62. Gras, Histoire de la guerre, p. 135.
63. As it turned out, because of the onset of war this constitution was never formally promulgated. Truong Chinh’s comments are in “The August Revolution,” pp. 62–63.
64. Gras, Histoire de la guerre, pp. 147–48. According to Philippe Devillers, the fighting was difficult to defuse because Colonel Dèbes, confident that he was adequately covered by Valluy in Saigon, had adopted an arrogant attitude toward the Vietnamese—see Paris-Saigon-Hanoi, pp. 240–49. The number of dead resulting from the shelling of the city has long been a matter of dispute. Many sources listed the number of those killed in the thousands, but some French sources put the figure at 200 or 300. See, for example, de Folin, Indochine, p. 179. Abbot Low Moffat, the U.S. diplomat who arrived in Hanoi a few days after the incident, reported an estimate of 2000. In a letter to French Prime Minister Léon Blum, Ho Chi Minh gave a figure of 3000. For a discussion of the issue, see Tonnesson, Déclenchement, pp. 104–6. For an overview of the issues surrounding the incident by U.S. Consul O’Sullivan in Hanoi, see Hanoi Dispatch 12 to Secretary of State, December 1, 1946, RG 59, UPA. For other accounts, see Sainteny, Ho Chi Minh, p. 91, and Tonnesson, Déclenchement, pp.81–120.
65. Confidential Reed November 7, 1946, from Saigon, in RG 59, UPA, Hanoi to Secretary of State, November 23, 1946, in RG 59, UPA; Paris to Department, November 29, 1946.
66. A deserter from the Vietminh movement later declared to French interrogators that Ho was always “the uncontested chief of the Party” and used the extremists to play his own “double jeu” with the French and other foreigners. See “Déclaration sur la vie en zone viet minh du Haut Tonkin, Viet Bac: Ho Chi Minh,” in Ministère des Relations avec les Etats Associés, DGD, Saigon, du 9 au 15 fevrier 1953. Moffat’s report is contained in the Senate Committee, U.S. and Vietnam, appendix 2, pp. 41–42. In Senate hearings in 1972, Moffat expressed his sympathy for Ho and sensed he was in the presence of a great man—see Senate Committee, Causes, pp. 200–201. He had less liking for Giap, whom he described as “the typical Commie” (ibid., p. 202).
67. DOS Circular Airgram, December 17, 1946, in RG 59, UPA. In retrospect, Moffat may have regretted his comments, since he was very concerned at the rising anti-Communist hysteria in Washington in the fall of 1946. See his comments in Senate Committee, Causes, pp. 190–91.
68. Sainteny, Ho Chi Minh, pp. 92–93; Devillers, Paris-Saigon-Hanoi, p. 262. According to U.S. Consul O’Sullivan, there may have been a disagreement within the DRV leadership, with Ho Chi Minh wanting to make concessions to the French on the situation in Haiphong, and hard-liners like Vo Nguyen Giap opposed—see Hanoi 132 to Department of State, December 4, 1946, RG 59, UPA.
69. Hanoi 134 to Department of State, December 5, 1946, RG 59, UPA; Devillers, Paris-Saigon-Hanoi, pp, 266–68. The views of the French on separating Ho Chi Minh from radical forces in his government were reported by Ambassador Caffery in Paris 6019 to Department of State, December 7, 1946, RG 59, UPA. According to Caffery, the French were suspicious of Ho Chi Minh’s motives, but felt that he sincerely hoped to carry out the modus vivendi when Caffery left Paris. Now he was under pressure from radicals. Bidault told Caffery that the French were prepared to return Cochin China to Vietnam, but only at an appropriate time and under the proper conditions.
70. Gras, Histoire de la guerre, p. 126. According to Vo Nguyen Giap, the first artillery companies were formed with heavy guns captured from the French and the Japanese; prior to the war, the munitions service had supplied the army with eighty anti-tank bombs—Vo Nguyen Giap, Unforgettable Days, pp. 398–99.
