovery of our economy and its
expansion.
Because this war placed on our country an
unbearable burden.
And here appears today a new and formidable threat:
if the Indochina conflict is not resolved — and settled very fast —
it is the risk of war, of international war and maybe atomic, that we must
foresee.
It is because I wanted a better peace that I wanted
it earlier, when we had more assets.
But even now there is some renouncings or abandons
that the situation does not comprise.
France does not have to accept and will not accept
settlement which would be incompatible with its more vital
interests [applauding on certain seats of the Assembly on the left and at the extreme
right].
France will remain present in
Far-Orient.
Neither our allies, nor our opponents must conserve
the least doubt on the signification of our
determination.
A negotiation has been engaged in
Geneva...
I have longly studied the report... consulted the
most qualified military and diplomatic experts.
My conviction that a pacific settlement of the
conflict is possible has been confirmed.
A "cease-fire" must henceforth intervene
quickly.
The government which I will form will fix itself —
and will fix to its opponents — a delay of 4 weeks to reach
it.
We are today on 17th of June.
I will present myself before you before the 20th of
July...
If no satisfying solution has been reached at this
date, you will be freed from the contract which would have tied us
together, and my government will give its dismissal to Mr. the
President of the Republic."
The
Geneva Conference on
July 21, 1954, recognized the 17th
parallel as a "
provisional military demarcation
line" temporarily dividing the country into two zones,
Communist North
Vietnam and pro-
Western South Vietnam.

Students demonstration in Saigon, July
1964, observing the tenth anniversary of the July 1954 Geneva
Agreements.
The Geneva Accords promised elections in 1956 to determine a
national government for a united Vietnam. However, the United
States and the
State of Vietnam
refused to sign the document. From his home in France, Emperor
Bảo Đại appointed
Ngô Ðình Diệm as
Prime Minister of South
Vietnam. With American support, in 1955 Diệm used a referendum
to remove the former Emperor and declare himself the
president of the
Republic of Vietnam.
When the elections were prevented from happening by the Americans
and the South, Việt Minh cadres who stayed behind in South Vietnam
were activated and started to fight the government. North Vietnam
also invaded and occupied portions of Laos to assist in supplying
the guerilla fighting
National
Liberation Front in South Vietnam. The war gradually escalated
into the
Second Indochina War, more
commonly known as the
Vietnam War in the
West and the
American War in
Vietnam.
Ho Chi Minh
In 1923,
Ho Chi Minh moved to Guangzhou
, China
.
From
1925-26, he organized the 'Youth Education Classes' and
occasionally gave lectures at the Whampoa
Military Academy
on the revolutionary movement in Indochina.
He stayed
there in Hong
Kong
as a representative of the Communist International organization. In
June 1931, he was arrested and incarcerated by British police until
his release in 1933.
He then made his way back to the Soviet Union
, where he spent several years recovering from
tuberculosis. In 1938, he returned to China
and served
as an adviser with the Chinese Communist
armed forces.
In 1941,
Ho Chi Minh, seeing
communist revolution as the path to freedom,
returned to Vietnam and formed the
Việt Nam Độc Lập Đồng Minh
Hội (Allied Association of Independent Vietnam), better known
as the
Việt Minh.
He spent many years
in Moscow
and
participated in the International Comintern. At the direction of Moscow, he combined
the various Vietnamese communist groups into the Indochinese Communist Party in
Hong
Kong
in 1930. Ho Chi Minh created the Viet Minh
as an
umbrella organization
for all the nationalist resistance movements, de-emphasizing his
communist social revolutionary background. Late in the war, the
Japanese created a nominally independent government of Vietnam
under the overall leadership of Bảo Đại. Around the same time, the
Japanese arrested and imprisoned most of the French officials and
military officers left in the country. After the French army and
other officials were freed from Japanese prisons in Vietnam, they
began reasserting their authority over parts of the country. At the
same time, the French government began negotiations with both the
Viet Minh and the Chinese for a return of the French army to
Vietnam north of the 16th parallel. The Viet Minh were willing to
accept French rule to end Chinese occupation. Ho Chi Minh and
others had fears of the Chinese, based on China's historic
domination and occupation of Vietnam. The French negotiated a deal
with the Chinese where pre-war French concessions in Chinese ports
such as Shanghai were traded for Chinese cooperation in Vietnam.
