Battle For Dien Bien Phu | Full Documentary

Prelude To The Vietnam War. It was the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu that led directly to America’s involvement in Vietnam#kingsofdocs
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[Music] a valley just like many other valleys a market just like like many other markets but this is Vietnam and this market and this Valley is that of diban Fu where in May 1954 France suffered one of the worst defeats in her history certainly one to rank with watero and sedan and ainur it was a defeat too that had dramatic effects around the world not least in the [Music] west today dbn who is at peace though here and there uniform still intrude every bump in the valley was fortified and fought over most bloodily the agony of Dean ban Fu some called it memorials to the dead now Crown many of the small hills decades later rusting remnants of the Epic struggle is still being dug up most of the fortifications in the valley have long since been cleared away save this the under ground headquarters of the French Commander a maab monument to such a miserable debacle for 56 days and 56 nights the French at dban Fu were besieged Hell in a very small place was how one described it there have of course been longer sieges this Century United States troops held batan for 66 days while British and Commonwealth forces held to Brook for 241 days but what was different about deanb and Fu was that like Midway and Stalingrad in the first battle of the man it was one of the most decisive battles of this century and it was the French defeat at Dian ban Fu that ushered in the United States involvement in Vietnam with all that that [Music] entailed hello it will be a war between an elephant and a tiger if the tiger stands still the elephant will crush him but the tiger will never stand still he will leap upon the elephant’s back ripping out huge chunks of Flesh and then will disappear again into the dark jungle and slowly the elephant will bleed to death that will be the war in Indochina Thus Spoke hoim Min in 1946 his elephant then in Vietnam was the French though his remark was to be just as apt a decade or so later when his opponent with the United States the West first became interested in Vietnam 300 years ago when French Jesuits established missions there and it was the persecution of the Vietnamese Catholics by their rulers last century that provided the pretext for France to occupy Indochina 7,000 M distant from Paris Indochina and Vietnam in particular with its rice and rubber and opium soon became the jewel of France’s Empire nor did the Vietnamese give the French much trouble but Hitler’s defeat of France in 1940 changed all that Japan had already occupied much of Vietnam’s neighbor to the North China and that same year forced the French to allow Japanese troops to enter the country in July 1941 just 5 months before Pearl Harbor Vietnam was in integrated into the Japanese military system though French civilians continued to administer it right up until the closing weeks of the war when fearing an Allied invasion the Japanese imprisoned them this was a body blow to the French because it not only showed their weakness and hence encouraged nationalism but also with the Japanese defeat in August 1945 created a political vacuum in Vietnam which hoi min’s Viet Min promptly filled Viet Min which is a contraction of a longer Viet amese word meaning League for the independence of Vietnam had been founded by ho in 1941 now he took advantage of the confusion following the Japanese surrender to declare Vietnam’s independence and to establish a government of sorts in the north based on Hanoi it was some 10 days afterwards that the first British troops arrived in southern Vietnam to disarm the Japanese and to free the French though once freed the French gave the Vietnam men short shrift especially around Saigon but ho was having better luck in the north where the taking of the Japanese surrender had been left to Chinese troops from across the border it was largely to get those Chinese to leave that in March 1946 France recognized hoi’s regime more and more French troops poured in as TS dragged on to flesh out that recognition but before the end of the year France and the vietn were at War a war triggered by a relatively minor incident over Customs inspection in hano’s Port of Hong H fled to the mountains near the Chinese border where he remain for the next 8 years eight years of up and down struggle as first the French and then the Vietnam seem to be gaining the upper hand eight years that cost the lives of nearly 100 th000 Frenchmen and many times that number of Vietnamese time and time again politicians in Paris with one voice implored their generals to defeat the Communists in Indochina for the glory of France and with another found excuses for not sending them enough troops to win the war French Pride had been deeply wounded by their defeat in 1940 and they were the most reluctant of the Imp Imperial powers to Grant Independence to their colonies hoim Min would have been ready for the same friendly Association continuing association between an independent Vietnam and France as India and Pakistan and Salon were already establishing with Britain after they had become independent but the French did not believe that their overseas colonies should become completely indep dependent Nations they thought they should remain a part of what they called the French Union and that these overseas lands and their peoples were a part of France and the