Viet Minh Attack Dien Bien Phu

In the spring of 1953, France installs General Henri Navarre as the new commander of French forces in Indochina. The French hope Navarre’s proposals for a more aggressive strategy against the Viet Minh will finally bring an end to the Indochina War.

By the end of 1953, Viet Minh forces appear to be preparing a largescale invasion of northern Laos. To counter this offensive, Navarre dispatches a large number of troops to a blocking position in far northeastern Vietnam, near a small village named Dien Bien Phu. Navarre believes the village, which is nestled in a valley that acts as a natural crossroads for any forces moving into Laos, is a good place to cut off any Viet Minh offensive and draw them into a pitched battle, where presumably superior French firepower can destroy them.

Dien Bien Phu is remote and can only be provisioned and reinforced by air via its short runway. There are no significant roads leading to the area. For this reason, General Navarre is confident that Viet Minh general Vo Nguyen Giap cannot move heavy artillery into striking distance of the French garrison. The French intend to use Dien Bien Phu as a base from which to launch their own offensive attacks, so they do not construct strong defensive fortifications. French commanders do not believe the Viet Minh can launch a significant attack on such a large French base.

Approximately 11,000 French troops move into Dien Bien Phu during the early months of 1954. Roughly one-third of these soldiers are Vietnamese men serving in the French colonial forces. By the end of February, General Giap has moved between 35,000 and 49,000 Viet Minh soldiers into the high hills surrounding the French position. Additionally, the Viet Minh mobilize between 30,000 and 50,000 porters and other support personnel, many of whom are women, to form a human supply chain from the Chinese border all the way to Dien Bien Phu. The Viet Minh porters and soldiers carry hundreds of tons of supplies and munitions on foot over hundreds of miles of rugged terrain, including dozens of large artillery pieces, which they painstakingly move up the steep slopes by disassembling them at the bottom of hills and reassembling them at the top—a process that takes as long as seven days and nights of heavy labor. By March, the Viet Minh have emplaced these heavy artillery pieces in well-concealed positions high atop the hills surrounding Dien Bien Phu.

On March 13, 1954, the Viet Minh launch a coordinated series of attacks against the several French strong points around Dien Bien Phu. Within 24 hours, Viet Minh artillery knocks out a number of French heavy guns, which had not been dug in to prevent being destroyed from a distance, and Viet Minh troops quickly overrun two major French outposts protecting the garrison and airfield. Viet Minh artillery then cripples the airfield’s runway as well, so that supplies and reinforcements can now only arrive via parachute drops.

As the full scope of this situation becomes evident, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency estimates that the French have almost no chance of withstanding the coming siege. It becomes clear in Washington that the United States must make a decision on whether to intervene to help save Dien Bien Phu—and with it, France’s chances of winning the war.

March 25, 1954 Army Planning Division Completes a Study on the Potential Use of Nuclear Weapons at Dien Bien Phu

President Dwight D. Eisenhower and his advisers are concerned that a looming French defeat at Dien Bien Phu will mean a Communist victory in the Indochina War. While the administration does not wish to appear sympathetic to France’s imperial goals, it determines that the prospect of a Communist-dominated Southeast Asia is absolutley unacceptable given the recent emergence of “Red” China. Eisenhower notes in cabinet meetings that he does not want to put American troops on the ground in Vietnam, but that he is open to the use of air strikes to relieve the garrison at Dien Bien Phu if he can be convinced they will be effective.

On March 25, 1954, almost two weeks after the beginning of the siege of Dien Bien Phu, the Army’s G–3 Plans Division completes a study that concludes that “tactical” nuclear weapons could be used to relieve the French garrison. While the Plans Division approves the results of the study, its conclusions provoke heated criticism from other military branches that question nuclear weapons’ potential military effectiveness and the political consequences of their use. Army Chief of Staff General Matthew B. Ridgeway and his Chief of Research and Development order the studies shelved, and President Eisenhower ultimately decides against using nuclear strikes to relieve Dien Bien Phu.

March 29, 1954 Secretary of State John Foster Dulles Calls For International “United Action” to Preserve a Non-Communist Indochina

Secretary of State John Foster Dulles delivers an address to the Overseas Press Club of America in New York on “The Threat of Red Asia.” The secretary stresses the importance of Indochina to the United States, reaffirming U.S. support for the French Union forces in the region. In an outline for U.S. action in Indochina, Dulles argues that the United States must form a coalition of nations, including parts of the British Commonwealth, to meet the global threat of Communist aggression.

