You thought the Vietnam war was lost by 1974? Turn your clocks back two decades
Almost 70 years after the French defeat — and, all credit due, the Vietminh victory — at Dien Bien Phu in northwest Vietnam,1 lessons continue to be drawn from a military confrontation that saw the defeat of a well-equipped Western army at the hands of a Third World anti-colonialist force.
The consensus view that has developed is that Dien Bien Phu was an extraordinary defeat for the French, one that was predictable due to bad planning. This view is articulated clearly by historian Ellen Hammer:
“ Dien Bien Phu was a poorly chosen place in which to make a stand, a valley exposed on all sides to the enemy artillery in the hills and impossible to supply except by air. And having chosen it, General Navarre … [failed] to give the embattled garrison the total support it needed. Certainly French Intelligence underestimated the effectiveness of the heavy artillery supplied by the Chinese which the Vietminh was able to bring against Dien Bien Phu. ” 2
Allied to this consensus view is the opinion — popular on the political Left in France and the U.S., and the official line of the Communist leadership of today’s unified Vietnamese state — that the outcome at Dien Bien Phu was not simply a question of tactics in a single military defeat, but the inevitable culmination of years of war by a dynamic and popular independence movement.
Other “lessons” of Dien Bien Phu emphasize that it was the last gasp of European colonialism and defeat was inevitable given French obduracy; that one cannot win jungle wars with a conventional Western army; and the decisive fact that the Vietminh had unity, clear goals and legitimacy.
Analysts have further contended that Dien Bien Phu was a “special case” where an irresistible force met an immovable object and the French, who relied on a fixed-position defensive strategy, were bound to lose. Finally, lessons have been drawn from geopolitics, emphasizing the lack of Allied support for the beleaguered French, notably the cancellation of American bombing raids.
Yet French defeat at Dien Bien Phu was not a foregone conclusion. Figures as diverse as Nikita Khrushchev and U.S. Army Pacific commander General John “Iron Mike” O’Daniel thought that the Vietminh would have great difficulty overcoming the heavily fortified French Expeditionary Corps.
Further, the consensus view of Dien Bien Phu disparages some “might-have-been” scenarios. Observers as knowledgeable as Vietminh general Vo Nguyen Giap and French colonel André Lalande contend that all the elements were present for a draw or even, argues Lalande, for a French victory.
But “victory has a thousand fathers while defeat is an orphan.” As a result, defeated French general Henri Navarre’s arguments have been widely dismissed in assessing Dien Bien Phu. The lessons he draws reject the consensus view.
What, then, are perceived to be the “lessons” of Dien Bien Phu? What have the principal players, both military and political, had to say about it?
Are the lessons that military figures, journalists and policy analysts draw consistent and coherent? Or do they contradict each other?
Finally, this paper will briefly examine what lessons, if any, were drawn by decision-makers in the U.S. when they first conceived and then carried out its Vietnam policy in the early and mid-1960s.
- The Strategy
Following World War II, in a move the United States viewed with great ambivalence, France moved quickly to reassert its colonial position throughout Indochina. National leaders as varied as Vietnamese emperor Bao Dai and Vietminh resistance leader Ho Chi Minh appealed to the French to change their past behavior and enter into a new arrangement with the “associated states”, one which would recognize their autonomy and let them move toward independence. France rejected these ideas out of hand.
As a result, from the fall of 1946 onward, France and the insurgent Vietminh forces fought an increasingly brutal and desperate war for control of, first, the mountainous Tonkin region of northern Vietnam, the Red River delta near Hanoi and, eventually, the highlands of central Vietnam.
By 1953, the Vietminh’s guerrilla campaign increasingly made it the major power in Tonkin outside French-held Hanoi, Haiphong and the delta corridor that linked them. As well, Vietminh strategist General Vo Nguyen Giap had created several divisions of regular forces whose clashes with French troops, notably at the entrenched camp of Na San in the winter of 1952-53, showed them them to be tenacious, well-organized and increasingly well-armed.
After successive French generals in the early 1950s had seen French Indochina slide into a state often described as “pourrissement” — rottenness, decay or infestation — especially by guerrilla forces in the Red River delta — in June 1953 General Henri Navarre was named commander of France’s Indochina forces.
