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

by Fredrik Logevall

  Robertson added that the Vietnamese hated the French and that Washington was stuck with France’s puppet emperor, “the horrid little Bao Dai.” He muttered dejectedly: “If only Ho Chi Minh were on our side we could do something about the situation. But unfortunately he is the enemy.”33

  V

  ROBERTSON AND SULZBERGER WERE DINING IN PARIS BECAUSE JOHN Foster Dulles and top aides had returned to the French capital—less than a week after leaving—for more talks, this time in tripartite form involving also the British. Officially the meeting was to be devoted to NATO affairs, but Indochina dominated from start to finish. No one present doubted the importance of the moment: This was the last chance to develop a unified Western position in advance of the Geneva Conference, set to begin a few days thence.

  Bidault made the first move, in a session with Dulles on the morning of April 22, before the British delegation had even arrived. In recent days had come more grim news from Dien Bien Phu, and General Navarre once again pressed for immediate and massive U.S. air support, à la Operation Vulture, despite deep private doubts that any such intervention would come in time to save the garrison. (On April 21, he wired Paris: “From now on, it is as much for the United States that we are fighting as for ourselves.”) General Valluy sounded out U.S. officials in Washington on April 18 but got a noncommittal response—it would be up to Eisenhower, he was told, and the president had not yet made up his mind. Dejected Paris policy makers considered negotiating a truce to allow the evacuation of the wounded, but the view prevailed that such a truce would give the Viet Minh too great a propaganda advantage heading into Geneva. What alternative remained? Perhaps only one, Bidault concluded: The government might have to accept United Action and its odious political elements, if that was the price to be paid for relieving Dien Bien Phu.34

  But Bidault still could not bring himself to accept the Americans’ prescription, not fully. Dulles would have to bend a little too. At that first session on April 22, the Frenchman, looking exhausted and depressed and joined on his side only by General Ely, painted a dark picture of the situation at Dien Bien Phu; in the past few days, it had become, he said, virtually hopeless. Disagreements and recriminations between the top generals—a clear reference to the now-unbridgeable chasm between Navarre and René Cogny—made things even worse. Nor was any kind of breakout from the camp possible, since the wounded could not be moved and the able-bodied troops would not leave them behind. Only one thing now had any chance of saving the situation, Navarre and Ely continued, namely a massive air intervention, of the kind only America could undertake, involving two to three hundred carrier-based aircraft. Britain could be forgotten, since her participation would be minuscule anyway. Alongside such immediate action at Dien Bien Phu—here came Bidault’s concession—an internationalization of the struggle of the type Washington wanted would be possible, even though the French government had been opposed to it up to now.35

  Dulles liked what he heard. At last Paris had moved toward acceptance of United Action. Much as he may have wanted to strike a deal right then and there, however, the secretary knew he could not. A collective defense system would have to be in place before any intervention; Congress had made that clear. Or at least Great Britain would have to be directly and explicitly on board. And there was one more thing, he told Bidault: France would have to give the Associated States an “independent” role in the new system, meaning they would be able to negotiate themselves to receive American aid. Bidault shook his head. If Dien Bien Phu fell, France would have no need for a coalition, he replied, and indeed would not want one, for in such an eventuality the French people would see a coalition as doing nothing but prolonging French bloodshed in Southeast Asia. According to Dulles’s account, the Frenchman concluded the meeting with an ominous warning: If the fortress fell, France would want to pull out completely from Southeast Asia and assume no continuing commitments, “and the rest of us would have to get along without France in this area.”36

  It was an inauspicious start to the proceedings. Bidault, according to several sources, left the meeting enraged by the Americans’ stubborn fixation on United Action when he could think only of Dien Bien Phu, while Dulles for his part told the British delegation over lunch that the French were on the verge of quitting Vietnam altogether.37 When the tripartite talks got under way that afternoon, Bidault’s mood had not improved. He was garrulous, ironical, and obscure, and more than a few of the twenty-odd people in the room, aware of his weakness for drink, thought he was inebriated. A British observer suspected exhaustion more than alcohol, but the effect was the same: Nobody really understood what the Frenchman was saying. “[He] said he was casting himself to the wolves, into the waves, under the train, but we could not quite make out which wolves, waves, train.” Bidault also read out a “declaration of French intentions” that indicated a French commitment to defending the Associated States at all costs, but later in the meeting he seemed to dismiss it as merely “une tendance,” which he did not plan to publish.38