The French landed a military force at Haiphong in early 1946.
Negotiations then took place about the future for Vietnam as a
state within the
French Union. These
talks eventually failed and the Việt Minh fled into the countryside
to wage guerrilla war. In 1946, Vietnam created its first
constitution.
The British had supported the French in fighting the Viet Minh,
armed militias from the religious
Cao Dai
and
Hoa Hao sects and the
Binh Xuyen organized crime groups which were all
individually seeking power in the country. In 1948, as part of a
post-colonial solution, the French re-installed Bảo Ðại as
head of state of Vietnam under the French
Union. The Viet Minh were militarily ineffective in the first few
years of the war and could do little more than harass the French in
remote areas of Indochina.
In 1949, the war changed with the triumph of
the communists in China
on Vietnam's northern border. China was able
to give almost unlimited support in terms of weapons and supplies
to the Việt Minh which transformed itself into a conventional army.
After
World War II, the United
States
and the USSR
entered into
the Cold War. The Korean War broke out in 1950 between communist
North
Korea
(DPRK) supported by China and the Soviet Union
, and South
Korea
(ROK) supported by the United States and its allies
in the United Nations. The
Cold War was now turning 'hot' in East Asia, and the American
government feared communist domination of the entire region would
have deep implications for American interests. The US became
strongly opposed to the government of Hồ Chí Minh, in part, because
it was supported and supplied by China. Hồ's government gained
recognition from China and the Soviet Union by January 1950 in
response to Western support for the
State of Vietnam that the French had
proposed as an associate state within the French Union. In the
French-controlled areas of Vietnam, in the same year, the
government of Bảo Đại gained
recognition by the United States and
the United Kingdom.
French domestic situation
The
1946 Constitution
creating the
Fourth Republic
(1946–1958) made France a
Parliamentary republic. Because of
the political context, it could find stability only by an alliance
between the three dominantparties: the Christian Democratic
Popular Republican
Movement (MRP), the
French
Communist Party (PCF) and the socialist
French Section of
the Workers' International (SFIO). Known as
tripartisme, this alliance briefly lasted
until the May 1947 crisis, with the expulsion from
Paul Ramadier's SFIO government of the PCF
ministers, marking the official start of the
Cold War in France. This had the effect of
weakening the regime, with the two most significant movements of
this period, Communism and
Gaullism, in
opposition.
Unlikely alliances had to be made between left and right-wing
parties in order to form a government invested by the
National Assembly, which
resulted in strong
parliamentary
unstability.
Hence, France had fourteen prime ministers in succession
between the creation of the Fourth Republic in 1947 and the
Battle of
Dien Bien Phu
in 1954. The rapid turnover of governments
(there were 17 different governments during the war) left France
unable to prosecute the war with any consistent policy according to
veteran General René de Biré (Lieutenant at Dien Bien Phu).
France
was increasingly unable to afford the costly conflict in Indochina
and, by 1954, the United
States
was paying 80% of France's war effort which was
$3,000,000 per day in 1952.
A strong
anti-war movement came into
existence in France driven mostly by the then powerful French
Communist Party (outpowering the socialists) and its young militant
associations, major trade unions like the
General
Confederation of Labour as well as notable leftist
intellectuals. The first occurrence was probably at the National
Assembly on March 21, 1947 when the communist deputees refused to
back the military credits for Indochina. The following year a
pacifist event was organized by soviet organizations with the
French communist atomic physicist
Frederic Joliot-Curie as
president. It was the
World Peace
Council's predecessor known as the "
1st Worldwide Congress of Peace
Partisans" (
1er Congrès Mondial des Partisans de la
Paix) which took place from March 25 to March 28, 1948 in
Paris. Later in April 28, 1950, Joliot-Curie would be dismissed
from the military and civilian
Atomic Energy
Commission. Young communist militants (UJRF) were also involved
in sabotage actions like the famous
Henri Martin Affair and the case of
Raymonde Dien who was jailed one year
for having blocked an ammunition train, with the help of other
militants, in order to prevent the supply of French forces in
Indochina in February 1950.
Similar actions against trains occurred in
Roanne
, Charleville
, Marseille
, and Paris
.
Even ammunition sabotage by PCF agents have been reported, such as
grenades exploding in the hands of legionaries. These actions
became such a cause for concern by 1950 that the French Assembly
voted a law against sabotage from March 2 to 8th. At this session
tension was so high between politicians that fighting ensued in the
assembly following communist deputees speeches against the
Indochinese policy.
