28 Isaacs, No Peace for Asia, 233–34.
29 See the analysis in Paul Kattenburg, The Vietnam Trauma in American Foreign Policy, 1945–75 (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 1980), 14.
30 Quoted in Ronald H. Spector, In the Ruins of Empire: The Japanese Surrender and the Battle for Postwar Asia (New York: Random House, 2007), 114.
31 Maclear, Ten Thousand Day War, 11.
32 Marr, Vietnam 1945, 488–89.
33 Ibid., 491, 492.
34 Bui Diem, In the Jaws of History, 39; Patti, Why Viet Nam?, 284; Phuong and Mazingarbe, Ao Dai, 54–55.
35 Duong Van Mai Elliott, The Sacred Willow: Four Generations in the Life of a Vietnamese Family (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 131.
36 Duiker, Ho Chi Minh, 327–28; Jacques Dalloz, The War in Indo-China, 1945–1954 (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1990), 56.
37 David G. Marr, “Creating Defense Capacity in Vietnam, 1945–1947,” in Mark Atwood Lawrence and Fredrik Logevall, eds., The First Vietnam War: Colonial Conflict and Cold War Crisis (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007), 88.
38 Duiker, Ho Chi Minh, 329; Ellen J. Hammer, The Struggle for Indochina, 1940–1955 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1955), 133.
39 David W. P. Elliott, The Vietnamese War: Revolution and Social Change in the Mekong Delta, 1930–1975 (Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 2007), chap. 4; Hammer, Struggle for Indochina, 106; Frances FitzGerald, Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam (Boston: Little, Brown, 1972), 71–74.
40 Norman Sherry, The Life of Graham Greene, vol. 2: 1939–1955 (New York: Viking, 1995), 365.
41 Quoted in Andrew Forbes, “Graham Greene’s Saigon Revisited,” CPAmedia.com, www.cpamedia.com/articles/20051020_01/ (last accessed on July 20, 2010).
42 Buttinger, Dragon Embattled, 218; Robert Shaplen, The Lost Revolution: The U.S. in Vietnam, 1946–1966 (New York: Harper & Row, 1966), 6; Huynh Van Thieng interview, 1981, WGBH Vietnam Collection, openvault.wgbh.org/catalog/org.wgbh.mla:Vietnam (last accessed on November 24, 2010).
43 Peter Dennis, Troubled Days of Peace: Mountbatten and South East Asia Command, 1945–1946 (New York: St. Martin’s, 1987), 40.
44 M. E. Dening to FO, September 10, 1945, WO203, TNA; M. E. Dening to FO, September 25, 1945, FO 371/46308, TNA. British thinking in this period is examined in Mark Atwood Lawrence, “Forging the Great Combination: Britain and the Indochina Problem, 1945–1950,” in Lawrence and Logevall, eds., First Vietnam War, 111–17; and in Peter Neville, Britain in Vietnam: Prelude to Disaster, 1945–1946 (London: Routledge, 2007).
45 John Saville, The Politics of Continuity: British Foreign Policy and the Labour Government, 1945–46 (London: Verso, 1993), 177–78; John Springhall, “Kicking Out the Viet Minh: How Britain Allowed France to Reoccupy South Indochina, 1945–46,” Journal of Contemporary History 40 (2005), 128. A sympathetic assessment of the thinking of Gracey and his officers is in Peter M. Dunn, The First Vietnam War (New York: St. Martin’s, 1985), esp. 169–72, 186–88.
46 J. F. Cairns, The Eagle and the Lotus: Western Intervention in Vietnam, 1847–1968 (Melbourne, Australia: Lansdowne Press, 1969), 29. See also the thoughtful examination of Gracey’s mission in Neville, Britain in Vietnam.
47 John Keay, Empire’s End: A History of the Far East from High Colonialism to Hong Kong (New York: Scribner, 1997), 278; Saigon Control Commission, “Political Report, 13th September, 1945, to 9th October, 1945,” Gracey 4/8, Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives, King’s College London, UK.
48 Germaine Krull, “Diary of Saigon, following the Allied occupation in September 1945,” WOS Special File, Record Group 59, Lot File 59 D 190, Box 9, NARA.
49 Marr, Vietnam 1945, 541; Springhall, “Kicking Out the Viet Minh,” 122.
50 On the importance of this period in terms of what comes later, see Vo Nguyen Giap, Chien Dau trong vong vay (Hanoi: Nha Xuat Ban Quan Doi Nhan Dan [People’s Army of Vietnam Publishing House], 1995), 22–23; and Vo Nguyen Giap, Mémoires 1946–1954, vol. 1: La résistance encerclée (Fontenay-sous-Bois: Anako, 2003–4), 27.
51 Harold Isaacs, “Indo-China: A Fight for Freedom,” New Republic, February 3, 1947.
52 One Viet Minh sympathizer, interviewed many years later, expressed great affection for Dewey. See Huynh Van Thieng interview.
53 George Wickes, “Saigon 1945,” unpublished ms. in author’s possession, p. 6; Bluechel interview; Karnow, Vietnam, 151; Rose, Roots of Tragedy, 61.
54 Dixee R. Bartholomew-Feis, The OSS and Ho Chi Minh: Unexpected Allies in the War Against Japan (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2006), 288–99. For speculation as to what may have occurred to Dewey’s body, see Spector, In the Ruins of Empire, 131.
55 NYT, October 1, 1945; Mark Atwood Lawrence, Assuming the Burden: Europe and the American Commitment to War in Vietnam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 149; Saigon Control Commission, “Political Report.”
56 Christopher E. Goscha, “Belated Asian Allies: The Technical and Military Contributions of Japanese Deserters (1945–50),” in Marilyn B. Young and Robert Buzzanco, eds., A Companion to the Vietnam War (London: Blackwell, 2002), 37–64; John T. McAlister, Jr., Viet Nam: The Origins of Revolution (Princeton, N.J.: Center for International Studies, Princeton University, 1969), 212; Lawrence, Assuming the Burden, 150.
57 Wickes, “Saigon 1945,” 11–12. I’m grateful to Mr. Wickes for sharing this memoir with me.
58 Anthony Clayton, The Wars of French Decolonization (London: Longman, 1994), 127; J. Davidson, Indo-China: Signposts in the Storm (Hong Kong: Longman, 1979), 42.
59 Marr, Vietnam 1945, 1.
CHAPTER 5: The Warrior Monk
1 A superb, deeply researched study of the period covered in this chapter and the next is Stein Tønnesson, Vietnam 1946: How the War Began (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009).
2 D’Argenlieu’s devotion to de Gaulle is a theme in his posthumously published account, Chronique d’Indochine 1945–1947 (Paris: Albin Michel, 1985). A trenchant biographical summary produced in the British Foreign Office can be found in FO 371/46307, TNA.
3 Ellen J. Hammer, The Struggle for Indochina, 1940–1955 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1955), 122.
4 Bernard Fall, The Two Viet-Nams: A Political and Military Analysis (New York: Praeger, 1964), 72.
5 Philippe Devillers, Histoire du Viêt-Nam de 1940 à 1952 (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1952), 195; Joseph Buttinger, Vietnam: A Dragon Embattled, vol. 1: From Colonialism to the Vietminh (New York: Praeger, 1967), 233.
6 François Guillemot, “Viêt Nam 1945–1946: L’élimination de l’opposition nationaliste et anticolonialiste dans le Nord: À coeur de la fracture vietnamienne,” in Christopher E. Goscha and Benoît de Tréglodé, eds., Le Viêt Nam depuis 1945: États, contestations et constructions du passé (Paris: Les Indes savantes, 2004); David G. Marr, Vietnam 1945: The Quest for Power (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 550.
7 Marr, Vietnam 1945, 551; Cecil. B. Currey, Victory at Any Cost: The Genius of Viet Nam’s Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap (Dulles, Va.: Potomac, 2005), 106.
8 David G. Marr, “Creating Defense Capacity in Vietnam, 1945–1947,” in Mark Atwood Lawrence and Fredrik Logevall, eds., The First Vietnam War: Colonial Conflict and Cold War Crisis (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007), 74–104; William J. Duiker, Ho Chi Minh: A Life (New York: Hyperion, 2000), 346.
