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Dien bien phu

The document summarizes key events and perspectives around the 1954 Battle of Dien Bien Phu, which marked the end of the First Indochina War between France and Vietnam. It includes: - Perspectives from Vietnamese General Vo Nguyen Giap describing the battle as a major victory over French and American imperialism. - Firsthand accounts from French soldiers feeling overwhelmed by the Viet Minh's siege and encroaching trenches. - Analysis from French scholars that the French expeditionary forces' tactics failed to achieve decisive results and turned more peasants against them.

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Siege of Dien Bien Phu The Battle that ended the First Indochina War
Source: Stephen Kirchoff, Dien Bien Phu (2003) Retrieved from http://www.campbell.edu/faculty/Slattery/dien_bien_phu.htm
Source: Stephen Kirchoff, Dien Bien Phu (2003) Retrieved from http://www.campbell.edu/faculty/Slattery/dien_bien_phu.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=th7tImvzutc
Sources Who is the author of your source? When was your source written? Is it primary or secondary? What is the tone of the source (eg biased, reasonable, emotional etc)? Was there a purpose in writing it? Who was the intended audience? What information can you take from this source? What can it be used for?
Vo Nguyen Giap talks about Dien Bien Phu: The Dien Bien Phu campaign is a great and first victory of a feudal colonial nation, whose agricultural economy is backward, against the great imperialist capitalist which has a modern industry and a great army. Thus, it means a lot to us, to people all over the world, and to other countries. This is also how Ho Chi Minh saw it. We see the Dien Bien Phu victory as the victory [over] the French army and [over] the intervention of the Americans --because in the Dien Bien Phu campaign, 80 percent of the war expenditures were spent by the Americans. The Americans had their hands in it. So the Dien Bien Phu defeat was a defeat for both the French and the Americans. But whether the Americans had drawn the lessons from that, I don't think so. That's why the Americans continued in South Vietnam. ... When we received news of the Dien Bien Phu victory, everyone practically jumped up in the air, they were so happy about it. But Ho Chi Minh said that this is only victory of the first step: we have yet to fight the Americans. It was very clear then. Source: CNN Interview with Vo Nguyen Giap, 1996 (retrieved from http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cold.war/episodes/11/interviews/giap/
A French Foreign Legionnaire reflects on the war: The artillery never stopped at night. It was like the Battle of the Somme in 1916. Every day we saw their trenchlines coming closer and closer. We could not shoot them because they were below ground level. All we saw was soil flying into the air. This condition made strong men weak; the weak simply broke down. We knew they were coming and would be on top of us in maybe two weeks or less. Source: Historical Services of the French Army, Reports of the French Expeditionary Corps in the Far East: Dien Bien Phu: Documents, Letters, Correspondence. Report of Sergeant Jean Claude Casta, Camp Dominique, 4 April 1954
Two French scholars assess the war: It is not surprising that the French Expeditionary Force failed to achieve decisive results… After 1947, they limited themselves to a series of fragmentary and murderous operations. ‘Hit-and-run’, ‘mopping up’, ‘raking over’, commando raids – all of these could never bring victory. On the contrary, by sowing more and more ruin and hatred and by constantly increasing the burden of the war upon the people, such actions turned the peasant masses against the French and greatly simplified the psychological and material tasks of the People’s Army. Source: Philippe Devillers and Jean Lacouture, End of a War: Indochina, 1954 , Pall Mall, London, 1969.