2 The economics of the war are ably handled in Hugues Tertrais, La piastre et le fusil: Le coût de la guerre d’Indochine 1945–1954 (Paris: Comité pour l’histoire économique et financière de la France, 2002).
3 Devillers and Lacouture, End of a War, 246.
4 Robert O. Paxton, “Mr. France,” New York Review of Books, June 13, 1985.
5 Quoted in Lacouture, Pierre Mendès France, 205.
6 See, e.g., “Entretien de Bidault et Chou En Lai,” June 8, 1954, Indochine, Box V, Oc, IPMF.
7 For Bidault’s bitter and resentful recollection of this period, see Georges Bidault, Resistance: The Political Autobiography of Georges Bidault, trans. Marianne Sinclair (New York: Praeger, 1968), chap. 10.
8 Aron quoted in Lacouture, Pierre Mendès France, 217.
9 “Extract from Minute #6 of the Plenum Conference of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Conference June 24, 1954,” Molotov’s report to CPSU Central Committee on the Geneva Conference, Harvard Project on Cold War Studies Online Archive, www.fas.harvard.edu/~hpcws/documents.htm; Geneva (Eden) to FO, June 19, 1954, FO 371/112074, TNA.
10 Geneva (Eden) to FO, June 16, 1954, FO 371/112073, TNA; Eden diary, entry for June 16, 1954, AP20/17/231, Eden Papers, UB; Zhou Enlai to Mao Zedong and the CCP Central Committee, June 19, 1954, in Xiong Huayuan, Zhou Enlai chudeng shijie wutai [Zhou Enlai’s Debut on the World Scene] (Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian, 1998), 98. Translated for me by Chen Jian.
11 Lacouture, Pierre Mendès France, 220. On the Chinese playing the lead role among the two Communist giants, see also Mari Olsen, Soviet-Vietnam Relations and the Role of China, 1949–1964: Changing Alliances (London: Routledge, 2006), 40.
12 Eden diary, entry for June 18, 1954, AP20/17/231, Eden Papers, UB.
13 Zhou Enlai to Mao Zedong and the CCP Central Committee, June 19, 1954, in Xiong Huayuan, Zhou Enlai chudeng shijie wutai, 98; Chen Jian, “China and the Indochina Settlement at the Geneva Conference of 1954,” in Mark Atwood Lawrence and Fredrik Logevall, eds., The First Vietnam War: Colonial Conflict and Cold War Crisis (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007), 251–52; François Joyaux, La Chine et le règlement du premier conflit d’Indochine, Genève 1954 (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1979), 227–31.
14 Quoted in Christopher E. Goscha, “Geneva 1954 and the ‘Deinternationalization’ of the Vietnamese Idea of Indochina,” unpublished paper in author’s possession.
15 Goscha, “Geneva 1954”; Joyaux, La Chine et le règlement du premier conflit d’Indochine; Gilles Boquérat, “India’s Commitment to Peaceful Coexistence and the Settlement of the Indochina War,” Cold War History 5 (May 2005): 211–34.
16 Chen Jian, “China and the Indochina Settlement,” 251–52.
17 William J. Duiker, U.S. Containment Policy and the Conflict in Indochina (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1994), 182–83. Little evidence has emerged to support this Vietnamese claim, but it’s hardly implausible; in later years, the PRC would often indicate a determination to preserve Chinese influence in Laos and Cambodia, and after Saigon’s collapse in 1975, Beijing intervened openly on the side of Pol Pot to thwart the establishment of a Hanoi-dominated “special relationship” among the three Indochinese states.
18 Geneva to Ottawa, June 21, 1954, CAB 12/69, TNA; James Cable, The Geneva Conference of 1954 on Indochina (London: Macmillan, 1986), 104.
