Dien Bien Phu and What It Meant For America in Southeast Asia
Long before the Vietnam War, America established a presence in Southeast Asia on the heels of French defeat in French Indochina
If you ever wondered how the United States of America found itself embroiled in Southeast Asia, one will see American military involvement came on the heels of the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu in 1954. Quite frankly, calling it a battle could be misleading - it is likely more accurate to call it the Siege of Dien Bien Phu as it was a one-sided affair.
In an obscure valley bordering China, in what was then French Indochina, the French and the communist-led Viet Minh engaged in what was largely a one-sided battle from March to May in 1954.
Intent on fortifying Dien Bien Phu to lure in Viet Minh guerrilla fighters, the French intended on building a fortress complete with superior fire power. Planning for their presence in Dien Bien Phu to draw the Viet Minh to attack them, the French intended to deploy their superior firepower. The primary objective: destroy a massive portion of the Viet Minh forces and end a war that had been raging since 1950.
A Plan Gone Horribly Wrong
What happened during those next three months was anything but what France had envisioned. The 16,000 French troops that had been inserted in Dien Bien Phu, a valley surrounded by high ground, were quickly surrounded by nearly 50,000 Viet Minh soldiers.
The Viet Minh forces, led by General Vo Nguyen Giap, began a barrage of heavy artillery. They would also successfully choke out any French air presence with the use of effective anti-aircraft artillery. With no supply lines, no reinforcements, and surrounded by a much stronger and effective force than they had anticipated, the French soldiers dug in to try to survive.
When the dust settled in May, fewer than 100 French soldiers broke through the siege at Dien Bien Phu. The others had been killed, wounded, or captured.
The French had completely underestimated their opponents. They had also failed to recognize the massive support and reinforcement the Viet Minh would receive from the Communist bloc, most notably the Chinese, who had just emerged from the Korean War victorious and with a stockpile of Soviet-made and captured American artillery. It would be these pieces of artillery that would obliterate French fortifications at Dien Bien Phu.
Many do not believe the Viet Minh could have been so successful, or could have actually defeated the French without the supply of firepower from the Chinese. Despite the what-if, the fact remained that the landscape in Southeast Asia was about to change forever.
This marked the first time a non-European colonial independence movement evolving from guerrilla bands to a semblance of a conventional army had defeated a modern Western occupier.
From the Verdun to Dien Bien Phu
Hoping the Americans would offer military support, the French leaned frequently on then President Eisenhower, but he refused to commit - even as talks of using an atomic bomb had been put on the table. The world knew that with the French defeat, not only would Southeast Asia be different, but France as a country would also never be the same.
The humiliating loss at Dien Bien Phu was just the beginning for France. With eerie similarities to the World War I debacle at the Verdun, the defeated French would sign the 1954 Geneva Accords promising their withdrawal French Indochina for good and separating Vietnam in two at the 17th parallel. And as it shed its empire, back in Paris, the government strained as French colonial rule fell away.
It is here that Dien Bien Phu became the bridge that ushered out French presence and war in Indochina and replaced it with American presence and eventual war. The division at the 17th parallel created the Communist Democratic Republic of Vietnam to the north, and the pro-western state to be known as the Republic of Vietnam to the south - to be ruled by Emperor Bao Dai.
Southeast Asia Becomes an American Priority
Within the Geneva Accords where this boundary was set, there was a vaguely worded declaration that went unsigned which called for free elections to unite the country in two years under one government. The United States and South Vietnam would reject the Geneva Accords. Neither would sign the Accords.
As the parties left Geneva, the political subversion campaigns began. Viet Min agents who had remained in South Vietnam, though a violation of the Geneva Accords, began trying to rally anti-Bao Dai supporters. Inversely, the National Security Council in Washington D.C. called on all available means to undermine the communist regime in Hanoi.
It is here, in late 1954, that America’s crusade against communism in Vietnam would begin. From late 1955 through mid-1975, the Second Indochina War would rage. United States involvement would escalate first under President Kennedy, followed by President Johnson in 1964 with the deployment of 184,000 troops.
America viewed the French defeat in Indochina as more the result of political weakness in Paris and less from the strategic prowess of the Viet Minh, they would engage the Vietnamese Communists forces with a similar arrogance as the previous French forces.
Under the misguided belief that air mobility, heavy firepower, and cutting-edge intelligence would prove superior against the communist strategy Ho and Giap had developed, the United States engaged in a traditional American way of war.
Giap’s highly flexible guerrilla strategy and force structure, notably on a much grander scale than what was used to defeat the French, would prove challenging to the Americans. And the social and political will United States leaders expected, tensions and war fatigue soon began boiling over on domestic soil.
But long before the commitment of American troops, the anti-war protests and social unrest back on American soil, there was the ill-fated French plan at Dien Bien Phu. A plan intended to crush the Viet Minh once and for all that went horribly awry, triggering the fall of the French empire and forever changing the geopolitics in Southeast Asia.
HISTORY FOR THE HURRIED
JULY 27, 1953: The Korean War ends with the signing of an armistice by the U.S. and North Korean delegates at Panmunjom, Korea.
JULY 28, 1943: A firestorm in Hamburg, Germany during World War II kills 42,000 civilians. It was the result of an Allied bombing run that dropped 2,236 tons of bombs and incendiaries.
JULY 29, 1883: Benito Mussolini, the “Il Duce” (the absolute dictator) of Italy from 1922-1943 is born in Dovia, Italy.
Nice article and description of events. Hubris gets us all if we’re not careful.