First Indochina War: A Visual History

The First Indochina War (1946-1954) was fought between France and the Viet Minh, the communist-led independence movement of Ho Chi Minh, which had declared the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in September 1945. Fighting began with the French bombardment of Haiphong in November 1946. The Viet Minh under General Giap built a peasant army in the northern hills, took the border forts in 1950 with Chinese aid, and after French successes under de Lattre and heavy American funding, lured the French into a fortified valley at Dien Bien Phu, which fell on 7 May 1954 after a 56-day siege. The Geneva Accords divided Vietnam at the 17th parallel and gave Laos and Cambodia independence; the United States took over the anti-communist cause.

When it was fought: the era ribbon

The bold bar is First Indochina War. The lighter bars are empires and wars from the same era and the same part of the world. Click any bar to jump to its page.

US share of French war costs

Timeline of the First Indochina War

1. 1945
   Ho declares independence2 September.
2. 1946
   Haiphong shelled; war begins
3. 1949
   Bao Dai's State of Vietnam
4. 1950
   Chinese aid; RC4 disaster; US aid begins
5. 1951
   De Lattre holds the delta
6. 1954
   Dien Bien Phu falls7 May.
7. 1954
   Geneva Accords21 July.

From August Revolution to war

Japan's collapse in 1945 let the Viet Minh seize Hanoi; Ho declared independence on 2 September. The French returned in the south with British help and negotiated with Ho in the north, but the accord broke down; the French navy shelled Haiphong on 23 November 1946, killing thousands, and the Viet Minh attacked Hanoi on 19 December and withdrew to the Viet Bac hills. France installed the ex-emperor Bao Dai as head of a nominally independent State of Vietnam in 1949.

China, Korea and Route Coloniale 4

Mao's victory in 1949 gave the Viet Minh a sanctuary and arms; in October 1950 Giap destroyed the French garrisons along the Chinese border on Route Coloniale 4, killing or capturing 6,000. The Korean War made Washington see Indochina as a front against communism and it paid most of France's war costs by 1954. De Lattre de Tassigny's fortified line held Giap's assaults on the Red River delta in 1951; the war spread to Laos in 1953.

Dien Bien Phu and Geneva

General Navarre dropped 15,000 men into the valley of Dien Bien Phu near Laos in November 1953 to lure the Viet Minh into a set-piece battle. Giap's porters hauled 200 artillery pieces up the surrounding hills; the assault began on 13 March 1954, the airstrip was closed and the strongpoints fell one by one until Colonel de Castries surrendered on 7 May, as the Geneva conference opened. Pierre Mendes France signed the accords on 21 July: ceasefire, partition at the 17th parallel, elections in 1956 that never came. Nearly a million northerners, mostly Catholics, moved south; the French left in 1956 and the Americans stayed.

Related empires and wars

Chosen automatically by overlap in time and geography, plus a few hand picked connections.

Empires of the same era and region

• Second French colonial empire (1830 to 1980)
• British Empire (1583 to 1997)
• Spanish Empire (1492 to 1976)
• Dutch Empire (1602 to 1975)
• Third Portuguese Empire (1822 to 1999)
• Empire of Japan (1868 to 1947)

Wars of the same era and region

• Vietnam War (1955 to 1975)
• Cold War (1947 to 1991)
• Chinese Civil War (1927 to 1949)
• Korean War (1950 to 1953)
• Algerian War (1954 to 1962)
• Cambodian Civil War (1967 to 1975)
• Third Indochina War (1978 to 1991)

8 surprising things about the First Indochina War

1. Ho Chi Minh's declaration of independence quoted the American Declaration; a US OSS officer stood beside him.
2. Dien Bien Phu was the first time a colonial army was defeated by a native army in a set-piece battle in the modern era.
3. Viet Minh porters carried disassembled howitzers up mountains and moved 200 tonnes a day on bicycles.
4. The US considered using atomic bombs to save Dien Bien Phu (Operation Vulture) and decided against it.
5. The Foreign Legion lost more men in Indochina than in any other campaign; many were German veterans of the Wehrmacht.
6. The Geneva 'temporary' line at the 17th parallel lasted 21 years.
7. Graham Greene's The Quiet American, set in the war's last years, foresaw the American entanglement.
8. The 1954 Catholic exodus south, encouraged by CIA leaflets saying 'the Virgin Mary is going south', moved 800,000 people.

Sources

• First Indochina War Wikipedia
• Battle of Dien Bien Phu Encyclopaedia Britannica
• Indochina wars Encyclopaedia Britannica
• Fredrik Logevall, Embers of War (2012) Random House

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