Indochina, French campaign in (1946-54). In the immediate aftermath of WW II, France faced the challenge of recovering her colonial possessions not only from the hands of former enemies, but also from indigenous resistance movements that had grown up in 1941-5. In French Indochina, guerrilla resistance to the Japanese by the Vietminh had become organized and united under the leadership of Ho Chi Minh, and perforce had to be defeated if French authority was to be restored.
At this time more than 80 per cent of Indochina was classified as forested, much of it dense and humid jungle. The problems for any force attempting to carry on a campaign in such terrain are obvious, and in the case of Vietnam these difficulties were exacerbated by the peculiar weather patterns which prevail in the region. The south-west monsoon, for example, limited the campaigning season to what the Vietnamese described as winter-spring, stretching roughly from October to mid-May. During the remainder of the year it was almost impossible, and certainly imprudent, to move troops because the smallest logistical problems would be magnified many times over by the torrential and destructive rains which swept across the country. The political context of the war is also crucial to an overall understanding of its shape and outcome. The Vietminh under the operational direction of Giap began with significantly inferior resources, but after 1949 were able to draw wholehearted support from newly communist China. The defeat of the Kuomintang by Mao Tse-tung was crucial to the Vietnamese insurgents' success in the years that followed. By contrast the French government received only some support from the USA, torn between its traditional anti-colonialism and a more recent appreciation of the communist threat, and was also indecisive, bureaucratic, and largely half-hearted about the campaign in Indochina. Various military commanders were sent to the troubled colony, but they were given limited resources and scant encouragement from home.
The French campaign in Indochina began with a few skirmishes with the Vietminh, and some controversy as to who actually fired the first shot. The French were intent upon undoing the fragile hold the Vietnamese had taken on the apparatus of state after the capitulation of Japan, and they rapidly asserted control in the major cities. The Vietminh had great sympathy among the population, but little strength in 1946, and were soon pushed back into their stronghold, the Vietbac, which is an almost impenetrable region of steep valleys and caves near the Chinese border. In 1947 Gen Jean Valluy, the French commander, having taken time to marshal his resources, attacked this area. Operation LEA, as it was known, met with initial success, but the plan—drawn straight from the European theatre of WW II—became bogged down in the difficult terrain. French units were isolated, and the Vietminh leadership was able to adapt to circumstances much more rapidly than the French. In the end the French managed to extricate themselves from an increasingly dangerous situation, while the Vietminh remained intact and with soaring morale.
The next two years of the French campaign were marked by small battles and French indecision. Valluy was replaced by Gen Roger C. Blaizot in 1948, and Blaizot was, in turn, replaced by Gen Marcel Charpentier a year later. Charpentier took over just before Giap's first major offensive in 1950 and was outgeneralled. After some vicious fighting shortly before the monsoon, the resumption of campaigning in the early winter months saw the Vietminh capture the key supply base at Dong Khe. Charpentier counter-attacked by sending two columns, which were ambushed and defeated in detail by an enemy with intimate knowledge of the terrain.
The French campaign in Indochina. Background and strategic situation (left) and Battle of Dien Bien Phu, 1954 (right).
(Click to enlarge)
Gen Jean de Lattre de Tassigny, Charpentier's successor, enjoyed rather more success against Giap's second offensive in 1951. French forces repulsed the Vietminh at Vinh Yen, Mao Khe, and during the Day River battles. De Lattre built up the Vietnamese National Army to provide support for the French, and used these troops to man the de Lattre Line, a series of forts and bases. This freed French troops for an offensive at Hoa Binh in November 1951, but Vietminh counter-attacks forced a withdrawal from that position three months later. Illness forced de Lattre to return to France in late 1951 and his replacement Gen Raoul Salan carried on the pattern of limited offensives and counter-offensives, winning a victory at a pitched battle at Na San in November 1952. Giap enjoyed some degree of success in the Black River campaign of 1952, and his Laotian campaign a year later was thwarted only because his troops advanced so far so quickly that they outran the limited Vietminh logistical capacities.
The success of the Laotian campaign opened the way for a final Vietnamese victory. Gen Henri Navarre became the latest French commander, and began to plan a major battle to give the French a strong bargaining chip in ongoing peace negotiations. When this set-piece battle began, however, it was on Giap's terms. Navarre had believed he could maintain an ‘airhead’ at Dien Bien Phu, near the Laotian border, but when serious fighting broke out around the position on 12 March 1954, the French were outgunned, outnumbered, and fatally placed in a valley with Vietminh artillery all around them. The garrison held out for two months, but the outcome was a foregone conclusion once Vietminh guns had smothered the French artillery and closed the airfields. On 7 May the last defenders surrendered and the French delegation at the peace conference in Geneva was compelled to capitulate.
Most of the fighting had been in the North and, prompted by the USA, a separate, non-communist state of South Vietnam came into being. Ho Chi Minh and Giap were not to be denied and although it took them a further twenty years, they eventually consolidated their hold on territory they had already won once from the Japanese and again from the French—an epic of tenacity, courage, and endurance that will live for as long as warfare is studied.
Bibliography
- Currey, Cecil B., Victory at any Cost: The Genius of Vietnam's Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap (London, 1997).
- Davidson, Philip B., Vietnam at War: The History, 1946-1975 (London, 1988).
- Kelly, George A., Lost Soldiers: The French Army and the Empire in Crisis, 1947-1962 (Boston, 1965)
— Andrew Haughton
