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The Significance of the Dien Bien Phu
Victory and The 1954 Geneva Agreements
Carlyle A. Thayer


Paper Presented to the
International Conference on Dien Bien Phu Victory The
Power of the Nation and the Height of the Time
sponsored by the
Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences
Hanoi, May 5, 2004

2
The Significance of the Dien Bien Phu Victory and The 1954 Geneva Agreements
Carlyle A. Thayer
*

Abstract
This paper examines the political and strategic impact of the battle of Dien Bien Phu on
the Vietnamese communist-led struggle for independence from France. The paper
argues that although the French garrison at Dien Bien Phu was soundly defeated, this
defeat did not bring an immediate end to French colonialism. The battle of Dien Bien
Phu impacted mainly on the domestic political situation in France where popular
sentiment was against the war in Indochina. France retained a relatively strong position
in Vietnam and it is likely that several more years of conflict would be necessary to force
France to abandon Vietnam. The dilemma for the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV)
was how to turn the victory at Dien Bien Phu into a diplomatic victory as well. The
Geneva Conference presented the DRVs with a complicated situation because both of
its allies, China and the Soviet Union, had differing national interests. The DRV was
forced to accept a compromise the partition of Vietnam at the seventeenth parallel
and reunification elections in two years. As events were to prove, it did not suit any of
the great powers to alter the status quo and Vietnam remained a divided country
alongside East and West Germany and North and South Korea.
Introduction
The defeat of Japan at the end of the Second World War marked a new phase in the
communist-led drive to free Vietnam from French colonial domination and to achieve
independence. The re-imposition of French colonial authority in 1945-46 sparked an
eight-year long Resistance War by the communist-led Viet Minh. The Resistance War
was dramatically ended by the victory of communist forces in the battle of Dien Bien

*
Emeritus Professor, The University of New South Wales at the Australian Defence Force Academy,
Canberra.
3
Phu.
1
This paper explores why the victory at Dien Bien Phu did not lead to a decisive
diplomatic victory at the Geneva Conference held from May to July 1954.
The Great Powers
In January 1954, a conference of the Big Four foreign ministers (Britain, France, United
States and the Soviet Union) met in Berlin and agreed to convene a meeting of the Five
Great Powers (the Big Four plus the Peoples Republic of China) and other states
concerned in Geneva in April to discuss the problem of restoring peace in Korea and
Indochina. The Indochina phase of the conference opened on May 8, a day after the
French garrison at Dien Bien Phu fell to the Vietnamese.
The Geneva Conference brought an end to the First Indochinese War. Four of the Great
Powers to attend Great Britain, China, France and the Soviet Union (USSR)
separately reached the conclusion that a ceasefire in Indochina would serve their
respective interests.
Britain wished to see a resolution of the conflict lest any continuation spill over and
affect its position in Malaya, where it was facing a local communist-led insurgency.
2
The
government of France, facing a population increasingly disenchanted with the dirty
war, was at the end of its electoral tether. A public opinion poll taken on November 21,
1953, for example, revealed that nearly sixty-seven percent of those who expressed an
opinion were in favour of either negotiations or a French withdrawal.
3


1
For accounts of this battle consult: Vo Nguyen Giap, Dien Bien Phu (Hanoi: Foreign Languages Publishing
House, 1959) and, in chronological order: Jules Roy, La Bataille de Bien Bien Phu (Paris: Rene Julliard,
1963), translated into English as The Battle of Dien Bien Phu (New York: Harper and Row, 1965); Bernard B.
Fall, Hell in a Very Small Place: The Siege of Dien Bien Phu (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1967); Pierre
Rocolle, Pourquoi Dien Bien Phu? (Paris: Flammarion, 1968), Yuen Foong Khong, Analogies at War: Korea,
Munich, Dien Bien Phu and the Vietnam Decisions of 1965 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992);
Howard R. Simpson, Dien Bien Phu: The Epic Battle America Forgot (London: Brasseys Inc.,1994); Martin
Windrow, The Last Valley: Dien Bien Phu and the French Defeat in Vietnam (London: Weidenfeld &
Nicolson, 2004); and Ted Morgan, Valley of Death: The Tragedy at Dien Bien Phu That Led America into
the Vietnam War (New York: Random House, 2010).
2
Anthony Eden, Full Circle (London: Cassell Publishers, 1960), 87.
3
Vincent Auriol, Journal de September 1947-1954, Vol. 7 (Paris: Armand Colin, 1971), 474 and 819.
4
The USSR and China share a common fear that the war in Indochina would escalate,
particularly as the United States appeared to be on the brink of intervention. The USSR
also may have hoped to link a settlement in Indochina with negotiations over Europe, an
area of greater strategic concern.
4
After the fall of the Laniel government (see below),
the Soviet Union had a direct interest in keeping the Mendes-France government in
office because it opposed proposals to form a European Defence Community.
China too had other reasons for wishing to see peace restored; at this time it was
turning inward, concerned with a new five-year plan of economic reconstruction.
5
In
brief, a constellation of the major powers on the international scene, each for its own
national interests, was simultaneously moving in a direction favourable for a negotiated
peace in Indochina.
Both the Soviet Union and China brought pressure on to bear on the leaders of the
Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) to agree to negotiations with the French.
6