Navarre proceeded to re-examine the entire French military strategy in Indochina, and to propose a much more dynamic and aggressive policy. The “Navarre Plan” proposed to recast the relatively static French military approach and to aim for final victory over the Vietminh by 1955. Navarre concluded that the great majority of French forces had become immobile, guarding fixed positions throughout Indochina but seldom taking the battle to the enemy. As military analyst André Teulières noted :
” As a result, out of a Franco-Indochinese force of roughly 500,000 men in 1953, barely 50,000 could be considered strategically mobile, that is, available to face the main Vietminh fighting force of 125,000 regulars. In other words, roughly 450,000 were immobilized in ground defence against 139,000 Vietminh guerrillas, whose tactics of people’s war made them virtually indestructible.” 3
In the earliest formulation of a “Vietnamization” policy, Navarre argued for a far greater indigenous military role in holding these fixed positions. Then, predominantly French forces could be concentrated in a great mobile force that in 1953 and 1954 would attempt to “mop up” guerrilla strongholds in central Vietnam (Annam) and the Red River delta, before challenging the main Vietminh forces to a decisive confrontation by 1955.
The choice of Dien Bien Phu was dictated by its geographical location in the Northwest of Vietnam, near the border of Vietnam and Laos, at the crossroads of the major roads through that rugged region. Dien Bien Phu also encompassed a large plain, the biggest open area in the Northwest of Vietnam, 16 kilometers long by 7 kilometers wide. In a region that was almost entirely mountainous, jungle-choked and inaccessible, this was by far the most accessible and defensible position. It offered both a strategic foothold in the Vietminh rear and a launching pad for future offensive operations.
The mountainous ridges overlooking the Dien Bien Phu plain were judged “too remote” for artillery; the Vietminh was underequipped in artillery. With poor logistics in a trackless environment, there was little chance for them to keep enough ammunition on hand. The Vietminh would inevitably be drawn down to the plain for decisive “conventional” battle, where they could not resist superior French logistics, artillery, tactics and air support.
Finally, reasoned Navarre, this position would also serve to block the route to Laos and its royal capital, Luang Prabang. At a time when the Vietminh main force was crossing the border with impunity and threatening to take the battle as far afield as the headwaters of the Mekong River on the border of Laos and Thailand, Navarre decided to draw a line at a point where he could conceivable enjoy great leverage with a comparatively small force.
Over the considerable reluctance of his immediate subordinate, Colonel René Cogny, the Hanoi-based commander of French forces in northern Vietnam, Navarre designated Dien Bien Phu as the priority for the French in 1953-54, rather than the populous and guerrilla-infested Red River delta.
- The Battle
On November 18, 1953, the first French paratroopers landed at Dien Bien Phu, chasing out the small Vietminh force there and preparing the ground for the massive influx of 15,000 men, their supplies and artillery that would begin arriving once the small airstrip was opened on November 24.
Between November 1953 and February 1954, the plain surrounding the hamlet of Dien Bien Phu was transformed, with the establishment of seven “strongpoints” ringed by barbed wire and minefields, crisscrossed with trenches and defended with artillery. These strongpoints were in turn grouped into three “subsectors”. Each was designed to reinforce the strongpoints through joint reserves, tanks, tight communications and counter-attack plans.
“The French forces at Dien Bien Phu were … beefed up to a total of nine batallions, including three airborne batallions; five batteries of 105-mm howitzers (a total of 20 field pieces) and two batteries (8 pieces) of 75-mm recoilless rifles; and one company of heavy mortars.” 4
More than one commentator noted that the entire valley began to resemble “a Boy Scout Jamboree”. A long parade of senior French and American military and civilian officials toured the entrenched camp of Dien Bien Phu in December and January. Interestingly, most pronounced themselves impressed with the defensive potential and the morale of the assembled troops — French paratroopers, Foreign Legionnaires from Germany, Eastern Europe and Spain, Thai tribesmen and North Africans. Everything seemed set for a resounding victory.
Vietminh preparations
The Central Committee of the Vietnamese Communist Party decided in December 1953 to accept the engagement at Dien Bien Phu, attempting, as Giap later wrote, “to take the French by the throat”. 5 Thus began the difficult task of digging in at a remote jungle site with no airborne supply operations.
French intelligence services had estimated that the Vietminh could rally two divisions, plus 20,000 “coolies” to work on supply and logistics. In fact, after the December “general mobilization” order was given to the army and Vietnamese population, the Vietminh brought together four divisions (the 308th, 312th, 316th and 304th Infantry, and the 351st Heavy Division) plus as many as 55,000 Vietnamese support and auxiliary workers.
Ingenious transportation schemes, such as the widespread use of bicycles, quadrupled the amount of supplies (to more than 200 kilos) that each person could transport to the front. Supply routes through the jungle from China were dramatically improved, with the 200 kilometers of navigable road increased by 100 kilometers through the efforts of Vietnamese and Chinese engineering corps. Excellent camouflage helped make French aerial bombardments even less effective than Navarre had anticipated from his small air force.
Sheer physical exertion allowed artillery pieces to be dragged up and anchored in isolated blockhouses near the ridge of the valley. Chinese advisors with Korean War-tested anti-aircraft guns added to the arsenal.
