The Vietnam War and Dien Bien Phu

Vietnam, after World War II, France, then America, become mired in the century's longest war. The pivotal event is one of the bloodiest and most historic battles of the 20th century. Diem Bien Phu. After the ruin of World War II, the European powers seek to regain their former colonies. Indochina is the most prized French position, comprising Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. But the war in Asia continues. Indochina is still occupied by the Japanese, and France faces another obstacle. Its ally, America, opposes colonialism. France had previously ruled Vietnam for 80 years, exploiting the rubber and rice economy and the cheap labor. Vietnam's peasants had repeatedly rebelled. Colonial conditions are described by Hanoi diplomat Ha Van Lau. Like all the young Vietnamese at that time, under the domination of the French colonialists, We felt that our liberty was gone. We felt that we were no longer independent. In colonialist days, from a political point of view, The word patriot was a synonym for criminal, and patriots were treated as such. That is to say, prison. There were more prisons than schools. Independence and liberty were empty words. One punishment for insurrection, public execution. But the Vietnamese nationalist movement grows under the charismatic leadership of Ho Chi Minh. Ho recognizes that Japan's impending defeat is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to end colonialism. He sees America as his best means of achieving independence. After 32 years in exile, he returns to organize resistance. Born in central Vietnam, Ho is now 54. Both of his parents had been active nationalists. Ho had spent his exiled youth studying the Marxist revolution. In December 1944, Ho and other guerrilla leaders form a so-called Workers'Party, known as the Viet Minh. Its military strategist is a former history teacher called Bo Nguyen Giap. Jap and Ho offered to aid the U.S. against the Japanese. America begins its Vietnam involvement by supporting Ho. It provides small arms for behind-the-lines resistance. The time, April 1945, exactly 30 years before the Vietnam War would end. Maintaining a gentle image, Ho is then seen by American contacts as more nationalist than communist. Major Archimedes Patti heads the first U.S. intelligence mission in Vietnam, sent by the OSS, the CIA's predecessor. Fifty American agents help train the guerrillas, and at times, fight alongside of them, recalls Patti. It was combat. It was a very small operation as far as the war is concerned, but nevertheless, it is true that they did work with the... against the Japanese. Then later, the Jap and his Viet Minh crew went out to attack several Japanese outposts with our men after they had been trained by the Americans in the use of grenade launchers and... Flamethrowers and rifles, machine guns, BARs and so on. In August 1945, the Japanese surrender and Ho's guerrilla forces seize power, occupying Hanoi. On September 2nd, Ho Chi Minh declares independence. The middle class and Vietnam's Catholics are apprehensive, but nationalists and communists are overjoyed. Ho becomes his country's first president. The public celebration in Hanoi's Bardeen Square is recalled by American agent Archimedes Patti. It was a very touching ceremony. I could tell from the reaction from the crowd, and the crowd was fantastic. Ho was very anxious for recognition. He actually always kept harping on the point, why don't the United States give us moral support? We don't want anything else from them, nothing but moral support. But America steps aside. The US needs its European allies in the developing struggle against communism. The French reoccupy Vietnam. Colonialism returns. With no more American help, Ho Chi Minh first advocates cooperation with the French. Their response is to make Vietnam semi-autonomous. In 1946, Ho travels to France to negotiate, but finds no real political independence. Back in Hanoi, Ho tells his compatriots the terms are unacceptable. November 1946. The war begins. There are three years of sporadic, inconclusive fighting. To the rest of the world, it is an obscure Asian conflict. But in December 1949, Mount Setong's communist victory in China, followed by the Korean War, shocks America. The US now arms the French in Indochina, and Mao provides modern weapons for the Viet Minh. Another three years pass with Vietnam as an escalating East-West war. In 1952, the Communist Viet Minh army takes over the strategic valley of the Nguyen Tru. The valley dominates supply routes linking Vietnam, Laos, and China. The French commander, General Henri Navarre, decides to occupy Nguyen Bien Phu in a daring parachute assault. The purpose of Dien Bien Phu was to defend Laos, and I decided on the Dien Bien Phu entrenched camp because with the state of my forces, which I said were inferior to those of the Viet Minh in terms of mobile forces, the strategy of blocking the Viet Minh was not so good. the road from Laos to Dien Bien Phu was the only one which seemed to be reasonable and I am still certain that it was the only one. November 1953 the French fight their way into Dien Bien Phu. The French air command has serious doubts. The valley is 170 miles from Hanoi. Supply planes can only just make the return trip. The French regional commander warns that Dien Bien Phu may become a battalion meat grinder. Now having taken Dien Bien Phu, the French plan is to pursue the communists in their border sanctuaries. An immediate task is to repair the old airstrip, the only link to the outside. The French land equipment suited to an attack base. They don't envisage a fortification. The communist force, the Viet Minh, has two choices. Ignore the French action or attack. Studying his tactical maps, the communist commander General Jap tells his officers, we will wipe out at all costs the whole enemy. ...before said Diem Bien Phu. Jap is the master strategist throughout the Vietnam conflict. We had to count every bullet, but we were inspired because we never before had been able to gather such a force. We were optimistic. But there were many difficulties. When Chairman Ho gave me the leadership, we talked all night. He said to me, our forces grow stronger day by day, but we must not let the enemy destroy the strength. He asked, can you do it? do it? "I thought for a while and answered, the enemy won't be able to destroy our strength. The difficult thing will be to take the initiative. Six Viet Minh infantry divisions force march 20 miles a day. They head for a rendezvous with history across the distant mountain peaks. The French become aware that a communist ring is closing in the hills around them. General Navarre decides against pulling out, convinced his troops can hold. I decided to occupy Dien Bien Phu to set up an entrenched camp there, and if the camp was attacked, to defend it. That's all. December, 1953. Half the 15,000-man French force are Algerians, Vietnamese, and French Legionnaires. Most of the equipment is American. The French try but fail to win the high ground. The Communists hold the nearest hills to the north. Beyond the eyes of the French, an army of 20,000 peasants and tribesmen clears the way for the coming soldiers. They labor to open up jungle trails, a human convoy stretching 500 miles from the supply depots at the Chinese border. a veteran of the mbm foo colonel havan lao getting supplies was very difficult because we had to use routes through the jungle with the pistes we couldn't use the roads the large roads because of the bombings and then to get one kilo of rice to the front at the envian foo we had to use four kilos for the carrier because the rice was transported on men's backs by