The End of the First Indochina War

The End of the First Indochina War PDF Author: James Waite
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0415886848
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 302

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Book Description
The French withdrawal from Vietnam in 1954 was the product of global pressures and triggered significant global consequences. By treating the war as an international issue, this book places Indochina at the center of the Cold War in the mid-1950s. Arguing that the Indochina War cannot be understood as a topic of Franco-US relations, but ought to be treated as international history, this volume brings in Vietnamese and other global agents, including New Zealand, Australia, and especially Britain, as well as China and the Soviet Union. Importantly, the book also argues that the successful French withdrawal from Vietnam – a political defeat for the Eisenhower administration – helped to avert outright warfare between the major powers, although with very mixed results for the inhabitants of Vietnam who faced partition and further bloodshed. The End of the First Indochina Warexplores the complexities of intra-alliance competition over global strategy – especially between the United States and British Commonwealth – arguing that these rivalries are as important to understanding the Cold War as east-west confrontation. This is the first truly global interpretation of the French defeat in 1954, based on the author’s research in five western countries and the latest scholarship from historians of Vietnam, China, and Russia. Readers will find much that is new both in terms of archival revelations and original interpretations.

The End of the First Indochina War

The End of the First Indochina War PDF Author: James Waite
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0415886848
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 302

Get Book Here

Book Description
The French withdrawal from Vietnam in 1954 was the product of global pressures and triggered significant global consequences. By treating the war as an international issue, this book places Indochina at the center of the Cold War in the mid-1950s. Arguing that the Indochina War cannot be understood as a topic of Franco-US relations, but ought to be treated as international history, this volume brings in Vietnamese and other global agents, including New Zealand, Australia, and especially Britain, as well as China and the Soviet Union. Importantly, the book also argues that the successful French withdrawal from Vietnam – a political defeat for the Eisenhower administration – helped to avert outright warfare between the major powers, although with very mixed results for the inhabitants of Vietnam who faced partition and further bloodshed. The End of the First Indochina Warexplores the complexities of intra-alliance competition over global strategy – especially between the United States and British Commonwealth – arguing that these rivalries are as important to understanding the Cold War as east-west confrontation. This is the first truly global interpretation of the French defeat in 1954, based on the author’s research in five western countries and the latest scholarship from historians of Vietnam, China, and Russia. Readers will find much that is new both in terms of archival revelations and original interpretations.

The First Vietnam War

The First Vietnam War PDF Author: Shawn F. McHale
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108936172
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 567

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Book Description
Shawn McHale explores why the communist-led resistance in Vietnam won the anticolonial war against France (1945–54), except in the south. He shows how broad swaths of Vietnamese people were uneasily united in 1945 under the Viet Minh Resistance banner, all opposing the French attempt to reclaim control of the country. By 1947, resistance unity had shattered and Khmer-Vietnamese ethnic violence had divided the Mekong delta. From this point on, the war in the south turned into an overt civil war wrapped up in a war against France. Based on extensive archival research in four countries and in three languages, this is the first substantive English-language book focused on southern Vietnam's transition from colonialism to independence.

The OSS and Ho Chi Minh

The OSS and Ho Chi Minh PDF Author: Dixee Bartholomew-Feis
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
ISBN: 0700616527
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 446

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Book Description
Some will be shocked to find out that the United States and Ho Chi Minh, our nemesis for much of the Vietnam War, were once allies. Indeed, during the last year of World War II, American spies in Indochina found themselves working closely with Ho Chi Minh and other anti-colonial factions-compelled by circumstances to fight together against the Japanese. Dixee Bartholomew-Feis reveals how this relationship emerged and operated and how it impacted Vietnam's struggle for independence. The men of General William Donovan's newly-formed Office of Strategic Services closely collaborated with communist groups in both Europe and Asia against the Axis enemies. In Vietnam, this meant that OSS officers worked with Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Minh, whose ultimate aim was to rid the region of all imperialist powers, not just the Japanese. Ho, for his part, did whatever he could to encourage the OSS's negative view of the French, who were desperate to regain their colony. Revealing details not previously known about their covert operations, Bartholomew-Feis chronicles the exploits of these allies as they developed their network of informants, sabotaged the Japanese occupation's infrastructure, conducted guerrilla operations, and searched for downed American fliers and Allied POWs. Although the OSS did not bring Ho Chi Minh to power, Bartholomew-Feis shows that its apparent support for the Viet Minh played a significant symbolic role in helping them fill the power vacuum left in the wake of Japan's surrender. Her study also hints that, had America continued to champion the anti-colonials and their quest for independence, rather than caving in to the French, we might have been spared our long and very lethal war in Vietnam. Based partly on interviews with surviving OSS agents who served in Vietnam, Bartholomew-Feis's engaging narrative and compelling insights speak to the yearnings of an oppressed people-and remind us that history does indeed make strange bedfellows.

