On March 14, 1954, Giap's trap snapped shut. Firing down on the French base from above, Vietnamese artillery obliterated Dien Bien Phu's defenses. French artillery spotters couldn't see the Vietnamese positions, much less hit them. (The humiliated French artillery commander killed himself with a hand grenade on the first day of the battle.) For weeks, the French - cut off from supplies and reinforcements and badly outgunned and outnumbered - fought fiercely to hold their lines against waves of Vietnamese soldiers.
But Dien Bien Phu was totally isolated. French planes dropped supplies by parachute and bombed Vietnamese positions, but it wasn't enough to break the siege. Perpetually short of food, water, and ammunition and utterly exhausted, French soldiers managed to hold out for 55 days. Their last trenches were finally overrun in early May. The Vietnamese took more than 11,000 prisoners.
The defeat at Dien Bien Phu spelled the end of French colonial rule in Indochina. The humiliating defeat inspired French colonies elsewhere in the world to push for independence. Within two years of the defeat, Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia had all successfully fought wars of independence against France. Dien Bien Phu also marked the beginning of America's war in Vietnam - American planes flew bombing missions to support the French base, and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles reportedly offered France nuclear weapons to use on the Vietnamese.
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Battle of Dien Bien Phu.
