Nathaniel L. Moir - Number One Realist: Bernard Fall and Vietnamese Revolutionary Warfare

To win the military battle but lose the political war could well become the US fate in Vietnam, observed Bernard Fall in 1962. In Number One Realist, Nathaniel Moir gives us a superbly rich biography, combined with an illuminating history of irregular and revolutionary warfare, subjects on which Fall was one of the twentieth centurys pioneering authorities. This is much more than a contribution to the history of that long and complex war in Indochina, the end of which Fall did not live to see. It is a profound study of war as a perennial human phenomenon and how best to think and write about it.

Niall Ferguson, Milbank Family Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford, and author of Kissinger, 19231968: The Idealist

Moir shines with this timely, relevant appraisal of Bernard Fall, the most perceptive critic of French and American political-military operations in Southeast Asia during the Cold War era. A superb evaluation of Fall and his influential scholarship on revolutionary warfare.

Gregory A. Daddis, USS Midway Chair in Modern U.S. Military History,San Diego State University

Original and exceptionally well-researched, this will be popular amongst scholars and readers of the Second World War and the Cold War.

Craig Whiteside, Associate Professor of National Security Affairs,U.S. Naval War College, and a co-author of The ISIS Reader

Moirs book illuminates the contributions of a very influential figure and fills a major gap in the historiography of the Vietnam War, the history of military thinking on Revolutionary Warfare. Enlightening.

Sophie Quinn-Judge, author of Ho Chi Minh and The Third Force in the Vietnam War

Bernard Fall remains one of our foremost up-close analysts of the long struggle for Vietnam. In this superb study he gets the nuanced and incisive treatment he deserves.

Fredrik Logevall, Professor of History, Harvard University

NUMBER ONE REALIST

NATHANIEL L. MOIR

Number One Realist

Bernard Fall and Vietnamese
Revolutionary Warfare

HURST & COMPANY, LONDON

First published in the United Kingdom in 2021 by

C. Hurst & Co. (Publishers) Ltd.,

New Wing, Somerset House, Strand, London, WC2R 1LA

Nathaniel L. Moir, 2021

All rights reserved.

Printed in Scotland

The right of Nathaniel L. Moir to be identified as the author of this publication is asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

A Cataloguing-in-Publication data record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 9781787384804

This book is printed using paper from registered sustainable and managed sources.

www.hurstpublishers.com

Unless otherwise noted, all photographs reproduced with the kind permission of Dorothy Fall and the Fall family.

To my family and in memory of John Zdrazil

CONTENTS

1. Fall, second from right, Nuremberg

2. Circa 1945

3. Circa 1945

4. Fall (left) and Remy Malot, 1945

5. Member of Maquis, circa 1944

6. Fall, top row, center, circa 1944

7. F.F.I. Identity Card

8. Bernard with sister Lisette, circa 1945

9. Bernard with sister Lisette, circa 1945

10. Fall, top center with hand on chin, Nuremberg

11. Nuremberg, Identity Card

12. Fall, ROTC instructor, Syracuse University, 19511952

13. Indochina, 1953

14. Indochina, 1953

15. Indochina, 1953

16. Fall working on dissertation, Ithaca, New York, 1954

17. Fall and Pham Van Dong, Hanoi, 1962

18. Bernard Fall with telegram from Pham Van Dong, 1962

19. Fall and Walter Cronkite, 1965

20. Vietnam, 1965

21. Fall, left, with David Halberstam (middle) and Neil Sheehan (right)

22. Late 1966, photo credit Francois Sully

23. Fall, left, early 1967