French overseas France they would of course enjoy a lot of internal self-government in their own Affairs but power would rest with the central government of the Union in Paris which would control foreign policy and defense policy and certain economic policies and so on the French wouldn’t give way and so war was inevitable and a lot of the Vietnamese who had supported the French went over to hoan’s side the French by and large were able to maintain their hold on the major towns and for the most part to control the roads too but the country areas were a different matter and were mainly The vietn Province however hard the French tribe they failed to clear them out when French troops moved into one country area the Vietnam simply faded away to reappear as soon as the French had left a pattern that became all too familiar to American troops 20 years later except on one or two rare occasions when they received a bloody nose that seemed to prove the rightness of their strategy the Vietnam avoided set piece battles which infuriated the French generals by by the spring of 1953 the Viet controlled nearly three quarters of the country they invaded French la which set in train yet another political crisis in Paris this was the period when the French changed their governments as often as others changed their clothes public opinion in France had increasingly become War weary and more and more voices were being raised in favor of a settlement that would bring the boys home the crisis led to a change of military leadership General Ori naar became the new French commander-in-chief in Indo China his orders were to save LA and to prepare the way militarily for eventual negotiation with hoochi Min the ending of the Korean war that summer meant that ho could expect even more military aid from the Chinese and Russians than he’d been getting so far for the French it became imperative to clip hose wings as soon as possible and this could only be be done by tempting the Viet men into the open for a setpiece battle where so the French thought their superiority in Firepower on the ground and in the air would win them the day the place naar chose for his confrontation was this Lush Valley surrounded by high heavily wooded Hills in the northwest corner of Vietnam a mere 8 mil from and 50 from China but more importantly for the outcome of the battle it was nearly 200 miles from the main French Air Base at Hanoi Dian ban Fu the Vietnamese called it seat of the Border County administrative Center is the prosaic English translation its lushness is due to its high annual rainfall more than 60 in Fall here during the 6mth long monsoon season of March to August when clouds cover the valley for most of the day and lowlevel flying if not out of the question is extremely uncertain as the French army weather people well knew needless to say it was in the dry season that the French paratroops dropped on dbn Fu Friday November the 20th 1953 to be precise with two batteries of Airborne artillery and a company of heavy mortars some 1,800 of them fell from the skies that day over the bewildered inhabitants of the valley they were among the best of the French units in Vietnam and had fought in every major battle here so far the French had of course occupied dban Fu before but had been forced out the year previously at the time its loss had been dismissed as of no strategic significance and the valley described as a mere inconsequential hole in the ground not all of nar’s colleagues agreed with his decision to reoccupy dbn Fu and when the French government heard about it they sent an admiral from Paris to try to dissuade him the Emissary presented himself in nar’s office at the very moment the paratroops were dropping on DNB Fu the drop had nearly been called off at the last minute because of possible bad weather and a late intelligence discovery that the valley was defended by a few hundred Viet regulars armed with mortars and machine [Music] [Applause] guns it was the Viet Mort machine guns that caused the casualties among the French and kept the helicopter ambulances [Applause] [Applause] busy by dusk though the Viet men had been cleared from the valley and time could be spared to bury the dead 11 on the French side and nearly 100 Viet men that first day the forerunners alas of some 20,000 who were to be laid to rest at dbn Fu before the battle was [Music] over the French generals were pleased with their first day and felt they could confidently plan for the tomorrow when another 650 men were to be [Music] dropped the most eagerly awaited event of the second day though was the dropping of the bulldozer that was to level the landing strip that had been laid by the French 25 years previously but lately dug up by the Viet Min to deter just such an invasion of one of their key opium growing areas the Viet Min of course had no aircraft raw opium worth about a million dollar a year was collect Ed here and the foreign currency obtained from selling it in Hong Kong and Bangkok had been used to buy medsin and surplus World War I weapons on the black markets there with the landing strip in order planes by the score could now bring to the valley all the ghastly paraphernalia of modern war tanks jeeps trucks Armored Cars ambulances blood banks workshops x-ray machines operating theaters battery chargers water purifiers bridging materials barbed wire landmines signals equipment mobile electricity generators you name it they brought it to DNB and Fu including even two field brothel some 15,000 men would eventually flown