Dien Bien Phu
CSC 1985
SUBJECT AREA History
WAR SINCE 1945 SEMINAR
DIEN BIEN PHU
Major Vincent J. Goulding, Jr.
1 April 1985
Marine Corps Command and Staff College
Marine Corps Development and Education Command
Quantico, Virginia 22134
Table of Contents
Intorduction i
Chapter I: An "Asphyxiating Atmosphere" 1
Chapter II: A Tale of Two Armies 15
The Victors 15
The Vanquished 19
Chapter III: A Long and Cruel War 24
Chapter IV: Operation CASTOR 38
Political Background 38
Setting the Stage 41
Base Aero-Terrestre 46
Into the Valley of Death 54
Chapter V: Conclusion 78
Chronology 82
Endnotes 84
Bibliography 91
MAPS
Regions of Vietnam 3
Viet Minh Operations: October 1950-February 1952 30
Battles of 1952 and Operation LORRAINE 36
Map of Dien Bien Phu 49
D-Day at Dien Bien Phu 55
Isabelle Alone 66
Introduction
May Fance, once illustrious among the peoples
of slaves, eclipse the glory of all free peoples
that have existed, become the model to the nations,
the terror of oppressors, the consolation of the
oppressed, the ornament or the oppressed, the orn-
ament of the universe....
- Robespierre
Report on the Principles of Public Morality
Peoples of Italy, the French army comes to break
your chains; the French people is the friend of
all peoples. You may receive them with confidence.
Your property, your religion, and your customs will
be respected... We have no grudge except against the
tyrants who oppress you.
- Bonaparte
Address at Cherasco, Italy, April 1796
The ideas of liberty and conquest have been getting mixed up
for as long as there have been men around to confuse them. Admit-
tedly, confuse might well be a poor choice of words; yet, it is
undeniably one of history's most consistent inconsistencies that
the terms are invariably uttered in the same breath by men try-
ing to use the former to justify the latter. The ingredient re-
quired to make either a reality is power. A weak nation's days
of feedom are numbered and only a strong state can forcibly
extend or defend its boundaries.
There is no nation on earth which should have been more
aware of this fact than the France of 1945; yet, it was this
same France which chose to look beyond its own national condition
before setting out to reimpose its own particular brand of free-
dom on a dedicated people halfway around the world whose strength
it severely and tragically underestimated. Under the guise of
anti-communism, a politically weakened and militarily second-
rate European "Great Power" sought to restore itself in Southeast
Asia after the Second World War. France, which in 1940 had been
dealt a stunning and humiliating defeat, turning over Paris to
the Nazis and Saigon to the Japanese, now sought, five years later,
to remount the pedestal of greatness as though what had just tran-
spired was little more than a figment of the world's imagination.
The Vietnamese saw through the charade instantly; the rest of
the world would very quickly. Unfortunately, the French them-
selves would be slow to grasp what to nearly everyone else was
rapidly becoming self-evident, and in the very same decade that
the defenders of Dien Bien Phu would trudge into captivity after
military defeat, so also would the Quai d'Orsay discover, in Al-
geria, that even victory on the battlefield is no guarantee of
success in a newly emerging type of war. The lessons were there
for the learning, and, most assuredly, not only for the French
Fourth Republic.
The May 7, 1954 surrender of the garrison at Dien Bien Phu
unquestionably terminated France's Indochinese adventure; but,
like the epitaph gouged on a dead man's headstone, hardly tells
an entire story. That Vo Nguyen Giap's People's Army soundly
defeated the flower of the French Expeditionary Force in a battle
of conventional arms and style is clear. It is important to re-
member, however, that Dien Bien Phu was the culmination of a
protracted war and as such cannot be studied in a vacuum.
It is the intent of this paper to examine the events which
led to this particularly famous and often misunderstood campaign.
To do this, the study must begin before the year 1954, for as
early as 1930, Ho Chi Minh was establishing himself as a force
with which to be reckoned. A decade later, the fall of France
and the establishment of Henri Petain's Vichy Government would
bring Japanese occupation and opportunity for Ho to consolidate
Vietnamese nationalism well before the reintroduction of the
"victorious" French in the autumn of 1945. Giap's creation of
a People's Army is no less worthy of study, and both his force
and that of the French will be examined. Most important, the
strategy each chose to employ in order to accomplish their de-
sired goals, however clearly or poorly perceived, will be an-
alyzed. Perhaps history provides us no better example of how
a progressive guerrilla war can be successfully waged against
a well-trained conventional army; more significantly, Dien Bien
Phu illustrates how the cohesion and consistency of state policy
manifests itself directly in the performance of its soldiers.
