Yes, one of my interests as a military historian are the myriad “What If?” scenarios that pop up when I’ve got too much spare thinking time on my hands (which is pretty much whenever I’m not asleep), and today I found myself thinking about the France vs Viet Minh match up just after WWII that led to France giving up on the idea of regaining French Indochina, and then led to the Vietnam we all know from TV, Movies, and PC games (And, of course, the people who were actually there…)
Anyway, anyone who knows their Modern Military History knows that the Viet Minh thoroughly trounced (pwned may be a better word) the French at Dien Bien Phu, and the French took their Berets and Croissants and went home.
But what if the French had won at Dien Bien Phu, or if the battle had never happened- and the French crushed the Viet Minh, and re-established colonial control over Indochina?
Would they have eventually decolonised it in the 60s along with everything in Africa (and if you look at a pre-WWII map of Africa, pretty much the entire north-west quarter of the continent was called French Something-or-other), or would Indochina still be a French Overseas Department, much like French Guyana still is?
Which of course leads to the very real possibility that France and Britain might still hold onto more of their former Empires than is currently the case…
Any Armchair Historians out there got any theories on this one?
I’m very interested in alternative history, too.
Even had the French crushed the Viet Minh, they were were still hated and resented by much of the native populace (who had fought for many years to force out the Japanese, too). By the late '50s, the French were soon to have a lot of problems in Algeria that would limit the troops and cash which could be spared for the occupation of Vietnam. Sooner or later, probably within a decade, the French would’ve pulled out of Vietnam, I suspect.
Hey guys, armchair historian and native Vietnamese (well, half, but I was born in Vietnam) here.
IMHO, even if the French hadn’t been defeated at Dien Bien Phu, it was just a matter of time before they pulled out of Indochina. I agree with Aragorn up there that it probably wold only have been a matter of a decade or so. Not only did the Vietnamese prove an extremely intractable foe when it came to fighting off foreign occupiers, but I have to believe that China would have been equally willing to help Vietnam against the French as against the Americans.
To me, DBP was just a spectacular episode in a general decline for French Indochina (and imperial France in general). It wasn’t a turning point any more than Yorktown was for American independence; in other words, a “last straw” more than a turning point.
The French would have been in the same position the Americans later found themselves in. They could have won all the battles and still lost the war. The Vietnamese were determined to keep fighting and the Chinese and Soviets were in a position to keep them supplied.
The North Vietnamese you mean, I presume.
Well, the North Vietnamese and the many Commmunist sympathetic South Vietnamese. Among the many uphill aspects of the war, from the U.S. standpoint at least, was that while North Vietnam was pretty monolithically Communist, the South was sharply divided between Communist and Nationalist factions.
North and South Vietnam didn’t exist as seperate entities at the time we’re talking about here. And as OneCentStamp wrote, there were a lot of people in both halves of the country who opposed foreign powers in Vietnam.
Well, you referred to the “position the Americans later found themselves in” and my comment was sort of tangential tongue-in-cheek to that.
Since there is no possible correct answer to this question, let’s move it to Great Debates.
samclem
Might as well call this forum “Endless Debates.” 