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

by Fredrik Logevall

  8 On Vulture, see John Prados, Operation Vulture (New York: ibooks, 2002).

  9 Memo of discussion, 190th meeting of the NSC, March 25, 1954, FRUS, 1952–1954, Indochina, XIII, 1:1163–68.

  10 Reported in Washington to FO, April 1, 1954, FO 371/112050, TNA.

  11 NYT, March 28, 1954.

  12 NYT, March 28, 1954; Richard Rovere, “Letter from Washington,” New Yorker, April 17, 1954, pp. 71–72.

  13 Quoted in Richard Nixon, RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1978), 151.

  14 Prados, Operation Vulture, 112.

  15 The speech is reproduced in U.S. News & World Report, April 9, 1954.

  16 Robert Bowie, quoted in Immerman, “Between the Unattainable and the Unacceptable,” 132.

  17 Wall Street Journal, March 30, 1954; U.S. News & World Report, April 9, 1954; New Republic, April 12, 1954; NYT, March 30, 1954.

  18 Melanie Billings-Yun, Decision Against War: Eisenhower and Dienbienphu, 1954 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 66; Robert Mann, A Grand Delusion: America’s Descent into Vietnam (New York: Basic, 2001), 142.

  19 Ronald H. Spector, Advice and Support: The Early Years of the U.S. Army in Vietnam, 1941–1960 (Washington, D.C.: Center for Military History, 1985), 202. See also Robert Buzzanco, Masters of War: Military Dissent and Politics in the Vietnam Era (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 42; and Ridgway’s memo to the JCS, April 6, 1954, Folder 17, Box 37, Ridgway Papers, U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center, Carlisle, Pa. I thank the center’s reference historian, Arthur Bergeron, for making this document available to me.

  20 George W. Allen, None So Blind: A Personal Account of the Intelligence Failure in Vietnam (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2001), 65.

  21 Quoted in Mann, Grand Delusion, 143.

  22 James C. Hagerty diary entry for April 1, 1954, Eisenhower Library.

  23 The 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution requested by Lyndon Johnson, by contrast, was more far-reaching. It did not “authorize” action by the president and was carefully crafted so as to avoid any suggestion that he needed congressional authorization; indeed, it sought to put lawmakers on record as agreeing that he had that power as commander in chief. The 1964 resolution thus stated that Congress “approves and supports the determination of the President, as Commander in Chief, to take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression.” The 1954 draft resolution had a termination date of June 30, 1955; the Gulf of Tonkin resolution had no fixed end date.

  24 Memo of conversation with the president, April 2, 1954, FRUS, 1952–1954, Indochina, XIII, 1:1210–11. The draft resolution is on pp. 1211–12. See also Lloyd C. Gardner, Approaching Vietnam: From World War II Through Dienbienphu (New York: W.W. Norton, 1989), 205.

  25 There is no indication that the FBI investigation came to anything. On June 18, 1954, U.S. News & World Report published an article under the title “Did U.S. Almost Get Into War?” For evidence that this article was planted by the administration and represented an official response to Roberts’s Washington Post story, see Dulles-McCardle telcon, July 23, 1954, Dulles Telcons 3, Dulles Papers, Eisenhower Library.

  26 Chalmers M. Roberts, “The Day We Didn’t Go to War,” Reporter 11 (September 14, 1954): 31–35. Roberts’s account draws mostly on interviews with several of the participants as well as McCormack’s “copious notes,” which he let the reporter see. The article has been seen as suspect by some historians for its heavy reliance on the recollections of Democrats with a possible interest in tarnishing the administration, but in fact it largely accords on the main issues with the only other record of the meeting, a brief memo Dulles wrote for his files. See Dulles memorandum for the file, April 5, 1954, FRUS, 1952–1954, Indochina, XIII, 1:1224–25. And see also Chalmers M. Roberts, First Rough Draft: A Journalist’s Journal of Our Times (New York: Praeger, 1973), 114–15; and William C. Gibbons, The U.S. Government and the Vietnam War: Executive and Legislative Roles and Relationships, Part I: 1945–1960 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986), 191–95. Roberts’s initial article is in Washington Post, June 7, 1954. The account here relies on all these sources.

