Hi, I’m the History Guy. I have a degree in history,
and I love history. And if you love history too, this is the channel for you.
The war between North and South Vietnam, fought between 1955 and 1975,
known in Vietnam as the American War, and in the United States as the Vietnam War,
was one of the deadliest of the proxy wars of the Cold War. As many as a million-and-a-half
north and south Vietnamese combatants died in the conflict, and more than 53,000 Americans.
And while Americans cannot forget the war that scarred our psyche,
we know much less about the conflict that drew us into that War. Because before the
Vietnam War was the first Indochina war, and the way that that War over decolonization
transformed over time to become a proxy war of the Cold War, is emblematic of the conflicts
that followed the Second World War. And so that seven-year conflict, and its defining battle,
in a small valley, near a remote village called Dien Bien Phu deserves to be remembered.
French presence in Indochina started in the 17th century, but it was during the 19th century,
that under the pretense of protecting Catholic missionaries, French forces began to dominate
the region, officially forming the Protectorate of French Indochina in
1887. The grouping of territories eventually included the modern-day countries of Laos,
Cambodia, and Vietnam. While the French left local Dynasties in each of the Protectorates,
the power was actually held by the French colonial government. During the Second World War,
French Indochina was first under the control of the pro-german Vichy French Regime, and
later taken over directly by the Japanese. It was Japanese expansion into Indochina that prompted
the American Congress to pass the Export Control Act of 1940, which restricted exports of critical
materials to Japan, and was seen as one of the actions that drove the Japanese to attack the
United States in 1941. It was during this period that a Vietnamese communist, named Ho Chi Minh,
created an organization dedicated to fighting for Vietnamese independence, both from France and
Japan, called the League for the Independence of Vietnam, or in Vietnamese, the Viet Minh. As the
Viet Minh was fighting the Japanese occupation, they received support from the Allies, including
the United States, who supported Ho Chi Minh's forces with military aid, food, and training.
After the War, Ho Chi Minh hoped to create a unified and independent Vietnam,
but the French wanted to restore their colonial rule under the new formation that brought all
the French colonies into a French Union. Under the agreements made at the Potsdam Conference in 1945,
the Japanese forces in the North surrendered to the Chinese government represented by Chiang
Kai-shek, and the Japanese forces in the South surrendered to a combination Franco-British
force. The three Powers, China, France, and the Viet Minh then worked out an agreement where,
in exchange for other territorial concessions by France, the Chinese forces vacated the country,
and the Viet Minh would get autonomy inside the French Union. But the agreement between
the Viet Minh and the French did not last long, Ho Chi Minh did not trust that the
French were going to provide true autonomy, and Ho Chi Minh wanted true Vietnamese independence. In
November of 1946, shots were fired between Vietnamese and French troops in the port
city of Haiphong over a disagreement of the collection of import duties. As a response,
the French Navy bombarded the Vietnamese section of the town, called the Haiphong Incident;
those shots were considered to be the first shots of the First Indochina War.
In the early years of the war the Viet Minh were poorly supplied, and maintained
mostly a small insurgency in the rural areas. Refusing to meet the French in open combat,
France was able to control most of the country. At this point the Viet Minh forces were largely
trained by men who had stayed behind from the Japanese Army, and many of those men fought on
the side of the Viet Minh. For their part, the inherent instability of the French Promontory
System, there were 14 French Prime Ministers during the war, and public opposition at home,
prevented the French from being able to fully prosecute the war, and forced the French to
fight mainly with French colonial troops in the French Foreign Legion. In 1948 the
French formed a rival government under the former emperor, Bao Dai, in 1949 they recognized the Bao
Dai government as an Associated state of the French Union, granting similar independence to
the kingdoms of Laos and Cambodia. In practice however, France still controlled their foreign
and military policy. As part of the recognition, Bao Dai’s government formed its own army. The war
shifted in 1949, with the Communist victory in the Chinese Civil War. Ho, and the Viet Minh,
gained a powerful ally, and a safe zone where Viet Minh troops could be trained and supplied. The US,
which had been officially neutral in the conflict, feared communist domination in Asia, and started
supporting the French. In the end, the United States was paying 80% of the costs of the war.
