Not all was pleasure, of course. The news of Ho Chi Minh’s arrival had circulated in Paris, and he was much in demand. A February article of the French newspaper Le Figaro had identified him as the Comintern agent Nguyen Ai Quoc, and some were eager to meet the old revolutionary. Ho Chi Minh allowed Jacques Dumaine, the director of protocol at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to guide him through the thickets of formal diplomatic behavior. But, characteristically, he kept it simple. To all those who requested an interview, he invited them to breakfast at 6:00 A.M., explaining that it was custom to rise early in the tropics. For all occasions, he wore his habitual attire. On July 4, he hosted a sumptuous dinner at his hotel in honor of incoming Prime Minister Bidault. Dress protocol was white tie, but Ho wore his familiar worn khaki suit, buttoned to the neck as a slight concession to the occasion, and canvas sandals.
Sainteny gave a reception for Ho Chi Minh at his own town house, and among the many politicians who attended was Ho’s old adversary Albert Sarraut. “Well!” exclaimed the onetime minister of colonies. “Here you are, you old brigand. I have you within reach at last. What a good part of my life I’ve spent pursuing you!” Then he embraced the amused Ho warmly and praised him as a good friend, asking him just one question: Did the Lycée Albert Sarraut still exist in Hanoi?39
Ho Chi Minh had hoped to meet Charles de Gaulle, but was unable to, for “le grand Charles” had retired to his estate at Colombey and made it a rule not to intervene in affairs of state. Not did he meet General Leclerc, who avoided him. Leclerc’s aloof attitude puzzled many observers, since the two had gotten along well in Indochina, Sainteny speculated that because the general had been severely criticized in French military circles for his actions in Indochina, he was reluctant to meddle further in the issue. But he also noted that Leclerc might have felt that Ho Chi Minh had deceived him when he had denied that his government was making preparations for war.40
At eleven in the morning on July 2, Protocol Chief Dumaine picked up Ho Chi Minh at his hotel and escorted him in a fleet of fourteen automobiles to the Hotel Matignon for a diplomatic reception hosted by Prime Minister Bidault. In his welcoming speech, Bidault apologized for the delay in opening the peace talks and referred to the traditional friendship between two peoples. He described the new French Union as being “animated by a great humane spirit” and hoped that the two sides could work together with sincerity and mutual understanding. In his reply, Ho thanked his host for his warm welcome, noting that Paris was the cradle of the noble ideals of the 1789 Revolution. Warning that there would probably be difficult days ahead, he expressed the hope that sincerity and mutual confidence would clear away all obstacles, adding that both Eastern and Western philosophy extolled the idea that “you should not do to others what you do not want others to do to you.”41
The next day, Ho Chi Minh walked up the Champs-Elysées to lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at the Arc de Triomphe. A reporter noted that he had drawn a large crowd. “Why, of course,” he replied with a smile, “everyone wants to see the Vietnamese version of Charlie Chaplin.” He also visited the Palace of Versailles, well known to all Vietnamese as a result of Ho’s famous appeal to the Allied leaders at the peace conference after World War I. After stopping at Napoleon’s tomb at Les Invalides, he visited Mount Valerian, in Montmartre, where a monument had been erected in memory of partisans executed by the Germans during the recent war.
Formal talks finally began on July 6 at the stately Palace of Fontainebleau, which still reflected much of the grandeur of the ancien régime. Leading the French delegation was Max André, who had visited Indochina at de Gaulle’s request in January. (High Commissioner d’Argenlieu had flown to Paris from Saigon in the hope of chairing the French delegation, but the Bidault goverment feared an adverse reaction from the Vietnamese—or from the French public—and rejected his offer.) The French delegation was mixed in its political orientation, with members from the FCP and the Socialist Party as well as Bidault’s MRP.
