After the outbreak of hostilities in Hanoi in December 1946 and Commander Jean Valluy's initial string of victories, the Indochina War settled into a three-year stalemate, with Vo Nguyen Giap content to rely on quick strikes and the French unable to mount a major offensive. During that period the Viet Minh's four-part strategic scheme to demoralize and undermine their foe gradually took shape.
Their first objective was to secure regions that were critical sources of food, manpower, minerals, and other resources, either by blocking access routes or by isolating enemy posts and harassing them to the point where they become too costly and burdensome to retain. (Buttinger, p. 738)
In larger zones where the French were firmly ensconced, guerillas and regular army detachments blew up bridges, barricaded roads, ambushed patrols and convoys, assassinated collaborators, and destroyed numerous watchtowers and stations set up for defense and communication. Masters of the night, they reclaimed hundreds of farms and villages and their inhabitants. (Buttinger, p. 739)
That was the foundation of the third -- and most remarkable -- achievement: the political, economic, and military organization and mobilization, openly and clandestinely, of millions of people. The Viet Minh had no choice if they were to survive a war at the outset of which they lacked food, medicine, agricultural tools, shoes, clothing, and a transportation system they had themselves decimated. (Buttinger, pp. 765-766, 770)
Their leaders were talented, energetic, devoted, and innovative. They disseminated their spoken and printed propaganda to every corner of the country. When necessary, they devised new methods of indoctrination to supplement traditional ones. To be sure they were Communists, but they were also authentic nationalists, and their ideology was grounded in the purposes for which their movement was conceived: national liberation and a progressive democratic state. (Buttinger, pp. 764-765)
Fourth, the Viet Minh bought time to enlarge their forces. By the spring of 1950, their regular army had grown to 120,000 men, with another 130,000 equally divided between regional and guerilla-militia units. The Chinese Communists had reached the Vietnam border in 1949, and could now provide automatic weapons, mortars, howitzers, ammunition, uniforms, trucks, and advisers. Viet Minh detachments were sent to China's Yunnan province for training in the use of explosives. While the French still maintained overall superiority, Giap was now capable for the first time of going toe to toe with his adversary. (Logevall, p. 241, 243)
The French, now under the command of Marcel Carpentier, were desperate to hold the line of forts in northern Tonkin which General Valluy had seized in 1947. Gateway to Communist sanctuaries in China, they were perched precariously on Route Coloniale 4, which twisted for one hundred fifty miles through ravines and high passes along the border from Cao Bang in the north to Lang Son in the south. By eliminating them, Giap could open up supply routes to China. (Karnow, p. 184)
On September 18, 1950, after a two-day engagement, five Viet Minh battalions took the centrally-located Dong Khe post, cutting off Cao Bang. Three weeks later fifteen battalions ambushed a combined French column of Cao Bang evacuees and their putative rescuers who had been dispatched from Lang Son; only six hundred soldiers out of six thousand escaped death or capture. One thousand machine guns, eight thousand rifles, and four hundred fifty trucks were claimed by the Viet Minh, followed by even larger stocks when Carpentier ordered Lang Son abandoned on October 18. (Logevall, pp. 256-250)
Scholar and author Bernard Fall called the calamity France's worst colonial defeat since the fall of Quebec to the British in 1759. Giap celebrated by getting drunk for the first time in his life. (Karnow, p. 185; Logevall, p. 250)
Despite the pleas of Radical Party spokesperson Pierre Mendes-France -- he called the war an exercise in futility, one that was exacting a huge toll in blood and treasure -- there was no talk of surrender in Paris's Hall of Power. The government's credibility was on the line. Disengagement short of victory would insult the memory of all the Frenchmen who had died defending the cause, a common argument that would be repeated often in the years ahead. It would simply be necessary to try harder, to perform better -- and to do so under fresh leadership in Hanoi. Commander Carpentier was recalled -- as was High Commissioner Leon Pignon; their replacement was a legendary figure grandiose enough to fill both roles. (Logevall, pp. 253, 255)