bicycle. We couldn't heat the rice because any smoke would attract planes. The French build a chain of fire bases on small hills across the valley. The seven main strong points are called Claudine, Hugette, Dominique, Eliane, Gabrielle, Beatrice, and Isabelle. The communist slogan is everything for the front, everything for victory. There is a new urgency. The great powers have just agreed to meet in Geneva in May 1954 to settle Cold War issues including Indochina. This means the Viet Minh must achieve a decisive military victory within five months. The Viet Minh understood that if the French command could be seriously defeated at Dien Bien Phu, this would allow them politically... to win the war. Then they decided to put everything into it, to take all the risks, increase their manpower, and accept even greater losses than before. And China granted massive assistance. Direct Chinese assistance includes 600 Russian-built Molotov trucks, which must defy airstrikes and monsoon rains. The French believe their defenses can contain any attack. French intelligence knows the Communists are bringing in heavy guns, but artillery experts underestimate their caliber and accuracy. Late February 1954. Five months of back-breaking labor has brought the Communist armies to the door of Diem Bien Phu. The last 50 miles of Mountain Road have to be built virtually from scratch. They call the guns steel elephants. They dragged 200 heavy guns an inch at a time, half a mile a day, through mountains. Colonel Harvan Lau. Equipment had to be dragged by rope over men's shoulders. And one time a rope... and one of our artillerymen threw himself behind the wheel of this big piece of artillery to stop it from sliding into an abyss. That was the morale of our fighters, who would sacrifice themselves to save a piece of equipment from falling. Now they can outgun the French in the valley below by... more than three to one. Ho Chi Minh issues directives from secret headquarters in safe mountainous jungle. He has one Western visitor, journalist Wilfred Bichette. He came in with a sun helmet and he turned that upside down on the table and he just felt around with his hands in the bottom of it and he said, the Dien Bien Phu is a valley and it's surrounded by mountains. The CRIM, the elite troops of the French Expeditionary Corps, are down there in that valley and we're around in the mountains and they'll never get out. Now General Jap, reviewing his 50,000 man force on the eve of battle, defines his tactics. He tells his staff, strike surely and advance surely. Strike to win. Strike only when success is certain. To make success more likely, Jap has secreted his heavy guns in fortifications carved out of the mountains. The guns overlook the French, but are virtually undetectable. March 13th, sunset. The battle opens. The communist artillery dramatically reveals its presence, pounding the unsuspecting French on the valley floor below. The first waves of Viet Minh advance on strongpoint Beatrice, which overlooks the entire French position. The communists launch a whole infantry division against it. Under the heavy shelling, only one French fighter bomber manages to take off. After the first communist losses, there's a pause. Then the attack continues. With the sudden heavy artillery barrage, the French realise they are in a trap. The first day, casualties are heavy. The artillery commander, Colonel Charles Pirof, apologizes to his fellow officers, then commits suicide with a hand grenade. At outpost Beatrice, so-called suicide platoons breach the barbed wire perimeter. The French repulse three separate assaults. 750 defenders, only 200 survive in the last-minute retreat. By midnight, Beatrice is in Viet Minh hands. March 15th. Two more Dien Bien Phu outposts are repeatedly stormed. At heavy cost, the Communists occupy half of Hill Gabriel. The French-led troops fall back, then abandon the position. On March 17th, Strongpoint Anne Marie falls. Now three outposts are silenced, but the French estimate communists dead at 2,500, with some hills covered with dead and dying, the Viet Minh pause. French casualties are also high. A hospital plane is stranded, leaving the only French woman, Nurse Genevieve de Galar. We were putting the wounded inside the plane to take them back to Hanoi. But the mechanic came back and told us, we can't take off because the oil tank has been damaged, severely damaged. And everybody was... very upset, especially the wounded, because they thought it was the end of this hell place for them, and it wasn't. By March 28, artillery fire closes the airstrip. The base is isolated. The French still fight on. Lieutenant Colonel Langlais. That did not spell the end for me, or it would seem for my comrades. It did not mean the end of fighting for us, since if the planes could not land, they could still carry out parachuting operations. I did not consider the closing of the airfield to be a catastrophe in terms of further combat. In a bold move to keep the aerial supply line open, the French go on the offensive. They use tanks to attack communist anti-aircraft emplacements on the western hills, flanking the main French forces. Several hundred Viet Minh resist fiercely. The French commit more tanks to the action and break through, led by paratroop commander Lieutenant Colonel Béjar. It was the first victory of Dien Bien Phu. The Viet Minh were shattered. They wanted to show that they had... units capable of fighting. So Colonel de Castries came back and said to me, Bruno, only you could have pulled this one through. I said, yes, Colonel, but operations like this cannot be carried out every day because I just lost my best officers, both senior and junior. It would be possible if you gave me the men to start all over, but we cannot play this game very long. General Japp's second phase assault on March 30th concentrates on the strong points which protect the French command center. Two important outposts are overrun. The French push hard and retake them but lose 2,000 men in five days. The Viet Minh enlarged the attacks, capturing strongpoint Elian to the east. The French again counter-attack. We started shooting, and we fired maybe 3,000 or 4,000 shots, and all the cannons of the NBN... all the 120 mortars were aimed at one position. All of a sudden, when the artillery had finished, the air force was there once more, and my men got out of the trenches and went to the attack. But the Viet Minh were also entrenched. Maybe half of them had been... killed but there still remained the other half and they fought like the great soldiers that they are they fought man to man with daggers after one whole day we had recaptured elian one so my men had to go back into the trenches but they were digging upon fallen bodies the soil was covered with dead bodies french and vietnam the smell was horrible the terrible bloodshed now lowers vietnam they have only one One doctor for 50,000 men. General Jap admits to what he calls negative thoughts affecting troop performance. More frontal assaults risk destroying the Communist army. Jap decides on a radical change of tactics. Underground war. He uses tens of thousands of troops and civilians to dig a hundred mile network of trenches. Soon the six-foot deep trenches reach like tentacles around the low hills in the valley center. When the trench lines are complete, Jap resumes the offensive. Now his troops are almost face-to-face with the French. France now urgently seeks U.S. intervention. America is already paying 80% of the war bill, providing giant Globemaster transports to airlift French reinforcements. The French request and get more American arms and fighter planes. But the U.S. wants its major allies to join the aid