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The Vietnam Battle that America Forgot to Heed
'Valley of Death: The Tragedy of Dien Bien Phu' chronicles a war foretold.
French prisoners of war leaving Dien Bien Phu after defeat by communist Vietminh.
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- Valley of Death: The Tragedy at Dien Bien Phu That Led America into the Vietnam War
- Random House (2010)
We were playing a little-boys' war game in a vacant lot next to my friend's house: having placed our toy soldiers in trenches, we were shelling the hell out of them with pebbles and dirt clods. An adult wandered out to take a look.
"What is this, Dien Bien Phu?" he asked.
We knew what he was talking about. Almost forgotten now, Dien Bien Phu was a battle in an unknown corner of the world that had every chance of spiralling into a third world war. It dominated the world news in the spring of 1954 as the Communist Vietminh methodically crushed 10,000 French paratroopers, Foreign Legionnaires and colonial troops.
Both the West and the Communists took the battle very seriously, though it was only one campaign in an anti-colonial war. And both sides understood that it really could get out of hand and turn global.
Reading this book disturbed me, because I can remember, more or less, what was going on in my life while Dien Bien Phu was under siege. A decade before it happened, the American war in Vietnam was clearly foreseen by the politicians in Washington, London and Beijing. No one wanted it. And despite their foresight, my generation -- American, Canadian, Australian, Vietnamese -- would be caught up in Indochina's Thirty Years' War.
It could have been a Thirty Days' War. World War II was winding down. The Americans, clear victors, had little time for the imperial pretensions of their British and French allies. President Roosevelt was open to the idea of an independent Vietnam; the French colonialists in Indochina had been collaborating with the Japanese throughout the war.
Cribbing from the Declaration of Independence
Ho Chi Minh, with American help, was already waging guerilla war against the Japanese and the French, and when Japan surrendered he was quick to take Hanoi and declare the Republic of Vietnam. He even cribbed his speech from the U.S. Declaration of Independence.
But Roosevelt was now dead, and Truman was more concerned about keeping France on the West's side of the Cold War. So he handed Indochina back to its former masters.
As Morgan's book makes clear, the British and Americans regarded the French as tiresome, high-maintenance allies who couldn't really pull their weight in the new world order. Rolling their eyes, the British and Americans provided the materiel and air support to let the French Army resume its prewar role in Indochina.
This was realpolitik at its most unrealistic, and it sealed the fates of perhaps a million Vietnamese children and 60,000 of their American and Canadian contemporaries. (The Canadians who went south to join the U.S. Army and fight in the war outnumbered the Americans who came north to escape it.)
By the summer of 1953, the French controlled little of their colony: Saigon, Hanoi and its port Haiphong, and the rice bowl of the Red River delta. In other regions it ruled by daylight and the Vietminh took over at night. Worse yet, the Vietminh were moving into Laos and Cambodia, also French possessions.
Imperialism undone
General Navarre, commanding French forces in Indochina, thought Dien Bien Phu would be a good chokepoint to keep the Vietminh out of Laos. It could also lure Vietminh General Vo Nguyen Giap into attacking the new base. That would take pressure off the Red River and give Navarre a chance to grind up the Communists. After all, in that remote and mountainous region the Vietminh couldn't bring in heavy artillery or supplies for a sustained assault. The French, however, could drop even tanks and trucks by parachute.
In hindsight, French racism undid French imperialism. They simply couldn't believe the Vietnamese were capable of organizing a major attack against a well-equipped army with air support and total air superiority.
Supplied and advised by the Chinese, Giap organized armies of coolies carried dismantled artillery on their backs, or on bicycles. When the French (and CIA contractors) bombed the roads from the Chinese border, the supply lines moved into a network of trails under the jungle canopy. Once the heavy guns arrived, the coolies and soldiers hid them in caves dug into the hillsides facing the valley of Dien Bien Phu and its scattered French strongpoints.
By late 1953, the French were surrounded. Thereafter, the Vietminh waged a war of grinding attrition that the isolated French could never win. Their airstrip was blown to fragments, trapping their wounded. Reinforcements had to parachute in, and were sometimes killed as they dropped.
