Support for Diem in Washington, however, was initially limited, since many U.S. officials viewed him as monkish and unrealistic, lacking in statesmanship, and altogether not a serious candidate for political leadership. One American observer dismissed him scornfully as a “messiah without a message.” Undaunted, Diem continued to pester U.S. diplomats with advice and sought the sponsorship of prominent members of the Catholic hierarchy in the United States, including Francis Cardinal Spellman and Joseph Kennedy, the former ambassador to London.
By his own account, Bao Dai had been motivated to appoint Ngo Dinh Diem because of his belief that Diem’s staunch anticommunism might appeal to cold warriors in Washington. Although it has often been assumed that the Eisenhower administration played a role in the decision, the news was apparently greeted in Washington with dismay as well as some reservations. It generated equally little enthusiasm in Saigon, where the Bao Dai government had established its capital. Having been brought up in a Catholic family with close ties to the imperial court in Hué, Diem was viewed with suspicion by many veteran political figures in the South. The new prime minister reciprocated the feeling, confiding to close members of his entourage that he found southerners too easygoing to resist effectively the Communists. Not surprisingly, his cabinet was composed for the most part of northerners and central Vietnamese.10
From his new post in Saigon, Diem had expressed his disapproval of the terms of the settlement reached at Geneva in July, and after the close of the conference he immediately made it clear that he had no intention of dealing with the Communists. The Saigon government’s security forces began to harass Vietminh sympathizers in the South and closed the offices of committees that the Vietminh had established to promote national elections. Diem was equally adamant in suppressing the Cao Dai and Hoa Hao religious sects, whose leaders showed no more enthusiasm for the Saigon government than they did for the Vietminh. He also sought to cleanse his government of any members considered sympathetic to Chief of State Bao Dai, whom he despised as a collaborator of the colonial regime, or to the French themselves.
Diem’s combative behavior during the winter of 1954–55 had aroused considerable anxiety among U.S. officials in Saigon and Washington. Still, with the Geneva conference at an end, the Eisenhower administration had already decided that the survival of an independent and viable non-Communist regime in South Vietnam was essential to preserve U.S. security interests in the region. In the fall of 1954, President Eisenhower dispatched his friend General J. Lawton Collins (known as “Lightning Joe” for his aggressive tactics as a corps commander in World War II) as his personal emissary to direct and coordinate U.S. activities in South Vietnam. From Saigon, Collins persistently advised that Diem be replaced by a more conciliatory figure who would be more acceptable to the French and to the South Vietnamese people themselves. In the early spring of 1955, the White House briefly gave serious consideration to heeding Collins’s suggestion. By April of 1955, however, Diem had managed to suppress internal opposition to his rule, so Washington then decided to give him its firm backing. As Eisenhower remarked to General Collins, the odds of success in South Vietnam had just risen from 10 percent to 50 percent. Shortly after, Diem publicly rejected Hanoi’s offer to hold consultations on future national elections.
In Washington, the news of Diem’s refusal to discuss national elections aroused mixed feelings. A recent CIA report had flatly predicted a victory for the Vietminh, not only because of the nationwide popularity of Ho Chi Minh, but also because the DRV leadership in the North was much more experienced at political mobilization than the fledgling regime in the South; it would presumably make good use of classical Leninist techniques to guarantee a favorable vote in areas under its authority. With memories of the staged elections and purge trials that had been held in Soviet-occupied countries in Eastern Europe after the end of World War II still sharp, U.S. officials were convinced that a fair assessment of the popular will could not be held in Vietnam under current circumstances.
Then too, the public perception of Ho Chi Minh and his regime had shifted significantly in the United States in the years since the beginning of the Franco-Vietminh conflict. The earlier view that the Vietminh were selfless patriots struggling to throw off the yoke of an oppressive colonial regime had been replaced in the popular mind by a more somber image of Ho and his colleagues as committed agents of international communism. After the close of the Geneva conference in July 1954, this view seemingly had been confirmed by filmed scenes of thousands of desperate refugees fleeing south to avoid the terrors of a Stalinist-style regime about to take power in Hanoi.
