casahistoria home                              visit caféhistoria for updates and current topic news

2. Biographies 

---

casahistoria home                              visit caféhistoria for updates and current topic news

 

5. The French War, 1945-54 - II: Campaigns & Ðiên Biên Phú 

---

 

• Hoa Binh Campaign At Hoa Binh, the watershed of the First Indochina War, the Viet Minh succeeded in bottling up the French in the Red River Delta. By Shaun M. Darragh
• Battle for Colonial Road 4 October, 1950. Interesting personal recollection by George Moore. Written Phnom Penh, March, 1997  §
• Setting the Stage David T. Zabecki writes that beaten in the Red River delta, in the 1950-51 campaign the Viet Minh proved at Hoa Binh they had learned their lesson, a lesson that would win them the war. (§ currently put offline by history.net but the article is linked here from the Wayback Archive, but be patient - slow to load!)
• Showdown at Nghia Lo - Northern Indochina, October 1-15, 1951 by Wild Bill Wilder
• Operation Lorraine (29th Oct - 8th Nov 1952) : Salan Strikes At Giap's Supply Lines

• Indochina War Films - Film reviews from Indochine. Good reviews of Hollywood and French films on the French & US wars. Select your Blockbuster movie from their list!
• Indochina 1951-1954 a site of a large number of photos taken by Italian Foreign legionnaire Michele Vacca Ovodda (1923-1954). In Italian.
• Links The excellent Indochine link site to web sites on most aspects of the war and Dien Bien Phu

• CNN Cold War - Spotlight: Dien Bien Phu Good, clear CNN page from the CNN/BBC Cold War series.
• Dien Bien Phu. Straightforward and basic account with diagrams by Stephen Kirchhoff. Published in American Military Experience, November 2003
• Dien Bien Phu – A Fatal Gamble by Wild Bill Wilder. Well written, clear account.
• Siege of Dien Bien Phu (1954) Produced for the Military Geology courses of the University of Missouri-Rolla
• Dien Bien Phu: A Battle to Remember by Bernard B. Fall. He wrote this article in 1964, prior to the publication of Hell in a Very Small Place. Fall was born in 1926 and grew up in France. Both his parents were killed by the Nazis in World War II. He gained firsthand guerrilla warfare experience while fighting in the French Underground from 1942 to 1944. With the Allied invasion of Europe, Fall joined the French army, serving in the infantry and pack artillery of the 4th Moroccan Mountain Division.
• Battle of Dien Bien Phu Shaped Southeast Asia Vietnam: Account of the battle. By George Esper, Associated Press. Published on the Australian Involvement in Vietnam Site
• An Analysis Of The French Defeat At Dien Bien Phu by Major Harry D. Bloomer, USA, who argues that at Dien Bien Phu the French violated nearly all of the principles of war at every level of war--strategic, operational, and tactical.  These violations contributed significantly to the French defeat. Page layout is frustrating, but is well detailed.  §
• Dien Bien Phu Infos In French but most useful for its maps of the Dien Bien Phu strongpoints.
• New Perspectives on Dien Bien Phu New Perspectives on Dien Bien Phu. Pierre Asselin. From "Contributions to the History of Dien Bien Phu," Vietnamese Studies 3 (1965): 51.
• Ðiên Biên Phú Complete with suitably grave music(!) and calling itself the official site of the battle. This is a multimedia site first and foremost but has interesting miscellany on the battle....
• Dien Bien Phu: A Vietnamese Perspective Review of a recently released a revised and supplemented edition of Dien Bien Phu, an account of the battle penned by General Giap

casahistoria home                              visit caféhistoria for updates and current topic news

 

6. Laos, Cambodia & the French 

---

 