This month saw the French navy mariner and
communist militant Henri
Martin arrested by military police and jailed for five years
for sabotage and propaganda operations in Toulon
's
arsenal. On May 5 communist Ministers were dismissed from
the government, marking the end of
Tripartism. A few months later on November 11,
1950, the French Communist Party leader
Maurice Thorez went to Moscow.
Some military officers involved in the
Revers Report scandal (
Rapport
Revers) like
General Salan were
very pessimistic about the way the war was being conducted, with
multiple political-military scandals all happening during the war,
starting with the
Generals' Affair
(
Affaire des Généraux) from September 1949 to November
1950.
As a result, General Revers was dismissed in December 1949 and
socialist Defense Ministry
Jules Moch
(
SFIO)
was brought on court by the National Assembly in November 28 1950.
Emerging media played their role, and this scandal started the
commercial success of the first French news magazine
L'Express created in 1953.
The third scandal was a financial-political scandal, concerning
military corruption, money and arms trading involving both the
French Union army and the Viet Minh, known as the
Piastres Affair.
The
US Communist Party was
outlawed in 1954, the very same year Wallace Buford and
James McGovern Jr. became the first American
casualties in Vietnam. Their C-119 transport aircraft was shot down
by Viet Minh artillery while on mission to drop supplies to the
garrison of Dien Bien Phu. The war ended that year but its sequel
started in
French Algeria where the
French Communist Party played an even stronger role by supplying
the
National
Liberation Front (FLN) rebels with intelligence documents and
financial aids. They were called "
the
suitcase carriers" (
les porteurs de valises).
In the French news, the Indochina War was presented as a direct
continuation of the
Korean War where
France had fought as a
UN French
battalion then incorporated in a U.S. unit, which was later
involved in the terrible
Battle
of Mang Yang Pass of June and July 1954. In an interview taped
in May 2004,
General Bigeard (6th
BPC) argues that "
one of the deepest mistakes done by the
French during the war was the propaganda telling you are fighting
for Freedom, you are fighting against Communism", hence the
sacrifice of volunteers during the climactic battle of Dien Bien
Phu. In the latest days of the siege, 652 non-paratrooper soldiers
from all army corps from cavalry to infantry to artillery dropped
for the first and last time of their life to support their
comrades.
The Cold War excuse was later used by
General Challe through his famous
"Do you want Mers El Kébir
& Algiers
to become soviet bases as soon as tomorrow?",
during the Generals' putsch
(Algerian War) of 1961, with limited
effect though. The same propaganda existed in the United
States with local newsreels using French news footages, probably
supplied by the army's cinematographic service. Happening right in
the
Red Scare years, propaganda was
necessary both to justify financial aid and at the same time to
promote the American effort in the ongoing Korea War. A few hours
after the French Union defeat at Dien Bien Phu in May 1954,
United States Secretary
of State John Foster Dulles
made an official speech depicting the "
tragic event" and
"
its defense for fifty seven days and nights will remain in
History as one of the most heroic of all time." Later on, he
denounced Chinese aid to the Viet Minh, explained that the United
States could not act openly because of international pressure, and
concluded with the call to "
all concerned nations"
concerning the necessity of "
a collective defense" against
"
the communist aggression".
War crimes & re-education camps
- The Boudarel Affair. Georges Boudarel was a French communist
militant who used brainswashing and tortures against French Union
POWs in Viet Minh reeducation camps. The French national
association of POWs brought Boudarel to court for a war crime charge. Most of the French Union
prisoners died in the Viet Minh camps and many POWs from the
Vietnamese National Army
were missing.
- Passage to Freedom was a
Franco-American operation to evacuate refugees. Loyal Indochinese
evacuated to metropolitan France were kept in detention camps.
- In 1957, the French Chief of Staff with Raoul Salan would use
the POWs experience with the Viet Minh reeducation camps to create
two "Instruction
Center for Pacification and Counter-Insurgency" (Centre
d'Instruction à la Pacification et à la Contre-Guérilla aka
CIPCG) and train thousands of officers during the Algerian War.
Other countries' involvement
By 1946, France headed the French Union. As successive governments
had forbidden the sending of metropolitan troops, the
French Far East
Expeditionary Corps (CEFEO) was created in March 1945.