Morgan's narrative focuses vividly and powerfully on the French combatants; the survivors wrote detailed accounts of their side of the fight. Giap's forces said much less, at least for publication, but they were clearly tough, well-trained, and ready to die. And they did.
Nuke Vietnam?
Meanwhile, the U.S., British and French governments were engaged in endless debate about what to do. Should U.S. troops go in? Could American air power make a difference? The use of atomic bombs was seriously debated until Eisenhower rejected the idea as militarily pointless and politically suicidal: using nuclear weapons twice in a decade against Asian enemies would discredit the U.S. for a generation or more.
Reluctantly, the western powers agreed to a conference in Geneva to end a war that the French were sick of. The Russians, Chinese and Vietnamese were there as well. Morgan effectively contrasts the political grandstanding and backstage bargaining with the carnage endured while the talks went on.
Eventually Geneva produced a temporary partition of Vietnam, to be followed by democratic elections in 1956. No one seriously expected the elections to be held (Ho Chi Minh would have won easily), but the settlement bought time for both sides. The Vietminh could rebuild. China was relieved that U.S. forces had been kept out of direct engagement in the war. France could turn its attention to another doomed war, trying to keep Algeria a colony.
In the meantime, Dien Bien Phu had surrendered and the surviving soldiers had been marched long distances to prison camps. It was a death march comparable to Bataan.
Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of this book is that the U.S. learned nothing from it and was itself at war in Vietnam a decade later. The Americans, like the French, pinned their hopes on anti-communist puppet governments, superior technology, and the empty threat of other Southeast Asian countries going communist if Ho Chi Minh wasn't stopped. When the puppet governments couldn't fight adequately, the U.S. threw in its own troops -- with results Eisenhower could have predicted.
So while my generation played war with toy soldiers in empty lots, our elders were setting up the conditions that would drive us into a real war. They had to have known what they were doing -- and yet they did it anyway.
The Vietnam war ended up costing the U.S. nearly 58,000 lives. The number of Vietnamese lives lost is estimated to be over a million.
Today, Aug. 4, marks the day in 1964 that Lyndon Johnson ordered the bombing of North Vietnam, steeply escalating the war's toll.
Tomorrow is the day in 1995 that U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher opened the U.S. embassy in Hanoi. ![[Tyee]](http://thetyee.cachefly.net/ui/img/ico_fishie.png){kind=small}
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21
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Fiat lux
42 weeks ago
As any other war in history,
As any other war in history, and the present, they have never been and are not fought by people against people, but by leaders to force religions, beliefs, and colonizations on their own and others.
The purpose of all wars is some form of energy control, usually costing and wasting more energy than gained.
WW 2 and Vietnam being the worst case examples, wasting millions of lives and destroying incredible resources for nothing, except bragging opportunities for some.
What did the Spanish and Portuguese people gain from the colonization of Central and South America, or the British from the largest empire in history ?
When we went to England in 1948, large areas still had no electricity. The village of Toft, about 5-6 miles from Cambridge, didn't get any until 1949.
Ed Deak.
Lawrence
42 weeks ago
Big oil
The Americans went into Vietnam to get their hands on the vast oil reserves in the South China sea, oil countries are still fighting over.
As far as I remember the Chinese and the people of Vietnam lost three million, not one million.
I'm not sure what you mean when you say the US was the '' clear victor '' in WW2.
The US came into the war when it became clear Russia, Canada and England were winning important battles long before D day.
Fiat lux
42 weeks ago
What did Britain get out of
What did Britain get out of "winning" two world wars and having been the biggest empire ?
Or the US now, with Canada as the humblest satellite, backing up all their idiocies ?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1542649/British-youngsters-get-worst-deal-says-UN.html
Ed Deak
FatherTheo
42 weeks ago
Vietnam
The Vietnamese casualty figures I have encountered are more like 3.4 million.
Fiat lux
42 weeks ago
What the Vietnamese got out
What the Vietnamese got out of it was that US capitalists can now bring their factories over to them, in the interest of the "efficiency" of communist slave labour, of course.
As in China.
Ed Deak.
Fish-counter
42 weeks ago
The real tragedy of the Vietnam War is: Afghanistan and Iraq
The USA went to war in Vietnam based on a lie; that Ho Chi Minh was a communist, when he was a Vietnamese nationalist, first and foremost. The Cold War Domino Theory was concocted to create fuel for a campaign and the Military Industrial Complex fired up beautifully in response to the profit motive.