Operation CASTOR is itself examined in some detail. Much
more than the heroic siege which is commonly, and rightfully,
associated with the campaign for Dien Bien Phu, it is important
to remember and comprehend the political machinations which took
place in cities far removed from Tonkin, or even Paris. In many
ways, the 1953-1954 struggle in Indochina's northwest corner was
the misbegotten child of policies, and in some instances, lack
of policies, formulated in numerous unlikely locations around the
globe. Just as we all had a stake in what happened at Dien Bien
Phu, we all have a great deal to learn from it.
For instance, formal military training does not necessarily
create a successful professional soldier. Vo Nguyen Giap showed
a grasp of tactics and logistics far beyond that of even St. Cyr's
most distinguished graduates. Thus, the question is raised as to
how a military leadership which is steeped in political goals and
ideology can be beaten by a basically expeditionary force, led
by conventionally educated officers. The answer is more than
just cutting off sources of external support to the guerrilla,
although history proves that this too must be accomplished.
The French lost in Indochina, but it is critical that today's
officer understand why. For the same reason that Gallipoli was
invaluable to the architects of America's amphibious techniques
of World War II, so also should Dien Bien Phu be important to the
professional military planner confronted by the world of 1985 and
beyond.
I
AN "ASPHYXIATING ATMOSPHERE"
In 1938, at the time of the Indochinese Democratic
Front there emerged in Vietnam a big mass movement
such as was never seen before, while in dance the
Daladier government surrendered to the fascists and
itself became fascist.
- Vo Nguyen Giap
The Military Art of People's War
Even if you should manage to re-establish a French
administration here, it would no longer be obeyed:
each village would be a nest of resistance, each
former collaborator an enemy, and your officials
and colonials themselves would beg to be freed
from this asphyxiating atmosphere.
- Emperor Bao Dai
letter to DeGaulle August 20. 1945
Beginning in the second year of our own American Civil War
and continuing until nearly the turn of the century, the French
incrementally occupied and consolidated their grip on Indochina.
Vietnam was the centerpiece and was divided into the three king-
doms of Tonkin in the north, Annam in the center and Cochin China
in the south. The battle that was destined to break France's
power in Indochina would be fought in Tonkin, but the two Viet-
namese leaders who would fight it were from Annam. Neither was
new to the idea of nationalism and they both understood that pro-
tracted guerrilla war was its manifestation.
In 1931 Nguyen Ai Quoc, celebrated throughout the world as
the legendary "Uncle" Ho Chi Minh, founded the Indochinese Com-
munist Party (ICP) in Canton, as much on a nationalist as commu-
nist platform. Forced to remain underground in its early days
due to French military supremacy, the party was granted a semi-
legal status only after the 1936 election of a Popular Front gov-
ernment in France.1 In 1937, members of the French Communist
Party, representing the government of France, were dispatched to
nurture their ideologically infant relative in Indochina. In spite
of the fact that the respite granted by the election of this Pop-
ular Front government was short-lived, the fledgling organization
proliferated. The previously unknown Vo Nguyen Giap, heretofor
earning his keep as professor of history, was given the opportu-
nity to dedicate his efforts toward political writing. Ho, al-
ready possessed of an active pen from his refuge in China, now had
his writing freely circulated throughout the French colony. The
seeds of change were being sown under the benevolent wings of a
future mortal enemy.
When the Popular Front Government in Paris fell, however,
the reaction was quick throughout French colonial possessions.
On September 26, 1939, communist parties were outlawed and whole-
sale arrests were made. As is so frequently the case, adversity
provided the impetus for a renewal of dedication, in this instance
on the part of the communist leadership. The 1940 collapse of
France, establishment of Petain's Vichy Government, and the intro-
duction of a Japanese army of occupation into Indcchina had mixed
results for Vietnamese nationalists.
