Vietnam War Bibliography:

World War II and the First Indochina War

Domenico Aceto, Legionario in Indocina, 1951-1953. Milano, Italy: Mursia, 2006. 236 pp. Memoir by an Italian who served in the Foreign Legion, and who was taken prisoner by the Viet Minh.

Eric Adam and Patrice Pivetta, with Jacques Sicard, Les paras français en Indochine. Paris: Histoire & Collections, 2009. 207 pp. Extensively illustrated.

Henry Ainley, In Order to Die. London: Burke, 1955. x, 224 pp. Ainley, an Englishman, served in the Foreign Legion in Indochina, 1951 to 1953.

Louis Allen, The End of the War in Asia. London: Hart-Davis, MacGibbon, 1976. Book One, "The Japanese Surrender in South-East Asia," Chapter 4, "French Indo-China," pp. 96-129, have been placed on-line in the Virtual Vietnam Archive of the Vietnam Project, at Texas Tech University.

Alexis Arette, On m'appelait Bleu de Noir. Biarritz: J & D Editions, 1997. 320 pp. Arette served initially with the 5ème BCCP, later with Group 9 of Commandos du Nord-Vietnam Phu-Lang-Thuon (Phu-Lang-Thuong?). The town sometimes spelled Phu Lang Thuon and sometimes, I think more correctly, Phu Lang Thuong, is in the northern part of the Red River Delta, on the road leading from Hanoi to Lang Son. I have not actually seen Arette's book, and I am not certain which spelling it used.

Thierry d'Argenlieu, Chronique d'Indochine. Paris: Albin Michel, 1985. Admiral d'Argenlieu was French High Commissioner in Indochina, 1945-1947.

Pierre Asselin, "The Indochinese Communist Party's Unfinished Revolution of 1945 and the Origins of Vietnam's 30-Year Civil War," Journal of Cold War Studies 25:1 (Winter 2023), pp. 4-45.

Albert Bacle, Rizières sans croix. Paris: Grancher, 1985. 232 pp.  Memoir of the Tonkin delta, early 1950s.

René Bail, Indochine, 1954-1954: les combats de l'impossible. Paris: Lavauzelle, 1985. 347 pp.

René Bail and Jean-Pierre Bernier, Indochine 1945-1954, 4 vols. Heimdal: ?, ?, 1988, ?. Picture books, with captions and short, strongly anti-Communist historical summaries.

Nicolas Bancel, Daniel Denis, and Youssef Fates, eds., De l'Indochine à l'Algérie: La jeunesse en mouvements des deux côtés du miroir colonial, 1940-1962. Paris: La Découverte, 2003. 346 pp.

Bao Dai, Le dragon d'Annam. Paris: Plon, 1980. 381 pp.  The Vietnamese language version appears to be considerably longer: Con rong Viet Nam: hoi ky chanh tri 1913-1987.  Los Alamitos, CA: Nguyen Phuoc Toc (distributed by Xuan Thu Publishing), 1990.  610 pp.  Memoirs of the former emperor.

Gabriel Barreteau, Indochine, 1952-1953. La Roche-Sur-Yon: Siloë, 2004. 167 pp.

Arnaud Barthouet, La tragédie franco-indochinoise. Bordeaux: Delmas, 1948. 328 pp.

R. Bauchar [pseudonym for René Charbonneau], Rafales sur l'Indochine. Paris: L. Fournier, 1946. 222 pp.

Christopher Bayly and Tim Harper, Forgotten Wars: Freedom and Revolution in Southeast Asia. Great Britain : Penguin, 2006. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007. xxx, 673 pp. The effort of the British to restore imperial domination after the Japanese Surrender of 1945. Includes Indochina.

Louis Beaudonnet, Souvenirs du général Louis Beaudonnet: de Verdun à Saigon (1923-1954). Vincennes: Service historique de la défense, 2008. 331 pp.

Bob Bergin, "The Gordon-Bernard-Tan Group: Three Amateur Spies and the Intelligence Organization They Created in Occupied WWII Indochina", Studies in Intelligence 63:1 (March 2019), pp. 9-22. The GBT Group, which had relations with British intelligence, Republic of China intelligence organizations, and the OSS, but was controlled by none of them, was the most effective Allied intelligence organization in Indochina from 1942 to early 1945.

Erwan Bergot, Mourir au Laos.  Paris: Éditions France-Empire, 1965.  267 pp.

Erwan Bergot, Les héros oubliés. Paris: B. Grasset, 1975. 389 pp. Re-issued in a book club edition under the title Services secrets en Indochine: les héros oubliés.  Paris: Club Pour Vous, 1979.  Re-issued under the title Commandos de choc en Indochine. Paris: Grasset, 1979. 388 pp.  Preface by Général Bigeard.  French troops operating among the mountain tribes of northern Laos, March 1945 to 1954.

Erwan Bergot, La bataille de Dong Khê: la tragédie de la R.C. 4: Indochine 1950. Paris: Presses de la Cité, 1987. 360 pp. Dong Khê, between Cao Bang and Lang Son near the Chinese border, was the scene of a major French defeat in late 1950.

Erwan Bergot, Bigeard. Paris: Perrin, 1988. 586 pp. Marcel Maurice Bigeard commanded the 6th Colonial Parachute Battalion, notably at Tu Le (1952) and at Dien Bien Phu (1953-1954).

Erwan Bergot, Bataillon Bigeard: Indochine 1952-1954, Algérie 1955-1957. Paris: Presses de la Cité, 1977. 292 pp. Preface by General Bigeard. Reissued as Le battaillon Bigeard. Paris: Jeannine Balland (an imprint of Presses de la Cité), 1995. 300 pp.

Erwan Bergot, Paras Bigeard: 1952-1958. Paris: Presses de la Cité, 1988. 189 pp.

Erwan Bergot, Le pirate du delta: Vandenberghe. Paris: Balland, 1973. 327 pp. Reprinted Paris: Pygmalion, 1985 under the title Commando Vandenberghe: le pirate du delta. Roger Vandenberghe (1927-1952) led a commando unit in the Red River Delta.

Erwan Bergot, Les gendarmes au combat en Indochine. Paris: Jeannine Balland, 1994.

Jean J. Bernardini, Sous la botte nippone. Paris: La Pensée universelle, 1971. 188 pp.

Jean-Pierre Bernier, G.M. 100: combats d'Indochine après Diên Biên Phu. Paris: Presses de la Cité, 1978. 284 pp. Groupement Mobile 100 suffered a severe defeat in the Central Highlands in 1954.

Jean-Pierre Bernier, Indochine 1954: les derniers combats. Paris: Page après page, 2004. 356 pp.

Georges Bidault, D'une résistance à l'autre. Paris: Les Presses du Siècle, 1965. 382 pp. Translated from the French by Marianne Sinclair as Resistance: The Political Autobiography of Georges Bidault. New York: Praeger, 1967/London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1967. xx, 348 pp. French Minister for Foreign Affairs from January 1953 until June 18, 1954.

Général [Marcel] Maurice Bigeard, Ma guerre d'Indochine. Paris: Carrère, 1994. 160 pp. ISBN 2012370233. Bigeard commanded the 6th Colonial Parachute Battalion, notably at Tu Le (1952) and at Dien Bien Phu (1953-1954).

Général Marcel [Maurice] Bigeard, Pour une parcelle de gloire. Paris: Plon, 1975.

Général M. [Marcel Maurice] Bigeard, Lettres d'Indochine. Edition No 1, 1998. ISBN 2863918478.

M.T. Blanchet, La naissance de l'État associé du Vietnam. Librairie de Médicis, 1954.

Lucien Bodard, La Guerre d'Indochine, 4 vols., L'Enlisement, L'Humiliation, L'Aventure, and L'Épuisement. Paris: Gallimard, 1963, 1965, 1967, 1973. The first three volumes were combined in one large volume, La Guerre d'Indochine. Paris: Grasset, 1997. 1168 pp.

Lucien Bodard, The Quicksand War. Boston: Little, Brown, 1967. London: Faber, 1967. Abridged translation of vols. 1, 2 of the above item.

Michel Bodin, Les Africains dans la guerre d'Indochine, 1947–1954. Paris: l'Harmattan, 2000. 240 pp.

Michel Bodin, Les combattants français face à la guerre d'Indochine, 1945–1954. Paris: l'Harmattan, 1998. 270 pp.

Michel Bodin, La France et ses soldats, Indochine, 1945-1954. Paris: l'Harmattan, 1996. 286 pp.

Michel Bodin, Soldats d'Indochine, 1945-1954. Paris: l'Harmattan, 1997. 238 pp.

Michel Bodin, Dictionnaire de la Guerre d'Indochine (1945–1954). Paris, Economica, 2004. 319 pp.

Gilbert Bodinier (ed.?), La Guerre d'Indochine, 1945–1954: Textes et Documents. Vol. 1: Le retour de la France en Indochine, 1945–1946. Vol. 2: Indochine 1947, règlement politique ou solution militaire? Textes et documents Français et Viêt-minh. Vincennes: Service Historique de l'Armée de Terre, 1987, 1989.

Colonel Robert Bonnafous, Les Prisonniers de guerre du C.E.F. en E.O. dans les camps du Viet-minh. Thèse doctorat, Université de Montpellier, 1984.

Robert Bonnafous, Les prisonniers Français dans les camps Viêt Minh (1945-1954). Société. des écrivains. 368 pp.

Paul Bonnecarrère, Par le sang versé. Paris: Fayard, 1968. 461 pp. Reprinted Marabout, 1985.

The Boudarel Affair. Georges Boudarel, a French Communist, joined the Viet Minh in 1950. From 1953 to 1954, he served as a political instructor at the Viet Minh's Prisoner of War Camp 113, where conditions were very poor and the death rate among prisoners was high. He returned to France in 1966 and became a scholar of Vietnam, and a professor at one of the campuses of the University of Paris. In 1991, some veterans of the French forces in the First Indochina War charged that Boudarel's actions at Camp 113 had been crimes against humanity.

Roger Bouvier, Commando sès sor. Paris: La Pensée universelle, 1975. 220 pp. Bouvier commanded Khmer troops during World War II and the First Indochina War.