Ho Chi Minh was the Osama bin Laden of his day. The Americans even used the phrase "The winning of hearts and minds" in Iraq and Afghanistan", which resonated in my mind, since that was the stock phrase used in Vietnam.
The abslolute bankruptcy of the U.S. military in using old phrases and old strategies to fight unwinnable wars is depressing.
The U.S. have spent themselves into oblivion and they are exactly where they deserve to be; in debt to the very people they have been fighting for the last 50 years. The irony is overwhelming.
Does anyone else remember the slogan of the Goldwater campaign? It showed a nuclear explosion (he was proposing nuking the Plain of Jars to solve the communist problem) and the comment was, "Vote in the .... election; the stakes are too high for you to stay home".
How was Canada in the Vietnam War? Ann Coulter thinks we were there, but we were not.
The real and most lasting crime of the Vietnam War was the legacy of death left by the defoliants used there. Seven million litres of Agent Orange and Agent Purple were dropped on the Vietnamese. It is a crime that has completely denied by the US, while whole watersheds are still unfit for human habitation.
pianosaurus rex
42 weeks ago
A little more actually
245T is the pesticide in Agent Orange; one of the by-products of manufacture is dioxins.
40 million litres of Agent Orange, containing 400 kilos of pure dioxins were sprayed to defoliate forests in Vietnam.
That is just the Agent Orange……
40 years later, if you are over there, go to Ho Chi Minh City, and have a tour of the Tu Du Hospital to see the lasting results of the mess.
Stephanie
42 weeks ago
Agent Orange
Thanks for the reminder of this element of American history.
Sadly, I don’t need this reminder as my partner, who did his tour of duty just as so many young Americans did at the time, is now living with the after effects of Agent Orange. Young at 63, healthy, non smoker and non drinker and 2 major cancers diagnosed in the last three months – directly related to said product.
I try to avoid anger and regrets but will admit to moments when I sincerely wish that those who cause and orchestrate these “engagements, endeavours, actions”, all euphemistic terms for using people to kill others for the profit of the chosen few, would be subjected to the effects of their own choices.
When will we learn? Sadly, and very doubtful, Stephanie
pianosaurus rex
42 weeks ago
responsibility
All of what I mentioned in the previous posting was dumped on the forests of Vietnam; 3 million people were contaminated, along with thousands of American foot soldiers.
In 1949 during an accidental spill at the manufacturing plant in Nitro West Virginia 220 workers came down with what is called chloracne.
http://cybersarges.tripod.com/Chloracne.html
During the period were Vietnam vets were suing the US government for benefits (1978), Monsanto did several company sponsored studies where they skewed the results to match up with their denial that any side effects existed from dioxin exposure.
Cate Jenkins was the EPA whistleblower who was vilified……thousands of Vietnam vets were denied benefits as a result of those studies which no one checked for accuracy until she did.
It is all in here…..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YH4OwBYDQe8
Fiat lux
42 weeks ago
Let's not forget that the
Let's not forget that the politicians who invent the crime waves are remembered in history books as "great" and the military who does the dirty work are always honoured as "heroes in defence of our country and freedoms", covered with medals and march in parades for the rest of their lives.
No matter what nation, the the words and actions are always the same.
Ed Deak.
RickW
42 weeks ago
Who "won"?
Perhaps the showing of the 20th anniversary of the JFK movie said it most succinctly.
Or maybe ABBA:
Money, money, money
Always sunny
In the rich man's world
firefox007
41 weeks ago
The Real Reason Dien Bien Phu Happened
The true reason for the battle was the French decision to permanently overrun the only opium-growing areas of Vietnam. The area was owned by the Meo hill tribes, who had severe problems with Ho Chi Minh, who stole their crop. The French saw a chance to own the areas the opium grows in. The crop was financially crucial for both the French & the Viet Minh. They could not back down and a large battle ensued. Information is from "The French Secret Services" by Douglas Porch.
Fiat lux
41 weeks ago
Isn't this the same reason
Isn't this the same reason for Afghanistan, plus the country's immense mineral resources the multinational corporate mafia could sell to China?