  Turning to Dulles, the foreign minister noted the presence of American ships in the Gulf of Tonkin and Dulles’s repeated public statements that America would not tolerate the expansion of Communism. If Washington wished, it could now reconcile those twin realities by assisting France at Dien Bien Phu. “He merely looked glum,” Bidault later remembered, “and did not even promise to repeat my request to Washington.”39

  AS TOP NATO LEADERS MEET IN PARIS TO DISCUSS THE NEXT COURSE OF ACTION IN INDOCHINA, FRENCH PARATROOPS FILE INTO THE NOSE OF A U.S. AIR FORCE GLOBEMASTER AT ORLY AIRPORT IN THE CITY’S OUTSKIRTS ON APRIL 23, 1954, BOUND FOR DIEN BIEN PHU. (photo credit 20.1)

  But Dulles did offer a response, the nature of which has been shrouded in controversy for half a century. According to Bidault, the American took him aside during an intermission and asked him whether atomic bombs could be effective at Dien Bien Phu. If so, Dulles allegedly went on, his government could provide two such bombs to France. Bidault said he turned down the request, on the grounds that the bombs would destroy the garrison as well as the Viet Minh, while dropping them farther away, on supply lines, would risk war with China. When informed a few months later of Bidault’s claim, Dulles said he could not recall making such an offer and insisted there must have been a misunderstanding. Given Bidault’s visible exhaustion on the day in question and his muddled speech-making, and given the lack of any British or American confirmation of the claim, it is reasonable to suppose Dulles might have been right. On the other hand, Bidault’s version is supported by senior French official Jean Chauvel in his memoirs, and by General Ely in his diary, which was kept on a daily basis. Ely wrote that he was of two minds about “the offer of two atom bombs. The psychological impact would be tremendous, but the [military] effectiveness was uncertain, and it carries the risk of generalized warfare.”40

  Moreover, Bidault’s contention that Washington might offer atom bombs to his government had an inherent plausibility. At several points that spring, U.S. strategists had considered the possible use of the bomb, and according to one interpretation, Operation Vulture had always, from its inception, had an atomic dimension. In early April, a study group in the Pentagon examined the possibility of using atomic weapons at Dien Bien Phu and concluded that three tactical A-bombs, properly employed, would be sufficient to obliterate the Viet Minh effort there.41 Admiral Radford used this finding to suggest the use of the A-bomb to the NSC on April 7. And on April 29, mere days after this supposed Bidault-Dulles encounter, the use of “new weapons” in Indochina was raised for discussion in a meeting of the NSC Planning Board. Some participants in that meeting argued that using atomic power in Vietnam could deter China from retaliating in response to expanded conventional attacks, while failure to employ it would lead Mao and his government to conclude that the United States lacked the will to take advantage of its technological might. National Security Adviser Robert Cutler raised the matter with Eisenhower and Nixon the next morning, and they replied that atom
ic weapons would likely not be effective at Dien Bien Phu. But they agreed, according to the meeting note taker, that “we might consider saying to the French that we had never yet given them any ‘new weapons’ and if they wanted some now for possible use, we might give them a few.”42

  Dulles himself, at this very Paris meeting, formally raised the matter of atomic weapons and their possible use, though without explicit reference to Indochina. In a speech to the NATO Council on the evening of April 23, he declared that Soviet advantages in manpower were too great—in military, political, or economic terms—for the West to overcome. Therefore, nuclear weapons must be considered part of NATO’s “conventional” arsenal. The secretary went on to assert that it must be “our agreed policy,” in the case of either general or local war, to use atomic weapons “whenever or wherever it would be of advantage to do so, taking account of all relevant factors.”43 Dulles sought here to speak to the furor in Europe resulting from the recent H-bomb tests, and he may also have been wanting to keep Moscow and Beijing guessing as to what the West might resort to in Indochina; but his language is a further indication that the use of the bomb in the jungles of Tonkin in the spring of 1954 was, from the administration’s perspective, decidedly within the realm of possibility.

