Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam

by Fredrik Logevall

  Eden grasped that this was old wine in new bottles, and he didn’t like the taste. He and others in the Foreign Office suspected the Americans of seeking to use trusteeships to their own economic advantage—the “international supervision of colonies” would simply be a smoke screen by which America could facilitate access to the economic resources of the colonies and spread her influence globally. What really frightened the British, though, was the president’s insistence on international control over the trusteeships. However ill-defined the details of his plan, trusteeship would surely compel the ruling state to follow international regulations, probably as laid down by the United Nations, and to commit to a timetable for the colony’s independence. This was anathema to Eden and his colleagues, who promptly set about trying to modify the trusteeship formula. They said they would accept an advisory role for other nations but no more. When FDR proved unbending, they switched to a policy of avoidance, eluding U.S. attempts to take up the issue.20

  IV

  MUCH TO CHURCHILL’S ANNOYANCE, ROOSEVELT SOUGHT TO RECRUIT Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek to the anticolonialist cause. In the president’s mind, China would serve as a counterweight to Britain and the other European colonial powers in postwar Asia, and would join with Washington in a kind of Sino-American axis dominating much of Asia and the Pacific. Chiang was a willing recruit. He shared FDR’s view that colonialism in Asia played into the hands of Japan, and he had vague notions—encouraged by Roosevelt—of participating in the departure of the British from India. He welcomed the president’s plan to make China one of the four major powers after the war, with significant responsibilities in keeping peace and stability in Asia.21

  But the budding Sino-American romance did not last. The two leaders failed to hit it off at their only wartime meeting, in Cairo in November 1943. At the Mena House Hotel, in the shadow of the pyramids, Roosevelt sought Chiang’s support for his trusteeship scheme, but Chiang resisted, expressing a preference for outright independence for Indochina and other Asian colonies. To FDR’s claim that he supported the return of Hong Kong to Chinese rule, Chiang said he would have no reply until the president first discussed the colony’s future with the British.

  Roosevelt did convince Chiang—as well as Churchill (who also attended the meeting) and Stalin (who did not)—to issue a joint press release on Allied Pacific war aims. The “Cairo Declaration” called for Japan’s unconditional surrender and her expulsion from territories “taken by violence and greed.” All Chinese territory “stolen” by Japan would be returned. Overall, though, Roosevelt found the Chinese leader weak and indecisive, and he left Cairo less confident that Chiang could play his assigned role after the war. No doubt the president’s judgment was affected by the growing drumbeat of despair among American observers in China, who in late 1943 grew steadily more critical of the Chiang Kai-shek regime. They spoke of widespread governmental corruption and venality, low morale, and a general unwillingness among military leaders to fight the Japanese. Meanwhile, the Chinese Communists under Mao Zedong, who had been waging an intermittent struggle against Chiang’s Nationalist (Guomindang) government since the late 1920s, were gaining strength in the north.22

  On Indochina, Roosevelt remained undaunted. From Cairo, he traveled to Tehran for meetings with Churchill and, for the first time, Stalin. During their initial get-together, FDR stressed to Stalin the importance of preparing the people of Indochina for self-government along the lines of what the United States had done in the Philippines. Stalin concurred that Indochina should not be returned to France and said he supported independence for all colonial subjects. “The president,” wrote a note taker, “remarked that after 100 years of French rule in Indochina, the inhabitants were worse off than they had been before.” When Roosevelt turned the discussion to his trusteeship scheme, implying that Chiang Kai-shek agreed, Stalin expressed support. As the meeting drew to a close, they agreed there was no point in discussing the India matter with Churchill.23