Jean de Lattre de Tassigny was a bona fide war hero. He had been wounded five times in Word War I, had escaped a Vichy prison camp in World War II with the help of his son Bernard, who had smuggled him a saw and a ten-yard length of rope, and in 1944-5 had led the French Army on its triumphant march from Provence to the Danube. At the time of his appointment he was in command of the Western Union (precursor to NATO) ground forces -- in effect, Western Europe's top general. (Logevall, pp. 261-263)
Often compared to Douglas MacArthur in appearance and temperament, de Lattre was vain, charming, eloquent, and magnetic -- the type of person who dominates any room he enters. So infused, however, was his egocentricity with pride, self-esteem, and the crude enjoyment of authority that some have termed it megalomania, pointing to his volcanic outbursts of anger toward subordinates, his constant humiliation of colleagues, and his unflinching demand that every acquaintance accord him the respect due his superior status. His soldiers' response to his pomposity was to nickname him le roi Jean (King Jean). (Buttinger, 755-756; Logevall, p. 255)
De Lattre inspired confidence by his mere presence. With an exhausting energy, he shuttled across the Red River Delta in a small spotter plane, evoking cheers from the assembled troops, weeding out the incompetent and lackadaisical, promising there would be no retreat until the Communists were vanquished. He organized striking groups, mobile headquarters with attached battalions that could move quickly to confront the Viet Minh and to relieve besieged outposts. He ordered the construction of a chain of twenty-two hundred concrete pillboxes -- the de Lattre line -- enclosing Hanoi and Haiphong. (Logevall, pp. 266-267; Fall, p. 176)
Giap regarded de Lattre's prominent reputation as a compliment to himself and his troops. "The French are sending against the People's Army a foe worthy of its steel," he proclaimed, as he set his sights on the rich rice paddies of the Red River Delta. (Logevall, p. 268)
His three attacks -- in January, March, and May of 1951 -- came tantalizingly close to success, but ultimately they all failed, with ruinous losses on both sides; Giap left ten thousand dead and an equal number wounded or captured on the battlefields. Displaying extraordinary courage, de Lattre flew twice to Vinh Yen, site of the first encounter, to direct the mobilization of all available resources, the transfer of reinforcements from Cochinchina, and a fierce aerial bombardment that would be the heaviest of the war. (Logevall, pp. 269-272)
In each case the French were outnumbered. The deciding factors were the predominance of American-made aircraft and artillery and the deployment of a devastating new weapon, described by one Viet Minh officer as "hell in the form of large egg-shaped containers [dropped from planes] . . . Immense sheets of flames, exceeding over hundreds of meters, it seems, strike terror in the tanks of my soldiers. This is napalm, the fire that falls from the skies." (Logevall, pp. 270-271)
Giap had been outclassed, had shown his inexperience as a general. Neither he nor his staff understood how to maneuver large units or handle them in combat. "The general counteroffensive is called off," he ordered. "Our troops who had shown their superiority as guerillas shall not now seek massive battle." (Logevall, pp. 272-273)
De Lattre himself could not escape tragedy. His twenty-three-year-old son, a lieutenant commanding a Vietnamese company, was killed by a mortar explosion on the bank of the Day River near Nam Dinh. Bernard de Lattre had been the youngest soldier in World War II to be decorated with the Medaille militaire. His father's appointment, he had written upon hearing of it, would bring "fresh blood and new machinery" to the war effort and meant that "we could save everything." (Logevall, pp. 260-261, 274)
Five months later, at the suggestion of Governor Thomas Dewey of New York, who had visited Saigon in July and been captivated by the general, de Lattre disembarked under the shadow of the Statue of Liberty. He had come to make the case personally that France deserved greater material and political support from the United States in her crusade against the Viet Minh -- and international communism. (Logevall, pp. 281-282)
At every stop during his two-week stay, he framed the conflict in Cold War terms. Just as United Nations forces were challenging the Communist world dictatorship in Korea, so the French were fighting it in Indochina. These were two fronts on the same battlefield. But in Indochina France stood alone; and while America had provided essential assistance, more must come, in the form of larger and prompter arms deliveries. (Logevall, p. 282)
