The Battle of Dien Bien Phu: Historical Perspectives

In History class, we have recently completed an assessment on the historical perspectives regarding the Battle of Dien Bien Phu. The battle, fought in early 1954, lasted just under two months and was a decisive victory for the pro-communist Viet Minh over the French colonialists. It was fought deep in enemy territory, with the French being outnumbered about 4:1 by the Viet Minh, who also received military support from the Soviet Union as well as China.

Despite the crushing defeat endured by the anti-communist Western powers, such did not deter further intervention in Vietnam by the West. Instead, the success enjoyed by the communist insurgents agitated the Western World (most notably the United States) into adopting an increasingly hawkish foreign policy regarding the spread of communism. That increasingly hawkish foreign policy eventually culminated in the escalation of the War in Vietnam by the Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon administrations.

For the assessment, we were tasked to write two perspectives; one from a French soldier or general, and one from a Viet Minh soldier or general. I chose to write both of my perspectives from that of a general, 40 days into the 55-day battle. We used historically accurate details to create a compelling and accurate account of each perspective. I hope you'll enjoy reading each of the perspectives. If you have any feedback at all, I would be highly interested in hearing your thoughts.

Battle of Dien Bien Phu Perspectives

General Henri Navarre (France): a letter from the 22nd of April, 1954 to the President of France.

To His Excellency,

It is with the utmost distress and profound lamentation that I write to you, Sir, of the circumstances at Dien Bien Phu. Our current situation is irreparable without external intervention, without which our defeat will be certain. My men have fought forty days and nights against an enemy which can be neither subdued nor defeated. My men are now few among what was formerly many. We began this battle 16,000 strong. Now only 7,000 remain capable of fighting. All the remainder have been either killed by the Viet Minh or have been injured, unable to fight on.

Sir, let me remind you why we are here, fighting, so far from home. We are here because we fear God’s judgement lest we did not spread the gospel. As it states in Matthew 28:19, it is our obligation to “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost”—how, Sir, may we thus contravene this sacred commandment? That commandment to go forth and evangelise all nations, proclaiming the gospel to them, how may we do so if we depart the land? To depart the land would undo much good work we have done in the Lord’s name. There is no doubt in my mind that the converted Catholics among the native population will be persecuted by a Communist administration, as occurred in the Soviet Union. Dechristianisation is a fundamental tenet of the Communist ideology; Marx himself claimed that religion is the opium of the masses. If we withdraw from Vietnam, it will surely bring judgement upon France, upon us all; it will stain our soul, blemish our blood, and disgrace us eternally before the Lord. We cannot lose this battle, nor this war, for if we do, the Christian converts among the native Vietnamese population will thus in turn lose their faith by force to the Communists, as we saw in Russia. We cannot allow that to occur.

In addition to undoing all the good works we have done in God’s service, may I remind you of the disgrace and shame which would perfuse not only our own bloodlines, but of the entire nation of France herself, if we were to suffer defeat by these ignoble rice paddy vermin! Could we, the glorious French nation, have gone from overthrowing two thousand years of Rome in the wake of Austerlitz, to being vanquished within a matter of weeks by rice farmers? Next year, Sir, marks 150 years since that epochal victory; shall our defeat here be our way of commemorating the men of the Napoleonic generation, of honouring them, of honouring France herself? Our descendants will be forced to live with the legacy of our inaction. They will read of our inaction, of our apathy and of our impotence, and they shall not mourn but will mock us for our inaction. It is imperative for us that we fight on against the Viet Minh for all the glory of France.

As you will be aware, Sir, our strategy at Dien Bien Phu was to initiate a set-piece battle deep in enemy territory (in the vicinity of coordinates 21.39 N, 103.02 E), whereby we would thus provoke the poorly-trained and weak Viet Minh troops from the surrounding area into fighting our troops, far superior to theirs, where we would be able to withstand their numerical advantage with our own technological and materiel advantage. This strategy has been compromised by the highly unorthodox tactics of the Viet Minh, which is very unlike the Western style of warfare, manifested in its gallantry, its determination, and a steadfast sense of honour. The modus operandi of the Viet Minh is that of deceit, dissemblance, and lâcheté! They have no sense of honour, no sense of how to fight with even a modicum of manliness:—their way of fighting is predicated whole and entire upon the archetype of the flea!