airlift. Britain refuses, fearing such intervention would escalate the East-West Cold War. America hesitates. As the hours of argument tick by, the Viet Minh guns decimate the MBM 4. It becomes so bad the French cannot even bury their debt. Colonel Béjar. All the able battalions had come, all the battalions. I kept telling my men, we must find a formula, we must hold on one more day. The Americans will not let us down. They may come. We felt we needed a day, an extra day. That is why we saw this thing through. Supplies are dwindling. By late April, the French can... ...control only a fraction of the valley center. Almost a third of the French force has been wiped out. The fate of the remaining 10,000 depends on getting ammunition and food, but pilots and troops are helpless as more and more supplies float into communist territory. The Viet Minh trench lines are now just 300 yards from the French command bunker. Even the seriously wounded attempt to fight on. So some got out. One who had lost an eye, one who had lost an arm. One arm we called him said, we're going back. We saw boys arriving who had lost an arm or an eye. were still asking for a weapon to continue fighting. It's indeed remarkable. There was a great spirit. When we went into that shelter where those men were, there was a foul smell, and we could see maggots on legs. And Grovin left them on because he He said, I think it prevents gangrene. So those maggots were moving around on the patient's legs, and it was terrible. So around May 6th, we went to see the men with Langlais, and everyone was exhausted, completely exhausted. We knew we could go no further. There was no more ammunition, and the men could not take it anymore. So when the Viet Minh attacked on May 7th, it was really the end. The end is an anticlimax, resistance futile. The Viet Minh rush the French command post, where senior officers have been waiting to surrender, among them Colonel Langley. We heard something rolling over the roof. I was seated in my chair. thinking of anything in particular. The stairs leading to the outside were in front of me and we could see a patch of sky there. We all thought a grenade, God, a grenade would be thrown down the stairs and explode. But that wasn't the case. We saw a victorious Viet soldier in a cork helmet, wearing a gas mask and carrying a bayonet, his gun, who said only, get out. 1730 hours, May 7th. Finally, the valley arena is silent. The Viet Minh victory has cost them an estimated 8,000 dead in the 55-day battle. But French Indochina is finished. On both sides, history records the battle as extraordinarily heroic. The aftermath, less so. The French are obliged to parade in mass surrender for the communist cameras. 10,000 prisoners start a march into captivity, which only one in two survive. Colonel Bichard. Apart from the casualties of Dien Bien Phu, more than half of the survivors of Dien Bien Phu died in captivity. Worn out and abandoned, they lay on the roadside and we were forbidden to help them. The Viet Minh would leave them to their fate, feeding them a handful of food. of uncooked rice. What could they do? The poor fellows died along the roadside. They march for up to 60 days to the Red River prison camps 500 miles away. The Viet Minh are without doctors, though Those who weaken die where they fall. The Geneva Conference in Indochina begins as Dien Bien Phu falls. Britain, France, Russia, and China sign the accords, but America does not. The agreement partitions Vietnam at the 17th parallel. This border remains for 20 years. General Bonwin Jap's victory at Dien Bien Phu at age 42 places him among the great generals of modern history. He is credited with building a small peasant force into a sophisticated modern army. they were exceptional infantrymen and they managed to defeat us now there weren't many of us we were far from France but we must admit they also beat the Americans so they were exceptional and I really think they certainly are one of the best infantrymen in the world. Hanoi, October the 11th, 1954. The Viet Minh formally takes control of North Vietnam. Hanoi is a scene of mass ovation for Ho Chi Minh. Ho and his colleagues, an accepting partition, trust in the Geneva provision for joint national elections within two years. Ho is confident he will win, but the elections are never held, opposed by Washington and Saigon. A new war. will gradually develop. In a period of legal migration, almost a million people leave the Communist North. Most are Catholics. French and American Navy ships take them to Saigon, capital of the new U.S.-supported Republic of Vietnam. At the same time, about 100,000 communists travel north. After the partition, there is social upheaval. In the north, land reform is hasty and savage. Landowners are executed, as many as 50,000 according to Western accounts. Peasant opposition forces the Hanoi regime to modify the land reform. The communist leader Ho Chi Minh is still personally popular, known to his people as Bac Ho, Uncle Ho. For some years he concentrates on nation building, determined to unite Vietnam as it was centuries earlier. A former emperor Bo Dai, who also ruled under the French, heads a weak and distrusted government in South Vietnam. Bo Dai, known as the Playboy King, installs a prime minister he believes he can control, Ngo Dinh Diem. Diem becomes the American hope for a non-communist Vietnam. He's now 53, unmarried, a devout Catholic from a powerful family. He has an impressive record in the civil service. He's known for his nationalism. and religious puritanism, which led him into self-exile abroad for many years. Now he is back to try and run a nation broken in two by war. But Diem's authority barely extends beyond Saigon, the capital city. When Diem curtails prostitution and gambling, a powerful gangster organization sends its own army against Diem. They attack the presidential palace, the national police headquarters, and terrorize the streets. Diem's forces drive the rebels out of Saigon, and he later crushes the religious sects. In doing so, he angers head of state Baudai, then absent in France. Baudai is allegedly getting payoffs from the various sects. He tries to recall his prime minister. Diem ignores him. The American military advisor to Diem, Edward Lansdale. Diem was receiving lots of popular support from the people. He felt that... he was in command of the situation and what had happened was a very necessary step by him and felt that he should stay and I said well your only authority is from bow tie the only highest authority is would be from the people and the only way to do that is through a plebiscite I cautioned him against being carried away and rigging the election I said all All you need is a fairly large majority. I don't want it to suddenly read in the newspapers that you've won by 99.99%. Diem wins with 98% of the vote. He becomes South Vietnam's first president. His family rules like a Mandarin court. Government, he says, functions through close personal relations at the top. His elder brother, Thuc, is Archbishop of Hue. His younger brother, Nhu, is appointed chief advisor. Madame Nhu becomes official hostess. Her father is named ambassador to the United States. Her mother is a government observer at the United Nations. Diem presides over a national assembly, but he allows it to meet only once or twice a year. After 15 months in power, Diem has an army of 135,000. Partly trained by a few American advisors, but communist strength in the countryside is growing. Diem wants more U.S. help. Washington, 1957. Diem meets with President Eisenhower, who pledges more military aid. The U.S. President again and again calls South Vietnam an important Western bulwark against Communism. The cost of defending freedom, of defending America, must be paid in many forms and in many places. Unassisted, Vietnam cannot at this time produce and support the military formations essential to it. Military, as well as economic help, is currently needed in Vietnam. For Washington, the early China-Soviet alliance under Mao and Khrushchev arouses fears of united communism. The U.S. sees an immediate danger of North Vietnam becoming the route for a Chinese and Russian takeover of Southeast Asia. In the late 50s, military aid for South Vietnam was considered part of America's wider strategic interest. Diem has refused to allow the elections called for by the Geneva Agreement. He has no national organization and his army is weak. Eisenhower now backs South Vietnam with a show of naval strength and privately pressures Diem to make political reforms. Diem attempts land reform. It fails. He tries to extend government control to the countryside, but his methods antagonize many peasants. He begins the strategic Hamlet program. These are fortified villages which control as much as defend the population. 