Vietnam to salute 50th Dien Bien Phu anniversary
HANOI - Vietnam celebrates this week the 50th anniversary of its victory at Dien Bien Phu, the epic battle that precipitated the collapse of French colonial rule.
The fighting began on March 13, 1954, and 56 days later, on May 7, shell-shocked survivors of the French garrison hoisted the white flag to signal the end to one of the greatest battles of the 20th century.
“The French loss at Dien Bien Phu brought to a swift end French domination of Indochina and their presence in Southeast Asia,”: said Carl Thayer of the Australian Defense Force Academy.
“The battle came at the precise psychological moment to affect the French negotiating position at the Geneva Conference, held initially to consider Korean matters and then the conflict in Indochina,” he said.
The French defeat led to the signing of the Geneva Accords on July 21, 1954, that split the country into North Vietnam and South Vietnam.
Leaders of the communist regime and foreign diplomats will gather in Hanoi on Wednesday for a formal ceremony to mark the battle, while on Friday victory celebrations will be held in Dien Bien Phu and other cities across the nation.
Significantly, the French ambassador to Vietnam will not be present at Wednesday’s ceremony, but instead will attend a memorial service in Paris.
Hanoi has made it plainly apparent that the anniversary will be a celebratory event rather than an occasion for both sides to honor their dead.
For the ruling Communist Party, the battle serves as a reminder of the values it holds so dear: the mobilization of the population, the unity of the party and the masses, and individual sacrifice for the greater good.
“Keeping alive their interpretation of the victory at Dien Bien Phu is designed to appeal to nationalism as a basis for the legitimacy of the regime,” said Thayer.
“The audience is primarily domestic, but the message to the outside world and would-be aggressors is: Vietnam possesses the military art to defeat any invading army. And they have the history to prove their point.”
Around 3,000 French troops died or disappeared at Dien Bien Phu, 500 kilometers (310 miles) northwest of Hanoi, and 10,000 were captured. As many as 10,000 Vietnamese soldiers died.
But despite the heavy casualty toll, Christopher Goscha, assistant professor at the University of Lyon II, says the Vietnamese triumph was “a milestone in the history of modern military science.”
“Not only had the Asian ‘colonized’ defeated the Western ‘colonizer’ in a set-piece battle, but the Vietnamese had also created a modern army from scratch in time of war,” he said.
After World War II, France was able to reinstall its colonial government in what was then known as Indochina.
But from 1945, it faced a challenge for control of the north from the Vietnamese independence movement, known as the Viet Minh and led by Ho Chi Minh, the founding father of the Vietnamese Communist Party.
However as the buildup got underway, some 50,000 Viet Minh troops under the leadership of the legendary General Vo Nguyen Giap surrounded Dien Bien Phu, and on March 13 they launched their bloody assault.
Agence France Presse - May 03, 2004.
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