  Over dinner that same day, with Churchill also in attendance, Stalin again said he opposed a French return to Indochina. Roosevelt seized the opening to extol international accountability through trusteeships, carefully limiting his examples to French territories (New Caledonia in the Pacific, and Dakar on the west coast of Africa) so as to avoid offending the prime minister. Churchill was unimpressed. He pledged that Britain would seek no new territory after the war, but since the Big Four would be charged with maintaining postwar stability, they should be given individual control over certain strategically valuable areas. After Roosevelt took ill and retired for the night, Stalin continued to press Churchill on the need to keep France from reclaiming her empire. His concern was not the Indochinese people per se: He cared little about Southeast Asia, and his mistrust of Ho Chi Minh, dating back to their encounters in the 1920s, had not disappeared. Rather, he saw his stance as a means to weaken the European colonial empires more generally, and to ensure that the France that emerged from the war was a minor player on the world stage.24

  After his return from Iran, Roosevelt maintained the pressure. The French were again in the forefront of his thinking in mid-December, when he told the ambassadors of Great Britain, the USSR, Turkey, Egypt, and Iran of his plan for Indochina. The Indochinese people had not been adequately prepared for immediate independence, the president acknowledged, but this was no reason to allow the French to wander in and reclaim colonial control. Rather, the best solution would be a trusteeship that would enable Indochina to develop along the Philippines model. The Soviet government supported this idea, FDR cheerfully reminded the British ambassador in a White House meeting in January 1944, adding that he had made his feelings known in twenty-five discussions with Prime Minister Churchill—“or perhaps discussed is the wrong word. I have spoken about it 25 times, but the Prime Minister has never said anything.”25

  That Roosevelt and Stalin seemed to propose a piecemeal attack on colonial empire was scant comfort to Churchill and other British officials. It was a slippery slope, they were convinced—or, if you will, a dangerous game of dominoes: If Indochina was allowed to fall from colonial control, what would keep Burma, Malaya, India, and other parts of the British Empire from being next? “We’d better look out,” Alexander Cadogan, permanent undersecretary of the Foreign Office, warned in early 1944 after learning of another Roosevelt attack on the “hopeless” French record in Indochina. “Were the French any more ‘hopeless’ than we in Malaya or the Dutch in the East Indies?”26

  It annoyed London strategists that the American president seemed so oblivious both to Indochina’s geostrategic importance and to the need to have a strong and stable France in postwar Europe. For them, Indochina was the linchpin of all Southeast Asia, a barrier between China to the north and a string of prized British possessions to the south. Japan had used it as a forward base for her operations against Malaya and Burma, and this could not be allowed to happen again. Postwar Indochina thus needed to be kept peaceful and stable, and France was in a better position than anyone else to ensure that happened. In Europe, meanwhile, Britain would need to be able to work well with France, whatever scenario played out on the continent—German revival, Soviet expansion, U.S. withdrawal, general social and economic collapse.27

  How to secure such a cooperative France? Partly, London planners determined, by supporting Charles de Gaulle’s determination to retain the French colonies, including Indochina, and partly by avoiding arguments with Washington on the issue. “Roosevelt has been more outspoken to me on that subject than any other colonial matter,” Churchill reminded Eden in mid-1944, “and I imagine it is one of his principal war aims to liberate Indochina from France.… Do you really want to go and stir all this up at such a time as this?”28 Quietly, London officials stonewalled American efforts in early and mid-1944 to negotiate on the colonial issue. Roosevelt continued to push his trusteeship plan and his opposition to a French return to Indochina, but with less urgency as 1944 progressed.

  Military development
s help explain the shift. As battlefield fortunes shifted decisively in the Allies’ favor and victory in both Europe and Asia could be perceived, Roosevelt had to confront a dilemma that had existed just beneath the surface since the war began: how to square a desire for a new global order based on self-determination and free trade with a need for postwar cooperation among the great powers. Had colonialism been the only thing at stake, FDR might well have continued to press the British and the French, and to insist on a specific timetable by which all the European colonial powers—including also the Dutch and Portuguese—would grant independence to their colonies. But in 1944, he thought more and more about what would happen once the fighting stopped. Some of his assumptions regarding the Four Policemen—the United States, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, and China, who would maintain order in their respective spheres—he realized, would require revision.

