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| Street Without Joy | 
 enlarge | Author: Bernard B. Fall
Publisher: Stackpole Books
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
Buy New: $10.00
You Save: $14.95 (60%)
New (22) Used (18) Collectible (3) from $6.25
Avg. Customer Rating:  28 reviews
Sales Rank: 250407
Media: Hardcover
Edition: Rev Sub
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 416
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.4
Dimensions (in): 8.6 x 5.7 x 1.4
ISBN: 0811717003
Dewey Decimal Number: 959.7041
EAN: 9780811717007
ASIN: 0811717003
Publication Date: March 1994
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Originally published in 1961, before the United States escalated its involvement in South Vietnam, "Street Without Joy" offered a clear warning about what American forces would face in the jungles of Southeast Asia: a costly and protracted revolutionary war fought without fronts against a mobile enemy. In harrowing detail, Fall describes the brutality and frustrations of the Indo-china War, and the savage eight-year conflict - ending in 1954 after the fall of Dien Bien Phu - in which French forces suffered a staggering defeat at the hands of Communist-led Vietnamese nationalists. With its frontline perspective, vivid reporting, and careful analysis, "Street without Joy" was required reading for policymakers in Washington and GIs in the field and is now considered a classic.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 23 more reviews...
 A worthwhile read September 9, 2008
I couldn't help but wonder whether this book was read by the architects of the US venture in Viet Nam. If so, what could have made them believe they could solve the puzzle that confounded the French? The parallels are so striking, and the results so starkly similar, that the book cries out for a explanation from those who expected a different result.
 A suprising book July 23, 2008
After searching ebay and Amazon for this title I find this book is more common than I expected. I received a first edition second printing of this book from my parents, they got it from my dad's sister who had given it to my uncle who was KIA at Dong Xoai in 1965. It is a very interesting book that looks at the overall actions of the French from about 1950 until after the French pull out. There is very little about the siege of Dien Bien Phu concentrating on the overall conduct of the war. Reading the book and David Hackworth's books it's easy to see America made the same mistakes as the French the main difference being America's helicopter mobility and willingness to provide excessive supplies to the troops in the field. Reading this book it becomes quickly obvious that the French never had a prayer in holding on to it's colonies in SE Asia. The French didn't have the number of troops available to cover the territory required, they weren't trained to fight the battles their enemy engaged them in, and they didn't have the mobility required for the forces available. In a fight the French fought very bravely, sometimes to the last man, and if he survived there were some remarkable escape and evasion stories in the book. The book also provides a warning of coming attractions in regards to the Viet Namese treatment of POW. The survivors of Dien Bien Phu faced a death march that made the Baatan Death March appear to be a Sunday stroll in the park. Overall an excellent book for students of the Viet Nam War and how a gurillia war is fought in the jungle.
Inside view of fall of North Vietnam July 6, 2008
This book is a classic in War History Studies and has been heavily read by military officers of all stripes since its publication in 1961. The author, a specialist in French Military History, Dr. Bernard B. Fall, spent time with the French and anti-communist Vietnamese forces in the actual places he writes about. Dr. Fall continued to follow events closely in Vietnam even after the battle of Dien Bien Phu which led to turning North Vietnam over to the Communists in 1954. He was killed by the Viet Cong in South Vietnam in 1967. This is an ironic shame because the Tet Offensive by the Viet Cong in 1968 led to the almost complete destruction of the Viet Cong, and American Forces, using hard-learned information like that in Dr. Fall's book, had so pacified South Vietnam that the US largely withdrew from Vietnam and forced North Vietnam to sign a peace treaty in 1973. The Communist's broke that treaty in 1975 and invaded South Vietnam with conventional, tank-led, regular army forces that succeeded largely because the US refused to provide the air support that would have stopped these armored forces easily.
After reading these reviews, it appears that only about one in five even read the book, as their conclusions and statements are not at all those found in the book. So I offer another review, not based on my political beliefs, but the book itself. I will review 2 major aspects of the book - the author's understanding of world history and the setting of Communist wars in Asia, and the French North Vietnam war itself.
The book is over 300 pages and is usually written in an informal, conversational style. It is not organized as to time or subject and jumps around from describing various localized incidents to global security issues and politics. It is also important to realize that the events in North Vietnam were concurrent with the Korean War which took most of the US attention at the time. Fall notes that while the US lost 20,000 men in those years, the French lost nearly 100,000 in Vietnam. Likewise, the French had over 2,500,000 war deaths in the first half of the 20th century as opposed to the US 450,000. So the next time you laugh at France's war exploits, you might just think twice. (And remember, French Special Forces sank that annoying Greenpeace ship, the Rainbow Warrior, so you can't say they've never done anything useful.)
