4 - The Collapsing Civil–Military Divide in Wars of Decolonization: Two Case Studies from the Indochina War (1945–1954)

Summary

This chapter examines how the First Indochina War (1945-54) collapsed the divide between civilians and soldiers. Two case studies are at the core of this essay – the Battle of Hanoi that marked the start of the conflict and the Battle of Dien Bien Phu that ended it in a remote northern valley in mid-1954. The Battle of Hanoi saw Vietnamese partisans, civilians and soldiers, take up arms to prevent the French army from retaking the city by force. At Dien Bien Phu, the Vietnamese communist transformed their guerilla army into a professional one. Although the Vietnamese communist party relied on two very different types of warfare in Hanoi and Dien Bien Phu, in each case the divide between civilians and professional soldiers was always blurred. Regular troops may have fought the French in set piece battle at Dien Bien Phu; but the party mobilized hundreds of thousands of civilians to serve as their human logistics service.