Under instructions from Hanoi to avoid providing the British with a pretext for further intervention, Tran Van Giau and other members of the committee sought to prevent an outbreak of outright conflict, but as a precaution Giau began to evacuate key Vietminh units from the city. During the next few days, Gracey’s forces started to cleanse the metropolitan area of all rebellious elements. In the meantime, Tran Van Giau and other members of the Committee for the South sought a compromise with Jean Cédile, the senior French representative in Cochin China. Cédile, who had parachuted into Cochin China on August 22, was liberal-minded and a moderate in his political views, but the talks went nowhere. Cédile demanded that the political future of Indochina be discussed only after the restoration of French authority, while Giau insisted on a prior French recognition of Vietnamese national independence. Further negotiations, held in September at the instigation of U.S. Lieutenant Colonel A. Peter Dewey, Patti’s OSS counterpart in the south, foundered on the same issue, as hard-line elements on each side prevented any tendency toward accommodation. It was, as the French diplomat Bernard de Folin noted, a dialogue of the deaf.
By mid-September, Pham Van Bach, the new chairman of the Committee for the South, had become convinced that a settlement with the French was impossible, so he called for a general strike on September 17. Gracey countered by declaring martial law, releasing and rearming the remaining French prisoners—many of them Legionnaires—and ordering them to restore order. Inevitably, clashes between French and Vietnamese troops took place, further inflaming the situation. On the night of the twenty-second, Cédile ordered French troops to take control of key installations in the city and evict the Committee for the South from its latest headquarters in the ornate Saigon City Hall. In the process, several Vietnamese soldiers were killed or taken prisoner. When they awoke the following morning, the 20,000 French residents of the city rejoiced to discover that once again Saigon was under French control. Many took to the streets, assaulting the Vietnamese they encountered—men, women, and children—at random. Hundreds, and perhaps thousands, were injured.
Colonel Dewey, the senior U.S. representative in Saigon, was appalled by Cédile’s peremptory action, A Yale graduate and a onetime correspondent for the Chicago Daily News who had been recruited by the OSS in 1943 and served in the European Theater, the twenty-eight-year-old Dewey was the son of a former U.S. ambassador to Paris and spoke fluent French but shared the anticolonial predilections of Archimedes Patti in Hanoi. Dewey immediately went to British headquarters to complain to Gracey, but the general refused to receive him. Indeed, Gracey blamed much of the recent troubles in Saigon on the activities of the OSS detachment, which he labeled “blatantly subversive,” and demanded that Dewey leave Indochina as soon as possible. But he did agree to order French troops off the streets and turned the task of maintaining law and order entirely over to the Japanese.28
Up until now, Vietminh representatives in Saigon had made it clear that radical actions, such as those that had occurred during “black Sunday” on September 2, were not part of the current stage of the Vietnamese revolution and would be severely punished, but such orders were widely ignored. On September 24, several hundred armed Vietnamese, many of them allegedly members of the Cao Dai or the Binh Xuyen, a local crime syndicate that ran vice operations in Saigon, ran rampant through the Cité Herault, a French residential section, calling out “death to the Europeans.” Although the neighborhood was technically under Japanese guard, more than 150 Europeans were massacred, many of them women and children, while the Japanese troops stood by without intervening. One hundred hostages were led away, never to be seen again. The violence spread into the surrounding rural areas, where peasant riots destroyed many estates, seized and redistributed the land of the wealthy, and killed several landlords.