Henri de Brancion, Commando Bergerol Indochine 1946–1953. Paris: Presses de la Cité, 1989. 251 pp.

Henri de Brancion, Retour en Indochine du Sud: Artilleurs des Rizières (1946–1951). Paris: Presses de la Cité, 1999. 360 pp.'

Henri de Brancion, Tonkin, 1946–1954: artilleurs parmi les fantassins at les blindés. Paris: Presses de la Cité, 2002. 408 pp.

Yves Breheret, L'odyssee de la colonne Alessandri: la retraite de Chine, mars 1945 - mai 1945. Paris: Presses de la Cité, 1990 256 pp.

Gérard Brett, Les supplétifs en Indochine (1951-1953). Paris: l'Harmattan, 1996. 317 pp. Brett was not quite nineteen when he arrived in Indochina in September 1951. Before he left in 1953, he had become commander of a company of Vietnamese auxiliary troops (under the French Army's 2° Bureau) in the Red River Delta, the 231° Compagnie des Supplétifs Militaires, and had been highly decorated.

Gérard Brett, La tragédie des supplétifs, Tome 1, La fin des combats, Quartier du Phu Duc - Tonkin, 1953-1954. Paris: l'Harmattan, 1998. 264 pp. the 231° C.S.M., December 1953 to July 1954. The author's note at the beginning says the names of persons have been changed. The impression I get from the opening pages of the text is that the fictionalization goes far beyond that. (Three more volumes were planned, carrying the story up to 1976, but I am not sure any of these have actually been published.)

Pierre Brocheux, et al., L'Indochine Française, 1940–1945. Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1982. 244 pp.

Pierre Brocheux and Daniel Hémery, Indochine: La colonisation ambiguë, 1858–1954. Paris: Découverte, 1994. 427 pp. Rev. ed. Paris: Découverte, 2001. 447 pp. The chapter that deals with the First Indochina War contains useful information.

Pierre Brocheux, "The Economy of War as a Prelude to a 'Socialist Economy': The Case of the Vietnamese Resistance against the French, 1945–1954." In Gisele Bousquet and Pierre Brocheux, eds., Viêt-Nam Exposé: French Scholarship on Twentieth-Century Vietnamese Society (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002), pp. 313–330.

Jean-Christophe Brunet, Gendarmes-parachutistes en Indochine, 1947-1953. Paris: Indo Editions, 2005. 342 pp.

Laura M. Calkins, China and the First Vietnam War, 1947-54. Routledge, 2013. xi, 181 pp.

Hélène Carré Tornézy, Infirmière en Indochine (1950-1952): d'amour et de détresse. Panazol: Lavauzelle, 1999. 333 pp.

Général Georges Catroux, Deux actes du drame indochinois: Hanoi: juin 1940; Dien Bien Phu: mars-mai 1954. Paris: Plon, 1959. 238 pp. General Catroux was Governor-General of French Indochina from 1939 to 1940; he headed a French government commission that investigated, in 1955, the Battle of Dien Bien Phu. See also biography by Henri Lerner, below.

Pierre Cenerelli, "Revisions of Empire: The French Media and the Indochina War, 1946-1954." Ph.D. dissertation, History, Brandeis, 2000. 378 pp. AAT 9968004.

René Charbonneau and José Maigre, Les parias de la victoire: Indochine - Chine 1945. Paris: Editions France-Empire, 1980. 397 pp.

Col. Pierre Charton, RC4, Indochine 1950: la tragédie de l'évacuation de Cao Bang. Éditions Albatros, 1975.

Roger Chaudron, Les allées du Phnom. Paris: Éditions des écrivains, 1998. 341 pp. I believe Chaudron was in Cambodia.

Xiaohe Cheng, "The Chinese advisory groups in the first Indochina War: Their formation, evolution, and disbandment," Cold War History 22:2 (May 2022), 195-213.

Guy de Chézal, Parachuté en Indochine: à travers l'Indochine en feu. Paris: Éditions des Deux sirènes, 1947. 279 pp. Parachuté en Indochine (à travers l'Indochine en feu). Paris: Éditions J'ai lu, 1966. 448 pp.

Chu Van Tan, translated by Mai Elliott, Reminiscences on the Army for National Salvation: Memoir of General Chu Van Tan. Data Paper no. 97. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Southeast Asia Program, 1974. vi, 217 pp. Chu Van Tan was a Nung who became a Viet Minh general, and was a member of the Communist Party Central Committee from 1945 to 1976. This memoir (Vietnamese original published by NXB Quan Doi Nhan Dan in 1971) covers the period from 1940 to 1945.

Albert Clavier, De l'Indochine coloniale au Vietnam libre: Je ne regrette rien. Paris: Indes Savantes, 2008. 205 pp. Clavier went over from the French forces to the Viet Minh during the First Indochina War, and remained in North Vietnam until 1964.

Antoine Colombani, Vietnam 1948-1950: la solution oubliée. Paris: l'Harmattan, 1997. 140 pp.

Louis Constans, Le fuyard de Lang Son: autopsie d'une "légende noire," Tonkin 1949–1950. Paris: Indo éditions, 2005. 293 pp.

Colonel Georges Couget, Le train en Indochine, 1945-1954.  n.p., n.d.  234 pp.  Looks as if it is probably a historical publication of the French Army.

Pierre Daillier, with Général Maurice Henry, Le 4e R.T.M.: les bataillons de marche on Indochine, 1947-1954. Vincennes: Service Historique de l'Armée de Terre, 1991. 355 pp. The 4e Régiment de Tirailleurs Marocains.

Jacques Dalloz, The War in Indochina, 1945-54. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1990. French original La guerre d'Indochine 1945-1954. Paris: Le Seuil, 1987.

Jacques Dalloz, Dictionnaire de la guerre d'Indochine, 1945-1954. Preface by Bernard Droz. Paris: Armand Colin, 2006. 283 pp.

Dang Phong, Lich su kinh te Viet nam 1945-2000 [Economic History of Vietnam 1945-2000], volume 1: 1945-1954. Hanoi: NXB Khoa Hoc Xa Hoi, 2002. 662 pp.

Dang Van Long, Nguoi Viet Nam o Phap, 1940–1954. Said to be very good, a valuable reference on Vietnamese in France.

Dang Van Viet, Highway 4: The Border Campaign (1947-1950). Hanoi: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1990. The author commanded a PAVN regiment.

Jean-Pierre Dannaud, Guerre morte. Saigon: Société Asiatic d'Éditions, 1954. Reprinted Paris: Pensée Moderne, 1973. A photo book, not paginated.

Pierre Darcourt, Bay Vien: le maître de Cholon. Paris: Hachette, 1977.  417 pp. The leader of the Binh Xuyen.

Pierre Darcourt, De Lattre au Vietnam. Paris: La Table Ronde, 1965.

Lieutenant colonel Michel David, Guerre secrete en Indochine: les maquis authchtones face au Viet-Minh, 1951–1955. Paris: Lavauzelle, 2002. 426 pp.

Jean Decoux, A la barre de l'Indochine: histoire de mon gouvernement général, 1940-1945. Paris: Plon, 1949. iii, 507 pp.

Nelcya Delanoë, Poussières d'empire. Preface by Trinh Van Thao. Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 2002. 222 pp. Deals with Moroccans in Indochina.

Raphaël Delpard, Les rizières de la souffrance: combattants français en Indochine, 1945–1954. Neuilly-sur-Seine: M. Lafon, 2004. 368 pp.

Roger Delpey, Soldats de la boue, vol. 1, la bataille de Cochinchine, and vol. 2, la bataille du Tonkin (Paris: Grancher, 1965). Delpey served in Indochina; vol. 1 covers the period 1947-1950, and vol. 2 the period 1951-1954.

Marie-Danielle Demélas, Parachutistes en Indochine. Paris: Vendémiaire, 2016. 378 pp.

Bob Denard, Corsaire de la République. Paris: R. Laffont, 1998. 436 pp.

Peter Dennis, Troubled Days of Peace: Mountbatten and Southeast Asia Command, 1945-46. St. Martin's. 270 pp.

Philipe de Pirey, Operation Waste. 2d ed. Arco Publications Ltd, 1954. Account by a man who served in the Colonial Commando Parachutists in Indochina, early 1950's.

Eric Deroo and Christophe Dutrône, Le Viêt Minh. Paris: Indes Savantes, 2008. 236 pp.

Eric Deschodt, L'orgueil du guerrier: Claude Barrès. Paris: Perrin, 1994. 224 pp.

Jacques Despuech, Le trafic des piastres. Paris: Éditions Deux Rives, 1953; reprinted Paris: La Table Ronde, 1974.

Philippe Devillers, Histoire du Viêt-Nam de 1940 à 1952. Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1952.  479 pp.

Philippe Devillers (ed.?), Paris, Saigon, Hanoi: les archives de la guerre, 1944–1947. Paris: Gallimard, 1988.

Philippe Devillers, Vingt ans et plus avec le Viet-Nam, 1945-1969. Paris: les Indes Savantes, 2010. 478 pp. Devillers arrived in Vietnam in 1945 as a French journalist. He became one of the most important French writers on the country. Most of this book deals with the French Indochina War.

Jacques Dinfreville [pseudonym of Général Pierre d'Esneval], L'Opération Indochine. Ed. Internationales, 1953.

Jacques Dinfreville [pseudonym of Général Pierre d'Esneval], Le roi Jean. Paris: La Table Ronde, 1964.

Doan Doc Thu and Xuan Huy, Giam muc Le Huu Tu va Phat Diem, 1945-1954 - Nhung nam tranh dau hao hung (Bishop Le huu Tu and Phat Diem, The years of heroic fight). 1973. Reprinted Houston, TX: Xuan Thu, 1984. Phat Diem, on the southern edge of the Red River Delta, was effectively ruled by Bishop Le Huu Tu during the First Indochina War. Doan Doc Thu was Bishop Tu's secretary.

Jacques Doyon, Les soldats blancs de Ho Chi Minh. Paris: Fayard, 1973. 521 pp.

Paul Dreyfus, "Stéphane", le capitaine à l'étoile verte. Paris: Le Sarment/Fayard, 1992. 413 pp. Biography of Etienne Poiteau. Probably devoted mostly to his career during World War II; my impression is that Poiteau's service in Indochina was very brief, ending with his death by friendly fire in April 1952.

