The road to Dien Bien Phu A history of the first war for Vietnam

Goscha (Univ. du Québec à Montréal, Canada) employs his unrivaled command of French-, English-, and Vietnamese-language sources in a magisterial new interpretation of how Ho Chi Minh transformed a band of guerillas and an embryonic political entity into the military force and administrative state that defeated the French at Dien Bien Phu. Using the example of Vladimir Lenin's war communism, he explains how Vietnamese communism and nationalist manipulation grew the political state and a large modern army. Although there is deference to his zealous talents, there is no hint of hagiography about Ho, a brutal totalitarian who, with Chinese assistance and following their model, subjected his people to untold, unconscionable suffering through death and starvation, using mass mobilization, conscription, manipulation, and land reform to achieve his goals. For Goscha, the sociology of the conflict is as important as the military campaigns, and, inter alia, his descriptions of the acquisition, allocation, logistics, and politics of food are as important as the battles. Alongside Fredrik Logevall's Embers of War (2012) and the never-outdated writings of Bernard Fall, this is the new standard on the French Indochina War, the battle of Dien Bien Phu, and Ho Chi Minh and his associates. Summing Up: Essential. Advanced undergraduates through faculty. --Joe P. Dunn, Converse University

University of Quebec history professor Goscha (Vietnam: A New History) analyzes in this comprehensive account the complex political, social, economic, and military developments behind the Democratic Republic of Vietnam's decisive 1954 victory against France at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu. Seeking to explain how the Vietnamese guerrilla army transformed itself into a professional fighting force capable of defeating France in a large-scale, pitched battle--and why anticolonialist forces in Algeria and Indonesia weren't able to "engineer such a military revolution"--Goscha punctures the myth that nationalism was the primary force behind Vietnam's victory. He documents how Chinese and Soviet support allowed Ho Chi Minh to simultaneously intensify the war against France and transform the Democratic Republic of Vietnam from a "republican-minded, national union government" into a single-party state. According to Goscha, North Vietnamese leaders employed a "communist toolkit," including compulsory military service, the creation of a cult of personality around Ho Chi Minh, and land reforms, to "control and mobilize" the country's majority peasant population against France and, later, the U.S. Goscha's deep research impresses, though neophytes may get lost in the details. Still, this is a thought-provoking reexamination of the recipe for Vietnam's back-to-back victories against Western powers. (Jan.)