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

by Fredrik Logevall

  47 Dulles to Acting SecState, December 7, 1953, FRUS, 1952–1954, Indochina, XIII, 1:901–2; Eden minute to Churchill, December 7, 1953, FO 371/105574, TNA.

  48 Excerpt of communiqué, December 7, 1953, FRUS, 1952–1954, Indochina, XIII, 1:901n2.

  CHAPTER 17: “We Have the Impression They Are Going to Attack Tonight”

  1 Martin Windrow, The Last Valley: Dien Bien Phu and the French Defeat in Vietnam (Cambridge, Mass.: Da Capo, 2004), 320.

  2 Bernard B. Fall, Hell in a Very Small Place: The Siege of Dien Bien Phu (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1966), 72. See also Vo Nguyen Giap, Dien Bien Phu: Rendezvous with History (Hanoi: Gioi, 2004), 48–51.

  3 Pierre Rocolle, Pourquoi Dien Bien Phu? (Paris: Flammarion, 1968), 225–26.

  4 Jules Roy, La bataille de Diên Biên Phu (Paris: René Julliard, 1963), 89.

  5 Ibid., 81–82; Pierre Pellissier, Diên Biên Phu: 20 novembre 1953–7 mai 1954 (Paris: Perrin, 2004), 118–20; Fall, Hell in a Very Small Place, 54–56.

  6 Pellissier, Diên Biên Phu, 124–28; Howard R. Simpson, Dien Bien Phu: The Epic Battle America Forgot (Washington, D.C.: Brassey’s, 1994), 25.

  7 Fall, Hell in a Very Small Place, 88–90; Roy, Bataille de Diên Biên Phu, 98.

  8 Simpson, Dien Bien Phu, 36–38.

  9 Roy, Bataille de Diên Biên Phu, 111–13.

  10 Howard R. Simpson, Tiger in the Barbed Wire: An American in Vietnam, 1952–1991 (Washington, D.C.: Brassey’s, 1991), 102.

  11 Quoted in Simpson, Dien Bien Phu, 40.

  12 George Ball, “Cutting Our Losses in Vietnam,” June 28, 1965, FRUS, 1964–1968, III: 222.

  13 Saigon to FO, December 31, 1953, FO 371/106779, TNA.

  14 Lich su Dang Cong san Viet Nam [A History of the Vietnamese Communist Party] (Hanoi: Su that, 1984), 691, as quoted in William J. Duiker, Ho Chi Minh: A Life (New York: Hyperion, 2000), 453.

  15 Georges Boudarel and Francois Caviglioli, “Comment Giap a faille perdre la bataille de Diên Biên Phu,” Nouvel Observateur, April 8, 1983, 97; Giap, Rendezvous with History, 86–92.

  16 Vo Nguyen Giap, with Huu Mai, Dien Bien Phu: Diem Hen Lich Su [Dien Bien Phu: A Historic Meeting Place] (Hanoi: People’s Army Publishing House, 2001), 93–94 (I thank Merle Pribbenow for his translation); Christopher J. Goscha, “Building Force: Asian Origins of Vietnamese Military Science (1950–54),” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 34 (2003): 556.

  17 Boudarel and Caviglioli, “Comment Giap a faille perdre,” 97.

  18 Ibid.; Qiang Zhai, China and the Vietnam Wars, 1950–1975 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), 38, 45–46.

  19 Windrow, Last Valley, 266.

  20 Simpson, Dien Bien Phu, 34.

  21 Vo Nguyen Giap, Dien Bien Phu: Diem Hen, 183. I thank Merle Pribbenow for his translation. See also Dinh Van Ty, “The Brigade of Iron Horses,” Vietnamese Studies 43 (1976).

  22 Tran Do, Stories of Dien Bien Phu (Hanoi, 1963), 30–37.

  23 Boudarel and Caviglioli, “Comment Giap a faille perdre,” 99.

  24 Ibid.

  25 Roy, Bataille de Diên Biên Phu, 134–35. See also Pierre Journoud and Hugues Tertrais, Paroles de Dien Bien Phu: Les survivants témoignent (Paris: Tallandier, 2004), 104–5.