Thus far, 40 days into the battle, we have already lost four of our strongpoints: Beatrice, Dominique, Elaine, and Huguette. Now they are advancing towards the southernmost strongpoint of Isabella which, being isolated from the other strongpoints, and being low on water and other essential resources, is sure to fall to the Viet Minh forces. The loss of Isabella is all but inevitable, but we may yet save some of our central strongpoints. As you may have already surmised, Sir, the rapid loss of these four strongpoints has resulted in the morale of my men degenerating. We began this battle confident of victory—but yet, our intelligence pertaining to the armaments of the Viet Minh was completely lacking. Now, in the midst of battle, we are now thoroughly acquainted with the Viet Minh’s weaponry, much of which is unlike anything we expected them to have, and which has ostensibly been supplied to them by the Soviet Union as well as China. The Soviet Union has sent the Viet Minh considerable quantities of heavy artillery, including their very own Katyusha rocket launchers. We thought we would have unlimited access to the air, considering that the Viet Minh is a ground-based force. But yet, with the anti-air artillery they have in their possession, we have been consequently unable to fly our planes at altitudes low enough to enable reconnaissance or air-to-ground combat.

In light of the quickly deteriorating conditions at Dien Bien Phu, it is with urgency that I request of you, Sir, your prompt contact with the U.S. Administration, and urge of them immediate military intervention. In order to best hold our current position here at Dien Bien Phu, and hold it with minimal losses, the use of tactical nuclear weapons must be an option, and an option the U.S. must exercise if the situation calls for it. If the Eisenhower Administration is as concerned about combatting the threat of World-Wide Communism as they claim themselves to be, it is imperative that they contribute their fair share. That contribution does not merely mean money, of which they have allocated plenty—more than $3 billion for the war effort in Indochina, 80% of the total funds for the war have been contributed by the Americans. And yet, all the money they have thrown will not be enough to fight this battle, win this war, or prevent the rise of World-Wide Communism. We cannot kill the Viet Minh shooting them with dollar bills. Sir, I plead: Eisenhower must either send men or send nukes. If he does neither, we will surely lose. As for the latter proposition, that of the nuclear recourse, we have the tentative support of the U.S. Secretary of State, who outlined a new foreign policy strategy of “massive retaliation”—opening up the possibility for nuclear-based retaliation in Vietnam.

That nuclear recourse, or at least the entry of U.S. troops, is of the utmost necessity. The mere allocation of funding from the U.S. will not be sufficient to fight this battle, win this war, or prevent the spread of Communism. We are only bloating our budgets with the exorbitant funding that the U.S. has sent us; if the $3 billion they have sent our way thus far has proven insufficient in our endeavours to vanquish the Viet Minh, what induces in the U.S. Administration the belief that sending us $3 billion more will do anything to assist the situation? Notwithstanding, I fully understand President Eisenhower’s reluctance to entangle his men in the affairs of France; but yet, that does not explain his obstinance regarding the nuclear option. The use of tactical nuclear weapons on the part of the U.S. bears no tangible risk to their men, and will result in a positive resolution to this battle for both our nations, ensuring a victory for the freedom of mankind, in religious, social, and economic terms. Furthermore, it will ensure the safety of my men, who have already endured heavy casualties, now numbering around 9,000 injured or dead out of the 16,000 men with which we began this battle. Sir, if we can persuade the U.S. of the viability of the nuclear option, and if it may be authorised and enacted, it will result in tremendous damage to the Viet Minh, both in terms of casualties sustained as well as the psychological shock they would endure. That psychological shock would itself likely precipitate, furthermore, the desertion of swathes of Viet Minh troops.

If the nuclear option is enacted, the position of the Viet Minh as we enter the upcoming Geneva Conference will be significantly weakened, and ours hugely strengthened. If we lose this battle, our position will be highly compromised at the conference, where the Viet Minh will surely strong-arm us into accepting very objectionable terms—potentially even the cession of Vietnam to the Communists. With the cession of Vietnam to the Communists, Communist agitation will thus inevitably erupt in our other colonial possessions.