From the Vietnamese point of view, the circumstances surrounding the opening of peace talks were forbidding. In the weeks leading up to the conference, the situation in Indochina had deteriorated. On June 1, a provisional government of Cochin China under Nguyen Van Thinh had taken office in Saigon. That month, the issue of whether the Vietnamese or the French would occupy the Governor-General’s Palace in Hanoi after the departure of Chinese occupation forces had been under discussion. On the twenty-fifth, French troops had suddenly occupied the building, the symbol of supreme power in all Indochina. After a vigorous protest from the Vietnamese government, General Valluy, d’Argenlieu’s second-in-command, finally agreed that the palace would be guarded by a joint contingent of French and Vietnamese soldiers, pending a final decision on the matter in Paris.
After the French opened the first session with a general statement of welcome, Pham Van Dong, chair of the Vietnamese delegation, harshly criricized French actions in Indochina—actions, he charged, that could not facilitate the success of the negotiations. The two sides eventually managed to agree on an agenda, consisting of the status of Vietnam within the French Union, its relations with other countries, and the unity of the three regions. But on all of these issues, each side maintained the exact positions that it had held in April at Dalat. The French were evasive on the issue of Cochin China, demanding the withdrawal of all north Vietnamese troops from the region as a precondition for a cease-fire, and adopted a narrow interpretation of the concept of the Vietnamese “free state” within the French Union. As if to symbolize their arrogance, many French delegates began to absent themselves from committee meetings.
The Vietnamese delegation undoubtedly hoped that it would receive some support from their comrades in the FCP, and perhaps from the Socialists as well. Both party newspapers had praised and supported Ho Chi Minh since his arrival in Paris. A delegation of Vietnamese supporters from the DRV National Assembly had visited France earlier in the year and successfully restored contacts with the FCP, which had been broken since before World War II. But although individual Party members were sympathetic to the Vietnamese cause, many leading French Communists were suspicious of Ho because of the decision of the ICP to dissolve itself the previous November. At the same time, the FCP was now caught up in the wave of nationalist fervor that swept through French society in the immediate postwar era, as the French people tried to come to terms with their memories of collaborationist behavior during the war. Jean Sainteny had become aware of the equivocal position of the FCP on the issue of Indochina when he showed a copy of the March 6 agreement to Maurice Thorez, a coal miner who had become a leading Communist and a member of the Council of Ministers. Thorez expressed his approval of the terms of the agreement, but added that “if the Vietnamese do not respect these terms, we will take the necessary measures and let guns speak for us, if need be.”42
Since he was not a formal member of the Vietnamese negotiating team, Ho did not attend the talks in Fontainebleau. Remaining in Paris, he used all the force of his long experience and charismatic personality (“operation charm,” as one wag called it) to promote official and public support for his cause. He met with representatives of all the major political parties and organizations in France, as well as with a number of well-known journalists and intellectuals. He made prolific use of his contacts with the FCP and asked Maurice Thorez, currently the deputy prime minister, to use his influence to have Vietnamese concerns addressed by the French cabinet. What Thorez replied to this request is not known.43
Ho Chi Minh’s contacts with members of local news organizations were especially crucial, since the talks were being carried on in relative secrecy, out of the glare of publicity. With the FCP and their allies vigorously supporting the Vietnamese, at least in public, and conservatives labeling as “treason” all public appeals to respond to Vietnamese demands, the atmosphere around the talks was tense and poisoned by political partisanship. Compromise was made more difficult by recent incidents in Indochina, wher
e Vietnamese attacks on French civilians and military forces had begun to take place with increasing frequency. From Ho’s point of view, it was in the Vietnamese interest that the true story of the negotiations be brought to public attention, and on July 12, he held a press conference in Paris to present his government’s case. Pointing out that Vietnam insisted on national independence and would refuse to accept a federal solution to the problem, he added that Hanoi was willing to accept the concept of independence within the framework of the French Union—an arrangement, he said, that could be profitable to both sides. He further declared that the provinces of Cochin China were an integral part of the national territory and could not be dealt with separately. In return, he promised that all French property and other rights would be protected in the new Vietnam, and that if the DRV needed foreign advisers, French citizens would be given preference. When a U.S. reporter asked if it was true that he was a Communist, Ho replied that he was indeed a student of Karl Marx, but that communism required an advanced industrial and agricultural base, and Vietnam possessed neither of these conditions. Who knows, he remarked, when the dream of Karl Marx will be realized; two thousand years ago, Jesus Christ taught the importance of loving one’s enemies, and that has yet to come true.44
In Saigon, Thierry d’Argenlieu was waging his own campaign to influence the talks. On July 23, word reached Paris that the high commissioner had announced his intention of convening a conference at Dalat on August 1. Its purpose would be to consider the creation of a federation of Indochinese states (Fédération Indochinoise) to include Cochin China, southern Annam and the Central Highlands, Cambodia, and Laos (Tonkin was not included, presumably because it was firmly under DRV control). Pham Van Dong strenuously protested the action and broke off negotiations, whereupon the French promised to take up the issue with the Bidault government.
