Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam

by Fredrik Logevall

  De Lattre called them attentistes (literally, “those who wait,” or fence sitters), the Vietnamese who refused to make the necessary effort. By the middle of the year, he used the term more and more often, against more and more people. Bitter, he said he had come to Vietnam to assist the Associated States (the euphemistic term now increasingly in use, referring to the pseudogovernments of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia) cement their already-granted independence within the French Union and to crush those who sought to impose a Communist system on a freedom-loving people. And what help did the Vietnamese provide? Precious little. They were not doing their share, were not all that interested in the struggle against Ho Chi Minh; they were even, he charged, stabbing him in the back. Huu’s government was apathetic and weak, and middle-class Vietnamese—the very people who had the most stake in the outcome of the war—were not signing up for the army. Despite a desperate shortage of medics, for example, not a single doctor could be induced to sign up.30

  It was his standard refrain in the summer months, and there’s no doubt Bernard’s death played a role in both the nature and frequency of his outbursts. Already in June, he began to assert that the Viet Minh attacks on the Day River—those that killed Bernard—were made possible by the treachery of the Catholic bishops at Phat Diem. He offered little evidence for the charge. More generally, de Lattre now declared that French officers and soldiers had sacrificed themselves needlessly to defend and protect a selfish and mistrustful Vietnamese people. “If this constant sacrificing of our youths’ flower does not prove us sincere in our desire to give Vietnam independence,” he asked, with scarcely disguised contempt, “what further is necessary to drive the point home?” In a “bona fide war,” he would at least have the consolation that his son had died a heroic death. Instead, Bernard had been “offered up on behalf of an ungrateful people,” who not only had failed to warn the French troops that there were Viet Minh in the vicinity, but had “booed and hissed ‘vendus’ [‘sell-out’] at the Vietnamese soldiers accompanying them.”31

  Maybe the general deep down inside felt some personal responsibility for the death. Rumors circulated quietly that he himself had assigned his son to that particular battalion, in order to break up Bernard’s affair with a Vietnamese woman who once had been a mistress of Emperor Bao Dai.32

  To remind all and sundry of the sacrifices being made by the French Union for the defense of Vietnam, de Lattre ordered a series of commemorative services be held for his fallen son, at various points around the country. On July 5, for example, there was a solemn mass in St. Joseph’s Cathedral in Hanoi. Reluctant Vietnamese ministers were compelled to fly to Tonkin—how could one decline such an invitation?—as were equally reluctant members of the diplomatic community, most of whom weren’t informed of the event until eight o’clock the night before. Hasty arrangements were made, and the aircraft left Saigon at four-thirty A.M. in order to make it in time for the service. After everyone else in the cathedral had been seated, and following an imposing silence, the general made a dramatic entrance and took his place next to the bishop. A Trappist monk delivered an eloquent address built on the theme of Bernard as a symbol of France’s contribution to the preservation of liberty.33

  The next week de Lattre returned to the theme, this time at an awards ceremony at a school for privileged Vietnamese boys—none of whom, experience had taught him, could be expected to join the army. Prime Minister Huu was in attendance. De Lattre reminded the students that Frenchmen were dying on their behalf (he left out the fact that most of those dying were legionnaires and imperial troops) and said there could be no room in this struggle for attentistes—“those miserable persons who want independence without war.” This was the war for Vietnam’s future, he declared, and France would carry the fight only if Vietnamese elites joined with her. “Certain people pretend that Vietnam cannot be independent because it is part of the French Union. Not true! In our universe, and in our world of today, there can be no nations absolutely independent. There are only fruitful interdependencies and harmful dependencies.… Young men of Vietnam, to whom I feel as close as I do to the youth of my native land, the moment has come for you to defend your country.”34

  It was a stirring message by a supremely talented orator. A standing ovation and raucous applause followed. But de Lattre knew that occasional speeches were not enough. That same month he prevailed upon Bao Dai and Huu to decree a “general mobilization” to conscript sixty thousand men for two months of training. This decree and de Lattre’s continual pronouncements were not without effect—recruitment into the Vietnamese National Army continued to move upward through the summer and fall—but the fundamental problem remained: Altogether too many privileged Vietnamese were unwilling to fight and die for Bao Dai’s government. Many sought to avoid military service completely; others pulled every available string to steer clear of combat duty. Only half the five hundred student-reserve officer candidates selected by the Ministry of Defense for the first increment of the mobilization ever reported for duty at the officer training centers in Thu Duc and Nam Dinh.35 Government bureaucrats too operated with what the French saw as a maddening diffidence and a tendency to focus their energies on political intrigue rather than on fighting the challenge posed by Ho Chi Minh’s forces.

