Tag: henri navarre

Latest read: Dien Bien Phu The Epic Battle America Forgot

Post author By Don Kasprzak
Post date December 30, 2018

Did the seige at Dien Bien Phu became the single event that catapulted America fully into the Vietnam conflict? Howard Simpson’s Dien Bien Phu The Epic Battle America Forgot may actually be the best book for Americans to understand the significance of the French disaster.
Several books on this battle that I have read over the past two years are well researched, second-hand accounts. Simpson was the single American intelligence member actually within the fortress at the beginning of the siege. Many French officers who were to fight and die over the 59-day siege engaged Simpson during the buildup around the garrison.

By December 1953 French expeditionary forces would number 20,000 men. They would be surrounded by 64,500 enemy.

Simpson captured the futility of the French effort within the opening two chapters. The struggle by the Vietminh to face their colonial rulers must be viewed by Americans in the context of the 1775 American revolutionary war. The determination of the Vietminh proved decisive in this battle.

Tags Battle of Dien Bien Phu, Christian de Castries, french union, henri navarre, indochina, rene cogny, Viet Minh, Vietnam War

Education Reading Vietnam War

Latest read: A War of Logistics

Post author By Don Kasprzak
Post date April 14, 2017

What really caused France’s humiliating loss to the Viet Minh in the French Indochina war? To understand we must focus on logistics. Charles Shrader’s A War of Logistics: Parachutes and Porters in Indochina, 1945–1954 reveals the true staggering failures of the French were simply the result of poor logistics.
On the surface, it may not make sense. A western power falling to an agrarian band of guerrilla fighters? No author has precisely examined Viet Minh and French military logistics in great detail. This is an impressive view.

Shrader has taught at West Point, the Command & General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, and at the Army War College. He is a former executive director of the Society for Military History. His metrics and well-written history document those French military pillars that collapsed triggering their retreat not only from Indochina but from the world stage.

Many respected books point to Dien Bien Phu as the surprising French loss and later defeat in the war. Shrader documents how this battle was the culmination of a series of shocking logistical failures that plagued their efforts against the Viet Minh.

The shift benefitting the Viet Minh developed after the Korean War. China began delivering overwhelming logistical resources to the Viet Minh. While French and CIA intelligence captured communications confirming numerous deliveries of infrastructure, France did not adjust to this threat.

In retrospect, the logistical failure to support the French effort should have sent strong signals to American military advisors that success against this communist enemy would be a long and difficult task.

Tags Battle of Dien Bien Phu, Dien Bien Phu, French Far East Expeditionary Corps, french union, henri navarre, logistics, nationalism, street without joy, Viet Minh, Vietnam War

Education Reading Vietnam War

Latest read: Operation Vulture

Post author By Don Kasprzak
Post date March 16, 2017

Operation Vulture by John Prados reveals President Eisenhower’s plans to use nuclear weapons at Dien Bien Phu to “rescue” the French garrison. An analyst of national security based in Washington DC, he is a Senior Fellow and Project Director with the National Security Archive at George Washington University where he leads the Archive’s documentation projects on Vietnam and CIA.
The US National Archive has released multiple classified documents since 2000. We now understand Eisenhower’s deep involvement. He ordered the US military into the First Indochina War in 1953. Prados reveals startling details of Eisenhower’s wish to use nuclear weapons and his order to the US Air Force and Navy bringing a nuclear weapons attack upon the valley as the French garrison was being quickly suffocated by the Viet Minh.

The details of those military actions moving men and arms throughout Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia along with the international political maneuvering by Allen Dulles in the early 1950s dispels any myth that America simply went to war in Vietnam under President Kennedy.

Prados stitches an enormous amount of Eisenhower’s actions regarding Vietnam beginning in 1953. Eisenhower acted on his view of the world that required a strong American confrontation in Asia to offset China.

Tags Battle of Dien Bien Phu, Christian de Castries, Dwight D. Eisenhower, french union, hell in a very small place, henri navarre, john foster dulles, john prados, nuclear weapons, operation vulture, rene cogny, street without joy, Viet Minh, Vietnam War

Education Reading Vietnam War

A Dien Bien Phu retrospective

Post author By Don Kasprzak
Post date November 9, 2016
1 Comment on A Dien Bien Phu retrospective

The valley of Dien Bien Phu was the site of a historic siege by the Viet Minh on the French garrison from March 13th to May 7th 1953. The siege revealed the first time an Asian force defeated a standing Western army in sustained battle. The French hoped to draw out their Viet Minh enemy and defeat them with superior artillery fire as they did at Na San in November 1952. However, a series of French military blunders would doom the garrison.

To more fully understand the French defeat may I recommend any of the titles below. All serve key lessons to the deeper American involvement in Vietnam. This would lead to our own nightmare that lasted a full generation. Each author addresses key failure points long after the battle. They each invalidate those immediate reactions. Each author conveys the inhumanity suffered by both sides before, during and after the French surrender.

All provide powerful experiences from both the Vietnamese and French perspectives. This garrison was not an all-French unit. Quite the opposite. A majority of soldiers were African, Algerian, Moroccan, Tunisian and of course Vietnamese serving the French Far East Expeditionary Corps. This unit included European volunteers from Spain, Poland and Germany. The garrison’s officer corps were French. Paris was no longer sending their sons to die in the jungles of Vietnam. French troops moved a brothel into the garrison. Actually two…..yes in 1953.

Tags Vietnam War, Battle of Dien Bien Phu, Christian de Castries, embers of war, French Far East Expeditionary Corps, french union, hell in a very small place, henri navarre, rene cogny, street without joy, the last valley, Valley of Death, Viet Minh, why vietnam

Education Globalization Reading Vietnam War

Latest read: The Last Valley: Dien Bien Phu and the French Defeat in Vietnam

Post author By Don Kasprzak
Post date October 21, 2016

The Last Valley: Dien Bien Phu and the French Defeat in Vietnam by Martin Windrow is another stunning book regarding the French defeat in Indochina. He follows the same historical accuracy as Archimedes Patti’s Why Vietnam? Prelude to America’s Albatross and Bernard Fall’s Hell In A Very Small Place: The Siege Of Dien Bien Phu.

Windrow has written an amazing history of France’s approach to defeat the Viet Minh. His work complements a select number of authors who have brought to life an important battle long overlooked in the late 1950s by America that contributed heavily to our entry into Vietnam.

Similar to my review of Ted Morgan’s book Valley of Death The Tragedy at Dien Bien Phu That Led America into the Vietnam War the siege is a stunning look by Windrow at a morally bankrupt 4th republic attempting to re-colonize Indochina beginning in 1946. World War II in Europe was over with rebuilding was underway. France attempted along with Britain to reclaim colonial territories after the surrender of Japan.

In great detail the opening chapters document French losses from 1948 to 1952. His attention to detail is amazing. These repeated failures as Windrow noted began to show weak points within the French Union. Clearly they had no ability to defeat the Viet Minh at the Laotian border.

Tags Christian de Castries, colonial empire, Dien Bien Phu, Education, French Empire, french union, henri navarre, indochina, na san, rene cogny, Viet Minh, vo nguyen giap