Pierre Dufour, L'histoire héroïque de la Légion en Indochine, 1883–1955. Paris: Nimrod, 2012. 471 pp.

Peter M. Dunn, The First Vietnam War. London: C. Hurst & Co., 1985. New York: St. Martin's, 1985. xvi, 392 pp. The British intervention in Vietnam in 1945.

Duong Truong Son thuy bo Bac Nam trong thoi khang chien chong Phap, 1947–1954 [The North-South Truong Son Trails on Land and at Sea in the Anti-French Resistance War, 1947-1954]. Danang, 2001.

M. Kathryn Edwards, Contesting Indochina: French Remembrance Beween Decolonization and Cold War. Oakland: University of California Press, 2016. xviii, 305 pp.

Général Paul Ely, Mémoires, vol. 1, L'Indochine dans la tourmente. Paris: Plon, 1964.

Thomas Engelbert, "Vietnamese-Chinese Relations in Southern Vietnam during the First Indochina Conflict," Journal of Vietnamese Studies 3:3 (Fall 2008), pp. 191–230.

Thomas Engelbert, "Ideology and Reality Nationalitätenpolitik in North and South Vietnam and the First Indochina War, 1945–1954," in Thomas Engelbert and Andreas Schneider, eds., \ Ethnic Minorities and Nationalism in Southeast Asia (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2000), pp. 105-142.

Bernard B. Fall, "Political Development of Viet-Nam, VJ-Day to the Geneva Cease-Fire," 3 vols. Ph.D. dissertation, Syracuse University, 1954. Vol. 1: "The Viet-Minh Regime" (pp. i-xiii, 1-238); Vol. II: "State of Viet-Nam" (pp. i-vi, 239-767); Vol. III: "International Aspects of the Viet-Nam Problem" (pp. 769-1078). Fall did research for this dissertation in Indochina from April to October 1953, and in Paris from November to December.

Bernard Fall, Street Without Joy: Indochina at War, 1946-54. Harrisburg, PA: Stackpole, 1961. 322 pp. 3d rev. ed. Street Without Joy: Insurgency in Indochina, 1946-63. Harrisburg, PA: Stackpole, 1963. 379 pp. 4th edition, revised, Street Without Joy. Harrisburg, PA: Stackpole, 1964. 408 pp. Reprinted with foreword by Fredrik Logevall, Street Without Joy: The French Debacle in Indochina. Lanham, MD: Stackpole (Rowman & Littlefield), 2018. xiii, 408 pp. A pretty good overall account of the War.

Bernard B. Fall, "Indochina: The Seven-Year Dilemma." Military Review, XXXIII:7 (October 1953), pp. 23-35.

Bernard B. Fall, "Indochina--The Last Year of the War: Communist Organization and Tactics." Military Review, XXXVI:7 (October 1956), pp. 3-11. Interesting maps on p. 10, contrasting the French official view of the distribution of control in the Red River Delta with the real situation. (He gave some information about how he researched these maps in an article in the April 1966 issue; see below.)

Bernard B. Fall, "Indochina--The Last Year of the War: The Navarre Plan". Military Review, XXXVI:9 (December 1956), pp. 48-56.

Bernard B. Fall, "Communist POW Treatment in Indochina." Military Review, XXXVIII:9 (December 1958), pp. 3-12.

Bernard B. Fall, "Insurgency Indicators." Military Review, XLVI:4 (April 1966), pp. 3-11. An interesting discussion of the ways the actual patterns of government and guerrilla control may vary from the officially acknowledged pattern.

Far Eastern Survey, a monthly journal, usually focused in current or recent events. If you browse the Internet through an institution that has subscribed to JSTOR, you can access the journal through the JSTOR Far Eastern Survey browse page or go to individual articles directly. Relevant articles include:

Jacques Favreau and Nicolas Dufour, Nasan: la victoire oubliée: base aéroterrestre au Tonkin. Paris: Economica, 1999. xiv, 208 pp.

Charles Fenn, At the Dragon's Gate: With the OSS in the Far East. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2004. 227 pp. Fenn, a Marine officer, served in China with the OSS from 1943 to 1945. He was involved in liaison with the Viet Minh. But the review in Studies in Intelligence 50:2 (2006), pp. 75-76, says that Fenn is significantly exaggerating his own role in the events.

Jean Ferrandi, Les officiers français face au Vietminh. Paris: Fayard, 1966.

Pierre Ferrari, Nous les damnés de la guerre: les combattants de l'information: récit authentique et vécu. Coxyde: Presses des eouvres littéraires, 1978. 309 pp.

Georges Fleury, La Guerre en Indochine, 1945–1954. Paris: Plon, 1994. 690 pp. ISBN 2-259-00047-9. No index or source notes and only a minimal bibliography, but a useful chronology (pp. 663–83).

Georges Fleury, Mourir à Lang Son. Paris: Grasset, 1985.

Jacques de Folin, Indochine, 1940–1955: la fin d'un rêve. Perrin, 1993. Based on archival research, but de Folin, a French diplomat, was also a participant in some of the events.

Philippe Franchini, Les Guerres d'Indochine. Paris: Tallandier, 2011.

Philippe Franchini, Les mensonges de la guerre d'Indochine. Paris: Perrin, 2005. 478 pp.

Brigitte Friang (trans. by James Cadell), Parachutes and Petticoats. London: Jarrolds, 1958. 224 pp. By a French war correspondent. French original Les fleurs du ciel. Paris: Robert Laffont, 1955.

Alain Gandy, Le battaillon Bigeard a Tu Le 1952. Paris: Presses de la Cité, 1996. 228 pp. Marcel Maurice Bigeard's 6th Colonial Parachute Battalion was dropped at Tu Le, in the Tai highlands of western Bac Bo between the Red and Black Rivers, in a virtual suicide mission in October 1952, to block a Viet Minh advance long enough to allow other forces in the area to escape.

André Gaudel, L'Indochine française en face du Japon. Paris: J. Suisse, 1947. 240 pp.

Max Gaudron, Legionnaire au Nord Tonkin. Paris: Copernic, 1980. 223 pp. The main focus is on the 3eme Régiment Etranger d'Infanterie, July-September 1949.

Marc Jason Gilbert, "The Impact of the Logistical Dilemmas of Operation Masterdom on the Allied Re-entry into French Indo-China, 1945," Global War Studies 12:3 (2016). Abstract.

George Ginsburgs, "Local Government and Administration in North Vietnam, 1945–1954", China Quarterly, no. 10 (Apr–Jun 1962), pp. 174–204. If you browse the Internet through an institution that has subscribed to JSTOR, you can access the text directly or go through the JSTOR China Quarterly browse page.

Pierre Giudicelli, Médecin de bataillon en Indochine: 1947-1951. Paris: Albatros, 1991. 187 pp.

Christopher Goscha, "Colonial Hanoi and Saigon at War: Social Dynamics of the Viet Minh's 'Underground City,' 1945-1954," War in History, 20:2 (April 2013), pp. 222-250.

Christopher E. Goscha, "Courting Diplomatic Disaster? The Difficult Integration of Vietnam into the Internationalist Communist Movement (1945–1950)." Journal of Vietnamese Studies, Vol. I, nos. 1-2 (February/August 2006), pp. 59-103.

Christopher E. Goscha, "Building Force: Asian Origins of 20th Century Military Science in Vietnam (1905-1954)," Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 34:3 (2003), pp. 535-60.

Christopher E. Goscha, Le premier échec contre-révolutionnaire au Vietnam: La destruction des partis nationalistes non-communistes devant le Viet Minh et la France en 1946. Diplôme d’études approfondies, Université de Paris VII, 1994.

Christopher Goscha, The Road to Dien Bien Phu: A History of the First War for Vietnam. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2022. xxvii, 514 pp. The main focus in on the DRV.

Christopher E. Goscha, Vietnam: un état né de la guerre, 1945-1954. Paris: Armand Colin, 2011. 559 pp.

Christopher E. Goscha, Historical Dictionary of the Indochina War (1945-1954): An International and Interdisciplinary Approach. Copenhagen: NIAS Press / Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2011. xxxv, 564 pp.

Christopher E. Goscha, Vietnam or Indochina? Contesting Concepts of Space in Vietnamese Nationalism, 1887-1954. NIAS Reports, No. 28. Copenhagen: Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, 1995 (reprinted 1999). 154 pp.

Christopher E. Goscha and Benoît de Tréglodé, eds., Naissance d'un État-Parti: Le Viêt Nam depuis 1945/The Birth of a Party-State: Vietnam since 1945. Paris: les Indes Savantes, 2004. 463 pp.

Général Yves Gras, Histoire de la guerre d'Indochine. Paris: Plon, 1977; revised and enlarged edition Paris: Denoël, 1992. 610 pp.

Paul Grauwin, Seulement médecin. Paris: France-Empire, 1956. 299 pp.

A Gravier and C. Cholley, Les sapeurs de Leclerc: le 13ème Génie. Paris: C. Cholley, 1982. 175 pp.

Michel Grintchenko, "Atlante-Aréthuse": une opération de pacification en Indochine. Paris: Economica, 2001. 333 pp. The attempt to break the Viet Minh in Interzone V, early 1954. The author is an officer of the French Army today; his father was a colonel in Indochina.

Michel Grintchenko, L'opération Atlante: les dernières illusions de la France on Indochine. Paris: Economica, 2008. 700 pp.

François Guillemot, "Autopsy of a Massacre On a Political Purge in the Early Days of the Indochina War (Nam Bo 1947)," European Journal of East Asian Studies 9:2 (2010), pp. 225-65.

François Guillemot, Dai Viêt, indépendance et révolution au Viêt-Nam: L'échec del la troisième voie (1938-1955). Paris: Les Indes Savantes, 2012. 739 pp.

Pierre Guillet, Pour l'honneur: le général Chanson en Indochine 1946-1951. Paris: Editions Ediprim, 1992. 133 pp. General Charles Chanson commanded the French forces in Cochinchina quite successfully until assassinated, apparently by the Cao Dai, in 1951.

