Discover the Best Books Written by Bernard B. Fall

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 Austria, he moved with his family to France as a child after the Anschluss. He started fighting for the French Resistance at the age of 16 and later for the French Army during World War II. 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 regularly traveled to Southeast Asia to learn about changes and their societies. He predicted the failures of France and the United States in their wars in Vietnam because of their tactics and lack of understanding of the societies. A landmine in South Vietnam killed him while he was accompanying US Marines on patrol in 1967.

Bernard Fall was born in Vienna, Austria, to Jewish parents Leo Fall and Anna Seligman. His family migrated in 1938, when he was 12, to live in France after the Anschluss, the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany. After France fell to Germany in 1940, his father aided the French Resistance and was captured, tortured, and killed by the Gestapo. His mother was also captured and deported and was never heard from again.

In 1942, at the age of 16, Bernard Fall followed in his father's footsteps and joined the French Resistance, after which he fought the Germans in the Alps. As France was being liberated in 1944, Fall joined the French Army, where he served until 1946. For his service, he was awarded the French Liberation Medal. After World War II, Fall worked as an analyst for the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal, in which capacity he investigated Krupp Industries.

Fall studied at the University of Paris from 1948 to 1949 and attended from 1949 to 1950 the University of Munich. After completing his studies in Europe, Fall traveled to the United States in 1950 on a Fulbright Scholarship. He studied at the University of Maryland for a time. In 1951, Fall enrolled at Syracuse University, receiving a master's degree in political science in 1952 and a Ph.D. in 1955.

Fall did postgraduate study at the Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies. One of his professors, Amry Vandenbosch, encouraged him to study Indochina because of his French background. Not content to study Indochina from afar, Fall traveled to Vietnam in 1953 while the First Indochina War was being waged between the Viet Minh and the French Union forces. His French citizenship allowed Fall to accompany French soldiers and pilots into enemy territory. 

From his observations, Fall predicted that the French would fail in Vietnam. When the French were defeated at the critical Battle of Dien Bien Phu, Fall claimed that the United States had been partly responsible for France's loss. Fall believed that the Americans had not sufficiently supported France during the war. In 1954, Fall returned to the United States, married Dorothy Winer, a 1952 graduate of Syracuse University, and submitted his dissertation, Viet-Minh Regime: Government and Administration in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. 

In 1955, he became an assistant professor at American University in Washington, DC. In 1956, he began teaching international relations courses at Howard University in Washington, DC. Fall became a full professor at Howard in 1962 and taught there intermittently until his death. Never losing his interest in Indochina, Fall returned to the region five more times (in 1957, 1962, 1965, 1966, and 1967) to study developments firsthand. 

The Southeast Asia Treaty Organization gave fall a grant to study the development of communism in Southeast Asia. He used to document the rise of communist activity in Laos. 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 Phạm Văn Đồng in Hanoi. Ho Chi Minh told Fall of his belief that communism would prevail in South Vietnam in about a decade's time.

Fall was a political scientist but had been a soldier and so spoke the soldier's language and shared soldiers' lives at the frontline. He obtained his data on the war while he slogged through the mud of Vietnam with French colonial troops, American infantrymen, and ARVN soldiers. He combined academic analysis of Indochina with an infantry|grunt's perspective of the war.