The correct and skilful military strategic direction
By the end of 1953, the French war in Indochina had lasted for 8 years, but the French were increasingly in a passive position on all battlefields. The Vietnamese army had grown stronger and stronger with a main force of 6 infantry divisions (308, 304, 312, 316, 320, 325) and 1 artillery division (351), liberating and controlling many areas in Viet Bac (Cao-Bac-Lang), the Northern Delta, Inter-zone 5 and the Central Highlands.
On May 7, 1953, the French Government assigned Lieutenant General Henri Eugène Navarre to replace General Raoul Albin Louis Salan as Commander-in-Chief of the French Expeditionary Force in Indochina. The new Commander-in-Chief built the “Navarre Plan”, planning a military strategy to turn the situation of the Indochina battlefield around. The Navarre Plan was divided into two phases: Winter-Spring 1953-1954, focusing on building a strong strategic mobile block of 44 battalions, including a paratrooper division; organising strategic defence in Bac Ky; carrying out strategic attacks in Trung Ky; organising puppet troops into 168 battalions (300,000 troops). Autumn-Winter 1954, organising defence with a strong stronghold group; concentrating mobile forces on the Bac Bo battlefield to carry out strategic attacks to destroy the Viet Minh Army, ending the war. By January 1954, the US had provided the French army with 360 aircraft, 1,400 tanks and armoured vehicles, 16,000 military vehicles of various types, 175,000 machine guns and rifles, with a total value of 1.1 billion USD, accounting for 78% of the French war expenditure in Indochina.
After the 1950 Autumn-Winter Border Campaign, the Vietnamese liberated zone was connected to the People’s Republic of China. In early 1954, French intelligence agencies collected information that Red China had, was, and could provide the Viet Minh with a large amount of weapons, ammunition, means of transport, etc. and predicted that the Viet Minh could use the “human wave tactic”. Therefore, H.E. Navarre was even more determined to build a powerful stronghold group as a “trap” to lure the Viet Minh troops to come and destroy them.
The Party Central Committee and the General Military Commission assessed: “The enemy concentrates mobile troops to create strength, we force them to disperse their forces, then that strength will no longer exist”. From there, they directed the implementation of the 1953-1954 Winter-Spring Strategic Plan. Viet Nam successfully carried out offensive campaigns across the Indochina battlefield, destroying an important part of the enemy’s forces, liberating many areas, forcing the enemy to disperse strategic mobile forces to cope. The enemy’s battle formation was broken.
Analysing the situation, the Party Central Committee and the General Military Commission assessed: Dien Bien Phu is a very secure military stronghold, the enemy’s forces at the peak reached 16,200 officers and soldiers; the system of battlefields and fortifications is very solid but located in the middle of the mountainous forest, if the road is cut off, the air route is controlled, it will be difficult to hold out for a long time; the enemy's mobile forces have been dispersed across the Indochina battlefields.
On the Vietnamese side, ensuring weapons, ammunition, and logistics for large main force units in a long campaign far from the rear will be arduous. But Viet Nam have basic advantages: the troops have high fighting spirit, have accumulated a lot of experience in siege warfare in the 1953-1954 campaigns, have been trained in combined arms warfare; Viet Nam can mobilise human and material resources from large liberated areas in the plains, midlands of the North, and North Central; people’s war has developed widely throughout the Northwest; the position and strength of the resistance war have been and are developing steadily.
From there, the Party Central Committee Standing Committee and the General Military Commission determined: Concentrate the majority of elite main force troops to attack and destroy the enemy in the stronghold group, creating a fundamental change in the war situation. This was a very bold decision in strategic combat command, shifting from the motto of “avoiding strong points and attacking weak points” to the motto of “attacking directly at the enemy’s strong but vulnerable points to gain a decisive victory”.
 |
| The army units participating in the Border Campaign held a departure ceremony, urgently marching to the front. (Photo: VNA) |
Developing the art of flexible, creative, and practical combat campaign
For the first time, Viet Nam concentrated a force of 4/6 infantry divisions, including 15 regiments (9 infantry regiments), with a total of 61,800 officers and soldiers; and mobilised more than 261,000 labourers to transport ammunition, food, and transport wounded and dead soldiers.
On January 26, 1954, the Party Committee - Front Command, headed by General Vo Nguyen Giap, Party Committee Secretary and Front Commander, decided to change the campaign’s combat motto from “fight fast, solve quickly” to “fight firmly, advance firmly”. The troops had pulled artillery into the positions surrounding Muong Thanh valley, then pulled out again, continuing to keep it secret, waiting for new orders.
Viet Nam organised a siege formation, combined attacks and sieges on each cluster of strongholds, and cut off the enemy’s 49 strongholds. The troops built a system of trenches and battlefields hundreds of kilometres long, forming a belt that gradually cut off each enemy sub-sector and cluster of strongholds, blocking roads, controlling air routes, and destroying each enemy base and cluster of strongholds.
Viet Nam organised joint operations, concentrate troops and firepower to fight each battle or several consecutive battles, destroy each vital force in each peripheral base and cluster of strongholds, first of all the high points in the North and East, and gradually advance to destroy the central sub-sector and the Command Center of the stronghold group.
They flexibly combined frontal attacks with flanking and deep thrusts; combining large-scale attacks with sieges, sniping, bringing anti-aircraft artillery close to Muong Thanh Airport to control the airspace, cutting off the enemy's supply and reinforcement sources, creating favourable conditions for a general attack to destroy the entire enemy force.
Developing combat tactics to a high level
The siege warfare tactics in the Dien Bien Phu campaign were developed to the scale of the corps, coordinating arms according to the regular method, using large artillery for the first time, practising preparatory firing, directly supporting and suppressing enemy artillery positions, and creating conditions for infantry to charge and capture the stronghold. Using anti-aircraft artillery for the first time to coordinate combat with infantry.
Flexibly switching from attacking to defending the battlefield. Units thoroughly took advantage of the terrain, renovating the enemy's old battlefield to build a defensive battlefield; organising small forces, large firepower, few forces holding the centre but many mobile reserve forces outside.
Creating a new tactical form of “surround, encroach, attack, destroy”, building a battlefield to approach the enemy combined with sniping, using small squads to regularly attack, destroy each gun emplacement, destroy each bunker, besiege the enemy, effectively destroying many enemies, with few casualties.
The victory of the Dien Bien Phu Campaign showed that the Vietnamese military art had reached its peak in specific circumstances.