The Union
gathered combatants from almost all French territories made of
colonies, protectorates and associated states (Madagascar
, Senegal
, Tunisia
, etc.) to fight in French Indochina, which was then
occupied by the Japanese. About 325,000 of the 500,000
French troops were Indochinese, almost all of whom were used in
conventional units.
The
Afrique Occidentale Française
(AOF) was a federation of African colonies. Senegalese and other
African troops were sent to fight in Indochina. Some African alumni
were trained in the Infantry Instruction Center no.2 (
Centre
d'Instruction de l'Infanterie no.2) located in southern
Vietnam. Senegalese of the Colonial Artillery fought at the siege
of Dien Bien Phu. As a French colony (later a full province),
French Algeria sent local troops to Indochina including several RTA
(
Régiment de Tirailleurs Algériens)
light infantry battalions.
Morocco
was a French protectorate and sent troops to
support the French effort in Indochina. Moroccan troops were
part of light infantry RTMs (
Régiment de Tirailleurs Marocains) for "Moroccan
Sharpshooters Regiment".
As a
French protectorate, Bizerte
, Tunisia
, was a major French base. Tunisian troops,
mostly RTT (
Régiment de Tirailleurs Tunisiens), were sent
to Indochina.
Part of French Indochina, then part of the
French Union and later an associated state, Laos
fought the
communists along with French forces. The role played by
Laotian troops in the conflict was depicted by veteran Pierre
Schoendoerffer's famous
317th Platoon released in 1964.
The French Indochina state of Cambodia played a significant role
during the Indochina War through its infantrymen and
paratroopers.
While Bao Dai's
State of Vietnam
(formerly Annam, Tonkin, Cochinchine) had the
Vietnamese National Army supporting
the French forces, some minorities were trained and organized as
regular battalions (mostly infantry
tirailleurs) that fought with French forces
against the Viet Minh. The
Tai Battalion
2 (BT2,
2e Bataillon Thai) is famous for its desertion
during the siege of Dien Bien Phu. Propaganda leaflets written in
Tai and French sent by the Viet Minh were found in the deserted
positions and trenches. Such deserters were called the
Nam Yum rats by Bigeard during the siege,
as they hid close to the Nam Yum river during the day and searched
at night for supply drops. Another allied minority was the
Muong people (
Mường). The 1st Muong
Battalion (
1er Bataillon Muong) was awarded the
Croix de Guerre des TOE
after the victorious
battle of Vinh
Yen in 1951. In the 1950s, the French established secret
commando groups based on loyal
montagnard ethnic minorities referred as
"
partisan" or "
maquisards", called the
Groupement
de Commandos Mixtes Aéroportés (Composite Airborne
Commando Group or GCMA), later renamed
Groupement
Mixte d'Intervention (GMI, or Mixed Intervention Group),
directed by the
SDECE counter-intelligence service. The SDECE's "Service
Action" GCMA used both commando and guerrilla techniques and
operated in intelligence and secret missions from 1950 to 1955.
Declassified information about the GCMA include the name of its
commander, famous Colonel
Roger
Trinquier, and a mission on April 30, 1954, when
Jedburgh veteran
Captain Sassi led the Mèo partisans of the
GCMA
Malo-Servan in
Operation
Condor during the siege of Dien Bien Phu.
In 1951,
Adjutant-Chief Vandenberghe from the 6th Colonial Infantry Regiment
(6e RIC) created the "Commando Vanden" (aka "Black Tigers", aka
"North
Vietnam Commando #24") based in Nam Dinh
. Recruits were volunteers from the
Thổ people,
Nung
people and
Miao people. This
commando unit wore Viet Minh black uniforms to confuse the enemy
and used techniques of the experienced
Bo doi
(
Bộ đội, regular army) and
Du Kich
(guerrilla unit). Viet Minh prisoners were recruited in POW camps.
The commando was awarded the
Croix de Guerre des TOE with
palm in July 1951, however Vandenberghe was betrayed by a Vet Minh
recruit, commander Nguien Tinh Khoi (308th Division's 56th
Regiment), who assassinated him (and his Vietnamese fiancee) with
external help on the night of January 5 1952.
