An amazing book
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This book is truly amazing. As someone who is very interested in history, but not very knowledgeable about French Indo-China I can heartily recommend this book.
The book started slowly, I found, and was very descriptive of the political situation before and after WW2. My advice is - stick with it. The knowledge Martin Windrow imparts in the first part of the book is invaluable for understanding attitudes later on. As the fortifications and then the battle commence in the book you find yourself swept away with the passion the author obviously has for the subject. The book is well written, well informed and immensely readable.
Before I read this book I had little knowledge of the French involvement and no overriding desire to find out, but this book changed everything for me. It is a rare book indeed that can make you catch breath with the almost palatable fear and tension that the soldiers must have been feeling. I have now read more widely on the subject and have started including the Vietnam War, but this book still remains my favourite on the subject of Dien Bien Phu - the Stalingrad of the jungle.
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Top-to-Bottom insight into a pivotal 20th century battle
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Martin Windrow's book is too modest - he describes his book as drawing on primarily on secondary sources, but this is to severely understate a masterly example of historical synthesis.
The battle of Dien Bien Phu was the death knell for French involvement in Indochina, and also hearalded the bitter involvement of the United States in South East Asia. Politically, the battle is of singular importance. Militarily, deployment and tactics of the french defenders, and the fighting qualities of the French paratroops and Foreign Legionnaires drive the narrative forward.
Windrow is sensitive to the more unfamiliar elements of the saga. The role of Vietnamese troops fighting for the French is highlighted, as are the contradictions of Senegalese and Algerian troops fighting for a French Empire which treated them equivocally. The American conflict to come haunts the book, as does the 'savage war of peace' in Algeria which followed hard on its heels.
I feel the Communist Vietnamese perspective was credited as fully as possible, given the very different type of historical record availiable from their side. Giap's strengths and weaknesses as a general are objectively assessed, free of the hagiographic perspectives of some accounts.
The book has excellent maps and notes (you will need three bookmarks!) and Windrow's own experiences of the military form a wry thread of commentary through the notes.
If you enjoy Max Hastings and Richard Holmes's work, you will enjoy this book's gruelling depiction of a major 20th century clash of arms.
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Exceptionally good military history - highly recommended
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This is now unquestionably the definitive account, in English at least, of this epic battle: even better than Bernard Fall's benchmark, 'Hell in a very small place', IMHO.
Windrow ably covers the background, strategy, principal characters and then handles the complexities of the overall battle and its many components in detail, but without ever losing the reader along the way. Windrow writes vividly, concisely and well: a refreshing change from a lot of military writing which can be pretty turgid.
Windrow's main accomplishment, though, is in telling the stories of the men (and some women) who served and fought at Dien Bien Phu. This is, as another reviewer commented, mostly from the French perspective and some personal details from the Viet Minh perspective would be welcome to give greater insight to what was a Verdun-like encounter for both sides. Certainly the 'lions led by donkeys' bromide often used in the British WWI context seems at least as applicable here.
The author also refrains from too obviously using the later American experience in hindsight analysis, making the decisions and perspectives as fresh as they would have appeared at the time. The book certainly gains from this approach and loses nothing by his light touch in this regard.
I would also like to have had more on the aftermath and how it affected the main protagonists, but a quick visit to Wikipedia revealed that Navarre and de Castries retired relatively soon afterwards; Bigeard, Langlais and Cogny continued to serve (Bigeard eventually attained the rank of Lieutenant-General). Perhaps the lack of any obvious witch-hunt or public consequences rendered the point moot.
Highly recommended for both specialised and more general readers: both will find much value in this fine and accessible work.
Didn't award it five stars as, although there are somewhere in the order of twenty maps in the preface, the fluidity of the engagements demand more visual detail in the text itself: I found it irritating to keep flipping back and forth. Photos were also fairly ordinary for a hardback edition.
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I had heard about the French in Vietnam but did not really know very much until I read this book. The book is an excellent read and tells the story of the battle in such a way that you feel you are part of it - of course in truth I doubt that anyone who reads the book could ever contemplate actually being there. The resolve and bravery of the French-led troops is hard to come to terms with.... it really is a case of lions led by donkeys (at least at the highest level of command). I have utmost respect for everyone involved on the ground and for the author of this book for bringing the battle to our attention many years later. Whilst at times thre book can be a little 'heavy' it needs to be, and I therefore thoroughly reccomend it to everyone
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Very good
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This is a very good account of the battle and the events that led to the battle. What is especially noteworthy is that the author regularly explains how the battle must have looked and felt from the perspective of ordinary French and Vietnamese soldiers. Unfortunately the author does not say anything about the aftermath of the battle. He frequently cites from the French official investigation report, indicating that there WAS indeed an investigation, but he fails to tell the reader about the political fall-out, or the effect on the further careers and lives of the main characters. There is some reflection on the relation between political circles and the army, and a short attempt to place Dien Bien Phu in the wider perspective of French military history, linking the battle to Verdun, May 1940 and Algeria, but that could have been much more extensive. Other than that, it is a highly recommendable book.
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