The Battle of Dien Bien
Phu
1954
 Describe the battle of Dien Bien Phu
What you will
know….
 Discuss the mistakes made by the French forces
 Discuss why the French sought help from the US
 Discuss the impacts of the Battle
Despite American aid, the French were defeated at the Battle of
Dien Bien Phu.
Watch the following video and make note on the following:
TASK
ATL: Thinking
skills
 1. The French aims in setting up a base in enemy territory at Dien
Bien Phu
 2. The ways in which the French underestimated the Vietminh
 3. The ways in which the French plan went dreadfully wrong and
why it went so wrong
 4. The American response
 5. The results of the battle
VIDEO LINK
 https://youtu.be/tG3mifrpGp0
Background of
Dien Bien Phu
 The battle commenced on 13 March 1954 the Viet Minh attackers
outnumbered the French defenders by a factor of about 5:1. This
numeric superiority was the product of a long period of preparation.
 After the French re-occupied the base in November of 1953, Giap began
to methodically “prepare the battle field” using supply lines that
depended on 1,000 trucks and over a quarter of a million porters.
 Food and ammunition were carried into the combat base and cached
along the route of the march for the infantry.
 Hundreds of thousands of artillery, mortar and rocket shells were
packed in the valley and then up the steep slopes of the
surrounding highlands to service the guns dug into the hillsides.
Vietminh
supplies
 Those guns themselves had to be dragged up the steep jungle
trails.
 French attempts to discover and interrupt this supply effort using
its airpower proved fruitless .As much energy was put into
camouflaging the supply lines as carrying the material along
them.
 In all, it was a massive human undertaking to supply the 40 000
combat troops that Giap would deploy against the French dug into
the valley floor.
 French supply depended on the fragile air link with Hanoi.
The French
supplies
 The French base at Dien Bien Phu had an airstrip, but this became an
important and easy artillery target for the Viet Minh gunners dug
into the hills and was unusable for the large supply effort for which
it was designed later in the siege.
 Whatever the defenders needed would then have to drift in to their
positions by parachute. As often as not, however, the ammunition
and food drifted in to the Viet Minh positions, more frequently as the
French defensive perimeter shrank.
 The loss of the airstrip also meant that the wounded could not be
evacuated, creating scenes of unimaginable suffering late in the
battle.
 French preparations were as sloppy as the Viet Minh’s were
thorough.
The French
defence
 The French position at Dien Bien Phu consisted of an outer
perimeter of hilltop bases, Gabrielle, Beatrice, Anne-Marie and
Isabelle, Huguette, Claudine,Dominique and Eliane, surrounding a
central position centred on the ruins of the village.
 The defensive theory was that these positions could support each
other with interlocking artillery fire.
 The outer positions were further designed to break or blunt Viet
Minh assaults before they got to the central position.
 A reserve was kept in the central position that could be used to
counter-attack any position in peril.
 While the plan may have been sound, its execution was inept.
Failures of the
plan-French
 The fortifications on the hills and in the central position were not
built strong enough to withstand the Viet Minh artillery, lacking
sufficient wood and steel reinforcement.
 What local timber was available was quickly used up, stripping
much of the base of cover and camouflage. Viet Minh spotters in
the surrounding hills could easily identify important targets.
 Inadequate drainage turned the French defences into a soupy
mess once the rains began.
 The southern position, Isabelle, was too far away for its artillery to
support anything but the central position and too far from that for
timely infantry support. Isabelle would fight as an island, isolated
from the central position for much of the battle.
Failurescontd..
 Artillery itself was inadequate in numbers and poorly placed and
managed. They could not take out Giap’s well-concealed guns while
they themselves were easy targets.
 Two days into the battle the Viet Minh gunners had destroyed two of
the three major French artillery positions, after which the French
artillery commander committed suicide
 French preparations seemed to be based on a woeful and negligent
under estimation of their opponents.
 Everything that Giap did seemed a surprise to the defenders.
These surprises included:
● amassing large amounts of heavy artillery on the hills overlooking
their positions.
● being able to support and supply these guns for weeks on end
● concealing the guns so effectively as to make them invulnerable to
Giap Suprises
/Tactics
the French gunners
● concentrating attacks on the outlying posts before assaulting the
main camp
● having sufficient anti-aircraft guns to severely limit the use of French
air power
● having the engineering capability to tunnel and trench ever closer to
the French positions, slowly strangling them after over-running their
outer fire bases.
 The Viet Minh then concentrated on the central positions, digging
trenches and tunnels toward the French positions, while
mounting attacks periodically from these closer locations.
 Unable to get ammunition or food in or wounded out, the
French situation was helpless and miserable. French pleas for
American help, although debated in Washington, were rejected.
 By 7 May the last of the French forces surrendered. Negotiations
in Geneva commenced the next day.
 It was this critical situation which led the French to appeal in
desperation for US help. Vice-President Richard Nixon had no
political power, and Admiral Radford, Chair of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff. Also quite hawkish-war like was the US Secretary of State
John Foster Dulles, who was obsessed by the crusade against
Communism.
Appeal for
help from the
US.
 More reserved was President Eisenhower who nonetheless gave a
press conference in early April where he proclaimed the infamous
"domino theory" about the possible spread of Communism from
one country to another.
 "You have a row of dominoes set up, you knock over the first one,
and what will happen to the last one is the certainty that it will go
over very quickly," he said. "So you could have a beginning of a
disintegration that would have the most profound influences.“
 President Eisenhower
 On that day Dulles met Congressional leaders who were adamant
they would not support any military intervention unless Britain
was also involved.
 Eisenhower sent a letter to the British Prime Minister Winston
Churchill warning of the consequences for the West if Dien Bien
Phu fell. It was around this time, at a meeting in Paris, that Dulles
supposedly made his astonishing offer to the French of tactical
nuclear weapons.
 In the end, there was no American intervention of any kind, as
the British refused to go along with it.
Giap interview
about Dien
bien Phu
QUESTIONS/REFLECTIONS