Geoffrey Gunn, Rice Wars in Colonial Vietnam: The Great Famine and the Viet Minh Road to Power. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2014. xix, 323 pp.

Raymond Guyader, La Légion Étrangère in Indochine 1946-1956: Histoire, Uniformes, Insignes, Fabrications locales. Heimdal, 2011. 256 pp. (Distributed in the United States by Casemate.) I believe the book is made up mostly of photographs.

Egbert Haas, Frans Indo-China en de Japanse expansiepolitick 1939-1945. Leiden: Universitaire Pers Leiden, 1956. 260 pp.

Ellen Hammer, The Struggle for Indochina. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1954. xvii, 342 pp. Expanded edition The Struggle for Indochina, 1940-1955. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1966. ix, 373 pp. A pretty good overall account, with a lot of coverage of the political aspects of the war.

Xiaorong Han, "Revolution knows no boundaries? Chinese revolutionaries in North Vietnam during the early years of the First Indochina War," Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Vol. 52, Issue 2 (June 2021), pp. 246-274.

Robert Hanyok, "Guerrillas in the Mist: COMINT and the Formation and Evolution of the Viet Minh, 1941-45" Cryptologic Quarterly, 15:1 (Spring 1996), pp. 95-114. An examination of what can be learned, from French and Japanese communications intercepted during World War II, about the development of the Viet Minh during that period. Hanyok says these sources indicate the Viet Minh was stronger, and strongly active over a much wider area, than most authors believe. Although NSA's Cryptologic Quarterly is normally a classified journal, this particular article was unclassified, because by the time it was written, the World War II intercepts were no longer secret.

Pierre Héduy, La guerre d'Indochine, 1945-1954. Paris: Société de production Littéraire, 1981. 358 pp.

l'Heure decisive: L'application et la ratification des accords franco-vietnamiens. Paris: Jean Vitiano, 1950. 26 pp. The text has been placed on-line in the Virtual Vietnam Archive of the Vietnam Project, at Texas Tech University.

Hoang Van Dao, Viet Nam Quoc Dan Dang: lich su tranh dau can dai (1927-1954) (title on cover: Viet Nam Quoc Dan Dang: lich su dau tranh can dai 1927-1954).  (Saigon?), 1970.  547 pp. Translated by Huynh Khue as Viet Nam Quoc Dan Dang: A Contemporary History of a National Struggle: 1927-1954. Pittsburgh: Rosedog Press, 2008. xx, 519 pp.

Alec Holcombe, Mass Mobilization in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, 1945–1960. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2020.

Paul Isoart, Le phénomène national viêtnamien: de l'indépendance unitaire à l'indépendance fractionnée. Paris: Librairie Générale de Droit et de Jurisprudence, 1961. iii, 437 pp.

Hubert Ivanoff, Le premier régiment étranger de cavalerie en Indochine, 1947-1956: mémoire de matrise d'histoire. Montpellier: Université Paul Valéry, Centre d'histoire militaire et d'études de defense nationale, 1982. 192, lxxxii pp.

Général Henri Jacquin, Guerre secrète en Indochine. O. Orban, 1979.

Elodie Jauneau, "Se souvenir de l'Indochine L'écriture des femmes engagées dans l'armée française, entre mémoire de guerre et récit de voyage," French Colonial History vol. 14 (2013), pp. 115-132.

Eric T. Jennings, Vichy in the Tropics: Pétain's National Revolution in Madagascar, Guadeloupe, and Indochina, 1940-1944. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001. xviii, 310 pp.

Eric T. Jennings and Jacques Cantier, eds., L'Empire colonial sous le régime de Vichy. Paris: Odile Jacob, 2004. 398 pp.

Pierre Jenoudet, De la lumière aux ténèbres: Lieutenant en Indochine, 1951-1954. Paris: l'Harmattan, 2008. 186 pp.

Francis Joucelain, Le Parti communiste français et la premiere guerre d'Indochine. Paris, 1973. A critique of Communist Party policy, from a left-wing viewpoint.

Charles Keith, "Vietnamese Collaborationism in Vichy France," Journal of Asian Studies 76:4 (November 2017), pp. 987-1008.

George A. Kelly, Lost Soldiers: The French Army and Empire in Crisis, 1947-1962. Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, 1965. 404 pp.

Robert Kilian, Les fusiliers marins en Indochine: la Brigade marine du Corps expéditionnaire d'Extrême-Orient, septembre 1945-mars 1947.  ParisBerger-Levrault, 1948.  xiii, 256 pp.

Charles Kraus, "A Border Region 'Exuded with Militant Friendship': Provincial Narratives of China's Participation in the First Indochina War, 1949-1954" Cold War History, 12:3 (August 2012),

Germaine Krull, "Diary of Saigon, Following the Allied Occupation in September 1945." The text has been placed on-line in the Virtual Vietnam Archive of the Vietnam Project, at Texas Tech University.

Dominique de La Motte, De l'autre côté de l'eau (Indochine, 1950-1952). Paris: Tallandier, 2009, 2012. 167 pp. The main focus is on the period February 1951 to June 1952, when Lieutenant de La Motte was commanding Commando 12, a unit in Tay Ninh province, made up one-third of local Vietnamese, two-thirds Khmers (some of the Khmers were from Vietnam, some from Cambodia). The book is organized by topics; the author has made no effort to cover events in chronological order. Quite interesting.

Pierre Labrousse, Le Méthode Vietminh: Indochine 1945-1954. Paris: Lavauzelle, 1996. 391 pp. This book does have an index, it is just on pp. 305-335, instead of in the usual location at the end of the volume.

Donald Lancaster, The Emancipation of French Indochina. London: Royal Institute of International Affairs and Oxford University Press, 1961. xii, 445 pp.

Jean de Lattre [Jean-Marie de Lattre de Tassigny], La ferveur et le sacrifice: Indochine 1951. Edited by Jean-Luc Barre; preface by Pierre Schoendoerffer. Paris: Plon, 1988. 473 pp. Letters, messages, statements, etc. by General de Lattre, who was commander of the French forces in Indochina from December 1950 until November 1951. Items dated 1946 to 1949 are pp. 29-39; items dated 1950 are pp. 39-78; items dated 1951 are pp. 79-438.

Mark Atwood Lawrence, "Transnational Coalition-Building and the Making of the Cold War in Indochina," Diplomatic History 26:3 (Summer 2002), pp. 453-80.

Mark Atwood Lawrence and Fredrik Logevall, eds., The First Vietnam War: Colonial Conflict and Cold War Crisis. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007. viii, 374 pp.

Le Manh Hung, The Impact of World War II on the Economy of Vietnam, 1939-1945. Singapore: Eastern Universities Press (Marshall Cavendish International), 2004. v, 304 pp.

Steven Hugh Lee, Outposts of Empire: Korea, Vietnam, and the Origins of the Cold War in Asia, 1948-1954. McGill-Queen's University Press, 1995.

Julien Joseph Legrand, L'Indochine à l'heure japonaise; la verité sur le coup de force, la résistance en Nouvelle-Calédonie. Cannes: Impr. Aegitna, 1963. 309 pp. Preface by Général d'armée Catroux.

Jean Le Morillon, Un Breton on Indochine: Mission Oiseau mouche. Cheminements, 2000. 191 pp.

Jean-Marc LePage, PhD, and Elie Tenenbaum, "French and American Intelligence Relations During the First Indochina War," Studies in Intelligence, 55:3 (September 2011), pp. 19-27.

Henri Lerner, Catroux. Paris: Albin Michel, 1990. 423 pp. Biography of General Georges Catroux, who was Governor-General of French Indochina from 1939 to 1940, and who headed a French government commission that investigated, in 1955, the Battle of Dien Bien Phu. (See also Catroux's own book, above.)

Colonel Jean Leroy, Un homme dans la rizière. Paris: Éditions de Paris, 1955.  192 pp.  Leroy, born in Vietnam of a French father and a Vietnamese mother,  was involved in the French reconquest of Cochinchina after the end of World War II, and then led Catholic forces in the Mekong Delta, particularly the area of Ben Tre, into the early 1950s.

Colonel Jean Leroy, Fils de la rizière. Paris: Robert Laffont, 1977. 333 pp.

Kevin Li, "Entrepreneurs of Disorder: A History of the Binh Xuyen in Southern Vietnam, 1945-1955." Ph.D. dissertation in progress, University of California, Berkeley.

Keven Li, "Partisan to Sovereign: The Making of the Binh Xuyen in Southern Vietnam, 1945-1948," Journal of Vietnamese Studies, Vol. 11, Issue 3-4, pp. 140-187.

Xiaobing Li, Building Ho's Army: Chinese Military Assistance to North Vietnam. University Press of Kentucky, 2019. 296 pp. The focus is on the years 1950 to 1956.

Adrian Liddell Hart, Strange Company. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1953. 211 pp. Describes Liddell Hart's rather brief service with the French Foreign Legion in Vietnam, approximately 1950-1951.

Lin Hua, Chiang Kai-shek, De Gaulle contre Ho Chi Minh: Vietnam, 1945-1946. Paris: L'Harmattan, 1994. 333 pp.

Greg Lockhart, Nation in Arms: The Origins of the People's Army of Vietnam. Sydney, Australia: Allen & Unwin, 1989. xiv, 314 pp. Excellent work.

Fredrik Logevall, Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam. New York: Random House, 2012. xxii, 839 pp. Covers the period from 1940 to 1959, but the main emphasis is 1940 to 1954. Won the Pulitzer Prize.

Henry-Jean Loustau, Les deux bataillons: Cochinchine-Tonkin, 1945-1952. Paris: Albin Michel, 1987. 255 pp.  Loustau arrived in Vietnam from Madagascar at the end of 1945.  He served in Cochinchina with the 1er Bataillon de Marche d'Extreme-Orient, a Franco-Cambodian unit, from 1946 to the end of 1947, and in Tonkin with the 1er Bataillon de Marche Indochinois, a Franco-Vietnamese unit, from 1950 to 1952.  He seems proud of the war.

Henry-Jean Loustau, Les dernier combats d'Indochine, 1952-1954. Paris: Albin Michel, 1984.  282 pp.  Loustau served in Cochinchina, then in Cambodia, then briefly in the area near Hue, finally in the effort to aid the forces that defended Dien Bien Phu.

