History Of Southeast Asia

Today we will wrap up the First Indochina War by covering the showdown which proved to the French that they couldn't stay in Vietnam anymore -- the battle of Dien Bien Phu! Over the course of the war, the French had seven generals commanding their forces. The last of those generals was Henri Navarre, who led from May 1953 to the end of the war in mid-1954. Here he is, from a Time Magazine cover dated December 28, 1953. His job was to stabilize the situation so that France could negotiate from a position of strength (by this time, the French no longer expected to win the war), but instead his strategy led to the disastrous battle of Dienbienphu. When the French established their base at Dien Bien Phu, they put a dashing tank commander, Colonel Christian de Castries, in charge of it. Rumor has it that de Castries left gambling debts and heartbroken mistresses back in France. Actually he proved to be a poor choice, because he was experienced in mobile warfare, and here his job was to defend a fixed posit