  26 Fall, Hell in a Very Small Place, 104.

  27 Saigon to SecState, January 3, 1954, FRUS, 1952–1954, Indochina, XIII, 1:937–38; Navarre to Monsieur le Secrétaire d’Etat à la Présidence du Conseil, chargé des relations avec les Etats Associés, January 1, 1954, Dossier IV, DPMP, Indochine, Institut Pierre Mendès France (hereafter IPMF); Rocolle, Pourquoi Dien Bien Phu?, 243.

  28 Bernard B. Fall, “Post-Mortems on Dien Bien Phu: Review Article,” Far Eastern Survey 27, no. 10 (October 1958).

  29 For a lengthy description of such incidents, see Hanoi (Fish) to FO, February 8, 1954, FO 371/112024, TNA.

  30 On Atlante, see Phillip B. Davidson, Vietnam at War: The History, 1946–1975 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 204–13; Fall, Hell in a Very Small Place, 45–49; Michel Grintchenko, Atlante-Aréthuse: Une opération de pacification en Indochine (Paris: Economica, 2001).

  31 Ted Morgan, Valley of Death: The Tragedy at Dien Bien Phu That Led America into the Vietnam War (New York: Random House, 2010), 241.

  32 Roy, Bataille de Diên Biên Phu, 151–54; Boudarel and Caviglioli, “Comment Giap a faille perdre,” 90.

  33 Vo Nguyen Giap, The Most Difficult Decision: Dien Bien Phu: And Other Writings (Hanoi: Giao, 1992), 21; Goscha, “Building Force,” 557; Hoang Minh Phuong, “Ve mot cuon sach xuat ban o Trung Quoc viet ve Dien Bien Phu,” Xu’a va Nay 3 (1994): 14.

  34 See here the analysis in Goscha, “Building Force,” 557. See also Bui Tin, Following Ho Chi Minh: The Memoirs of a North Vietnamese Colonel (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1995), 20–21; and Giap, Dien Bien Phu: Diem Hen, 103.

  35 Giap, Rendezvous with History, 107–8.

  36 Pellissier, Diên Biên Phu, 198–207; Giap, Rendezvous with History, 108; Boudarel and Caviglioli, “Comment Giap a faille perdre,” 90; Ngo Dang Tri, “Le service logistique du Vietnam dans la bataille de Dien Bien Phu,” in Pierre Journoud and Hugues Tertrais, eds., 1954–2004: La bataille de Dien Bien Phu, entre histoire et mémoire (Paris: Société française d’histoire d’outre-mer, 2004), 121.

  37 Giap, “Most Difficult Decision,” 23–27; Bui Tin, Following Ho Chi Minh, 20.

  38 Vo Nguyen Giap, People’s War, People’s Army: The Viet Cong Insurrection Manual for Underdeveloped Countries (Hanoi: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1961), 170.

  CHAPTER 18: “Vietnam Is a Part of the World”

  1 Ho Chi Minh, “Report to the Assembly of the DRV,” December 1–4, 1953, in Ho Chi Minh on Revolution: Selected Writings, 1920–1966, ed. Bernard B. Fall (New York: Praeger, 1967), 258–69.

  2 Pierre Asselin, “The DRVN and the 1954 Geneva Conference: New Evidence and Perspectives from Vietnam,” unpublished paper in author’s possession; Truong Chinh, “Making Great Efforts to Smash the French and U.S. Imperialists’ Schemes for Intensifying the War of Aggression,” February 22, 1954, unpublished document in author’s possession.

  3 NSC 5405, January 16, 1954, FRUS, 1952–1954, Indochina, XIII, 1:971–76.

  4 Memorandum of discussion, 179th meeting of the NSC, January 8, 1954, FRUS, 1952–1954, Indochina, XIII, 1:947–54.

  5 Richard Immerman, “Between the Unattainable and the Unacceptable: Eisenhower and Dienbienphu,” in Richard A. Melanson and David Mayers, eds., Reevaluating Eisenhower: American Foreign Policy in the 1950s (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987), 124–25. The other members of the committee were Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Kyes, special assistant to the president C. D. Jackson, Admiral Radford, and CIA director Allen Dulles.

  6 For the early experience of these mechanics, see Robert K. Scudder, “Tonkin Taxi: Hanoi to Saigon and All the Stops in Between,” Friends Journal 29 (Winter 2006–7), 8–14.

