During the first days after his return to Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh consulted with the Standing Committee to review the situation and plan future actions. Key issues that had to be resolved were whether to agree to the proposed October 30 date for a cease-fire in the south and how to deal with the growing tension with rival nationalist parties. Ho proposed convening the National Assembly to deliberate a draft constitution—this would lead to a new government replacing the coalition, which had been seriously weakened by the resignation of key figures like Vice President Nguyen Hai Than—and to approve new policies for the coming months.
When the National Assembly convened on October 28, it was a far cry from the atmosphere of carefully staged national unity at its last meeting seven months previously. In the preceding several days at least two hundred opposition figures had been arrested and placed in detention camps, while armed clashes in various areas of the north had resulted in several deaths, including those of two journalists. The mood in Hanoi was somber, with tensions running high between elements sympathetic to the government and those opposed. The session at the Municipal Theater was heavily guarded by a detachment of the National Defense Guard. Inside, 291 out of the 444 representatives who had originally been elected in January were in attendance. Of the 70 representatives of nationalist parties who had participated in March, only 37 took their seats. When one opposition deputy asked what had happened to the remaining delegates, he was informed that they had been arrested “with the approval of the standing committee of the assembly for crimes of common law.”62
Unlike the previous session, the hall was now divided into three rather than two sections, with the far left (in the French manner) occupied by avowed members of the ICP as well as deputies from the newly formed Socialist Party, all wearing red neckties, as well as delegates from the ICP surrogate Democratic Party. In the center were non-parry members participating in the Vietminh Front, while the VNQDD and Dong Minh Hoi delegates sat on the right. Also in the hall were a number of foreign guests.
At the opening session, the veteran Party member and Labor Minister Nguyen Van Tao, who had attended the Sixth Comintern Congress in 1928, proposed a message of confidence in “First Citizen” Ho Chi Minh. The proposal was adopted, to “prolonged applause.” The government then submitted a report on its activities since the first session of the assembly in March. Ho Chi Minh defended the modus vivendi he had signed in Paris and assured his listeners that it would not prejudice the course of negotiations. Asked whether France would implement the agreement, he replied that it should be kept in mind that there were good people as well as bad in France, and the majority of the French people approved of the principle of Vietnamese independence and unity.
Before his departure from Paris, Ho Chi Minh had promised French officials that on his return to Hanoi he would broaden the government to make it more representative of the various groups within the population. On the second day of the session, the government submitted its resignation to the assembly, which thereupon asked Ho to form a new one. Three days later a new cabinet was submitted to the legislature, and given unanimous approval. But if French observers had hoped that Ho Chi Minh’s promise would be fulfilled, they were now disappointed, because the new cabinet, far from being more moderate, actually moved significantly to the left. It was strongly Vietminh in composition, with militants in all key positions, including Vo Nguyen Giap remaining as minister of national defense and Pham Van Dong as under secretary for economic affairs. Ho Chi Minh retained the presidency, as well as the portfolio of foreign affairs. He also served as prime minister. Only two members of the new government were not attached to the Party or the Vietminh Front.
The move to the left reflected in part the collapse of the united front with nationalists that had been carefully constructed in the previous fall and winter. With rival parties now openly in opposition, Party leaders saw no need to compromise. But it also may have reflected the rising influence of radical leaders like Hoang Quoc Viet, Tran Huy Lieu, and Truong Chinh within the Party. In an article written a few weeks later, Chinh was publicly critical of the stage-by-stage approach adopted by Ho Chi Minh and indicated his preference for a more ideological approach to the Vietnamese revolution.
