To this end the basin was occupied in an air operation spread out over three days, which dropped a total of six battalions of para-troopers and one artillery group that refurbished a preexisting airfield, and then held their positions in anticipation of the first wave of reinforcements.
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In order to loosen the pressure being exerted by the Vietminh on the Tonkin Delta, and also to forestall an attack on Laos, General Henri Navarre had envisioned creating a kind of acute abscess 350 kilometers west of Hanoi near the Laotian border, supplied from the air and designed to force the Vietminh to engage in a full frontal battle where they would be wiped out. THE FRENCH POSITIONįrom a bird's eye point of view of the Dien Bien Phu basin-turned-battlefield in 1954, the strategic choices made by the French command over the course of the previous year appear rather stupefying. The defeat there, furthermore, signaled the beginning of the empire's definitive dismantlement: the fall of Dien Bien Phu inflicted a profound psychological shock on metropolitan France, instigated the demise of the Laniel government (1953–1954) and the rise of Pierre Mendès-France to power ( prime minister, 1954–1955), as well as the signing on 21 July 1954 of the Geneva Accords, which ended France's engagement in Vietnam and drew up its partition, originally meant to be provisional. It was also the last battle waged with forces drawn from other parts of the French Empire (which had been reorganized as the "French Union" in 1946). THE FRENCH POSITIONĭien Bien Phu (13 March–) was the last battle fought by the French Army in the twentieth century.
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