Captain Kirk A. Luedeke, "Death on the Highway: The Destruction of Groupement Mobile 100". Armor, January-February 2001, pp. 22-29. Text on a U.S. Army web site. The destruction of an important French unit in June 1954, on the road from An Khe to Pleiku.

Stephen R. Lyne, The French Socialist Party and the Indo-China War, 1944-54. Doctoral dissertation, Stanford University, 1965.

MacLean, "History Reformatted: Vietnam's Great Famine (1944–45) in Archival Form" Southeast Asian Studies, Vol. 5, No. 2, August 2016, pp. 187-218.

Shawn F. McHale, The First Vietnam War: Violence, Sovereignty, and the Fracture of the South, 1945–1956. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2021. xi, 304 pp.

Jean Paul Marchand, L'Indochine dans le cadre de l'Asie et ses problèmes actuels. Paris: J. Peyronnet, 1949. 215 pp.

Général Jean Marchand, Dans le jungle moï. Paris: J. Peyronnet, 1951. 182 pp.

Général Jean Marchand, Le drame indochinois. Paris: J. Peyronnet, 1953. 246 pp.

Général Jean Marchand, L'Indochine en guerre. Paris: Les Presses Modernes, 1954. 323 pp.

David G. Marr, Vietnam 1945: The Quest for Power. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. 602 pp. This book, a splendid study of this vital turning point in Vietnamese history, won the John K. Fairbank Prize of the American Historical Association. The full text is available online if you browse the Internet through an institution that is affiliated with netLibrary.

David G. Marr, Vietnam: State, War, and Revolution (1945-1946). Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013. xxi, 721 pp. Not a revised edition of the previous item, but a genuinely new work, and a very important one.

Françoise Martin, Heures tragiques au Tonkin, 9 mars 1945 - 18 mars 1946. Paris: Berger-Levrault, 1948. xxiii,285 pp.

Antoine Mattei, Tu survivras longtemps. Paris: Olivier Orban, 1976. 286 pp. Mattei arrived in Vietnam a lieutenant, with the 3d Regiment of the Foreign Legion, initially going to Saigon. By 1950 he was a captain, commanding a company in Tonkin.

Andre F. Mercier, Faut-il abandonner l'Indochine? Paris: France-Empire, 1954.

Lt. Col. Albert Merglen [French Army], "Two Airborne Raids in North Vietnam." Military Review, XXXVIII:1 (April 1958), pp. 14-20. Merglen was in the 2d Foreign Legion Parachute Battalion in the raid on Phu Doan (Northwest of Hanoi), November 9, 1952, and commanded the battalion in the raid on Lang Son, July 17, 1953.

Franck Michelin, La guerre du Pacifique a commencé en Indochine 1940–1941. Paris: Passés composés, 2019. 320 pp.

Martin L. Mickelsen, "A Mission of Vengeance: Vichy French in Indochina in World War II," Air Power History 55:3 (Fall 2008), pp. 30-45. Vichy officials having to decided to what extent to capture, and turn over to the Japanese, American pilots shot down in Indochina.

Francois Mitterand, Aux frontières de l'Union française: Indochine-Tunisie. Paris: Juilliard, 1953. 221 pp.

Eugène Mordant, Au service de la France in Indochine. Saigon: Édition IFOM, 1950. 215 pp. General Mordant commanded French troops in Indochina under the Japanese occupation during World War II.

Dominique de La Motte, De l'autre côté de l'eau: Indochine 1950-1952. Lieutenant de La Motte was commander from February 1951 to June 1952 of Commando 12, a unit of supplétifs, in an area I believe was not far from Tay Ninh City.

Raymond Muelle, Le 1er Bataillon de choc en Indochine, 1947-1948. Paris: Presses de la Cité, 1985.

Raymond Muelle, Le bataillon des damnés: le BILOM, Indochine 1949-1950. Monaco: Trésor du Patrimoine, 2001. 306 pp. The Bataillon d'Infanterie Légère d'Outer-mer.

Raymond Muelle, Bérets rouges en Indochine. Paris: Presses de la Cité, 1986.

Raymond Muelle, Le Service Action on Indochine. Jeannine Balland, 1993.

Raymond Muelle and Eric Deroo, Services speciaux en Indochine, 1950-1954 (alternate title: Services speciaux: armes, techniques, missions: GCMA - Indochine 1951/54). Crepin Leblond, 1992.

Sachiko Murakami, "Japan's Thrust into French Indochina, 1940-1945." Ph.D. dissertation, History, New York University, 1981. 316 pp. AAT 8127944. A lot of use of Japanese sources.

Paul Mus, Viet-Nam: Sociologie d'une guerre. Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1952. 374 pp.

Giorgio Adamo Muzzati, Là où l'on meurt--peut-être. Paris: Italiques, 2004. 415 pp. I believe Muzzati was in the Foreign Legion, and was at Dien Bien Phu.

Henri Navarre, Agonie de l'Indochine (1953-1954). Paris: Plon, 1956. There is a nouvelle édition, Paris: Plon, 1958, v, 345 pp., that has blank spaces on pages 198-99, 265, 267, and 270 where material that had been protested by Général René Cogny has been deleted, and that also has an appendix (pp. 337-45) responding to Joseph Laniel's book (see above). Général Navarre was appointed in May 1953 to command the French forces in Indochina.

Chizuru Namba, Français at Japonais en Indochina (1940-1945): colonisation, propagande et rivalité culturelle. Paris: Karthala, 2012.

Henri Navarre, Le temps des vérités. Paris: Plon, 1979. 461 pp.

Peter Neville, Britain in Vietnam: Prelude to Disaster, 1945-6. London: Routledge, 2007. 232 pp.

Nguyen Bac, Au coeur de la ville captive: souvenirs d'un agent du Viêt-Minh infiltré à Hanoi. Translated by Philippe Papin. Paris: Arlea, 2004. 133 pp. Vietnamese original titled Giua thanh pho bi chiem.

Nguyen Lien Van [order?], "American Perceptions of the Chinese Role in Vietnam, 1946-1954". Ph.D. Dissertation, University of South Carolina, 1978.

Nguyen Minh Chau et. al., Tu Dien Bien Phu den bac Tay Nguyen: Trung doan 96, tran tieu diet Binh doan co dong 100 cua Phap. Hanoi: NXB Quan Doi Nhan Dan, 1995. 180 pp.

Dominique Niollet, L'épopée des douaniers on Indochine, 1874-1954. Paris: Kailash, 1998. 666 pp. Alcohol, salt, and especially opium in the French colonial system.

"Notre" guerre d'Indochine. Vol. 1: Le piège, 1945-1951. Vol. 2: Le duel, 1951-1954. Paris: Librairie J. Tallandier, 1972.

Colonel Le Page, Cao Bang: La tragique épopée de la colonne Le Page. Nouvelles Éditions Latines, 1981.

Peter Paret, French Revolutionary Warfare from Indochina to Algeria. New York: Praeger, 1964. vi, 163 pp.

Jean Michel Pedrazzani, La France in Indochine, de Catroux à Sainteny. Paris: Arthaud, 1972. 215 pp.

Guy Pedroncini and Philippe Duplay, eds., Leclerc et l'Indochine, 1945-1947: quand se noua le destin d'un empire. Paris: Albin Michel, 1992.

Mandaley Perkins, Hanoi, adieu - A bittersweet memoir of French Indochina. Fourth Estate (HarperCollins), 2005. The story of Michel l'Herpiniere, as told to Mandaley Perkins. L'Herpiniere was a teenager living in Hanoi when he decided to join the French Army in 1939. By late 1940 he was a junior officer stationed at Lang Son. I believe the story goes up at least to the 1950s.

Phan Quang Dan, The War in Indochina: A Comparative Study of the Vietminh and French Union Forces. n.p., 1954. 58 pp.

Jean-Pierre Pissardy, Commandos Nord-Vietnam: 1951-1954. Paris: Indo éditions, 1999. 338 pp.

Douglas Porch, The French Secret Services: From the Dreyfus Affair to the Gulf War. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1995. 623 pp. Three chapters (pp. 293-357) deal with the First Indochina War.

Philippe Pottier, "GCMA/GMI: A French Experience in Counterinsurgency During the French Indochina War." Small Wars & Insurgencies 16 (June 2005), pp. 125-46.

René Poujade, Cours martiales Indochine 1940-1945: les évasions de résistants dans l'Indochine occupée par les Japonais. Paris: Éditions La Bruyère, 1987. 252 pp.

Anne Raffin, "The Causes and Consequences of Patriotic Youth Mobilization in Vichy France and Indochina During and After World War II." Ph.D. dissertation, Sociology, New School for Social Research, 2000. 356 pp. AAT 9980019.

Anne Raffin, Youth Mobilization in Vichy Indochina and Its Legacies, 1940 to 1970. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books (Rowman & Littlefield), 2005. viii, 273 pp.

Jacques Raphael-Leygues, Ponts de lianes: missions en Indochine, 1945-1954.  Paris: Hachette, 1976.  286 pp.  Raphael-Leygues was involved in efforts to initiate peace negotiations, from 1952 to 1954.

Brett Reilly, "The Sovereign States of Vietnam, 1945-1955," Journal of Vietnamese Studies 11:3-4 (2016): 103-139.

Brett Reilly, "The Origins of the Vietnamese Civil War and the State of Vietnam," Ph.D. dissertation in History, Universitiy of Wisconsin-Madison, 2018. vii, 280 pp. 10824310. Deals mostly with the period up to 1949.

Edward Rice-Maximin, Accommodation and Resistance: The French Left, Indochina and the Cold War, 1944-1954. Westport: Greenwood, 1986. A good survey, very short but with plentiful source notes.

René Riesen, Jungle Mission (trans. by James Oliver). Hutchinson, 1955. Memoir of anti-VM operations among highland minorities in Vietnam. French original Mission spéciale en forêt moï. Paris: France-Empire, 1955. 318 pp.

Gary Romano, "End of Empire: The Destruction of Mobile Group 100." Strategy and Tactics, No. 221 (Mar/Apr 2004), pp. 52-58.

