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.
Morgan set the post-World War II stage inside Indochina for any reader to learn how France was able to maintain a rule over Indochina during the occupation by the Japanese Imperial coup in Vietnam.