During the next few days, the assembly deliberated over the draft of the new constitution for the DRV. Despite the implicit criticisms by Truong Chinh, the new charter was essentially moderate in tone and designed to appeal to the majority of the population. The sections dealing with political organization stressed democratic freedoms and the need for a broad alliance of all patriotic groups to struggle against the restoration of French rule. Economic sections guaranteed the sanctity of private property and made no mention of the ultimate objective of creating a classless society. But French observers could not ignore that it also declared the total independence of Vietnam and made no reference to the Fédération Indochinoise, or to the French Union. The National Assembly approved the document, but left it to the government to decide when to implement it. On November 14, the assembly adjourned. By now there were only 242 delegates, with 2 belonging to the opposition.63
While the National Assembly was in session, the cease-fire that had been called for by the modus vivendi went into effect in Cochin China. At first, both sides made some effort to respect the truce, but inevitably clashes began to take place, and soon the war had heated up once again, as the French sent sweep operations into guerrilla-held areas and Nguyen Binh fought desperately to maintain his strongholds. By now, the French had lost faith in the peace process, and Thierry d’Argenlieu, fearing the possibility of a sudden Vietminh attack on his forces in the north or the center, began to consider organizing a coup to overthrow Ho Chi Minh and place a more compliant government in power in Hanoi. In September a French source contacted Bao Dai, the former emperor, who had settled in Hong Kong earlier in the year, to sound him out on the possibility of serving as head of a new government. D’Argenlieu instructed General Jean-Etienne Valluy in mid-November to strike quickly in the eventuality that negotiations broke down.
With the threat of war now imminent, Party leaders intensified their efforts to build up the readiness of their armed forces. One of their main needs was to obtain modern weapons; during the fall of 1946 the government began to smuggle guns into the country by sea from China, since the land border had been effectively sealed off by the French. Haiphong was one of the main ports of entry for smuggled matériel. As the major entry point for all goods imported into the DRV, the city had, in fact, been the focus of Franco-Vietnamese discussions for months. The French had raised the issue of customs several times during the talks at Fontainebleau, since the import tax constituted a high percentage of total revenue in colonial Indochina. But the issue had not been resolved, and the modus vivendi merely stated that the question would need further study. In Saigon, d’Argenlieu had been impatient at the failure to solve the problem, and on the very day that the temporary agreement was signed in Paris, he ordered Morlière to seize control of customs from the Vietnamese at his earliest opportunity.
In early November, French military forces finally did occupy the customs office in Haiphong and evict the Vietnamese administrators. Before it adjourned, the DRV National Assembly protested this action, asserting Vietnam’s sovereign right to control all matters pertaining to custom house duties. For the moment, however, the most crucial issue remained the government’s ability to use Haiphong as an entry point for weapons purchased abroad. On November 20, French naval craft seized a Chinese junk carrying a cargo of contraband gasoline presumably destined for the Vietnamese armed forces. While the junk was being towed into the harbor, local Vietnamese militia on shore fired on the French, who immediately responded; fighting spread rapidly throughout the city. A cease-fire was reached, but two days later Valluy ordered the commander of French forces in Haiphong to take total power over the city and restore law and order. On the twenty-third, French Colonel Dèbes issued an ultimatum to the Vietnamese to evacuate the Chinese quarte
r of the city and lay down their arms. When they did not respond, he ordered the shelling of this quarter of the city, killing hundreds of civilians. Then about two thousand French troops stormed the area, while their artillery pounded neighboring sectors of the city to neutralize the opposition. Still, the French came under heavy fire from defending Vietnamese forces, and the fighting in the city continued for several days, until the last Vietminh abandoned the battle on September 28.64
The incident at Haiphong shook the Truman administration from its lethargy regarding the situation in Indochina. In a cable from Hanoi on the same day, U.S. Consul James O’Sullivan reported that although the Vietnamese had fired first, the French had provoked the incident by their overbearing attitude. In Paris, Ambassador Caffery was instructed to register American unhappiness over the situation to French officials. But this irritation with the French was tempered by rising concern over the alleged Communist complexion of Ho Chi Minh’s government. At the end of November the U.S. Embassy in Paris reported that the French had “positive proof” that Ho had received advice and instructions from Moscow. From Saigon, U.S. Consul Charles Reed warned that if Cochin China fell to the Vietminh, they would soon begin to unleash propaganda and terrorist operations in neighboring Cambodia and Laos, a danger that Reed suggested merited “closest attention.” This was the first expression by a U.S. official of what would become known as the “domino theory.”65
In late November, the State Department sent Abbot Low Moffat, chief of the Division of Southeast Asian Affairs, to Indochina to assess the overall situation and report on the underlying character of the Hanoi government. Moffat was an outspoken supporter within the State Department of the cause of Vietnamese independence, and he was instructed to assure Ho Chi Minh that the United States supported the terms of the March 6 agreement and was sympathetic to the effort of his government “to achieve greater autonomy within the framework of democratic institutions.” But Moffat was also asked to warn Ho not to use force to seek his objectives, and to urge him to accept a compromise solution over the status of Cochin China. As a means of dissuading Vietnamese leaders from ill-advised actions, Moffat was to assure them that the French government had pledged to abide by the Ho-Sainteny agreement and had no intention of restoring colonial authority over Indochina.