9 Duiker, Ho Chi Minh, 347; Peter G. MacDonald, Giap: The Victor in Vietnam (New York: W.W. Norton, 1993), 69. On the extraordinary efforts made to secure weapons and ammunition in this period, see also Nguyen Thi Dinh interview, 1981, WGBH Vietnam Collection, openvault.wgbh.org/catalog/org.wgbh.mla:Vietnam (last accessed on October 15, 2010).
10 Stanley Karnow, Vietnam: A History, 2nd ed. (New York: Penguin, 1997), 168; Ilya V. Gaiduk, Confronting Vietnam: Soviet Policy Toward the Indochina Conflict, 1954–1963 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Pr
ess, 2003), 3.
11 Jean Sainteny, Histoire d’une paix manquée, Indochine 1945–1947 (Paris: Amiot-Dumont, 1953), 166; Charles Fenn, Ho Chi Minh: A Biographical Introduction (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1973), 94–95; Jean Sainteny, Ho Chi Minh and His Vietnam: A Personal Memoir (Chicago: Cowles, 1972), 51ff.
12 Robert Shaplen, The Lost Revolution: The U.S. in Vietnam, 1946–1966 (New York: Harper & Row, 1966), 43. Pignon’s memoirs, unfinished at the time of his death, were completed and published by a team led by his widow. See Elise Pignon et al., Léon Pignon: Une vie au service des peuples d’Outre-Mer (Paris: Academie des Sciences d’Outre-Mer, 1988). Pignon’s role in French Indochina policy is also the subject of Daniel Varga, “La politique française en Indochine (1947–50): Histoire d’une décolonisation manqué,” thèse de doctorat, Université d’Aix-Marseille I, 2004.
13 Frédéric Turpin, De Gaulle, les gaullistes et l’Indochine 1940–1956 (Paris: Les Indes savantes, 2005), 183–90; Duiker, Ho Chi Minh, 355.
14 On this point, see Gilbert Bodinier and Philippe Duplay, “Montrer sa force et négocier,” in Guy Pedroncini and Philippe Duplay, eds., Leclerc et l’Indochine 1945–1947 (Paris: Albin Michel, 1992), 181–82; and Tønnesson, Vietnam 1946, 161, 351n54.
15 Devillers, Histoire du Viêt-Nam, 176; Fall, Two Viet-Nams, 107.
16 Leclerc to Juin and d’Argenlieu, February 14, 1946, Tel. 933, AOM; reprinted in Gilbert Bodinier, ed., 1945–1946. Le retour de la France en Indochine. Textes et documents (Vincennes: Service historique de l’armée de terre, 1987), 208–9; D’Argenlieu to Sainteny, February 20, 1946, F60 C3024, AN; Mark Atwood Lawrence, Assuming the Burden: Europe and the American Commitment to War in Vietnam (Berkley: University of California Press, 2005), 128. See also Martin Shipway, The Road to War: France and Vietnam, 1944–1947 (Providence, R.I.: Berghahn, 1996), 167–68.
17 Operation Bentré is well described and analyzed in Tønnesson, Vietnam 1946, 42–49. See also Turpin, De Gaulle, les gaullistes et l’Indochine, 195–215.
18 Peter Worthing, Revolution and Occupation: China and the Vietnamese August Revolution of 1945 (Berkeley: China Research Monograph, Institute of East Asian Studies, 2001), 120–24, 135–69; Stein Tønnesson, “La paix imposée par la Chine: L’accord franco-vietnamien du 6 mars 1946,” in Charles-Robert Ageron and Philippe Devillers, eds., Les guerres d’Indochine de 1945 à 1975 (Paris: Institut d’histoire du temps présent, 1996). On the important role played by the Chinese, see also Lin Hua, Chiang Kai-shek, de Gaulle contre Hô Chi Minh: Viêt-nam 1945–1946 (Paris: Éditions L’Harmattan, 1994); and Laurent Cesari, L’Indochine en guerres 1945–1993 (Paris: Belin, 1995), 42–43.