According to a contemporary account,
a number of members of the Vietminh delegation have declared openly that pressure
from Chinese Communist Premier Chou En-lai and Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav
M. Molotov forced their regime to accept less than it rightfully should have obtained
here.
7

Undoubtedly the two communist allies wished to encourage the momentum gained as a
result of the armistice reached in Korea in July 1953. In November 1953, Ho Chi Minh
signaled a change in in the DRV governments view on the question of negotiations.
8

The United States was initially opposed to an international conference to bring about an
end to the war in Indochina. Senior U.S. officially spoke openly of united action to

4
New Times [Moscow], July 31, 1958, 1 and supplement, 8.
5
Speech by Chen Yun, March 5, 1954 cited in Geoffrey Warner, The 1954 Geneva Agreements: An
Ambiguous Legacy, Paper presented to the Contemporary China Centre Seminar Series, Research School
of Pacific Studies, The Australian National University, Canberra, September 26, 1974. Chen Yun helped
draft Chinas First Five-Year Plan.
6
Mark Moyer, Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954-1965 (New York: Cambridge University Press,
2008),30 and 427, note 71.
7
Tillman Durdin, dispatch from Geneva, The New York Times, July 25, 1954.
8
Replies to a Swedish Correspondent (November 1953), in Ho Chi Minh, Selected Writings, 1920-1969
(Hanoi: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1973), 153-154.
5
save the French position. Diplomatic pressure from France and the United Kingdom,
who both opposed united action, ultimately persuaded the United States to attend
the Geneva conference.
9

The Geneva Conference
The Geneva Conference on Indochina was convened from May to July 1954. It was
attended by representatives from France, the DRV, the State of Vietnam, Kingdom of
Cambodia, Kingdom of Laos, Britain, the Soviet Union, China, and the United States. The
conference was co-chaired by Britain and the USSR.
At the Geneva Conference on Indochina, after the initial political broadsides had been
exchanged, it was decided to separate political from military issues. Military issues were
to be discussed in confidential talks between the representatives of the French and
Vietnam Peoples Army (VPA ) High Commands.
10

During the course of the Geneva Conference the French government headed by Joseph
Laniel fell on June 19. Pierre Mendes-France became the new premier; he set a self-
imposed deadline of thirty days for an agreement. He threatened that if the deadline
was not met he would resign from office; but before doing so he would go to the
National Assembly and support national conscription so France could soldier on in
Indochina.
11

Representative of the State of Vietnam, under Emperor Bao Dai, were effectively frozen
out of the secret talks among the other parties.
12
By the time the State of Vietnams
representatives learned that partition had been seriously discussed, it was too late to do
anything about it. When the State of Vietnam raised its objections and presented an
alternate proposal, they were ignored.

