Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam

by Fredrik Logevall

“In the existing state of American opinion, the US administration would find it politically impossible to sit down with a high level meeting of the big Five.”

For years, British analysts had marveled at the deep American aversion—across party lines—to negotiating with adversaries; at the ruling out of compromise and the demand for “unconditional surrender”

DULLES UNDERSTOOD, MORE CLEARLY IT SEEMS THAN EITHER BIDAULT or Eden did, that the decision to convene a Geneva conference on Indochina started the clock ticking at Dien Bien Phu.

Piroth, the artillery commander, puzzled over his failure to locate the enemy’s guns but nevertheless exuded confidence, even refusing to dig his own guns in to provide shelter for their crews. Who could hit them, after all?

“Ours is a wonderful profession. The Commander in Chief has just explained everything to us dogmatically, and I, a humble journalist, would stake my life on it that he is either making a terrible mistake or lying to us. I would be ready to swear that the situation he has described has nothing in common with reality. What the Commander in Chief lacks, like his entourage, is our fresh, unbiased view of events.”