  27 Dulles memcon with congressional leaders, April 5, 1954, Chronological Series, April 1954, Dulles Papers, Eisenhower Library; Billings-Yun, Decision Against War, 91–92.

  28 Dulles-Eisenhower telcon, April 3, 1954, Dulles Papers, Eisenhower Library.

  29 Memo of conversation, April 3, 1954, FRUS, 1952–1954, Indochina, XIII, 1:1225–29.

  30 High Commissioner in Auckland to Colonial Office, April 7, 1954, FO 371/112051, TNA; Munro to Auckland, April 6, 1954, FO 371/112052, TNA; Gardner, Approaching Vietnam, 207–8. The passage from which Dulles read is in Winston Churchill, The Gathering Storm (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1948), 78–79.

  31 James Waite, “Contesting the Right Decision: New Zealand, the Commonwealth, and the New Look,” Diplomatic History 30 (November 2006): 908; Washington to FO, April 5, 1954 FO 371/112050, TNA.

  32 Editorial note, FRUS, 1952–1954, Indochina, XIII, 1:1236; Sherman Adams, Firsthand Report: The Story of the Eisenhower Administration (New York: Harper & Bros., 1961), 122.

  33 See, e.g., Billings-Yun, Decision Against War and especially Gareth Porter, Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 70–71. For the problem with claims that Eisenhower was deliberately setting forth conditions for intervention that he knew could not be fulfilled, see William J. Duiker, U.S. Containment Policy and the Conflict in Indochina (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1994), 190–91.

  34 See, e.g., Prados, Operation Vulture; Gibbons, U.S. Government, 178.

  35 A point made in Duiker, U.S. Containment, 161.

  36 Ely, Mémoires, 76–78, 83–85; Philippe Devillers and Jean Lacouture, End of a War: Indochina, 1954 (New York: Praeger, 1969), 75–76; Paris to FO, April 10, 1954, FO 371/112104, TNA.

  37 Jean Pouget, Nous e’tions à Dien-Bien-Phu (Paris: Presses de la cité, 1964), 280; Laniel, Le drame indochinois, 83–86; Henri Navarre, Agonie de l’Indochine (Paris: Plon, 1956), 242–43.

  38 Devillers and Lacouture, End of a War, 76–77. See also the revealing summary in Paris to FO, April 10, 1954, FO 371/112104, TNA.

  39 Paris to State, April 5, 1954, FRUS, 1952–1954, Indochina, XIII, 1:1236–38; Devillers and Lacouture, End of a War, 77; Laniel, Le drame indochinois, 83–86.

  40 James R. Arnold, The First Domino: Eisenhower, the Military, and America’s Intervention in Vietnam (New York: William Morrow, 1991), 169.

  41 State to London, April 4, 1954, FRUS, 1952–1954, Indochina, XIII, 1:1238–40.

  42 Kevin Ruane, personal correspondence with the author, November 18, 2010. Might Eisenhower have inserted “appreciable” precisely in order to generate a negative British reply? Conceivably yes, but unlikely; it seems too clever by half. See also note 31 above.

  43 White House to Dulles, April 5, 1954, FRUS, 1952–1954, Indochina, XIII, 1:1238n2.

  44 Eisenhower-Dulles telcon, April 5, 1954, DDE Phone Calls, Eisenhower Library; Dulles to Dillon, April 4, 1954, FRUS, 1952–1954, Indochina, XIII, 1:1242.

  45 Paris to State, April 5, 1954, FRUS, 1952–1954, Indochina, XIII, 1:1242–43.

  46 Ibid., 1:1248–49.

  47 Mann, Grand Delusion, 153.

  48 Immerman, “Between the Unattainable and the Unacceptable,” 137.

  49 Presidential press conference, April 7, 1954, Public Papers of Eisenhower, 2:382–84; George C. Herring and Richard H. Immerman, “Eisenhower, Dulles, and Dienbienphu,” 355. The New York Times liked the metaphor and the sentiment behind it: See the editorial on April 8, 1954.

