The French Defeat in Indochina: An Analysis of the Street Without Joy

Kindle Customer: it is as ordered. I am reading the book

United States on Dec 11, 2023

Jan C. Teipel: Bernard B. Falls "Street without Joy" ist ein äußerst lesenswerter Klassiker über den Französisch-Vietnamesischen Dekolonisationskrieg „Indochinakrieg“, 1946 bis 1954.

Der Autor war ein Zeitgenosse Peter Scholl-Latours und ähnlich diesem ein breit gebildeter Beobachter und Berichterstatter, der sich nicht scheute, eigene Eindrücke dort zu sammeln, wo es „brennt und weh tut“.

Das bereits sieben Jahre nach der französischen Niederlage veröffentlichte Buch basiert auf Falls Aufenthalt in Indochina seit 1953. Da er als ehemaliger Resistance-Angehöriger über eigene Guerillaerfahrung verfügte und sowohl französische Truppenin den Einsatz begleitete wie auch (nach 1954) mit Nordvietnamesischen Militärs und Politikern sprach, ist ihm mit "Street without Joy" ein eindrucksvolles und kenntnisreiches analytisches Buch gelungen.

Mit zunehmendem Engagement der USA in Vietnam wurde das Buch in den 60er Jahren auch bei amerikanischen Militärs verstärkt wahrgenommen, inzwischen gehört es zum Kanon der empfohlenen Literatur für US Offiziere. Leider hat die amerikanische politische und Militärführung aus den Thesen und Prognosen des Autors keine oder...

Germany on Aug 29, 2021

John McLevin: Good read

Canada on Jun 10, 2020

carolyn white: My husband, for whom I bought the book, is a Vietnam veteran and had read the book back in the early1960s. He is into it now and is finding it fascinating and a great description of the precursor to Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam war.

Australia on Feb 26, 2020

Jean-Paul Azam: Mon père commandait le 9ième tabor marocain engagé du côté de Hué et au Laos de 1951 à 1954. Je ne l'aurais jamais connu s'il n'avait pas fini son temps assez tôt pour quitter Dien Bien Phu avant que le Viêt Minh ne boucle entièrement la zone. Ce livre de Bernard Fall montre bien l'éternel problème des armées françaises qui n'ont pas vraiment gagné une guerre depuis plus de 300 ans, sauf en tant que partenaire junior d'une alliance avec les Américains. Incapable de développer une stratégie adaptée aux circonstances, les généraux justifient leur salaire en s'agitant de façon désordonnée, sans réelle évaluation des capacités effectives de leurs troupes dans ce milieu tropical. De Lattre s'inspire de la ligne Maginot qui a tant fait rire les Allemands pour montrer qu'il fait quelque chose pour protéger Hanoï, il envoie des troupes "prendre le contrôle" de tel ou tel village en brousse, que son successeur devra faire évacuer au prix de beaucoup de morts. Et puis le général Navarre! En tant qu'officier d'état-major, mon père m'a raconté souvent comment il s'était opposé avec un seul autre officier (dont je regrette d'avoir oublié le nom) au projet...

France on Jan 15, 2018

George N. Schmidt: When America's media began proclaiming that the United States military would do "counter insurgency" in Iraq, Afghanistan, and wherever else in the 21st Century, it was not David Petraeus and his field manual to which I went, but Bernard Fall. "Stupid, again..." was the only way to describe what we -- the people of the USA -- were repeating based on the smug and mediagenic distortions of reality preached by the general and repeated in an echo chamber that stretched from the White House to Hollywood.

Instead of repeating the mistakes of a previous generation -- or, worse, denying that they were mistakes, based on some silly Rambo version of reality -- we should have learned from our own mistakes in Vietnam. And those of us who forced us into the morass of Vietnam should have listened early to Bernard Fall. Fall warned, in Street Without Joy, that white Westerners (or any colored Westerners fighting against the majority of the people of Vietnam) would ultimately lose, no matter how heroic they might have been. The correction to the nonsense we were being fed in 1964 and 1964 (and indeed until Tet 1968 blew up the last major illusions) would have simply admitted that we (the...

United States on Aug 06, 2015

R. M. Peterson: Even after fifty years, STREET WITHOUT JOY probably remains the best book in English on the French debacle in Vietnam. It is also regarded in some circles as a trenchant analysis of how the French went wrong. This revised edition was written in 1964, just after the Americans had crossed the Rubicon to take over the lapsed French mission of sacrificing their own sons to help the Vietnamese (though by then only those in the South) defeat the insurgents, and it contains a fair amount of advice, implicit as well as explicit, for the Americans. Much of that advice was ignored, and hence Bernard Fall is cited by some critics of the way the U.S. pursued its mission in Vietnam as some sort of Cassandra. That's giving him too much credit. Had he been in charge of the American mission, we might not have lost as many lives in the jungles of South Vietnam but we would have been bombing North Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos (and possibly even China) earlier, more heavily, and more openly. As incisive as Fall was on many aspects of the French and American interventions, he did not have the answers.

Fall criticizes both the French and the Americans for relying on technology to fight a war of...

United States on Mar 02, 2015

KOR: Street Without Joy is a must for anyone interested in contempory French history, the First Indochina War and the second Indochina War (the Vietnam War). Bernard Fall goes back to the French fight against the invading Japanese and the then American refusal to provide the former with previously paid-for (!) fighters which may have changed the course of WW2 in SE Asia in favour of the Allies. Fall describes, in great detail, both the Viet-Minh and French military tactics, strengths and weaknesses, which, if the US Military and politicians had taken notice of when this book was first published, the US could have won its war with the Communist North. Fall supports his narrative with documented facts and quotes from individual protagonists. His own opinions, published in 1961, are rich in information and, with the benefit of reading them with a 2013 hindsight, are surprisingly prophetic.

Điện Biên Phủ and its effect on the First Indochina War is addressed factually. The big questions relating to Điện Biên Phủ are: (a) What were the real reasons behind the American decision not to aid the trapped French forces with B29 strikes? And, (b) if those strikes had gone ahead,...

United Kingdom on Jan 14, 2013