By now Tran Van Giau had lost confidence in his ability to bring about a compromise. Fearing that nationalist rivals would seize control over the movement, he called for a new general strike and ordered his followers to evacuate the city, which he now planned to place under siege. Barricades were erected to prevent French citizens from leaving Saigon, and to keep Vietnamese from entering from the outside. In a cable to Patti in Hanoi, Dewey (who had recently described the unrest in the south as a “popgun war”) reported that “Cochin China is burning,” and urged that the Americans “ought to clear out of Southeast Asia.” The next afternoon, while Dewey was about to leave for the airport, he was fired upon in his Jeep at one of the Vietnamese barricades in the city, and he was instantly killed. Shortly after, the OSS headquarters nearby was placed under attack by Vietnamese units for several hours, until the area was cleared by Gracey’s Gurkhas.29
The death of Colonel Dewey, the first American to die in the Vietnamese revolution, caused lengthy and bitter recriminations; accusations of blame were levied from all sides. An investigation of the incident by the local OSS team concluded that there was no evidence of a sinister plot against Dewey or the Americans by the Vietminh. In fact, Americans in Saigon at the time were convinced that the Vietnamese viewed them as separate from other Westerners, and more sympathetic to their aspirations for national independence. Partial responsibility for the incident was placed at the feet of General Gracey, since Gracey had refused Dewey’s request to fly an American flag on his Jeep, arguing that as he was not an officer of flag rank he did not merit the privilege. There was indeed bad blood between Gracey and the U.S. military contingent in Saigon. Reports by OSS officers concluded that the incident was probably a case of mistaken identity, with the Vietnamese troops assuming that the Jeep was carrying French troops. When he heard the news from Patti, Ho Chi Minh was severely shaken, and later he wrote a personal letter to President Truman, expressing his regret for the incident.30
The incident also had repercussions at SEAC. Press reports of the situation in Saigon had damaged the reputation of the British role in the peace-keeping force in Indochina. Displeased by the events of late September, Lord Mountbatten met with Cédile and General Gracey in Singapore and instructed them to seek a cease-fire and a peaceful settlement of the spreading dispute. He criticized Gracey for attempting to apply law and order in an indiscriminate manner throughout Cochin China and for his refusal to deal with Vietnamese authorities. But Mountbatten’s intervention had little effect in softening the positions adopted by either side. In early October, French troops under the command of General Henri Leclerc began to arrive in Saigon, and a few days later—with French residents in the city celebrating at the newly opened Cercle Sportif just behind the governor-general’s residence—Gracey signed an agreement turning authority over from his occupation command to the French in all areas of Indochina south of the 16th parallel.31
On October 10, Tran Van Giau’s forces attacked French and British troops at the Tan Son Nhut Airport and on roads at checkpoints entering the city. During the next few weeks, remnants of the military units of the Vietminh and other nationalist groups opposed to the French were driven inexorably out of the Saigon metropolitan area. Vietminh cadres operating under the command of Le Duan, who had spent the war years in prison, met secretly somewhere in the Mekong delta to begin preparations for war. But Vietminh forces lacked the strength and experience to deal with the French, who were methodically driving the Vietnamese away from the suburbs and into the swamps and jungles. In the meantime, Hoang Quoc Viet attempted to bring about the unification of the diverse political parties and the two millennarian religious sects for a concerted effort against the French.
As the situation in Cochin China deteriorated, the government in Hanoi did what it could to help. On September 26, Ho Chi Minh broadcast a radio message to his compatriots in the south, promising them that the entire nation would mobilize its strength to seek ultimate victory. In some provinces in central Vietnam, entire villages went south to fight the French. In private, however, Ho counseled patience to his colleagues, citing examples in Vietnamese history when ultimate victory required protracted war.32