Dulles’s speech is intended as a warning to China and the Viet Minh about the possibility of American and international intervention to save the garrison at Dien Bien Phu. The Eisenhower administration has been debating what form this intervention should take if it becomes necessary, and President Eisenhower is wary of provoking China to enter the war.

Dulles and Eisenhower view “United Action” via a true coalition of nations as a way to keep Chinese troops out of the Indochina War, thereby avoiding what they believed to be the American mistakes that led China to intervene in the Korean War. United Action would further ensure that the United States will not bear the entire burden of the fighting in Southeast Asia. Congress is also eager to have allies before approving any U.S. military intervention.

Despite vigorous lobbying by the Eisenhower administration, Great Britain, the most important member of the proposed coalition, declines to involve itself in the Indochina conflict. The British do not agree with the set of assumptions known as the “domino” theory of global Communist expansion, a view generally held by the current U.S. administration, and the British do not believe that the fall of non-Communist Indochina would lead to the spread of communism throughout the region. As a result, The American proposal for United Action in Indochina is never carried out.

April 1954 United States Debate Over Intervention at Dien Bien Phu

Disagreements among U.S. policymakers on the most appropriate and effective course of action in Indochina and the deteriorating situation at Dien Bien Phu lead President Eisenhower and Secretary of State Dulles to begin formulating a response:

• April 2, 1954: President Eisenhower meets with Dulles, Secretary of Defense Charles E. Wilson, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Arthur W. Radford, and National Security Adviser Robert Cutler to discuss how to get Congress to agree to military action. Much disagreement exists over what form intervention should take, with some advocating for immediate air strikes and others contending that air strikes alone are ineffective at winning battles or wars. The administration is nearly unanimous that the fall of Dien Bien Phu to the Viet Minh would be a disastrous outcome; but Eisenhower decides not to intervene with American military forces until he receives congressional approval and international support.
• April 3, 1954: Dulles, Radford, and other officials from the Departments of State and Defense meet with Senate Minority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson (D-TX) and a bipartisan coalition of senators. The Eisenhower administration seeks a joint resolution from Congress to authorize the use of air and naval power in Indochina. After Radford outlines the situation, the congressmen decide that this military action must be a multilateral effort, involving partnerships (United Action) with other nations before they grant congressional support. Dulles, however, believes that it might not be possible to secure such international commitments without a firm promise from the U.S. to defend Indochina with its own forces.
• April 4, 1954: President Eisenhower meets with Dulles, Radford, and other Defense and State officials. He says he will send U.S. forces to Indochina only under the conditions that: (1) intervention is a United Action that necessarily includes Britain, among others; (2) France promises to maintain its military commitments in Indochina so that the United States is not forced to take over the burden of fighting the war; and (3) Paris agrees to grant the Associated States of Indochina full independence to avoid the appearance of U.S. support for colonialism. Later, on April 4, the French urgently request immediate American intervention at Dien Bien Phu in the form of airstrikes on the Viet Minh artillery positions that have surrounded and are pounding the garrison.
• April 5, 1954: The French request for airstrikes is relayed to President Eisenhower, who makes it clear to the French representatives that U.S. intervention requires congressional approval, and Dulles sends word to Paris that the United States cannot intervene except on a coalition basis with active British Commonwealth military participation. French Foreign Minister Georges Bidault, unhappy with this response, warns that the future of Indochina will be decided at Dien Bien Phu within days.
• April 11, 1954 Secretary Dulles arrives in London to discuss the situation in Indochina with British Foreign Secretary Sir Anthony Eden. Dulles hopes to convince Eden and Prime Minister Winston Churchill to enter a coalition with the United States for united military action in Indochina. He is ultimately unsuccessful at swaying the British.

By the end of April, the internal U.S. debate over whether to save Dien Bien Phu has come to a halt, though discussions of taking over the war from France, with British help, continue. Dulles continues to clash with Eden over the British refusal to enter a coalition, and on April 29 the U.S. National Security Council formally decides to forego military action in Indochina as negotiations progress at the ongoing Geneva peace conference.