Coolies and
POW known
as
PIM (
Prisonniers Internés Militaires which is
basically the same as POW) were civilians used by the army as
logistical support personnel. During the battle of Dien Bien Phu,
coolies were in charge of burying the corpses - the first days
only, after they were abandoned hence a terrible smell according to
veterans - and they had the dangerous job of gathering supply
packets delivered in drop zones while the Viet Minh artillery was
firing hard to destroy the crates. The Viet Minh also used
thousands of coolies to carry the Chu-Luc (regional units) supplies
and ammunition during assaults. The PIM were civilian males old
enough to join Bao Dai's army. They were captured in enemy
controlled villages, and those who refused to join the State of
Vietnam's army were considered prisoners or used as coolies to
support a given regiment.
_Lublin-51.jpg/190px-Samochod_(GAZ)_Lublin-51.jpg)
One point that neither the Americans nor the French seemed to
grasp, was the concept of sanctuary. As long as the revolutionaries
who are fighting a guerilla war have a sanctuary, in which they can
hide out, recoup after losses, and store supplies, it is almost
impossible for any foreign enemy to ever destroy them.
In the early 1950s,
southern China
was used as
a sanctuary by Viet Minh guerrillas. Several hit and run
ambushes were successfully operated against French Union convoys
along the neighboring
Route
Coloniale 4 (RC 4) which was a major supply way in Tonkin
(northern Vietnam). One of the most famous attack of this kind was
the
battle of Cao Bang. China
supplied the Viet Minh guerrillas with food (thousands of tons of
rice), money, medics, arms (Sung Khong Zat cannons), ammunitions
(SKZ rockets), artillery (24 guns were used at Dien Bien Phu) and
other military equipment including a large part of material
captured from
Chiang Kai-shek's
National Revolutionary
Army during the
Chinese Civil
War. Evidences of the Chinese secret aid were found in caves
during
Operation Hirondelle in
July 1953. 2,000 Chinese and Soviet Union military advisors trained
the Viet Minh guerrilla to turn it into a full range army. On top
of this China sent two artillery battalions at the siege of Dien
Bien Phu on May 6 1954.
One operated SKZ (Sung Khong Zat) 75 mm
recoilless cannons while the other used 12 x 6 Katyusha rockets China and the
Soviet
Union
were the first nations to recognize North
Vietnam.
The
Soviet
Union
was the other ally of the Viet Minh supplying
GAZ
trucks, truck engines, fuel, tires, arms (thousands
of Skoda light machine guns), all
kind of ammunitions, anti-aircraft guns (4 x 37 mm type) and
cigarettes. During Operation Hirondelle, the French Union
paratroopers captured and destroyed tons of Soviet supply in the Ky
Lua area. According to General Giap, the Viet Minh used 400
GAZ-51 soviet-built trucks at the battle of
Dien Bien Phu. Using highly effective camouflage, the French Union
reconnaissance planes were not able to notice them. On May 6, 1954
during the siege,
Katyusha
were successfully used against the outpost. Together with China,
the Soviet Union sent 2,000 military advisors to train the Viet
Minh guerrilla and turn it into a fully organized army. The Soviet
Union was with China the first nations to recognize Ho Chi Minh's
North Vietnam.
Mutual Defense Assistance Act (1950–1954)
At the beginning of the war, the U.S. was neutral in the conflict
because of opposition to
imperialism and
consequently to help colonial empires regain their power and
influence, because the Viet Minh had recently been their allies,
and because most of its attention was focused on
Europe where
Winston
Churchill argued an
Iron Curtain
had fallen.
Then the U.S. government gradually began supporting the French in
their war effort, primarily through
Mutual Defense Assistance Act,
as a means of stabilizing the
French Fourth Republic in which the
French Communist Party -
created with help from Ho Chi Minh himself - was a significant
political force. A dramatic shift occurred in American policy after
the victory of
Mao Zedong's
Communist Party of China in the
Chinese Civil War. By 1949,
however, the United States became concerned about the spread of
communism in Asia, particularly following the end of the
Chinese Civil War, and began to strongly
support the French as the two countries were bound by the Cold War
Mutual Defense Programme. After the
Moch-
Marshall
meeting of September 23, 1950, in Washington, the United States
started to support the French Union effort politically,
logistically and financially. Officially, US involvement did not
include use of armed force. However, recently it has been
discovered that undercover (
CAT)
-or not-
US Air Force pilots
flew to support the French during
Operation Castor in November 1953.