On September 21, 1951, speaking at the Pentagon, de Lattre warned Secretary of Defense Robert Lovett and the Joint Chiefs of Staff: "If I lose Indochina, Asia is lost . . . India would burn like a match, and there would be no hindrance to the march of Communism through Suez and Africa. The Muslim world would be engulfed, and Europe itself would be outflanked." (Logevall, p. 283)
While much of American officialdom probably agreed with The Washington Post when it opined, "The great problem in increased military is to avoid the appearance of propping up colonialism," they never wavered in their conviction that France needed -- and Cold War imperatives demanded -- their full support. In the subsequent four months, 130,000 tons of equipment were shipped to Indochina. (Logevall, pp. 283-284)
Returning to Indochina, de Lattre presided over one final victory: the seizure on November 14, 1951, of Hoa Binh, an important river and road junction in the mountains west of the Red River Delta. Two months later he was dead from cancer. While his military sagacity and dazzling leadership probably averted disaster in 1951, politically, as he confided to General Valluy on his deathbed, he never completely understood Indochina. Ultimately, his credibility as a vocal affirmant of Vietnamese nationalism was undermined by his unyielding insistence on total popular loyalty to the French Union. (Logevall, pp. 288-290)
Despite growing public dissatisfaction with what had been labeled la sale guerre, the dirty war, Prime Minister Rene Plevin won approval by a wide margin for an appropriation that was approaching one-sixth of the nation's entire budget. Lauding the army for its persistent valor, he predicted that eighteen months hence France would secure a negotiated settlement from a position of strength. (Logevall, pp. 313-314)
The new man for the job was Raoul Salan -- elegant, courteous, and competent, although, according to de Gaulle, "there was something slippery and inscrutable" about him. He had served extensively in Indochina, which, alongside his love of the country's artifacts and customs, including the smoking of opium, had earned him the sobriquets Le Chinois and Le Mandarin. (Logevall, p. 320)
Salan had mixed success in 1952. Early on he was pressured into relinquishing Hoa Binh. Then in October he lost the garrisons along the key Nghia Lo ridge line between the Red and Black Rivers. The following month his offensive into the Tai Highlands northwest of Hanoi, Operation Lorraine involving 30,000 soldiers, failed miserably, costing him twelve hundred casualties. He delivered some retribution later in the month when Giap once again made the mistake of offering a set-piece battle at the Black River stronghold of Na San and was badly repulsed. (Logevall, pp. 323-329)
It was a reminder that all was not good for Ho Chi Minh. Food and manpower shortages weighed heavily on his ranks' morale and fighting capacity. The Vietnamese National Army -- organized alongside the French to lend legitimacy to the Bao Dai government -- was gaining effectiveness in the field. The French still controlled the Red River Delta and were more solidly anchored in the Saigon area than they had been earlier in the year. Their efforts at pacification -- winning the hearts and minds of the local peasantry -- were showing signs of progress in the south. And a new administration was ascending to power in the United States. (Logevall, pp. 331-333)
Although President Eisenhower did not publicly employ the domino metaphor until April 1954, he left no doubt as to how he viewed Indochina in his remarks before a National Governors' Conference in August 1953. "If Indochina goes," he warned his audience, "several things happen right away. The Malaysian peninsula, with its valuable tin and tungsten, would become indefensible, and India would be outflanked. Indonesia with all its riches would likely be lost too . . . So you see, somewhere along the line, this must be blocked. It must be blocked now. That is what the French are doing." (Logevall, p. 365)
For Secretary of State, Eisenhower tapped the severe, self-important, sanctimonious, and bombastic John Foster Dulles. Many Europeans shuddered at Dulles's virulent anti-Communism, and feared he might so antagonize the Soviets that their continent would be consumed in a nuclear holocaust. Bolstering French colonialism was not pleasant, Dulles conceded, but "necessary as a practical matter . . . because the theoretically practical solution [an independent, non-Communist Vietnam] is not possible for many reasons." (Logevall, pp. 337-340)