19 Lawrence, Assuming the Burden, 128. For Giap’s defense of the March 6 deal, see Devillers, Histoire du Viêt-Nam, 229–31. In official Vietnamese historiography, the agreement is seen as having been necessary to keep Vietnam from having to fight two adversaries simultaneously. Nguyen Khac Vien, Vietnam: A Long History (Hanoi: Gioi, 1999), 251.
20 Quoted in Michael Maclear, The Ten Thousand Day War (New York: Avon, 1982), 18. See also Sainteny, Ho Chi Minh and His Vietnam, 59–64.
21 George Wickes, “Hanoi 1946,” unpublished ms. in author’s possession, pp. 4–5; Saigon to FO, April 11, 1946, FO 959/7, TNA.
22 A point made well in Buttinger, Dragon Embattled, 373. For d’Argenlieu’s retrospective view of the agreement, see his Chronique d’Indochine, chap. 7.
23 Lawrence, Assuming the Burden, 124–26. Lawrence argues for a somewhat greater range of opinion in French thinking in this period than I would.
24 On the intricacies of French party politics in the early years of the war, see Martin Thomas, “French Imperial Reconstruction and the Development of the Indochina War, 1945–50,” in Lawrence and Logevall, eds., First Vietnam War; and R.E.M. Irving, The First Indochina War: French and American Policy, 1945–1954 (London: Croom Helm, 1975), 1–77.
25 Devillers, Histoire du Viêt-Nam, 242; Shipway, Road to War, 179–81; Tønnesson, Vietnam 1946, 62.
26 For the admiral’s recapitulation of the Dalat talks, see his memorandum, April 26, 1946, F60 C3024, AN. See also Buttinger, Dragon Embattled, 247.
27 Devillers, Histoire du Viêt-Nam, 324.
28 David Schoenbrun, As France Goes (New York: Atheneum, 1968), 231; Duiker, Ho Chi Minh, 370.
29 Robert Shaplen, Lost Revolution, 47.
30 Jacques Dumaine, Quai d’Orsay: 1945–1951 (Paris: Julliard, 1955), 103, quoted in Pierre Brocheux, Ho Chi Minh: A Biography (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 121.
31 NYT, July 6, 1946.
32 Leclerc to Schumann, June 8, 1946, printed in Georgette Elgey, Histoire de la IVème République, vol. 1: La République des illusions 1945–1951 (Paris: Fayard, 1965), 161.
33 Bui Diem with David Chanoff, In the Jaws of History (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987), 44; Anthony Clayton, The Wars of French Decolonization (London: Longman, 1994), 131ff.
34 For Bidault’s background and rise to power, see Jacques Dalloz, Georges Bidault: Biographie politique (Paris: Éditions L’Harmattan, 1992).
35 Vietnam: A Television History, episode 1: “Roots of a War,” PBS, transcript.
36 Quoted in David Halberstam, Ho (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1987), 89.
37 Alexander Werth, France 1940–1955 (New York: Henry Holt, 1956), 335–36; Jean Lacouture, Leon Blum (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1982), 532.
38 Werth, France 1940–1955, 336; Buttinger, Dragon Embattled, 252; D’Argenlieu, Chronique d’Indochine, 302–16. A solid account of the Fontainebleau talks is Shipway, Road to War, chap. 8.
39 Schoenbrun, As France Goes, 232–35; Sainteny, Ho Chi Minh and His Vietnam, 87.
40 Sainteny, Histoire d’une paix manqué, 209ff; Raoul Salan, Mémoires: Fin d’un empire, vol. 1: Le sens d’un engagement juin 1899–septembre 1946 (Paris: Presses de la Cité, 1970), 404.
41 Duiker, Ho Chi Minh, 380; Buttinger, Dragon Embattled, 253; Lacouture, Blum, 532; Newsweek, September 30, 1946.
42 James P. Harrison, Endless War: Vietnam’s Struggle for Independence (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989), 109.
43 Nhat Ky Hanh Trinh cua Ho Chu tich, “Bon thang sang Phap” [Travel notebook of President Ho: Four months in France], in Toan Tap, 4, pp. 323–411, as quoted in Brocheaux, Ho Chi Minh, 122.