1959. North Vietnam makes the fateful decision. It will challenge Diem militarily. Communist organizers born in the South begin to infiltrate back. Their numbers quickly grow to about 5,000. Soon a network of rebel bases is ready. A guerrilla war is launched under the banner of Ho Chi Minh. Terror and counter-terror spread through the countryside. Diem's troops attack and burn communist villages. In 1959, US military advisers total only 350. A large part of American aid is goodwill, but it helps mainly the cities. Poverty continues and corruption spreads. Diem's family and friends control the economy. They isolate him from the people. An influential critic, General Tran Van Don. He began to be oppressive, inept, ambitious. He wanted to become the king of Vietnam. He believed too much. God ordered him to be in South Vietnam with a mystic mission. In America, newly elected President John F. Kennedy adopts Eisenhower's policy, Vietnam cannot fall to the Communists. Assistant Secretary of State Roger Hilsman. When President Eisenhower had his private conversation... with Kennedy on Inauguration Day, President Eisenhower said, I think you're going to have to send troops, and if you do, I will come up from Gettysburg and stand beside you and support you. Six months later in September 61, the war widens. The Communists seize the provincial capital near Saigon. They publicly execute the provincial chief. The guerrilla strength is now estimated at 26,000 men, up 500% within two years. Diem asks the United States for a treaty to guarantee South Vietnam's existence. Kennedy consults his personal military advisor, General Maxwell D. Taylor. I met the president one morning in the White House just walking down a corridor and he said I have a letter here from President Diem tell me how to answer it well it changed my I spent the next 11 years involved in answering the questions or related thereto. Because it really amounted to the question, was the United States favor a major increase in the military effort to accomplish the political objectives in Vietnam? Kennedy increases military aid. Within days, the first American helicopter units arrive. A newsreel of December 1961 conveys the optimism. The techniques in jungle warfare are being mounted against the rebels in South Vietnam with rousing success. Helicopter forays, christened eagle flights, carry small detachments of Vietnamese troops into the swamps and jungles of the Camau Peninsula, where Viet Cong guerrillas have... successfully eluded pursuit on the ground. Whirlybirds swoop in to deposit soldiers where rebels have been reported, and the troops quickly spread out through swamp and jungle to surround the communist enemy. Usually the rebels quickly fade from villages, but a pincer attack flushes them from the surrounding jungles. A successful airstrike like this one will bring in prisoners by the dozen. A new kind of warfare that is turning the tide of battle. In their enlarged advisory role, American lives are now at risk. Though not officially in combat, they lead the South Vietnamese into battle. By late 1961, guerrilla ambush is frequent and costly. They control to some degree most of the countryside, tying down Saigon's 200,000-man army. The war is costing $1 million a day. On U.S. advice, a self-defense program to arm remote populations like the Montagnards begins in the Central Highlands. The CIA's Saigon chief at that time, William Colby. With the authority of the... President Ziem and his brother knew, we began these programs of arming mountain scout teams, things of this nature, arming villages in the area of Van Matuot, spreading 50 or 100 weapons into... such a village for its own protection, and then gradually spreading out to additional villages until you formed an area, so-called an ink spot as it spreads through the blotter, of safety against outward infiltration. And we began this in about 1960, this process of doing this, and by 1962 or three we had armed something like 30,000 of the... these people. Then comes the sudden setback. In May 63, a nationwide crisis begins when Buddhists are denied the traditional right to fly religious flags. The Buddhists riot. Forty are killed. Thousands arrested by the secret police headed by Diem's brother, Nhu. Week after week, Buddhist monks commit public suicide in protest. These human tortures appall Washington. American Ambassador Frederick Nolting argues that Diem is not to blame. It was contrived, in my opinion, strictly by the Viet Cong. It was a political rather than a religious outbreak. Motivated by political rather than religious motives. A new American ambassador arrives, Henry Cabot Lodge. He wants Diem's family, especially Brother New. removed from power. Lodge meets with Jim. He was as unreceptive as I've ever seen a human being be, and he almost said to me, well, what business is it of yours whether I have my brother here to advise me or not? To which, of course, that was a very good answer. It's my business because the President of the United States has made it my business. I didn't. I didn't say that, but I thought that. I thought that. President Kennedy was hoping it would work itself out and became sympathetic to the idea of a coup if the Americans were not responsible and not involved in it. For Diem, the end would come not from the Communists, but from his own army. Within three months, he would be assassinated by his generals. More U.S. equipment arrives in Vietnam in 1963, and the changing role of the American advisors portends a widening war. In five years, their numbers have risen from a few hundred to more than 16,000. Their job is to train and guide South Vietnamese troops, to lead them into combat, but not to join them. But as the ground fire increases, the Americans start firing back. The destination this typical day is a small airstrip in the Mekong Delta. A South Vietnamese unit has reported heavy casualties. American advice on ambush precautions has been ignored. Air cover had been unavailable. A support unit which might have saved the situation fails to advance. The result, 100 South Vietnamese casualties, two American ground advisers wounded. U.S. helicopter pilots must come to the rescue. The operation is called Dust Off. Again and again, the advisers become ambulance men, picking up the dead and wounded of an ally who ignores their advice. There is growing disillusionment in the field and in Washington, but the very weakness of their allies seems to demand greater American involvement. In 1963, the U.S. had planned to withdraw 1,000 advisers. Instead, their numbers increased by 50%.

