Customer Reviews

Valley of Death: The Tragedy at Dien Bien Phu That Led America into the Vietnam War

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

For a pivotal battle that marked the end of France's colonial ambitions in Indochina and America's increasing involvement there, there's been surprisingly few books that focus on it exclusively. Most of the historiography on Dien Bien Phu has incorporated it into the larger framework of the overall efforts at Vietnamese liberation from even before the Second World War to the collapse of Saigon in 1975. Earlier books such as Henri Navarre's "Agonie de l'Indochine" (1958), Bernard Fall's Hell in a Very Small Place: The Siege of Dien Bien Phu (1985), Jules Roy's The Battle of Dienbienphu (2002), David Stone's DIEN BIEN PHU: (Battles in Focus) (2004) and Martin Windrow's The Last Valley: Dien Bien Phu and the French Defeat in Vietnam (also 2004) covered this pivotal battle to varying degrees of success, and each with their own particular perspective on it. While it would appear Morgan could have little to add, the reality is there is much that has been recently declassified or overlooked by previous researchers, especially within the French archives. As a veteran of the French army, Morgan has the potential to show bias, but adeptly avoids that. Morgan also debunks the theory that the French arrogantly blundered into selecting Dien Bien Phu as a defensive stand, leaving the hilly terrain around the area for the Vietminh to capture, reconstructing how implausible it was that the Vietminh could do what they did and how theoretically easy it should have been to supply the base via air support. Of course this was proven fatally wrong by the Vietminh, who disassembled and dragged artillery pieces into the mountains surrounding the area and then reassembled them, despite no roads in the area and with them being covered by dense jungle foliage. What emerges instead is a story of grim determination by both sides to hold on in the face of daunting challenges, dispelling the belief it was a mistake by the French, who were instead undone by the undaunted courage and willpower of the Vietminh.

Morgan captures the unfolding drama as though we don't already know the outcome of events in a prose that is very engaging. The French quite simply could not have seen things unfolding the way they did; no one expected what happened, as the Vietminh accomplished the seemingly impossible. My major quibble is that Morgan's book is a bit Amero-centric, as it seeks more to explain how the U.S. was drawn into the Vietnamese conflict, rather than what it meant to the French. Morgan explores the pleas of the French for U.S. intervention and the discussion of possibly using atomic weaponry, which was ultimately rejected for obvious reasons. The debacle at Dien Bien Phu was followed two years later by the British and French intervention in the Suez Crisis, which effectively marked the end of both as Great Powers. It could be argued that Dien Bien Phu was the initial rupture or breaking point for Eisenhower's tolerance of continued European colonialism, yet Morgan doesn't make that point here. Suez is frequently pointed to as that break point along with increasing U.S. intervention in the late 1950s, displacing European powers. For the French, Dien Bien Phu was the beginning of the end of their empire, followed by decolonization and the war in Algeria. I would have liked "Valley of Death" had it given more of the "big picture" relevancy to France and global relations. While Morgan seeks to explain how the U.S. wound up in Vietnam, the result is too narrowly tailored when it could be used to explain things more broadly. As a result "Valley of Death" is micro-history, not macro-history. Enjoyable indeed, but it could have been so much more.

Ted Morgan has written an excellent book about the 1954 Battle of Dien Bien Phu. Actually, it starts in 1940 and takes about a third of the book just to get to the commencement of the battle because it covers the background on the French and Vietminh sides (and the American involvement too). Morgan is an excellent writer who can shift very easily from conferences at the Presidential/Foreign Ministry level to the viewpoint of troops in the field. The interplay between soldiers and politicians in France is fascinating and sometimes revolting if you believe, as I do, that it is obscene to send young men into battle unless you are serious about the war aims and prepared to see them through to the end. The details of the French involvement before the battle and the consequences of the defeat at DBP and how they played out afterward are thought-provoking and fascinating. The popular view is sometimes that the American vs. NVA/VC Battle of Khe Sanh in 1968 was just Dien Bien Phu Part II with the Americans substituting for the French; this book definitively shows why this was not so. Morgan has written another excellent book called "My Battle of Algiers" about his experience as a conscript in the French army during the equally unpopular Algerian war and his very mixed - to say the least - feelings about his military service there. He is uniquely qualified to write on these topics because he was born French (as Sanche de Gramont) but moved to America when young and has since become very Americanized. Anyone interested in what happened before the US got involved in Vietnam will like this book.

For anyone even remotely interested in how we went to war in South-Vietnam this is a MUST study. This book brilliantly captures the politics,culture and frustrations we faced by a leadership who too willingly committed us to war without exploring the unintended results. As an Infantry Officer who served three tours on the ground in SVN, this book provides a seminal study on how we should NOT be deluded into future conflicts without a national debate.

This was a very nice history of Dien Bien Phu. It starts with a brief overview of Vietnam during WWII, from the Japanese coercion of basing rights from the Vichy colonial administration, through their outright seizure of the colony, to Ho Chi Minh's resistance to the Japanese and his post war efforts to gain American recognition.

