Causes and Consequences of the Battle of Dien Bien Phu

Following the French return, the Communist regime of Vietnamese people had decided it was time for a rebellion and started waging war versus the French (Pendergast 14). With Vietnam’s neighbors to the north, China, following Russia’s principles and becoming a Communist nation, the Vietnamese Communist Regime, also known as the Viet Minh, gained strategic military support (Pendergast 15). The fighting between the Viet Minh and the French continued for many years and in the spring of 1954 the Viet Minh won a very decisive battle known as the Battle of Dien Bien Phu (Pendergast 17). This battle proved to bring the fighting between the French and Viet Minh to a close because in the summer of 1954 there was a conference held in Geneva, Switzerland to bring the fighting to a close (Pendergast 19). The results of this conference were the Geneva Accords which called for a temporary ceasefire, and a split of the country into a communist sector in the north and republic in the south along the 17th parallel (Pendergast 20). The plan however was not well liked and

On the 19th of December 1946, The Viet Minh under Ho Chi Minh leadership launched a rebellion against the French authority governing the colonies of French Indochina. The first few years of the war were a low-level rural insurgency against French authority. However, after the Chinese communists reached the Northern border of Vietnam in 1949 the conflict became a conventional war between two armies equipped with modern weapons. These were supplied by the Chinese communist and Russian communist.

Assess the consequences of the Vietnamese victory against the French for Indochina in the periods 1954-1964.

Tensions grew in Vietnam and the U.S. forces were sent overseas. The people of Vietnam had mixed reactions, some waited and hoped for things to get better, and some

Ho Chi Minh used the analogy of “the elephant and the tiger” frequently during his presidency. Minh applied this theory to the war between the Vietnamese and French, claiming that the French were the elephants and the Vietminh troops were tigers, reinforcing the guerrilla warfare tactics that the Vietminh used to great success. Minh stated that time and resources were not of issue, the war was a fight for nationalism and self-determination, regardless of the duration of the war or the amount of troops and resources lost, the Vietnamese would come out as victors. Ho Chi Minh said at a speech in Paris in 1946 “you can kill 10 of our men for every one we kill of yours, but even at those odds, you will lose and we will win” and “we have a secret weapon, don’t smile when I tell you this, our secret weapon is nationalism” which emphasizes the desire and desperation the North Vietnam were willing to go to in order to self-determine. The battle at Dien Bien Phu in 1954 was the culmination of the First Indochina War and as a result of North Vietnam’s victory, French forces left and a sense of nationalism was prevalent. The Vietnamese were at war with the French due to the Communist forces in the North of Vietnam desiring the expulsion of French forces and colonisation to promote nationalism and self-determination. In March 1954, General Giap, the principal commander of the Vietminh army at the time, ordered a siege against

“The war in vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit.” Martin Luther King, Jr. once said. The Vietnam War was considered one of America’s greatest defeats of all time. Not only did the US failed to stop the spread of communism, but they also embarrassed this country as a whole with the outcome of this war. The overall outcome from this war will be remembered for years to come. In this essay, I will be talking about how the United States would have won the Vietnam war if the home front was for the war, if the the US was more familiar with the land, and the U.S.’s goal was not successful.

Fighting in Vietnam started well before the actual “Vietnam War”. The Vietnamese people had been under French rule for several decades until Japan invaded in 1940. In 1941, when Ho Chi Minh came back from his travels there were two foreign powers occupying the Vietnam territory, the French and Japanese. Ho Chi Minh established the Viet Minh in hopes to rid Vietnam of these two powers. On September 2, 1945 the Viet Minh established the Democratic Republic of China after getting support in northern Vietnam. This action spawned the French to fight back to keep control of their colony. Ho Chi Minh wanted support from the United States against the French; he went as far as to supply the United States with information about the Japanese during WWII. The United States kept with their Cold War foreign policy of containment as to prevent the spread of Communism, fearing the “Domino Theory” that said “if one country in Asia fell to Communism then surrounding countries would soon fall”.