To round off this letter, Sir, I would like to describe why the strategy we employed here at Dien Bien Phu has not resulted in our victory. I believed, in the lead-up to this battle, that if we can provoke the Viet Minh into facing us in a set-piece battle, where they would come out of the surrounding hillside into the valley where our strongpoints are positioned, that we would be able to effectively decimate them as they move upon our positions with our vastly superior armaments and insurmountable defences. This has not occurred. Instead, the Viet Minh has engaged us using unorthodox guerilla tactics, with which neither me nor my men are familiar. What has occurred is quite the opposite of what I was expecting; rather than we bombarding them as they advance upon our positions, they have bombarded us as we have remained within the strongpoints.

Yours Sincerely,
Gen. Henri Navarre

General Vo Nguyen Giap (Viet Minh): a letter from the 22nd of April, 1954 to Ho Chi Minh

Dear Ho,

Forty days long we have fought the colonialists, fought the imperialists, and fought the capitalists, and with overwhelming success. We have endured more than five weeks of bloodshed, for I know, as you know, and as our men know, that it will be worth it in the end. For the love of Vietnam we have a duty to fight, for her complete independence and freedom from the gauntlet of oppression which has exploited our people for centuries.

Long and harsh years ago came the mandarins from the north. So our descent to serfdom began. We resisted their chains with all the strength we had, but yet they overpowered us with the unvanquishable numerosity of their forces. For it is so that the Chinese have always proven weak fighters, such that they are unable to defeat the opponent unless they outnumber them ten to one. But so, after centuries of mandarin tyrants, the French came, hearing of our plenteous resources, and were thus overcome with envy for that which is rightfully ours. They cast out the mandarins, installing themselves as rulers in the former’s place. Then, very briefly, the Japanese came, but so it was brief, it transpiring that they were nothing but a paper tiger. Now the French are determined to return. We will not allow them. We have suffered too long. When we come to power, the totality of the oppressors’ legacy will be reduced to a mere mote of dust upon the chronicles of our glory. We will fight and we will all gladly die for Vietnam today, Vietnam tomorrow, Vietnam forever!

All the foreign influence will be extirpated upon the foreigners’ defeat and consequent departure from our land, Vietnam. For the past several centuries, they have sought to impose their culture, their customs, their language, and their religion upon our people. They have sought to poison the souls of our men, our women, and our children. The French, as a prime example, have dumped Catholicism upon our shores like the toxic waste it is, despite their insistence it be gold. It is our traditional folk religion which has been suppressed by the imperial authorities over the past several centuries; the French have destroyed our shrines and our temples, and have built in their place cathedrals obtrusive to its surroundings. The cathedrals, such as Notre Dame in Saigon, are a symbol of the foreigner, come to uproot our culture with their unwelcome ways which they have forced upon us. Why can we not be left alone? Why must invaders come from both near and far to take that which is not theirs? Whether they be Sinitic or European, to the north or from the west, they come all the same, as foreigners and as invaders. Let us then take the military aid granted us by the Chinese; we must take that which is offered, for we cannot isolate ourselves. We will accept their palm but not their fist.

Furthermore, Ho, as you know, the French have been forcing their foreign curriculum on our children. Many children today in Vietnam, especially the city-dwellers, know nothing of the traditional Vietnamese way of life, only a bastardised quasi-Parisianism which they have learnt at school. Such may be seen most evidently in cities such as Saigon, where the French hegemony has approached leviathanic proportions. The schoolchildren no longer learn of Vietnam, but of France instead. They no longer learn of Vietnamese history nor of Vietnamese culture. Even our very own language is discouraged from being spoken, at best, and at worst, schoolchildren caught speaking Vietnamese are dealt severe punishment, as is often the case in the South. It is surely a tragedy for us all that our people have had to endure the foreigners for so long. But yet, that will soon change, with our imminent victory here at Dien Bien Phu. Then, we will rid our country of their influence, and put our own people first, before all else, for the glory of a socialist Vietnam.