71. Devillers, Paris-Saigon-Hanoi, p. 270.
72. Ibid., pp. 275–76.
73. Ibid., pp. 291–95; Tonnesson, Déclenchement, pp. 184–85; Vo Nguyen Giap, Unforgettable Days, pp. 407–8. Ho’s telegram was also given to O’Sullivan, who sent it to the U.S. Embassy in Paris.
74. The letter to Sainteny is quoted in Vo Nguyen Giap, Unforgettable Days, p. 413. Msg Ho Chi Minh à Léon Blum, December 18, 1946, transmis à Paris par tg de Saigon 2071, December 20, 1946, 03.40 Z (AN SOM, Tel 938, 3642 A); Ho’s message to Blum is in Devillers, Paris-Saigon-Hanoi, pp. 295–96.
75. Sainteny’s account is in Ho Chi Minh and …, pp. 96–97.
76. This meeting is reported in Ngoc An, “Them tu lieu ve hoi nghi Van Phuc va ‘loi keu goi toan quoc khang chien” [Additional material on the Van Phuc meeting and the “appeal for a war of national resisrance”], in Tap chi Lich su Quan su [Journal of Military History], no. 36 (December 1988). According to this source, Ho drafted the appeal himself on the evening of December 18; some Vietnamese sources wrongly date the meeting itself on that date. Also see Devillers, Paris-Saigon-Hanoi, pp. 297–99.
77. Sainteny, Ho Chi Minh, pp. 97–98. According to Devillers (Paris-Saigon-Hanoi, pp. 297–298), there was a brief glimmer of hope that hostilities could be avoided. During the afternoon of December 19, Morlière (allegedly to demonstrate his sincerity) suddenly agreed to Giap’s request to order a demobilization of French troops in the capital region. Party leaders thereupon decided to cancel their plans for an attack that evening. But at about 5:00 P.M. a French double agent informed Morlière about the original Vietnamese plans for an attack, and the general ordered his troops to resume their combat positions. In response, the Vietnamese returned to their original plan.
78. For Ho’s use of Sun-tzu, see Ho’s comments on October 11, 1946, cited in BNTS, vol. 3, p. 315. For other examples of his use of Sun-tzu, see ibid., pp. 217, 222.
XII | The Tiger and the Elephant
1. For an English-language version of the December 22 statement, see JPRS, no. 50,557, Translations on North Vietnam, no. 725, “Historic Documents of the ICP.” On June 4, 1954, French General Alessandri told U.S. diplomat Robert McClintock that the French had obtained a copy of the Vietminh war plan sometime in 1947. The plan, Alessandri noted, was deceptively simple—to create a base area in the Red River delta, as a source of manpower and provisions, and to open lines of communication with China, as the primary source for equipment. It would be a war of maneuver, with the Viet Bac as the main battleground and safe haven. See Saigon dispatch 570 to Department of State, June 4, 1954, RG 59, UPA.
2. According to Georges Boudarel, columns of Vietminh troops passed under the span of the Paul Doumer Bridge and then crossed the Red River at a point midway between two French posts farther up the river; their exodus was facilitated by the heavy smoke which blanketed the city, from fires set by Vietminh sapper units earlier in the day—see Georges Boudarel and Nguyen Van Ky, Hanoi, 1936–1996: Du drapeau rouge au billet vert (Paris: Editions Autrement, 1997), p. 118.
3. The tract, titled “Appel au peuple de France,” is contained in Alain Ruscio, ed., Ho Chi Minh: Textes, 1914–1969 (Paris: L’Harmattan, n.d), pp. 135–36. It began appearing on the streets of the capital shortly after the outbreak of conflict. Also see Yves Gras, Histoire de la guerre d’Indochine (Paris: de Noel, 1992), p. 160. Ho’s letters are contained in Hanoi 851 to Secretary of State, April 24, 1947, in RG 59, UPA.