here and more than 60 heavy guns 2third of the garison were not French at all but either friendly Vietnamese Moroccans tunisians algerians salies or else German Italian Spanish Portuguese Czech polish and Yugoslav members of the legendary foreign region this jumble of nationalities Plus the confusion of men living in pup tents and cooking over small open fires gave the operation for the first few days at least the air of a vast Boy Scouts jambur once established the gison was encouraged to venture forth to meet the Viet and to gain intelligence of his movements at first they encountered merely lightly armed gorilla bands but it was not long before there was firm evidence of strong groups of vietman regulars having returned to the area when in foraging stabs against them the Garrison came off badly thereafter they were discouraged from leaving the comparative safety of the valley so any offensive meaning dbn Fu might have had was gone and it was merely a question of waiting for the Viet men to attack a at a moment presumably of their own choosing meantime the generals coped with something more to their liking a veritable Deluge of visiting dignitaries come to see this latest Wonder of French military Ingenuity that Dian ban Fu was completely surrounded even by early January and that the ring was getting tighter every day didn’t deter the generals from their metal pinning nor that from the beginning of February the vietn men occasionally pounded the air strip patrols sent to destroy these guns failed even to locate them what was worse when a French officer was killed the Vietnam found on his body a detailed map of dban Fu’s defenses sound military sense should have prompted naar to evacuate the Garrison his staff did examine the feasibility of a withdrawal Under Fire but concluded it would be too costly in men and material and hence that it was better to sit it out the gauntlet naar had thrown down had indeed been picked up by his vietman opposite number V Nayan Gap a history teacher under the French but now a self-style general Gap sent about bringing nearly a 100,000 troops to dbn fu 40% of his total strength compared with a mere 4% of the French forces in Indochina The Garrison represented unlike the French Who were parachuted or flown in the Vietnam marched to dban Fu carrying their weapons and their food with them and of course wearing the distinctive palm leaf helmet that was to become familiar to a generation of American troops a decade or so later back in the air conditioned map rooms of the French High command the Viet men were thought to be incapable of keeping supplied for any length of time a sizable Force so far from their main bases even if Gap was able to bring guns to DNB and Fu as soon as they fire they would be silenced by the heavier French guns on the ground or by the combat bombers from the air so ran the impeccable logic of the generals and colonels trained in the militarys of Metropolitan France although as the crow flew China was only 50 mil from dbn Fu the point on the border from which Gap was getting his supplies was some 600 mil away 600 mil of largely trackless jungle with many rivers to cross and mountains to scale Gap got thousands of coolies to work in the main by forcibly conscripting them without pay from Villages along the Route and no doubt they didn’t all work as enthusiastically as this Russian shot film would have us believe all in all it was a remarkable achievement and under the very noses of the French a trail was laid in just 3 months that wound the 600 mil from the supply depos on the Chinese border the first hoochi Min Trail and as history has recorded not the last the Viet men were masters of camouflage and went to great pains to conceal their movements from the prying gaze of the French reconnaissance Plains at certain points along the trail the tops of the tall trees were tied together to form a tunnel of vegetation the vietman Knew Too that once the monsoon began flying over Dian ban Fu and the supply Trails leading to it would be difficult for the French the whole rais on death of dban Fu was that it could be protected and resupplied from the air without hindrance or Interruption everything on the Viet Min side was subordinated to feeding the front men machines and animals were ruthlessly requisition women played their part [Music] too it was a gigantic single-minded effort [Music] the Russians gave G up several hundred heavy trucks which were put to good use by him though they were forever conking out and repairs were not easy in the jungle by far the greater part of the supplies were taken to dmbn FU by bicycle most of them French made and bought years before in the shops of Hanoi and Saigon each carried about a fifth of a ton and some 8,000 tons of ammunition and food were brought to dbn Fu in this way the Vietnam’s biggest achievement though and the one which proved crucial to the outcome of the battle was hauling in more than 200 heavy guns many of them American captured by the Chinese in Korea bunkers in the hillsides overlooking DNB and Fu had been built for the guns again without the French realizing and when they did they refused to believe it said the French artillery Commander firstly the vietman won’t succeed in getting their guns here secondly if they do we’ll smash them thirdly even if they manage to keep on firing they’ll be unable to supply their pieces with enough ammunition to do us any real harm he was to commit suicide shortly after the battle began [Music] ironically if the French had evacuated DNB and