The President and his Secretary had their worst fears realized when in April 1953 General Giap drove into Laos, skirted French fortifications in the Plain of Jars, and reached the outskirts of the royal capital, Luang Prabang. It was not a campaign of conquest, however. Once his goals of extending the French line of defense and establishing food depots for future use were attained, he pulled back across the border. (Logevall, p. 345)
The elusiveness of a quarry who could slip through pincers of armor and infantry just before their closure was illustrated in the frustrating outcome of "Operation Camargue." In July 1953 the French High Command decided to clean up the "Street Without Joy," a stretch of Road One along the central Annan coast where their convoys were plagued by shellfire and ambushes. During a thirty-six-hour assault, two amphibious forces, three overland groupings, and one airborne unit -- fifteen regiments in all, including artillery -- overran four key villages and sealed off the main area of resistance, only to find that they had caught nothing. Even their preponderance in numbers of ten to one was insufficient when the enemy enjoyed an intimate knowledge of the terrain, the benefit of defensive organization, the sympathy of the population, and an edge in combat intelligence. (Fall, pp. 144-145, 168, 171)
While public opinion in France may have been signalling the government to adopt a less belligerent policy in Indochina -- a poll commissioned by Le Monde found that two-third's of voters favored a unilateral withdrawal or a negotiated armistice -- the United States was now the heavyweight in the ring; nothing less than much improved military performance would keep the materials and weapons flowing. President Eisenhower expressed his dismay with Salan's lethargy, and called for a "forceful and inspirational leader" in the mold of de Lattre. (Logevall, p. 346)
A veteran of both world wars but a newcomer to Indochina, Henri Navarre would bring an "absence of prejudice" to the theater, so rationalized the Paris brain trust. Beneath his cold and effete demeanor there reputedly lodged a brilliant analytical mind. Navarre sought to project an air of authority at all times, and exuded confidence from the start. "We will give back to our troops the aggressiveness they have sometimes lacked," he declared. If the Associated States apply themselves, "victory is certain." (Logevall, pp. 354-355)
With the assistance of General John "Iron Mike" O'Daniel -- a gruff, cigar-chomping American officer full of his own rhetorical bluster -- the Navarre Plan was birthed. Small operations and raids would commence immediately, followed by a large-scale attack. Static units behind the lines would be consolidated into groupes mobiles. The Vietnamese National Army would be trained and equipped at an accelerated pace and given additional responsibilities in the field. A mole d'amarrage, or mooring point, would be established, from which the French and their native auxiliaries could penetrate the Viet Minh's rear areas. A final offensive in 1955 would destroy the enemy's masse de maneuvre and compel him to sue for peace. (Logevall, p. 356; Karnow, p. 190)
A Time Magazine cover story on Navarre in September 1953 praised the "quiet but steely, cultured but tough" general's conception of his role, and applauded his immediate successes. The soldiers "who must fight this dirty war," wrote the reporter, are imbued with "a new spirit and optimism." He quoted one who would coin another memorable phrase: "A year ago none of us could see victory . . . Now we can see it clearly, like light at the end of a tunnel." (Logevall, p. 365)
Of two American visitors to Vietnam that fall -- both of whom would play prominent roles in its future -- one would agree with Time's assessment and one would not. Freshman Senator Mike Mansfield of Montana returned brimming with enthusiasm for Navarre. "There are indications that the stalemate in Indochina may be coming to an end," he related to Congress. "The months ahead could witness the beginning of a series of significant military engagements." (Logevall, p. 369)
Vice-President Richard Nixon, however, told the National Security Council that the administration should not count on the Navarre Plan. The Communists had a sense of history, they had determination and skill, and they believed time was on their side, he said. Nevertheless, in spite of the gamble, he urged continuing military aid to the French. (Logevall, pp. 376-377)
Thus the stage was set for one of the most decisive battles of the twentieth century.
