that, as a result, the French could have won the war. For even if French Union forces had held the valley and brought about the destruction of Giap’s main force divisions, and even if that result had seriously undermined the morale of Viet Minh troops elsewhere in Indochina, the overall balance of strength would still have tilted against France. The extent of the pourrissement (deterioration) in the countryside rendered the reestablishment of French control an unlikely prospect at best, not merely in Tonkin but in large swaths of Annam and Cochin China as well. The VNA remained a weak military instrument, while on the home front in France, morale was sinking ever further, as more and more Frenchmen and -women concluded that the war no longer had any valid objective and as the French Army continued losing officers at a frightful clip—an average of six hundred killed per year, the equivalent of a whole graduating class from the military academy at Saint-Cyr.
None of which diminished the momentousness of the occasion when the small and intense French foreign minister, who had been at the center of Indochina policy for eight years, who was as closely associated with this war as anyone on his side, arose slowly from his seat in the Palais des Nations in Geneva on the afternoon of May 8, walked to the lectern, and acknowledged before the delegates and the world the fall of Dien Bien Phu.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
T HIS BOOK HAS MY NAME ON THE COVER, BUT IT’S VERY MUCH A collective enterprise. I am deeply grateful to the authors whose books and articles I read and reread over the past decade, and on whose shoulders I stand. The same goes for archivists at repositories in several countries, who patiently showed me how to navigate their collections and responded with alacrity when I emailed or phoned with this or that follow-up query. I’m also forever indebted to three dear friends who read the entire manuscript and set me right about facts or interpretations, who pushed me when I needed pushing, and who provided succor at just the right time: Chris Goscha, Jim Hershberg, and Ken Mouré. I can’t thank them enough. Other colleagues provided incisive critiques of individual chapters: Chen Jian, Will Hitchcock, Jack Langguth, Mark Lawrence, Tim Naftali, Andrew Preston, and John Thompson.
Many friends have been generous in sharing documents, and in notifying me of collections I needed to consult. Here I thank, in particular, Chen Jian, Chris Goscha, Matthew Jones, Merle Pribbenow, Priscilla Roberts, and Kevin Ruane. Merle Pribbenow also made a tremendous contribution by making available to me his translations of Vietnamese military documents, and by providing new translations seemingly instantaneously. During one memorable two-week stretch, it seemed that every time I opened my email there was a new document from Merle, pertaining to this or that military campaign we had been discussing.
George Herring and Ben Weber were delightful travel companions on a memorable visit to Dien Bien Phu, and I thank them for indulging my desire to traverse the area around Colonel de Castries’s battlefield headquarters and the nearby strongpoints. Nor will I soon forget George’s keen interest and superb input as he and I discussed my then-embryonic book project by the pool at the Metropole Hotel in Hanoi, or our harrowing trip to Phat Diem, in which our driver seemed determined to set a new land speed record between the two points and thought nothing of using both sides of the road to make it happen.
I owe a great debt to my many wonderful students at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Cornell University, and in particular to a remarkable group of research assistants at the two institutions: George Fujii, Justin Granstein, Michael Mazza, and Kim Quinney. Samuel Hodges, at the time a Brown University junior, provided excellent help during a return visit to his hometown of Santa Barbara.
For their willingness to help in various
None of which diminished the momentousness of the occasion when the small and intense French foreign minister, who had been at the center of Indochina policy for eight years, who was as closely associated with this war as anyone on his side, arose slowly from his seat in the Palais des Nations in Geneva on the afternoon of May 8, walked to the lectern, and acknowledged before the delegates and the world the fall of Dien Bien Phu.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
T HIS BOOK HAS MY NAME ON THE COVER, BUT IT’S VERY MUCH A collective enterprise. I am deeply grateful to the authors whose books and articles I read and reread over the past decade, and on whose shoulders I stand. The same goes for archivists at repositories in several countries, who patiently showed me how to navigate their collections and responded with alacrity when I emailed or phoned with this or that follow-up query. I’m also forever indebted to three dear friends who read the entire manuscript and set me right about facts or interpretations, who pushed me when I needed pushing, and who provided succor at just the right time: Chris Goscha, Jim Hershberg, and Ken Mouré. I can’t thank them enough. Other colleagues provided incisive critiques of individual chapters: Chen Jian, Will Hitchcock, Jack Langguth, Mark Lawrence, Tim Naftali, Andrew Preston, and John Thompson.
Many friends have been generous in sharing documents, and in notifying me of collections I needed to consult. Here I thank, in particular, Chen Jian, Chris Goscha, Matthew Jones, Merle Pribbenow, Priscilla Roberts, and Kevin Ruane. Merle Pribbenow also made a tremendous contribution by making available to me his translations of Vietnamese military documents, and by providing new translations seemingly instantaneously. During one memorable two-week stretch, it seemed that every time I opened my email there was a new document from Merle, pertaining to this or that military campaign we had been discussing.
George Herring and Ben Weber were delightful travel companions on a memorable visit to Dien Bien Phu, and I thank them for indulging my desire to traverse the area around Colonel de Castries’s battlefield headquarters and the nearby strongpoints. Nor will I soon forget George’s keen interest and superb input as he and I discussed my then-embryonic book project by the pool at the Metropole Hotel in Hanoi, or our harrowing trip to Phat Diem, in which our driver seemed determined to set a new land speed record between the two points and thought nothing of using both sides of the road to make it happen.
I owe a great debt to my many wonderful students at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Cornell University, and in particular to a remarkable group of research assistants at the two institutions: George Fujii, Justin Granstein, Michael Mazza, and Kim Quinney. Samuel Hodges, at the time a Brown University junior, provided excellent help during a return visit to his hometown of Santa Barbara.
For their willingness to help in various
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