  7 James C. Hagerty diary entry for February 7, 1954, Eisenhower Library.

  8 Eden to Cabinet, November 24, 1953, CAB 129 64, TNA; Eden to Churchill, November 25, 1953, FO 800/784/95, TNA.

  9 Lloyd note, August 23, 1953, FO 371/103518, TNA.

  10 E. J. Kahn, Jr., The China Hands: America’s Foreign Service Officers and What Befell Them (New York: Viking, 1975); and Robert P. Newman, Owen Lattimore and the “Loss” of China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992).

  11 Paul Wright memorandum, August 22, 1953, FO 371/103518, TNA.

  12 Lloyd note, August 23, 1953, FO 371/103518, TNA.

  13 Paul Wright memorandum, August 22, 1953, FO 371/103518, TNA.

  14 Robert Rhodes James, Anthony Eden: A Biography (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1987), 158. See also Dominic Sandbrook, Never Had It So Good: A History of Britain from Suez to the Beatles, vol. 1: 1956–1963 (Boston: Little, Brown, 2005), 7–8.

  15 Eden to Cabinet, November 24, 1953, CAB 129 64, TNA. See here the fine analysis in Kevin Ruane, “Anthony Eden, Britis
h Diplomacy, and the Origins of the Geneva Conference of 1954,” Historical Journal 37, no. 1 (1994): 156–57.

  16 Rhodes James, Eden, 374–75.

  17 Anthony Eden, Full Circle: The Memoirs of Anthony Eden (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1960), 87.

  18 Quoted in Philippe Devillers and Jean Lacouture, End of a War: Indochina, 1954 (New York: Praeger, 1969), 55. See also Pierre Grosser, “La France et l’Indochine (1953–1956): Une ‘carte de visite’ en ‘peau de chagrin’ ” [France and Indochina (1953–1956): A Visitor’s Pass to the Land of Sorrow], doctoral dissertation, Institut d’études politiques de Paris, September 2002, 483–500.

  19 For the consensus in French officialdom that the United States was firmly committed to keeping the war going, see Le Général des Corps d’Armée Valluy à Monsieur le Général d’Armée Chef d’Etat-major Général des Forces Armées, February 4, 1954, Dossier 295, Indochine, Asie-Océanie 1944–1955, MAE.

  20 André Siegfried, L’Année Politique 1954 (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1955), 511–16.

  21 C. L. Sulzberger, A Long Row of Candles: Memoirs and Diaries, 1934–1954 (New York: Macmillan, 1969), 949.

  22 Churchill to Eden, February 8, 1954, PREM 11/648. Churchill wrote: “I think that you are quite right to try your Far East meeting. It is important to keep parleys afloat.”

  23 David Dutton, Anthony Eden: A Life and Reputation (London: Hodder Arnold, 1997), 474.

  24 A portion of the communiqué is printed in FRUS, 1952–1954, The Geneva Conference, XVI:415.

  25 Quoted in David Carlton, Anthony Eden: A Biography (New York: HarperCollins, 1986), 339. The delegate in question was Livingston Merchant.

  26 Dulles to Eisenhower, February 6, 1954, FRUS, 1952–1954, Indochina, XIII, 1:1021.

  27 Memo of discussion, 186th NSC meeting, February 26, 1953, FRUS, 1952–1954, Indochina, XIII, 1:1080–81; Lawrence S. Kaplan, “NATO and French Indochina,” in Lawrence S. Kaplan, Denise Artaud, and Mark Rubin, eds., Dien Bien Phu and the Crisis of Franco-American Relations, 1954–1955 (Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 1990), 239.

  28 W. D. Allen note, February 24, 1954, FO 371/112047, TNA.

  29 Georges Bidault, D’une résistance à l’autre (Paris: Les Presses du siècle, 1965), 193; James Cable, The Geneva Conference of 1954 on Indochina (London: Macmillan, 1986), 43.

  30 Here, as so often on the subject of domestic politics and its impact on U.S. foreign policy, foreign observations are especially astute. Wrote a sympathetic Evelyn Shuckburgh in his diary on February 11: “American public opinion might easily turn on him for agreeing too readily to sit down with the Chinese Communists.” Evelyn Shuckburgh, Descent to Suez: Diaries, 1951–1956 (New York: W.W. Norton, 1987), 133.

