THE INDOCHINA WARS VOL. 2 - FROM THE BATTLE OF DIEN BIEN PHU TO THE FALL OF SAIGON

INDOCHINA, war — these two words remain inextricably linked in collective memory. Associated with images of violence and tragedy, with impressions frozen by interpretation, they conceal a reality far more complex and often elusive. There was the French war with its faces — Leclerc, Ho Chi Minh, d'Argenlieu, Giap, de Lattre — its battle names, its Geneva peace, and then the American war with its own — Diem, Kennedy, Minh, Westmoreland, Johnson, Thieu, Nixon, Kissinger, Khe Sanh. There was the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the Paris peace, and then the war between the two Vietnams, the agony of Saigon, reunification in blood. Above all, there were all those anonymous faces of a people torn apart, so alike in their differences: the sacrificed soldiers — French, American, Southern or revolutionary — those innocent and haggard crowds swept away by a storm… A monumental synthesis drawn from meticulous documentation, in part unpublished, and from a systematic analysis of texts and facts from both sides, Les Guerres d'INDOCHINE presents for the first time a global and comprehensive account of more than a century of a country's history, from the arrival of the French in 1859 to its apocalyptic epilogue and its present-day repercussions.