In a 1965 letter to Newsweek, French writer and academic Bernard Fall (1926-67) staked a claim as the 'Number One Realist' on the Vietnam War. This is the first book to study the thought of this overlooked figure, one of the most important experts on counterinsurgency warfare in Indochina. Nathaniel L. Moir's intellectual history analyses Fall's formative experiences: his service in the French underground and army during the Second World War; his father's execution by the Germans and his mother's murder in Auschwitz; and his work as a research analyst at the Nuremberg Trials. Moir demonstrates how these critical events shaped Fall's trenchant analysis of Viet Minh-led revolutionary warfare during the French-Indochina War and the early Vietnam War. In the years before conventional American intervention in 1965, Fall argued that--far more than anything in the United States' military arsenal--resolving conflict in Vietnam would require political strength, willpower, integrity and skill. Number One Realist illuminates Fall's study of political reconciliation in Indochina, while showing how his profound, humanitarian critique of war continues to echo in the endless conflicts of the present. It will challenge and change the way we think about the Vietnam War.

Since the original publication of Undergrounds in Insurgent, Revolutionary, and Resistance Warfare in 1963, much has changed, but much remains relevant. The Internet, the globalization of media, the demise of Soviet Communism and the Cold War, and the rise of Islamic fundamentalism have all impacted the nature and functionality of undergrounds. The original study's observation, however, that for every guerilla fighter, there are from two to twenty-seven underground members is still true. Likewise, the report's main thesis--that the underground part of an insurgency is the sine qua non of all such movements--is demonstrably accurate today. This book examines the anatomy of undergrounds in various insurgencies of recent history. Our goal is to continue the groundbreaking work performed in the original study and update it with insights from the post-Cold War world. Primary source material for this book comes from the Tier I and Tier II Case Studies written as part of the Assessing Revolutionary and Insurgent Strategies project. Hence, these case studies should be used as companion documents for this study.

This Casebook was originally published by the US Army Special Operations Research Office in December 1962. As we developed the Assessing Resistance and Insurgent Strategies (ARIS) project and work began on the new Casebook, we determined that the studies within this volume are still important and relevant and thus this first volume should be republished. This volume covers roughly the first half of the nineteenth century through 1962.

Examines the anatomy of undergrounds in various insurgencies of recent history. -- Preface.