But the war in Asia continues. Indochina is still occupied by the Japanese, and France faces another obstacle. Its ally, America, opposes colonialism. France had previously ruled Vietnam for 80 years, exploiting the rubber and rice economy and the cheap labor.

Vietnam's peasants had repeatedly rebelled. Colonial conditions are described by Hanoi diplomat Ha Van Lau. Like all the young Vietnamese at that time, under the domination of the French colonialists, We felt that our liberty was gone. We felt that we were no longer independent.

In colonialist days, from a political point of view, The word patriot was a synonym for criminal, and patriots were treated as such. That is to say, prison. There were more prisons than schools. Independence and liberty were empty words.

One punishment for insurrection, public execution. But the Vietnamese nationalist movement grows under the charismatic leadership of Ho Chi Minh. Ho recognizes that Japan's impending defeat is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to end colonialism.

He sees America as his best means of achieving independence. After 32 years in exile, he returns to organize resistance. Born in central Vietnam, Ho is now 54. Both of his parents had been active nationalists. Ho had spent his exiled youth studying the Marxist revolution.

In December 1944, Ho and other guerrilla leaders form a so-called Workers'Party, known as the Viet Minh. Its military strategist is a former history teacher called Bo Nguyen Giap. Jap and Ho offered to aid the U.S. against the Japanese.

America begins its Vietnam involvement by supporting Ho. It provides small arms for behind-the-lines resistance. The time, April 1945, exactly 30 years before the Vietnam War would end.

Maintaining a gentle image, Ho is then seen by American contacts as more nationalist than communist. Major Archimedes Patti heads the first U.S. intelligence mission in Vietnam, sent by the OSS, the CIA's predecessor. Fifty American agents help train the guerrillas, and at times, fight alongside of them, recalls Patti.

It was combat. It was a very small operation as far as the war is concerned, but nevertheless, it is true that they did work with the... against the Japanese.

Then later, the Jap and his Viet Minh crew went out to attack several Japanese outposts with our men after they had been trained by the Americans in the use of grenade launchers and... Flamethrowers and rifles, machine guns, BARs and so on. In August 1945, the Japanese surrender and Ho's guerrilla forces seize power, occupying Hanoi.

On September 2nd, Ho Chi Minh declares independence. The middle class and Vietnam's Catholics are apprehensive, but nationalists and communists are overjoyed. Ho becomes his country's first president.

The public celebration in Hanoi's Bardeen Square is recalled by American agent Archimedes Patti. It was a very touching ceremony. I could tell from the reaction from the crowd, and the crowd was fantastic.

Ho was very anxious for recognition. He actually always kept harping on the point, why don't the United States give us moral support? We don't want anything else from them, nothing but moral support. But America steps aside. The US needs its European allies in the developing struggle against communism.

The French reoccupy Vietnam. Colonialism returns. With no more American help, Ho Chi Minh first advocates cooperation with the French.

Their response is to make Vietnam semi-autonomous. In 1946, Ho travels to France to negotiate, but finds no real political independence. Back in Hanoi, Ho tells his compatriots the terms are unacceptable. November 1946. The war begins.

There are three years of sporadic, inconclusive fighting. To the rest of the world, it is an obscure Asian conflict. But in December 1949, Mount Setong's communist victory in China, followed by the Korean War, shocks America. The US now arms the French in Indochina, and Mao provides modern weapons for the Viet Minh. Another three years pass with Vietnam as an escalating East-West war.

In 1952, the Communist Viet Minh army takes over the strategic valley of the Nguyen Tru. The valley dominates supply routes linking Vietnam, Laos, and China. The French commander, General Henri Navarre, decides to occupy Nguyen Bien Phu in a daring parachute assault. The purpose of Dien Bien Phu was to defend Laos, and I decided on the Dien Bien Phu entrenched camp because with the state of my forces, which I said were inferior to those of the Viet Minh in terms of mobile forces, the strategy of blocking the Viet Minh was not so good.

the road from Laos to Dien Bien Phu was the only one which seemed to be reasonable and I am still certain that it was the only one. November 1953 the French fight their way into Dien Bien Phu. The French air command has serious doubts. The valley is 170 miles from Hanoi. Supply planes can only just make the return trip.

The French regional commander warns that Dien Bien Phu may become a battalion meat grinder. Now having taken Dien Bien Phu, the French plan is to pursue the communists in their border sanctuaries. An immediate task is to repair the old airstrip, the only link to the outside.

The French land equipment suited to an attack base. They don't envisage a fortification. The communist force, the Viet Minh, has two choices. Ignore the French action or attack. Studying his tactical maps, the communist commander General Jap tells his officers, we will wipe out at all costs the whole enemy.

...before said Diem Bien Phu. Jap is the master strategist throughout the Vietnam conflict. We had to count every bullet, but we were inspired because we never before had been able to gather such a force. We were optimistic.

But there were many difficulties. When Chairman Ho gave me the leadership, we talked all night. He said to me, our forces grow stronger day by day, but we must not let the enemy destroy the strength.