• French domination of Laos From "Refugees from Laos: historical background and causes" by Gary Yia Lee. Article focuses on the historical background and causes of population displacement from Laos, within context of the Indochina War.
• The War in Laos - Red Princes, Opium Farmers and Elephants From the Indochine site. Very details article by Danny O'Hara with campaign maps and clear layout
• Khmer Issarak - The War in Cambodia 1945-53 From the Indochine site. "Of all the Indochinese regions, Cambodia probably saw the least fighting during the French Indochina War. That is not to say that nothing happened in the country during this period - in fact, many seeds of the later struggles were sown during this time. Political activity was more important than - but did not entirely replace - military guerrilla action in Cambodia." A detailed chronology
• Useful outline histories from ASEAN Focus where the emphasis is on the colonial and immediate post colonial period:
  • Cambodia
  • Laos

casahistoria home                              visit caféhistoria for updates and current topic news

 

7. Geneva Accords & background to US intervention 

---

 

• The Geneva Accords in 1954 Brief description by Ed Moise  §
• Geneva Conference useful day by day info from the excellent set of detailed chronologies of the Vietnam War Timetable compiled by Ray Sarlin
• Geneva Accords; Agreement on the Cessation of Hostilities in Vietnam (July 20, 1954)  The actual documents
• Chronology 1950-1964 From the Avalon Project at Yale Law School. Also has a Indochina - Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos search engine.
• The Aftermath of the Geneva Accords (1954-1961)  by Ed Moise  §
• The Second Indochina War 1954-60 from the excellent set of detailed chronologies of the Vietnam War Timetable compiled by Ray Sarlin
• The Importance to the U.S. of the Security and Progress of Viet-Nam Address by President Eisenhower, Gettysburg College, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, April 4, 1959 (Excerpt)
• The Program of the National Liberation Front (1962) translation from Viet Cong by Douglas Pike (Cambridge, Massachusetts: 1966. Here ( §) is a fuller version from Vassar College.
• Diem: America's Mandarin Transcript of PBS TV programme: The American Experience
• Assassination of Ngo Dinh Diem Very thorough article from Vietnam Magazine. By Peter Kross
• Buddhist Crisis in Vietnam Detailed article looks at emergence of Buddhist issue in south after Geneva. From Vietnam Magazine. By Peter Brush

General outlines linking the French wars with the US war

• Vietnam Chronology A comprehensive timeline of events from 1945-1975, listing each battle and its length.
• Chronology of U.S.-Vietnamese Relations A timeline of events from 1930 to the present.
• Roots of a War (1945-1953): PBS/The American Experience/Vietnam/Transcript
• Battle for Colonial Road 4, October, 1950 Interesting personal recollection by George Moore. Written Phnom Penh, March, 1997
• The Vietnamese, the French and the Americans to 1960 A referenced article covering the challenges to Vietnamese autonomy. Includes a section on the French connection.

Kennedy and Vietnam

• Senator John F. Kennedy, Speaking about Indochina, April 6, 1954   §
• America Engages 1960-64  use this to see the stages by which JFK draws the US into the conflict. From the excellent set of detailed chronologies of the Vietnam War Timetable compiled by Ray Sarlin
• JFK's Early Indecisions. Peter Kross argues that J F. Kennedy's tentative response to the report by General Maxwell Taylor had unintended consequences for the course of the war. Click  for the complete "Report of McNamara-Taylor Mission to South Vietnam". It was fundamental to National Security Action Memorandum, approved by JFK on October 5, 1963
• Idealism and pragmatism in American foreign policy rhetoric: The case of John F. Kennedy and Vietnam From Presidential Studies Quarterly (1994) Denise Bostdorff (Purdue University), Steven Goldzwig (Marquette University)
• Was John Kennedy Going to Pull Out of Vietnam? interview done with Robert Kennedy in April, 1964 by the John F. Kennedy Library.
• Early Covert Action on the Ho Chi Minh Trail Article about the 1961 and 1962 CIA- trained and -sponsored 1st Observation Group formed to counter Communist operations along the trail. By Ken Conboy and James Morrison. Article from HistoryNet

For extensive links to the US war in Vietnam go to the casahistoria sites:
 
             Vietnam War, Part One: US Involvement and campaigns 

             Vietnam War, Part Two: opposition, contagion & US withdrawal 

 

casahistoria home                              visit caféhistoria for updates and current topic news