And so, it is with great honour that I report to you, Ho, of our overwhelming victory we have experienced here at Dien Bien Phu thus far. We have thoroughly outmanoeuvred the French. They did not expect us to have the weaponry we have, including that contributed by China and the Soviet Union. We have used that artillery to bombard their strongpoints, as well as, furthermore, prevent them from controlling the air above Dien Bien Phu. As a result, the French have not been able to fly reconnaissance missions nor conduct air-to-ground combat with our forces, due to the anti-air capabilities of our artillery. Their airstrip, upon which they were completely dependent for the resupplying of their facilities and their men, we have destroyed. As a result, they have to fly their cargo planes at high altitudes and drop their resupply packages, which, as you can no doubt imagine, is not terribly accurate; I would estimate that we are able to intercept about a quarter of the resupply packages, which has an adverse effect upon their ability to continue their operations, and brings only benefits for my men, with medicine, water, non-perishable foods, and ammunition all being contained within the packages. With our artillery, our four-to-one numerical advantage, and stable supply lines, we have been able to also take the strongpoints of Dominique, Elaine, and Huguette with great ease, in addition to Beatrice, as aforenoted. They stand no chance against us. Ho, we are simply butchering them, as though they were cows come to the abbatoir. It is nothing but reparation for all they have done to our people, all they have done to Vietnam. We have killed and injured around 5,000 to 8,000 French troops, in my estimation, out of an initial French force of about 15,000 men. Of course, we too are suffering great casualties of about 12,000 men lost, yet that is nothing for what we will gain with victory, principally our freedom. And so it is also natural considering we have a much larger force than theirs, with my men outnumbering the French about four-to-one.

It is not only the result of our artillery capabilities that we are winning the battle here at Dien Bien Phu. It is also an example from the field of the superiority of the guerilla in resisting the colonialist and his more traditional forms of warfare. My thoughts on guerilla warfare are summed up in the words of Mao Zedong, who stated in his 1937 treatise On Guerilla Warfare that “The guerilla must move amongst the people as a fish swims in the sea.” We have certainly abided by such a principle, given the fact of our immense support throughout the surrounding town of Dien Bien Phu, where we have been able to gain the covert support of many townspeople, who have been of great logistical assistance, ensuring our supply lines remain strong, so that my men shall not have cause to cease battle for hunger, thirst, or lack of ammunition. The French are completely unaware that we have Viet Minh supply lines running straight through the town of Dien Bien Phu, for the townspeople we have enlisted there are, as Zedong described, like fish in the sea, keeping themselves inconspicuous, but also highly mobile. It is not only in logistical terms that we engage in guerilla warfare; it is even through the fighting itself. For when the French advance, we retreat, and when the French retreat, we advance. We attack them from all sides. We attack them when they do not expect us, and when they do expect us, we sit amongst ourselves. The Viet Minh style of warfare is precisely that of the guerilla, and it is as guerillas that we will win this battle and this war, and thereby win the independence of a socialist Vietnam.

Ho, if we are able to win this battle, we will achieve a great victory for the advancement of all mankind. We are progressing through the predicted Hegelian-Marxist dialectic of which you speak so keenly. Now we are in the midst of a global transition from capitalism to socialism, and from socialism will inevitably come communism. It is certain that we, comprising a dictatorship of the proletariat, will be victorious over the capitalists, who are few in number not only here at Dien Bien Phu, but increasingly on a global scale, too, with the victory of Mao Zedong in 1949 adding another 540 million socialists to the world’s population. And so too, it goes without statement that, with the addition of 540 million more socialists comes the simultaneous addition of 540 million more anti-imperialists and anti-colonialists. For capitalism is but colonialism paraphrased. It is so that capitalism relies upon the exploitation of the proletarian majority, just as colonialism relies upon the exploitation of the autochthonous majority. We are that majority synthesised, for we are both the ethnic and economic majority in our land. Thus must our struggle be directed in a twofold convergence striking with unrelenting fury at the intersection between colonialism and capitalism. We will thereby vanquish the two evils with one united struggle.

Vive la révolution!
Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap