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

by Fredrik Logevall

  EISENHOWER ENTERTAINS FRENCH LEADERS ON THE WILLIAMSBURG, MARCH 1953. WITH THE PRESIDENT ARE, FROM LEFT, FRENCH AMBASSADOR HENRI BONNET, RENÉ MAYER, DULLES, AND BIDAULT. (photo credit 14.1)

  III

  TO ADD TO EISENHOWER’S CONCERNS, IN APRIL THE VIET MINH invaded Laos, until then a backwater in the war. Giap used main-force battalions from three divisions in the attack, hoping to disperse the French across wide stretches of Indochina, and by month’s end the quaint royal capital of Luang Prabang was partially surrounded, and the French strongpoints on the Plain of Jars (Plaine des Jarres, so named for the ancient stone burial urns that dotted its landscape) were isolated. In Eisenhower’s judgment, the fall of Laos would be no less disastrous than the fall of Vietnam, and probably more so, for Communist control of Laos would permit a hostile drive west as well as south. “If Laos were lost,” he warned the National Security Council, the United States would “likely lose the rest of Southeast Asia and Indonesia. The gateway to India, Burma, and Thailand would be open.” In fact, however, Giap’s objectives in Laos that spring were more limited. He sought primarily to force the French to spread their forces thinner and to plant food depots and a political infrastructure in northern Laos, all for future exploitation. In early May, satisfied that he had achieved these goals and with the monsoon season fast approaching, he withdrew from all but one Laotian province (Sam Neua), leaving the French and their Laotian supporters badly shaken and Americans further convinced that the war effort was foundering.23

  Eisenhower was particularly distraught. Until the Laos invasion, he told the National Security Council on April 28, he had thought the French would ultimately win the war; now that seemed far less likely. French commanders lacked the requisite aggressiveness and moreover had failed to “instill a desire to hold” among the Vietnamese population. With only limited manpower at their disposal, these commanders moreover had allowed their forces to become separated and divided into isolated pockets, each of which could be supplied only by air. The Viet Minh units, meanwhile, were able to wander around the countryside almost at will. The following week the president returned to the theme, first at a meeting of the NSC, then in a letter to the U.S. ambassador in Paris, C. Douglas Dillon. Only two developments, he said, would really save the situation. The first was an official declaration from the Paris government guaranteeing the independence of the Associated States as soon as the war was concluded. The second was a strong and capable new military commander who would accept battle, not shy away from it. Convinced that the French generals in Vietnam, including current commander Raoul Salan, were generally a “poor lot,” Eisenhower called for “a forceful and inspirational leader” in the mold of de Lattre.24

  FRENCH UNION PARATROOPS OPERATING IN THE PLAIN OF JARS IN LAOS, APRIL 1953, IN ORDER TO TRY TO TURN BACK GIAP’S OFFENSIVE. THEY ARE CLAD IN SURPLUS U.S. GEAR. (photo credit 14.2)

  The French had heard this message before, but Prime Minister Mayer could do little but swallow hard and smile. He was frustrated by his government’s dependence on Washington and by the Eisenhower administration’s insistence on a military solution in Indochina at the same time it sought a political settlement in Korea. He fully shared the frustration of President Vincent Auriol, who told Letourneau in late May: “I am more and more worried about the Americans’ [overbearing] attitude. Their involvement in the Indochina war is a catastrophe.”25 But the problem was insoluble; the Americans in effect called the shots. Any unilateral move to withdraw from Indochina could lead to an immediate end of U.S. aid, which would expose the Expeditionary Corps and the colon community to grave dangers, forcing decolonization. It could also complicate Franco-American relations concerning German rearmament and other issues.

  The internationalization of the war, which had looked like such a good idea in 1949–50, when Paris leaders worked so hard to secure allied and especially American backing, had become a crushing burden from which there seemed no real relief.

  And yet, Mayer saw no option but to go along, to hope for some tactical victories in the field from which a compromise settlement could, some months down the line, be negotiated. He assured Douglas Dillon that a statement of the type Eisenhower wanted regarding independence would be announced in a future speech (it would happen in July), and he said a new commander would soon be sent to Indochina. But he demurred on Eisenhower’s suggestion that he choose either General Augustin Guillaume, commander of French forces in North Africa, or Lieutenant General Jean Valluy, now at Supreme Headquarters, Allied Powers Europe. Guillaume’s health was poor, Mayer noted, while Valluy would inflame Vietnamese nationalist opinion in view of his close association with the Haiphong incident of November 1946 and the overall meltdown that had led to the outbreak of full-scale war the following month. Instead, Dillon was told, Paris intended to appoint General Henri Navarre, chief of staff of French NATO forces in Central Europe, who was little known to U.S. officials and had no Indochina experience.26

  The sense of urgency in Washington was reflected in other ways. In late April, the administration agreed to loan France six C-119 “Flying Boxcars” (with the U.S. insignias painted over) to transport heavy equipment to Laos, and to allow civilian U.S. pilots to fly the planes. The same week the National Security Council approved NSC-149/2, which suggested the possibility of direct American intervention in Indochina in the event of Chinese aggression or, generally, a “basic change” in the situation. Did the Viet Minh invasion of Laos, Special Assistant to the President Robert Cutler asked at a meeting on May 6, constitute such a basic change? In other words, was the United States now prepared to consider a direct military intervention in the conflict? The question was left hanging, suggesting the answer for the moment was no. But that it was raised at all, and that NSC-149/2 won approval, shows how seriously senior policy makers saw the situation.27

  American pressure contributed to another important decision by the Mayer government that spring: the devaluation of the Indochinese piaster on May 10. The move came in response to increased reports of profiteering in the currency as a result of the artificial maintenance of the exchange rate. The operation, which had gone on for several years, consisted of buying U.S. dollars on the French black market for between 350 and 400 francs for each dollar. The dollars were then sold in Indochina for 50 piasters to the dollar. The piasters in turn were converted back into francs at the official, but highly overvalued, rate of seventeen francs for a piaster, with a consequent profit of as much as 150 percent. (The currency’s real value on international markets was eight francs per piaster.) Critics charged that many dollars bought in Paris and sold in Saigon had found their way into the hands of Viet Minh agents, who then used the profits to buy arms with which to kill Frenchmen. Less often mentioned was that this also financed the lavish lifestyles on the Côte d’Azur of Bao Dai and his associates, including the procuring of legions of expensive prostitutes; or that French businessmen and politicians were in on the game.

  The costs of the trafficking to the French treasury were considerable: Credible reports put the losses at 500 million francs per day (roughly $1.4 million). The CIA complained that while it had shut down gold smuggling to Bangkok and Singapore, Air France flights on the Paris-Saigon route continued to operate, with gold shipments of the Banque d’Indochine that were then transferred to Macao for sale to the Viet Minh. These were turned over to the Chinese, who purchased weapons for the Viet Minh through Moscow. The agency determined that French bankers were netting a tidy 50 percent profit on the deal, which put roughly five hundred tons of arms in Viet Minh hands every month.28

  U.S. officials called the situation intolerable and pressed for a devaluation, reminding Paris of their own treasury’s major contribution to the Indochina effort. The French press, meanwhile, ran numerous high-profile stories on the issue—notably the left-wing L’Observateur, which in early May published documentary evidence against persons profiting from the traffic, citing names and dates. The stories relied in part on the investigations of Jacqu
es Despuech, a disgruntled ex-employee of the Currency Exchange Office, who withstood lawsuits and attempted bribes, even threats on his life and that of his wife, to publish a book-length exposé titled Le trafic des piastres.29 The government responded to this onslaught by announcing a 40 percent devaluation, which disturbed the artificial economic equilibrium in Indochina and generated uproar among colons, many of whom had benefited from the inflated rate. More ominously for the future, the action also angered non-Communist nationalists throughout Indochina, including officials in Bao Dai’s State of Vietnam government. “Of course we are angry,” declared Prime Minister Nguyen Van Tam, who was not known for his nationalist fervor (he had volunteered to serve under General Leclerc early in the war and was a French citizen). The Paris government’s failure to consult with him or his ministers prior to the decision was inexcusable, Tam charged, and it suggested that the whole concept of the French Union should be reexamined.30

  IV

  JUST HOW MUCH DELIBERATION WENT INTO THE SELECTION OF Navarre and the piaster devaluation is open to question, for by now Mayer had something bigger on his mind, namely the survival of his three-month-old government. The assaults came from both left and right, and they concerned economic and social policy as well as what critics saw as Mayer’s too-favorable view of the EDC and its integrated European army.31 But the bloody struggle in Indochina also loomed large, particularly as news filtered in of the Viet Minh offensive in Laos. Mayer now faced, according to one close observer, “an unprecedented parliamentary offensive” over the war. The phrase is somewhat misleading, as there was still no mass antiwar movement in the National Assembly, but it does capture the growing domestic pressure on French leaders to find a way out of what many now called la sale guerre (the dirty war). In April, a downbeat Bidault complained to Dulles that the government was “caught in a crossfire” between those who opposed the war on moral grounds and those who said it was ruining France economically. That same month former prime minister Edgar Faure proposed a five-power conference to settle the Indochina conflict diplomatically, while in May a public opinion poll commissioned by Le Monde found that two-thirds of French voters favored either a unilateral withdrawal of French forces or a negotiated armistice. Only 19 percent advocated stepped-up military action.32

  Said a Paris-based British diplomat of the popular mood: “A left-wing man-in-the-street will say that it is a dirty war which ought never to have been started and which ought to be brought to an end as quickly as possible for moral reasons quite apart from material ones. If he is not left-wing but averagely cynical he will say that he wants the war to be terminated because it is no concern of his except in so far as it tends to increase the weight of his taxes; his hearth is not menaced by the Viet Minh and the French lives which are lost in Indo-China are those of volunteer soldiers. If he has some finer feelings he may say that the war ought to be brought to an end because it can clearly never be won and that its continuation is meanwhile weakening France.”33

  If this man in the street was a reader of books he could pick up two new authoritative works, Philippe Devillers’s Histoire du Viêt-Nam, de 1940 à 1952 and Paul Mus’s Viêt-Nam: sociologie d’une guerre, which provided important historical context and implicitly pointed to the giant obstacles in the way of victory.34 If he opened the influential Le Monde, he could read the complaint that while France was exhausting herself in Vietnam, Germany was becoming the leading power in Europe; while in the afternoon paper Paris-Presse, he could read Vietnam correspondent Max Harmier declare that France had neither the tactics nor the means to defeat the Viet Minh.35 And if his curiosity caused him to peruse L’Express, a brand-new weekly magazine modeled on Time, he would see story after story attacking the war. The magazine came out firing in its first issue, charging that certain political groups, with vested financial interests in Indochina, were “conspiring” to keep the war going. Featured on the cover was Pierre Mendès France of the Radical Party, who declared on page six, in an interview titled “France Can Bear the Truth”: “We cannot approach problems of economic recovery without resolving the problem of unproductive costs like rearmament and the Indochina War.” No military solution was possible in Vietnam, Mendès France went on, and therefore every effort had to go to gaining a diplomatic settlement, perhaps through direct bilateral negotiations with Ho Chi Minh. “Our negotiating position was better two years ago than it was last year; better last year than it is now; it is probably not as bad now as it will be next year.”36

  More and more, Mendès France was the figure around whom opponents of the war coalesced. L’Express, indeed, had come into existence explicitly for the purpose of bringing him into power. When Mayer’s government fell on May 21, speculation turned to the prospect of a Mendès France government. He almost succeeded, gaining broad support except among Gaullists and Communists and winning 301 votes, thirteen short of the number required to form a government. Commented Letourneau to the new Indochina commander Navarre: “I am somewhat worried for the future when I see that 300 members of parliament have voted for the nomination of M. Mendès France, thereby practically stating that they are ready to envisage some way of pulling out of Indo-china.” In fact, the figure was even higher, as Ambassador Dillon ruefully noted in a cable to Washington: If Communist votes were added, it totaled 406 votes in favor of withdrawal from Indochina.37

  During lunch with Dillon on June 17, Mendès France elaborated his vision for a political resolution of the war, and his fears for what a stay-the-course policy would bring. France, he began, should guarantee immediate and full independence to the Indochinese states and should set a definite time schedule for the withdrawal of French forces. Together with the Indochinese states, France would then propose an armistice to Ho Chi Minh, subject to nationwide elections for a constituent assembly to establish a constitution for a free and independent Vietnam. The Communists would undoubtedly be the leading entity in that parliament, Mendès France acknowledged, and their subsequent actions would be impossible to know in advance, but those were risks worth taking. Moscow and Beijing, meanwhile, were benefiting from the continuation of the war, since it had the effect of weakening the West; this was added reason to bring it to a swift resolution. The Frenchman concluded with a warning: The only alternative to a policy of the type he had outlined was a political catastrophe in Indochina within the next year.38

  One wonders: Would it all have been different had he won the vote and become premier? Would he have sought to terminate the war in short order? Probably yes and yes. With hindsight’s advantage—and arguably even in the context of the time—it’s hard to argue against his claim that the French negotiating position was more favorable in spring 1953 than it would likely be a year thence. Few doubted the depth of his conviction that the war was having a devastating impact on France’s financial, diplomatic, and military health. Then again, just what Mendès France would have done as prime minister in 1953—and when he would have done it—is not easy to gauge. To the surprise of many, in his investiture speech he had suddenly turned vague on the war, saying merely that the war was a “crushing burden, which is sapping the strength of France,” and promising a “precise plan” in due course.

  This ambiguity, some analysts speculated, may have cost Mendès France the necessary votes; it may also have signified uncertainty in his mind about the proper course of action on Indochina. It would be no simple task to bring an end to a long and costly war, he perhaps realized; nor would it be easy to go against the new American administration’s aggressive advocacy. Eisenhower had made it unambiguously clear: France had to stay in the fight. Whatever the case, Mendès France had missed his best chance to date to take the reins of power and somehow ease the “crushing burden.” In late June, Joseph Laniel, a wealthy, rumpled, and little-known Independent from Normandy with vague foreign policy views, became prime minister, ending a thirty-six-day political crisis. It was the nineteenth French government in the past seven years. Pierre Mendès France was left to ponder wha
t might have been and hope for another chance.

  CHAPTER 15

  NAVARRE’S AMERICAN PLAN

  ON INDOCHINA MATTERS, THE NEW FRENCH LEADER JOSEPH LANIEL would rely heavily on Georges Bidault, who narrowly failed to become prime minister himself and who stayed on as foreign minister. Bidault’s personal stake in a successful outcome in Indochina went deeper than anyone else’s, since he had been right there at the center when the crucial early moves were made, first as foreign minister in de Gaulle’s Provisional Government in 1944–45, then as president in the summer and fall of 1946. As foreign minister and then prime minister again in 1947–50, he had been uncompromising on the war—in the parlance of the later American war, a hawk among hawks—and he did not waver as defense minister in 1951–52. It’s a remarkable thing, in view of the dizzying turnover of governments in the Fourth Republic, that Bidault was seemingly always there, putting his stamp on the policy, pushing forward, ruling out compromise. This was Bidault’s war if it was anyone’s.

  Lately, though, the true believer had begun entertaining doubts, though he kept them mostly private. Still suspicious of negotiations, he felt pressure from the likes of former prime ministers Paul Reynaud and Edgar Faure to seek an early end to the war. Both men supported the proposed European Defense Community and were prepared to offer full and complete independence to the Indochinese states and leave them to their fates. France would then be free to concentrate on European issues, which ultimately mattered much more. Easy for them to say, Bidault thought; they weren’t responsible for policy, at least not as he was. (Reynaud was now minister for the Associated States.) Well aware that French options on Indochina ranged from poor to worse, and that the Eisenhower team was pushing hard—harder than its predecessor—for a more forceful prosecution of the war, he and Laniel moved cautiously at first, avoiding any commitment to direct diplomatic overtures to Ho Chi Minh and affirming their faith in the new commander in chief, Henri Navarre.