4. Quoted in Gras, Histoire de la guerre, p. 160. In a telegram to Ho Chi Minh that was routed through General Valluy, Blum took a hard line, insisting on an immediate cessation of hostilities for negotiations to resume; no violation, he warned, could be accepted—see Philippe Devillers, Histoire du Vietnam, 1940–1952 (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1952), p. 299.
5. Stein Tonnesson, 1946: Déclenchement de la guerre d’Indochine: Les vêpres tonkinoises du 19 décembre (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1987), pp. 245–46; for Ho’s letter, see Philippe Devillers, Paris-Saigon-Hanoi (Paris: Gallimard, 1988), p. 321, citing Letter from Ho Chi Minh to Moutet, January 3, 1947, in Recueil Varet, p. 277.
6. Devillers, Paris-Saigon-Hanoi, p. 324; Gras, Histoire de la guerre, p. 161.
7. Paris 1007 to Department of State, March 6, 1947, in RG 59, UPA.
8. There are many sources for Mus’s meeting with Ho. The original version is in “Entrevue du
Président Ho avec le représentant du Haut Commissaire Bollaert,” undated, in dossier labeled “Ho Chi Minh 1947–1948,” in SPCE, Carton 370, CAOM. For a U.S. account of the discussions, see Hanoi A13 to Department of State, June 20, 1947, RG 59, UPA. O’Sullivan described the meeting as “cordial.”
9. Marshall’s cable to Paris is in Secretary of State to Caffery, February 3, 1947, RG 59, UPA. Earlier messages are found in Department of State to Paris no. 74, January 8, 1947, and no. 431, February 3, 1947, in ibid.
10. Ho’s interview was with Harrie Jackson of the Associated Press. The Pham Ngoc Thach affair is discussed in some detail in Mark Bradley’s “An Improbable Opportunity: America and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam’s 1947 Initiative,” in Jayne Werner and Luu Doan Huynh, eds., The Vietnam War: Vietnamese and American Perspectives (Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 1993). In a cable to Washington on April 17, Ambassador Stanton reported that he had recently received two letters from Thach. The first, dated April 12, transmitted a memorandum on the conflict in Indochina and was also sent to O’Sullivan in Hanoi in January for transmission to the State Department. On the twenty-fourth, Stanton reported that Thach had informed Colonel Law that the Vietnamese were disillusioned with the FCP, which had betrayed them by approving French military measures in Indochina. Thach described the United States as a vigilant defender of the Atlantic Charter and the only country that could bring the hostilities to an end. See Bangkok 289, dated April 17, 1947, and no. 851, dated April 24, 1947 to Secretary of State, along with accompanying documents, in RG 59, UPA.
11. For references, see William Duiker, U.S. Containment Policy and the Conflict in Indochina (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1994), pp. 58–60, and Bradley, “Improbable Opportunity,” pp. 18–23.
12. Sources on military problems encountered by the Vietminh during the early years of the war are Truong Chinh’s The Resistance Will Win, translated in Truong Chinh: Selected Writings (Hanoi: Foreign Language Press, 1977), pp. 175–76, and Cuoc khang chien than thanh cua nhan dan Viet Nam [The sacred war of the Vietnamese people], vol. 1 (Hanoi: Su that, 1958), pp. 238–39.
13. For changing Vietminh military tactics during the late 1940s, see Vo Nguyen Giap, People’s War, People’s Army (New York: Praeger, 1962), p. 92.
14. Cited in Gras, Histoire de la guerre, p. 196.
15. For a description of Ho’s life in the jungle, see “Déclaration sur la vie en zone viet minh du Haut Tonkin, Viet Bac: Ho Chi Minh:” in Ministère des Relations avec les Etats associés, DGD, Saigon, du 9 au 15 fevrier 1953.
16. Cuoc khang chien than thanh, vol. 1, p. 239.
17. For an excellent overview of this process, see Motoo Furuta, “The Indochinese Communist Party’s Division into Three Parties: Vietnamese Communist Policy Toward Laos and Cambodia,” in Motoo Furuta and Takashi Shiraishi, eds., Indochina in the 1940s and 1950s (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Southeast Asia Program, 1992), pp. 143–63.