19 Lacouture, Pierre Mendès France, 220.
20 Geneva to MAE, “Entrevue Mendès-France–Chou En Lai à Berne,” June 23, 1954, Dossier V, DPMF Indochine, IPMF; Roussel, Pierre Mendès France, 238–40. The Chinese record of the meeting is now also available: Minutes of Zhou Enlau’s meeting with Pierre Mendès France, June 23, 1954, Record no. 206-Y0007, Chinese Foreign Ministry Archives, Beijing (hereafter CFMA). I thank Chen Jian for making this document available to me.
21 “Réunion du 24 juin 1954 chez le Président Mendès France,” June 24, 1954, Dossier V, DPMF, Indochine, IPMF.
22 Quoted in Devillers and Lacouture, End of a War, 257.
23 “Réunion du 24 juin 1954 chez le Président Mendès France,” June 24, 1954, Dossier V, DPMF Indochine, IPMF.
24 Edward Miller, “Vision, Power and Agency: The Ascent of Ngô Dình Diêm, 1945–54,” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 35 (October 2004): 433–58; and Philip E. Catton, Diem’s Final Failure: Prelude to America’s War in Vietnam (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2002), 5–7. Mansfield later denied that Diem’s Catholic faith affected his own estimate of Diem’s ability. See Don Oberdorfer, Senator Mansfield: The Extraordinary Life of a Great American Statesman and Diplomat (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian, 2003), 118. See also Wilson D. Miscamble, “Francis Cardinal Spellman and ‘Spellman’s War,’ ” in David L. Anderson, ed., The Human Tradition in the Vietnam Era (Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 2000), 3–22.
25 Edward Lansdale, who as we shall see became a key adviser to the regime later that summer, had never heard of him when he departed for Saigon in the late spring of 1954. Edward G. Lansdale interview, 1979, WGBH Vietnam Collection, openvault.wgbh.org/catalog/org.wgbh.mla:Vietnam (last accessed on October 25, 2010).
26 Miller, “Vision, Power and Agency.”
27 Bao Dai, Le dragon d’Annam (Paris: Plon, 1980), 328. See also the recollections of Chester Cooper, who was part of the U.S. delegation at Geneva. Cooper, The Lost Crusade: America in Vietnam (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1970), 126–27; and Cooper, In the Shadows of History: Fifty Years Behind the Scenes of Cold War Diplomacy (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus, 2005), 120. According to R. G. Casey, Bao Dai pleaded for U.S. support when he met with Dulles in Paris on April 24. R. G. Casey diary entry for April 26, 1954, 34–M1153, NAA.
28 Quoted in Seth Jacobs, America’s Miracle Man in Vietnam: Ngo Dinh Diem, Religion, Race, and U.S. Intervention in Southeast Asia, 1950–1957 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2005), 54.
29 Cooper, Lost Crusade, 124; Paris to State, May 24, 1954, FRUS, 1952–1954, Indochina, XIII 2:1608–9; Saigon to State, July 4, 1954, FRUS, 1952–1954, Indochina, XIII, 2:1782–84.
30 Paris to State, May 24, 1954, FRUS, 1952–1954, Indochina, XIII, 2:1609.
31 Stelle to Bowie, June 24, 1954, FRUS, 1952–1954, Indochina, XIII, 2:1741–43.
32 Quoted in Duiker, U.S. Containment, 185.
33 Churchill to Eisenhower, June 21, 1954, PREM 11/649, TNA.
34 Hagerty diary entries for June 23, June 24, and June 28, as cited in George C. Herring, America’s Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950–1975, 4th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2002), 47–48.