By January 1954, the quality and quantity of the Vietminh artillery was dramatically superior to what Navarre had projected. Notes Bernard Fall:
“French ground and air observation … estimated that the enemy … possessed at least 200 guns above the 57-mm caliber. On the French side, the maximum number of such guns ever available amounted to 60 and dropped to an average of less than 40 within a week after the battle had begun.” 6
When the battle finally began on March 13, enemy combatant strength in Dien Bien Phu was estimated at 49,500 men, with 31,500 logistical support personnel. Another 23,000 Communist support troops and personnel were strung out along the communication lines. On the French side there was a total of 13,200 men in the valley, of whom only about 6,600 to 7,000 could be counted on as front-line combatants, and these of very unequal quality.
Fall concludes: ” Thus, in addition to enjoying firepower superiority of five-to-one, Gen. Giap’s forces also enjoyed a superiority in manpower of five-to-one. And since it is generally accepted that three-to-one superiority will generally achieve victory in an infantry breakthrough, Giap’s forces had met the conditions prescribed in the Vietminh slogan, ‘Certain attack, certain progress’ ” 7
This force ratio, then, augured poorly for the Navarre Plan, which had forecast meeting two logistics-constricted Vietminh divisions at Dien Bien Phu for a short and decisive battle. This was not to be.
Chronology of the Battle
On March 13, 1954, after months of sporadic Vietminh artillery fire that seemed only to emphasize the futility of attacking, Giap ordered his troops to embark on a human-wave assault supported by a massive artillery barrage on the two northern-most French strongpoints, nicknamed “Béatrice” and “Gabrielle”.
The 450 troops in the northern Gabrielle strongpoint were overwhelmed after two nights of relentless attacks by Vietminh troops through mine-studded and barbed-wire-strewn terrain. To the astonishment of the French command, both northern strongpoints fell between March 13 and March 17. Vietminh artilery was accurate and deadly; the chief of French artillery, Colonel Piroth, committed suicide, “dishonored” that his projections were so wrong. The planned French counter-attacks were not attempted in any sustained fashion. As a result, four days into the battle, the Vietminh was able to begin moving artillery to within 1,500 meters of the sole supply route the French had — the central airstrip.
Beginning then, and continuing for the next two weeks, the Vietminh adopted an enormously labor-intensive tactic of digging hundreds of kilometers of trenches and tunnels along the eastern face of the valley in order to prepare for progressive attacks on the eastern strongpoints of the French camp in late March. The “creeping offensive” preceded and prepared the final one.
Between March 29 and April 5, a series of fierce attacks and counterattacks on the eastern flank saw control of several highpoints in the Eliane and Dominique strongpoints change hands repeatedly. Although Vietminh losses were staggering, the bulk of the two entrenched areas was in their hands by early April. Fighting would subsequently be conducted in a close-fought environment of trenches amid artillery barrages from both sides. Combatants were sometimes as close as 15 meters apart.
By early April, the French were reduced to a sharply constricted central zone protecting their central command posts, hospital and supply depots. The airstrip was now under constant attack; parachuting 100 tons of supplies a day become the French air force task. Many supplies, including 105-mm shells, fell into enemy territory, only to be fired back on the beleaguered French troops.
With the situation looking desperate, General Paul Ely, French chief of staff, repeatedly petitioned Washington for air support. American bombing from Philippine bases, he argued, could loosen the siege around Dien Bien Phu. While several top U.S. officials gave encouraging signs, ultimately President Eisenhower decided that the risk of getting involved in an Asian war nine months after the Korean truce was too great. He rejected the operation.
May 1 to 7 saw the final offensive in which the French enclave was reduced to a baseball field-sized encampment surrounded on all sides and subject to constant bombardment. The wounded could not be sheltered, no position was protected and supplies were increasingly tight. Finally, late in the afternoon of May 7, 1954, the Vietminh’s red flag was raised on General de Castries headquarters bunker as Vietnamese soldiers overwhelmed the camp.
- Immediate Lessons: The Media
The French media followed Dien Bien Phu intensely — five of the cover stories of the weekly Paris Match during the 8-week battle were devoted to the drama — but it did not draw “lessons” from it in any coherent manner. Except for the Communist papers, the French press unanimously celebrated the heroism of its troops, and put aside its reservations about the policies being pursued in what was widely perceived as a “sale guerre”, or dirty war.
After Dien Bien Phu fell on May 7, however, more introspection was evident. Criticisms focused on four factors: the role of political intervention and politicians generally; the choice of the site for the battle; the shortage of means for the French forces to accomplish their objectives; and the military’s consistent underestimation of the Vietminh.