9
Dwight D. Eisenhower, The White House Years: Mandate for Change, 1953-1956 (New York: Signet Books,
1965), 403-452,
10
Robert F. Randle, Geneva 1954: The Settlement of the Indochinese War (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1969), 274-280.
11
Philippe Devillers and Jean Lacouture, End of a War: Indochina, 1954 (London: Pall Mall Press, 1969),
246.
12
Wesley R. Fishel, One Vietnam or Two? A New Look at an Old Question, The Virginia Quarterly, 50(3),
Summer 1974, 355-357.
6
Both the Soviet Foreign Minister, Vyacheslav Molotov, and his Chinese counterpart,
Chou En-lai, intervened decisively at various stages of the conference to keep up the
momentum.
13
Chou effectively pressured Pham Van Dong, the DRVs Foreign Minister,
into dropping his demand that the Khmer and Lao resistance forces be given separate
recognition. Molotov selected the two-year timetable for holding reunification
elections.
There were basically two solutions mooted for a settlement of the conflict. A third
alternative, a proposal to form a coalition government, including communist
representation, was quickly discarded.
14
Thereafter attention turned to the idea to
regroup opposing military forces. There were two proposals that received attention:
regroupment into enclaves, the so-called leopard spot solution, and regroupment into
separate zones.
15
Both sides favoured the latter and this led to the partition of Vietnam.
As a result of staff talks held by western military officials, it was decided that a
demarcation line drawn across central Vietnam at roughly 17
o
30 north would be
defensible.
16
DRV representatives were anxious to secure unified territory adjacent to
China, with its own port and capital city.
17
It was clear from hand gestures made by Ta
Quang Buu, a representative of the VPA High Command, at secret military session held
on June 10 with M. de Brebisson, his French counterpart, that the DRV was considering
a line drawn at about the sixteenth parallel.
18
The French considered the eighteenth
parallel more appropriate.

13
Bui Tin, Following Ho Chi Minh: Memoirs of a North Vietnamese Colonel (London: Hurst & Company,
1995), 23.
14
Randle, Geneva 1954, 199-200 and Georges Chaffard, Carnets Secrets de la Decolonisation (Paris:
Calmann-Levy , 1967).
15
Devillers and Lacouture, End of a War, 207, 224, 250 and 259 and Randle, Geneva, 203.
16
U.S. Department of State, TEDUL 222, June 18, 1954 to the American Consulate in Geneva in U.S.
Department of Defense, United States-Vietnam Relations (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing
Office, 1971), Book 9, 577 and T. B. Millar, ed. Australian Foreign Minister: The Diaries of R. F. Casey 1951-
60 (London: Collins Publisher, 1972), 147.
17
Devillers and Lacouture, End of a War, 233-234.
18
Devillers and Lacouture, End of a War, 249-253.
7
During the course of late June/early July, Pham Van dong pressed successively for the
thirteenth, fourteenth and sixteenth parallels. But it was only on July 20, the deadline
set by Mendes-France, that Molotov intervened and chose the seventeenth parallel a
compromise between the two. At the same time, Molotov dashed DRV hopes for early
elections by suggesting a delay of two years or until July 1956.
19

Impact of the Dien Bien Phu Victory on the Geneva Conference
On May 7, on the very eve of the Indochina phase of the Geneva Conference, the French
garrison at Dien Bien Phu surrendered unconditionally after a siege lasting fifty-five
days.
The question why the DRV would agree to a settlement so favourable to the defeated
French cannot be fully answered with reference to external intervention by the major
powers.
It can be argued that the victory at Dien Bien Phu was a Pyrrhic victory for the Vietnam
Peoples Army.
20
The VPA had dispatched nearly all their mobile forces to Dien Bien
Phu, perhaps totaling 50,000, to confront 15,000 French-led troops in the valley
garrison.
21
The victory at Dien Bien Phu resulted in French casualties of 2,242 dead and
6,473 wounded, with Vietnamese communist losses estimated at 22,900.
22
In sum, the
VPA was exhausted by the loss of nearly half its men in capturing Dien Bien Phu.
Although the French garrison suffered a crushing military defeat and psychological blow
with the loss of Dien Bien Phu and the capture of 11,700 troops, France still retained a
powerful Expeditionary Corps, totaling 139,200 (excluding the Dien Bien Phu garrison)
supplemented by an expanding National Army of the State of Vietnam whose strength