The village of Dien Bien Phu lay nestled in a heart-shaped basin in northwest Vietnam ten miles from the Laotian border. At the junction of three routes, it was not only geographically the key to region but inhabited by an ethnic tribe, the Tai, who were fierce Communist resisters and a source of the opium used by the French (and the Viet Minh, if it fell into their hands) to finance their activities. (Logevall, pp. 381-383)
The Viet Minh had occupied Dien Bien Phu during their foray into Laos, but Navarre's plan was to expel them and establish it as a hedgehog, also known as an air-ground base or airhead, a fortified camp accessible only by air lodged in the path of the enemy in order to interdict his flow of supplies and reinforcements. Navarre believed this strategy would lure Viet Minh main force units into a set-piece battle where French superior artillery and aircraft firepower would give him a sizable advantage. (Logevall, p. 383)
Despite the objections of his two principal subordinates, Tonkin overseer Rene Cogny and airborne commander Jean Gilles, who were convinced Giap could easily skirt Dien Bien Phu and that it would be too difficult to supply adequately by air, on November 23, 1953, twenty-two hundred paratroopers dropped into the valley and took possession. (Filippelli)
"For us," wrote General Giap, "the parachutage presented a fundamentally favorable opportunity." As he assessed it, the French were in a "completely isolated position," solely dependent on airlifts, while the Viet Minh, entrenched in the mountains dominating the site, would be able to draw food and ammunition from the rear. Consequently, he decided "to wipe out the whole enemy force at Dien Bien Phu." (Filippelli; Karnow, pp. 190-191)
The task would be monumental. Just to get to the battle zone, each soldier had to march three hundred miles in ten days carrying a rifle, bullet magazines, hand grenades, a blanket, a mosquito net, a change of clothes, and a bag of rice which would be refilled at a depot along the way. Over a rudimentary road system stretching five hundred miles a herd of trucks would transport the three hundred tons of ammunition and 4200 tons of rice required to sustain 43,000 troops and 14,000 porters. (Karnow, p. 191; Logevall, p. 394)
By the end of January 1954, Giap had surrounded Dien Bien Phu, and was ready to spring his trap. (Filippelli)
The man designated to defend the garrison was fifty-one-year-old cavalry colonel, Christian de la Croix de Caistre. Dashing, aristocratic, "irresistible to women, and riddled with gambling debts, he had been a champion horseman, daredevil pilot, and courageous commando." Informed by his staff that their skirmishers were encountering stiff resistance, he immediately set to work constructing nine strongpoints in the valley, supposedly named after former mistresses. Three housed the bulk of his artillery -- Gabrielle and Beatrice to the north, Isabelle to the south -- and were situated so as to provide cover for the hub of his defenses. Tactically, however, his engineers erred; Giap would move against the northernmost bases first, and Isabelle was too distant to serve its purpose. (Logevall, p. 406; Karnow, p. 195)
With his Chinese adviser Wei Guoqing encouraging him to be aggressive, Giap made plans to storm the fortress on January 25. For ten frantic days, supplies were hauled over the mountains via shuttle trucks loaded and unloaded at eight checkpoints, teams of porters carrying shoulder poles and bamboo rigs, and specially equipped bicycles that could transport two hundred kilograms. Heavy guns, including cumbersome but deadly 105mm howitzers, were manhandled into place, much to the amazement of the onlookers, whose aircraft continually rained bombs on roads and bridges. (Logevall, pp. 413-417)