France’s Fourth Republic was full of revolving-door governments and pragmatic, changeable centrists. This instability and inattention to principle bred a widespread scorn for politicians. Senior MRP (Mouvement républicain populaire) party personalities were widely blamed for Dien Bien Phu. However, no specific failings were emphasized on the level of military tactics. The whole Indochina War was the object of popular disgust.
Some commentators, such as the excellent Indochina correspondent of Le Monde, Robert Guillain, tried to bring the political lessons into focus: “The Government imposed too large a mission on the command and did not give it the means to carry it out,” he wrote on May 3, noting that protecting Laos was an added military burden. The defeat at Dien Bien Phu, he concluded, “was not born in Indochina, but in Paris.” 8
The second lesson drawn in the press was extensive second-guessing about the choice of battleground, with many writers noting its distant location. As a former colonel in the Expeditionary Corps, Jules Roy, wrote in the weekly L’Express on May 2, “In all of modern military history, there is almost certainly no other example of such a decision to block the enemy’s path by locking oneself in, 200 kilometers from any source of supply and cut off from road access, at the bottom of a valley that is actually part of the jungle.” 9
A third group of lessons were clustered around the military’s underestimation of the Vietminh in relying on such a “jungle Maginot line”. Writing in L’Aurore, a “senior military personality who requested anonymity” attacked Navarre, writing: “We had long known that Giap had a division armed with 105-mm guns. It had not seen action, but it would probably seek out the first occasion presenting itself to demonstrate its efficiency. The fortified camp at Dien Bien Phu offered it precisely this opportunity … We lived in the past without being able to foresee the character of future operations.” 10
Finally, some French commentators asked whether France could ever win such a national war of liberation. As media analyst Alain Ruscio writes in his study of the Dien Bien Phu-era press: “Was it possible that things could turn out otherwise, and a regular army could defeat an entire people?” 11 Le Monde added: “The lesson we must draw is that we make a terrible mistake whenever we allow ourselves to confront an alliance of nationalism and communism.” 12
These criticisms did not go unnoticed by the military. Au contraire. General Navarre dealt quickly and pointedly with the media critics of his strategy, those “a posteriori prophets”, armchair strategists, second-guessers and instant experts who drew lessons from Dien Bien Phu that the illustrious Saint-Cyr graduate and commander of Indochina forces knew to be false.
- Military Lessons: The Generals
General Navarre, in both his 1956 Agonie de l’Indochine and in his 1979 Le Temps des Vérités, replied directly to many of the analyses of such a momentous defeat. Predictably, for a general whose reputation and lifework was being assailed by people he regarded as largely unqualified to do so, Navarre struck back hard and fast, underlining like a schoolmaster the correct lessons.
His two books attempt to set the record straight by emphasizing the strategic soundness of his proposals and their military utility. Like General Westmoreland, moreover, Navarre was drawn into a series of postwar lawsuits to save his reputation from what he regarded as malicious portrayal of his acts.
Navarre draws two main lessons from Dien Bien Phu. Each is sharply at variance what has crystallized as conventional wisdom in the West.
The greatest single error, claims Navarre in Le Temps des Vérités, was for France to accept, in February 1954, the Geneva Conference being held in May. This gave the Vietminh a huge motivation to fight and drew the Chinese to their side. It also underlined the split between France’s politicians and military leaders, who were so often visibly working at cross-purposes.
Second, Navarre agrees that the means at his disposal were not sufficient, particularly the air support. He blames General Cogny in part for diverting resources to the war in the delta, and argues that American air power could have saved the base after mid-April. He denigrates Eisenhower for not acting.
Navarre does not, however, renounce his choice to stand and fight the Vietminh at Dien Bien Phu in 1953-54. He points out that diplomatic as well as military factors led to the choice of Dien Bien Phu as the site for a battle.
Geography lessons
Navarre admits that Dien Bien Phu was not ideal, topographically; it was, however, the largest open plain in northwest Vietnam. The Vietminh showed its interest in the position by occupying it themselves. They had to be chased out of the site in November 1953 by the initial French paratroopers landing there.
Navarre argues that the plain was hardly the “washbasin” (la cuvette) that some of his journalistic critics called it, picking up on the terminology of French pilots landing there. The valley of Dien Bien Phu is almost 100 square kilometers, with a large plain, several settled villages and two airstrips standing among the low foothills. Dien Bien Phu dwarfs the open space of other French entrenched fortresses (bases aéro-terrestres, or airheads) of the area such as Na San, where the French successfully took stands in the early 1950s to invite Vietminh attack.