Historians’ Debate: Why Didn’t the United States Intervene?

There are multiple interpretations of the Eisenhower administration’s decision not to intervene at Dien Bien Phu over the course of the 55-day siege and battle. It remains an open question whether or not Eisenhower truly wanted to intervene and that congressional and British reticence prevented him from doing so, or if proposals for United Action were ultimately political ploys to shift the responsibility for non-intervention to Congress and to Britain. If Eisenhower and Dulles knew which of these approaches they had in mind, they left scant evidence of it for future scholars to find.

Some historians argue that neither Secretary of State John Foster Dulles nor President Eisenhower ever intended to send U.S. troops to Indochina to aid the French. These scholars interpret the debate over intervention and congressional approval as a political maneuver on the administration’s part. With the decisions and mistakes that had led China to enter the Korean War fresh in their minds, the administration’s maneuvers were calculated to induce China to back away from supporting the Viet Minh and allow the United States to gain leverage in the Geneva conference.

Other historians believe that Eisenhower was fully prepared and even hoped to intervene at Dien Bien Phu and that a congressional resolution approving such military action would have given him a stronger bargaining position with allied nations. If Eisenhower had already decided to stay out of the war, these scholars say that he would not have spoken so unambiguously and publically about the importance of Indochina to U.S. national security interests, nor would he have so aggressively lobbied Britain to participate in a coalition. Ultimately, Eisenhower decided he could not act unilaterally without Congress or European allies.

Various scholars also point out the deep divisions among the administration’s top advisers and Eisenhower’s own uncertainty over what to do. The president held deep anxieties about entering into conflicts that pitted the United States and Europe against the decolonizing and developing world.

May 6, 1954 Two American Civil Air Transport (CAT) Pilots Die at Dien Bien Phu

Shortly before the final Viet Minh assault at the battle of Dien Bien Phu, two American Civil Air Transport pilots, James McGovern and Wallace Buford, are killed when Viet Minh ground fire near Dien Bien Phu downs their transport plane. McGovern and Buford had been part of CAT’s mission to airdrop supplies and ammunition to the beleaguered Dien Bien Phu defenders. Over the course of the battle, 37 CAT pilots complete a total of 682 airborne supply missions in support of the French garrison.

May 7, 1954 Viet Minh Forces Capture Dien Bien Phu, Effectively Ending the First Indochina War

The French troops at Dien Bien Phu have been surrounded by an overwhelmingly superior force of Viet Minh soldiers for nearly two months. They can only receive limited supplies and reinforcements dropped from the air, and transport planes struggle to keep the French garrison sufficiently provisioned through bad weather and heavy antiaircraft fire.

On May 6, the Viet Minh launch a massive all-or-nothing assault. After 20 hours of intense and uninterrupted combat, the surrounded French forces at Dien Bien Phu finally surrender to the Viet Minh. The besieged French have held out for 55 days. Some 1,500 French Union troops are dead, 4,800 wounded, and 10,000 missing or captured. The majority of these casualties are Vietnamese soldiers serving in the French colonial forces. The Viet Minh leave Dien Bien Phu with over 8,000 prisoners and march them hundreds of miles to prison camps. Many of these prisoners never return from captivity. Between 7,900 and 10,000 Viet Minh are dead and at least 15,000 are wounded. The Viet Minh victory forces a depleted and war-weary France to negotiate for peace at Geneva and signals the end of the First Indochina War.

As the warring parties move toward a negotiated peace agreement, some French officials blame the defeat on the United States for failing to come to their aid when the need was greatest, while some in the United States in turn blame France’s mismanagement of the war from the beginning. For their part, the Viet Minh are convinced that the ideology and strategy comprising what they call “people’s war” (partially borrowed from Mao Zedong’s People’s Republic of China) have been proven effective.