This is followed by a very concise survey of the post WWII French attempts to regain their former colony. By sketching out the chronology of the French involvement, Morgan provides the context for Navarre's decision to attempt to recreate the French success at Na San by creating another "air land base" to interdict Viet Minh supply lines and prevent their invasion of Laos. The book intersperses a basically "battalion level" account of the operations with the political machinations going on behind the scene. Both stories are told chronologically, with a chapter on the military operations, followed by a chapter on the politics.

Morgan provides a decent, but not exhaustive, level of detail on the military operations. But where the book really shines is in the political realm. It gives a very detailed, sometimes day by day, account of the political maneuverings involving the US, Britain and France, with only a slightly less detailed look at what was going on politically with the Viet Minh leadership and the Peoples Republic of China. Overlaying all the political intrigues is the prospect of the 1954 Geneva Conference on Indochina which, in some measure motivated both Giap's and Navarre's military operations in the Winter 1953 and Spring 0f 1954.

The book is very well written and engaging. While I don't recommend it for the coverage of the actual battle, which was done better by Fall's Hell In a Very Small Place, Roy's Battle of Dien Bein Phu and perhaps Windrow's The Last Valley (which I `m currently in the middle of and enjoying immensely), I found it invaluable for its coverage of the politics which is sadly lacking in both Fall's and Roy's books.

This is an excellent and historical book about one of the most significant battles ot the Twentieth Century and which competes with other battles such as Agincourt, Stalingrad, Waterloo, and Berlin in the battle's post battle effect on the world. This book is written by a Pulitzer Prize winner who himself is a veteran of the French Army. He has thoroughly researched his material and clearly shows how Ho Chi Minh was deceived, lied to, and manipulated as the French Government tried to make it appear the Vietnamese would get autonomy and independence. The Associated States of the French Union was nothing more than a ploy to gain cooperation. Leclerc, de Lattre, and others showed what cooperation would finally get. The French wanted Dien Bien Phu because of the monopoly they had on the opium product produced in that very alley. John Foster Dulles was willing to see the struggle extended in exchange for a better negotiating position. Dulles, the US Secretary of State who refused to participate in the Geneva Conference and refused to speak to the Chinese Representative while there. We no longer have time to tolerate this kind of petulence from one we expect to represent us. Thousands of good Frenchmen, Vietnamese, Morroccan, Algerian, and innocent civilian died simply because someone wanted to maintain the Colonial status quo. This book should be a library item for everyone's shelf. It is thoroughly researched and very well presented. Please don't miss it. This should be required reading for every commissioned officer and for every noncommissioned officer in the grade of sergeant and above.

Good overview of the entire period in Asia and the political machinations of the big four with China entering the scene at the end. Lot's of the backstage manuevering that I had not read about. The battle itself is a small part in the middle of all this, but well summarized. Bernard Fall and others have covered the actual battle much better but this book is better on the political side than anything I have read.

Valley Of Death, is a well written and striaght shooting book on DBP it fills in so many blanks and answers many questtions that Dr. Bernad Fall asked over 40 years ago. It will become a classic book about early Vietnam and the growth of the Vietminh and the fall of the French.

Ken Schneider

Only the most serious military historian need delve in here. The level of detail here is simultaneously impressive and downright annoying. The persistent abbreviations make this virtually unreadable for the casual reader. I love history and am usually a patient reader, but I found the prose in this book a bit dense. Good editing could reduce the length of the text by 20 percent without losing any of the substance.

The book is the definitive explanation of how the United States became involved in Vietnam. If life has a purpose, the purpose of Ted Morgan's life is to have written this book.
Morgan is a French-American Pulitzer prize winning writer who served in the French army in Algeria from 1955 - 1957. By documenting in detail, based on archival evidence, the American support for the French in Indochina, and then why Eisenhower resisted sending troops during the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, he defines the obstacles that had to be overcome in order to send in the troops.
A comprehensive, heart wrenching, story of the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, this book is essential reading for anyone trying to understand the Vietnam War.

This book seeks to accurately piece together why the Americans (and the Western nations) were so interested in the battle of Dien Bien Phu 13 March-7 May 1954. The French Union fighting with Foreign legion mercenaries and colonial units from Algeria and Thailand held valiant but bloody defense of the trenches and airspace in the "Valley of Death".

Ted Morgan is talented and experienced author (he also served in the French army in Algeria). This book is very long (637 pages, not counting the extensive and well researched notes and reference section)and offers a wealth of knowledge on the French Union and the American diplomatic cables and dealings during the French-Indochina War. It highlights all the aspects of the war like lack of French government and public support, generals and officers who served with duty, and the large financial support for the war by the Americans.

I gave "Valley of Death, The tragedy at Dien Bien Phu....." 4 stars because though it accomplishes its thesis very well I feel that it should have given more detail on the French soldiers experience during the conflict. I did however find the wealth of knowledge on the individual commanders of the Battle like Massu and "Bruno" Bigeard to be fascinating and inspiring in some respects. The photos were sub-par at best (one is very blurry), and I had hoped for several depicting French soldiers during and in between defending the base.