Unlike Jules Roy and other popularizers who quoted military theorists in rejecting under all circumstances setting up camp in a lowland or valley encircled by highlands, Navarre pointed out that in World War I similar topographical sites (without naming them) had been chosen and defended successfully: “I, too, had this impression [of being in an undefendable valley] when, as a young soldier, I arrived in 1917 at a sector of the front where [the heights] dominated us at about the same distance. The position had held for months. We were constantly harassed by German artillery … but no one called our positions undefendable.” 13
Moreover, sites in Laos itself, which could be used to defend that country, such as Luang Prabang and Vientiane, were even more distant from the main supply centres of Hanoi-Haiphong and the delta, and could not guarantee as good an airport infrastructure, especially in wartime conditions.
The general emphasizes, moreover, he was operating under a dual mandate. With the signing in October 1953 of the treaty linking Laos and France in the French Union — of which a defence pact was an integral part — the general had to make defence of Laos from Vietminh invasion a priority, in addition to the broad strategy of defending Vietnam against the Vietminh insurgency.
Dien Bien Phu was, therefore, a compromise choice. Navarre called its logistic and supply problems a concern, but contrasted them favorably with those of the Laotian cities, and emphasized that these logistic problems would be even more distinct for the Vietminh, relying as it did on ground forces, with no real air force.
Political aims
Navarre seeks, moreover, to diffuse the blame among the many people who were privy to the Dien Bien Phu strategy by noting the lengthy list of French military and political figures and American officials such as General O’Daniel, who pronounced themselves impressed with the fortified camp and its radiating network of strongpoints, while allowing a few reservations.
If, however, the choice of Dien Bien Phu was sound — while not ideal — as was the military objective of avoiding the Vietminh’s strong hand, guerrilla war, while seeking to draw them on to open ground more suited to Western soldiers and technology, then why did Dien Bien Phu turn into such a resounding military defeat for France?
Navarre’s explanation turns on one major point and several minor ones. The major change in the order of battle, he argues is the fact — unknown at the time the Navarre Plan was drawn up — that the major powers would agree at the meeting in Berlin in January/February 1954 to hold the Geneva Conference in May on the resolution of Asian conflicts.
This event, argues Navarre, changed dramatically the motivation of the Vietminh and brought on the massive intervention of China as a supplier of military equipment and advisors, many of then trained and tested in the Korean conflict. The key technological element that the Chinese introduced, argues Navarre, was anti-aircraft guns and advisors, both of a sophistication and experience that the Vietminh had never matched before.
General Giap now had every reason to deploy a far greater, even self-defeating, number of men and guns for the psychological and political gain that could accrue to them on the eve of a major diplomatic conference.
General Navarre also draws lessons from the battle that focus largely on the political conditions needed for a coherent military strategy. He notes that, were the Navarre Plan to work, it was essential to have a decisive and patient government committed to a long-term policy.
At the same time, however, Navarre fails to underline that his initial plan was strictly military, and he never took into account the domestic political scene. In mid-1953, a time when more than 300 of the 627 deputies in the French National Assembly were in favor of “immediate negotiations” and, failing that, withdrawal from Indochina, Navarre pushed forward with a plan that required the nation to be patient and to support him for two years until the situation was decisively under control.
The Vietminh, with its appeals to French principles of liberty and equality, and its strong links to the French Communist Party, was arguably more aware of the need to influence domestic opinion in France than was Navarre. The general planned no string of stirring speeches to rally the French public and made no special effort to rally political support.
One of the principal foundations of good strategy, obvious to Clausewitz — the close alliance between political aims and military ends — was violated, short-circuiting Navarre’s plan.
Defensive shortcomings
The general’s explanations also come up short when they touch on the early and crucial defeats on the ground. The fall of strongpoints Béatrice and Gabrielle in the first four days of the battle (March 13 to 17) was absolutely pivotal, since it allowed the Vietminh to move artillery to within easy range of the airstrip and the interior of Dien Bien Phu complex.
However, Navarre’s explanation of how such a crucial defeat could occur so early in the battle fails to make it clear why it was not foreseen. He notes that the northern-most strongpoint, Gabrielle, was undermanned (450 men) and the forces were of dubious quality. This was doubly emphasized after several of their commanders were killed in the first day of fighting.
But if the resilience of the Thai troops was dubious, why were they deployed in such a key position, especially if the strongpoint was undermanned? And if these posts could be taken in just two or three nights at the beginning of a battle, then there excessive faith that a domino effect could not take hold.
Finally, the Chinese intervention may have been crucial, but by December French intelligence estimates already underestimated the manpower the Vietminh’s general mobilization had rallied. And little account was taken of the tremendous logistics efforts that were entirely independent of China.
Giap’s Lessons
General Giap, in the essay “Dien Bien Phu” published in The People’s Art of Military War, situates the Vietminh victory there in the context of a force that was politically and militarily united in pursuit of a single goal.