Sabine Rousseau, La colombe et le napalm: des chrétiens français contre les guerres d'Indochine et du Vietnam, 1945-1975. Paris: CNRS, 2002. xxii, 370 pp. Documentary appendices are pp. 337-359.

Jules Roy, La bataille dans la rizière.  Paris: Gallimard, 1953. 365 pp.

Alain Ruscio, Les communistes français et la guerre d'Indochine, 1944-1954. Paris: Harmattan, 1985. 422 pp.

Alain Ruscio, La guerre française d'Indochine, 1945-1954. Bruxelles: Editions Complexe, 1992. 278 pp.

Alain Ruscio, La guerre "française" d'Indochine (1945-1954), Les sources de la connaissance: Bibliographie, filmographie, documents divers. Paris: Les Indes Savantes, 2002. 1174 pp. Includes a chronology (pp. 1059-1080) and useful brief biographical sketches (pp. 1081-1094).

G. Sabattier, Le destin de l'Indochine: souvenirs et documents, 1941-1951. Paris: Plon, 1952. 466 pp. Major General Gabriel (Camille Ange Gabriel) Sabattier was among the senior French officers in Vietnam under the Japanese occupation during World War II. After the Japanese coup of March 9, 1945, Sabattier and several thousand of his troops retreated to China.

I. Milton Sacks, Political Alignments of Vietnamese Nationalists. Washington, D.C.: Office of Intelligence Research, U.S. Department of State, 1949. vii, 176 pp. A history of Vietnamese political groups, using a rather broad definition of "nationalism." The text has been placed on-line in the Virtual Vietnam Archive of the Vietnam Project, at Texas Tech University, in four parts: pp. i-vii, 1-41 (p. 42 missing);   pp. 43-92;   pp. 93-138, and charts; and pp. 139-176 (footnotes, index of namese, chronology, bibliography).

Hélie de Saint Marc, with Laurent Beccaria, Mémoires: les champs de braises. Paris: Perrin, 1995. 331 pp. I think de Saint Marc was an officer in the Foreign Legion. He and Beccaria collaborated on two volumes; this looks like the best bet to contain his Indochina experiences.

Jean Sainteny, Histoire d'une paix manquée: Indochine, 1945-1947. Paris: Amiot-Dumont, 1953. 260 pp. Paris: Fayard, 1967. 295 pp.

Jean Sainteny, Face à Ho Chi Minh. Paris: Seghers, 1970. 201 pp. Translated by Herma Briffault as Ho Chi Minh and his Vietnam: A Personal Memoir. Chicago: Cowles, 1972. xii, 193 pp.

Raoul Salan, Mémoires: fin d'un empire, vol. II, Le Viêt-minh mon adversaire. Paris: Presses de la Cité, 1971. 479 pp. Salan, having commanded French forces in norhern Indochina, was promoted to commander-in-chief for all Indochina after the death of de Lattre.

Colonel Jean Sassi, with Jean-Louis Tremblais, Opéreations spéciales: 20 ans de guerres secrètes (Résistance, Indochine, Algérie). Nimrod, 2009. 350 pp. Sassi commanded Hmong troops in Laos in the GCMA (Groupement de Commandos Mixtes Aéroportés).

A. M. Savani, Notes sur la secte P.G.H.H. Saigon, 1951. 105 pp. The Hoa Hao religious sect.

A. M. Savani, Visages et images du Sud Viet-Nam. Saigon: Imprimerie Francaise d'Outre-Mer, 1955. 336 pp. Savani, a French officer, knew a great deal about the "sects" of southern Vietnam.

John S. Sbrega, "'First catch your hare': Anglo-American Perspectives on Indochina during the Second World War." Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, XIV:1 (March 1983), pp. 63-78. The text has been placed on-line in the Virtual Vietnam Archive of the Vietnam Project, at Texas Tech University.

John C. Schaefer, "Ngô Kha, Vietnam's Civil Wars, and the Need for Forgiveness," Journal of Vietnamese Studies 13:1 (2018): 1-41.

Général Maurice Schmitt, De Diên Biên Phu à Koweït City (From Dien Bien Phu to Kuwait City). Paris: Grasset, 1992. 309 pp., of which pp. 26-73 are devoted to Indochina. Schmitt arrived in Vietnam at the beginning of 1953 as a lieutenant with the 4th Group, 1st Colonial Artillery Regiment. Assigned to Thai Binh, in the Catholic region of the southern Red River Delta. He parachuted into Dien Bien Phu on May 1, 1954.

Pierre Sergent, Paras-Légion: Le 2e B.E.P. en Indochine. Paris: Presses de la Cité, 1982.

Elisabeth Sevier, with Robert W. Sevier, edited by Nancy J. Vesta, War Without a Front: The Memoirs of a French Army Nurse in Vietnam. Edmond, OK: Wesley Publishing Co., 1999. xx, 170 pp. Sevier served in Indochina from 1950 to 1953.

Martin Shipway, The Road to War: France and Vietnam, 1944-1947. Oxford: Berghahn Books, 1996. xiii, 309 pp. Said to be better dealing with the French than with the Vietnamese. The full text is available online to paid subscribers of Questia.

Masaya Shriraishi, Nguyen Van Khanh, and Bruce M. Lockhart, eds., Vietnam-Indochina-Japan Relations during the Second World War: Documents and Interpretations. Tokyo: Waseda Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies, 2017. iii, 333 pp.

Général Guy Simon, Chroniques de Cochinchine, 1951-1956.  Paris: Lavauzelle, 1995.  324 pp.  Letters that Simon, then a young lieutenant, wrote to his father.

T.O. Smith, Britain and the Origins of the Vietnam War: UK Policy in Indo-China, 1943-50. Houndsmills and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. xiii, 229 pp.

T. O. Smith, Churchill, America and Vietnam, 1941-45. Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. xi, 185 pp.

Captain André Souyris, "An Effective Counterguerrilla Procedure" (in "Foreign Military Digests," digested from Revue de Défense Nationale, June 1956), Military Review, XXXVI:12 (March 1957), pp. 86-89. Describes a program very much like strategic hamlets, and claims that this was applied successfully over wide areas of Cambodia beginning in 1952.

Ronald H. Spector, In the Ruins of Empire: The Japanese Surrender and the Battle for Postwar Asia. New York: Random House, 2007. xiii, 358 pp.

Ronald Spector, "Phat Diem Nationalism, Religion and Identity in the Franco-Viet Minh War. Journal of Cold War Studies 15:3 (Summer 2013), pp. 34-46. Phat Diem, on the southern edge of the Red River Delta, was effectively ruled by Bishop Le Huu Tu during the First Indochina War.

Georges Spillmann, Souvenirs d'un colonialiste. Paris: Presses de la Cité, 1968. 320 pp. Spillmann, a French general with no background in Indochina, was made responsible in 1951 for the French Army's relations with the Vietnamese National Army.

John Springhall, "'Kicking Out the Vietminh': How Britain Allowed France to Reoccupy South Indochina, 1945-46." Journal of Contemporary History, 40:1 (January 2005), pp. 115-130.

Louis Stien, Les soldats oubliés: de Cao Bang aux camps de reeducation du Viet Minh. Paris: Albin Michel, 1993. 336 pp. By an officer of the 1st BEP, captured in the Battle of Cao Bang, 1950.

Albert Stihlé, Le prêtre et le commissaire. Paris: Grasset, 1971. 265 pp. Stihlé, a priest, was captured by the Viet Minh at Na San in 1952.

Balázs Szalontai, "The 'Sole Legal Government of Vietnam': The Bao Dai Factor and Soviet Attitudes toward Vietnam, 1947-1950," Journal of Cold War Studies 20:3 (2018), 3-56.

George K. Tanham, Communist Revolutionary Warfare: The Vietminh in Indochina. New York: Praeger, 1961. x, 166 pp. Revised as Communist Revolutionary Warfare: From the Vietminh to the Viet Cong. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2006. 152 pp.

Nicholas Tarling, Britain, Southeast Asia and the Onset of the Cold War, 1945-50.  Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998.  498 pp.

Hugues Tertrais, La piastre et le fusil: Le coût de la guerre d'Indochine, 1945-1954. Paris: Comité pour l'Histoire Économique et Financière de la France, 2002. x, 634 pp.

Amédée Thévenet, ed., La Guerre d'Indochine racontée par ceux qui l'ont vécue, 1945-1954: un devoir de mémoire assumée ensemble. Paris: France-Empire, 2001. 629 pp.

Stein Tonnesson, The Vietnamese Revolution of 1945: Roosevelt, Ho Chi Minh, and de Gaulle in a World at War. Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1991. xiv, 458 pp.

Stein Tonnesson, The Outbreak of War in Indochina 1946. Oslo: International Peace Research Institute, 1984; PRIO Report 3/84. 452 pp. Doctoral dissertation, Department of History, University of Oslo, Norway, Fall 1982.

Stein Tonnesson, 1946: Déclenchement de la guerre d'Indochine: les vêpres tonkinoises du 19 décembre. Paris: l'Harmattan, 1987.

Stein Tønnesson, Vietnam 1946: How the War Began. Foreword by Philippe Devillers. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009. 392 pp.

Seymour Topping, Journey Between Two Chinas. New York: Harper & Row, 1972. x, 459 pp. Mostly deals with the various periods when Topping reported on China, but pp. 109-184 are on Indochina. Topping's account of his tour as an AP reporter in Indochina, February 1950 to late 1951, is extremely interesting.

Seymour Topping, On the Front Lines of the Cold War: An American Correspondent's Journal from the Chinese Civil War to the Cuban Missile Crisis and Vietnam. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2010. xv, 435 pp. The First Indochina War is chapters 14-15, 17, 20, 27.

Tran Quang Vinh, Hoi ky Tran Quang Vinh va lich su quan doi Cao Dai. Washington, DC: Thanh that vung Hoa Thinh Don, 1997. 295 pp. Tran Quang Vinh commanded the main Cao Dai armed force during the First Indochina War.

Tran Tam Tinh, Dieu et César. Paris: Sudestasie, 1978. 238 pp.

A Translation from the French: Lessons of the War in Indochina, Volume 2. Translated by V.J. Croizat, USMC (Ret.) RM-5271-PR. Santa Monica: Rand, May 1967. x, 411 pp. Translation of a work originally issued by the Commander in Chief, French Forces, Indochina, in May 1955.