Street Without Joy

Street Without Joy PDF Author: Bernard B. Fall
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 0811767752
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 423

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Book Description
First published in 1961 by Stackpole Books, Street without Joy is a classic of military history. Journalist and scholar Bernard Fall vividly captured the sights, sounds, and smells of the brutal— and politically complicated—conflict between the French and the Communist-led Vietnamese nationalists in Indochina. The French fought to the bitter end, but even with the lethal advantages of a modern military, they could not stave off the Viet Minh insurgency of hit-and-run tactics, ambushes, booby traps, and nighttime raids. The final French defeat came at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, setting the stage for American involvement and a far bloodier chapter in Vietnam‘s history. Fall combined graphic reporting with deep scholarly knowledge of Vietnam and its colonial history in a book memorable in its descriptions of jungle fighting and insightful in its arguments. After more than a half a century in print, Street without Joy remains required reading.

The Road to Dien Bien Phu

The Road to Dien Bien Phu PDF Author: Christopher Goscha
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691228647
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 568

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Book Description
A multifaceted history of Ho Chi Minh’s climactic victory over French colonial might that foreshadowed America’s experience in Vietnam On May 7, 1954, when the bullets stopped and the air stilled in Dien Bien Phu, there was no doubt that Vietnam could fight a mighty colonial power and win. After nearly a decade of struggle, a nation forged in the crucible of war had achieved a victory undreamed of by any other national liberation movement. The Road to Dien Bien Phu tells the story of how Ho Chi Minh turned a ragtag guerrilla army into a modern fighting force capable of bringing down the formidable French army. Taking readers from the outbreak of fighting in 1945 to the epic battle at Dien Bien Phu, Christopher Goscha shows how Ho transformed Vietnam from a decentralized guerrilla state based in the countryside to a single-party communist state shaped by a specific form of “War Communism.” Goscha discusses how the Vietnamese operated both states through economics, trade, policing, information gathering, and communications technology. He challenges the wisdom of counterinsurgency methods developed by the French and still used by the Americans today, and explains why the First Indochina War was arguably the most brutal war of decolonization in the twentieth century, killing a million Vietnamese, most of them civilians. Panoramic in scope, The Road to Dien Bien Phu transforms our understanding of this conflict and the one the United States would later enter, and sheds new light on communist warfare and statecraft in East Asia today.

Valley of Death

Valley of Death PDF Author: Ted Morgan
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1588369803
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 769

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Book Description
Pulitzer Prize–winning author Ted Morgan has now written a rich and definitive account of the fateful battle that ended French rule in Indochina—and led inexorably to America’s Vietnam War. Dien Bien Phu was a remote valley on the border of Laos along a simple rural trade route. But it would also be where a great European power fell to an underestimated insurgent army and lost control of a crucial colony. Valley of Death is the untold story of the 1954 battle that, in six weeks, changed the course of history. A veteran of the French Army, Ted Morgan has made use of exclusive firsthand reports to create the most complete and dramatic telling of the conflict ever written. Here is the history of the Vietminh liberation movement’s rebellion against French occupation after World War II and its growth as an adversary, eventually backed by Communist China. Here too is the ill-fated French plan to build a base in Dien Bien Phu and draw the Vietminh into a debilitating defeat—which instead led to the Europeans being encircled in the surrounding hills, besieged by heavy artillery, overrun, and defeated. Making expert use of recently unearthed or released information, Morgan reveals the inner workings of the American effort to aid France, with Eisenhower secretly disdainful of the French effort and prophetically worried that “no military victory was possible in that type of theater.” Morgan paints indelible portraits of all the major players, from Henri Navarre, head of the French Union forces, a rigid professional unprepared for an enemy fortified by rice carried on bicycles, to his commander, General Christian de Castries, a privileged, miscast cavalry officer, and General Vo Nguyen Giap, a master of guerrilla warfare working out of a one-room hut on the side of a hill. Most devastatingly, Morgan sets the stage for the Vietnam quagmire that was to come. Superbly researched and powerfully written, Valley of Death is the crowning achievement of an author whose work has always been as compulsively readable as it is important.