The newly empowered Viet Minh were able to score some territorial victories,
but the French changed to a strategy of creating fortified strong points, forcing the Viet Minh to
engage in direct combat rather than hit-and-run tactics. This largely led to a stalemate,
where the Viet Minh proved unable to dislodge the French positions, but the French proved unable to
successfully attack outside their fortified line. French resolve however, was slowly wearing down.
In 1953, the Viet Minh shifted strategy, invading Laos, and attacking lightly held French positions
there. The French, leveraging the success of their strategy of fortified strong points,
decided to create such a strong point in Vietnam, that would block Viet Minh supply lines into Laos;
the goal was to draw the Viet Minh into a pitched battle. The French chose as
a location for the garrison, an isolated valley just 10 miles from the Laotian border,
where the local people were supportive, near the small village of Dien Bien Phu.
While French paratroopers were quickly able to take the valley,
the Viet Minh managed an extraordinary feat, moving heavy artillery provided by
the Chinese through jungle territory, moving them through tunnels dug into the surrounding hills,
and entrenching them surrounding the valley. The artillery destroyed the roads and airfields,
forcing in the French to be supplied by air. The combat on the ground was brutal trench warfare,
the French withstood many assaults, but under the Viet Minh guns, their perimeter slowly contracted,
making supply by air drop more difficult, even as Viet Minh anti-aircraft guns took their toll
on the planes dropping the supplies. After a two-month siege, the garrison, no longer
able to receive adequate supply, was overrun. Over 11,000 troops from the French Far East
expeditionary Corps were in captivity, where many died later of disease. After the loss, the French
finally accepted that victory was impossible, and agreed to withdraw all French forces from French
Indochina. The country was to be temporarily divided between Ho Chi Minh 's government
in the north, and Bao Dai’s government in the south, until elections could be held, in 1956.
The French loss in the first Indochina war was just the beginning of the decline of the French
Empire. The French were almost immediately drawn into another brutal war of independence
in Algeria, France's oldest major colony, and by 1960, all but a few small remnants of the
French Empire had gained their independence. The elections that were supposed to occur in Vietnam
in 1956 never occurred, the parties involved in the negotiations, especially the United States,
and the Soviet Union, could not agree upon how the elections would be conducted. And
when it was clear that they weren't going to be held, the Viet Minh staged an uprising in
South Vietnam. The United States moved to support the South Vietnamese government, and that fully
escalated into the second Indochina War, which in the United States we know as, the Vietnam War.
One interesting irony of the first Indochina War is that some former
members of the Japanese army stayed behind and fought on behalf of the Viet Minh,
including members of the notorious Kempeitai, the Japanese secret police. Whereas on the other side,
the French Foreign Legion actively recruited foreign veterans, including some German, Polish,
and Russian former members of the SS, and thus former members, of two of the most notorious
organizations, of the Axis powers, faced each other on the battlefields of Indochina. The
first Indochina War is a great example of how Wars of the past drive the wars of the present,
the colonial wars of the 19th century drove the wars of decolonization in the 20th century. And
the blocks that were created in the aftermath of the Second World War, transformed those
wars of decolonization into proxy wars between East and West. And now, as those blocks slowly
disintegrate, we are seeing another round of wars of decolonization, as the wheel of history turns.
I’m the History Guy. I hope you enjoyed this episode of my series, 5 minutes of history,
short snippets of forgotten history 5 to 10 minutes long, and if you did enjoy then please
go ahead and put that thumbs up button that's on your left. If you have any questions, or comments,
feel free to write those in the comment section, and I will be happy to respond.
And if you'd like 5 minutes more of forgotten history, all you need to do is subscribe.