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The day after Roger Bannister ran a mile in under four minutes, the French got their shit wrecked at the battle of Điện Biên Phủ. Well, it had been going on for almost two months, but May 7, 1954, was the day the French colonial forces in Vietnam said please stop killing us we give up.
--On This Day in History, Shit Went Down: May 7, 1954--
You know how Western European countries were all about showing up in other countries and saying bow down motherfuckers we’re in charge now? France did that in the area comprising Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and part of China and called it French Indochina in the late 19th century. During World War II France was run by fucking Nazis, so the Japanese waltzed into Indochina and took over. When France was liberated, and Japan knew they were losing, the Japanese decided to destroy the French colonial administration on their way out. Then with WWII over France said to the region “We’ll just take this back now” and the locals said, “I don’t fucking think so.”
You recognize the name Hồ Chí Minh? He was kicking French ass before he kicked American ass. The “First Indochina War” began in 1946, and eight years later Điện Biên Phủ spelled the end of it. The battle was a French clusterfuck. Like with Germany in 1940, they woefully misjudged their enemy’s capabilities.
The French occupied the Điện Biên Phủ valley in Northwest Vietnam as a strategy to cut the Viet Minh (their enemy) supply lines. The French wanted a major confrontation—a contest of firepower—because they figured they’d win with their fancy airplanes and shit. They didn’t think the enemy had antiaircraft guns. But they did. And artillery. The Viet Minh took their big guns apart into small pieces and secretly hiked the equipment through the brutal jungle hills to surround the French. It was an impressive feat and critical to their victory. They dug tunnels and deep cover for their artillery, so it was mostly safe from French counterbattery fire. And for eight weeks the Viet Minh punished the shit out of the French defenders on the ground and blew French planes out of the sky.
Thousands died on both sides, but it all ended with the surrender of almost 12,000 French, more than a third of whom were wounded. A short time later France said fuck this place and pulled out after a peace agreement was reached in July 1954. Not wanting to waste any time, the Second Indochina War began little more than a year later as a cold war proxy conflict between commies and capitalists. It took the Americans twice as long as it took the French to figure out maybe they shouldn’t fucking be there.
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