Two US
pilots were killed in action during the siege of
Dien Bien Phu
the following year. These facts were
declassified and made public more than 50 years after the events,
in 2005 during the
Légion
d'honneur award ceremony by the French ambassador in
Washington.
In May
1950, after the capture of Hainan
island by
Chinese Communist forces, U.S. President
Harry S. Truman began covertly authorizing direct
financial assistance to the French, and in June 27, 1950, after the
outbreak of the
Korean War, announced
publicly that the U.S. was doing so.
It was feared in
Washington
that if Ho were to win the war, with his ties to
the Soviet Union, he would establish a puppet state with Moscow
with the
Soviets ultimately controlling Vietnamese affairs. The
prospect of a
communist dominated
Southeast Asia was enough to spur the U.S. to
support France, so that the spread of Soviet-allied communism could
be contained.
On June 30, 1950, the first U.S. supplies for Indochina were
delivered. In September, Truman sent the
Military Assistance Advisory
Group (MAAG) to Indochina to assist the French. Later, in 1954,
U.S. President
Dwight D.
Eisenhower explained the
escalation risk, introducing what he
referred to as the "domino principle," which eventually became the
concept of
Domino theory. During the
Korean war, the conflict in Vietnam was also seen as part of a
broader proxy war with China and the USSR in Asia.
US Navy assistance (1951–1954)
The
USS Windham Bay
delivered
Grumman F8F Bearcat fighter
aircraft to Saigon on 26 January 1951.
On 2 March of that year, the United States Navy transferred the
USS Agenor (LST 490) to the
French navy in Indochina in accordance with the MAAG-led MAP.
Renamed
RFS Vulcain , she was
used in Operation Hirondelle in 1953. The
USS Sitkoh Bay carrier delivered
Grumman F8F Bearcat aircraft to Saigon on 26 March 26 1951. During
September 1953, the
USS
Belleau Wood (renamed
Bois Belleau) was lent to France
and sent to French Indochina to replace the
Arromanches.
She was used to
support delta defenders in the Halong Bay
operation in May 1954. In August, she joined
the Franco-American evacuation operation called "
Passage to
Freedom".
The same month, the United States delivered additional aircraft,
again using the USS Windham Bay. On 18 April 1954, during the siege
of Dien Bien Phu, the
USS Saipan
delivered 25 Korean War
AU-1 Corsair
aircraft for use by the French Aeronavale in supporting the
besieged garrison.
US Air Force assistance (1952–1954)
A total of 94 F4U-7s were built for the
Aeronavale in 1952, with the last of the
batch, the final Corsair built, rolled out in December 1952. The
F4U-7s were actually purchased by the U.S. Navy and passed on to
the Aeronavale through the U.S. Military Assistance Program (MAP).
They were
supplemented by 25 ex-U.S.MC AU-1s (previously used in the Korean
War) and moved from Yokosuka, Japan to Tourane
Air Base (Da
Nang
), Vietnam in April 1954. US Air Force assistance followed in
November 1953 when the French commander in Indochina,
General Navarre, asked
General McCarty, commander of the Combat
Cargo Division, for 12
Fairchild
C-119 for
Operation Castor at
Dien Bien Phu. The USAF also provided
C-124 Globemasters to transport French
paratroop reinforcements to Indochina.
On March
3, 1954, twelve C-119s of the 483rd Troop Carrier Wing ("Packet
Rats") based at Ashiya
, Japan,
were painted with France's insignia and loaned to France with 24
CIA pilots for short term use. Maintenance was carried out
by the US Air Force and airlift operations were commanded by
McCarty.
Central Intelligence Agency covert operations (1954)
Two
CIA pilots (
CAT) were killed in action during the
siege of Dien Bien Phu in 1954. Twenty four CIA pilots supplied the
French Union garrison by airlifting paratroopers, ammunition,
artillery pieces, tons of barbed wire, medics and other military
material. With the reducing
DZ areas,
night operations and anti-aircraft artillery assaults, many of the
"packets" fell into Viet Minh hands.
The 37 CIA pilots completed 682 airdrops under anti-aircraft fire
between March 13 and May 6. The ceasefire began the following day
at 5:00 PM under Hanoi-based General Cogny's orders. On February
25, 2005, the French ambassador to the United States,
Jean-David Levitte, awarded the seven
remaining CIA pilots with the
Légion d'honneur.