35 Editorial Note, FRUS, 1952–1954, Indochina, XIII, 2:1751.
36 “The US Government/HMG would be willing to respect an agreement which: (1) preserves the integrity of Laos and Cambodia and assures the withdrawal of Viet Minh forces therefrom; (2) preserves at least the southern half of Vietnam, and if possible an enclave in the Delta; in this connection we would be unwilling to see the line of division of responsibility drawn further south than a line running generally west of Dong Hoi; (3) does not impose on Laos, Cambodia or retained Vietnam any restrictions materially impairing their capacity to maintain stable non-Communist regimes; and especially restrictions on their right to maintain adequate forces for internal security; to import arms and to employ foreign advisers; (4) does not contain political provisions which would risk loss of retained area to communist control; (5) does not exclude the possibility of the ultimate unification of Vietnam by peaceful means; (6) provides for the peaceful and humane transfer, under international supervision of those people desiring to be moved from one zone to another of Vietnam; and (7) provides effective machinery for international supervision of the agreement.” See “The Secretary of State to Embassy in France,” June 29, 1954, FRUS, 1952–1954, Indochina, XIII, 2:1757–58; “The Ambassador in France (Dillon) to the Department of State,” June 30, 1954, FRUS, 1952–1954, Indochina, XIII, 2:1768–69.
37
Chauvel (Geneva) to PMF, July 1, 1954, Dossier V, DPMF Indochine, IPMF.
38 Paris to FO, June 30, 1954, FO 371/112075, TNA; Chauvel (Geneva) to PMF, June 29, 1954, Dossier V, DPMF Indochine, IPMF.
CHAPTER 24: “I Have Seen Destiny Bend to That Will”
1 Jawaharlal Nehru, Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, 2nd series, vol. 26: June 1, 1954–September 30, 1954 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001), 371–72; Outward Telegram from Commonwealth Relations Office, June 30, 1954, PREM 11/64, TNA; The Pentagon Papers: The Defense Department History of Decisionmaking on Vietnam, Senator Gravel edition (Boston: Beacon Press, 1971), 1:148.
2 Philippe Devillers and Jean Lacouture, End of a War: Indochina, 1954 (New York: Praeger, 1969), 260–62.
3 Chen Jian, “China and the Indochina Settlement at the Geneva Conference of 1954,” in Mark Atwood Lawrence and Fredrik Logevall, eds., The First Vietnam War: Colonial Conflict and Cold War Crisis (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007), 254–57; Pierre Asselin, “The Democratic Republic of Vietnam and the 1954 Geneva Conference: A Revisionist Critique,” Cold War History 11:2 (May 2011), 169–70. See also Christopher Goscha, “Geneva 1954 and the ‘Deinternationalization’ of the Vietnamese Idea of Indochina,” unpublished paper in author’s possession. And see the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ internal study, Dau Tranh Ngoai Giao trong Cach Mang Dan Toc Dan Chu Nhan Dan (1945–1954) [The Diplomatic Struggle as Part of the People’s National Democratic Revolution, 1945–1954] (Hanoi, Bo Ngoai Giao, 1976), 2:41. Translated by Merle Pribbenow.
4 Chen Jian, “China and the Indochina Settlement,” 257–58.
5 All quotes from the Central Committee’s Sixth Plenum are from Nguyen Vu Tung, “The Road to Geneva: How the DRV Changed Its Positions,” unpublished paper (Cold War International History Project) in author’s possession, 22–24; Asselin, “Democratic Republic of Vietnam,” 171–73.
6 Nguyen, “The Road to Geneva,” 25–26; Dau Tranh Ngoai Giao trong Cach Mang Dan Toc Dan Chu Nhan Dan, 43; Asselin, “Democratic Republic of Vietnam,” 171.
7 Goscha, “Geneva 1954 and the ‘Deinternationalization’ of the Vietnamese Idea of Indochina,” excerpts cited in Dau Tranh Ngoai Giao trong Cach Mang Dan Toc Dan Chu Nhan Dan, 119.
8 Mao quoted in Chen Jian, “China and the Indochina Settlement,” 258.
9 Trinh Quang Thanh, interview by author, Hanoi, January 2003.
10 Paris to Washington, July 9, 1954, Dossier V, DPMF Indochine, IPMF.
11 Hagerty diary entry, July 6, 1954, Box 1, George Kahin Collection on the Origins of the Vietnam War, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library; Editorial Note, FRUS, 1952–1954, Indochina, XIII, 2:1803; William J. Duiker, U.S. Containment Policy and the Conflict in Indochina (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1994), 188.