Click here to view image
Although it is true that the facade of a French colonial ad-
ministration was left largely intact by the Japanese, it soon be-
came clear that the real power in most of Indochina was in fact
the Japanese army. For the most part, however, it was not the
Japanese army which became the target of the rapidly emerging
Vietnamese maquis. Men destined to raise their flag over the
fallen garrison of Dien Bien Phu cut their teeth as guerrilla
fighters in operations against isolated French posts in a Japanese
occupied country. Most such raids were planned and organized just
a handful of miles across the Chinese border, often under the tu-
telage of that bastion of anti-communism, the Kuomintang.2 In all
liklihood, it was this unusual and oppressive double occupation
which provided the catalyst for the development of a real nation-
alist leadership within Vietnam. In any case, Ho Chi Minh return-
ed to his native country in May 1941 and quickly established him-
self as political chieftain and outspoken champion of national
liberation. Drawing divergent nationalist groups together, Ho
quickly founded the League for the Independence of Vietnam. The
French came to know his organization as the Viet Minh.3
If Ho was to become the pen of the Viet Minh, its sword would
be Vo Nguyen Giap, the man who gave his party "the fearsome mili-
tary apparatus that makes the Vietnam People's Army the strongest
native military force in Southeast Asia today." Giap is a most
interesting character; his very life provides a graphic illustra-
tion of not only what was taking place in his country during the
years of the Second World War, but also what a profound impact it
had on the people who lived there. During the early years of Japan-
ese occupation, warrants were issued by the French for the arrest of
both Giap and his young wife. Although the future general himself
eluded his captors, his wife and infant daughter were not so for-
tunate. Arrested and then tried in a French military court for
conspiracy against the security of France, Mme. Giap was sentenced
to life imprisonment. She and the baby died in a French jail, in
a Japanese occupied Vietnam in 1943. Giap's sister-in-law, Minh
Khai, was executed on the guillotine.5 The man who was later to
be dubbed by the Fench as the "Snow-Covered Volcano" personally
understood the meaning of foreign occupation, be it political or
military. Giap, and thousands like him, longed for the day when
Vietnam would be returned to its people. Hatred had transformed
idealists and scholars into zealots and soldiers.
It was not until late 1944 that Vietnamese soldiers were
actually organized into military units in order to take up arms
against their unwelcome guests from France and Japan. In fact,
the official birthday of the Vietnam People's Army (VPA) is Decem-
ber 22, 1944, a date which commemorates the day that a platoon of
Vietnamese soldiers overran two small French garrisons near the
Chinese border. By V-J Day, Giap's troops were militarily quite
potent, well-trained and adequately armed with an assortment of
French, Japanese, and even American, weapons (those of American
manufacture, parachuted in by the OSS).6 Of course, from this
day in August 1944 until after the capture of Dien Bien Phu, nine
years later, it was to be the soldiers of France who were to suffer
the wrath of Vietnam's rapidly maturing army.
September 2, 1945 saw the creation of the Democratic Republic
of Vietnam, founded in Hanoi, capital of Tonkin. Even such politi-
cal moderates as the recently abdicated Emperor Bao Dai seeming-
ly took interest in the prospect of a viable Vietnamese government
and therefore lent support to the Viet Minh. Bao Dai, in fact,
stepped down attesting that he would prefer to be "a common cit-
izen in an independent state than a king of a subjugated nation."7
Warnings to the Euopean powers that the Vietnamese would
not accept any attempt to restore the old order of things fell on
deaf ears.8 In any case the Second World War had barely ended
when, at the Potsdam Conference, the victors decided to return
foreign troops to Vietnam: Chiang Kai-shek's Chinese north of
the 16th Parallel, Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten's tommies to
the south. By late 1945 the overtaxed British were quite anxious
to leave, and during this time frame the arrival of French polit-
ical and military advance forces in Cochin China made it abun-
dantly clear that an independant Vietnam was not one of the press-
ing issues on the French (or British) political agenda. Fearful
that unless the former colony was reclaimed quickly, the newly
emerging American gospel of anti-colonialism would reach too many
sympathetic ears, President Charles de Gaulle acted quickly to
restore the status quo ante bellum.9 Thus, by early February
1946, Mountbatten's British occupation force had been replaced
south of the 16th Parallel by Marshall Jean Leclerc's Frenchmen.
The French wouldn't find their reinstatement quite as easy
in the northern part of the country (northern Annam and Tonkin).