Arguing in dialectical fashion, Giap contends that the fact that France fielded a colonial army limited its options on the ground: If the French dispersed their forces, the Vietminh guerrillas would harass them, but if they moved to concentrate, as Navarre had, the countryside would be up for grabs.
This unity also meant that there would be no second-guessing political superiors and military subordinates about the ultimate aims of policy. Moreover, it meant that his troops were motivated and focused on a goal, unlike the French troops who, Giap argued, “didn’t know why” 14 they were fighting.
Surprisingly, General Giap agrees with some of Navarre’s arguments. He agrees that the open plain at Dien Bien Phu was a valued crossroads, that a strong defence could be mounted there, and that the French had formidable strategic and logistic assets. In fact, Navarre quotes Giap’s interview with French journalist Merry Bromberger in his memoirs. Regarding the choice of Dien Bien Phu for an armed camp, Giap says: “It’s been called stupid. But it was very well conceived … We had to give up our offensive into Laos.” 15 And: “In the theater of operations of [North Vietnam] and upper Laos, Dien Bien Phu is a strategic position of first importance, capable of becoming an infantry and air base of extreme efficiency.” 16
However, at the same time, there were some obvious drawbacks to the choice of Dien Bien Phu, says Giap: The premier of these was logistic. How would the French, in the heat of battle, re-supply themselves, when all supplies of almost any value had to be delivered by air? The colonial force, after all, enjoyed almost no support on the ground, among the people.
For Giap, Dien Bien Phu was the culmination of a long, patient, inexorable dynamic of popular war. Colonialists are an occupying force who face “contradictions” that severely limit their adaptability. The Vietminh confounded the occupying force attacking in the delta, central Vietnam and Laos in the lead-up to Dien Bien Phu. This denied the French command the security of a secure military rear when Dien Bien Phu became the focus.
The emphasis on human resources meant that ways were found to haul artillery and supplies over intractable routes in terrible conditions that would defeat a technically proficient but uninspired army.
Giap’s battle plan emphasized waves of attacks that would gradually cut away protective layers. This was a local version of the long-term strategy to which the Vietminh was committed — wearing down the enemy by harassing it and attacking only when it held overwhelming superiority. This was reflected in the slogan, “Certain attack, certain victory.”
As cogent as Giap’s analysis is, it leaves out several factors that figure in other people’s lessons about the battle. The word “China”, for example, never appears in the nationalist Giap’s article. By many accounts, its assistance with engineering units, 700 Soviet-made Molotova trucks and radar-guided anti-aircraft artillery was pivotal to the victory.
And morale, far from being only a French concern, appeared repeatedly on the Vietminh side. Giap refers repeatedly to “rightist passivity” that cropped up among his troops after the murderous early April assaults. One has to speculate whether this meant widespread shellshock, apathy, revolt or something else among troops who were facing 70 per cent casualty rates.
Other military analysts
Overall, however, independent military analysts reflect Giap’s arguments more closely than they repeat Navarre’s. André Teulières, a French military writer and former paratrooper, gives high priority to morale factors in analyzing the French (and American) defeats in Vietnam. He underlines that the Vietminh emphasized broad military purpose, national goals and clear objectives. After the French reoccupation of Indochina in 1945-46, however, in a context of nationalism and independence movements, the French offered no countervailing vision, either to its own nationals or to indigenous troops.
It was difficult to rally people to the weak Bao Dai as a national symbol. And moral confusion abounded: “Our policy consisted of avoiding in its application the independence we had accepted in principle,” noted Navarre.
The disciplined Vietminh had a very clear moral vision, argued Teulières, while the French Union’s goals changed monthly. The requirement to defend Laos, for example, wasn’t harmonized in any way with Navarre’s plan in 1953. As well, the French general staff misjudged the Vietminh’s numbers, mobility, resolve, tactics, artillery and its theory of a “long war”.
Concludes Teulières: “There was never a general French strategy at the level of the State.” 17 The ministers of the nine cabinet posts with Indochina responsibilities never met to coordinate their objectives.
Other analysts draw lessons that are more strictly military: “The French Union command refused to admit that the enemy had become a professional army. The colonial generals continued to plan their campaigns on the suicidal prejudice that the Vietminh could not win a direct confrontation,” 18 writes Melanie Billings-Yun. Faced with a resolute enemy, “France and its forces … lost the will to continue fighting.” 19
Yet the astute Indochina writer Bernard Fall contends that the French could still have won at Dien Bien Phu, with American air support: “Air power on a more massive scale than was then available could not have changed the outcome of the Indochina War … but it would have saved Dien Bien Phu.” 20
- What are the ‘Lessons’?
