Approaching Vietnam: From World War II Through Dienbienphu, 1941-1954

Approaching Vietnam: From World War II Through Dienbienphu, 1941-1954 by Gardner, Lloyd. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9780393025408.

In our beginnings are our ends. On May 8, 1954, after a bloody siege of nearly five months, the tiny fortress of Dienbienphu in northeast Indochina fell to the forces of Ho Chi Minh, ending eighty years of French rule. Vietnam, jewel in the French colonial crown, was gone, plucked away by the forces of history. Colonialism was dying. The United States did not mourn the passing of the French from Asia. On the other hand, Washington was not prepared to leave Vietnam to the Vietnamese, especially to the communists. And so began, in the common view, the escalating involvement that produced the longest war in American history. About this long war we are sadly "presentminded." Burned into our minds are innumerable images of the sixties, the Vietnam buildup during Kennedys thousand days, streets that boiled with war protest during the LBJ presidency, Nixons agonizing and brutal withdrawal--it was a war we saw in our living rooms and on front pages. We know a part of its truth. But that is only the beginning of understanding. There was another Vietnam War--a diplomatic and unequivocally American war that began in 1941 as the fires of World War II raged. That first Vietnam War--the war of diplomatic maneuver and decisions made from afar--is the subject of this book. With masterly command of documents never before analyzed in a book. Lloyd Gardner paints a complex and fascinating picture.