He asked, can you do it? do it? "I thought for a while and answered, the enemy won't be able to destroy our strength. The difficult thing will be to take the initiative. Six Viet Minh infantry divisions force march 20 miles a day. They head for a rendezvous with history across the distant mountain peaks. The French become aware that a communist ring is closing in the hills around them. General Navarre decides against pulling out, convinced his troops can hold. I decided to occupy Dien Bien Phu to set up an entrenched camp there, and if the camp was attacked, to defend it. That's all. December, 1953. Half the 15,000-man French force are Algerians, Vietnamese, and French Legionnaires. Most of the equipment is American. The French try but fail to win the high ground. The Communists hold the nearest hills to the north. Beyond the eyes of the French, an army of 20,000 peasants and tribesmen clears the way for the coming soldiers. They labor to open up jungle trails, a human convoy stretching 500 miles from the supply depots at the Chinese border. a veteran of the mbm foo colonel havan lao getting supplies was very difficult because we had to use routes through the jungle with the pistes we couldn't use the roads the large roads because of the bombings and then to get one kilo of rice to the front at the envian foo we had to use four kilos for the carrier because the rice was transported on men's backs by bicycle. We couldn't heat the rice because any smoke would attract planes. The French build a chain of fire bases on small hills across the valley. The seven main strong points are called Claudine, Hugette, Dominique, Eliane, Gabrielle, Beatrice, and Isabelle. The communist slogan is everything for the front, everything for victory. There is a new urgency. The great powers have just agreed to meet in Geneva in May 1954 to settle Cold War issues including Indochina. This means the Viet Minh must achieve a decisive military victory within five months. The Viet Minh understood that if the French command could be seriously defeated at Dien Bien Phu, this would allow them politically... to win the war. Then they decided to put everything into it, to take all the risks, increase their manpower, and accept even greater losses than before. And China granted massive assistance. Direct Chinese assistance includes 600 Russian-built Molotov trucks, which must defy airstrikes and monsoon rains. The French believe their defenses can contain any attack. French intelligence knows the Communists are bringing in heavy guns, but artillery experts underestimate their caliber and accuracy. Late February 1954. Five months of back-breaking labor has brought the Communist armies to the door of Diem Bien Phu. The last 50 miles of Mountain Road have to be built virtually from scratch. They call the guns steel elephants. They dragged 200 heavy guns an inch at a time, half a mile a day, through mountains. Colonel Harvan Lau. Equipment had to be dragged by rope over men's shoulders. And one time a rope... and one of our artillerymen threw himself behind the wheel of this big piece of artillery to stop it from sliding into an abyss. That was the morale of our fighters, who would sacrifice themselves to save a piece of equipment from falling. Now they can outgun the French in the valley below by... more than three to one. Ho Chi Minh issues directives from secret headquarters in safe mountainous jungle. He has one Western visitor, journalist Wilfred Bichette. He came in with a sun helmet and he turned that upside down on the table and he just felt around with his hands in the bottom of it and he said, the Dien Bien Phu is a valley and it's surrounded by mountains. The CRIM, the elite troops of the French Expeditionary Corps, are down there in that valley and we're around in the mountains and they'll never get out. Now General Jap, reviewing his 50,000 man force on the eve of battle, defines his tactics. He tells his staff, strike surely and advance surely. Strike to win. Strike only when success is certain. To make success more likely, Jap has secreted his heavy guns in fortifications carved out of the mountains. The guns overlook the French, but are virtually undetectable. March 13th, sunset. The battle opens. The communist artillery dramatically reveals its presence, pounding the unsuspecting French on the valley floor below. The first waves of Viet Minh advance on strongpoint Beatrice, which overlooks the entire French position. The communists launch a whole infantry division against it. Under the heavy shelling, only one French fighter bomber manages to take off. After the first communist losses, there's a pause. Then the attack continues. With the sudden heavy artillery barrage, the French realise they are in a trap. The first day, casualties are heavy. The artillery commander, Colonel Charles Pirof, apologizes to his fellow officers, then commits suicide with a hand grenade. At outpost Beatrice, so-called suicide platoons breach the barbed wire perimeter. The French repulse three separate assaults. 750 defenders, only 200 survive in the last-minute retreat. By midnight, Beatrice is in Viet Minh hands. March 15th. Two more Dien Bien Phu outposts are repeatedly stormed. At heavy cost, the Communists occupy half of Hill Gabriel. The French-led troops fall back, then abandon the position. On March 17th, Strongpoint Anne Marie falls. Now three outposts are silenced, but the French estimate communists dead at 2,500, with some hills covered with dead and dying, the Viet Minh pause. French casualties are also high. A hospital plane is stranded, leaving the only French woman, Nurse Genevieve de Galar. We were putting the wounded inside the plane to take them back to Hanoi. But the mechanic came back and told us, we can't take off because the oil tank has been damaged, severely damaged. And everybody was... very upset, especially the wounded, because they thought it was the end of this hell place for them, and it wasn't. By March 28, artillery fire closes the airstrip. The base is isolated. The French still fight on. Lieutenant Colonel Langlais. That did not spell the end for me, or it would seem for my comrades. It did not mean the end of fighting for us, since if the planes could not land, they could still carry out parachuting operations. I did not consider the closing of the airfield to be a catastrophe in terms of further combat. In a bold move to keep the aerial supply line open, the French go on the offensive. They use tanks to attack communist anti-aircraft emplacements on the western hills, flanking the main French forces. Several hundred Viet Minh resist fiercely. The French commit more tanks to the action and break through, led by paratroop commander Lieutenant Colonel Béjar. It was the first victory of Dien Bien Phu. The Viet Minh were shattered. They wanted to show that they had... units capable of fighting. So Colonel de Castries came back and said to me, Bruno, only you could have pulled this one through. I said, yes, Colonel, but operations like this cannot be carried out every day because I just lost my best officers, both senior and junior. It would be possible if you gave me the men to start all over, but we cannot play this game very long. General Japp's second phase assault on March 30th concentrates on the strong points which protect the French command center. Two important outposts are overrun. The French push hard and retake them but lose 2,000 men in five days. The Viet Minh enlarged the attacks, capturing strongpoint Elian to the east. The French again counter-attack. We started shooting, and we fired maybe 3,000 or 4,000 shots, and all the cannons of the NBN... all the 120 mortars were aimed at one position. All of a sudden, when the artillery had finished, the air force was there once more, and my men got out of the trenches and went to the attack. But the Viet Minh were also entrenched. Maybe half of them had been... killed but there still remained the other half and they fought like the great soldiers that they are they fought man to man with daggers after one whole day we had recaptured elian one so my men had to go back into the trenches but they were digging upon fallen bodies the soil was covered with dead bodies french