ABSTRACT
The battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954 was one of the most important Cold War crises that Dwight D. Eisenhower faced as president. At this valley in northwest Vietnam, Eisenhower and his senior advisers considered the use of American military power to save French forces and prevent a communist victory in Indochina. While there has been much scholarly interest in US policy during the Dien Bien Phu crisis, the focus has been predominantly on leading officials in Washington. Absent from the literature to date is an examination of the contribution of the US Embassy in Saigon. This chapter argues that the embassy played an important role during the crisis by keeping Washington informed about the situation at Dien Bien Phu, relaying French requests for further assistance to the State Department, managing American press coverage of the battle, and mediating Franco-Vietnamese tension. However, it also reveals that embassy officials had surprisingly little input into US government deliberations around a US intervention to save the French. This chapter illuminates the geographical, political, personal and technological factors that limited the embassy’s contribution to US government debates over whether to go to war in Vietnam in 1954.
