Resources on the French defeat in Indochina?

[jmm99]

1. Anything by Bernard Fall - Street Without Joy, Hell in a Very Small Place: The Siege of Dien Bien Phu, and the Two Vietnams (the least known of the trilogy, but the best to understand the political action before, during and after the French defeat). You also should be able to find a number of his articles for free downloading.

2. Add in Jules Roy, Battle of Dienbienphu, for a slightly different view by a French officer who became fed up with the whole "hopeless mess". The Troupes de Marine, in its history section, has quite a bit on DBP (Fall's Hell) and GM100 (Fall's Street); but that requires some French reading ability.

3. Giap, People's War, People's Army; and later (1967), Big Victory, Great Task, which spells out the integration of the Political Struggle and the Military Struggle in the context of what he considered the Resistence War (I vs the French and II vs the US), where he was waging what we would call unconventional warfare. Also anything else from Giap that you can find onlne.

4. Putting it all together, John J. McCuen, The Art of Counter-Revolutionary Warfare (1966, reprint available from Hailer Publishing), which is not a cookbook; but which spells out the phases of insurgency and what to do about them. Heavy focus on the First Indochina War and a good bibliography after each section (including some English translations of French intel articles which I haven't yet tracked down online).

Not a complete list by any means, but it should get you going.

Bonne chance, Kevin

Mike

PS: For some nasty stuff (which may or may not be true), George Robert Elford, Devil's Guard (from the early 1970s, with I believe a couple of sequels I don't have) - SS officer who served in Vietnam with a Legion German unit he commanded. Whether fact or fiction, it is an interesting read.