18. In June 1954, the American Embassy in Tokyo transmitted a document from Taipei sources providing the texts of five secret agreements allegedly reached between 1940 and 1952. One was signed in June 6, 1948, somewhere in Yunnan and provided for mutual recognition and a formal military alliance between the two parties. Recent Information on the limited links between the two countries makes it likely that this was an agreement between local operatives in the area, but Vo Nguyen Giap confirms that cooperation began to take place at the leadership level beginning in early 1948—see his Duong toi Dien Bien Phu [The road to Dien Bien Phu] (Hanoi: Quan doi Nhan dan, 1999), p. 13. Also see AmEmbassy Tokyo to Department of State, dispatch 1671, June 10, 1954, RG 59, UPA. For information on the Independence Regiment, see Am-Consulate Hanoi, January 8, 1951, dispatch transmitting a report by French Captain Augier, in ibid. Augier was a specialist in Chinese affairs, and his report stressed that Chinese activities along the border neat the Tonkin Gulf were making the Vietminh so nervous that they eventually disbanded the regiment. U.S. diplomats suspected, probably correctly, that both the French and the Nationalist Chinese were making a major attempt to influence U.S. policy by pointing to Chinese influence over the Vietminh and thus tended to discount such warnings. Information from Chinese sources, however, suggests that such low-level contacts did indeed exist at the time; nevertheless, in the light of recent information, the 1948 alliance seems unlikely. On these early contacts, see Luo Guibo, “Lishi de Hui-tan” [Historical recollections], in Zhongguo waijiaoguan tsongshu (Beijing: Zhong hua Publishers, 1995), pp. 163–64. The establishment of radio links is recounted in HZYZ, p. 123.
19. Foreign Relations of the United States (1949), vol. 7, pt. 1, pp. 140–41. On the change in French military leadership in Indochina, see Gras, Histoire de la guerre, pp. 264–67. For Vo Nguyen Giap’s reported visit of April 1949, see the note on Sino-Vietnamese military operations, in SPCE, Carton 366, CAOM. According to this source, a joint conference held at Jingxi that month agreed to a fusion of the armies of the two countries and broad cooperation along the border. Another document in the French archives indicates that in early January 1950, Vietnamese Party leaders rejected a Chinese proposal to fuse the armies of the two countries. I have been unable to find any confirmation of this document, which appears to predate the formal signing of an aid agreement between Vietnamese and Chinese Party leaders—perhaps it refers to the decisions reached in Jingxi in April. See no. 995/TNH, Parti Communiste, Dong Duong Cong San Dang [sic], “Résolutions prises en séance plenière de l’Assemblée des Conseillers tenue le 3 janvier 1950.”
20. This report is contained in a dossier labeled “1950,” in SPCE, Carton 366, CAOM. Vietnamese sources confirm the existence of this meeting—see BNTS, vol. 4, p. 308. Also see Vo Nguyen Giap, Duong toi, p. 10.
21. Cited in Gras, Histoire de la guerre, p. 272.
22. “Déclaration sur la vie”; Gras, Histoire de la guerre, p. 272.
23. Ho Chi Minh’s letter and the mission are reported in Luo Guibo, “Lishi,” pp. 150–51. Also see HZYZ, p. 21, and HZYZ, p. 124. The two delegates were Le Ban (Li Bishan) and Nguyen Duc Rui. Le Ban, a southerner, settled in China before World War II but returned to Vietnam in 1947. Rui was reportedly a merchant in Hanoi. French intelligence wrote about the trip in a report dated October 3, 1949, in SPCE, Carton 366, CAOM. On the meeting of the DRV Council of Ministers held on August 18, see SF de Tonkin, September 3, 1949, in ibid.
24. Gras, Histoire de la guerre, p. 286. Truong Chinh’s article is in Cuoc khang chien than thanh, vol. 2, pp. 293–98. On Liu Shaoqi’s famous trade union speech, see Melvin Gurtov, The First Vietnam Crisis: Chinese Communist Strategy and United States Involvement, 1953–1954 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1967), pp. 7–8. Also see King C. Chen, Vietnam and China, 1938–1954 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1969), pp. 14–20.