Ed Deak.
realisticman
41 weeks ago
Dear Ed Deak.
"What did Britain get out of "winning" two world wars ..."
Well, for one thing Ed, it enabled it to provide a safe haven for a certain Mr. Ed Deak, where he also went on to university and later found a comfortable home, ran a business and later retired in one of Britain's commonwealth countries.
Do you think that Poland should have just been ignored in 1939?
Fiat lux
41 weeks ago
A group of prominent German
A group of prominent German politicians sent an emissary to England, requesting recognition if and when they knock off Hitler. Churchill wasn't in power yet, might have helped, but couldn't
They were refused. The names and events are well known and books have been written on the subject.
In any case, I didn't suggest that Britain shouldn't have gone to the defence of Poland, or anybody for the defence of anybody, but what are the results of all war glories ? From Rome to the Huns, thew Tartars, etc. down the line.
In any case I didn't retire to any commonwealth country of Britain, but developed businesses, trained apprentices, taught courses and nightschools, developed organic farming and ranching and still stirring hell, when I see how this country and the world is being destroyed by the biggest crime wave in history by so called "conservatives", pushing a criminal economic theory that makes the destructions by Hitler, Stalin and Mao look like heaps of chickenshit.
I suppose the promotion of fraud, theft and destruction by the perennial, predatory special interests of history and the suckers in their service, could indeed be called "realists", as the millions starving to death are discovering it even now.
Something to be really proud of kiddie !!!
Ed Deak.
realisticman
41 weeks ago
Mr. Deak
There is one thing you are right about, if one considers the number of people worldwide that now enthusiastically support the 'conservatives' economic theory in use almost everywhere, it does reduce the total number that supported the three despots you name to a level than can suitable be called 'chicken shit'.
Enjoy your freedom, I know you worked hard for it, as did many of our ancestors.
Fiat lux
41 weeks ago
Two world wars and the death
Two world wars and the death camps of Stalin, Hitler and Mao have taken 70 years to murder 120 million people.
This famous "conservative economic theory", the world is so enthusiastically support now, kills the same number in 4-5 years with starvation and easily preventable illnesses, while "creating" 10-15% more billionaires, worldwide, every year.
Something to be proud of , as Eichmann was for the number of Jews killed in his death camps.
We'll see how this "conservative economic theory" will handle the worldwide depression it is now causing, with our governments proudly reporting the thousands of new jobs "created", while exporting millions of jobs and the resources to work with, to communist China, plus with the planned "free trade" Harper is negotiating with India.
In the name of "competitive economic efficiency" of course.
Ed Deak.
RickW
41 weeks ago
Ed
R/M suffers from what I call "The Pontius Pilate Syndrome".
the real ODB
41 weeks ago
UXO: unexploded ordinances
Another legacy of that waste of lives: EVERYDAY someone in Cambodia and Laos is blown up by UXO's. Unexploded mines and carpet bomblets from cluster bombs. They were dropped on the Ho Chi Minh trail and from US bombers returning to bases in Thailand to "save fuel". Wish I made this shit up. But don't expect the US to clean up this mess. No, that's done by NGO's and other nonprofit organizations. And they still use them to this day. Only now they paint them bright colours (as opposed to army green) so kids will think they're toys. 'Nuff said.
jgg017
41 weeks ago
Lesson to learn
The Americans should start to listen and learn from the mistakes they make -- training and arming insurgents is NEVER a good idea.
In Vietnam, as with all American "interventions" ... there are simply too many screw-ups to mention. Despite being Canadian, my father was training to go to Vietnam. Even after all of the crap that happened he has, to this day, a bizarre sense of regret that he didn't go. I'm happy for the both of us.
sicntired
41 weeks ago
Afghanistan
The Americans are really slow learners.Iraq was an unmitigated disaster and Afghanistan has defeated better armies than the one America is throwing at the Taliban.Obama was a fool to be drawn into a war that they can never win.It should be obvious to the Americans,of all people,that occupation of an unfriendly country is impossible to maintain in the long term.NATO has no excuse either.As a species we seem doomed to always repeat the same mistakes.Every generation has to learn by doing.History seems to teach us nothing.