Beatrice Trefalt, "Japanese War Criminals in Indochina and the French Pursuit of Justice: Local and International Constraints," Journal of Contemporary History 49:4 (October 2014), pp, 727-742.

Trinh Ngoc Hien, Thanh binh Nam bo: khoi di tu tam vong nhon. Self-published, 1999.

Roger Trinquier, Le premier bataillon des Bérets rouges: Indochine 1947-1949. Paris: Plon, 1984.

Roger Trinquier, Modern Warfare: A French View of Counterinsurgency. Introduction by Bernard B. Fall. London: Pall Mall Press, 1964. Reprinted (and also available online from) Fort Leavenworth, Kansas: U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, 1985. xviii, 115 pp. (Front matter, consisting mostly of an introductory essay by Bernard B. Fall;   pp. 1-40;   pp. 41-93;   pp. 95-112;   pp. 113-115) Reprinted Westport, CT: Praeger, 2006. French original La guerre moderne. Paris: la Table Ronde, 1961.

Truong Chinh, The August Revolution. Hanoi: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1958. 76 pp. The story of the Viet Minh siezure of power in 1945. Truong Chinh was General Secretary of the Indochinese Communist Party at that time; he published the Vietnamese original of this work in Su That in 1946. By the time this translation was published in Hanoi as a book, Truong Chinh had been demoted as punishment for his errors in the Land Reform campaign of 1953-1956. The text has been placed on-line in the Virtual Vietnam Archive of the Vietnam Project, at Texas Tech University, in two parts: pp. 1-40 and pp. 41-76.

Truong Chinh, Primer for Revolt. New York: Praeger, 1963. An American reprint combining the above work with another, The Resistance Will Win (originally written in 1947, published in English in Hanoi in 1960).

Frédéric Turpin, De Gaulle, les gaullistes et l'Indochine, 1940-1946. Paris: Les Indes Savants, 2005.

Jacques Valette, Indochine 1940-1945: Français contre Japonais. Paris: SEDES, 1993. 505 pp.

Rijuta Vallishayee and Tessa Delgo, Rice and Revolution: The Great Famimine of Vietnam During the Second World War. San Francisco: Pacific Atrocities Education, 2021. viii, 99 pp.

Van kien dang ve khang chien chong thuc dan Phap (Party documents regarding the war of resistance against French colonialism), vol. I (1945-1950) and vol. II (1951-1954). Hanoi: Nha xuat ban su that, 1986 and 1988.

Michael G. Vann, "White City on the Red River: Race, Power, and Culture in French Colonial Hanoi, 1872-1954." Ph.D. dissertation, History, University of California at Santa Barbara, 1999. 613 pp. AAT 9951419.

Vo Nguyen Giap, Nhung nam thang khong the nao quen (Unforgettable months and years). Hanoi: NXB Quan Doi Nhan Dan, 1974. 440 pp. The revolution of 1945-1946.

Vo Nguyen Giap, Unforgettable Days. Hanoi: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1975. 430 pp. Translation of the above item.

Vo Nguyen Giap, Unforgettable Months and Years. Ithaca, New York: Southeast Asia Program, Cornell University, 1975. viii, 103 pp. Translated and with introduction by Mai Van Elliott.

Vu Quoc Thong, La decentralization administrative au Viet-Nam. Hanoi: Presses Universitaires du Viet-Nam, 1952. 400 pp. If anyone knows where a copy of this important work can actually be found, I would be very grateful if you would inform me.

William M. Waddell III, In the Year of the Tiger: The War for Cochinchina, 1945-1951. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2018 (forthcomng). 264 pp.

Peter Worthing, Occupation and Revolution: China and the Vietnamese August Revolution of 1945. China Research Monograph #54. Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, 2001. viii, 202 pp.

Thijs Brocades Zaalberg and Bart Luttikhuis, eds., Empire's Violent End: Comparing Dutch, British, and French Wars of Decolonization, 1945-1962. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2022. 246 pp. The focus is on the issue of violence, and there is more attention to the Indonesian war for independence. The individual papers are compartive; none deals with just a single war.

Joseph J. Zasloff, The Role of the Sanctuary in Insurgency: Communist China's Support to the Vietminh, 1946-1954. Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation Memorandum RM-4618-PR, May 1967.

A. Zervoudakis, French Operational Strategy and Tactics in Indochina, 1951-52. London: Frank Cass, 2002. 256 pp.

Alexander Zervoudakis, "Nihil mirare, nihil contemptare, omnia ingelligere: Franco-Vietnamese intelligence in Indochina, 1950–1954", Intelligence and National Security 13:1 (1998), pp. 195-229.

Qiang Zhai, "Transplanting the Chinese Model: Chinese Military Advisers and the First Vietnam War, 1950-1954." Journal of Military History, 57:4 (October 1993), pp. 689-715.

 

Riverine and Naval Aspects of the First Indochina War

[Maurice] de Brossard, Dinassaut.  Paris: France-Empire, 1952.  316 pp.  Memoir by a French officer, of service in riverine forces in the Red River Delta.

René Chauvin, Carnets du Tonkin: Dinassaut 4 (1953). Paris: Les Indes Savantes, 2001. 176 pp.

Col. Victor J. Croizat, The Brown Water Navy: The River and Coastal War in Indo-China and Vietnam, 1948-1972. Dorset, UK: Blandford Press, 1984. 160 pp.

Bernard Estival, L'enseigne dans le Delta. Versailles: Les Sept Vents, 1989. 236 pp. The last year of the war. Preface by Marcel Bigeard.

Bernard Estival, La Marine Française dans la guerre d'Indochine. Nantes: Marines, 1998. ISBN 2909675408. 320 pp.

Georges Fleury, On l'appelait le "crabe-tambour": le destin du lieutenant de vaisseau Pierre Guillaume. Librairie Académique Perrin, 2006. 332 pp. Guillaume, a French naval officer, served in both the Mekong and Red River Deltas during the First Indochina War. Later he served in Algeria, and joined the OAS. See also memoir by Guillaume, below.

Yannick Guiberteau, La Dévastation, cuirassé de rivière. Paris: Albin Michel, 1984. 358 pp.

Lieutenant de vaisseau Pierre Guillaume, Mon âme à Dieu, Mon corps à la patrie, Mon Honneur à moi; mémoires. Paris: Plon, 2006. 393 pp. Guillaume, a French naval officer, served in both the Mekong and Red River Deltas during the First Indochina War. Later he served in Algeria, and joined the OAS. See also biography by Fleury, above.

Contre-Amiral François Jourdier, Indochine 1954-1954: les luc binh: Souvenirs d'un marin du fleuve. L'Esprit du Livre, 2009. 120 pp. Preface by Général Bigeard. Enseigne de vaisseau Jourdier served 27 months, initially in the area of Saigon, later in the Mekong Delta.

Charles W. Koburger, Jr., The French Navy in Indochina: Riverine and Coastal Forces, 1945-54. New York: Praeger, 1991. xxvi, 133 pp.

Charles W. Koburger, Jr., Naval Expeditions: The French Return to Indochina, 1945-1946. Praeger, 1997. xiv, 149 pp.

Jacques Michel, La Marine française en Indochine de 1939 à 1955. 5 vols. Paris: Marine nationale, Etat-major de la Marine, Service historique, 1972-1977. Vol. 1: September 1939 to August 1945. Vol. 2: August 1945 to December 1946. Vol. 3: January 1947 to December 1949. Vol. 4: January 1950 to April 1953. Vol. 5: April 1953 to May 1956.

Jacques Mordal [pseud.], Marine Indochine. Paris: Amiot-Dumont, 1953. 231 pp.

Jean Moulin, Les Navires français on Indochine, 1946-1956. Marine Editions, 2005. 91 pp. A photo book.

 

Naval Aspects of the Second Indochina War (includes a separate sub-section on riverine warfare)

For naval aviation in the First Indochina War, see "Aerial Operations" immediately below.

 

Aerial Operations

René Bail, Les pingouins d'Indochine: l'aeronavale de 1945 à 1954. Paris: Éditions maritimes & d'outre-mer, 1979. 375 pp.

Marc Bertin, Packet sur Diên Biên Phu: la vie quoditienne d'un pilote de transport. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1991. 155 pp.

Général Lionel M. Chassin, Aviation Indochine. Paris: Amiot-Dumont, 1954.

James S. Corum and Wray R. Johnson, Airpower in Small Wars: Fighting Insurgents and Terrorists. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2003. 528 pp. Chapter 4 is "The French Colonial Wars, 1946-1962: Indochina and Algeria."

Michel Fleurence, Rotors dan le ciel d'Indochine, 3 vols. Vincennes: Service Historique de l'Armee de l'Air, 2003- . French helicoper operations.
       Vol. 1: Les hommes. 2010.
       Vol. 2: Les opérations. 2006.
       Vol. 3: Le livre d'or.

Guillaume de Fontanges, Les ailes te portent: Souvenirs d'un pilote de l'Armée de l'air. Paris: Éditions maritimes & d'outre-mer, 1981. 296 pp.

Philippe Gras, L'armée de l'air en Indochine (1945-1954): L'impossible mission. Paris: l'Harmattan, 2001. 613 pp.

Bernard Klotz, Enfer au paradis: trois campagnes sur Hellcat, Indochine, 1952-1953-1954. Paris: Association pour la recherche de documentation sur l'histoire de l'aéronautique navale, 2005. 205 pp.

Gilbert Perret, Des hommes et des zincs en Indochine. Paris: Panthéon, 1997. 239 pp.

Patrick-Charles Renaud, Aviateurs au combat: Indochine, 1950-1954. Paris: Grancher, 2004. 253 pp.

Patrick-Charles Renaud, Aviateurs en Indochine: Diên Biên Phu, de novembre 1952 à juin 1954. Paris: Grancher, 2003. 351 pp.

Service Historique de l'Armee de l'Air, Regards sur l'aviation militaire française en Indochine, 1940-1954: recueil d'articles et état des sources. Vincennes: Service Historique de l'Armee de l'Air, 1999. 451 pp.