  50 Dulles-Wiley telcon, April 7, 1954, Box 2, Telephone Calls Series, John Foster Dulles Papers, Eisenhower Library.

  51 Immerman, “Between the Unattainable and the Unacceptable,” 138.

  CHAPTER 20: Dulles Versus Eden
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  1 This remark is sometimes attributed to Eisenhower.

  2 Martin Gilbert, Never Despair: Winston S. Churchill, 1945–1965 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1988), 959–60.

  3 Diary entry, March 26, 1954, Evelyn Shuckburgh, Descent to Suez: Diaries, 1951–1956 (New York: W.W. Norton, 1987), 155–56.

  4 Lloyd C. Gardner, Approaching Vietnam: From World War II Through Dienbienphu (New York: W.W. Norton, 1989), 188–91, 215; and Roy Jenkins, Churchill: A Biography (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2001), 876. Jenkins, a parliamentarian at the time, was present in the Commons that day. “The scene remains etched in my memory,” he wrote.

  5 Geoffrey Warner, “Britain and the Crisis over Dien Bien Phu, April 1954: The Failure of United Action,” 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), 65–66; Anthony Eden, Full Circle: The Memoirs of Anthony Eden (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1960), 104–5.

  6 Strong memo, April 12, 1954, PREM 11/645, TNA; Confidential Annex to COS 42nd meeting, Item 2, April 10, 1954, FO 371/112053, TNA; Warner, “Britain and the Crisis over Dien Bien Phu,” 66–67. Eden’s Australian counterpart, R. G. Casey, felt the same. See R. G. Casey diary entry for April 12, 1954, 34–M1153, National Archives of Australia (hereafter NAA).

  7 Shuckburgh diary entry for April 8, 1954, quoted in James Cable, The Geneva Conference of 1954 on Indochina (London: Macmillan, 1986), 55.

  8 Cable, Geneva Conference, 56.

  9 Record of conversation, April 11, 1954, FO 371/112054; Memcon, April 11, 1954, FRUS, 1952–1954, Indochina, XIII, 1:1307–9. See also Eden, Full Circle, 107–8.

  10 Ibid.

  11 Walton Butterworth, Oral History Interview, Dulles Papers, Mudd Library, Princeton University, quoted in Gardner, Approaching Vietnam, 221–22.

  12 Record of conversation, April 12, 1954, FO 371/112054, TNA; Memcon, April 12, 1954, FRUS, 1952–1954, Indochina, XIII, 1:1319–20.

  13 Diary entry, April 12, 1954, Shuckburgh, Descent to Suez, 164. Robertson’s Zhou comment is in Robert E. Herzstein, Henry R. Luce, Time, and the American Crusade in Asia (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 173.

  14 Memcon, April 13, 1954, FRUS, 1952–1954, Indochina, XIII, 1:1321–23; diary entry, April 13, 1954, Shuckburgh, Descent to Suez, 164.

  15 Gardner, Approaching Vietnam, 221; Eden minute, March 26, 1954, FO 371/112048, TNA. See also his comment in the margin of W. D. Allen to I. Kirkpatrick, March 23, 1954, FO 371/112048, TNA.

  16 Philippe Devillers and Jean Lacouture, End of a War: Indochina, 1954 (New York: Praeger, 1969), 87–88. For Bidault’s cynical view of United Action, see Ministère des Affaires Étrangère, “Note,” April 7, 1954, Dossier 2 457 AP 52, Archives Nationale.

  17 FO to Washington, April 15, 1954, FO 371/112053, TNA; Cable, Geneva Conference, 58.

  18 FO to Washington, April 17, 1954, and April 18, 1954, FO 371/112053, TNA; Cable, Geneva Conference, 58–59; Eden, Full Circle, 99.