Moffat arrived in Saigon on December 3, and after discussions with French officials, went on to Hanoi on the seventh. Consul O’Sullivan had just reported that Ho felt “desperately alone” and suggested that publicity for Moffat’s impending visit might strengthen the president’s position with his rivals. Although Ho was seriously ill (perhaps from a recurrence of his tuberculosis), he invited Moffat to the Northern Palace for a discussion. In conversation, Ho tried to reassure his visitor that his main objective was not Communism, but independence. As an inducement for U.S. support, he repeated his earlier offer of a U.S. naval base at Cam Ranh Bay. Moffat, however, had arrived without instructions on that point so, as he described it many years later in testimony before Congress, he “really couldn’t say anything,” and the conversation ended without any concrete result. Moffat did express his skepticism that the United States had any interest in Cam Ranh Bay and noted that it could not engage in diplomatic relations with Vietnam until its status had been decided in negotiations with the French.
After Moffat left for Indochina, the State Department had drawn up further instructions for him to evaluate the relative strength of Communist and non-Communist elements within the Vietnamese government. It sent a cable to Saigon indicating that the emergence in Hanoi of a government dominated by the Communists and oriented toward the Soviet Union would be the “least desirable eventuality.” As it turned out, Moffat did not receive that cable until he was leaving Indochina, but in his report about his conversation with Ho Chi Minh, he did offer his own assessment on the current balance of forces in Hanoi. The Vietnamese government, he felt, was under control of the Communists and was probably in direct contact with both Moscow and the Chinese Communist Party. At the same time, he sensed a split between the relatively moderate and pragmatic elements around Ho Chi Minh and the hardliners, like Vo Nguyen Giap, who bore a visceral hatred for the French. Moffat concluded that for the time being some sort of French presence was inevitable, not only as a means of limiting Soviet influence, but also to protect the region from a possible Chinese invasion. He therefore recommended U.S. support for a settlement before the prospects for a result satisfactory to the French deteriorated further.