  31 William C. Gibbons, The U.S. Government and the Vietnam War: Executive and Legislative Roles and Relationships (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986), 1:165–66; “Report on Berlin,” February 24, 1954, quoted in Robert F. Randle, Geneva 1954: The Settlement of the Indo-Chinese War (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1969), 40–41.

  32 Dulles to State, February 18, 1954, FRUS, 1952–1954, Indochina, XIII, 1:1057.

  33 Pierre Pellissier, Diên Biên Phu: 20 novembre 1953–7 mai 1954 (Paris: Perrin, 2004), 231–32; and James R. Arnold, The First Domino: Eisenhower, the Military, and America’s Intervention in Vietnam (New York: William Morrow, 1991), 146–47.

  34 Conversation tenue, Comité de défense nationale, March 11, 1954, vol. 297, Série Asie-Océanie 1944–1955, Sous-série Indochine, MAE; Pellissier, Diên Biên Phu, 243–45; Joseph Laniel, Le drame indochinois (Paris: Plon, 1957), 16–17; Pierre Grosser, “La France et l’Indochine,” 624–37.

  35 Devillers and Lacouture, End of a War, 62–66; Yves Gras, Histoire de la guerre d’Indochine (Paris: Plon, 1979), 541–42; Laniel, Le drame indochinois, 79–80.

  36 On the urgent need to improve the performance of the VNA, see Général C. Blanc, “Situation d’ensemble,” February 8, 1954, Dossier IV, DPMF Indochine, Institut Pierre Mendès France, Paris.

  37 Laniel, Le drame indochinois, 82.

  38 Jean Lacouture, Pierre Mendès France, trans. George Holock (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1984), 201.

  39 Text in India, Parliamentary Debates, Official Report, House of the People, Part 2, 6th Session, vol. 1, no. 6 (February 22, 1954), cols. 415–16.

  40 Pierre Rocolle, Pourquoi Dien Bien Phu? (Paris: Flammarion, 1968), 327, as cited in Martin Windrow, The Last Valley: Dien Bien Phu and the French Defeat in Vietnam (Cambridge, Mass.: Da Capo, 2004), 363.

  41 General O’Daniel, “Report on the U.S. Special Mission to Indochina,” February 5, 1954, Box 1, George Kahin Collection on the Origins of the Vietnam War, Carl A. Kroch Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University.

  42 Saigon to State, February 9, 1954, FRUS, 1952–1954, Indochina, XIII, 1:1026, 1065–66; Time, March 1, 1954.

  43 Quoted in Jules Roy, The Battle of Dienbienphu, trans. Robert Baldick (New York: Harper & Row, 1965; reprint Carroll & Graf, 1984), 144. See also Robert Guillain, Diên-Biên-Phu: La fin des illusions [Notes d’Indochine, février–juillet 1954] (Paris: Arléa, 2004).

  44 Graham Greene diary entry for January 5, 1954, Box 1, Greene Papers, GU; Graham Greene, Ways of Escape (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1980), 189. Greene’s article appeared in two installments in the newspaper, on March 21 and March 28.

  45 On Viet Minh gains in the south in early 1954, see David W. P. Elliott, The Vietnamese War: Revolution and Social Change in the Mekong Delta, 1930–1975 (Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 2007), 80–82.

  46 Bernard B. Fall, “Solution in Indo-China: Cease-Fire, Negotiate,” Nation, March 6, 1954. On February 20, Bao Dai startled the U.S. and British ambassadors by suggesting seriously that the best solution to the “pourriture” in the delta would be to remove all, or nearly all, its residents and transport them to southern Annam. After this exodus, the army could then launch an all-out bombardment of the barren zone. Saigon to FO, February 25, 1954, FO 371/112024, TNA.

  47 Fall, “Solution in Indo-China.”

  48 A superb treatment of these early days in the battle remains Rocolle, Pourquoi Dien Bien Phu?, 343–90. See also Pierre Journoud and Hugues Tertrais, Paroles de Dien Bien Phu: Les survivants témoignent (Paris: Tallandier, 2004), 111–31. For the harrowing first hours, see Erwan Bergot, Les 170 jours de Diên Biên Phû (Paris: Presses de la cité, 1979), 85–98.

  49 Gaucher letter quoted in Ted Morgan, Valley of Death: The Tragedy at Dien Bien Phu That Led America into the Vietnam War (New York: Random House, 2010), 256.