  China, for example, now seemed unlikely to be able to assume her position as one of the four. That spring a full-scale Chinese civil war seemed increasingly probable, as Chiang allocated more and more of his forces to combating the Communists rather than the Japanese. In May, Roosevelt told his cabinet that he was “apprehensive for the first time as to China holding together for the duration of the war.” Infighting among Guomindang officials had become endemic, and foreign observers reported widespread government corruption. Even Life magazine, long a champion of Chiang, published a report by Theodore White warning that “we are being played for suckers” by Chinese leaders who were hoarding American supplies to use in the “inevitable civil war.” Meanwhile China’s strategic importance in the war as a whole declined rapidly in 1944. Originally American planners believed that air bases in northeastern China would have to be established in order to defeat Japan, but in 1944 it became apparent that an “island-hopping” campaign across the Pacific would provide a quicker and easier route to the Japanese homeland—and that route was fully under U.S. control, obviating the need to deal with allies. The China theater, once vital in American military strategy, was fast becoming peripheral.29

  Simultaneously, Roosevelt heard arguments that another of the policemen, the Soviet Union, might be less than cooperative after the war. As the Red Army advanced westward, crushing whole Nazi divisions in its path, senior U.S. analysts expressed concerns about Stalin’s ambitions, not merely in Europe but in Asia as well. “Our relations with the Soviets have taken a startling turn evident during the last two months,” U.S. ambassador to Moscow W. Averell Harriman reported in mid-September. “They have held up our requests with complete indifference to our interests and have shown an unwillingness even to discuss the pressing problems.” Harriman warned that the Russians were becoming “a world bully wherever their interests are involved. This policy will reach into China and the Pacific as well when they can turn their attention in that direction.”30

  V

  THE TURMOIL IN CHINA AND THE UNCERTAINTY ABOUT SOVIET INTENTIONS strengthened the hand of those in the foreign policy bureaucracy in Washington who argued for allowing Britain and France to retain their Asian territories after the armistice. For the better part of a year, these “conservatives” had been waging a campaign against “progressive” colleagues who shared FDR’s hostility toward a French return to Indochina and sought to promote Indochina’s development toward independence under a degree of international supervision. Many of the conservatives shared the president’s antipathy toward de Gaulle and his disdain toward France’s lackluster performance against German and Japanese aggression, but they rejected his claim that France should not play a major role in world affairs for many years to come. On the contrary, they argued, the United States would need a strong France immediately after the war in order to bring stability to Europe and to the larger world system.31

  French authorities picked up on this schism in U.S. decision making and sought to exploit it. All too aware of the Americans’ preponderant power in the Western Pacific—“Nothing will or can be done in Indochina without their agreement, at least tacit,” one senior official reminded his colleagues—they stepped up their efforts in 1944 to reestablish France’s claim to Indochina, and to do so before Washington settled on firm policy. Most important, de Gaulle reasoned, would be to get French troops involved in the campaign to liberate Indochina. He recalled candidly in his memoir: “I regarded it as essential that the conflict not come to an end without our participation. Otherwise, every policy, every army, every aspect of public opinion would certainly insist upon our abdication in Indochina. On the other hand, if we took part in the battle—even though the latter were near its conclusion—French blood shed on the soil of Indochina would constitute an impressive claim.”32

  Accordingly, de Gaulle and his aides set about organizing a force capable of fighting the Japanese. Beginning in mid-1944, Free French agents parachuted into Indochina to make contact with Gaullist sympathizers and to coordinate resistance. French diplomats also worked to get Allied assistance in sending fresh troops to Indochina and to convince the U.S. government to allow regular French units to participate in the broader Pacific War. Washington proved resistant, but the French kept pressing. In a series of midlevel bilateral meetings devoted to Indochina, they stressed their benevolent intentions toward the Indochinese population and their determination to grant them greater autonomy after the war. Indochina, they vowed, would enjoy “a new political status” involving new governing arrangements of a “liberal character.” For good measure, they also stressed the metropole’s success in promoting Indochina’s economic development earlier in the century, and they insisted that the indigènes were deeply grateful as a result. “The population of our colonies has always had confidence in us,” Minister of Colonies René Pleven told foreign journalists in October.33

