"Pulitzer Prize-winning author Ted Morgan has now written a definitive account of the fateful battle that ended French rule in Indochina - and led inexorably to America's Vietnam War. Dien Bien Phu was a remote valley on the border of Laos along a simple rural trade route. But it would als...

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Bibliographic Details

Main Author:	Morgan, Ted 1932-2023 (Author)
Format:	Book
Language:	English
Published:	New York Random House 2010
Edition:	1. ed.
Subjects:	Geschichte 1954 Dien Bien Phu, Battle of, Điện Biên Phủ, Vietnam, 1954 Indochinese War, 1946-1954 / Causes Außenpolitik Indochinese War, 1946-1954 > Causes Schlacht von Dien Bien Phu Vorgeschichte Vietnamkrieg United States / Foreign relations / 1945-1953 United States / Foreign relations / Vietnam Vietnam / Foreign relations / United States USA United States > Foreign relations > 1945-1953 United States > Foreign relations > Vietnam Vietnam > Foreign relations > United States
Online Access:	Inhaltsverzeichnis
Summary:	"Pulitzer Prize-winning author Ted Morgan has now written a definitive account of the fateful battle that ended French rule in Indochina - and led inexorably to America's Vietnam War. Dien Bien Phu was a remote valley on the border of Laos along a simple rural trade route. But it would also be where a great European power fell to an underestimated insurgent army and lost control of a crucial colony. Valley of Death is the untold story of the 1954 battle that, in six weeks, changed the course of history." "Here is the history of the Vietminh liberation movement's rebellion against French occupation after World War II and its growth as an adversary, eventually backed by Communist China. Here too is the ill-fated French plan to build a base in Dien Bien Phu and draw the Vietminh into a debilitating defeat - which instead led to the Europeans being encircled in the surrounding hills, besieged by heavy artillery, overrun, and defeated." "Morgan reveals the inner workings of the American effort to aid France, with Eisenhower secretly disdainful of the French effort and prophetically worried that "no military victory was possible in that type of theater." Morgan paints indelible portraits of all the major players, from Henri Navarre, head of the French Union forces, a rigid professional unprepared for an enemy fortified by rice carried on bicycles, to his commander, General Christian de Castries, a privileged, miscast cavalry officer, and General Vo Nguyen Giap, a master of guerrilla warfare working out of a one-room hut on the side of a hill. Most devastatingly, Morgan sets the stage for the Vietnam quagmire that was to come."--BOOK JACKET.
Item Description:	Includes bibliographical references (p. [645]-692) and index
Physical Description:	xxii, 722 S., [8] Bl. Ill., Kt. 25 cm
ISBN:	9781400066643 1400066646