Ho Chi Minh visited Fontainebleau on July 26 at the joint invitation of the two delegations. After a welcome banquet, he talked with members of his delegation as well as with French officials, returning that evening to Paris. Through this intervention, Ho was able to get the peace talks in France to resume—but only temporarily. On August I, the day that the Dalat conference convened, the Vietnamese delegation formally protested French actions in Cochin China and, in the absence of a proper answer from the government, suspended the negotiations. Ho persisted in his efforts, and was eventually able to persuade his old friend Marius Moutet to seek a formula for renewing the talks. Moutet, who had argued that it was better to deal with Ho than with any alternative, wanted to continue the negotiations and abide by the spirit of the March 6 agreement. To do so, he said that both sides would need to lower the tone of violence, propaganda, and provocation. Unless law and order could be restored in Cochin China, he predicted, any elections would inevitably favor the Vietnamese.45
Whether peaceful conditions would return soon to the south, however, was doubtful. During the winter and spring of 1945–46, French troops under the command of General Henri Leclerc attempted to mop up resistance forces in the Mekong delta. Tran Van Giau attempted to counter French moves with a “scorched-earth” policy, which applied the tactics of brutality and terrorism on the local population to enforce allegiance to the movement. Areas under the control of the religious sects were attacked, and sect leaders who refused to place themselves under Vietminh command were sometimes assassinated. Leclerc responded by reverting to the “oil spot” technique (after pacifying individual districts, French forces would gradually extend their efforts to establish security into neighboring areas), which had been used successfully against rebel forces at the end of the nineteenth century. The insurgents were inexorably driven into the most isolated areas of the lower delta, including the heavily wooded Ca Mau Peninsula and the Plain of Reeds, and in the rubber plantation areas along the Cambodian border, where they sought to continue the struggle.
The negotiations at Fontainebleau resumed in late August, but when the French delegation refused to accept Vietnamese demands for the formal recognition of Vietnamese independence and a firm date for the projected referendum in Cochin China, Vietnamese delegates broke off talks once again, on September 10. Three days later, they left Paris—without Ho Chi Minh—to catch a ship to return to Indochina.
With the talks at an impasse, Jean Sainteny asked Ho to return to Hanoi in order to put an end to the anti-French climate in Indochina, but Ho decided to remain in Paris, declaring that he could not afford to return “empty-handed” and thus “discredited and consequently powerless.” In an attempt to pressure him to leave, the government stopped picking up his bill at the Royal Monceau, but Ho thereupon moved to the suburb Soisy-sous-Montmorency, where he stayed at the house of Raymond Aubrac, a sympathetic acquaintance. While his living conditions were more spartan and less convenient, Ho was able to receive visitors and hold interviews, all the while keeping up his efforts to revive the peace process. “Don’t let me leave France like this,” he appealed to his old acquaintance Marius Moutet. “Arm me against those who are trying to outstrip me; you’ll have no reason to regret it.”
