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    Hell In A Very Small Place: The Siege Of Dien Bien Phu
    Hell In A Very Small Place: The Siege Of Dien Bien Phu
    Hell In A Very Small Place: The Siege Of Dien Bien Phu
    Audiobook19 hours

    Hell In A Very Small Place: The Siege Of Dien Bien Phu

    Written by Bernard B. Fall

    Narrated by Robertson Dean

    4.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Like Gettysburg, Stalingrad, Midway, and Tet, the battle at Dien Bien Phu-a strategic attack launched by France against the Vietnamese in 1954 after eight long years of war-marked a historic turning point. By the end of the fifty-six-day siege, a determined Viet Minh guerrilla force had destroyed a large, tactical French colonial army in the heart of Southeast Asia. The Vietnamese victory would not only end French occupation of Indochina and offer a sobering premonition of the U.S.'s future military defeat in the region, but would also provide a new model of modern warfare in which size and sophistication didn't always dictate victory.

    Before his death in Vietnam in 1967, Bernard Fall, a critically acclaimed scholar and reporter, drew upon declassified documents from the French Defense Ministry and interviews with thousands of surviving French and Vietnamese soldiers to weave a compelling account of the key battle of Dien Bien Phu. With Fall's thorough and insightful analysis, Hell in a Very Small Place has become one of the benchmarks in war reportage.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateSep 6, 2016
    ISBN9781515980933
    Hell In A Very Small Place: The Siege Of Dien Bien Phu

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    Reviews for Hell In A Very Small Place

    4.5/5

    80 ratings5 reviews

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    • 5/5
      This is an outstanding and meticulously detailed tome of the establishment and ultimate destruction of Dien Bien Phu. Bernard Fall is one of the greatest military historians of his time. I highly recommend this book to anyone wishing to learn about the Vietnam war before U.S. involvement.
    • 5/5
      Superb. One of the best books I've read this year. Comparable to The Great Siege b Ernle Bradford, it describes an horrific battle whose outcome changed the course of history. I'm not much into military tactics, but this book by B. Fall lays everything out in clear maps and prose with unbelievably expert analysis. And, yet, the US still decided to tackle Vietnam, committing many of the same mistakes as did the French. The US deserved what it got. The author's story is equally credible and worth learning as well. Finished 03.09.20.
    • 3/5
      A good writer, and a well researched book. it remains one of the classics of war reporting. It may have had some influence on whipping up enthusiasm for the Widening Vietnamese conflict when it was published.
    • 4/5
      Hell in a Very Small Place (1966) was the definitive book on the battle of Dien Bien Phu (1954) up until the release of The Last Valley in 2004. It still might be, I have not read the later to determine. Fall's book is mostly the chronicle of a "cage fight" with two tough cats thrown into a closed space and watching them destroy one another. I admit to being somewhat lost much of the time for lack of decent maps (I read the audiobook version). There is a lot of detail that would reward a second or third reading. As a battle it's interesting in the same way the Western Front was in WWI. Except in the back woods of Vietnam. And units that included ex-Nazi mercenaries, sub-Saharan Africans, Moroccan and Algerians, French elite paratroopers, Laos tribesmen, Chinese and of course many Vietnamese. Actions included massive air drops, mountain artillery, underground mines, human waves, daredevil feats of heroism. I'd like to revisit sometime but with a better understanding of the Indochina war.
    • 5/5
      I have re read this book after 27 years and after a personal trip to the site of the battle. With greater maturity, I enjoyed the book much more with the second reading. The threat of Communism was perhaps less than the years of anti-colonial war that the Vietnamese people had to endure to finally throw off the foreign yoke, much as the French themselves had to fight off German occupation in several wars. The irony is that neither the French, nor the Americans (with their Revolutionary War experience) either identified with the Vietnamese struggle for their own independence.