  19 FO to Washington, April 19, 1954, FO 371/112053, TNA.

  20 See the analysis in Warner, “Britain and the Crisis over Dien Bien Phu,” 69–70; and David Dutton, Anthony Eden: A Life and Reputation (London: Hodder Arnold, 1997), 343.

  21 Townsend Hoopes, The Devil and John Foster Dulles (Boston: Little, Brown, 1973), 216. See also Douglas Dillon oral history, Dulles Oral History Project, Princeton University.

  22 Diary entry for April 15, 1954, in Shuckburgh, Descent to Suez, 166; Cable, Geneva Conference, 60.

  23 Cable, Geneva Conference, 59.

  24 U.S. News & World Report, April 30, 1954; NYT, April 17, 1954.

  25 Washington Post, April 20, 1954; Wall Street Journal, April 19, 1954; NYT, April 20, 1954.

  26 Richard Nixon, RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1978), 151–52; Nixon interview, Dulles Oral History Project, Princeton University; Arthur Radford, From Pearl Harbor to Vietnam: The Memoirs of Admiral Arthur W. Radford, ed. Stephen Jurika (Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution Press, 1980), 405.

  27 Nixon never regretted his stance. In his 1985 book No More Vietnams, he wrote that not intervening at Dien Bien Phu was “the first critical mistake” the United States made in Vietnam. “By standing aside as our ally went down to defeat, the United States lost its last chance to stop the expansion of communism in Southeast Asia at little cost to itself.” Richard M. Nixon, No More Vietnams (New York: Arbor House, 1985), 31.

  28 JFD-Nixon telcon, April 19, 1954, JFD Phone Calls, Eisenhower Library; Eisenhower-Nixon telcon, April 19, 1954, Box 5, DDE Diary, Ann Whitman File, Eisenhower Library; Wall Street Journal, April 19, 1954.

  29 Wall Street Journal, April 19, 1954; NYT, April 19, 1954.

  30 See also, e.g., Washington Post, April 20, 1954; U.S. News & World Report, April 30, 1954. The latter declared approvingly: “The White House, despite diplomatic denials, has not closed the door to the use of troops if the alternative is Communist domination of Southeast Asia.”

  31 Robert F. Randle, Geneva 1954: The Settlement of the Indo Chinese War (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1969), 92; Herbert S. Parmet, Richard Nixon and His America (Boston: Little, Brown, 1990), 318–19.

  32 James C. Hagerty diary entry for April 24, 1954, Eisenhower Library.

  33 C. L. Sulzberger, A Long Row of Candles: Memoirs and Diaries, 1934–1954 (New York: Macmillan, 1969), 836–37; C. L. Sulzberger, “Foreign Affairs: The Day It All Began,” NYT, January 11, 1967.

  34 “Rapport Navarre,” April 21, 1954, 74 AP 39, Paul Reynaud Papers, Archives Nationale; Laurent Cesari and Jacques de Folin, “Military Necessity, Political Impossibility: The French Viewpoint on Operation Vautour,” in Kaplan, Artaud, and Rubin, Dien Bien Phu, 112–13.

  35 Eden to FO, April 24, 1954, FO 371/112055, TNA; Dulles to Eisenhower, April 22, 1954, FRUS, 1952–1954, Indochina, XIII, 1:1361–62.

  36 Dulles to Eisenhower, April 22, 1954, FRUS, 1952–1954, Indochina, XIII, 1:1361–62.

  37 See, e.g., diary entry for April 22, 1954, Shuckburgh, Descent to Suez, 169; Cable, Geneva Conference, 61.

  38 Diary entry for April 22, 1954, Shuckburgh, Descent to Suez, 169.

  39 Georges Bidault, Resistance: The Political Autobiography of Georges Bidault, trans. Marianne Sinclair (New York: Praeger, 1968), 196.

  40 Jean Chauvel, Commentaire: De Berne à Paris, 1952–1962 (Paris: Fayard, 1973), 3:45–46; Georges Bidault, D’une résistance à l’autre (Paris: Presses de siècle, 1965), 198; Cesari and de Folin, “Military Necessity,” 113. See also J. R. Tournoux, Secrets d’état (Paris: Plon, 1960), 48–49; and Roscoe Drummond and Gaston Coblentz, Duel at the Brink (New York: Doubleday, 1960), 121–22.