  50 Howard R. Simpson, Dien Bien Phu: The Epic Battle America Forgot (Washington, D.C.: Brassey’s, 1994), 53–54.

  51 Ibid., 63.

  52 Lich Su Bo Doi Dac Cong, Tap Mot [History of the Sapper Forces, Volume I] (Hanoi: People’s Army Publishing House, 1987), 68–70; Hanoi to FO, February 17, 1954, FO 371/112024, TNA. See also John Prados, “Mechanics at the Edge of War,” VVA Veteran 22, no. 8 (August 2002); Simpson, Dien Bien Phu, 64–65.

  53 Edgar O’Ballance, The Indo-China War, 1945–1954 (London: Faber & Faber, 1964), 218.

  54 Quoted in Roy, Battle of Dienbienphu, 167.

  55 Phillip B. Davidson, Vietnam at War: The History, 1946–1975 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 236.

  56 Roy, Battle of Dienbienphu, 172.

  57 Bernard B. Fall, Street Without Joy: Indochina at War 1946–1954 (reprint ed., Mechanicsburg, Pa.: Stackpole, 1994), 321.

  58 Bernard B. Fall, Hell in a Very Small Place: The Siege of Dien Bien Phu (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1966), 156.

  59 Pellissier, Diên Biên Phu, 268–72.

  60 Paul Grauwin, J’étais médecin à Dien-Bien-Phu (Paris: France-Empire, 1954). A shorter English translation is Doctor at Dienbienphu (New York: John Day, 1955).

  61 Simpson, Dien Bien Phu, 89.

  62 Navarre pour Ministre Etats Associés, March 23, 1954, Dossier I 457 AP 53, Conférence de Genève, AN.

 
63 Devillers and Lacouture, End of a War, 72.

  64 Comité de défense nationale to Schumann, March 11, 1954, vol. 297, Série Asie-Océanie 1944–1955, Sous-série Indochine, MAE.

  CHAPTER 19: America Wants In

  1 Memo of discussion, 189th NSC meeting, March 18, 1954, FRUS, 1952–1954, Indochina, XIII, 1:1132–33.

  2 Memo of conversation, March 19, 1954, FRUS, 1952–1954, Indochina, XIII, 1:1133–34; Comité de défense nationale to Schumann, March 11, 1954, vol. 297, Série Asie-Océanie 1944–1955, Sous-série Indochine, MAE.

  3 Télégram a l’arrivée, March 24, 1954, vol. 297, Série Asie-Océanie 1944–1955, Sous-série Indochine, MAE; Memo for the record, March 21, 1954, FRUS, 1952–1954, Indochina, XIII, 1:1137–40; NYT, March 23, 1954; Paul Ely, Mémoires: L’Indochine dans la tourmente (Paris: Plon, 1964), 59–60.

  4 Conversation tenue, March 23, 1954, vol. 297, Série Asie-Océanie 1944–1955, Sous-série Indochine, MAE; Ely, Mémoires, 65–67.

  5 Memo of conversation with the president, March 24, 1954, FRUS, 1952–1954, Indochina, XIII, 1:1150; Dulles-Radford telcon, March 25, 1954, Box 2, Telephone Calls Series, John Foster Dulles Papers, Eisenhower Library.

  6 Ely, Mémoires, 67–83; Bonnet to Paris, March 24 and 25, 1954, vol. 297, Série Asie-Océanie 1944–1955, Sous-série Indochine, MAE; Arthur Radford, From Pearl Harbor to Vietnam: The Memoirs of Admiral Arthur W. Radford, ed. Stephen Jurika (Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution Press, 1980), 391–401; Joseph Laniel, Le drame indochinois (Paris: Plon, 1957), 83–88; Kathryn C. Statler, Replacing France: The Origins of American Intervention in Vietnam (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2007), 89; George C. Herring and Richard H. Immerman, “Eisenhower, Dulles, and Dienbienphu: ‘The Day We Didn’t Go to War’ Revisited,” Journal of American History 71 (September 1984), 347–48.

  7 Richard H. Immerman, “Between the Unattainable and the Unacceptable: Eisenhower and Dienbienphu,” in Richard A. Melanson and David Mayers, eds., Reevaluating Eisenhower: American Foreign Policy in the 1950s (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987), 131.