19
Devillers and Lacouture, End of a War, 292-293.
20
This is a reference to the victory of King Pyrrhus over the Romans at Asculum in 279 BC. A Pyrrhic
victory is a costly one in which the victor suffers extremely heavy casualties.
21
Only 13,000 troops were present at any one time; Fall, Hell in a Very Small Place, vii and 482 and 487.
22
Fall, Hell in a Very Small Place, 483-484. The French figures include all nationalities, including Foreign
Legion, North African and Vietnamese. Rocolle, Pourquoi Dien Bien Phu?, 553-557, estimated that
Vietnamese casualties were thirty to one hundred percent greater than French losses.
8
was put at 205,700 in 1953. The State of Vietnam also had a combined militia, police
and other armed forces of 128,000;
Two factors influenced the DRV leadership that negotiations with France would yield
better results than continued military struggle: (1) war-weariness and (2) the possibility
of United States military intervention.
According to Janos Radvanyi, a Hungarian diplomat who visited Hanoi in April 1959,
General Vo Nguyen Giap told him:
[t]he battle of Dien Bien Phu was the last desperate exertion of the Viet Minh army.
Its forces were on the verge of complete exhaustion. The supply of rice was running
out. Apathy had spread among the populace to such an extent that it was difficult to
draft new fighters. Years of jungle warfare had sent morale in the fighting units to the
depths.
23

A similar conclusion is drawn in Nikita Khrushchevs memoirs. Khrushchev wrote:
Before the Geneva Conference there was a preparatory meeting in Moscow. China
was represented by Chou En-lai and Vietnam by President Ho Chi Minh and Prime
Minister Pham Van Dong. We worked out the position we would take in Geneva,
basing it on the situation in Vietnam. The situation was very grave. The resistance
movement in Vietnam was on the brink of collapse. The partisans were counting on
the Geneva Conference to produce a cease-fire agreement which would enable them
to hold on to the conquests which they had won in the struggle of the Vietnamese
people against the French occupation. Hanoi was securely in the hand of the French.
If you looked at a map on which our own demands for a settlement were marked
out, you'd see that North Vietnam was pockmarked with enclaves which had been
captured and occupied by the French.
24

Authoritative DRV sources also have confirmed that there was a problem with morale at
Dien Bien Phu. A commentary published in Hanoi revealed:
This second phase was characterized by long and extremely bitter fighting. We had to
solve arduous tactical and technical problems, to overcome fatigue and weariness, to
meet extremely hard fighting condition, living week after week in trenches and
underground shelters. Sometime, our positions would be flooded with rain, supplies
would be insufficient, and as fighting was carried on uninterruptedly, losses had to be
compensated for by reinforcements, and units had to be reorganized. Under those

23
Janos Radvanyi, Delusion and Reality (South Bend: Indiana Gatewasy Editions, Ltd., 1978), 6.
24
Stroke Talbot, editor and translator, Khrushchev Remembers (London: Sphere Books Ltd., 1971), 442-
443.
9
conditions, political work played an important role in maintaining the morale of the
troops, for among certain cadres and men, negative tendencies had appeared: fear of
losses, privations and fatigue; or complacency, underestimation of the enemy and
impatience to gain a quick victory. Before starting the offensive which was to end this
second phase, the Central Military Committee, on order from the Political Bureau,
launched a campaign for moral mobilization and ideological rectification among
the cadres and Party members.
25

It seems reasonable to conclude that war weariness, exhaustion after the battle of Dien
Bien Phu, the risks of prolonged fighting, perhaps most importantly, the possibility of
U.S. military intervention, and external pressures from the USSR and China all played a
part in the DRV decision to seek a negotiated end of the war against France.
A more difficult question, however, is whether or not the seventeenth parallel
represented an accurate dividing line between the two contending military forces. There
can be no doubt that VPA and DRV military and political strength were greater in the
north and central Vietnam than in the south. Any demarcation line drawn across
Vietnam north of the thirteenth parallel would have cut across areas under the control
of the DRV. According to the official edition of The Pentagon Papers:
During June and July [1954], according to CIA maps, Viet Minh forces held down the
larger portion of Annam (excepting the major port cities) and significant pockets in
the Cochinchina delta. Their consequent claims to all the territory north of a line
running northwest from the 13
th
to the 14
th
parallel (from Tuy Hoa on the coast
through Pleiku to the Cambodian border) was far more in keeping with the actual
military situation than the French demand for location of their partition line at the
18
th
parallel.
26

However, as an account published later in Hanoi indicates, the eighteenth parallel
marked the divide between the two parts of Viet Nam:
North of the 18
th
parallel which cut the 4
th
Interzone into two parts, the French
troops only maintained their control over the Red river delta which was considered
to correspond roughly to the 3
rd
Interzone, and in the Tay Bac Interzone (or
Northwest), over the system of strong points at Na Dan and Lai Chau town which
they had to evacuate in August and December 1953 respectively. The greater part of