On September 11, Ho held a press conference in which he insisted on his desire to reach an agreement, and he compared the existing differences with those that normally occured within all families. He expressed optimism that an accord could be reached within six months and promised to do all in his power to end the violence in Indochina. That same day, he visited the U.S. Embassy to meet Ambassador Jefferson Caffery, who, in his account of their conversation, surmised that his visitor hoped to bring the United States into the game in order to play Washington off against Paris. Although Ho insisted that he was not a Communist, Caffery made no commitments (in a personal letter a few days later, he remarked that Ho had behaved “with dignity” and in a tactful manner during the negotiations). The next day Ho talked with George Abbott, then first secretary at the embassy and later to serve as U.S. consul general in Saigon. Ho mentioned his wartime collaboration with the United States and his admiration for President Roosevelr, and emphasized his country’s desperate need for economic assistance, which the French were unable to provide. As a final inducement, he hinted at the possibility of future military cooperation between the two countries—including U.S. use of Cam Ranh Bay, on the central coast of Vietnam, as a naval base.46
But Washington took no action on the issue, despite concerns expressed by Asian specialists in the State Department. In a memo to Assistant Secretary for Far Eastern Affairs John Carter Vincent, Abbot Low Moffat of the Office of Southeast Asian Affairs warned that “a critical situation” was emerging in Indochina as a result of French actions in violation of the March 6 agreement. With tension increasing among Vietnamese because of anger over French behavior, there were grounds to believe that the French were preparing to resort to force to secure their position throughout Indochina. Moffat suggested that the State Department might wish “to express to the French, in view of our interests in peace and orderly development of dependent peoples, our hope that they will abide by the spirit of the March 6 convention,”
The Truman administration, however, was in no mood to irritate the French over the issue of Indochina at a crucial juncture in French politics. In fact, concern was rising within the State Department over allegations from intelligence sources that the government in Hanoi was a tool of the Kremlin in its plan to expand its influence in Asia. In August, a cable to Saigon had asked for clarification about “indications possible subservience to Party line by Ho and other leaders” and queried U.S. Consul Charles Reed about the relative strength of Communist and non-Communist elements in the Hanoi government.47
However, some American diplomats were becoming uneasy at growing indications of U.S. support for French policies in Indochina. From Saigon, Reed reported to Washington that many Vietnamese might logically assume that the United States was backing the French, since the latter were using Jeeps and trucks that they had purchased from surplus stocks in Manila which still bore U.S. markings. Officials in Washing
ton had reported to the White House that the French were using U.S. surplus equipment in Indochina, but President Truman decided there was no point in removing matériel that was already there.
Ho Chi Minh’s decision to remain in France after the departure of the DRV delegation inspired considerable debate. Some French observers predicted that Ho was trying to blackmail Paris into giving up what he could not win at the conference table. Others suspected that his appeal to Moutet for assistance was insincere, since in the end he would inevitably turn his government’s weapons against the French. Even if Ho was sincere, there was growing doubt that he could control his own followers, that he would be anything but a “sorcerer’s apprentice.” In feet, Ho Chi Minh was already under heavy attack from many sources within the Vietnamese community, who feared that he was giving up too much in his desperate effort to avoid a war. Sentiment in Indochina (and even among Vietnamese émigrés in France) was running strongly against a compromise with the French. Sainteny himself believed that Ho was sincere, citing Ho’s efforts to reduce hostility to the French in Indochina in recent months. But Prime Minister Georges Bidault claimed to have proof that Ho’s pose of friendship was only a ruse, since Ho had actually sent instructions to Hanoi to prepare for a renewal of hostilities in the north.48
Bidault may have had a point. In an interview with Ho on September II, New York Times correspondent David Schoenbrun had asked whether war was inevitable. “Yes,” Ho had replied, “we will have to fight. The French have signed a treaty and they wave flags for me, but it is a masquerade.” When Schoenbrun noted that without an army or modern weapons, such a war would be hopeless, Ho disagreed:
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