25. Vietnam: Nhung su kien (1945–1986) [Vietnam: Historical events (1945–1986)] (Hanoi: Nha xuat ban Khoa hoc Xa hoi, 1990), pp. 49–50. Gras, Histoire de la guerre, p. 287.
26. Luo Guibo, “Lishi,” pp. 151–53. According to Luo, electronic communications had been restored between the two parties in the late 1940s, but were still not functioning smoothly, and most communications were apparently carried by messengers.
27. Ibid, pp. 157–60; Gras, Histoire de la guerre, p. 287. Chinese escorts had surmised that Mr. Ding was actually Ho Chi Minh and reported that fact to the authorities—see Vo Nguyen Giap, Duong toi, pp. 13–14. For the meeting in the Viet Bac in mid-December, see BNTS, vol, 4, p. 376.
28. Hoang Van Hoan A Drop in the Ocean: Hoang Van Hoan’s Revolutionary Reminiscences (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1988), pp. 275–78; BNTS, vol. 4, p. 399; Vo Nguyen Giap, Duong toi, p. 14. In his telegram to Mao reporting Ho Chi Minh’s arrival in Beijing, Liu Shaoqi indicated that Chinese leaders had listened with sympathy to their visitor’s request for assistance—See Liu Shaoqi Nianpu (1898–1969) [Liu Shaoqi’s chronicle (1898–1969)] (n.p.: Central Documents Press, 1996), p. 241.
29. Ho’s l
etter was reported on Radio Moscow on August 29, 1949—see SPCE, Carton 56, CAOM. Also see Georges Boudarel, Autobiographie (Paris: Jacques Bertoin, 1991), p. 90. A U.S. diplomat in Moscow reported attending a lecture by a Soviet official on February 23, 1950. The speaker remarked that Vietnam was a “party of a new type which is in the process of transforming itself into a party of the Marxist type.” There were, the speaker noted, compulsory lectures on Marxism for members of the Communist Party. The strategy was for Communists to “unite temporarily in a national party with any working class parties.” The Vietnamese Party, he concluded, differed from chose in Eastern Europe, which were “much further developed” than in Vietnam, which had not yet established a dictatorship of the proletariat or a people’s democracy. I was told by a Vietnamese specialist in Moscow that there were no Soviet contacts with Ho Chi Minh until 1949, and that Stalin had been skeptical of a Vietminh victory before that.
30. Jerrold L, Schector with Vyacheslav V. Luchkov (tr. and ed.), Krushchev Remembers: The Glasnost Tapes (Boston: Little, Brown, 1990), pp. 154–55. For the story of the helicopter, see Wu Xiuquan, New China Diplomacy, cited in Harrison Salisbury, The New Emperors (Boston: Little, Brown, 1992), p. 93. Also see his Eight Years in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Beijing: n.p., 1985). Hoang Van Hoan’s son told Vietnam specialist Christopher Goscha that in 1950 neither Stalin not Mao Zedong was convinced that Ho Chi Minh was a genuine Marxist-Leninist.
31. Interview with Do Quang Hung in Hanoi, December 15, 1990.
32. Luo Guibo, “Lishi,” p. 161. Stalin explained his decision on the grounds that Soviet attentions were focused on their new allies in Eastern Europe. According to one source, Ho Chi Minh asked Stalin for equipment sufficient to arm ten infantry divisions and one artillery regiment—see Vo Nguyen Giap, Duong toi, pp. 14–15.
33. For a convincing discussion of Mao Zedong’s worldview at that time, see Chen Jian, “China and the First Indo-China War,” China Quarterly (March 1993), pp. 88–91. Also see his China’s Road to the Korean War: The Making of the Sino-American Confrontation (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994). Ho Chi Minh’s new role as director of operations for Communist Parties in the region comes from “Déclaration sur la vie.”
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