12 Hagerty diary entry, July 8, 1954, Box 1, Kahin Collection, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University; State to Paris, July 10, 1954, FRUS, 1952–1954, Indochina, XIII, 2:1807–10.
13 Jean Lacouture, Pierre Mendès France, trans. George Holock (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1984), 226–27; “Réunion des trois ministres des affaires étrangères,” July 13, 1954, Dossier V, DPMF Indochine, IPMF; Washington to Paris, July 12, 1954, Dossier V, DPMF Indochine, IPMF; M. Roux, “Position américaine à Genève,” July 13, 1954, Dossier V, DPMF Indochine, IPMF.
14 Paris to FO, July 14, 1954, PREM 11/646, TNA; “Memo of Discussion at 206th Meeting of the National Security Council,” July 15, 1954, FRUS, 1952–1954, Indochina, XIII, 2:1834–40.
15 Eden to FO, July 15, 1954, FO 371/112078, TNA; James Cable, The Geneva Conference of 1954 on Indochina (London: Macmillan, 1986), 116.
16 Chester L. Cooper, The Lost Crusade: America in Vietnam (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1970), 97.
17 Eden to FO (for PM), July 18, 1954, FO 371/112079, TNA.
18 The developments on July 20 are well handled in a number of studies. See, e.g., Devillers and Lacouture, End of a War, 290–313; Lacouture, Pierre Mendès France, 234–39; Cable, Geneva Conference, 120–23; Eric Roussel, Pierre Mendès France (Paris: Gallimard, 2007), chap. 14.
19 Minutes of meeting between Zhou Enlai and Cambodian delegation, July 20, 1954, Record No. 206-Y0008, CFMA. Translated by Chen Jian.
20 Molotov quoted in Lacouture, Pierre Mendès France, 237.
21 See FRUS, 1952–1954, The Geneva Conference, XVI, 1479.
22 Quoted in Newsweek, August 2, 1954.
23 For the full text of the Franco–Viet Minh agreement and the Final Declaration, and the verbatim record of the final plenary session, see Allan W. Cameron, ed., Viet-Nam Crisis: A Documentary History (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1971), 1:288–308.
24 U.S. delegation to State, July 19, 1954, FRUS, 1952–1954, The Geneva Conference, XVI, 1500.
25 Quoted in David Schoenbrun, As France Goes (New York: Atheneum, 1968), 122–23.
26 Michel Bodin, La France et ses soldats, Indochine, 1945–1954 (Paris: Éditions L’Harmattan, 1996), 7; Bodin, Dictionnaire de la guerre d’Indochine, 1945–1954 (Paris: Economica, 2004), 214.
27 Saigon to MAE, July 10, 1954, Dossier V, DPMF Indochine, IPMF; Saigon to MAE, July 18, 1954, Dossier V, DPMF Indochine, IPMF.
28 Quoted in Devillers and Lacouture, End of a War, 309. The VNA’s role and performance in the final months of the war is examined in Michel Bodin, “L’armée nationale du Vietnam à fin du conflit (1953–1954),” in Pierre Journoud and Hugues Tertrais, eds., 1954–2004: La Bataille de Dien Bien Phu, entre histoire et mémoire (Paris: Publications de la Société française d’histoire d’outre-mer, 2004), 89–101. The 800 figure is from Newsweek, August 23, 1954.
29 See, e.g., George C. Herring, America’s Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950–1975, 4th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2002), 48; Duiker, U.S. Containment, 183.
30 See here, e.g., Zhou Enlai’s comments to Eden on July 13, as recorded in Minutes of meeting between Zhou Enlai and Anthony Eden, July 13, 1954, Record No. 206-Y0006, CFMA. Translated by Chen Jian.
31 Chester L. Cooper, In the Shadows of History: Fifty Years Behind the Scenes of Cold War Diplomacy (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus, 2005), 126.
32 Zhou’s “servant mentality” vis-à-vis Mao is a theme in Gao Wenqian, Zhou Enlai: The Last Perfect Revolutionary: A Biography (New York: Public Affairs, 2009). On Mao’s strategy at Geneva, see also Yang Kuisong, “Changes in Mao Zedong’s Attitude toward the Indochina War, 1949–1973,” Cold War International History Project Working Paper no. 34 (Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 2002), 6–11.
