Talk:Operation Vulture

link

[1] Paris By Night 11:31, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Atomic bomb option

"There was an eleventh-hour appeal from the French for U.S. intervention. The plea was rejected by the Dwight D. Eisenhower administration. John Foster Dulles, the hawkish U.S. Secretary of State, is said to have offered two atomic bombs to the French government to stave of a military defeat. The French government politely refused that offer. " Source
The French wouldn't have proposed the dropping of an atomic bomb on a locked position where their soldiers were still present? Johannjs (talk) 21:21, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

The Battle of Dien Bien Phu was a desperate battle with the French forces (many of whom were actually French, being an assortment of Foreign Legionaries, Algerians, Senegalese, Moroccans, etc) trapped in a valley, cut off and surrounded, being supplied only by air. Beyond that, the battle had a symbolic importance in France. Marshal Henri Navarre had declared that this was going to be the decisive battle where the French were going to finally going to crush the Vietminh. Because of this, the battle had a political importance that went well beyond its military importance. This sounds harsh, but the losing some men from the paratroopers and the Foreign Legion at Dien Bien Phu would be tragic for the men concerned, but it would not affect France's ability to continue the war in a military sense. But because of the way that Navarre had presented it when he sent in his forces into the valley at Dien Bien Phu in December 1953, the battle had a huge symbolic importance in France, and it was generally understood that if France lost at Dien Bien Phu, that would be the end of the French people's patience with the war, as indeed proved to be the case. Contrary to what Navarre had predicated, the Vietnamese had moved hundreds of Soviet-built artillery guns to the hills above Dien Bien Phu and enough anti-aircraft guns to make it very, very difficult for the French to fly in supplies. It was pretty clear almost from the moment that the battle began in March 1954 that the French were going to lose at Dien Bien Phu. Desperate times call for desperate means. I would agree that settling off three atomic bombs in the vicinity of Dien Bien Phu would not be good for the health of the French garrison there, but the French government was desperate to win this battle no matter what. --A.S. Brown (talk) 07:41, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

From what I gather from e.g., [2], [3], [4], matters of concern to decisionmakers did not center on the fate of French troops on the ground. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 12:58, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

You're quite right. Just to add to this-all of the French troops in Indochina were volunteers. France had conscription, but also had one of the largest Communist parties in Western Europe, and it was believed that sending conscripts to Indochina would cause domestic unrest. If one wanted to go to Vietnam, one had to volunteer to do so. But there are only so many men who are willing to volunteer to fight in a war. Which explains why so many of the 'French' troops in Vietnam were not French-besides for the French Foreign Legion, there were a great many Algerians, Moroccans, Tunisians, Senegalese, and Vietnamese fighting for France. To a surprising extent, a many Vietnamese had come to embrace the idea of France's mission civilisatrice. Quite a few Vietnamese fought to keep Vietnam a French colony. I don't have a RS to back me on this, but from what I gather because many of the garrison at Dien Bien Phu were not French, decision-makers in Paris were not as concerned about them. If a Frenchman died in Vietnam, he would had parents, siblings, wives, children, girlfriends, etc to moan his loss. Who would had cared if the somebody from the Foreign Legion died in Vietnam? Not only are the Legionaries foreigners, but the Legion which famously "asks no questions" about a recruit's background attracts all sorts of riff-raff and adventurers from all over the world ( To be fair, some of the men who joined the Legion were of a better quality, being romantics caught up in the myth of the Legion or young men with a broken heart). There is a reason why the Legion has a certain disreputable reputation. A disproportionate number of the Legionaries in 1954 were German and many had records under the Nazi era that did not bear much scrutiny. Who in France would really cared about what happened to them? Even at the best of times, nobody cares about the Foreign Legion, which gets all of the really hard jobs for the simple reason that if they get killed nobody in France will moan them. This article might benefit from bringing that in. Thank you for the links, which are most informative. Best wishes and cheers!--A.S. Brown (talk) 07:57, 21 January 2021 (UTC)

Removed a supporting cite

In the Frence-American meeting section, I've replaced the Ref reading "<ref>Peter Hercombe, [http://info.france2.fr/dossiers/france/1288617-fr.php ''Dien Bien Phu, Chronicles of a Forgotten Battle'', Transparences Productions, 2004] Documentary broadcasted on public channel France 2</ref>" with a {{fact}} tag. The cited page is a dead link, but an archived copy (in French) is available. As I read the Google translation, the meeting referred to there was a meeting related to the The Geneva Agreements, not a meeting related to the US supplying nuclear weapons to France. -- Boracay Bill (talk) 02:43, 24 April 2009 (UTC)