  The urgings of the conservatives in Washington, combined with the pressure from the British and French, chipped away at FDR’s resolve. But only partly. His dislike of French imperialism and of de Gaulle personally were undiminished, and he clung to the belief—or at least the hope—that the general would soon be a spent force. It mattered not that a growing chorus of voices in Congress and the press loudly proclaimed otherwise, insisting that de Gaulle was now the leader of the French nation and was not going away. Already in 1943, these observers reminded the White House, de Gaulle had assumed leadership of an Algiers-based Comité français de la Libération nationale (CFLN) to administer the liberated territories and coordinate military action; now, in the spring of 1944, the committee had assumed the functions and legitimacy of a Provisional Government of the French Republic.

  When de Gaulle arrived in Washington in July 1944 for three days of meetings, Roosevelt made an outward show of respect and admiration, but behind closed doors he stuck to his position. In the postwar world, he told de Gaulle, France would be reduced to the status of a spectator. The Big Four of the United States, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, and China would be predominant, and Western Europe would recede in comparison to other parts of the world. The new United Nations organization would help contain Soviet ambitions, while on the Western side the United States would be supreme. De Gaulle cautioned against relying on China as an effective ally and said a regenerated France would again be a leading world power. To FDR’s claim that self-determination would be a guiding principle of America’s postwar policy, de Gaulle replied that France would be prepared to discuss the form of colonial relationships—dependent territories could thenceforth receive more autonomy—but would not surrender any part of her empire. Their conversations were, as the wonderful French expression has it, dialogues de sourds (dialogues of the deaf).34

  De Gaulle, nevertheless, was impressed by what he saw on the trip. It was his first exposure to the great power center of official America, and he came away acutely conscious of the overwhelming self-confidence of the elite, and the dynamism of American society. From Washington, he traveled to New York City and was awed by what he saw. “C’est énorme,” he remarked while looking out the window of his suite
at the Waldorf Astoria at the cars streaming by below. “This country has not built automobiles for three years and look at all the cars … what a capital they represent … and what a powerful country.” The United States was predominant among all countries, he went on, and would remain so for years to come: Her industrial might and her agricultural production gave her an enormous advantage over all others. “She will be the wealthiest and best-equipped country after the war is over,” he concluded, and she “is already trying to rule the world.”35

  Shortly before his return flight to Algiers, de Gaulle told a packed room of reporters that his visit had been a success. “I am sure that, henceforth, the settlement of all the common problems we face, and will face … will be easier because we now understand each other better.” A reporter asked whether de Gaulle expected the French Empire to be returned whole. Yes, he replied, France “will find everything intact that belongs to her,” though France “is also certain that the form of French organization in the world will not be the same.” Did France regard herself as a great power? someone else asked. Too ridiculous a notion even to consider, he replied. As for the prospect of formal U.S. recognition of the committee in Algiers as the Provisional Government of France, de Gaulle said it had not been the purpose of his trip to gain such recognition but he hoped it would come.36

  It was, an observer remarked, a serenely confident performance. And no wonder: De Gaulle knew he had British backing, both for his leadership of France and for the retention of the empire. He knew he had eclipsed all potential rivals for leadership of the French nation. It was a nation, moreover, that could expect to be liberated. The massive Allied cross-channel invasion of France had commenced a month earlier, and though it very nearly ended in disaster, the Normandy beachhead became the center of a massive buildup over the ensuing weeks. By the end of July, close to 1.5 million troops had been transported across the English Channel and were beginning to break out of the coastal perimeter. Even then Roosevelt half-expected some unknown leader to emerge from the liberated territories and claim the legitimacy of the government of the republic. But it was de Gaulle the French people wanted. General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander, grasped this reality and moreover had none of Roosevelt’s personal dislike of the general. To FDR’s consternation, Eisenhower allowed de Gaulle’s Free French forces the honor of entering Paris first. On August 25, 1944, de Gaulle announced the liberation of Paris to an ecstatic crowd at the city’s Hôtel de Ville.