French generals met to discuss a plan to build a defensive battlefield for the Dien Bien Phu stronghold in 1953 – Photo: Archives of the French Ministry of Defense
Dien Bien Phu – View from France 50 minutes long carried out by the Foreign Television Department (VTV4), will air on VTV4 at 8:00 p.m. on May 6 and rebroadcast at 8:10 p.m. on May 7 on VTV1.
Dien Bien Phu: Documents published for the first time
At the Press Conference on key programs commemorating the 70th anniversary of the Dien Bien Phu victory taking place on April 26 in Hanoi, Deputy Head of the Foreign Television Department Tran Thu Ha recounted the process of exploiting secret documents at the Center. Archives of the French Ministry of Defense and the French National Assembly to find answers.
“Accessing confidential files in the archives system of the French defense and parliament is not easy.
There are documents that have been declassified since 2015 and there are documents that were newly declassified since last year.
There are still documents in top secret form that have not been published,” she said.
Accordingly, part of the huge record of the Dien Bien Phu campaign, from the specific time, strategy, and direction of the French generals, will be brought to light for the first time in a documentary. Dien Bien Phu – View from France.
During the research process, the creators realized that there were not many films that analyzed in depth the internal conflicts in politics (in the minds of politicians and French public opinion) during the 1953-1954 campaign. Dien Bien Phu and the Indochina War.
Ms. Ha said there were some top secret documents here that recorded the admissions of some French generals about why they failed at Dien Bien Phu. That is information that has never been mentioned before.
Ms. Tran Thu Ha – deputy head of the Foreign Television Department (VTV4) – recounts the process of making the documentary – Photo: DAU DUNG
For a long time, when talking about Dien Bien Phu, we often stop at May 7, 1954. So what happened after that time?
“At the French Military Investigation Committee in Dien Bien Phu, there was a hearing of all French generals that took place for eight months until 1955 to reach conclusions about the responsibilities of the parties and mistakes. mistakes of relevant parties,” journalist Tran Thu Ha revealed.
That shows that the imprint and echoes of Dien Bien Phu are still there even after the war has ended.
Movie Dien Bien Phu – View from France also brought to light France’s aerial photographic intelligence force.
At that time, every day this force made an average of two to three consecutive flights to the Dien Bien Phu basin to collect tactics of the Vietnamese army.
“There are about 10,000 aerial photos recorded of our troops digging trenches and hiding artillery… However, they admit that Vietnam is very good at hiding artillery, they don’t know where to hide it,” Ms. Ha said, “when looking at these documents , we were also extremely surprised.”
Many secret documents are published for the first time – Photo: VTV
The French talk about us
Movie Dien Bien Phu – View from France also took viewers to meet French veterans who fought in Vietnam during that period.
“We don’t talk about ourselves but hear the French talk about us,” Ms. Ha shared.
That is the story of Mr. Pierre Flamen – who came to Vietnam at the end of 1948 to collect intelligence information about the Viet Minh. He was captured by the Viet Minh four times and escaped three times.
Veteran Jacques Bouthier (right) said he “respects the Vietnamese soldiers” – Photo: VTV
Once in Thanh Hoa, he happened to see a poster of President Ho Chi Minh’s portrait posted on a bulletin board in a camp in the middle of a bamboo forest. He kept that painting until he returned to France and after 70 years of keeping it, he donated it to the Ho Chi Minh City museum.
He remembers the handfuls of sticky rice and peanuts that the Vietnamese people cooked for him, or remembers the time they saved him from severe malaria…
Pierre was moved: “They did not consider me an enemy but welcomed me like a child returning from a long trip.”
Or veteran Jacques Bouthier, during his time here, Mr. Jacques encountered the Viet Minh many times and was seriously injured three times.
But he always respected Vietnamese soldiers: “I respect the soldiers very much. They protect their country. Therefore, we should never have gone to war. All wars are unjust.”
After that, Jacques Bouthier married a Vietnamese woman. He, his wife and family returned to Vietnam many times to visit the places that had been with him during his youth.