and vietnam the smell was horrible the terrible bloodshed now lowers vietnam they have only one One doctor for 50,000 men. General Jap admits to what he calls negative thoughts affecting troop performance. More frontal assaults risk destroying the Communist army. Jap decides on a radical change of tactics. Underground war. He uses tens of thousands of troops and civilians to dig a hundred mile network of trenches. Soon the six-foot deep trenches reach like tentacles around the low hills in the valley center. When the trench lines are complete, Jap resumes the offensive. Now his troops are almost face-to-face with the French. France now urgently seeks U.S. intervention. America is already paying 80% of the war bill, providing giant Globemaster transports to airlift French reinforcements. The French request and get more American arms and fighter planes. But the U.S. wants its major allies to join the aid airlift. Britain refuses, fearing such intervention would escalate the East-West Cold War. America hesitates. As the hours of argument tick by, the Viet Minh guns decimate the MBM 4. It becomes so bad the French cannot even bury their debt. Colonel Béjar. All the able battalions had come, all the battalions. I kept telling my men, we must find a formula, we must hold on one more day. The Americans will not let us down. They may come. We felt we needed a day, an extra day. That is why we saw this thing through. Supplies are dwindling. By late April, the French can... ...control only a fraction of the valley center. Almost a third of the French force has been wiped out. The fate of the remaining 10,000 depends on getting ammunition and food, but pilots and troops are helpless as more and more supplies float into communist territory. The Viet Minh trench lines are now just 300 yards from the French command bunker. Even the seriously wounded attempt to fight on. So some got out. One who had lost an eye, one who had lost an arm. One arm we called him said, we're going back. We saw boys arriving who had lost an arm or an eye. were still asking for a weapon to continue fighting. It's indeed remarkable. There was a great spirit. When we went into that shelter where those men were, there was a foul smell, and we could see maggots on legs. And Grovin left them on because he He said, I think it prevents gangrene. So those maggots were moving around on the patient's legs, and it was terrible. So around May 6th, we went to see the men with Langlais, and everyone was exhausted, completely exhausted. We knew we could go no further. There was no more ammunition, and the men could not take it anymore. So when the Viet Minh attacked on May 7th, it was really the end. The end is an anticlimax, resistance futile. The Viet Minh rush the French command post, where senior officers have been waiting to surrender, among them Colonel Langley. We heard something rolling over the roof. I was seated in my chair. thinking of anything in particular. The stairs leading to the outside were in front of me and we could see a patch of sky there. We all thought a grenade, God, a grenade would be thrown down the stairs and explode. But that wasn't the case. We saw a victorious Viet soldier in a cork helmet, wearing a gas mask and carrying a bayonet, his gun, who said only, get out. 1730 hours, May 7th. Finally, the valley arena is silent. The Viet Minh victory has cost them an estimated 8,000 dead in the 55-day battle. But French Indochina is finished. On both sides, history records the battle as extraordinarily heroic. The aftermath, less so. The French are obliged to parade in mass surrender for the communist cameras. 10,000 prisoners start a march into captivity, which only one in two survive. Colonel Bichard. Apart from the casualties of Dien Bien Phu, more than half of the survivors of Dien Bien Phu died in captivity. Worn out and abandoned, they lay on the roadside and we were forbidden to help them. The Viet Minh would leave them to their fate, feeding them a handful of food. of uncooked rice. What could they do? The poor fellows died along the roadside. They march for up to 60 days to the Red River prison camps 500 miles away. The Viet Minh are without doctors, though Those who weaken die where they fall. The Geneva Conference in Indochina begins as Dien Bien Phu falls. Britain, France, Russia, and China sign the accords, but America does not. The agreement partitions Vietnam at the 17th parallel. This border remains for 20 years. General Bonwin Jap's victory at Dien Bien Phu at age 42 places him among the great generals of modern history. He is credited with building a small peasant force into a sophisticated modern army. they were exceptional infantrymen and they managed to defeat us now there weren't many of us we were far from France but we must admit they also beat the Americans so they were exceptional and I really think they certainly are one of the best infantrymen in the world. Hanoi, October the 11th, 1954. The Viet Minh formally takes control of North Vietnam. Hanoi is a scene of mass ovation for Ho Chi Minh. Ho and his colleagues, an accepting partition, trust in the Geneva provision for joint national elections within two years. Ho is confident he will win, but the elections are never held, opposed by Washington and Saigon. A new war. will gradually develop. In a period of legal migration, almost a million people leave the Communist North. Most are Catholics. French and American Navy ships take them to Saigon, capital of the new U.S.-supported Republic of Vietnam. At the same time, about 100,000 communists travel north. After the partition, there is social upheaval. In the north, land reform is hasty and savage. Landowners are executed, as many as 50,000 according to Western accounts. Peasant opposition forces the Hanoi regime to modify the land reform. The communist leader Ho Chi Minh is still personally popular, known to his people as Bac Ho, Uncle Ho. For some years he concentrates on nation building, determined to unite Vietnam as it was centuries earlier. A former emperor Bo Dai, who also ruled under the French, heads a weak and distrusted government in South Vietnam. Bo Dai, known as the Playboy King, installs a prime minister he believes he can control, Ngo Dinh Diem. Diem becomes the American hope for a non-communist Vietnam. He's now 53, unmarried, a devout Catholic from a powerful family. He has an impressive record in the civil service. He's known for his nationalism. and religious puritanism, which led him into self-exile abroad for many years. Now he is back to try and run a nation broken in two by war. But Diem's authority barely extends beyond Saigon, the capital city. When Diem curtails prostitution and gambling, a powerful gangster organization sends its own army against Diem. They attack the presidential palace, the national police headquarters, and terrorize the streets. Diem's forces drive the rebels out of Saigon, and he later crushes the religious sects. In doing so, he angers head of state Baudai, then absent in France. Baudai is allegedly getting payoffs from the various sects. He tries to recall his prime minister. Diem ignores him. The American military advisor to Diem, Edward Lansdale. Diem was receiving lots of popular support from the people. He felt that... he was in command of the situation and what had happened was a very necessary step by him and felt that he should stay and I said well your only authority is from bow tie the only highest authority is would be from the people and the only way to do that is through a plebiscite I cautioned him against being carried away and rigging the election I said all All you need is a fairly large majority. I don't want it to suddenly read in the newspapers that you've won by 99.99%. Diem wins with 98% of the vote. He becomes South Vietnam's first president. His family rules like a Mandarin court. Government, he says, functions through close personal relations at the top. His elder brother, Thuc, is Archbishop of Hue. His younger brother, Nhu, is appointed chief advisor. Madame Nhu becomes official hostess. Her father is named ambassador to the United States. Her mother is a government observer at the United Nations. Diem presides over a national assembly, but