The Battle of Dien Bien Phu was a climactic confrontation of the First Indochina War that took place between 13 March and 7 May 1954. It was fought between the French Union’s French Far East Expeditionary Corps and Viet Minh communist revolutionaries. The garrison was overrun in May after a two-month siege, and most of the French forces surrendered. The war ended shortly afterward and the 1954 Geneva Accords were signed.
About Battle of Dien Bien Phu in brief
The Battle of Dien Bien Phu was a climactic confrontation of the First Indochina War that took place between 13 March and 7 May 1954. It was fought between the French Union’s French Far East Expeditionary Corps and Viet Minh communist revolutionaries. The French began an operation to insert, then support, their soldiers at Điện Biên Phủ, deep in the hills of northwestern Vietnam. The plan was to resupply the French position by air – based on the belief that the Vietminh had no anti-aircraft capability. The Viet MinH, however, under General Võ Nguyên Giáp, surrounded and besieged the French. The garrison was overrun in May after a two-month siege, and most of the French forces surrendered. The war ended shortly afterward and the 1954 Geneva Accords were signed. France agreed to withdraw its forces from all its colonies in French Ind Cochina, while stipulating that Vietnam would be temporarily divided at the 17th parallel, with control of the north given to the VietMinh as the Democratic Republic of Vietnam under Ho Chi Minh. In 1953, French Premier René Mayer appointed Henri Navarre to take command of French Union forces. Navarre was shocked by what he found: There had been no long-range military plan since Lattre de Lattré de Tassigny had given a single order to create a single military force. According to military scholar Phillip Davidson, Navarre’s arrival would lead to an ‘honorable political solution’ to the Indochinese crisis.
In 1954, the French government in Paris resigned, and the new Prime Minister, the left-of-centre Pierre Mendès France, supported French withdrawal fromIndochina. The battle was decisive; the war ended soon afterward and the Geneva Accord was signed. The French were unable to slow the Viet Minnh advance, who fell back only after outrunning their always-tenuous supply lines. They set up fortified staging areas in northwest Vietnam to strengthen their defenses in the area, including Lai Châu and the Plain of Jars. They also set up staging areas near the Chinese border to the north, near the Hanoi area, and near the Sànàn Nàn to the west of Hanoian Plain. During their 1952–1953 campaign, the Viet minh had overrun vast swathes of Laos, Vietnam’s western neighbor, advancing as far as Luang Prabang and the Plains of JARS. As key positions were overrun, the perimeter contracted. As the air resupplly on which the French had placed their hopes became impossible. Fewer and fewer of those supplies reached the French, and fewer and fewer French forces were able to reach the French garrison. French forces eventually surrendered in May 1954, and a few of them escaped to Laos.
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