Kevin Boylan, Luc Olivier

Valley of the Shadow (eBook, PDF)

The Siege of Dien Bien Phu

• Format: PDF

Produktbeschreibung

Using new material unearthed in French archives, Vietnamese-language publications and the testimony of veterans, Valley of the Shadow offers a new perspective on the climactic French defeat at Dien Bien Phu.

Following the end of World War II, France attempted to reassert control over its colonies in Indochina. In Vietnam, this was resisted by the Viet Minh leading to the First Indochina War. By 1954, the French army was on the defensive and determined to force the Viet Minh into a decisive set-piece battle at Dien Bien Phu.

Over the past five decades, Western authors have generally followed a standard narrative of the siege of Dien Bien Phu, depicting the Viet Minh besiegers as a faceless horde which overwhelmed the intrepid garrison by sheer weight of numbers, superior firepower, and logistics. However, a wealth of new Vietnamese-language sources tell a very different story, revealing for the first time the true Viet Minh order of battle and the details of the severe logistical constraints within which the besiegers had to operate.

Using these sources, complemented by interviews with French veterans and research in the French Army and French Foreign Legion archives, this book, now publishing in paperback, provides a new telling of the climactic battle in the Indochina War, the conflict that set the stage for the Vietnam War a decade later.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Bloomsbury UK eBooks
• Seitenzahl: 368
• Erscheinungstermin: 26. Juli 2018
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781472824394
• Artikelnr.: 54505518

Autorenporträt

Kevin Boylan is a military historian who earned his BA in History from Rutgers University and his PhD from Temple University. In addition to a long career in academe, he spent ten years at the Pentagon conducting defense analysis for the US Defense Department and the US Army Staff, and is currently employed as an official historian by the US Army Center for Military History in Washington, DC. He has authored numerous articles (including two that won the Society of Military History's Moncado Prize) and several books - the most recent of which, Valley of the Shadow: The Siege of Dien Bien Phu, was published by Osprey Publishing in 2018.

Inhaltsangabe

1. Introduction
2. L'Union Française
3. The Vietnamese People's Army
4. The Base Aero-Terrestre
5. Giap's First Offensive, March 13-18
6. The Lull, March 19-29
7. Giap's Second Offensive, March 30-April 2
8. April is the Cruelest Month, April 3-30
9. Giap's Third Offensive, May 1-8
10. Afterward