The Road to Dien Bien Phu: A History of the First War for Vietnam.

• Author: Mattingly, David A.

Christopher Goscha. The Road to Dien Bien Phu: A History of the First War for Vietnam. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2022, 437 notes and index. $35.00

To most Americans, the Vietnam War and U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia is a subject rather forgotten than remembered. Although the U.S. endured combat for over a decade, the average American, including those that served, knows little about the period between the end of World War II and the deployment of the U.S. military in the early 1960s. Dr. Christopher Goscha is a specialist in the history of the Cold War at the Universite du Quebec a Montreal (UQAM). Goscha has produced a thorough and well-documented history of Vietnam from the closing days of World War II to the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu in 1954. As in all matters of Southeast Asia, it is never a simple spatial look at the area. Especially in the early days after World War II, it was a multiple-faceted realignment of world politics with Indochina in the center.

As you begin to read The Road to Dien Bien Phu, I would suggest leaving all previous ideas about the war behind and using critical thinking skills to sort through the world events that occurred after World War II. Additionally, reading the book with an atlas will assist in understanding the movement of Ho Chi Minh and the Vietminh through North Vietnam and Southern China.

Goscha goes into detail about Ho Chi Minh's early life in France, the Soviet Union, and with Mao in China during the early days of the Communist Revolution. This helps the reader understand his actions after World War II ended. Additionally, Ho Chi Minh's contact with Mao led to China deploying a military advisory group which was tasked not to take over the fighting as the Military Advisory Group Vietnam would later do when the U.S. replaced French forces. Mao suggested that they should not try to teach the Vietnamese how to fight but to assist the Vietnamese in creating a professional army and allowed the Vietnamese to attend training schools and academies in Southern China. Goscha does touch on Ho's contacts with the U.S. through the Army's Office of Strategic Services, which were negated by the Truman administration's decision to support France in the return of its colonies.

An important aspect of Goscha's writing is describing the development of methodologies, tactics, and procedures to combat the modern French forces. Those same tactics would be seen ten years later when the U.S...