French Indochina, officially known as the Indochinese Union and after 1941 as the Indochinese Federation, was a grouping of French colonial territories in Mainland Southeast Asia until its end in 1954. It comprised Cambodia, Laos, the Chinese territory of Guangzhouwan, and the Vietnamese regions of Tonkin in the north, Annam in the centre, and Cochinchina in the south. The capital for most of its history (1902–1945) was Hanoi; Saigon was the capital from 1887 to 1902 and again from 1945 to 1946.
The Battle of Điện Biên Phủ was a climactic confrontation of the First Indochina War that took place between 13 March and 7 May 1954. It was fought between the French Union's colonial Far East Expeditionary Corps and Viet Minh communist revolutionaries. The United States was officially not a party to the war, but it was secretly involved by providing financial and material aid to the French Union, which included CIA-contracted American personnel participating in the battle. The People's Republic of China and the Soviet Union similarly provided vital support to the Viet Minh, including most of their artillery and ammunition.
The Battle of Route Coloniale 4, also called the Autumn-Winter Border Campaign by the Viet Minh, was a battle of the First Indochina War. It took place along Route Coloniale 4, a road used to supply the French military base at Cao Bằng. French military traffic along the road had previously been subject to an ongoing series of ambushes during 1947–1949.
The First Indochina War was fought between France and Việt Minh, and their respective allies, from 19 December 1946 until 20 July 1954. Việt Minh was led by Võ Nguyên Giáp and Hồ Chí Minh. Most of the fighting took place in Tonkin in Northern Vietnam, although the conflict engulfed the entire country and also extended into the neighboring French Indochina protectorates of Laos and Cambodia. At the Potsdam Conference in July 1945, the allied Combined Chiefs of Staff decided that Indochina south of latitude 16° north was to be included in the Southeast Asia Command under British Admiral Mountbatten. On V-J Day, September 2, Hồ Chí Minh proclaimed in Hanoi the establishment of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV). In late September 1945, Chinese forces entered Tonkin, and Japanese forces to the north of that line surrendered to Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek. At the same time, British forces landed in Saigon, and Japanese forces in the south surrendered to the British. The Chinese accepted the DRV under Hồ Chí Minh, then in power in Hanoi. The British refused to do likewise in Saigon, and deferred to the French, despite the previous support of the Việt Minh by American OSS representatives. The DRV ruled as the only civil government in all of Vietnam for a period of about 20 days, after the abdication of Emperor Bảo Đại, who had governed under the Japanese rule. On 23 September 1945, with the knowledge of the British commander in Saigon, French forces overthrew the local DRV government, and declared French authority restored in Cochinchina. Guerrilla warfare began around Saigon immediately, but the French gradually retook control of Indochina. Hồ Chí Minh agreed to talk with France but negotiations failed. After one year of low-level conflict, all-out war broke out in December 1946 between French and Việt Minh forces as Hồ Chí Minh and his government went underground. The French tried to stabilize Indochina by reorganizing it as a Federation of Associated States. In 1949, they put former Emperor Bảo Đại back in power, as the ruler of a newly established State of Vietnam. The first few years of the war involved a low-level rural insurgency against the French. By 1949 the conflict had turned into a conventional war between two armies equipped with modern weapons, with the French supplied by the United States, and the Việt Minh supplied by the Soviet Union and a newly communist China. French Union forces included colonial troops from the empire – North Africans; Laotian, Cambodian and Vietnamese ethnic minorities; Sub-Saharan Africans – and professional French troops, European volunteers, and units of the Foreign Legion. The use of metropolitan recruits was forbidden by the government to prevent the war from becoming more unpopular at home. It was called the "dirty war" by leftists in France. The French strategy of inducing the Việt Minh to attack well-defended bases in remote areas at the end of their logistical trails was validated during the Battle of Nà Sản. French efforts were hampered by the limited usefulness of tanks in a forested environment, the lack of a strong air force, and reliance on soldiers from French colonies. The Việt Minh used novel and efficient tactics, including direct artillery fire, convoy ambushes, and anti-aircraft weaponry to impede land and air resupplies together with a strategy based on recruiting a sizable regular army facilitated by large popular support. They used guerrilla warfare doctrine and instruction translated from early Chinese text, and used war materiel provided by the Soviet Union. This combination proved fatal for the French bases, culminating in a decisive French defeat at the Battle of Điện Biên Phủ. An estimated 400,000 to 842,707 soldiers died during the war as well as between 125,000 and 400,000 civilians. Both sides committed war crimes during the conflict, including killings of civilians, rape and torture. At the International Geneva Conference on 21 July 1954, the new socialist French government and the Việt Minh made an agreement which gave the Việt Minh control of North Vietnam above the 17th parallel, an agreement that was rejected by the State of Vietnam and the United States. A year later, Bảo Đại would be deposed by his prime minister, Ngô Đình Diệm, creating the Republic of Vietnam. Soon an insurgency, backed by the communist north, developed against Diệm's anti-communist government. This conflict, known as the Vietnam War, included large U.S. military intervention in support of the South Vietnamese and ended in 1975 with the defeat of South Vietnam to the North Vietnamese and the reunification of Vietnam.