In drawing lessons about Dien Bien Phu and the war in French Indochina, it is difficult not to focus on the unique qualities of the insurgent Vietminh fighting forces. Lessons that focus on the geographical attributes of the valley as pivotal do not allow full measure for the human and political factors.
Navarre was clearly hamstrung by conflicting goals and objectives. Clausewitz would agree that the military effort was largely sundered from the political entities for which it was supposedly acting. The French general was no fool, but the valley represented a compromise that was short of being a strong compromise. Too many unproven assumptions about the enemy’s technical abilities were allowed to be accepted as fact.
As a result, French politics stands at the pinnacle of blame, giving birth as it did to an unwinnable project of “recolonization.”
While General Navarre argues alone for his plan, it is hard not to agree with Colonel Lalande who, having outlined his reservations, underlines that Dien Bien Phu might look like a “stroke of genius” if rains had bogged down the Vietminh offensive and the U.S. had agreed to bomb their artillery.
While logistics and the choice of battle site are easy to fault, they were secondary to politics and the goals which the military was assigned. It is hard not to conclude that a Dien Bien Phu, perhaps by another name, would have happened somewhere in in Vietnam in 1954 or 1955.
The choice of a site, in the broad historical context of decolonization, now seems almost incidental.
Published as thesis contribution, Columbia U., May 1994.
Epilogue:
American Policy-makers in the 1960s
It would be comforting to find that the United States studied the French experience at Dien Bien Phu closely, and concluded that Vietnam was a very difficult place to win a war. But a study of the impact of Dien Bien Phu on “the best and the brightest” in two administrations in the early and mid-1960s suggests its lessons were interpreted in a self-serving manner.
Briefly put, the consensus view among the policy elite in Washington was that France lost a colonial war. This was due both to its lack of commitment to Vietnamese autonomy and its military incompetence. Since Vietnam was a colony under the French, there would be no common denominator with the U.S., whose sympathy with African and Asian independence movements was manifest.
This attitude is evident in academic studies, policy journals and The Pentagon Papers. There was a long history of poor assessments of Vietnam.
“The military situation in Indochina is favourable. Contrary to some reports, the recent advances by the Vietminh are largely ‘real estate’ advances” … “tactically, the French position is solid and the officers in the field are confident of their ability to deal with the situation,” said Under Secretary of State William Bedell Smith in 1953. (quoted in Vietnam Folly). Similarly, many American policy-makers saw the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu as an opening for a superior U.S. approach to Ho Chi Minh’s threat.
“The Eisenhower administration saw in the [Geneva] accords a new opportunity. Long frustrated by what the Americans considered France’s lack of will, poor military planning and identification with colonialism, the U.S. thought it could make a fresh start with the government of Ngo Dinh Diem and build a stable country resistant to Communist encroachment.” (Manning, P. 42) [italics mine] The U.S., as the defender of a potentially democratic state, would not be seen as the successor to the French.
In an excellent recent study of the impact of France’s defeat on the U.S., Analogies at War: Korea, Munich, Dien Bien Phu and the Vietnam Decisions of 1965, Harvard researcher Yuen Foong Khong shows that throughout the early 1960s, John Kennedy and George Ball were the only top decision-makers who used the “Dien Bien Phu analogy” to structure the analyses about Vietnam. The great majority of policy-makers compared the situation with Korea.
President Kennedy, of course, had the power to keep the U.S. out of a direct combat role. Walt Rostow has suggested that “Kennedy’s attitude toward Vietnam was colored strongly by his memories of having seen the French in Vietnam … He kept coming back to the fact that the French had put in more than 250,000 good troops, and were run out.” (transcript, Walt Rostow Oral History Interview, P.81, cited in Khong, P. 88).
George Ball did not possess that power of decision-making, and he was cast as a minority of one in the LBJ cabinet. He got involved in several memo battles with Dean Rusk and General Taylor over precisely the subject of how the French experience was to be interpreted.
“The lessons of history … were disdained … It was useless for me to point out the meaning of the French experience; they thought that experience without relevance … we were a superpower,” wrote Ball in his memoirs (P.376) As William Bundy wrote in an unpublished manuscript cited by Khong, “Ball was convinced to the depths of his being that white men and Western military techniques simply could not win a guerrilla war against the kind of political/military force Ho had developed.”
The consensus opinion opposed Ball and held that, as the defender of a democratic state, the U.S.’s motives would be above reproach and its technological edge would guarantee military victory.
At the same time as the “broad” interpretation of Dien Bien Phu was invoked, General Westmoreland and President Johnson became obsessed with what LBJ called “Dinbinphoo” when the central highlands Marine outpost Khe Sanh was under siege in early 1968: “It won’t be no damn Dinbinphoo,” Karnow quoted Johnson as pledging in the Situation Room. French generals from Dien Bien Phu were flown to Saigon for advice.
