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
Next page