From an American history perspective, scholars point out that Dien Bien Phu is among the most significant events of the twentieth century. The French defeat set a series of events in motion that eventually lead to what the Vietnamese later call the “American War.” Though Eisenhower decides not to intervene in April 1954, his administration still believes that it is vital to American security interests that Vietnam not become an entirely Communist state. The United States thus responds to the French surrender and the eventual Geneva Accords by essentially replacing French colonial forces with American military advisers, whose mission is to train a non-Communist Vietnamese military force capable of fighting the Viet Minh and, later, Communist North Vietnam. The Eisenhower administration also commits to propping up a non-Communist Vietnamese government based in the southern city of Saigon, headed by former emperor Bao Dai. While these seem to be comparatively small commitments at the time they are made, they are commitments nonetheless—obligations that Eisenhower’s successors later feel they cannot abandon. Some scholars conclude that Eisenhower’s decisions in the wake of Dien Bien Phu, along with the “domino theory” articulated and passed down by his administration, initiate the precedents and assumptions that compel subsequent presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson to gradually escalate the American military commitment to a non-Communist Vietnam.

“ou have broader considerations that might follow what you would call the ‘falling domino’ principle. You have a row of dominos 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. So you could have a beginning of a disintegration that would have the most profound influences. . . . we come to the possible series of events, the loss of Indochina, of Burma, of Thailand, of the Peninsula, and Indonesia following . . . . Finally, the geographical position achieved thereby does many things. It turns the so-called island defensive chain of Japan, Formosa , of the Philippines and to the southward; it moves in to threaten Australia and New Zealand. . . . So, the possible consequences of the loss are just incalculable to the free world.” – President Dwight D. Eisenhower during a press conference, April 7, 1954

• Fredrik Logevall, Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the making of America’s Vietnam (New York: Random House, 2012).
• Bernard B. Fall, Hell in a Very Small Place: The Siege of Dien Bien Phu (New York, J.B. Lippincott Company, 1967).
• Yuen Foong Khong, Analogies at War: Korea, Munich, Dien Bien Phu, and the Vietnam Decisions of 1965 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992).
• John Robert Nordell, The Undetected Enemy: French and American Miscalculations at Dien Bien Phu, 1953 (College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 1995).
• Charles R. Shrader, A War of Logistics: Parachutes and Porters in Indochina, 1945–1954 (Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 2015).
• Chen Jian, Mao’s China and the Cold War (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2001).
• John Prados, “Assessing Dien Bien Phu,” in Mark Atwood Lawrence and Fredrik Logevall, eds., The First Vietnam War: Colonial Conflict and Cold War Crisis (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007).
• Robert H. Scales, Jr., Firepower in Limited War (Washington, D.C.: National Defense University Press, 1990).
• Douglas C. Foyle, Counting the Public In: Presidents, Public Opinion, and Foreign Policy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999).
• Kathryn C. Statler, Replacing France: The Origins of American Intervention in Vietnam (Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press).
• Ted Morgan, Valley of Death: The Tragedy at Dien Bien Phu that Led America into the Vietnam War (New York: Random House, 2010).
• Andrew Wiest and Michael J. Doidge, eds., Triumph Revisited: Historians Battle for the Vietnam War (New York, Routledge, 2010).
• Richard M. Leighton, Strategy, Money, and the New Look, 1953–1956, History of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Volume III (Washington, D.C.: Historical Office, Office of the Secretary of Defense, 2001), 533–535; George C. Herring and Richard H. Immerman, “Eisenhower, Dulles, and Dienbienphu: “The Day We Didn’t Go to War” Revisited,” The Journal of American History 71 (September 1984), 346–347.

Ronald H. Spector, Advice and Support: The Early Years, 1941–1960, The U.S. Army in Vietnam (Washington, D.C.: Center of Military History, United States Army, 1985), 200–201; Edward Miller, Misalliance: Ngo Dinh Diem, the United States, and the Fate of South Vietnam (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013), 73; George C. Herring and Richard H. Immerman, “Eisenhower, Dulles, and Dienbienphu: “The Day We Didn’t Go to War” Revisited,” The Journal of American History 71 (September 1984).

Fredrik Logevall, Embers of War: The Fall of An Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam (New York: Random House, 2012), 461; Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952–1954, Volume XIII, Part 1, Indochina, ed. Neil H. Petersen (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1982), Document 656; Richard M. Leighton, Strategy, Money, and the New Look, 1953–1956, History of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Volume III (Washington, D.C.: Historical Office, Office of the Secretary of Defense, 2001), 536–537.