Yet the battle was never studied in earnest, or the general and president might have seen that Khe Sanh more resembled the diversionary attacks Giap launched in early 1954 at Kontum in the central highlands (!) before the attack at Dien Bien Phu began in earnest.
NOTES
1 The site of the battle is spelled alternately Dien Bien Phu, Dienbienphu and Dien-Bien-Phu in English, and Diên Biên Phu in French. This paper has adopted the spelling Dien Bien Phu, the most popular version, one which reflects the three words in the original Vietnamese.
2 Hammer, Struggle for Indochina, P. 328.
3 Teulières, La Guerre du Vietnam, P. 86.
4 Fall, Hell in a Very Small Place, P. 45.
5 Giap, The Military Art of People’s War, P.147.
6 Fall, Op. cit., P. 133.
7 Ibid., P. 133.
8 Quoted in Ruscio, Dien Bien Phu, P. 55.
9 Quoted in ibid., P.54.
10 Quoted in ibid., P. 55.
11 Quoted in ibid., P. 56.
12 Le Monde, July 22, 1954, P.1.
13 Navarre, Temps des Vérités, P. 442.
14 Teulières, Op. cit., P. 187.
15 Navarre, Op. cit., P. 444.
16 Giap, Op. cit., P. 130.
17 Teulières, Op. cit., P. 205.
18 Billings-Yun, Decision Against War, P.8
19 Ibid., P. 8
20 Fall, Op. cit., P. 455.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ball, George, The Past Has Another Pattern (New York: Norton, 1982).
Ball, Moya Ann, Vietnam-on-the-Potomac (New Haven, Conn: Praeger, 1989).
Billings-Yun, Melanie, Decision Against War, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988).
Dalloz, Jacques, Dien Bien Phu, (Paris: La Documentation Française, 1991).
” ” ” The War in Indochina 1945-54 (Savage, Md: Barnes and Noble Press, 1990).
Fall, Bernard, Hell in a Very Small Place: the Siege of Dien Bien Phu (New York: Da Capo Press, 1985).
” ” ” “Dien Bien Phu: A Battle to Remember”, in Vietnam Documents, ed. George Katsiaficas (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1992).
Ferrari, Pierre, Une Guerre Sans Fin: Indochine 1945-1954 (Paris: Lavauzelle, 1984).
Giap, General Nguyen Vo, The Military Art of People’s War (Hanoi: Foreign-Language Press, 1961).
Gras, General Yves, Histoire de la Guerre d’Indochine (Paris: Plon, 1979).
Gruening, Ernest and Beaser, Herbert William, Vietnam Folly (Washington: National Press, 1968).
Gurtov, Melvin, The First Vietnam Crisis (New York: Columbia University Press, 1967).
Hammer, Ellen J., The Struggle for Indochina 1940-1955 (Stanford Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1966).
Hess, Gary R., “Kennedy’s Vietnam Options and Decisions”, in Shadow on the White House: Presidents and the Vietnam War 1945-1975, ed. David L. Anderson (Lawrence, Kan: University Press of Kansas, 1993).
Karnow, Stanley, Vietnam: A History (New York: Penguin Books, 1984).
Khong, Yuen Foong, Analogies at War: Korea, Munich, Dien Bien Phu and the Vietnam Decisions of 1965 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992)
Lomperis, Timothy, The War Everyone Lost — And Won (Baton Rouge, La: Louisiana State University, 1984).
Maison Rouge, Olivier de, Guerre d’Indochine 1945-54 (Paris: Editions La Bruyère, 1989).
Manning, Robert, “Development of a Vietnam Policy: 1952-1965”, in Vietnam Reconsidered: Lessons of a War, ed. Harrison Salisbury (New York: Harper and Row, 1984).
Palmer, General Bruce, The 25-Year War (Lexington, Ky: University of Kentucky Press, 1984).
The Pentagon Papers (as published by The New York Times) (New York: Quadrangle Books, 1971).
Pouget, Jean, Nous Etions à Dien-Bien-Phu (Paris: Presses de la Cité, 1964).
Roy, Jules, The Battle of Dienbienphu (New York: Carrol & Graf, 1984.)
Ruscio, Alain, Dien Bien Phu: La Fin d’Une Illusion
Sullivan, Marianna, France’s Vietnam Policy (Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 1978).
Teulières, André, La Guerre du Vietnam 1945-1975 (Paris-Limoges: Lavauzelle, 1979).
Thai, General Hoang Van, “Dien Bien Phu: Why and How?” in Vietnam Documents, ed. George Katsiaficas (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1992).
