ABSTRACT
In Indochina within two years after the 1954 cease-fire, France had disappeared from the scene as a military and political factor—for one simple reason: Dien Bien Phu and its aftermath. Ironically, South Viet-Nam's total liberation from French tutelage and replacement of the latter by an American protective shield in 1961 was brought about at bayonet point, not by the Vietnamese nationalists, but by their Viet-Minh opponents. The Vietnamese Communist forces have seen to it that all their military exploits became part of their own military tradition, which thus stretches back to the first Communist guerrilla groups in Tongking in 1944. Militarily, the Viet-Nam People's Army command applied a slightly altered version of Mao Tse-tung's teachings on the subject of guerrilla war, protracted war, and, revolutionary war. The foredoomed battle of Dien Bien Phu again must be mentioned as a shining example of what the Vietnamese soldier could do—but on both sides.
