He was awarded the Croix de Guerre with bronze star for his exemplary service between 28 September 1918 and 4 October 1918.

The project drew little support from his superior, Colonel Louis Rivet, and was ultimately rejected by Prime Minister Édouard Daladier.

[1] After the Armistice of 22 June 1940, Navarre was appointed head of the intelligence and counter-espionage bureau of General Maxime Weygand in Algiers.

On 27 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.

The French government wanted to stabilize the situation so that they could begin peace negotiations on favorable terms; military victory was no longer an objective.

Five French battalions parachuted into Điện Biên Phủ in the Mường Thanh Valley, a 20-km-long, 6-km-wide basin surrounded by hills.

Troops were unable to execute any missions beyond the valley floor, limiting actions to patrols and local counterattacks.

[7] After some initial success, Operation Atlante quickly bogged down into a series of Viet Minh ambushes on French convoys.

The French eventually terminated Operation Atlante with no tangible gains while Điện Biên Phủ was lost on 7 May 1954, after a siege of 54 days.

In the same year he published Agonie de l'Indochine, a work which blamed the Indochina defeat on the nature of the French political system, intellectuals, politicians, journalists, and communists.