Moffat’s observation that the moderates and hard-liners within the government had severe differences was echoed in comments by other foreign observers in Hanoi. The French journalist Philippe Devillers also reported a division within the Vietminh leadership between Ho and more militant elements such as Giap and Hoang Quoc Viet, and Ho himself frequently appealed to French and other Western officials to support his efforts against his rivals. Skeptics derided such reports, claiming that Ho manipulated these rumors in order to pry concessions out of the French. Although the debate has not been resolved, available evidence suggests that while some members of the Party were clearly restive with their leader’s willingness to reach a compromise, the nimble Ho Chi Minh adroitly used such differences to play on the fears of his adversaries. As for Moffat’s remark about the likelihood of Soviet influence over the DRV, links between Moscow and the ICP had been virtually nonexistent since the beginning of World War II, and Ho and his colleagues were limited to learning about Soviet views only through their counterparts in the FCP.66
Concern over the alleged threat of communism in the region had suddenly emerged as a major force in U.S. foreign policy, as the civil war in China heated up. Like many Southeast Asian specialists, Moffat was increasingly concerned that the fear of communism was leading U.S. foreign policy away from its traditional support of national aspirations in the region, and he had voiced those concerns within the State Department. But, to Moffat’s discomfiture, it was the fact that his report had referred to the Communist character of the government in Hanoi that had influence in Washington. In a circular sent to U.S. missions around the world on December 17, State reiterated Moffat’s comments on the Communist character of the Vietnamese government and concluded that a French presence in the area was important, “not only as [an] antidote to Soviet influence, but to protect Vietnam and Southeast Asia from future Chinese imperialism.”67
D’Argenlieu left for France on November 13 to seek additional forces for a possible preemptive campaign against Vietminh forces in the north, but as he discovered on his arrival in Paris, the French government was not yet ready to give up on a political solution. National elections had just returned a leftist majority and Georges Bidault was preparing to resign in favor of a government led by the Socialists. Bidault promised d’Argenlieu that reinforcements would eventually be made available, but he warned that Indochina could not be preserved by force alone. Further instructions, he said, must await the formation of a new government. To convey its message, Paris turned once again to Jean Sainteny as one of the few French officials who might still be able to avert the drift toward war. Appointed governor with plenipotentiary powers to replace General Morlière, Sainteny left Paris for Cochin China on November 23, a few hours after the Haiphong incident. After a few days in Saigon (at the request of Valluy, who wanted to spare him from responsibility for Haiphong), he arrived in Hanoi on December 2. In his pocket were instructions from d’Argenlieu, who was still in Paris:
Military honor having been saved, French prestige restored and enhanced, it would be a mistaken policy to impose unduly harsh conditions.
Henceforth it is essential not to go too far in forcing Ho Chi Minh and his government to take desperate measures. For this reason I consider as premature and inopportune your installation in the palace of the general government, for it will be interpreted as a deliberate provocation signifying the return to forceful methods.
Those instructions had been reinforced by Valluy, who urged Sainteny to do his best
to strengthen moderate forces to create conditions for negotiations. Perhaps, Valluy remarked, Ho did not want war.
Due to illness, Ho Chi Minh had not met Sainteny at the airport, but received him the following day. New French troops had just arrived in Da Nang harbor in contradiction to the agreement between France and Vietnam, thus arousing suspicions that the French were planning an attack. But Ho had been informed about the changing political situation in France by Hoang Minh Giam, who advised him to temporize in order to await the formation of a new government there. According to Sainteny, he and Ho did not engage in serious discussions, but limited themselves to discussing the Ho’s health and his trip home from Paris. Sainteny had no further communication from Ho for the next several days, leading him to wonder whether the president still retained freedom of action in determining his government’s policy. During this interval, Sainteny received no further instructions from Paris, and thus could not have engaged in serious negotiations even had Ho Chi Minh wanted him to. While Sainteny was waiting, a new government under the Socialist Party leader Léon Blum took office.68
One subject that Ho and Sainteny did apparently discuss was the composition of the new Vietnamese government. Sainteny demanded the removal of radicals from the cabinet, and he recorded his impression that Ho himself wanted to avoid a rupture. But, he said, it was hard to say how much influence Ho Chi Minh still wielded over his own colleagues. Sainteny told O’Sullivan that Paris had no objection to Ho’s remaining in office, but that unless the radical elements resigned, the French were prepared to engage in a “police action” to get them out. But Sainteny admitted that the prospects of separating Ho from militants in the Party were slim. He expressed the hope that any French police action could be a rapid success, but O’Sullivan was skeptical, reporting to Washington that “Action to rid country [of] Vietminh will, I fear, grearly exceed police work and will take much longer than short time Sainteny foresees.”69
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