The French command knew of the impending attack, and waited with nervous anxiety all through the twenty-fifth. It never came. At the last minute Giap called it off, concerned that his foe was much stronger than he had initially calculated, that his artillerymen would not be able to execute coordinated calibration, and that his units were not accustomed to fighting on such an expansive battlefield during the daylight hours and for periods longer than twenty-four hours. It was the correct decision, he wrote afterward, in accordance with "the fundamental principle of the conduct of revolutionary war: strike to win; strike only when success is certain; if is not, then don't strike." (Logevall, pp. 423-424)
Giap's adversaries misread his procrastination. De Caistre reasoned that Giap had avoided conflict because he feared he would not prevail. One-armed artillery commander Charles Piroth refused to plant his guns in trenches where his crew would be sheltered, preferring open emplacements that facilitated fire from all angles. "Iron Mike" O'Daniel affirmed that the base "could withstand any kind of attack the Viet Minh are capable of launching." In Saigon, General Navarre told U. S. Ambassador David Heath that he would be disappointed if no battle developed at Dien Bien Phu because it would prevent him from inflicting a major defeat on the enemy. (Logevall, pp. 443-444)
Giap pushed his men hard for the next seven weeks, intent on building overwhelming supremacy. Stocks of ammunition and supplies were brought in. Huge effort was expended installing the 105mm howitzers in casements sunk in the forward slope of the hills overlooking the basin so the gunners could fire "down the tube" at their targets. Commando raids on French airfields in the Red River Delta destroyed two dozen planes and hundreds of thousands of liters of fuel. A vast trench and tunnel system slowly snaked its way toward the compound "like the tentacles of some determined devilfish." (Logevall, pp. 447-448)
On the afternoon of March 13, Giap switched from siege to surge. Softened up by an artillery barrage, Beatrice fell by midnight, her commander and his entire staff killed when their bunker suffered a direct hit. Gabrielle held on for thirty-six more hours against two entire regiments but succumbed when a relief column was ambushed. When the Tai soldiers defending Anne-Marie began to drift away into the jungle, de Caistre ordered it abandoned, opening a hole in his line and shrinking his zone for receiving parachuted supplies and reinforcements. On March 30, after a heavy bombardment, portions of the central strongpoints Dominique and Eliane were overrun by Viet Minh infantry. (Filippelli)
"I am completely dishonored," Colonel Piroth muttered to a fellow officer. "I have guaranteed de Caistre that the enemy artillery couldn't touch us -- but now we're going to lose the battle." He slipped away to his dugout, lay down on his cot, pulled out the safety pin on a grenade with his teeth, and blew himself to bits. (Logevall, p. 450)
On the verge of disaster, the French appealed to the United States for some level of direct intervention. Flying to Washington, French Chief of Staff Paul Ely obtained from his counterpart, Admiral Arthur Radford, an endorsement for Operation Vulture, which entailed massive night raids against the Dien Bien Phu perimeter by a squadron of B-29 bombers based in the Philippines. When the plan was scotched by Army Chief of Staff Matthew Ridgeway, who had no faith in air strikes, President Eisenhower declined to act without Congressional approval. (Karnow, pp. 196-197)
On April 3, eight Congressional power brokers, including Senate minority leader Lyndon Johnson, met with Radford, Secretary of State Dulles, and four other administration officials. After hearing Johnson assert, "We want no more Koreas with the United States furnishing ninety percent of the manpower," the lawmakers unanimously rejected any escalated involvement without the participation of their foremost ally, Great Britain. (Logevall, pp. 467-469)
Dulles met a cold shoulder in London. Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden dismissed his attempt to compare the present situation to Hitler's occupation of the Rhineland, doubted whether air strikes would do any good, and was not convinced that a Communist Indochina portended a similar doom for its neighboring countries. Prime Minister Winston Churchill told his Cabinet and Chiefs of Staff that the mission under consideration would not salvage France and could take the world to the brink of war. (Logevall, pp. 486-502, 505)
