Background

He was born in Vienna, Austria, the son of Leon Fall, an engineering materials salesman, and Anne Seligman. He grew up in southern France, losing both parents in World War II: his mother was deported as a hostage and never returned; his father was tortured to death by the Nazis.

Education

He worked briefly as an investigator for the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal and studied at the University of Paris in 1948-1949; at the University of Munich, 1949-1950; and in the United States at Johns Hopkins University and Syracuse University.

He received his M. A. from Syracuse in 1953 and his Ph. D. in political science in 1955.

Career

Fall joined the resistance as a teenager. He transferred to the regular army and fought with the Allies in the liberation of France and the drive into Germany.

In 1956 he accepted an academic appointment at Howard University in international relations, which he retained until his death.

One of his teachers suggested that he study Vietnam because his French background ideally prepared him to do so and because no one was currently studying the area. Fall went to Indochina in 1953 at his own expense to research a doctoral dissertation (published in 1954 as The Viet-Minh Regime) on the Vietminh insurgents.

He accompanied French troops on operations in the field, and his letters to his wife describing these operations provided the basis for his classic study of the First Indochina War, Street Without Joy (1961).

Thus began Fall's reputation as one of the foremost authorities on Vietnam. He returned to Southeast Asia numerous times, and in 1961-1962 he was a visiting professor at the Royal Institute of Administration, Cambodia.

His The Two Vietnams: A Political and Military Analysis (1963) was one of the first efforts to put the conflict in Indochina into historical perspective.

When the American phase of the war began in the early 1960's, Fall wrote more than 250 newspaper and magazine articles that examined the war and the experiences of those who fought it. Some of his articles and essays were collected and published in Viet-Nam Witness (1966).

That same year he published Hell in a Very Small Place, a study of the battle of Dien Bien Phu. Fall brought to his work enormous energy and a powerful intellect.

After he was diagnosed as having retroperitoneal fibrosis, a rare, incurable disease, he returned to Vietnam. While accompanying United States Marines on a mission north of Hue, he was killed by a Vietminh land mine. Fall, who prided himself on being an independent scholar, was a major contributor to the debate on Vietnam in the 1960's.

Fall early exposed the flaws in the official American explanation of the war, and he was among the first to warn of the strength of Vietnamese nationalism and of the Vietminh's ability to absorb great punishment.

He remained a French citizen, but he had great affection for both the United States and Vietnam, and he endlessly agonized over the grief each visited on the other.

His books were popular with the American military in Vietnam. Few American officials agreed with him, but increasingly they listened to him and read his work.

Much of his writing has become dated through the explosion of scholarship on Vietnam, but it remains important for the light it sheds on the contemporary debate.

Achievements

• In 1950 he first came to the United States for graduate studies at Syracuse University and Johns Hopkins University, returning and making his residence there. He taught at Howard University for most of his career and made regular trips to Southeast Asia to learn about changes and the societies. He predicted the failures of France and the United States in the wars in Vietnam because of their tactics and lack of understanding of the societies.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Hell In A Very Small Place: The Siege Of Dien Bien Phu

    (From the acclaimed scholar and reporter, a thorough and r...)

  • STREET WITHOUT JOY Indochina At War 1946-1954

    (Taiwan Pirated Edition 322 Pages)

  • Hell in a very small place: the siege of Dien Bien Phu

    (1966. Book Condition: Very Good. 1st edition, near fine c...)

  • book

Religion

Fall, who prided himself on being an independent scholar, was a major contributor to the debate on Vietnam in the 1960's.

Politics

Although he admired Ho Chi Minh and the Vietminh, he was firmly anti-Communist.

Views

He was neither hawk nor dove, and he rejected both escalation and an American withdrawal from Vietnam. He was sharply critical of American policy, which he felt was based on abstractions divorced from the realities of Vietnamese history and was victimized by chronic and usually unwarranted optimism.

Highly critical of what he regarded as America's abandonment of France in the First Indochina War, he was sometimes dismissed as a French apologist. Yet he was a harsh critic of French colonialism.

He developed deep empathy for the victims of the wars in Vietnam, the soldiers on all sides, and the Vietnamese people.

Quotations: Although a critic of American policy in an age when criticism was not encouraged, and frequently, in his own words, "the unwelcome bearer of ill tidings, " Fall had considerable influence.

Personality

A brash and flamboyant man, he cut a dashing figure as a war correspondent. His ambition was to be the foremost writer of his generation.

Interests

• He spoke French, English, Polish, Hungarian, German, and some Vietnamese, and had total recall. He also had great zest for field research, and he was openly contemptuous of those who wrote about the war from the safety of the United States.

Connections

In 1954 he married Dorothy Winer, an American designer. They had three children. Fall became a Vietnam specialist by accident.

Father:

Leon Fall

mother Anne Seligman

Wife:

Dorothy Winer

References

• Bernard Fall: Memories of a Soldier-Scholar