Fredrik Logevall, Embers of War: The Fall of An Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam (New York: Random House, 2012), 466–471, 473–474, 476–494, 508–509; Richard M. Leighton, Strategy, Money, and the New Look, 1953–1956, History of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Volume III (Washington, D.C.: Historical Office, Office of the Secretary of Defense, 2001), 537; Department of State Office of the Historian, “Presidential and Secretaries Travels Abroad: John Foster Dulles” https://history.state.gov/departmenthistory/travels/secretary/dulles-john-foster (link is external) (accessed 5/11/2016); George C. Herring, America’s Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950–1975, 4th ed (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2002), 37–44. When French officials approached U.S. Ambassador C. Douglas Dillon on April 4 with the direct request for support, they were under the impression that the United States was likely to approve this request. In late March, French Army Chief of Staff Paul Ely came to D.C. and met with U.S. policymakers. In his conversations with Admiral Radford, Radford apparently indicated that with a formal request, the U.S. could deploy up to 350 aircraft in support of Operation VULTURE/VAUTOUR, an air strike to relieve the siege. In reality, Radford had no such backing, even among the JCS. Army Chief of Staff Matthew B. Ridgeway argued that this was not within the proper scope of JCS authority and protested against intervention. And on April 5, with the formal French request, Eisenhower was irritated with Radford for promising too much to France. Logevall, Embers of War, 474–476; George C. Herring and Richard H. Immerman, “Eisenhower, Dulles, and Dienbienphu: “The Day We Didn’t Go to War” Revisited,” The Journal of American History 71 (September 1984), 346–348;

George C. Herring, America’s Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950–1975, 4th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2002), 44.

William J. Duiker, U.S. Containment Policy and Conflict in Indochina (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994), 191; George C. Herring and Richard H. Immerman, “Eisenhower, Dulles, and Dienbienphu: “The Day We Didn’t Go to War” Revisited,” The Journal of American History 71 (September 1984), 349, also suggest that top civilian leaders held little enthusiasm for intervention.

Fredrik Logevall, Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam (New York: Random House, 2012), 472–473.

Edward Miller, Misalliance: Ngo Dinh Diem, the United Staets, and the Fate of South Vietnam (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013), 73; Melanie Billings-Yun, Decision Against War: Eisenhower and Dien Bien Phu, 1954 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988).

Alfred T. Cox, Civil Air Transport, A Proprietary Airline, 1946–1955, Clandestine Services History (declassified and published, 1963), Vol. 3, Tab K, pp. 11–22 (pilot deaths noted p. 17); Spencer C. Tucker, ed. The Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War: A Political, Social, and Military History, 2nd ed. (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2011), 166–68; George C. Herring, America’s Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950–1975, 4th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2002), 33–45. Regarding the number of pilots and the 682 missions number, see https://www.cia.gov/news-information/featured-story-archive/earthquake-mcgoons-final-flight.html  and the heading for Dien Bien Phu; Frederik Logevall, Embers of War: The Fall of An Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam (New York: Random House, 2012), 528–529.

Frederik Logevall, Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam (New York: Random House, 2012), 529–535,  542 ; George C. Herring, America’s Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950–1975, 4th ed (New York: McGraw Hill, 2002), 31–34, 37, 44–45; Ronald H. Spector, Advice and Support: The Early Years, 1941–1960, United States Army in Vietnam (Washington, D.C.: Center of Military History, 1985), 182–184, 187–190, 211; Richard M. Leighton, Strategy, Money, and the New Look, 1953–1956, History of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Volume III (Washington, D.C.: Historical Office, Office of the Secretary of Defense, 2001), 538–539; Ted Morgan, Valley of Death: The Tragedy at Dien Bien Phu That Led America into the Vietnam War (New York: Random House, 2010), 559; Spencer C. Tucker, ed. The Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War: A Political, Social, and Military History, 2nd ed. (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2011), 296. The approximate French figures come from Tucker, Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War, 296. Morgan, Valley of Death, 559, has a very close approximation, as does Herring, America’s Longest War, 45. The figures for Viet Minh casualties also come from Tucker, Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War and Logevall, Embers of War, 542. Even after the fortress’ fall, talks between the French and the Americans of intervention continued. Not because the French sought to escalate the war through internationalizing it, but more to force concessions from the Communists at the Geneva talks, Logevall, Embers of War, 563–564.

Dwight D. Eisenhower, “73, The President’s News Conference, April 7, 1954,” The American Presidency Project, University of California Santa Barbara, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=10202  (accessed 12/29/16).