33 Quoted in Stanley Karnow, Vietnam: A History (New York: Viking, 1983), 220. This point was also emphasized by Trinh Quang Thanh, interviewed by author, Hanoi, January 2003.
34 I’m grateful to Geoffrey Warner for sharing his views on this point. And see here also Asselin, “Democratic Republic of Vietnam.”
35 Dwight D. Eisenhower, Mandate for Change: The White House Years, 1953–1956 (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1963), 362.
36 Mendès-France, “Entrevue Mendès-France–Chou En Lai à Berne,” June 23, 1954, 71–77, IPMF.
37 Casey and Chauvel quoted in Cable, Geneva Conference, 88, 134.
38 Anthony Eden, Full Circle: The Memoirs of Anthony Eden (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1960), 144.
39 Le Figaro, July 21, 1954.
40 The press conference is excerpted in FRUS, 1952–1954, The Geneva Conference, XVI, 1503.
41 Cooper, Lost Crusade, 99–100; Eisenhower-Dulles telcon, July 20, 1954, Box 4, Diary Series, Eisenhower Library.
42 Eden and Chauvel are quoted in Devillers and Lacouture, End of a War, 313.
CHAPTER 25: “We Have No Other Choice but to Win Here”
1 Quoted in Newsweek, October 18, 1954. See also Donald Lancaster, The Emancipation of French Indochina (London: Oxford University Press, 1961), 359–67.
2 Quoted in NYT, October 11, 1954.
3 Jawaharlal Nehru, Selected
Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, 2nd. series, ed. Ravinder Kumar and H. Y. Prasad (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 27:21ff.
4 Luu Doan Huynh, interview by author, Hanoi, January 2003.
5 Neither the Democratic Republic of Vietnam nor its successor, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, has ever published casualty figures for their armed forces in the years 1945–54. The French have estimated a total of 500,000 Vietnamese killed during the war, including civilians. The figure here is an estimate drawn from various sources, including Stein Tønnesson, Vietnam 1946: How the War Began (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009), 1; and Michael Clodfelter, Warfare and Armed Conflicts: A Statistical Reference to Casualty and Other Figures, 1618–1991, vol. 2: 1900–1991 (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Company, 1992), 1122.
6 Lich Su Bien Nien Xu Uy Nam Bo va Trung Uong Cuc Mien Nam (1954–1975) [Historical Chronicle of the Cochin China Party Committee and the Central Office for South Vietnam (1954–1975)] (Hanoi: National Political Publishing House, 2002), 33–47. Translated by Merle Pribbenow.
7 Sainteny to Paris, October 21, 1954, Dossier VII, DPMF Indochine, IPMF; Marcel Duval, “L’Avenir des Intérêts Français en Indochine,” France-Indochine (December 1954), 236.
8 Philippe Devillers and Jean Lacouture, End of a War: Indochina, 1954 (New York: Praeger, 1969), 355; Pierre Grosser, “La France et l’Indochine (1953–1956): Une ‘carte de visite’ en ‘peau de chagrin’ [France and Indochina (1953–1956): Visitor’s Pass to the Land of Sorrow], doctoral dissertation, Institut d’études politiques de Paris, September 2002, 1253–54.
9 MAE to Washington, August 13, 1954, Dossier V, DPMF Indochine, IPMF; Claude Cheysson to PMF, “Note pour le Président,” August 12, 1954, Dossier VII, DPMF Indochine, IPMF; Baudet to MAE, August 13, 1954, Indochine, vol. 157, Asie, 1944–1955, MAE.
10 Duval, “L’Avenir des Intérêts Français en Indochine,” 239; “Projet d’instructions à M. Sainteny,” September 1954, Dossier VI, DPMF Indochine, IPMF; Grosser, “La France et l’Indochine,” 1258.
Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam Page 94