  V

  IF IN DE LATTRE’S VIEW THE VIETNAMESE WERE UNGRATEFUL, INSINCERE, and even treacherous, he had hardly better things to say about the Americans. The latter, indeed, in his mind were in good measure responsible for the attentisme problem. Repeatedly he criticized American journalists for questioning France’s commitment to granting the Vietnamese full independence, and it irritated him that the Truman administration sought to administer its aid directly to the Vietnamese and not through the French. Still more annoying was the U.S. legation’s constant trumpeting of American economic assistance, which made France seem “like a poor cousin in Viet eyes.” De Lattre banned any mention of U.S. economic aid in the French-language newspapers in Vietnam, and he lashed out at the self-congratulatory pronouncements of the Economic Aid Mission (STEM), which he said was engaging in propaganda and political work in addition to producing economic reports. American representatives sought to undermine his authority, he charged, and to implant themselves in Vietnam in place of France. When an American embassy official protested that this was Communist propaganda, de Lattre replied that even Communists were sometimes right.36

  Most upsetting of all to de Lattre and his staff were the activities of the U.S. Information Service (USIS), a State Department program charged with the conduct of public diplomacy—that is, propaganda. It outraged the French that so many Vietnamese were enrolling in the USIS’s English-language classes, particularly when so few of them had adequate command of French. Was this one more sign that the United States sought to supplant France in Vietnam? French officials thought so. And why was it that the USIS’s first translation effort was a history of the United States? “This seems either absurd or offensive to most French who have found that even literate Viets know little of [the] history of their own country and almost nothing of [the] history of France,” remarked the acting French diplomatic counselor in Saigon. “To expect them to read American history seems [the] height of national egotism on [the] part of Americans.”37

  Secretary of State Dean Acheson scoffed at the French complaints. “If the Viets ‘know nothing or little’ of their own history or that of France, this is a problem for the Ministry of Education and incidentally one which should have been taken up long ago,” the secretary of state commented acidly. It was not America’s problem.38 De Lattre, however, was undaunted. At the opening of the USIS’s new reading room on July 23, he took the opportunity to warn that there was no room in Vietnam for American political or cultural or economic competition. “Because of this … simple fact—war—there can no longer be any struggle for influence any more than there can be rivalry of interests,” he said.

  There is only one struggle in Asia just as there is only one defense in Europ
e. Every action of the free peoples must combine in that struggle; and America’s influence in Indochina is exercised within the framework of the efforts made against the common enemy. This necessary framework, without which there can be neither organization nor dynamic cohesion nor success, is at the present time furnished by the structure of the French Union. Nothing must weaken that structure, for if it should disappear there would arise—as all admit—a situation and a regime the first effects of which would be the elimination of every American influence as of every French influence.

  As always, he sought also to connect the two Asian wars: “America and France are today giving the world examples of enterprises which are as magnanimous and disinterested as the principles and splendor of their cultures,” he declared. “It is in a just war, at the head of the United Nations in Korea, that America has thrown the preponderant weight of her power. It is solely to honor her given word, to respect obligations inscribed in the constitution of the French Union, that France has undertaken in Indochina the defense of an area essential to the free world.”

  Disputable claims, certainly, but hardly evidence of deep Franco-American discord. According to a British onlooker, however, the tension was palpable throughout the ceremony, from the moment early in his speech when de Lattre said: “Can I pay an equal tribute to United States civilization? I must confess that I have had little time to study it.” U.S. minister Donald Heath, who in a series of recent speeches had spoken in praise of French culture, made a quick exit after the event. The short-statured American might not have shown up at all had he known de Lattre’s private characterization of him: “ce sacré petit bonhomme d’un petit Consul” (“this bloody little chap who mistakes himself for a consul”).39

  No one was spared the general’s vitriol, it seemed, not even his top deputies. In late July, de Lattre accused his second in command, General Raoul Salan, a seasoned officer with long experience in colonial intelligence work, of being secretly pro-Communist, and of playing poker and smoking opium. Salan admitted to taking opium on occasion to relieve stress but denied the other charges. No leftist poker aficionado he. In hushed tones, Salan told the British consul in Hanoi, A. G. Trevor-Wilson, that de Lattre had become extremely neurotic and sour, with hardly a good word for anyone.40

  Was de Lattre’s bitterness a passing phase? The question was topic A in the diplomatic community in Saigon that summer and among the journalists who gathered daily for drinks at the Continental Hotel’s terrace bar—the regulars included Tillman Durdin of The New York Times and his wife, Peggy, a freelancer; Lucien Bodard of France-Soir; Robert Shaplen of The New Yorker; and Max Clos of the Associated Press. He was still grieving, some of them said; give him time. No, others insisted, this went beyond the loss of Bernard. De Lattre despaired at the size of the obstacles that still stood in the way of victory in the war, these analysts believed, notwithstanding his success against Giap’s offensives earlier in the year. Paris was not delivering anywhere near the reinforcements he needed, and the VNA was not ready to make up the difference—and wouldn’t be ready for a long time to come, if ever. U.S. aid, crucial to the enterprise, had been stepped up since the start of the year, which was good, but the Americans’ penchant for sticking their noses into everything was less than helpful. In other words, went this line of argument, de Lattre had determined he could not get enough from the two players that mattered most to him: the Bao Dai administration and the U.S. government.