Operation Passage to Freedom (1954)
In August 1954, in support to the French navy and the merchant
navy, the U.S. Navy launched
Operation Passage to Freedom
and sent hundreds of ships, including
USS Montague, in order to evacuate
non-communist - especially
Catholic
Vietnamese refugees from
North Vietnam
following the July 20, 1954 armistice and
partition of Vietnam. Around 450,000
Vietnamese civilians were transported from North to South during
this period, with around one tenth of that number moving in the
opposite direction.
Popular culture

French Indochina medal, law of 1
August 1953.
Although a kind of taboo in France, "the dirty war" has a been
featured in various films, books and songs. Since its
declasification in the 2000s television documentaries have been
released using new perspectives about the U.S. covert involvement
and open critics about the French propaganda used during
wartime.
Famous Communist propagandist
Roman
Karmen was in charge of the media exploitation of the battle of
Dien Bien Phu.
In his documentary, Vietnam
(Вьетнам, 1955), he staged the famous scene with the raising of the
Viet Minh flag over de Castries' bunker which is similar to the one
he staged over the Berlin Reichstag
roof during World War
II (Берлин, 1945) and the "S" shaped POW column
marching after the battle, where he used the same optical technique
he experimented before when he staged the German prisoners after
the Siege of Leningrad
(Ленинград в борьбе, 1942) and the Battle of
Moscow
(Разгром немецких войск под Москвой,
1942).
Hollywood
made a film about Dien Bien Phu
in 1955, Jump Into
Hell, directed by David
Butler and scripted by Irving
Wallace, before his fame as a bestselling
novelist.
The first French movie about the war,
Shock Patrol
(
Patrouille de Choc) aka
Patrol Without Hope
(
Patrouille Sans Espoir) by Claude Bernard-Aubert, came
out in 1956. The French censorship has cut some violent scenes and
made the director change the end of his movie which was seen as
"
too much pessismistic". The second film
The 317th Platoon (
La 317ème
Section) was released in 1964, it was directed by Indochina
War (and siege of Dien Bien Phu) veteran
Pierre Schoendoerffer. Schoendoerffer
has since become a mediatic specialist about the Indochina War and
has focused his production on realistic war movies. He was
cameraman for the army ("Cinematographic Service of the Armies",
SCA) during his duty time, moreover as he had covered the
Vietnam War he released the
The Anderson Platoon, which won
the
Academy Award
for Documentary Feature. The popular Hollywood Vietnam war
movies
Apocalypse Now
Redux, and most obviously
Platoon, are inspired by
Schoendoerffer's work on the First Indochina War.
An interesting detail
about Apocalypse Now is all its First Indochina War
related scenes (including the line "the White leaves but the
Yellow stays" which is borrowed from the The 317th
Platoon) and explicit references were removed from the edited
version that was premiered in Cannes
, France in
1979.
See also
Notes
- Fall,
Bernard, Street Without Joy, p. 17.
- Nash, Gary B., Julie Roy Jeffrey, John R. Howe, Peter J.
Frederick, Allen F. Davis, Allan M. Winkler, Charlene Mires, and
Carla Gardina Pestana. The American People, Concise Edition
Creating a Nation and a Society, Combined Volume (6th Edition). New
York: Longman, 2007.
- Stanley Karnow, Vietnam: A History, (New York: Penguin
Books Ltd., 1997), 146
- Allies Reinforce Java and Saigon,
British Paramount News rushes, 1945
- Philipe Leclerc de Hauteloque (1902-1947), La légende d'un
héro, Christine Levisse-Touzé, Tallandier/Paris Musées,
2002
- DienBienPhu.org the official web site of the
battle
- June 17, 1954 discourse of Mendès-France on the
website of the French National Assembly
- A Bernard Fall Retrospective, presentation of
Bernard B.
