The Battle of Dien Bien Phu

What really happened at Dien Bien Phu? First of all, the French government underestimated the will of the Vietnamese people. Basically, they wanted France out of their country as France had been there over two hundred years and had made a colony out of Vietnam. Vietnam soveriegnty was at stake and the people also were fed up with the French government robbing them of their natural resources such as rubber and shipping this resource back to France. Enough was enough. France was no longer welcomed in Vietnam. General Vo Nguyen Giap and his military basically crippled the French military at this important outpost in northwestern North Vietnam and by the time the fighting was over in about two months the beleagured French forces had to surrender. Giap had cut off any means of supplies entering that embattled piece of real estate. In addition, over that two month period, the North had created tunnels that were used to penetrate the firebases surrounding Dien Bien Phu and the French military had no where to go. They were completely encircled. Old Giap had used some of the same war tactics that the Chinese had used in their early history to defeat enemies of the Chin Dynasty and guess what it worked. He also realized that by keeping the French military from being resupplied by military airlift drops, he would be able to force them into submission and this is exactly what he did.

This was a great military victory for the Vietnamese people and this defeat of the French really shocked the world. And the ironic thing of this entire conflict is that General Giap still lives today somewhere in North Vietnam and is well over ninety years old. He is truly a military here to the Vietnamese people. A strong western power had been finally forced out through primitive but effective techniques of fighting the enemy. Colonialism would no longer be able to exist in Vietnam !!