Regardless of these developments, the administration was nervous about the political fallout from Saigon’s flat refusal to hold consultations, which had been clearly called for at Geneva, and sought a tactical maneuver that would place the blame on Hanoi. In mid-spring of 1955, U.S. officials approached Saigon with the suggestion that Diem agree to hold consultations, and then demand stringent conditions, such as periodic inspections by teams of outside observers, to guarantee free elections. This would place Diem’s government on a firm legal footing when such demands were inevitably rejected by the Communists (which is what had happened when the issue had been raised in preparation for similar elections in the occupied zones of Germany).
But despite a U.S. warning that in flatly rejecting national elections he would be open to criticism for violating the Geneva Accords, Diem refused this suggestion. Some U.S. officials approved the decision, and the Eisenhower administration was put in an awkward position. Although it had refused to commit itself to the provisions of the agreement, Washington had indicated at Geneva that “it would view any renewal of the aggression in violation of [the agreement] with grave concern and as seriously threatening international peace and security.” But would the United States be justified, John Foster Dulles rhetorically wondered, in considering an invasion of the South as a violation of the Geneva Accords if Diem himself had refused to abide by their terms? In the end, however, Washington went along with Diem. At a press conference Dulles declared that the United States had no objections to free elections in Vietnam, but that it agreed with Ngo Dinh Diem that for the time being conditions were not ripe.
Ngo Dinh Diem’s success in consolidating his rule in the South, along with Washington’s subsequent decision to provide him with firm support, was a rude surprise to Party leaders in Hanoi, who were accustomed to viewing their nationalist rivals with a measure of disdain. In Politburo meetings held in late 1954, Ho Chi Minh urged his colleagues not be be pessimistic or to lose patience, but to reassess the situation and turn it to their advantage. To isolate the United States and its ally in Saigon, he recommended that cultural and economic concessions be made to the French with an eye toward winning them over. At its plenary session in March 1955, the Central Committee formally announced a new policy that would place the highest priority on nation building in the North, while using diplomacy to promote a peaceful solution in the South.11
Even though many DRV officials had been skeptical that the elections called for at Geneva would ever take place, Diem’s refusal to hold consultations was undoubtedly maddening to Hanoi. Party leaders could only hope that pressure from their own allies would serve to change minds in Washington and Saigon. Late in June 1955, in the company of General Secretary Truong Chinh and other DRV officials, Ho Chi Minh made a state visit to Beijing. After two weeks in the PRC, during which he consulted with senior officials and visited the Great Wall, the delegation left via Outer Mongolia for Moscow.
Unfortunately for the DRV, conditions in China and the USSR were not especially conducive to a successful trip. In the months following the close of the Geneva conference, both Beijing and Moscow remained focused on improving relations with the United States and reducing the potential threat of a major ideological conflict with the capitalist nations. In Beijing, preparations were under way for a series of ambassadorial talks with U.S. diplomats at Geneva; the Chinese hoped these wou
ld lead eventually to an end to a U.S. embargo and a resolution of the conflict over Taiwan. In Moscow, the new Khrushchev leadership was actively promoting the new Soviet line of peaceful coexistence to stabilize the situation in Europe and reduce Cold War tensions with the United States. For Party leaders in both countries, any renewal of the dispute over Vietnam would be an obstacle to the realization of their larger objectives elsewhere in the world.