Jean Carmet was a French actor.
The Geneva Conference was intended to settle outstanding issues resulting from the Korean War and the First Indochina War and involved several nations. It took place in Geneva, Switzerland, from 26 April to 20 July 1954. The part of the conference on the Korean question ended without adopting any declarations or proposals and so is generally considered less relevant. On the other hand, the Geneva Accords that dealt with the dismantling of French Indochina proved to have long-lasting repercussions. The crumbling of the French colonial empire in Southeast Asia led to the formation of the states of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, the State of Vietnam, the Kingdom of Cambodia, and the Kingdom of Laos. Three agreements about French Indochina, covering Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam, were signed on 21 July 1954 and took effect two days later.
The State of Vietnam was a governmental entity in Southeast Asia that existed from 1949 until 1955, first as a member of the French Union and later as a country. The state claimed authority over all of Vietnam during the First Indochina War, although large parts of its territory were controlled by the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.
Jean Etienne Valluy was a French general.
Pierre Schoendoerffer was a French film director, a screenwriter, a writer, a war reporter, a war cameraman, a renowned First Indochina War veteran, a cinema academician. He was president of the Académie des Beaux-Arts for 2001 and for 2007.
The French Far East Expeditionary Corps was a colonial expeditionary force of the French Union Army that was initially formed in French Indochina in 1945 during the Pacific War. The CEFEO later fought and lost in the First Indochina War against the Viet Minh rebels.
The Japanese coup d'état in French Indochina, known as Meigō Sakusen, was a Japanese operation that took place on 9 March 1945, towards the end of World War II. With Japanese forces losing the war and the threat of an Allied invasion of Indochina imminent, the Japanese were concerned about an uprising against them by French colonial forces.
Jews are a minor ethno-religious group in Vietnam, consisting of only about 300 people as of 2007. Although Jews have been present in Vietnam and Judaism has been practiced since the late 19th century, most adherents have been, and remain today, expatriates, with few to no native Vietnamese converts.
The 1st Foreign Parachute Regiment was an airborne regiment of the Foreign Legion in the French Army which dated its origins to 1948. The regiment fought in the First Indochina War as the three-time reconstituted 1st Foreign Parachute Battalion, the Suez Crisis and Algerian War, but was dissolved along with the 10th Parachute Division and 25th Parachute Division following the generals' putsch against part of the French government in 1961.
Léo Joannon was a French writer and film director. Born in Aix-en-Provence, Joannon was originally a law student who became a novelist and journalist before entering the film industry in the 1920s as a cameraman. He was married to the Vietnamese actress Foun-Sen.
North Vietnam, officially the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, was a socialist state in Southeast Asia that existed from 1945 to 1976, with formal sovereignty being fully recognized in 1954. A member of the Eastern Bloc, it opposed the French-supported State of Vietnam and later the Western-allied Republic of Vietnam. The DRV emerged victorious over South Vietnam in 1975 and ceased to exist the following year when it unified with the south to become the current Socialist Republic of Vietnam.
The 1945–1946 War in Vietnam, codenamed Operation Masterdom by the British, and also known as the Southern Resistance War by the Vietnamese, was a post–World War II armed conflict involving a largely British-Indian and French task force and Japanese troops from the Southern Expeditionary Army Group, versus the Vietnamese communist movement, the Viet Minh, for control of the southern half of the country, after the unconditional Japanese surrender.
Jump into Hell is a 1955 war film directed by David Butler. The film stars Jacques Sernas and Kurt Kasznar. As the first Hollywood film based on the war in French Indochina, the story is a fictionalized account of the Battle of Dien Bien Phu.
A Yank in Indo-China is a 1952 American war film directed by Wallace Grissell and starring John Archer, Douglas Dick and Jean Willes. It was produced by Sam Katzman for distribution by Columbia Pictures. The film's sets were designed by the art director Paul Palmentola. It was one of the few American films to be set during the First Indochina War. It was inspired by the success of A Yank in Korea (1951), also by producer Sam Katzman.
The Battle of Nghĩa Lộ was a battle of the First Indochina War. In the fall of 1952 the French army encountered its most serious crisis since the disasters near the Chinese border at Cao Bằng, Đông Khê and RC 4 occurred in 1949 and 1950. The Battle of Nghĩa Lộ was the opening salvo in a series of offenses and counter-offenses in late 1952 during the First Indochina War. It was part of a Việt Minh offensive in the T’ai region of Tonkin in the vicinity of the Black River. The French countered with Operation Lorraine to attack Việt Minh rear supply bases in an attempt to cut off the offensive. The Việt Minh did not cease or divert the offensive to protect its supply bases. The Việt Minh continued its offensive attack against Nà Sản where there was an outpost and a short airstrip, both guarded by the French army. This series of battles lasted for three months between October 1952 and December 1952. These actions and the Việt Minh successes set the stage for the subsequent Invasion of Laos in April 1953.
Marc Prosper Jacques Arthur Benoît-Lizon was a French skier. He competed in the military patrol at the 1948 Summer Olympics. He was killed during the First Indochina War.
