Fall, Bernard Dien Bien Phu

Un coin d'Enfer

On Saturday, 8 May 1954, the command aircraft receives the very last message sent by the French from Dien Bien Phu: Breakout failed, stop, can no longer communicate with you, stop, end. The breakout of Isabelle has just failed, and this is indeed the end. The end of the Indochina War and French colonial power. For the first time in history, a guerrilla force had defeated a major power on the battlefield. The loss of Dien Bien Phu in 1954, whose siege had lasted 167 days, had consequences similar to those of Waterloo, the Marne and Stalingrad. How did this desperate situation come about on the eve of the Geneva Conference? Bernard Fall meticulously reconstructs the battle after collecting the testimonies of survivors from both sides, interviewing the key players in this drama, such as Ho Chi Minh and Giap in Hanoi, and obtaining permission from the French Minister of Defence to view still-secret documents of the utmost importance. He describes the attack and subsequent suffocation of Dien Bien Phu by trench warfare reminiscent of Verdun, and takes us into the hell of the entrenched camp, where the wounded cower with vermin in dark trenches. He shows how the 13,000 men of the French garrison, 70% of whom were legionnaires, North Africans and Vietnamese, faced 50,000 Viet Minh fighters and 55,000 unarmed recruits men, women and the elderly. In this panorama, Bernard Fall reveals the truth about the hidden aspects of this tragedy: what role did Generals Navarre, Cogny and de Castries really play, and what was the relationship between them? Why did the United States not intervene? Was the dropping of an atomic bomb considered? And above all: would the history of Vietnam have taken its current course if a decisive defeat had been avoided in 1954?