Meanwhile the ring of steel around Dien Bien Phu was tightening; having absorbed significant losses both in men and ammunition, Giap reverted to his siege tactics, pushing his assault trenches ever closer to the French fortifications. Conditions worsened considerably on March 30 when the monsoon rains descended, turning the ground into knee-deep liquid mud and making supply and reinforcement drops increasingly difficult. The hospital was overfull; the wounded were strewn in every available space awaiting care, many with missing or gangrened limbs and infested with maggots. French combat strength had dwindled to 2400 from 11,000 at the start of the battle plus four battalions parachuted in afterward; probably half the difference were deserters. (Logevall, pp. 510-512)
At five o'clock on the afternoon of May 1, more than one hundred Viet Minh field guns opened fire over the whole remaining area of the camp. Bunkers and soggy trenches caved in under the barrage, burying many soldiers alive. When the shooting slackened, the eastern hill positions of Eliane and Dominique were indefensible against the onslaught of three full divisions. Three nights later de Castrie and his staff listened helplessly as eighty legionnaires and Moroccan riflemen at strongpoint Huguette gallantly fended off three thousand attackers for several hours before being silenced. (Logevall, pp. 524-525)
On May 7 time ran out for the stricken defenders, whose resistance had contracted to strongpoint Isabelle in the south (which would fall last, around midnight) and General de Caistre's command center at Eliane. In the early afternoon, hearing reports of a possible breakout, Giap ordered a general advance and the shutdown of any escape route to the south. Around six o'clock a special Viet Minh detachment entered de Caistre's headquarters, where they found him impeccably dressed and wearing his red spahi cap. They took him prisoner and hoisted their own flag over the rooftop. The Battle of Dien Bien Phu was over. (Logevall, pp. 532-534)
Thirty-five hundred multinational soldiers -- French, Vietnamese, Moroccan, Algerian, Legionnaires -- died or went missing during the fifty-five-day ordeal. Another six thousand perished during a brutal four-hundred-fifty mile trek to Viet Minh prison camps or during their three-month incarceration, a total death rate of sixty percent of those who had been sent to, in Bernard Fall's words, "hell in a very small place." The Viet Minh's mass assaults had been equally devastating -- ten thousand killed, fifteen thousand wounded, twenty-five percent of those who saw action. (Logevall, pp. 542-543)
Henri Navarre had grievously miscalculated. In seeking a confrontation in the arena of his own choosing, he never foresaw that Giap could rapidly assemble a force five times larger than his own; that Giap could deploy enough artillery in the hills surrounding Dien Bien Phu to impair, much less demolish, his defenses; that Giap's emplacements could be protected by camouflage and anti-aircraft guns; that Giap's howitzers and abysmal weather conditions would restrict supply flights and parachute drops behind his lines; that porter service would keep ammunition flowing steadily to his besiegers; and that his tanks would be virtually useless in the tangled brush and flood waters that covered the valley floor. (Karnow, p. 194; Buttinger, p. 802)
"Vo Nguyen Giap had accomplished the unprecedented . . . For the first time in the annals of colonial warfare, Asian troops had defeated a European army in fixed battle." (Logevall, p. 534)
On May 8, 1954, the day after the surrender of Dien Bien Phu, delegations from nine countries -- France, Great Britain, the United States, the Soviet Union, the People's Republic of China, Bao Dai's State of Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh's Democratic Republic of Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos -- gathered around a horseshoe-shaped table at the old League of Nations building in Geneva, Switzerland, to determine the fate of Indochina.
