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I know a victory at OTL Dien Bien Phu is next to impossible, but hear me out.

Say the French are smart enough to fortify on a hill or plateau rather than valley, still deep in Tonkin near the border with Laos, with the intent to draw the Vietminh into a pitched battle.

Now say that the Vietminh still attack. The French can provide counter-battery fire, but are still facing way more enemy artillery fire than they bargained for. The Vietminh will still cut the supply lines and hit aerial supply drops with antiaircraft, making the base difficult to resupply.

But the French are fighting from the high ground, and can use their artillery, so they hold. They take heavy loses, but the Vietminh suffer much more than in OTL, before being finally deciding to detach. So the French have a tactical, costly, far from decisive victory, and the Vietminh have a bitter defeat.
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How does such a scenario effect the war in Indochina and the peace talks? The French were still looking for a way out, but in this way they would have a better negotiating position, so how might it change things?
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