The French military defeat at Dien Bien Phu at the hands of the Vietnamese communist guerrillas of the Viet Minh in 1954 sealed the fate of French colonial rule in Indochina.
The Geneva Conference was called to hammer out and get a political agreement for Vietnam with the participation of the great powers and the Vietnamese. The Geneva Accords sanctioned the division of the country into a northern and southern parts, and called for free elections to reunite Vietnam. However, because of fears of a communist victory in the elections, the United States and the West did not allow the vote to take place, and Vietnam remained divided into North Vietnam (communist state) and South Vietnam (pro-Western).
