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Vietnam Dien Bien Phu
With Beijing's promise of limited assistance to Hanoi, the
communist military strategy concentrated on the liberation of
Tonkin and consigned Cochinchina to a lower priority. The top
military priority, as set by Giap, was to free the northern
border areas in order to protect the movement of supplies and
personnel from China. By autumn of 1950, the Viet Minh had again
liberated the Viet Bac in decisive battles that forced the French
to evacuate the entire border region, leaving behind a large
quantity of ammunition. From their liberated zone in the northern
border area, the Viet Minh were free to make raids into the Red
River Delta. The French military in Vietnam found it increasingly
difficult to convince Paris and the French electorate to give
them the manpower and materiel needed to defeat the Viet Minh.
For the next two years, the Viet Minh, well aware of the growing
disillusionment of the French people with Indochina, concentrated
its efforts on wearing down the French military by attacking its
weakest outposts and by maximizing the physical distance between
engagements to disperse French forces. Being able to choose the
time and place for such engagements gave the guerrillas a decided
advantage. Meanwhile, political activity was increased until, by
late 1952, more than half the villages of the Red River Delta
were under Viet Minh control.
The newly appointed commander of French forces in Vietnam,
General Henri Navarre, decided soon after his arrival in Vietnam
that it was essential to halt a Viet Minh offensive underway in
neighboring Laos. To do so, Navarre believed it was necessary for
the French to capture and hold the town of Dien Bien Phu, sixteen
kilometers from the Laotian border. For the Viet Minh, control of
Dien Bien Phu was an important link in the supply route from
China. In November 1953, the French occupied the town with
paratroop battalions and began reinforcing it with units from the
French military post at nearby Lai Chau.
During that same month, Ho indicated that the DRV was willing
to examine French proposals for a diplomatic settlement announced
the month before. In February 1954, a peace conference to settle
the Korean and Indochinese conflicts was set for April in Geneva,
and negotiations in Indochina were scheduled to begin on May 8.
Viet Minh strategists, led by Giap, concluded that a successful
attack on a French fortified camp, timed to coincide with the
peace talks, would give Hanoi the necessary leverage for a
successful conclusion of the negotiations.
Accordingly, the siege of Dien Bien Phu began on March 13, by
which time the Viet Minh had concentrated nearly 50,000 regular
troops, 55,000 support troops, and almost 100,000 transport
workers in the area. Chinese aid, consisting mainly of
ammunition, petroleum, and some large artillery pieces carried a
distance of 350 kilometers from the Chinese border, reached 1,500
tons per month by early 1954. The French garrison of 15,000,
which depended on supply by air, was cut off by March 27, when
the Viet Minh artillery succeeded in making the airfield
unusable. An elaborate system of tunnels dug in the mountainsides
enabled the Viet Minh to protect its artillery pieces by
continually moving them to prevent discovery. Several hundred
kilometers of trenches permitted the attackers to move
progressively closer to the French encampment. In the final
battle, human wave assaults were used to take the perimeter
defenses, which yielded defensive guns that were then turned on
the main encampment. The French garrison surrendered on May 7,
ending the siege that had cost the lives of about 25,000
Vietnamese and more than 1,500 French troops.
The following day, peace talks on Indochina began in Geneva,
attended by the DRV, the Associated State of Vietnam, Cambodia,
Laos, France, Britain, China, the Soviet Union, and the United
States. In July a compromise agreement was reached consisting of
two documents: a cease-fire and a final declaration. The ceasefire agreement, which was signed only by France and the DRV,
established a provisional military demarcation line at about the
17°N parallel and required the regroupment of all French
military
forces south of that line and of all Viet Minh military forces
north of the line. A demilitarized zone (DMZ), no more than five
kilometers wide, was established on either side of the
demarcation line. The cease-fire agreement also provided for a
300-day period, during which all civilians were free to move from
one zone to the other, and an International Control Commission,
consisting of Canada, India, and Poland, to supervise the ceasefire . The final declaration was endorsed through recorded oral
assent by the DRV, France, Britain, China, and the Soviet Union.
It provided for the holding of national elections in July 1956,
under the supervision of the International Control Commission,
and stated that the military demarcation line was provisional and
"should not in any way be interpreted as constituting a political
territorial boundary." Both the United States and the Associated
State of Vietnam, which France had recognized on June 4 as a
"fully independent and sovereign state," refused to approve the
final declaration and submitted separate declarations stating
their reservations.
Data as of December 1987
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