One of Fall's major themes is that war is a mixed-up mess of changing political and economic conditions. Fall's first few pages start in about 1940 and are shocking to the average American, indoctrinated on our infallibility and role as world "good guy". France had surrendered to the Germans but their 70,000 troops in Indochina were still fighting the Japanese. The US at that time was already helping Chiang Kai Shek fight the Japanese invasion of China with supplies sent through the North Vietnamese harbor of Haiphong (even though we were supposedly "neutral" at the time. Did you ever wonder why the Japanese considered us enemies and attacked Pearl Harbor? Here's one of the reasons.) Japan's involvement in the Asian mainland was extremely complex. Henry Pu-Yi, the last Manchu emperor, had been deposed in 1911 by Nationalist Chinese led by Sun Yat-Sen and Chiang Kai-Shek. Shortly thereafter, Pu-yi returned to power at the head of a Northern Chinese Puppet state called Manchukuo (largely Manchuria), aided by the Japanese. Japan had angered the US via several incidents such as their attack on the US gunboat PANAY. (Look it all up; it's pretty complex but well-documented.) So we supported China. France then controlled Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos and had done so for 100 years or more via colonial rule.
French forces asked for aid from the US to fight the Japanese. After all, we were the principal allies of the Chinese and were doing everything we could to provoke a war with Japan by our embargo. (Read about the history of General Short and Admiral Kimmel, the 2 Pearl Harbor Commanders who got the blame when Roosevelt purposely withheld information about the Japanese attack, if you don't believe me.) France ordered, and paid for, 120 fighters as well as various other military supplies to fight the Japanese. (The combined French forces in Indochina had a total of one plane at the time.} The US kept the money and the supplies and sent a telegram to the French that said "should Japan attack Indochina, the US would not oppose such action." So much for the US always being the "good guys". (See page 22 of Fall's book)
French forces nevertheless fought against Japan's invasion of North Vietnam. After they lost, they then fought Japan's ally, Thailand. (Bet you didn't know Thailand was an ally of Japan in WWII.) France beat Thailand but the Japanese then forced the French to surrender again. The British also refused to allow American supplies for China to go through Singapore. (Fall points out that alliances change frequently and aren't at all what many think them to be.} A case in point, Russia was the ally of Germany who started WWII by invading Poland and slaughtering its officer corps in the Katyn forest. (Bet most of you didn't know that either.)
Throughout WWII, pro-communist factions that had controlled US foreign policy and the US State Department since the 1930's refused to aid the French in Indochina. The OSS, American precursor to the CIA, and even then riddled with traitors and Communists, aided the Communist Viet Minh led by the terrorists Ho Chi Minh and Giap, known Communists since 1920, with material of every kind. When Japan ended the war, all of the captured Japanese stores were turned over to the terrorists rather than the pro-western Vietnamese. Turns out that the supposed anti-Communist Chinese warlord in that area, Lung Yun, was a Communist agent who received lots of American supplies from the American Communists who controlled the China policy and sold them to both the Chinese Communists and the Vietnamese Communists. (Bet you didn't know that either. See pages 23-25 in Fall's book.)
The result was that the Communists had control of North Vietnam until the French returned to Hanoi in 1946. The arms from the Americans and Japanese are what armed the Communists and led to the fall of North Vietnam eventually. Fall notes of this terrorist Communist government, "it used its unhindered control to liquidate hundreds of Vietnamese anti-Communist nationalists likely to get in the way." (Fall, p. 310) The US aided France up until 1954, mostly with air help. So was the US the "good guy" or the "bad guy"? Or both? You tell me.
This brings up one of the most obvious glaring errors of most of the reviewers which shows they didn't read the book. On the last page, 310, Fall notes that the French fight in Indochina may have lost North Vietnam, but it "bought freedom for about 20 million people out of 35 million, and 223,000 square miles of land out of 285,000." Fall was a pro-western patriot, not some leftist, Ho Chi Minh supporter. Shame on you reviewers who wrote pro-communist drivel.
So before the French even fired the first shot against the Communists in North Vietnam, the enemy already had in place arms, a terrorized population, and a well-trained army. France had, of course, just lost a war with Germany. 650,000 French had died in those few years, 40,000 of them killed by their own countrymen as German Collaborators. They were hardly in a position of strength to carry on a deadly war of attrition half a world away. And yet they did. Outnumbered, and out-gunned, but never out-fought, they struggled to the end, and often to the last man.