The reception in both capitals to Ho Chi Minh’s appeal for support on the issue of national elections was thus decidedly cool. In a joint communiqué issued on the departure of the Vietnamese delegation from Beijing, however, China did promise to support Hanoi’s position on consultations, and Prime Minister Zhou Enlai agreed to address a letter of protest to Great Britain and the USSR, co-chairs of the Geneva conference. Ho had less success in Moscow, where support for the DRV position was pro forma at best. Soviet leaders added insult to injury by implying that they still harbored lingering doubts about the orthodoxy of the brand of Marxism-Leninism practiced in Hanoi. Foreign Minister Molotov agreed to take up the issue of reconvening the Geneva conference with British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, but when Eden rejected the proposal, Molotov was surprisingly acquiescent. The issue was not formally raised at a meeting of Big Four leaders later in the year, although Molotov referred to the problem in a perfunctory manner in a statement declaring that “the execution of the Geneva agreements on Indochina and other problems will not tolerate postponement.”
As if to console the North Vietnamese for their disappointment, both China and the Soviet Union promised to provide substantial financial aid ($200 million from China and $100 million from the USSR) to assist the DRV in postwar reconstruction and advancing to a fully socialist society. Both countries also agreed to dispatch shipments of grain to reduce the growing danger of starvation in the North. In a speech at the municipal racecourse shortly after his return to Hanoi on July 22, 1955, Ho Chi Minh made an oblique reference to the mixed results from the trip, publicly thanking China and the USSR for their economic assistance, but warning his compatriots that they would have to rely above all on their own efforts to bring about national reunification. At its plenary session the next month, the Central Committee decided that for the time being Diem’s decision should not be permitted to affect policy, and a communiqué issued after the meeting declared that the Party continued to prefer that unification take place by peaceful means.12
Hanoi’s decision was of little solace to members of the revolutionary faithful who had remained in the South. That summer, Diem launched a “denounce the Communists” campaign to destroy the remnants of the Vietminh movement throughout the South. Thousands were arrested on suspicion of taking part in subversive activities. Some were sent to concentration camps—or incarcerated in the infamous “tiger cages” once used by the French colonial regime on Poulo Condore Island—while others were executed, A decree issued by the Saigon regime authorized “the arrest and detention of anyone deemed dangerous to the safety of the state and their incarceration in one of several concentration camps.” As one account of the period written in Hanoi put it:
From the end of 1955 to 1956, as Diem stepped up his “Denounce the Communists” campaign, the hunt for patriots and former resistance members became fiercer. Finding it impossible to live and carry on the political struggle in the countryside, the latter fled to former resistance bases such as the Plain of Reeds, the U Minh jungle or Resistance Zones D and C [west and northwest of Saigon].13
Nguyen Van Linh, a young veteran of the movement who had remained in the South after the Geneva conference to help direct the Party’s activities there, called it “a ferocious time,” with Vietminh cadres reduced to a virtual struggle for survival.14
Not surprisingly, Hanoi’s decision to refrain, at least temporarily, from a return to revolutionary war led to vigorous debate among cadres in the South. Some decided to abandon the movement entirely, while others sought to organize armed resistance on their own initiative. In the jungles of Ca Mau or the marshy Plain of Reeds, they joined up with dissident members of the Cao Dai and the Hoa Hao sects who had been angered by Diem’s heavy-handed efforts in 1955 to bring them under his control.
By the summer of 1955, then, any naive hopes that unification with the South would be an easy matter had been replaced by a more sober realization. That message was reflected at the Central Committee’s Eighth Plenum held in August by Ho Chi Minh. On the positive side, Ho declared, the world situation was less tense than it had been earlier in the decade. On the other hand, the situation within Asia was, if anything, more perilous. Recent events strongly indicated that the United States intended to transform the regroupment zone in the South into an advanced base to stem the tide of revolution in Southeast Asia.
The emergence of the United States as the primary supporter of the Saigon regime—and therefore the “main enemy” of the Vietnamese people—seriously complicated Hanoi’s plans for an early reunification by peaceful means. Although Ho Chi Minh attempted to put a positive face on the situation, declaring in his report to the plenum that both China and the Soviet Union had given their verbal support for the Vietnamese struggle for independence, it was now obvious that the road to reunification would probably be a long one. The Central Committee approved a program of action that temporarily placed primary focus on the struggle to consolidate the political base of the VWP in the North, and to take initial actions to bring about postwar reconstruction and embark on the first steps toward laying the basis for a socialist society. The new slogan of the day reflected the new reality: “Build the North, look to the South.”