Fu at the last minute and they clearly had the means to do it before the monsoon began they might have won a tremendous psychological victory since it would have left Gap with the bulk of his forces and all his artillery in the middle of nowhere as it were while the French with their greater Airborne Mobility could have attacked his Supply bases near the Chinese border with relative impunity but such resource was unknown on the French Side by this stage of the indo-china war nor was there much unanimity in their approach to the fighting nar’s subordinate commander in the north General RI coni for one opposed the stand at dban Fu and yet had been entrusted with its detail planning and supplying the luckless commander there was a dashing womanizing Cavalry Colonel by the name of Christian Mar fedin laad de castri it was said that the strong points in the valley were named after his Mistresses an Marie Beatrice Gabrielle clodine franois Isabel Dominique Marcel but once the battle began he faded away and the Tactical decisions were taken by his Pat troop Commander Pierre longle stke only when success is certain was the instruction Gap had from hoi Min and by early March more than a 100 days after the French paratroops had first landed at diban Fu Gap decided he was ready he’d even had a model made of the valley with which to plan his battle and to brief his subordinates French intelligence got 24 hours warning of the attack when they intercepted a message from gap’s headquarters to clear all civilians from the valley by by noon on March the 13th a Saturday when told D castri guessed the battle would start at 5:00 p.m. since the vietn usually attacked just before dark when their Gunners had enough light to see their targets but when there wasn’t much time for the French combat bombers to intervene he was dead right like a hail storm on a wintry evening shells rain down on the hapless Frenchman for the first time they were feeling the full weight of the Viet artillery bunker after bunker trench after trench collapsed burying under them men and weapons many of the French heavy guns were knocked out straight away and casualties among the Gunners in their open pits were high 500 Frenchmen died that first evening including some of dri’s closest colleagues his chief of staff suffered a nervous breakdown and had to be relieved of his [Music] post one of the key strong points fell almost immediately and was never retaken within a few hours the air strip was a burning mess of wrecked planes the control tar and radio Beacon both destroyed and so the premise on which Nar had based a Victorious defense of Dian ban Fu namely continued availability of uninterrupted air support was already being challenged many of the non-french members of The Garrison deserted or simply gave up the fight dicastri was to lose a fifth of his force in this way curiously not all of them went over to the enemy the majority set it out within the entrenched Camp begging for food from their former comrades or else stealing what they could at night equally curiously the castri tolerated this bizarre situation further strong points fell within the first 72 hours and by the end of the fifth day all dmbn Fu’s outer defenses were in Viet hands the French had also lost a third of their heavy guns [Music] miraculously despite the monsoon Mists and the deadly accuracy of the Vietnam aak some planes were getting in with supplies and reinforcements and were even taking out some of the seriously wounded at the cost in aircraft was so high that it clearly couldn’t last mercifully almost by the end of the first Fortnight the air strip was totally out of action and the unthinkable had happened tan Fu was cut off except for what and who could be parachuted in gap now called again on his army of kolers this time to ring Dian ban Fu with a vast intricate web of trenches night and day the valley echoed with the sound of digging on a gigantic scale The Trenches ran to within a 100 yards or so of every French position and some burrowed beneath them the Defenders asked their headquarters for trench periscopes but none were available in Vietnam the request was passed to Paris but evidently there were not even any suitable relics of the first world war to be had with ammunition in such short supply the French had to limit their fire though they could see the Vietnam [Music] digging gap’s tactics were to pick off the dmbn fu strong points one at a time the routine was usually the same trenches were dug right up to the particular French Outpost and round it more often than not such that supplies and reinforcements couldn’t get through and the defense simply died by exhaustion or more likely strangulation despite the Relentless Viet pressure the French defense was far from passive not a day passed by without a Counterattack or some offensive stab it was remarkable that their morale held up under such excruciating conditions vietman prisoners were taken almost every day at one time more than 2,000 were [Applause] held mail was dropped to The Defenders fairly regularly one Moroccan Sergeant received official permission to make a pilgrimage to Mecca without of course the Paris bureaucrat suggesting how he might leave the valley memos and radio messages by the Myriad Wing their way between dbn Fu and Hanoi or Saigon where K and nvar were comfortably located while the Defenders sought supplies and yet more supplies reinforcements and yet more reinforcements which they knew in their hearts would never come in adequate enough numbers or