Indeed, the new government was in no position to fight a war. The economic situation in the north was still dire, and although no French troops were stationed in the area, nationalist parties represented an increasingly vocal challenge. Behind them loomed the Chinese. Faced with threats from all sides, Ho Chi Minh maneuvered desperately to seek out allies and isolate adversaries. To placate Lu Han, the commander of the Chinese occupation troops, he ordered a subordinate to provide him with opium. To furnish an additional symbol of legitimacy for his fragile government, he asked former emperor Bao Dai, now citizen Vinh Thuy, to serve as his political adviser. Arriving from Hué on September 6, Vinh Thuy met immediately with Ho Chi Minh, who expressed his disapproval of the pressure that had been applied to persuade the emperor to abdicate. “Personally,” Ho remarked, “I had envisaged that you would remain head of state and I would serve as the head of government.” At a dinner held a few days later, Ho offered him the position of supreme counselor. Vinh Thuy accepted.33
Still, the most pressing immediate challenge came from the Vietminh’s nationalist competitors. Ho Chi Minh’s old rival Nguyen Hai Than, now a septuagenarian but still a leading member of the Dong Minh Hoi, had been attacking the government—which he described as “Ho and his gang of cutthroats”—for its willingness to compromise with the French. Dai Viet leaders also entered the city in September from south China and began to voice a similar message in their party newspaper. Despite Ho’s efforts to present a friendly and moderate image to the population, there was little that he could do to diminish the hostility and suspicion of rival nationalist elements, many of whom had become convinced by their wartime experience in south China that long-term cooperation with Ho and his Vietminh colleagues was impossible. To nationalist leaders, the unilateral seizure of power by the Vietminh in Hanoi at the end of the war was ample proof of Ho’s treachery and double-dealing. While such elements lacked the political and military strength to compete directly with the Vietminh—Patti noted later that none of the nationalist leaders appeared to have a socioeconomic program to deal with the situation and were “hopelessly disoriented politically”—they possessed a crucial trump card in their credibility with the Chinese occupation forces. Convinced that the Chinese would ultimately be forced to support them, nationalists like Vu Hong Khanh adopted a hard line in talks with the Vietminh. Khanh’s party, the VNQDD, set up an opposition newspaper and a loudspeaker at its downtown headquarters, both of which began to denounce the “red terror.”34
But Ho’s rivals were divided, not only among themselves but also in their relations with the Chinese. Elements connected with the Dong Minh Hoi sided with General Xiao Wen, who was increasingly angry with Ho Chi Minh for his independent stance and now hoped for an early departure of both Japanese and Chinese troops to bring about the emergence of an independent government under nationalist leadership. Other groups, such as the VNQDD and the Dai Viet, supported Lu Han, who anticipated a lengthy Chinese occupation as a means of cementing Sino-Vietnamese relations.
Some observers claimed to see divisions within the Vietminh camp as well. According to the French journalist Philippe Devillers, who was then posted in Hanoi, there were at least three camps within the government: an old guard consisting of veteran Communists such as Hoang Quoc Viet, Tran Huy Lieu, and Ho Tung Mau; a group of more pragmatic members who had pursued legal careers during the 1930s, such as Vo Nguyen Giap, Hoang Minh Giam, and Giap’s father-in-law, Dang Thai Mai; and a group of non-Communists who had rallied to the Vietminh cause for patriotic reasons. In Devillers’s interpretation, Ho Chi Minh maneuvered skillfully among these factions, taking issue with colleagues who wanted to adopt a hard line with their nationalist rivals and arguing for a policy of conciliation. Ho’s view can be seen in the comment of one Party publication, which said that nationalist parries should be neutralized gradually in order to wipe out their forces “step by step.” When a member of his government expressed outrage at the behavior of nationalist elements, Ho counseled him to be patient, promising that such issues would be dealt with once the government was firmly in power. As the rhetoric on all sides became more inflamed, Ho Chi Minh was forced to take increasing precautions to guarantee his own safety, moving his residence frequently in order to avoid surprise attack.35
In Ho’s view, the best way to deal with the Party’s nationalist rivals was to placate the Chinese occupation authorities. There was as yet no indication as to when Chinese troops would leave Indochina. In late September, General Lu Han made it cleat that there was no timetable for the departure of Chinese troops. By early October—after one of Chiang Kai-shek’s favorite commanders, He Yingqin, arrived in Hanoi to urge Lu Han to devise a plan to keep the Vietnamese Communists from consolidating power—their immediate withdrawal appeared even less likely.
