Almost 70 years ago, on May 7, 1954, the Battle of Diên Bien Phu triggered the fall of the French colonial empire on the Indochinese peninsula, almost a century old. The Indochina War, which caused more than 500,000 victims, fascinated the French at the time. For more than seven years, the inhabitants of the metropolis lived to the rhythm of the fighting and torn over the meaning and direction of this war. In 2014, for the 60th anniversary of Diên Bien Phu, Ifop published a summary of the surveys carried out in France on this subject, from 1945 to 1954.
How has public opinion evolved on the subject? How concerned did she feel about this distant war? Did she want to continue the war, negotiate or abandon Indochina?
Le Figaro
looks back on nine years of opinion surveys, brought together in the publication “Ifop Collectors”.
Continue to fight, negotiate or give up?
At the end of the Second World War, France's positions in Indochina were weakened by its inability to...