Jean-Pierre Simon, Les aviateurs dans la guerre d'Indochine 1945-1957: Témoignages. Paris: Éditions du Grenadier, 2016. 375 pp.

Roger Vercken, Au-delà du pont d'envol. Alerion, 1995. 215 pp.

Armand Verdier, Des ailes, des raquettes et du ciel: la flotille 3F et l'Arromanches en Indochine, septembre 1951 - mai 1952. Paris: Association pour la recherche de documentation sur l'histoire de l'aéronautique navale, 2004. 240 pp.

 

 

The Role of the United States, 1941-1954

Dean Acheson, Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department. New York: Norton, 1969. xiv, 798 pp. pb New York: Signet (New American Library), 1970. 1024 pp. Acheson, Truman's Secretary of State from 1949 to 1953, played a huge role in shaping U.S. Cold War policy. See also biographies by Beisner and McLellan, below.

James R. Arnold, The First Domino: Eisenhower, the Military, and America's Intervention in Vietnam. New York: Morrow, 1991. 444 pp. This mostly deals with the Eisenhower administration, but stretches into other periods to some extent.

Dixee Regan Bartholomew-Feis, "The Men on the Ground: The OSS in Vietnam, 1944-1945." Ph.D. dissertation, History, Ohio State University, 2001. AAT 9999373. 422 pp.

Dixee Bartholomew-Feis, The OSS and Ho Chi Minh: Unexpected Allies in the War against Japan. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2006. 400 pp.

Robert Beisner, Dean Acheson: A Life in the Cold War. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. xiv, 800 pp. A very detailed and comprehensive study of Acheson's policies during his years in the State Department (up to January 1953), with only a brief discussion of his later role as an elder statesman.

Bob Bergin, "The OSS Role in Ho Chi Minh's Rise to Political Power," Studies in Intelligence 62:2 (June 2018), pp. 7-22. Careless with factual details.

Melanie Billings-Yun, Decision Against War. New York: Columbia University Press, 1988. 199 pp., but the actual text ends on p. 160. About Eisenhower's 1954 decision not to put U.S. forces into combat in Indochina.

Kathryn E. Brown, "The Interplay of Information and Mind in Decision-Making: Signals Intelligence and Franklin D. Roosevelt's Policy-Shift on Indochina", Intelligence and National Security 13:1 (1998), pp. 109–31. Why Roosevelt became less hostile to French colonialism in Indochina in the last months of his life.

Frank Cain, America's Vietnam War and Its French Connection. New York: Routledge, 2017. 252 pp.

Robert Cutler, No Time for Rest. Boston: Little, Brown, 1966. ix, 421 pp. Cutler was President Eisenhower's national security advisor, 1953-1955.

François David, Le Vietnam, de la "protection" de la France à l'influence amérecaine, 1953-1956. Paris: les Indes Savantes, 2023. 360 pp.

René J. Défourneaux, The Winking Fox: Twenty-Two Years in Military Intelligence. Indianapolis: Indiana Creative Arts, 1997. vii, 389 pp. Défourneaux, born in France, joined the U.S. Army in 1943, joined OSS, was parachuted into France, then was sent into Vietnam in mid 1945 as part of the Deer Team, to train the fledling Viet Minh forces. He later (1955-57) served a tour in Laos, working primarily for CIA but also to some extent for Army intelligence.

Edward R. Drachman, United States Policy Toward Vietnam, 1940-1945. Farleigh Dickinson, 1970. xiv, 186 pp.

Noel C. Eggleston, "The Roots of Commitment: United States Policy Toward Vietnam, 1945-1950." Ph.D. dissertation, History, University of Georgia, 1977. 253 pp. DA 77-29754.

Dwight D. Eisenhower, The White House Years, vol. I, Mandate for Change: 1953-1956. New York: Doubleday, 1963. pb New York: Signet, 1965. 760 pp.

Louis Galambos and Daun Van Ee, eds., The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. The full texts of volumes XIV to XXI (covering the years 1953-1961, when Eisenhower was president) are available online, searchable, at a website of the Eisenhower Memorial Commission.

Alex Ferguson, "Press Management and U.S. Support for France in Indochina, 1950-1954," Diplomatic History 42:2 (April 2018), pp. 228-53.

Lloyd C. Gardner, Approaching Vietnam: From World War II through Dienbienphu. New York: Norton, 1988. 440 pp.

Michael Gillen, "The Roots of Opposition: The Critical Response to U.S. Indochina Policy, 1945-1954." Ph.D. dissertation, New York University, 1991.

Samuel P. Hayes, ed., The Beginning of American Aid to Southeast Asia: The Griffin Mission of 1950. Heath, 1971.

Gary R. Hess, The United States' Emergence as a Southeast Asian Power, 1940-1950. New York: Columbia University Press, 1987.

Keith Honaker, The Eagle Weeps. Knoxville: K & W Publishers, 1994. xxiv, 467 pp. Honaker, an Army major, served in the US Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) from 1952 to 1954.

John Hostetter, "John Foster Dulles and the French Defeat in Indochina," Ph.D. dissertation, Rutgers University, 1972.

R.E.M. Irving, The First Indochina War: French and American Policy, 1945-54.  London: Croom Helm Ltd., 1975. 169 pp.

Thomas A. Julian, "Tourane 1954, Danang 1965," Veteran, July 1995. Includes Cat Bi; USAF transport planes.

Nelson D. Lankford, The Last American Aristocrat: The Biography of Ambassador David K. E. Bruce. Boston: Little, Brown, 1996. 484 pp. Bruce became US ambassador to France in 1949. He later represented the United States in the Paris Peace Negotiations.

Mark Atwood Lawrence, "Selling Vietnam: The European Colonial Powers and the Origins of the American Commmitment to Vietnam, 1944-1950." Ph.D. dissertation, History, Yale, 1998. 469 pp. AAT 9929613. Argues that France and Britain heavily influenced the development of U.S. opinions and policy.

Mark Atwood Lawrence, Assuming the Burden: Europe and the American Commitment to War in Vietnam. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005. xii, 358 pp. Presumably based on the preceding item.

Stevan Hugh Lee, Outposts of Empire: Korea, Vietnam, and the Origins of the Cold War in Asia, 1949-1954. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1995.

Melvyn P. Leffler, A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration and the Cold War. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992. xvii, 689 pp.

David McLellan, Dean Acheson: The State Department Years. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1976. xii, 466 pp.

Lori Maguire, "To Stay or Not to Stay: The United States Consulate in Ha Noi, 1954-1955," Journal of Vietnamese Studies 18:4 (Fall 2023), pp. 30-70.

Dennis Merrill, ed., The Documentary History of the Truman Presidency, vol. 32,The Emergence of an Asian Pacific Rim in American Foreign Policy: The Philippines, Indochina, Thailand, Burma, Malaya, and Indonesia. Bethesda, MD: University Publications of America, 2001. ISBN 1-55655-825-2.

"Mutual Defense Assistance: Indochina--Agreement Between the United States of America and Cambodia, France, Laos, and Viet-nam." The American Journal of International Law 48:3 (July 1954), pp. 133-137. Text of the agreement signed December 23, 1950. If you browse the Internet through an institution that has subscribed to JSTOR, you can access the text directly.

Nguyen Lien Van [order?], "American Perceptions of the Chinese Role in Vietnam, 1946-1954". Ph.D. Dissertation, University of South Carolina, 1978.

Pablo de Orellana, The Road to Vietnam: America, France, Britain, and the First Vietnam War. London: I. B. Tauris, 2020. I don't know whether the book as a whole is as strange as its table of contents, in which a chapter on the period "Late 1948–September 1947" is followed by one on "August 1947–September 1946" and then one on "August 1946–April 1945."

Archimedes Patti, Why Vietnam? Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980. Patti was a U.S. intelligence officer who negotiated U.S. cooperation with Ho Chi Minh around the end of World War II. His account of these events is excellent.

The "Pentagon Papers" A detailed history of U.S. policy toward Vietnam, written inside the Defense Department between 1967 and 1969, accompanied by many of the documents that the authors had used as sources. Originally it was classified "top secret." Large portions were published in 1971, and the whole thing is now available online.

Andrew J. Rotter, The Path to Vietnam. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987. xii, 278 pp. Covers the development of U.S. involvement, roughly 1948-53.

Thibaut de Saint Phalle, Saints, Sinners and Scalawags: A Lifetime in Stories. Brookline, NH: Hobblebush Books, 2003. ix, 577 pp. Chapter XI, "Indochina 1950-54," deals with de Saint Phalle's assignment to a project under which Americans were supposed to train irregular troops in Indochina (mostly members of highland tribes) who would then fight under French command. He believes that the U.S. government was very mistaken in its assumption that an officer of French origin would find it easier to get the cooperation of the French government for such a project.

Marc J. Selverstone, Constructing the Monolith: The United States, Great Britain, and International Communism, 1945-1950. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009. 318 pp. I have not read this, but it should be relevant.

Kathryn Claire Statler, "From the French to the Americans: Intra-Alliance Politics, Cold War Concerns, and Cultural Conflict in Vietnam, 1950-1960." Ph.D. dissertation, History, University of California at Santa Barbara, 1999. 482 pp. AAT 9982175.

Kathryn C. Statler, Replacing France: The Origins of American Intervention in Vietnam. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2007. xiv, 378 pp. Covers the period from 1950 to 1960.

United States Operations Mission to Vietnam, Cumulative Activity Report (on Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam) through June 30, 1954. The text has been placed on-line in the Virtual Vietnam Archive of the Vietnam Project, at Texas Tech University, in parts: front matter and pp. 1-10;   pp. 11-23;   pp. 24-35;   pp. 36-46;   pp. 47-57;   pp. 58-70 (including some unpaginated maps showing province boundaries in Vietnam and Cambodia as of 1954); pp. 71-76 (including unpaginated map of provinces in Laos); pp. 7-80.

L. H. Woolsey, "The United States and Indo-China." The American Journal of International Law 48:2 (April 1954), pp. 276-281. If you browse the Internet through an institution that has subscribed to JSTOR, you can access the text directly.
 

The End: Dien Bien Phu and the Geneva Conference
 

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Copyright © 1996, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2021, 2022, 2024, Edwin E. Moise. Revised April 18, 2024.