CHAPTER 6: The Spark
1 Unbeknownst to Ho, the French secret services successfully infiltrated his cabin on the ship, outwitting his guards and photographing many of his private papers while he ate lunch. Due to a technical glitch, however, the film could not be developed. Paul Aussaresse, Pour la France, Services spéciaux 1942–1954 (Paris: Éditions du Rocher, 2001), 175.
2 Bui Diem with David Chanoff, In the Jaws of History (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987), 13. Biographies of Giap include Tran Trong Trung, Tong tu lenh Vo Nguyen Giap (Hanoi: NXB Chinh Tri Quoc Gia, 2006); Cecil B. Currey, Victory at Any Cost: The Genius of Viet Nam’s Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap (Dulles, Va.: Potomac, 2005). Giap’s most recent multivolume memoirs should also be consulted.
3 A. J. Langguth, Our Vietnam: The War, 1954–1975 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000), 52.
4 Currey, Victory at Any Cost, 49–52.
5 Stein Tønnesson, Vietnam 1946: How the War Began (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009), 28.
6 Edgar O’Ballance, The Indo-China War, 1945–1954 (London: Faber & Faber, 1964), 66–67.
7 NYT, August 6, 1946.
8 Martin Windrow, The Last Valley: Dien Bien Phu and the French Defeat in Vietnam (Cambridge, Mass.: Da Capo, 2004), 89; Bui Diem, In the Jaws of History, 46–49.
9 O’Ballance, Indo-China War, 71–72; Saigon to FO, October 15, 1946, FO 959/11, TNA.
10 Christopher E. Goscha, “A ‘Popular’ Side of the Vietnamese Army: General Nguyên Bình and the Early War in the South (1910–1951),” in Christopher E. Goscha and Benoît de Tréglodé, eds., Naissance d’un état-parti: Le Viêt Nam depuis 1945 (Paris: Les Indes savantes, 2004), 325–54.
12 Tønnesson, Vietnam 1946, 76–77; Philippe Devillers, Histoire du Viêt-Nam de 1940 à 1952 (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1952), 318.
13 Haussaire to COMININDO No. 1800F, November 10, 1946, Tel. 938, Archives nationales d’outre-mer (hereafter AOM); David G. Marr, Vietnamese Anticolonialism, 1885–1925 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971), 39; Tønnesson, Vietnam 1946, 104.
14 Martin Shipway, The Road to War: France and Vietnam, 1944–1947 (Providence, R.I.: Berghahn, 1996), 235; Mark Atwood Lawrence, Assuming the Burden: Europe and the American Commitment to War in Vietnam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 153.
15 Paul Mus, Viêt-Nam: Sociologie d’une guerre (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1952), 73.
16 Frédéric Turpin, De Gaulle, les gaullistes et l’Indochine 1940–1956 (Paris: Les Indes savantes, 2005), 602–24; Tønnesson, Vietnam 1946, 107–8. For Valluy’s retrospective view of Haiphong’s strategic importance, see La Revue des deux mondes, December 1, 1967, 364ff.
17 Tønnesson, Vietnam 1946, 108.
18 Printed in Gilbert Bodinier, ed., 1945–1946. Le retour de la France en Indochine. Textes et documents (Vincennes: Service historique de l’armée de terre, 1987), 315–17. See also Philippe Devillers, Paris-Saigon-Hanoi: Les archives de la guerre, 1944–1947 (Paris: Gallimard/Julliard, 1988), 240–41.
19 Pignon to COMININDO, November 19, 1946, vol. 255, no. 4145/CAAP3, Série Asie-Océanie 1944–49, MAE.
20 Tønnesson, Vietnam 1946, 120.
21 General Morlière, “Rapport sur les événements politiques et militaires en Indochine du Nord, au cours du dernier trimestre 1946,” January 10, 1947, printed in Georges Chaffard, Les deux guerres du Viêt-nam de Valluy à Westmoreland (Paris: La Table Ronde, 1969), 36–58; Devillers, Histoire du Viêt-Nam, 332ff. For a Vietnamese version of events, see Vo Nguyen Giap, Unforgettable Days (Hanoi: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1975), 373.
Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam Page 86