  Much of the discussion on April 23 was taken up by NATO business, but Indochina remained on everyone’s minds. A night’s sleep had done Bidault good—he was sharper in the morning session, and he looked better. But the arrival of a letter from General Navarre sent him into despair again, and in the afternoon he took Dulles aside, letter in hand. Dien Bien Phu would fall very soon, he told the American. De Castries’s combat-worthy force was down by two-thirds, to a mere three thousand men; no more reserves remained. Air-dropped supplies continued to land behind Viet Minh lines. After the garrison’s fall, General Giap would move his forces to the Red River Delta and launch an offensive against Hanoi—before the rainy season got fully under way. In such a situation, Bidault continued, Paris would have no choice but to seek a full ceasefire by the quickest possible means. Only one thing could forestall this calamitous sequence of events: immediate and massive air support for the besieged garrison by American B-29s. Would the United States, he asked, reconsider her rejection of Operation Vulture?

  Dulles listened intently and said he would have an answer by the following day, after conferring with Eisenhower and with Admiral Radford, who was en route from Washington. This reply gave Bidault hope, even as time was running out at Dien Bien Phu (Giap had commenced his third phase), and other French officials that day also thought Operation Vulture might still happen. General Ely, for example, considered making an appeal to the Viet Minh for a cease-fire in order to collect the wounded from Dien Bien Phu. He added in his diary: “After refusal, get U.S. intervention.”44

  Dulles now in fact was inclined to accept the French version of events, at least to a degree. Still dubious that air strikes at Dien Bien Phu would be militarily effective, much less that they would save the garrison, he nevertheless saw them as the only ready means to bolster France’s will to resist. His conviction on this point deepened over dinner as Defense Minister René Pleven disabused him of the hope that any cease-fire would be limited to Dien Bien Phu. It would apply to the whole of Indochina, Pleven insisted. The West’s bargaining power at Geneva would be effectively nil, and the Communists would secure a resounding victory. Dulles knew what he must do: He must gain British support for United Action—the sine qua non of congressional assent to military intervention—and he must do it fast. Eden, bracing himself for what lay ahead, cabled Churchill that Dulles seemed to want air strikes, then went to bed, he recalled later, “a deeply troubled man.” His private secretary, Evelyn Shuckburgh, took a sleeping pill but still managed only four hours.45

  VI

  SATURDAY, APRIL 24, DAWNED SUNNY AND WARM, A GLORIOUS PARIS spring day. Overnight Dulles had cabled the president, who was spending the weekend in Augusta, Georgia, informing him of the Bidault request for intervention at Dien Bien Phu. “The situation here is tragic,” Dulles wrote. “France is almost visibly collapsing under our eyes.” Dien Bien Phu had achieved symbolic importance all out of proportion to its military significance, and if the fortress fell, most likely “the government will be taken over by defeatists.”46

  The message alarmed Eisenhower, and he gave serious thought to returning to Washington to monitor the crisis. He opted to stay put for now, but the matter consumed his attention on the Saturday. That morning he called acting secretary of state (in Dulles’s absence) Walter Bedell Smith, who told him the situation was evolving so rapidly—in both Paris and Vietnam—that making considered appraisals was almost impossible. The president nevertheless offered a couple: The French were contemptible for constantly seeking U.S. aid while insisting on Washington remaining a junior partner; and Eden and the British were foolish for failing to see that it was preferable to fight the Communists in Indochina, where hundreds of thousands of French Union troops were engaged, rather than in some other country lacking such a force. Admiral Radford should be urged, Eisenhower continued, to stop in London on his return from Paris and ask the British military chiefs baldly why they’d rather fight “after they’ve lost 200,000 French.”47 A subsequent presidential cable to Dulles lauded the secretary for his efforts thus far and suggested he hand Premier Laniel a message from Eisenhower urging France to commit to staying in the fight, “regardless of the possibility of the physical over-running of the gallant outpost” of Dien Bien Phu.48

  The message could hardly be clearer: In the president’s mind that final weekend in April 1954, military intervention in Indochina was a very live possibility.