Here they were confronted by Ho Chi Minh's Viet Minh and not a
war-weary European ally and colonial power. The Nationalist Chi-
nese who moved in to fill the postwar void were of no consequence
militarily or otherwise; Generalissimo Chiang was adequately chal-
lenged by a communist movement in his own country. He had shown
the priorities which drove his military effort throughout the
Second World War, diverting the lion's share of his military ef-
fort to the crippling of the Chinese communists rather than the
defeat of the Japanese (from the Chinese view, this pre-World War
II civil war would continue after the Japanese had been defeated).
Thus, there was no reason to expect Chiang to become too involved
in Vietnam after 1945. As far as the French were concerned, the
writing was on the wall. The time had come when Paris would have
to fight if it expected to regain control over its former colony;
clearly, the followers of Ho Chi Minh and the soldiers of Vo Nguyen
Giap were not prepared to acquiesce to a return to a subjugated
status. The latter especially was a strong advocate of fighting
the French with weapons as opposed to words, describing the Viet-
namese people as "indissolubly united to fight to the death."10
The manner in which the situation took shape in 1946 and 1947,
however, suggests that the People's Army would remain first and
foremost a tool designed to attain the Viet Minh's political ends.
It is worthwhile to pause briefly at this point in order to
examine in a little more detail the motivation behind the Viet-
nam People's Army overall strategy, and the impact it had on how
the struggle in Indochina assumed a character all its own. The
Vietnam People's Army was a loyal disciple of Clausewitz' famous
dictum that military action was nothing short of the last resort
of political policy. What is so intriguing about this entire
business is that only grudgingly is credit given where credit is
due, which is to say, Mao Tse-tung. Without question, the concept
of protracted guerrilla warfare was the cornerstone of Mao's
method of achieving political victory. As the Chinese communist
wrote in May 1938, in an essay entitled "On Protracted War:"
...it can reasonably be assumed that this pro-
tracted war will pass through three stages.
The first stage covers the period of the en-
emy's strategic offensive and our strategic
defensive. The second stage will be the per-
iod of the enemy's strategic consolidation
and our preparation for the counteroffensive.
The third stage will be the period of our
strategic counteroffensive and the enemy's
strategic de feat.11
Mao summarized his thoughts on mobile guerrilla warfare in a
short article he wrote in 1936 entitled "Problems of Strategy
in China's Revolutionary War" by boiling the entire essence of
protracted warfare into the single statement of "fight when you
can win, move away when you can't win." General Giap refers to
this form of strategy as the "long-term Resistance War:" which
would progress through the three stages of defensive, equilibrium
and offensive.12 In his accounts of the fighting against the
French, especially from 1950 on, the former history teacher re-
flects personal pride in his accomplishment and seems reluctant
to acknowledge a military debt to anyone. The evidence would
seem to indicate otherwise. General Giap's strategy and tactics
smack heavily of the thoughts of Chairman Mao.
What is of considerable importance is the fact that the Viet-
namese nationalist movement was being guided by men who had no in-
tention of acting hastily in the face of French generals who
boasted openly that the pacification of Indochina would entail
only a month or so of mopping up. French politicians, however,
were showing that they could be circumspect as well. With the
formal withdrawl of Chinese Nationalist troops from northern
Vietnam, the returning colonialists quickly realized that the
real power there belonged wholly to the Viet Minh and that Gen-
eral Leclerc (despite his boasting) hardly possessed the means
to alter the situation. Thus, on March 6, 1946, Jean Sainteny,
assistant military attache in Chungking, signed a modus vivendi
with the Viet Minh.13 At this particular time, many Frenchmen
in Indochina, and in Paris as well, were rightfully of the opin-
ion that Ho Chi Minh was not yet a bitter enemy of France, but
rather a high-minded nationalist who probably had no objections
to maintaining diplomatic relations with the Quai d'Orsay and
could thus accept Vietnam's status as an Associated State. To
a point, Ho was a Francophile; but, where the misunderstanding
would always occur was in determining exactly where that point
was. Ho was an ideological nationalist before all else. Free-
dom for his country was much more important to him than hatred
for the nation which precluded it from becoming a fact. In the
Democratic Republic of Vietnam's Declaration of Independence
(drafted by Chairman Ho in September 1945), it is made clear that
the Vietnamese had no intention of returning to their former sta-
tus. The preamble has a familiar ring to it:
We hold truths that all men are created equal,