25
How the Dien Bien Phu Battle Was Won, Vietnamese Studies, No. 8, March 1965), 68-69.
26
The Outcome for the Communists, in United States-Vietnam Relations (Washington, D.C.: U.S.
Government Printing Office, 1971), Book 2, III.D.I, D8-D9. This is the official U.S. government version of
The Pentagon Papers.
10
the Bac Bo remained under the peoples power. It formed, with the three northern
provinces of the 4
th
Interzone, an immense free territory encircling the occupied
zone. Contrary to the North, the South, making up about three-fifths of the countrys
area, presented a carved-up aspect, with occupied and free zones interlacing one
another.
27

The Geneva Agreements stipulated the regroupment of opposing military forces roughly
along the seventeenth parallel. French forces were to regroup to the south while
communist forces were to regroup to the north. The VPA was to withdraw into four
regroupment zones in the South and over a three-hundred day period transfer to the
North. The seventeenth parallel served its purpose as a military demarcation line.
Whether or not it accurately reflected the politico-military balance of forces on the
ground is another matter.
The political provisions of the Geneva Agreements were much more ambiguous than the
military ceasefire agreements. The vital clauses setting out the details on elections, for
example, were included in the unsigned Final Declaration. The key provisions were
contained in Point 7 that read:
The Conference declares that, so far as Vietnam is concerned In order to ensure
that sufficient progress in the restoration of peace has been made and that all the
necessary conditions obtain for free expression of the national will, general elections
shall be held in July 1956 under the supervision of an international commission
composed of representatives of the Member States of the International Supervisory
Commission, referred to in the agreement on the cessation of hostilities.
Consultations will be held on this subject between the competent representative
authorities of the two zones from July 20, 1955 onward.
28

Both the United States and State of Vietnam issued separate statements clearly
disassociating themselves from the responsibility of implementing the Final
Declaration.
29


27
Ta Xuan Linh, South Viet Nam at the Time of Dien Bien Phu, in Dien Bien Phu: Before, During and After,
Vietnamese Studies, No. 43, 1976, 56-57.
28
Final Declaration, Point 7 in Great Britain, Further Documents Relating to the Discussions of Indochina
at the Geneva Conference, Misc. No. 20, Command Paper Cmd. 9239 (London: HMSO, 1954), 9-11.
29
Randle, Geneva 1954, 342-346.
11
Did DRV leaders really expect that elections would be held? The evidence indicates that
while they held reservations they were prepared to use national elections as the vehicle
to reunify Vietnam.
British scholar, P. J. Honey, provides evidence that DRV leaders were skeptical that
elections would be held. Honey wrote, for example:
Pham Van Dong, immediately after signing the Geneva Agreements on Indo-China
under Soviet Pressure, remarked to some non-Communist Vietnamese friends
staying at his villa that the national elections envisaged by the agreement would
never take place.
30

In a subsequent account, Honey revealed:
The worthlessness of the concession [a definite date for elections] can be seen in a
remark by the Communist North Vietnam Prime Minister Pham Van Dong, to one of
my Vietnamese friends immediately after the signing of the agreements. When asked
which side he thought would win the elections, Dong replied, You know as well as I
do that there wont be any elections.
31

American scholar Jeffrey Race cites an interview he conducted with Vo Van An, a high-
ranking communist party cadre who later defected, to confirm Honeys account:
[a]ccording to An, higher level cadres (province and above) were certain that general
elections would never take place, although this was not discussed at lower levels to
maintain morale and so as not to conflict with the Partys public stance that the
Geneva Accords were a great victory for the Party.
32

According to Seymour Topping, a correspondent working for the Associated Press who
covered the Geneva Conference:
The Vietminh no doubt had every reason to believe, as did Chou En-lai and Molotov,
that all of Vietnam would fall to them within two years. In this sense, the Vietminh
leadership was satisfied, although members of their delegation complained privately
to me that they had been cheated and expressed doubt that the national elections
would be held in 1956.
33