  Eisenhower’s cable arrived in Paris in midafternoon, local time, by which point the climactic Dulles-Eden encounter was about to begin. The setting was Ambassador Dillon’s residence on Avenue d’Iéna. The British suspected what was coming, and any doubt was removed by what they saw on arrival: There to greet them in the garden were not only Dulles and his wife and the ambassador and his, but a phalanx of senior U.S. army and navy officers, including Radford. Dulles immediately guided the guests into the study and, after acknowledging that Dien Bien Phu might now be beyond saving, made the case for joint Anglo-American intervention in Indochina. Only such a commitment would keep the French in the war, Dulles declared, and thus would be highly beneficial even if it failed in its immediate objective of preventing the fall of the fortress in remote Tonkin. Radford, who seemed to the Britons present to be yearning for war, said that the impending fall of Dien Bien Phu would leave no option but for the United States and Great Britain to more or less take over the fighting, pushing the French into the background and hoping by these actions to so inspire the Vietnamese that they would rally against the Viet Minh—and also prevent a massacre of French troops by disaffected VNA units. If Her Majesty’s government would participate nominally in an air bombardment (Radford suggested the contribution of RAF squadrons in Malaya and Hong Kong), the administration was prepared to seek congressional support for American intervention, Dulles said. But it would never happen absent allied (read: British) involvement.

  Once again Dulles had presented the British with a choice: Would it be joint action or appeasement?49 Eden refused to be drawn but restated his doubts that air strikes would do any good and his fear that the kind of intervention proposed could result in a dangerous Cold War conflagration. More and more skeptical of the domino theory, Eden doubted that defeat in Indochina would cause neighboring countries to fall one by one. Intervention would also be “hell at home,” he remarked, sure to inflame British public opinion. The Americans offered no sympathy. Dulles, the foreign secretary later remarked, seemed in a “fearfully excited state” during the exchange, and did not demur when Radford and the “even more vehement and emotional” Walter Robertson spoke of bombing China to teach her a lesson once and for all.50

  When Bidault joined the discussion at four-thirty P.M., the Americans continued the offensive.
What would be the position of the French government, Dulles demanded to know, if Dien Bien Phu fell? Would it continue the war? Bidault equivocated. He and Laniel would want to pursue the struggle, he said, but would have to contend with a highly problematic military and psychological reaction. Dulles persisted: Would Paris, as René Pleven had asserted the night before, declare before Geneva a full cease-fire covering all of Indochina? No, the Frenchman replied, there would be no such declaration, and he would enter the negotiations with considerable freedom of maneuver. Thus reassured, Dulles produced a draft letter, addressed to Bidault, stating that while U.S. intervention at Dien Bien Phu was now impossible, Washington was nevertheless ready to move “armed forces” into Indochina, provided France and other allies so desired, for the purpose of defending Southeast Asia. The letter was handed to Eden, who skimmed it and passed it on to Bidault. Several minutes ticked by as he read it and considered his options. He was still primarily interested in Dien Bien Phu, and he remained leery of internationalization, but perhaps this was a way to salvage something out of the wreckage. He cleared his throat and said yes, he would be prepared to receive the letter formally.51

  Suddenly events stood at a new watershed: United Action was back with a bang, and the war seemed about to be internationalized. Eden quickly interjected that his government did not feel bound by the Dulles-Eden communiqué of April 14 to intervene in the Indochina War. He could promise no more, he said, than to return to London at once to consult with his cabinet colleagues. But the foreign secretary understood that the crucial moment had arrived; as he noted in a cable to the Foreign Office just before heading to the airport: “It is now quite clear that we shall have to take a decision of first-class importance, namely whether to tell the Americans that we are prepared to go along with their plan or not.” Just prior to departure, he received a call from Maurice Schumann, the French secretary of state for foreign affairs, advising him that both Laniel and Bidault hoped he would gain approval from his colleagues to proceed “on the lines desired by Mr. Dulles.”52