  41 See MacArthur to Dulles, April 7, 1954, FRUS, 1952–1954, Indochina, XIII, 1:1270–72.

  42 Cutler memo, April 30, 1954, FRUS, 1952–1954, Indochina, XIII, 1:1445–48; John Prados, Operation Vulture (New York: ibooks, 2002), 213; William J. Duiker, U.S. Containment Policy and the Conflict in Indochina (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1994), 167.

  43 Gardner, Approaching Vietnam, 236, emphasis added.

  44 Navarre to Ely, April 22, 1954, 1 K 233 (35), Ely Papers, Service historique de l’armée de terre; Ely’s diary, April 23, 1954, 1 K 233 (19), Ely Papers, Service historique de l’armée de terre; Cesari and de Folin, “Military Necessity,” 113–14.

  45 Eden, Full Circle, 102; diary entry for April 24, 1954, Shuckburgh, Descent to Suez, 171.

  46 Dulles to Eisenhower, April 23, 1954, FRUS, 1952–1954, Indochina, XIII, 1:1374. A few hours before sending this cable, Dulles told Australia’s Casey that France was “in the death throes of her existence as a great power.” Casey diary entry for April 23, 1954, 34–M1153, NAA.

  47 Eisenhower-Smith telcon, April 24, 1954, Box 5, DDE diary, Ann Whitman File, Eisenhower Library.

  48 Press Secretary Hagerty wrote that day in his diary that the option of using carrier-based aircraft
“to support French troops at Dien Bien Phu” remained alive. Hagerty diary, April 24, 1954, Eisenhower Library.

  49 This formulation from Gardner, Approaching Vietnam, 237.

  50 Eden, Full Circle, 114–15; Iveragh McDonald, A Man of the Times: Talks and Travels in a Disrupted World (London, 1976), 137, as quoted in David Carlton, Anthony Eden: A Biography (New York: HarperCollins, 1986), 345–46.

  51 Dulles to Smith, April 24, 1954, FRUS, 1952–1954, Indochina, XIII, 1:1398–99; Eden to FO, April 24, 1954, FO 371/112056, TNA; Casey diary entry for April 26, 1954, 34–M1153, NAA; Eden, Full Circle, 116; Hoopes, Devil and John Foster Dulles, 217.

  52 Eden to FO, April 24, 1954, FO 371/112056, TNA.

  53 Diary entry for April 24, 1954, Shuckburgh, Descent to Suez, 172.

  54 Shuckburgh, Descent to Suez, 173; Eden, Full Circle, 117.

  55 “Indochina,” April 27, 1954, CAB 129/68, TNA; entry for April 25, Harold Macmillan, The Macmillan Diaries: The Cabinet Years, 1950–1957, ed. Peter Catterall (London: Macmillan, 2003), 309.

  56 Record of conversation at dinner, April 26, 1954, FO 371/112057, TNA. See also Chester L. Cooper, In the Shadows of History: Fifty Years Behind the Scenes of Cold War Diplomacy (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus, 2005), 123–24.

  57 RN dictabelts, VP diary, April 29, 1954, Nixon Library, Yorba Linda, Calif.

  58 Record of conversation at dinner, April 26, 1954, FO 371/112057, TNA.

  59 Carl W. McCardle to Dulles, April 30, 1954, Box 2, General Correspondence and Memoranda Series, Dulles Papers, Eisenhower Library; diary entry for April 24, 1954, Shuckburgh, Descent to Suez, 172.

  60 Dwight D. Eisenhower diary, April 27, 1954, diary series, “April 1954,” Ann Whitman File, Eisenhower Library; Eisenhower to Hazlett, April 27, 1954, Ann Whitman File, Eisenhower Library.

  61 U.S. News & World Report, April 30, 1954.

  62 RN dictabelts, VP diary, April 29, 1954, Nixon Library, Yorba Linda, Calif.