Exiting Indochina

Exiting Indochina PDF Author: Richard H. Solomon
Publisher: US Institute of Peace Press
ISBN: 9781929223015
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 140

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Book Description
For most Americans, the "exit" from Indochina occurred in 1973, with the withdrawal of the U.S. military from South Vietnam. In fact, the final exit did not occur until two decades later, after the collapse of the Republic of Vietnam in 1975, the Cambodian revolution, and a decade of Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia. Only in the early 1990s were the major powers able to negotiate a settlement of the Cambodia conflict and withdraw from the region. This book recounts the diplomacy that brought an end to great power involvement in Indochina, including the negotiations for a UN peace process in Cambodia and construction of a "road map" for normalizing U.S.-Vietnam relations. In so doing, this volume also highlights the changing character of diplomacy at the beginning of the 1990s, when, at least temporarily, an era of military confrontation among the major world powers gave way to political management of international conflicts.

Doctor At Dien-Bien-Phu

Doctor At Dien-Bien-Phu PDF Author: Major Paul Grauwin
Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing
ISBN: 1786256851
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 455

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Book Description
Includes 34 illustrations. The searing firsthand account of the horrors suffered by the French paratroops and soldiers during the siege of Dien Bien Phu at the hands of the Viet Minh. During the course of the First Indochina War, the French had established a base at Dien Bien Phu in late 1953. Dr. Grauwin, holding the rank of major, arrived in February 1954 to take charge of the 42-bed hospital unit there, conducting triage for evacuation and operating when necessary. By the end of the battle in May, Grauwin had more than 1,300 wounded in the makeshift wards of his hospital, and deprived by the shelling of electricity, was forced to operate by candlelight. With the fall of the base on May 7, he was taken into captivity by the Viet Minh. Grauwin remained in captivity until June 1, when he and other French medical officers were exchanged for several hundred Vietnamese prisoners.

The Second Indochina War

The Second Indochina War PDF Author: William S Turley
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000305392
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 166

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Book Description
In the United States, discussion of the Vietnam War has tended to focus on the U.S. role, U.S. strategy, U.S. diplomacy, and the war's effects on American society. The tendency to hold U.S. domestic politics responsible for the war's outcome implies that events in Indochina were nothing more than a backdrop for an essentially American drama. In contrast, The Second Indochina War emphasizes the Vietnamese dimensions of a conflict in which all of Indochina—Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia—was treated as a single strategic unit. The author contends that only from this perspective is it clear how the war began, why its scale outstripped U.S. expectations, and why the Communists prevailed. Professor Turley gives a balanced account of events in, and views from, Washington, Saigon, and Hanoi. Drawing on years of research in primary documents and interviews conducted by the author in Saigon and Hanoi, the book focuses on the experience, strategies, leadership, and internal politics of the revolutionary side. To set the scene, the author considers the legacies of colonial rule in Indochina and the origins of the U.S. commitment there. He recounts the development of the Saigon regime and explains the bases of revolution in the South, the key communist decisions, and the North's response to bombing. The major military campaigns are clearly described and analyzed, as are the negotiations that led to the Paris Agreement and its aftermath. Vietnam is the central focus, but the reader's attention is also drawn to the strategies and events that unified the conflict in all three countries of Indochina into a single war. Concise yet comprehensive, The Second Indochina War is suitable for the general reader, as a text for courses on the war, or as supplementary reading for courses on Southeast Asian politics, U.S. foreign policy, revolutionary conflict, and Asian regional security. An annotated bibliography and chronology enhance its usefulness. Original material on communist internal debates and military campaigns, based on primary documents in Vietnamese, will also make this book a valuable resource for scholars of Southeast Asia.

Hanoi's Road to the Vietnam War, 1954-1965

Hanoi's Road to the Vietnam War, 1954-1965 PDF Author: Pierre Asselin
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520287495
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
"Using new and largely inaccessible Vietnamese sources as well as French, British, Canadian and American archives, Pierre Asselin sheds valuable light on Hanoi's path to war. Step by step the narrative makes Hanoi's revolutionary strategy from the end of the French Indochina War to the start of the Anti-American Resistance Struggle for Reunification and National Salvation (the Vietnam War) transparent. The book reveals how North Vietnamese leaders moved from a cautious policy emphasizing nonviolent political and diplomatic struggle to a far riskier pursuit of military victory"--