he allows it to meet only once or twice a year. After 15 months in power, Diem has an army of 135,000. Partly trained by a few American advisors, but communist strength in the countryside is growing. Diem wants more U.S. help. Washington, 1957. Diem meets with President Eisenhower, who pledges more military aid. The U.S. President again and again calls South Vietnam an important Western bulwark against Communism. The cost of defending freedom, of defending America, must be paid in many forms and in many places. Unassisted, Vietnam cannot at this time produce and support the military formations essential to it. Military, as well as economic help, is currently needed in Vietnam. For Washington, the early China-Soviet alliance under Mao and Khrushchev arouses fears of united communism. The U.S. sees an immediate danger of North Vietnam becoming the route for a Chinese and Russian takeover of Southeast Asia. In the late 50s, military aid for South Vietnam was considered part of America's wider strategic interest. Diem has refused to allow the elections called for by the Geneva Agreement. He has no national organization and his army is weak. Eisenhower now backs South Vietnam with a show of naval strength and privately pressures Diem to make political reforms. Diem attempts land reform. It fails. He tries to extend government control to the countryside, but his methods antagonize many peasants. He begins the strategic Hamlet program. These are fortified villages which control as much as defend the population. 1959. North Vietnam makes the fateful decision. It will challenge Diem militarily. Communist organizers born in the South begin to infiltrate back. Their numbers quickly grow to about 5,000. Soon a network of rebel bases is ready. A guerrilla war is launched under the banner of Ho Chi Minh. Terror and counter-terror spread through the countryside. Diem's troops attack and burn communist villages. In 1959, US military advisers total only 350. A large part of American aid is goodwill, but it helps mainly the cities. Poverty continues and corruption spreads. Diem's family and friends control the economy. They isolate him from the people. An influential critic, General Tran Van Don. He began to be oppressive, inept, ambitious. He wanted to become the king of Vietnam. He believed too much. God ordered him to be in South Vietnam with a mystic mission. In America, newly elected President John F. Kennedy adopts Eisenhower's policy, Vietnam cannot fall to the Communists. Assistant Secretary of State Roger Hilsman. When President Eisenhower had his private conversation... with Kennedy on Inauguration Day, President Eisenhower said, I think you're going to have to send troops, and if you do, I will come up from Gettysburg and stand beside you and support you. Six months later in September 61, the war widens. The Communists seize the provincial capital near Saigon. They publicly execute the provincial chief. The guerrilla strength is now estimated at 26,000 men, up 500% within two years. Diem asks the United States for a treaty to guarantee South Vietnam's existence. Kennedy consults his personal military advisor, General Maxwell D. Taylor. I met the president one morning in the White House just walking down a corridor and he said I have a letter here from President Diem tell me how to answer it well it changed my I spent the next 11 years involved in answering the questions or related thereto. Because it really amounted to the question, was the United States favor a major increase in the military effort to accomplish the political objectives in Vietnam? Kennedy increases military aid. Within days, the first American helicopter units arrive. A newsreel of December 1961 conveys the optimism. The techniques in jungle warfare are being mounted against the rebels in South Vietnam with rousing success. Helicopter forays, christened eagle flights, carry small detachments of Vietnamese troops into the swamps and jungles of the Camau Peninsula, where Viet Cong guerrillas have... successfully eluded pursuit on the ground. Whirlybirds swoop in to deposit soldiers where rebels have been reported, and the troops quickly spread out through swamp and jungle to surround the communist enemy. Usually the rebels quickly fade from villages, but a pincer attack flushes them from the surrounding jungles. A successful airstrike like this one will bring in prisoners by the dozen. A new kind of warfare that is turning the tide of battle. In their enlarged advisory role, American lives are now at risk. Though not officially in combat, they lead the South Vietnamese into battle. By late 1961, guerrilla ambush is frequent and costly. They control to some degree most of the countryside, tying down Saigon's 200,000-man army. The war is costing $1 million a day. On U.S. advice, a self-defense program to arm remote populations like the Montagnards begins in the Central Highlands. The CIA's Saigon chief at that time, William Colby. With the authority of the... President Ziem and his brother knew, we began these programs of arming mountain scout teams, things of this nature, arming villages in the area of Van Matuot, spreading 50 or 100 weapons into... such a village for its own protection, and then gradually spreading out to additional villages until you formed an area, so-called an ink spot as it spreads through the blotter, of safety against outward infiltration. And we began this in about 1960, this process of doing this, and by 1962 or three we had armed something like 30,000 of the... these people. Then comes the sudden setback. In May 63, a nationwide crisis begins when Buddhists are denied the traditional right to fly religious flags. The Buddhists riot. Forty are killed. Thousands arrested by the secret police headed by Diem's brother, Nhu. Week after week, Buddhist monks commit public suicide in protest. These human tortures appall Washington. American Ambassador Frederick Nolting argues that Diem is not to blame. It was contrived, in my opinion, strictly by the Viet Cong. It was a political rather than a religious outbreak. Motivated by political rather than religious motives. A new American ambassador arrives, Henry Cabot Lodge. He wants Diem's family, especially Brother New. removed from power. Lodge meets with Jim. He was as unreceptive as I've ever seen a human being be, and he almost said to me, well, what business is it of yours whether I have my brother here to advise me or not? To which, of course, that was a very good answer. It's my business because the President of the United States has made it my business. I didn't. I didn't say that, but I thought that. I thought that. President Kennedy was hoping it would work itself out and became sympathetic to the idea of a coup if the Americans were not responsible and not involved in it. For Diem, the end would come not from the Communists, but from his own army. Within three months, he would be assassinated by his generals. More U.S. equipment arrives in Vietnam in 1963, and the changing role of the American advisors portends a widening war. In five years, their numbers have risen from a few hundred to more than 16,000. Their job is to train and guide South Vietnamese troops, to lead them into combat, but not to join them. But as the ground fire increases, the Americans start firing back. The destination this typical day is a small airstrip in the Mekong Delta. A South Vietnamese unit has reported heavy casualties. American advice on ambush precautions has been ignored. Air cover had been unavailable. A support unit which might have saved the situation fails to advance. The result, 100 South Vietnamese casualties, two American ground advisers wounded. U.S. helicopter pilots must come to the rescue. The operation is called Dust Off. Again and again, the advisers become ambulance men, picking up the dead and wounded of an ally who ignores their advice. There is growing disillusionment in the field and in Washington, but the very weakness of their allies seems to demand greater American involvement. In 1963, the U.S. had planned to withdraw 1,000 advisers. Instead, their numbers increased by 50%.

Transcript for:The Vietnam War and Dien Bien Phu

Transcript for:
The Vietnam War and Dien Bien Phu