Bernard B. Fall

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Bernard B. Fall (November 19, 1926-February 21, 1967) was a prominent war correspondent, historian, political scientist, and expert on Indochina during the 1950s and 1960s.

Born in Vienna, Austria, Fall was taken by his parents, Leon Fall and Anna Seligman, to live in France when Austria was united with Nazi Germany in 1938. After France fell to Germany in 1940, Leon Fall aided the French Resistance. Leon Fall was eventually arrested and executed by the Germans, while Seligman was deported to Germany, never to be heard from again. Fall followed in his father’s footsteps in 1942 and joined the French Resistance, after which time he fought the Germans in the Alps. As France was being liberated in 1944, Fall joined the French Army, which he served in until 1946. For his service, he was awarded the French Liberation Medal. Following World War II, Fall worked as an analyst for the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal, in which capacity he investigated Krupp Industries. From 1948 to 1949, Fall studied at the University of Paris. From 1949 to 1950, he attended the University of Munich.

After completing his studies in Europe, Fall traveled to the United States in 1950 on a Fulbright Scholarship, where he studied at the University of Maryland for a time. In 1951, Fall attended Syracuse University, where he received a masters degree in political science in 1952. Fall then took classes at The Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies, where he was encouraged to study Indochina. Fall took the idea to heart.

Not content to study Indochina from afar, Fall traveled to Vietnam in 1953, where the First Indochina War was being waged between French colonial forces and the Viet Minh. While in Vietnam, Fall, due to his French citizenship, was allowed to accompany French soldiers and pilots into enemy territory. Based on his observations, Fall predicted the French would eventually fail in Vietnam. When the French were defeated in the critical Battle of Dien Bien Phu, Fall claimed the United States was partly responsible for France’s loss. Fall believed that the United States did not support France to a sufficient extent during the First Indochina War.

In 1954, Fall returned to the United States and married Dorothy Winer. In 1955, he earned a doctorate from Syracuse University and became an assistant professor at American University. In 1956, he taught international relations courses at Howard University. Fall became a full professor at Howard University in 1962 and taught there intermittently until his death.

Never losing his interest in Indochina, Fall would return to the region five more times (in 1957, 1962, 1965, 1966, and 1967) in order to study developments there firsthand. Fall was eventually given a grant by the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization to study the development of Communism in Southeast Asia, which he used to observe the rise of Communist activity in Laos. However, Fall was particularly interested in the tensions between North Vietnam and South Vietnam. While teaching at the Royal Institute of Administration in Cambodia in 1962, Fall was invited to interview Ho Chi Minh and Pham Van Dong in Hanoi, where Ho Chi Minh told Fall his belief that Communism would prevail in South Vietnam in about a decade’s time.

Fall himself supported the American military presence in South Vietnam, believing it could stop the country from falling to Communism. However, Fall was highly critical of Ngo Dinh Diem’s American-backed regime and the tactics used by the United States Military in Vietnam. As the conflict between the American forces and the Communists in Vietnam escalated throughout the 1960s, Fall became increasingly pessimistic about the U.S.’s chances of success, predicting that if it did not learn from France’s mistakes, it too would fail in Vietnam. Fall wrote extensive articles detailing his analysis of the situation in Vietnam, and lectured a great deal about his ideas on the Vietnam War. Fall’s research was considered invaluable to many U.S. diplomats and military officials, but his negative opinions were often not taken seriously. By 1964, Fall concluded that the U.S. forces in Vietnam were losing. Fall’s dire predictions caught the attention of the FBI, which began to monitor his activities.

In 1967, while accompanying a platoon of U.S. Marines on the "Street Without Joy" in Vietnam, Fall stepped on a landmine and was killed. He left behind his wife and three daughters.

Although he had lived in the United States for many years, he never became a U.S. citizen.

[edit] Books

Fall wrote many books about his experiences in Vietnam, including The Viet-Minh Regime (1954), The Two Vietnams (1963), Viet-Nam Witness, 1953-66 (1966), and Hell in a Very Small Place: The Siege of Dien Bien Phu (1966). Fall also wrote Anatomy of a Crisis: The Laotian Crisis of 1960-1961 (published 1969). Perhaps Fall’s most famous and important book was Street Without Joy (1961), which detailed the kind of warfare he had witnessed during his first trip to Vietnam. His last book, Last Reflections on a War (1967), was published after his death.