Fall, Vietnam Witness 1953-56, New York, Praeger,
1966, by the Ludwig von Mises Institute
- Patrick Pesnot, Rendez-vous Avec X - Dien Bien Phu, France
Inter, December 4th 2004 (Rendez-vous With X broadcasted on public
station France Inter)
- "We wanted a newspaper to tell what we wanted"
interview by Denis Jeambar & Roland Mihail
- Five columns on the cover's dossiers: Communism in
the United States (May 4th 1965) French public channel
ORTF
- William M. Leary, CAT at Dien Bien Phu, Aerospace
Historian 31 (Fall / September 1984)
- General Challe's appeal (April 22nd 1961)
- John Foster Dulles on the fall of Dien Bien
Phu
- Boudarel affair in the ANAPI official website
- Alf
Andrew Heggoy and Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in
Algeria, Bloomington, Indiana, Indiana University Press, 1972,
p.175
- The 317th Platoons script
- Original audio recordings of General de Castries (Dien
Bien Phu) and General Cogny (Hanoi) transmissions on May 7, 1954,
during the battle of Dien Bien Phu (from the European Navigator
based in Luxembourg)
- French Defense Ministry archives, ECPAD
- Service Spéciaux - GCMA Indochine 1950/54,
Commandant Raymond Muelle & Eric Deroo, Crépin-Leblond
editions, 1992, ISBN 2703001002
- Guerre secrète en Indochine - Les maquis autochtones face
au Viêt-Minh (1950-1955), Lieutenant-Colonel Michel David,
Lavauzelle editions, 2002, ISBN 2702506364
- Dien Bien Phu - Le Rapport Secret, Patrick Jeudy,
TF1 Video, 2005
- French Defense Ministry archives
- French Defense Ministry archives
- French Defense Ministry archives
- Dr. Jacques Cheneau in "In Vietnam, 1954. Eight
episode"
- French Defense Ministry archives
- French Defense Ministry archives
- Chinese General Hoang Minh Thao and Colonel Hoang Minh Phuong
quoted by Pierre Journoud researcher at the Defense History Studies
(CHED), Paris University Pantheon-Sorbonne, in Paris Hanoi
Beijing published in Communisme magazine and the
Pierre Renouvin Institute of Paris, July 20th 2004.
- French Defense Ministry archives
- French Defense Ministry archives
-
http://www.ina.fr/archivespourtous/index.php?vue=corpus&code=C0524208764#
Indochina War: The "good offices" of the Americans (National
Audiovisual Institute)
- Pierre Schoendoerffer interview with Jean Guisnel
in Some edited pictures
- Roman Karmen, un cinéaste au service de la
révolution, Dominique Chapuis & Patrick Barbéris, Kuiv
Productions / Arte France, 2001
- The Cinematheque of Toulouse
References
- Chaliand, Gérard. 1982. Guerrilla Strategies: An Historical
Anthology from the Long March to Afghanistan, California. ISBN
0520044436
- Chen Jian. 1993. "China and the First Indo-China War, 1950-54",
The China Quarterly, No. 133. (Mar., 1993),
pp. 85–110. London: School of Oriental and African
Studies.
- Cogan, Charles G. 2000. "L'attitude des États-Unis à l'égard de
la guerre d'Indochine" in Vaïsse (2000: 51–88).
- Dunstan, Simon. 2004. Vietnam Tracks: Armor in Battle
1945-75, Osprey Publishing. ISBN 1841768332
- Fall, Bernard. 1994. Street
Without Joy, Stackpole Books. ISBN 0811717003
- Giap, Vo Nguyen. 1971. The
Military Art of People's War. Modern Reader, New York &
London. ISBN 085345-193-1
- Humphries, James. F. 1999. Through the Valley: Vietnam,
1967-1968, Lynne Rienner Publishers. ISBN 1555878210
- Perkins, Mandaley. Hanoi, adieu: A bittersweet memoir of
French Indochina. Sydney: Harper Perennial, 2006. ISBN 9780
7322 8197 7, ISBN 0 7322 8197 0
- Summers, JR., Harry G. Historical Atlas of the Vietnam
War. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1995. ISBN 0-395-72223-3
- Thi, Lam Quang. 2002. The
Twenty-Five Year Century: A South Vietnamese General Remembers the
Indochina War to the Fall of Saigon, University of North
Texas. ISBN 1574411438
- Vaïsse, Maurice (editor). 2000. L'Armée française dans la
guerre d'Indochine (1946–1954). Editions Complexe, Paris. ISBN
978-2870278109
- Wiest, Andrew (editor). Rolling Thunder in a Gentle
Land. Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 2006. ISBN
978-1-84693-020-6
- Windrow, Martin. 1998. The
French Indochina War, 1946-1954, Osprey. ISBN 1855327899
- Windrow, Martin. 2004. The
Last Valley. Weidenfeld and Nicolson. ISBN 0306813866
External links
Media links
Films