Tag: Viet Minh

Latest read: The Vietnam War: An Intimate History

Post author By Don Kasprzak
Post date March 10, 2019

The Vietnam War: An Intimate History by Geoffrey Ward and Ken Burns have authored one of the finest efforts to address the war from multiple perspectives and is perfect for Gen X and Millennials. This compliments Burns’ highly acclaimed 2017 PBS series.
Many already recognize that Ken Burns is a gifted storyteller mixing media together to produce: The Civil War (1990), Baseball (1994), Jazz (2001), The War (2007), The National Parks: America’s Best Idea (2009), Prohibition (2011), and The Roosevelts (2014).

Prior to the PBS 10-part series, I knew Burns would deliver another great experience. For the book release, Ward and Burns do not disappoint. Their detailed stories and personal testimonials from soldiers and their families are deeply moving. Many young and old will more accurately understand a very tumultuous period in our nation’s history.

Burns’ access to newly released interviews and declassified materials from both sides show greater insights that inject confusion to long-held beliefs. This will lead many to question truths on all sides, from past government leaders to military generals.

Burns and Ward offer a number of key revelations:

Education Reading

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 Technology Vietnam War

Latest read: None So Blind

Regarded as one of the CIA’s premiere Vietnam intelligence experts George W. Allen wrote a 2001 memoir None So Blind: A personal account of the intelligence failure in Vietnam that remains an alarming insight of intelligence failures that forecasted both France and America’s defeat in Vietnam. Allen’s contributions set the stage regrettably for the Pentagon and White House to also follow France’s misplaced goals for the next twenty-five years.
My interest in Allen’s memoir developed from reading a series of confidential reports by the US military and CIA from the 1950s.

Declassified in the late 1990s the documents address the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu.

Many of those documents point to Allen’s intelligence reports and analysis. Naturally this peaked my wish to better understand the American intelligence analysis of the French defeat.

Allen holds a unique, deep understanding of the Indochina Wars (France 1945-1950) and the coming failure of America’s intervention on behalf of South Vietnam 1960-1974. The lessons in his book leave deep, haunting impressions today on the White House and Pentagon leaders who ignored our intelligence community.

Tags cia, compartmentalization of information, defense intelligence agency, Dien Bien Phu, george w. allen, indochina, intelligence failure, joint chiefs of staff, MAAG, MAAV, MACV, pacification, pentagon, richard helms, robert mcnamara, tet offensive, Viet Minh, VietCong, Vietnam War