Dien Bien Phu is a valley and small town in North Vietnam, 260 miles northwest of Hanoi and the place of the decisive 1954 battle that forced France to relinquish control of colonial Indochina. Dien Bien Phu City is today the capital of the Dien Bien Province of Vietnam and is developing a tourism economy based on the battlefield.

In military parlance, “Dien Bien Phu” has also become a synonym for an extremely unwise decision: the attempt to hold a seemingly strong defensive position, against which the enemy, cooperating with the defender’s plans, will then destroy himself against the impregnable fortifications.

The Battle of Dien Bien Phu is seen as the decisive battle of the First Indochina War between French troops and the Viet Minh movement of Ho Chi Minh. This major confrontation occurred at Dien Bien Phu, a large heart-shaped valley located in the northwestern part of Vietnam, near the border with Laos. The valley served as a French forward operating base to conduct operations in the region. The main purposes of the operations there were to cut off Viet Minh supply lines into Laos, a former member of French Indochina and an ally of France, and to successfully defeat the enemy. However, the French garrison attracted the Viet Minh.

Despite their plans, the French were attacked and suffered a defeat. The leadership of the garrison absolutely failed, as well as the French leadership in Vietnam and France. The units stationed in the valley had to fight on their own, pitting some 6,000 reliable French troops (many African troops or Vietnamese auxiliaries preferred desertion to fighting) against more than 55,000 Viet Minh soldiers. The battle started on March 13, 1954 and was over 56 days later, on May 7. One of the Legion units had to fight until May 8. The battle culminated in French withdrawal from Southeast Asia after almost 100 years.