amounts though hardly a day went by without some supplies were dropped and some men parachuted into the valley The General on the outside wrote for history trying to Buck the blame for Dean ban Fu’s predicament which they knew history would certainly place at their door as it was naar and coni were scarcely talking to each other save what was militarily necessary which didn’t ease things for the unfortunate Defenders [Music] The Defenders seldom had more than 2 or 3 days ammunition and were constantly having to ration their salvos while the Viet men could be proplate with theirs D NBN Fu was now hardly bigger than a baseball ground because of this the the increasing numbers of the vietn akak Guns Plus of course the poor visibility over the valley from the monsoon more and more of the French supply drops were going astray what was worth some of the United States Equipment beginning to come France’s way especially the delayed fuse shells was falling into vietman hands and being used against the Defenders with devastating effect food was inevitably a problem and usually took second place in the supply drops to ammunition and Replacements of men The Defenders were soon on half rations and then on hardly any Russians at all for the French their Replacements never kept pace with their losses and so the Gallison was being steadily reduced in numbers those who remain scarcely ever got an opportunity to rest let alone to [Music] recover the vietman of course could be more easily replaced they simply walked in but their heavy losses 10,000 killed in the first month were affecting their morale many of the Viet Replacements were only 16 years old and had been recruited a few weeks before their training was minimal incredibly some of them deserted to the French lines conditions for the wounded on both sides were desperate dbn Fu had become a Valley of Tears and death pain was everywhere the Viet men were perennially short of medicines had only one experienced surgeon and half a dozen not too well informed General Practitioners the French were better off with 19 doctors including some excellent surgeons but they’re wounded seldom less than a thousand at any one time and considerably more towards the end had to face an indefinite stay under Fire in dugouts that were several feet underwater the French tried to reach an understanding with gap regarding wounded but he refused to allow any french casualties even the most serious cases to leave the valley nor would he accept The Return by the French of his own wounded in his Marxist way he wanted to maximize the effect on French morale of the constant sight of maimed bodies every day hundreds of men suffered at Dian ban Fu every day many died here the French soon found it impossible to bury their dead and the sickly sweet smell of decomposing corpses pervaded the valley and that’s the first time we have we have not too much bodies we can take him for a Cho and take in in the earth alone one by one but at the end it was difficult and sometime we cannot recognize and take the identification because men who lost your hand and the head and no more the do staks so what can you do no identification when you saw the dead people and wed ones on the ground and on a very wet ground with rain and uh it was in horrid View and uh perhaps for me as for other people around me it was something making think of the hell it was difficult to change the bandage because we have few bandage it was difficult because we have no bed pan enough it was difficult because we have no no sweet things just little food not much and sometime we have like said we have one ration for not one man but nine ration for 10 man we take part smaller but that every body have something was sometime very hard in the last days of the of the struggle uh there was a big problem of of flooding you know we had uh water the the River flooded over and we had mud up to to the Belt you know so uh it was very hard to fight in such circumstances you know Good Friday April the 16th came around and everybody at dbn Fu Alo it seemed was promoted or decorated dri’s Insignia of General together with a congratulatory bottle of champagne was dropped over the valley but fell into vietn hands that mishap symbolized the increasing hopelessness of the French position within the week they had lost more than a half of the air strip making further supply drops difficult if not now almost impossible but meanwhile 6,000 M away at Geneva in Switzerland preparations were being made for a summit conference to decide indochina’s fate the previous December Russia now more moderate since Stalin’s death had suggested that the three Western Powers meet with them in Berlin to discuss Mutual problems this had happened within the month and out of it had come a British suggestion for a further get together at Geneva in late April to resolve the Korean stalemate and if possible Indochina the United States under President Eisenhower and more especially his hardliner anti-communist secretary of state John Foster dallis had been reluctant to agree the stumbling block was The Proposal that the Chinese Communists and the Vietnam should take part the British never got involved in the war in Vietnam they didn’t give any military aid to the French or to the South Vietnamese the American attitude was very different indeed the Americans had been involved they were in favor in principle of the Vietnamese being independent but on condition that they chose an anti-communist and anti-chinese and anti-russian national government and they of