One important question that needed to be answered in light of this decision was how to build a popular basis of support among the Vietnamese people. There were some initial signs that the regime intended to follow an inclusive policy that would embody Ho Chi Minh’s promise in his appeal the previous September to seek the support of all those compatriots who shared the common objective of building a peaceful, democratic, independent, and unified Vietnam, regardless of what their political affiliations had been in the past. In September 1955, the Lien Viet Front, the 1951 successor of the Communist-dominated Vietminh Front, was now replaced by a new broad front group labeled the Fatherland Front (Mat tran To quoc). The new front was aimed at encompassing a broad sector of the Vietnamese population in both zones, including all those who sincerely supported the goals of independence and national unity. In his closing address to the delegates at the founding congress, Ho emphasized that the purpose of the new organization was to bring about the creation of a broad national alliance to achieve peace, independence, and reunification for the entire country. The Fatherland Front, he said, was ready “to unite with all patriots whatever their political tendencies, religions, etc.,” who were sincerely opposed to the U.S.–Diem scheme of dividing the country, and who sincerely stood for national reunification.15
The equivalent of such a pragmatic policy in the field of economics, of course, would be to continue the “new democracy” approach originally adopted after the Party’s return to Hanoi in the fall of 1954. In urban areas, that was indeed the case. The regime continued to exhibit tolerance toward private enterprise activities, and it welcomed “bourgeois experts” willing to remain on the job to carry out functions within the government or throughout society as a whole that it was otherwise not capable of fulfilling itself. Most of the business firms that were taken over by the state were seized only because of the departure of management personnel and the danger of a shutdown, as was the case with mines, cement factories, and textile mills. According to one recent source, only 12 percent of manufactured goods produced in 1955, were made by the emerging state sector. In October, the government set up a National Planning Council, with the announced task of creating a one-year plan for 1956 aimed at restoring the national economy to the level achieved in 1939, the last year before the Pacific War. The government did become directly involved in establishing regulations to control prices an
d the availability of consumer goods, but primarily as a means of limiting inflationary pressures and the hoarding of scarce food products by private firms.16
The signs of moderation suggested by Ho Chi Minh’s remarks and the creation of the new Fatherland Front were deceptive, however, for there were strong countervailing pressures within the Party pushing for the adoption of harsher policies, measures directed at punishing class enemies and laying the groundwork for a quick advance to a fully socialist society. Hints of incipient radicalization had begun to appear at the government’s 1954 return to Hanoi. Haughty cadres voiced their suspicion of moderate intellectuals, many of whom were ordered to undergo reeducation to ascertain whether they had been seduced by the “sugar-coated bullets” of the enemy. In their suspicions, Vietnamese militants were actively incited by Chinese advisers, whose presence throughout the North, although less visible than it had been in liberated areas during the war, was nonetheless oppressive.
The weapon that radicals selected to wage their class war in the countryside was the issue of land reform. Ho Chi Minh had opposed harsh measures during the war against the French, but in 1953, at the behest of Chinese advisers, he had reluctantly agreed to more stringent regulations as a means of mobilizing the poor in preparation for the battle of Dien Bien Phu. With the war at an end, the Party now set out to complete the program and lay the groundwork for the future collectivization of all cultivable land in the country. In his appeal to the people in early September 1954, Ho Chi Minh had promised that a program of “land to the tiller” for newly occupied areas in the northern provinces was high on the government’s agenda. Although Ho confided to intimates that he was personally “in no hurry” to carry out the program, he agreed to support it as a tactical measure to please Beijing, and possibly to placate such militant colleagues as Truong Chinh and Hoang Quoc Viet as well.17
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