American diplomacy throughout the proceedings was wholly inconsistent. John Foster Dulles fretted at having to appear on the same stage as the Chinese Communists. Undersecretary of State Walter Bedell sought to embolden the French by promising military intervention should the Communists make unreasonable demands, then demurred when Australia and New Zealand refused to be a party to such acts. Yet he and Dulles still urged the French to resist any compromises even as the other players were drifting toward partition as the preferred solution. Wanting to avoid both "another Korea" and any hint of "appeasement" of the Communists, Eisenhower and Dulles contemplated pulling out of the conference altogether. (Logevall, pp. 551, 569-575)
After initially taking a hard line, Viet Minh representative Pham Van Dong turned surprisingly conciliatory. In a speech on May 25, he indicated that partition might be acceptable as a temporary measure; each side would have complete administrative and economic control over its portion and would withdraw its forces from the other zone -- precursors to ultimate reunification through free elections. Since that proposal foretold the death knell of the Bao Dai regime, French Foreign Minister Georges Bidault predictably opposed it. (Logevall, p. 566)
Two developments broke the deadlock. On June 17, Pierre Mendes-France, who had been denouncing the Indochina War for years, replaced Joseph Laniel as French Prime Minister. Ascending the rostrum of the National Assembly, he made a startling announcement: "If in four weeks I have not obtained a ceasefire, I will resign." (Karnow, p. 201)
At that point Zhou Enlai stepped in to take charge of the talks for the Communists; he would for the first time display the subtlety and toughness that would make him one of the most brilliant diplomats of the century. Even if it meant undercutting the Viet Minh, his own country's objectives were his priority: to prevent American intervention in Indochina; to curb Viet Minh ambitions in Laos and Cambodia; and to demonstrate an attitude of moderation toward India, Burma, Indonesia, and other non-aligned nations in Asia. (Karnow, pp. 200-201)
On June 23, Zhou flew to Bern, Switzerland, for a secret meeting with Mendes-France. The next day, in Paris, after consulting with his four principal advisers, Mendes-France did what his predecessors Bidault and Laniel had always refused to do: He formally agreed to the temporary division of Vietnam as a means of bringing the long and bloody Indochina War to an end. (Logevall, pp. 584-586)
Several obstacles remained to be overcome. Zhou persuaded Pham Van Dong to rescind his conditions that the Pathet Lao and Free Khmer movements supported by the Viet Minh in Laos and Cambodia be accorded legal status and be allowed to retain their occupied areas. He recruited Soviet Minister Vyacheslav Molotov to coerce Pham into accepting the seventeenth parallel (rather than the thirteenth) as the line of demarcation between North and South and into extending the time period for elections from six months to twenty-four months after the ceasefire. (Karnow, pp. 202-204)
Agreement was reached a midnight on July 20, exactly at Mendes-France's self-imposed deadline. The only documents signed were those ending the military hostilities in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. The accord between France and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam was not a political settlement. It provided for the partition of Vietnam pending a nationwide election to be held in 1956 and the removal of each side's army from the other territory. (Karnow, p. 204)
The United States (and Bao Dai's State of Vietnam) did not join the seven other conferees in orally and formally endorsing the declaration of understandings. Bedell Smith did promise that the United States would "refrain from the threat or the use of force to disturb them" and would "continue to seek to achieve unity through free elections." (Logevall, p. 606)
Those elections were never held. Instead the United States embarked on the policy that would lead it into a deadly and tragic quagmire: preserving and protecting a regime as corrupt and ruthless as the Communist one it was designed to thwart.
If insanity can be defined half in jest as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result, surely the misadventures of the French in Indochina -- which cost them 110,000 lives and three billion dollars -- were intimations of insanity.
REFERENCES
Buttinger, Joseph. Vietnam: A Dragon Embattled; Volume II: Vietnam at War. New York: Frederick A. Praeger, Inc., 1967.
Fall, Bernard. Street Without Joy. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: The Telegraph Press, 1965.
Filippelli, R. Parallel Narratives: Vietnam Notebook: First Indochina War, Dien Bien Phu (1953-1954).
Karnow, Stanley. Vietnam: A History. New York: The Viking Press, 1983.
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