Fall is at his best here, describing the heroic efforts of individual men and units against overwhelming odds and against bureaucratic inertia that used them poorly and ignored their needs. Take the tale of one of the last anti-guerrilla groups in North Vietnam, abandoned by the French just like we abandoned many of our POW's in Vietnam. Two years after the surrender of the French, some units were still fighting. The last radio message from North Vietnam from a French force in French: "You sons-of-bitches, help us! Help us! Parachute us at least some ammunition, so that we can die fighting instead of being slaughtered like animals!" This was 2 years after the "end" of the war. France had abandoned all of its troops and let these last few be slaughtered. Just like we ignored the POW sightings until they finally stopped.
At any rate, Fall's book is an excellent compilation of lesser known facts and detailed actions by French military units. You can't help but be impressed by the French and horrified at the terrible manner in which their lives were thrown away. How can statements like that of General de Negrier be explained when he told the French Foreign Legionnaires (they made up 20,000 of the 300,000 French in Indochina), "Legionnaire, you are here in order to die and I shall send you where one dies"? Hopefully not the leadership technique they teach at West Point these days.
Fall has another book where he details the debacle at Dien Bien Phu. Briefly, a few French fought 40,000 communists with limited ammunition and supplies and men. That they held out as long as they did, often to the last man in a bayonet charge, is amazing.
The lessons that Fall sprinkles through his book, were learned and used by the Americans. Reviewers of this book who spout nonsense about the Americans making the same mistakes as the French and garbage about tiny guerrillas in pajamas defeating the world's greatest army are completely wrong. American forces were deployed by helicopter into every imaginable area and then followed and destroyed the Communists wherever they went. The Americans had all kinds of jungle and special force units. They had gunboats on the rivers and trained the South Vietnamese to do the same kind of missions. The Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Communists were terrorists who ruled by assassination and threat. As Fall noted, the Communists began a campaign of terror in 1957 in South Vietnam where they began to murder anyone who might possibly be able to organize resistance. They started by killing an average of 25 mayors, officials, policemen and administrators a month. By 1960 they were murdering 25 a day. Next time some idiot tells you that the South Vietnamese really supported the Communist terrorists, you show them page 308 and these figures. The Americans never lost a single battle and after destroying the Viet Cong in 1968, they so defeated the North Vietnamese through air power and the mining of Haiphong Harbor that the Communists surrendered and signed a treaty.
The main lesson I got out of the book was the perfidy of all governments and the traitorous actions of so many for so long. There are unlearned lessons in this book. Never trust the media or the government. Never allow a sanctuary for the enemy. We still haven't learned that lesson as we allow Osama to operate from Pakistan.
So overall, 4 stars for incredible military stories and heroic battles, with some complaints on the disorganized nature of the book.
 A Book that Should have Offered so Much More May 31, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
I found this book to be somewhat disappointing. Perhaps I was expecting more. In fact, I'm sure this was the case. I had visions of an analysis of the fall of Dien Bin Phu and the French retreat from Indochina when, what I really got, was something much more confusing.
Bernard Fall was a first hand witness to much of the mess that was the French colonisation of Indochina. He saw great events and largely understood the sweep of history. Unfortunately, in writing "Street Without Joy", he offers a jumbled and confusing run down of certain events without placing them well in a broader context. This is a shame. This book could have been so much more.
If there is one portion of the book that really captured my attention, it was the end of chapter 10. Here, Fall describes two French soldiers playing tennis while a Cambodian war hero with a chest of French war medals waits for the game to conclude. Suddenly, the sounds of a bugle can be heard as the French flag is lowered for sunset at a nearby camp. The Cambodian snaps to attention and salutes the distant bugle. The two French officers continue with their game. Fall concludes that "in one blinding flash, I knew that we were going to lose the war." This is a poignant moment.
Yet for all the poignancy of the moment, the remainder of the book cannot capture the drama of this one snapshot of time. This is a pity. Fall could have produced a much greater work. It is a tragedy that he didn't.
An early version of the Vietnam War June 9, 2007
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
A gripping history of dedicated and professional soldiers who fought the battles of Indochina with valor and integrity, but were not supported by their countrymen. Bernard Fall "walked the walk" with the fighters of Indochina and put a lot of heart into his work.
Strange how the US was fully knowledgeable of the struggles of the French and was actively supporting them, but in spite of their advance exposure to the complexities of the political and strategic situation the US policy makers repeated many of the same strategic mistakes and also failed to rally popular support for a war in a faraway land.
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