The French, of course, represented the main and greatest challenge. If the rest of the victorious Allies grouped together against the Soviets, the French could very well resume sovereignty in Indochina, and, however distasteful that might be, it would have to be at least temporarily accepted. In mid-September, in an attempt to placate the potential enemy, Ho Chi Minh began secret negotiations with French representatives General Marcel Alessandri and Léon Pignon (Jean Sainteny had left for consultations in India). In interviews with Western journalists, Ho indicated that the French would be welcomed back to Indochina as advisers, provided that they came as friends, not conquerors.36
With Chinese commanders supporting the nationalist parties in the north and the British operating hand in glove with the French in the south, the United States represented the last best hope for Ho Chi Minh as a possible patron for the government in Hanoi. During the late summer and early fall, Ho attempted to cultivate his American contacts, notably Archimedes Patti, who was obviously sympathetic to the cause of Vietnamese independence as well as the most senior U.S. representative in Hanoi. Despite the displeasure of his superiors in Chongqing, who were concerned at his increasingly favorable attitude toward the new Vietnamese government, Patti continued to report on conditions in Indochina, and in early September he cabled that although the new government was clearly leftist, it apparently was in full control of the situation and fully prepared to resist the return of the French. A few weeks later he reported on the goals of the Vietnamese leaders, indicating that they intended to seek national independence in ten years, with a French governor-general to serve until then as chief of state. Having observed the U.S. record in the Philippines, he reported, the Vietnamese would prefer to become a U.S. protectorate until the restoration of complete independence, but they recognized the unlikelihood of that and would be happy to accept temporary French administration, so long as it was under the watchful eye of the United Nations.37
But the U.S. attitude about the situation in Indochina was still ambiguous. One reason for that ambiguity was that policy differences between Europeanists and Asianists in the State Department had flared up again. Through cables from Patti and information from diplomatic missions elsewhere in Asia, Washington was well aware that the Vietminh government was Communist in orientation; close observers knew that Ho Chi Minh himself was in fact the veteran Comintern agent Nguyen Ai Quoc. Asianists were becoming increasingly concerned at the drift toward war in Indochina. On September 28, Assistant Secretary for Far East Affairs John Carter Vincent (later to become one of the prominent victims of Senator Joseph McCarthy’s anti-Communist crusade) raised the issue with Under Secretary of State Dean Acheson, warning that the current “hands-off” policy of not opposing the restoration of French sovereignty in Indochina could result in a full-fledged crisis, since Paris appeared determined to restore its authority prior to opening negotiations with the Vietnamese government. Vincent proposed that the United States join with Great Britain in establishing a commission to investigate the situation in Indochina. Pending the final report, he suggested that no additional French troops be authorized to land in Indochina. The commission report, he concluded, could become the basis for international discussi
ons among concerned countries, including appropriate “Annamese” representatives. Vincent conceded that Paris might resent such initiatives, but he pointed out that this would be less dangerous than an explosion of Annamese nationalism.38
Europeanists in the State Department took issue with such reasoning. H. Freeman Mathews, chief of the Division of European Affairs, argued that it would be preferable to see if the British and the French could work out the problem themselves. A commission, Europeanists feared, could lead to only one result—the eventual eviction of the French from Indochina. It could also encourage Moscow to demand a role in the region for the USSR. This, said one, “would be bad for the French and the West, and generally be bad for the Indo-chinese themselves.” Acheson, by instinct and training a Europeanist, agreed with Mathews, and he rejected action unless the situation deteriorated markedly. On October 20, Vincent issued an official statement reiterating U.S. policy and declaring that the United States did not question French and Dutch sovereignty over their Southeast Asian colonies, but that it expected the European colonial powers to prepare their subject peoples for the duties and responsibilities of self-government.39
The French clearly did not want any interference. In late October an official of the French Embassy in Washington, D.C., met with Far Eastern Division staff member Abbot Low Moffat to complain about a report that a representative from Ho Chi Minh’s government was en route to Washington to discuss the situation with U.S. officials. Any such interference by the United States, the embassy official warned, “would be considered an unfriendly act” by the French government.40
Ho Chi Minh was not aware of such events in the United States, but he was clearly concerned at the trend in U.S. policy. On September 30, Patti’s last day in Indochina, he invited Patti to the Northern Palace for a final conversation. In a tête-à-tête after dinner, Ho remarked that he could not reconcile the official U.S. position on self-determination that had been laid out at the Tehran, Quebec, and Potsdam conferences with the current policy of standing aside and permitting the British and the Chinese to assist in the return of the French to Indochina. Does not the Atlantic Charter, he asked, apply to Vietnam? Ho suggested the formation of a pan-Asian community including several of the colonial possessions in the region and assisted by political and economic programs for the common good. Patti expressed his personal sympathy for the Vietnamese struggle for independence, but reiterated official U.S. policy that neither questioned French sovereignty not supported Paris’s imperialist ambitions. At the close of the conversation, Ho recounted to his visitor some of the key events in his life as a revolutionary. Conceding that many Americans viewed him as a “Moscow puppet,” Ho denied that he was a Communist in the American sense. Having repaid his debt to the Soviet Union with fifteen years of Party work, he now considered himself a free agent. In recent months, he pointed out, the DRV had received more support from the United States than from the USSR. Why should it be indebted to Moscow?
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