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A review by bobbo49
Hell in a Very Small Place: The Siege of Dien Bien Phu by Bernard Fall
4.0
Reading Fall's detailed, incisive 1966 account of the final days of the French war in Vietnam, I find it difficult to imagine a scenario in which American political and military leadership ever believed in a different outcome for the American war in Vietnam, particularly after they were schooled by this book and the French experience. In short, the fundamental French (and later American) miscalculations about the staying power, determination, willingness to incur lengthy and deep losses of life, and nationalistic fervor of the Viet Minh, as well as the futility of an outsider's dominant military powers, were all readily apparent in the French defeat in 1954. Quoting a senior French officer from the Viet Minh prison camp: "we were fighting for our professional honor and in the end, for our skins. But they, the enemy, were fight for their country."
It is of course a great shame that Fall was killed in 1967, and thus unable to write with equal detail and insight about America's equivalent defeat, although others - including of course Neil Sheehan's A Bright Shining Lie, Michael Herr's Dispatches, and Fitzgerald's Fire in the Lake - have made a fine contribution. The only reason I didn't give this 5 stars is that the level of daily detail regarding the movement of military units and personnel is sometimes just overwhelming; I understand that it makes Fall's testament more historically accurate and unassailable, but it does bog down the bigger picture at times.
It is of course a great shame that Fall was killed in 1967, and thus unable to write with equal detail and insight about America's equivalent defeat, although others - including of course Neil Sheehan's A Bright Shining Lie, Michael Herr's Dispatches, and Fitzgerald's Fire in the Lake - have made a fine contribution. The only reason I didn't give this 5 stars is that the level of daily detail regarding the movement of military units and personnel is sometimes just overwhelming; I understand that it makes Fall's testament more historically accurate and unassailable, but it does bog down the bigger picture at times.