course were very worried that hoi Min if he became the head of the government and his colleagues would be Pro communist and so the Americans had been involved already in the war for some years not with American soldiers but they gave enormous financial aid to the French and to the South Vietnamese against hoim Min they gave military equipment to the French and to the South Vietnamese in fact without that American military aid material military aid the French couldn’t have carried on the war as long as they did by the time the Geneva conference was convening the United States was contributing almost 34s of the French cost of the war in Indochina and had already footed a bill of more than a billion dollars but as far as most of the world’s press was concerned the main interest at Geneva was seeing the red Chinese for the first time led by their prime minister Chuan Li the vietn with their Spartan clothes and serious countenances came in for much curiosity too [Music] but even as the rest of the delegations were arriving the French behind the scenes were desperately trying to persuade the United States to deliver a massive air strike against the vietn at Ganan Fu Dalles appeared willing and according to the French even offered atomic bombs but Eisenhower insisted the operation be cleared with Congressional leaders in Washington who flatly turned it down unless it were a joint action of all the Western allies but the British for one under Winston Churchill and more especially Anthony Eden wouldn’t do anything that might jeopardize the Geneva negotiations no doubt the story of Vietnam after 1954 particularly as it affected the United States would have been different if Dallas had got his way and American PLS had successfully destroyed gap’s forces at dmbn Fu with the Geneva conference underway the vietn men were clearly anxious to defeat the French at dban Fu as quickly as possible to strengthen their bargaining hand at 5:00 p.m. on May the 1st Gap began his final assault the vietnan dead were countless the French casualties were heavy too 500 men in a single evening clearly such losses could not continue on May the 5th Hanoi gave to C three permission to break out but to have done so in any great numbers would have been pure Folly a few did Escape though and managed to reach the French lines in Laos the Defenders could see the Vietnam lining up to attack but lacked the ammunition to shoot them by then they were down to just 3 hours Supply on May the 6th gap’s artillery destroyed most of the remaining French guns that night D castri and his colleagues decided further resistance was pointless Hanoi pleaded with them not to surrender for the sake of France’s Pride the compromise agreed was that the Garrison would cease firing at 5:30 p.m. the next day dban Fu would fall not capitulate silence came at one stroke suddenly no noise I was sad to be prisoner but I was AP for my wounded soldiers when news of the N reached Paris the French Capital went into virtual mourning all television and radio went off the air to be replaced by solemn music in particular berio’s requium in the United States though the news didn’t rate the front pages they were filled with another fall that of the Communist witch hunter Senator Joseph McCarthy who at long last was meeting his match in the televised Army hearings some 10,000 of the Garrison were marched off to prison camps near the Chinese border half of them to die on route or in vietn imprisonment more than were killed by Viet bullets and shells at dmbn Fu [Music] itself the day after Dian ban Fu fell was the 9th anniversary of V Day the Allied victory over Nazi Germany traditionally an occasion for the French to demonstrate National Unity at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Paris many of the politicians who attended were jostled and bared save one who was cheered a go the days of France’s Fourth Republic were numbered in Vietnam General Navar argued that d ban Fu had given France a new reason for continuing the fighting but no one believed him anymore and he was soon to be replaced later that same day just 24 hours after Dian ban Fu had fallen the French delegation at Geneva sued for peace in Indochina France’s Imperial dream was at an end it took a further 10 days of pitiless bargaining before the Vietnam allowed the French the helicopter out there seriously wounded from dbn Fu nearly 900 left this way and their arrival in Hanoi and subsequently in Paris was both a joyful and in many ways tragic occasion it showed the terrible price France’s young men had paid for their Elders lesson 8,000 of the dbn fu Garrison lost their lives and another 7,000 were wounded in some way estimates of the Viet dead vary between 12 and 25,000 the war in Indochina officially ended on July the 20th 1954 LA and Cambodia were given their independence by the French as was Vietnam but the northern part of the country above the 17th parallel was handed to the Vietnam it was written into the Geneva agreement that within 2 years a referendum was to be held in the whole of Vietnam to decide on reunification but how that count was never taken is another story all that remained now was for the French administrators in Hanoi to hand over to the vietn and to make their withdrawal while hoochi Min and his Victorious troops prepared to enter their new [Music] capital [Music] one Vietnam War was over another alas was about to [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] begin [Music] he [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music]