  This interpretation of his mood seems correct. In support of it there is also this: The general’s health was now in steep decline, the cancer cells advancing rapidly inside his body. Did he know he was gravely ill? It’s hard to be sure—the formal diagnosis wouldn’t come until October—but associates could see that all was not well. Surely his illness added to his frustrations, to his feelings of resentment, to his ill temper. Never a patient man, he now seemed intolerant of even minor delays and setbacks. Yet the old personal magnetism hadn’t disappeared, at least not among those who saw him only intermittently or met him for the first time. For them, he could still radiate charm and sincerity. When Thomas E. Dewey, governor of New York and the Republican presidential nominee in 1948, visited Saigon in July, he fell under the general’s spell. “He is the most exciting personality I have met in many years,” Dewey enthused afterward.41

  So impressed was Dewey that he suggested de Lattre visit the United States personally to make the case for the vital importance of France’s struggle. De Lattre had been entertaining the idea himself. The road to victory in the war, he was convinced, led through Washington, but the Truman team still needed to be convinced of the full importance of Vietnam in the world picture. He trusted no one else to make the case. In September, accordingly, he left Saigon for the American capital, stopping in France en route. British officials thought he looked tired and worn during a dinner in Paris on the fourth but were impressed by the case he laid out, by his passionate defense of French policy. Also impressed were two prominent Americans he saw in the French capital, General Dwight Eisenhower, who had succeeded him as Western Europe’s top general and was now NATO commander, and Henry Cabot Lodge, Republican senator from Massachusetts. Both men accepted de Lattre’s claim that France wasn’t fighting a selfish colonial war but was defending one of the hinges of the allied front against the East. Both agreed that France deserved greater material and political support in the struggle.42

  VI

  HE ARRIVED BY SHIP, ENTERING NEW YORK HARBOR ON SEPTEMBER 13 aboard the stately Île de France. Resplendent in kepi and pigskin gloves, he posed for photos with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, who were returning from location filming for The African Queen, in which Bogart starred with Katharine Hepburn. De Lattre then asked for a picture of himself with the Statue of Liberty as a backdrop. The massed photographers were quick to oblige, and de Lattre turned his chiseled profile to the lenses and gestured theatrically toward his country’s copper gift to America. A fawning cover story in Henry Luce’s virulently anti-Communist Time called the photo request a “deliberately significant gesture: the general had freedom—and mutual aid—very much in mind.” For nine months, the magazine enthused, de Lattre “has been fighting one of freedom’s bloodiest and most crucial battles,” and he was now coming to the United States to get more aid for Indochina, “the rampart against the Communist surge toward Singapore and the Indies.”43

  That was precisely the message de Lattre wanted to convey during his two-week stay. At every stop, he framed the Indochina struggle in Cold War terms, as a war against “Red colonialism.” Just as United Nations forces were fighting the Communist world dictatorship in Korea, so French troops were fighting it in Indochina; these were two fronts in the same struggle. But in Indochina France fought alone. She had willingly assumed the burden of war in Indochina at a tremendous cost to her manpower and financial resources, and while America had provided essential assistance, more must come, in the form of larger and prompter arms deliveries. To assuage American concerns regarding France’s ultimate plans, de Lattre insisted that his government had no colonial ambitions in Indochina but was doing everything possible to build up the strength and independence of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.44

  The message went over well, in large part, both inside and outside the halls of power, but behind the scenes there were tensions. In Washington, where the general got the number one treatment—honor guard, military band, howitzer salute, receptions, dinners—President Truman told him he regarded the Indochina struggle as “the same fight for liberty” as the war in Korea and pledged full support for the French effort. Secretary of State Acheson offered his own assurances: “We shall do all that is possible for you.” De Lattre sought clarification: Did this mean that Korea and Indochina would get equal billing in terms of U.S. expenditures? No, came the reply, Indochina’s needs, while highly important, would be acted upon only after those in Korea had been fulfilled.45

  At the Pentagon a few days later, de Lattre tried again. “If you lose Kore
a,” he told Secretary of Defense Robert Lovett and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “Asia is not lost; but if I lose Indochina, Asia is lost.” Tonkin was the key to Southeast Asia, and if Southeast Asia were lost, India would “burn like a match,” and there’d be no hindrance to the march of Communism before Suez and Africa. The Muslim world would be engulfed, the Muslims of North Africa would fall in line, and Europe itself would be outflanked. Lovett praised de Lattre’s exegesis and said he agreed the stakes in Vietnam were huge, but he added that “the United States has a primary obligation in other theaters, whereas your primary obligation is in your own theater.” When de Lattre complained that he felt at times during his visit like a “beggar” and that “your spirit should lead you to send me [greater military aid] without my asking,” Lovett said, “We all regard General de Lattre as a comrade in arms and will do everything possible for his theater within our capabilities.” The general shot back: “Do not say my theater; it is our theater.”46