30
P. J. Honey, North Vietnams Party Congress, The China Quarterly, No. 4, October-December 1960, 70.
31
P. J. Honey, Communism in North Vietnam: Its Role in the Sino-Soviet Dispute (Cambridge: the MIT Press,
1966), 6.
32
Jeffrey Race, War Comes to Long An: Revolutionary Conflict in a Vietnamese Province (Berkeley: The
University of California Press, 1972), 34.
33
Seymour Topping, Journey Between Two Chinas (New York: Harper and Row, 1972), 151.
12
In light of Toppings remarks, and the vociferous campaign subsequently waged by DRV
authorities to hold elections, it seems reasonable to conclude that the DRV leadership
whatever their misgivings they might have expressed in private and to their own cadres,
favoured elections not a continuation of armed struggle as the principal means of
unifying Vietnam in 1954.
According to remarks broadcast to southern Vietnam by Huynh Van Tieng, a deputy in
the DRV National Assembly from Saigon-Cholon in 1957:
You certainly remember that, in the various meetings held before our repatriation,
we spiritedly discussed for many days and nights running the prospects for our
struggle for national reunification. We came to the conclusion that our forces,
compared to those of the enemy, were only able to wholly liberate a half of our
country, that we should continue to struggle, through political means by utilizing
the possibilities of the Geneva Accords to liberate the other half
34

This account is borne out by an official history of the Vietnam Workers Party:
However, in 1954, the revolutionary forces were not strong enough to liberate the
whole country; the enemy was defeated, but he was not completely subdued.
Therefore out country was temporarily divided into two zones.
35

Pham Van Dong and other members of the DRV delegation in Geneva were undoubtedly
gravely upset that elections has been scheduled for two years instead of six months,
their preferred time scale. Nevertheless they still held out hope that France would
honour its commitments.
The overall view of the situation in Vietnam in mid-1954 was summarized in a directive
issued by the Central Committee of the Vietnam Workers Party captured by the French
in November that year. The Directive stated:
Peace is concluded to procure advantages for us, not for the purpose of ceasing the
struggle. Peace as such is not unconditional. We love peace and do not want war
which causes bloodshed, but we are resolved to maintain our fundamental point of
view which is independence, unity, democracy and peace. If the political struggle

34
Voice of Vietnam in Vietnamese to South Vietnan, 1200 GMT, July 21, 1957.
35
An Outline History of the Viet Nam Workers Party (Hanoi: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1970),
79.
13
does not permit us to accomplish this essential aim, we are resolved to continue the
war to support our just cause and to achieve total victory.
36

Conclusion
In November 1953 the leaders of the Vietnam Workers Party/Democratic Republic of
Vietnam signaled a change in their policy and now supported negotiations to end the
conflict in Indochina. The French decision to occupy the valley at Dien Bien Phu
presented them with an opportunity to besiege the French forces, inflict damage on
them, and gain some leverage in negotiations. The siege at Dien Bien Phu resulted in a
spectacular - if not Pyrrhic - victory for the Vietnam Peoples Army. The significance of
the victory at Dien Bien Phu was mainly political. The French government came under
tremendous domestic pressure to end the war.
The battle of Dien Bien Phu, however costly for the French, did not result in the collapse
of the French position in Indochina. The relative political-military strengths of the two
contestants the DRV and France was tested in negotiations held in Geneva from May
to July 1954. These negotiations essentially focused on a ceasefire and the regroupment
of military forces. The political aspects of the peace settlement were hastily drawn up.
Unlike the ceasefire agreement, which was signed by representatives of the French and
VPA High Commands, the Final Declaration, which contained the political terms of the
settlement, was unsigned and adopted by voice vote. In short, the Geneva Agreements
brought an end to armed conflict and resulted in the regroupment of military forces.
The French withdrew from northern Vietnam to below the seventeenth parallel.
Vietnam could not convert the victory of Dien Bien Phu until a similar diplomatic victory
at the Geneva Conference because its main backers, the Soviet Union and China, side
not share the same national interests at the DRV. When the deadline for the
commencement of consultations between the two competent representatives of
Vietnam approached in July 1955, the DRV found itself an orphan. Both of the

36
Viet Minh policy document on post-Geneva strategy (November 1954), In United States Department
of State, Working Paper on the North Vietnamese Role in the War in the South (Washington, D.C., 1968),
Item 200, Appendices, 7.
14
cochairmen of the Geneva Conference, Britain and the Soviet Union, preferred to
maintain the status quo. Thus Vietnam remained partitioned for another two decades,
alongside a divided Germany and a divided Korea.