Henri Navarre

Who was Henri Navarre?

Henri Eugène Navarre was a French Army general. He fought during World War I, World War II and was the seventh and final commander of French Far East Expeditionary Corps during the First Indochina War. Navarre was in overall command during the decisive French defeat at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu.

In May 1953, Navarre replaced Raoul Salan as commander of French forces in Indochina, in the midst of a war with the Viet Minh that was going badly for the French. Navarre was charged to bring the war to an honorable end. He quickly switched the French strategy from defensive to offensive operations. Navarre created mobile strike forces and sent a large number of troops to Dien Bien Phu, where they would sit on an important Viet Minh transport route and also perhaps draw the Viet Minh into a pitched battle in which the French forces would presumably have complete air and artillery superiority. However, the French underestimated the capacity of the Viet Minh, who managed to place the French position under heavy artillery fire and eventually achieved a decisive victory that more or less ended the First Indochina War.

Navarre retired in 1956. In the same year he published Agonie de l'Indochine, a work which blames the Indochina defeat on the nature of the French political system, intellectuals, politicians, journalists, and Communists. The book warns of the possible necessity for an army coup to replace the French Fourth Republic. He died in Paris in 1983.