The War That Might Not Have Been

Outmanned 3 to 1 and heavily outgunned, the 13,000-man French force trapped in the small North Vietnamese valley of Dienbienphu was slowly being decimated by the Viet Minh. The Communists, entrenched in the surrounding hills, kept up such a deadly hail of flak that resupply flights to the defenders were down to a dribble. In those bleak days of April 1954, only one thing could have saved the besieged garrison: American help. That help was denied--and, according to French-born Historian Bernard B. Fall, it was largely because of objections by then Senate Minority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson. Had the decision gone the other way, Fall argues in a new book on Dienbienphu, Hell in a Very Small Place, the battle would have been won, and the current war might never have taken place.

A professor of international relations at Howard University who has known Viet Nam since 1953, Fall says--correctly--that a U.S. bombing raid to destroy Viet Minh antiaircraft batteries ringing Dienbienphu was strongly favored at the time by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Arthur W. Radford. In fact, U.S. military planners considered both conventional and nuclear bombing attacks and warned the Administration that, if the nation intervened, the Air Force should be free to use whatever weapons were needed; no decision on this was made. Fall writes that planning did go far enough ahead, however, for as many as 548 U.S. planes to be designated the attack force. The French code-named the proposed operation Vulture.

Crucial Decision. The scheme was effectively killed on April 3, 1954, when Dulles and Radford met with eight legislative leaders to plead for Congress' support. Johnson, who was among the legislators, reportedly asked how many allies had been invited to join with the U.S. Because of the shortage of time, none had, and the lawmakers told Dulles that Congress would not support an attack without allied support.

Johnson's query about allies, concludes Fall, "seems to have been the key question and the key stumbling block." As it was, Communist gunners continued to blast French resupply planes, isolating the bloodied garrison. Within five weeks Dienbienphu fell, after 10,000 men had died for it--8,000 Viet Minh attackers and 2,000 French troops. Within a day of the garrison's fall, France sued for peace.

"Perhaps without realizing it," writes Fall, "Lyndon B. Johnson, on April 3, 1954, had made his first crucial decision on Viet Nam."

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