Vietnam has a very rich history that often goes unnoticed and unaccounted for, this is most likely due to the war being such a big landmark in the history of Vietnam. Before the war many events transpired that would eventually lead up to the war. In the late 19th century Vietnam was considered to be a French colony. The French built their own standing infrastructure, they began to build railways and roads and bridges. All of this building meant heavy taxation on the Vietnamese. This was all good and progressive for vietnam however “Naturally the Vietnamese wanted independence.” (http://www.localhistories.org/viethist.html) From there Ho Chi Minh founded a revolution and within 20 years Vietnam came under Ho Chi Minh rule.

The years precluding the Vietnam war, there was a war taking place in Vietnam. It was known as the Indochina War, where the Vietnamese waged war against the colonial rule of France. The French were defeated in the battle of Dien Bien Phu. Following this defeat, there was a peace conference in Geneva, which resulted in Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam to receive their independence. The Geneva Accords officially divided Vietnam into North Vietnam and South Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh and his communist forces led the North. A French backed emperor led the south until elections in 1956. These elections were supposed to reunify Vietnam.

The true history of the Vietnam War does not appear to be widely know, and did not begin with the Eisenhower Administration, but in fact actually dates back to 1945 and the end of WWII. The issues first began when the Japanese recognized their lost efforts during WWII and surrendered. This is now as the First Indochina War, which took place between 1946 and continued until 1954. Their surrender left Vietnam vulnerable as they were now any formal national government. An aspiring communist organizer/ leader, Ho Chi Minh, tried to promote independence for Vietnam in the fall of 1945 and took advantage of the lack of leadership in Vietnam at the national level in an attempt to make this a reality. However, this was unsuccessful as what ensued was a highly contested battle for control of the country between the French colonial forces and the Viet Minh. Eventually, both British and Chinese officials arrived in Vietnam to monitor and facilitate the withdrawal of Japanese troops from the region. Politically and ideologically, this was motivated by anti-communist sentiments, as a result, the British and the Chinese both permitted French colonial rule to prevail as they preferred this over allowing communists to control the country. During the war the French described Viet Minh solders as “elusive”, and an unknown French soldier was quoted as saying: “The enemy melted into the jungle.” This would serve to be a foretelling of what

France proposes a colonial system naming it Indochina which includes the following cities: Tonkin, Annam, Cochin China, Cambodia and Laos is then added. Ho Chi Ming was trained by the Soviet Union to be an international communist. Ho Chi Minh finds an Indochinese communist meeting in Hong Kong and attends. Ironically, France wanted control over Indochina but were then invaded by Nazi Germany. Japanese troops invaded

The First Indochina War was fought mainly on North Vietnam soil, but was soon ended in 1954 when the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu. The turning point in Asia occurred earlier in 1949 when China became a communist country after communist rebels won the civil war. After this point and on forward, the United States supported the anti-communist South in order to contain the spread of communism. In 1954, Vietnam signed a treaty at the Geneva Conference allowing them

The Vietnam War, also known as the Second Indochina War was a clash between communist forces who are allied with the Viet Cong and South Vietnam allied with the United States of America. The “roots” of the war started during the 1940’s when Japan “invaded and occupied Vietnam” which has been under French rule for more than 50 years. It all started with Ho Chi Minh, a communist revolutionary who established the Viet Minh, an organization “whose goal was to get rid Vietnam of the French and Japanese occupiers” .

---After WWII and until 1955, France fought hard to regain their former territories in the region, but with a poorly organized army and little determination among the troops, their efforts soon collapsed. The French were finally defeated at Dien Bien Phu on the 8th of May 1954 by the communist general Vo Nguyen Giap. The French troops withdrew, leaving a buffer zone separating the North and South and set up elections in order to form a government in the South. The communist regime set up its headquarters in Hanoi under the leadership of Ho Chi Minh. Many North Vietnamese left the country and fled south where the self-proclaimed president, Ngo Dinh Diem had formed the Republic of Vietnam.

This began the conflict procedures involving the French and Viet Minh known as the First Indochina War. Fought mainly in northern Vietnam, this conflict ended when the French were defeated decisively at Dien Bien Phu in 1954. War was finally settled by the Geneva Accords of 1954, which temporarily divided country section in parallel with the 17 with Minh Nam in control in the north and the non-communist state to be formed in the South under the leadership of Prime Minister Ngo Dinh Diem. This division was to last until 1956, when national elections will be held to decide the future of the