Embers of War (121 page)

22
Devillers,
Histoire du Viêt-Nam
, 335; Shipway,
Road to War
, 243.

23
La Revue des deux mondes
, December 15, 1967, p. 510; Devillers,
Histoire du Viêt-Nam
, 339. For Martin quote, see
Vietnam: A Television History
, episode 1: “Roots of a War,” PBS, transcript. For the varying estimates on the number of Vietnamese killed, see Tønnesson,
Vietnam 1946
, 133–35. Tønnesson concludes that the number must be in the thousands, and that most of the dead were civilians.

24
Shipway,
Road to War
, 245.

25
Stanley Karnow,
Vietnam: A History
, 2nd ed. (New York: Penguin, 1997), 172; Ellen J. Hammer,
The Struggle for Indochina, 1940–1955
(Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1955), 185.

26
Hanoi to FO, December 9, 1946, 959/11, TNA.

27
William J. Duiker,
U.S. Containment Policy and the Conflict in Indochina
(Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1994), 45–46. In early December, Moffat told a British official that Communism would in all likelihood increase in Vietnam as a result of the French actions there. D’Argenlieu, he added, had become much more reactionary and imperialistic and had gone back on agreements. D’Argenlieu, for his part, told the British ambassador in Paris that the root of the trouble in Vietnam was Communism. FO to Saigon, December 4, 1946, FO 959/14, TNA.

28
David Halberstam,
The Best and the Brightest
(New York: Random House, 1972), 85.

29
Duong Van Mai Elliott,
The Sacred Willow: Four Generations in the Life of a Vietnamese Family
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 135; Hanoi to FO, December 9, 1946, FO 959/11, TNA.

30
Tønnesson,
Vietnam 1946
, 195–98.

31
NYT
, December 21, 1946; Shipway,
Road to War
, 262.

32
Elliott,
Sacred Willow
, 138–39.

33
Ibid., 141.

34
On the difficulty of pinpointing a start date, see Alain Ruscio,
La guerre “française” d’Indochine, 1945–1954
(Paris: Les Indes Savantes, 1992), 92.

35
The French determination to reoccupy Tonkin, through war with the DRV if necessary, is powerfully demonstrated in the works by Turpin, Tønnesson, and Devillers cited above. D’Argenlieu quoted in
Le Monde
, December 27, 1946.

36
On December 24,
L’Humanité
voiced support for diplomacy, but only if conditions had been met: “Negotiations as soon as peace and order have been reestablished.”

37
Shipway,
Road to War
, 250, 259–65; Hammer,
Struggle for Indochina
, 190; Joseph Buttinger,
Vietnam: A Dragon Embattled
, vol. 1:
From Colonialism to the Viet Minh
(New York: Praeger, 1967), 279.

38
Martin Thomas, “French Imperial Reconstruction and the Development of the Indochina War, 1945–1950,” in Mark Atwood Lawrence and Fredrik Logevall,
The First Vietnam War: Colonial Conflict and Cold War Crisis
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007), 134. On the (noncolonial) success of French diplomacy after 1945, see William I. Hitchcock,
France Restored: Cold War Diplomacy and the Quest for Leadership in Europe, 1944–1954
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998). On the MRP’s foreign policy more broadly, an excellent study is John W. Young,
France, the Cold War, and the Western Alliance, 1944–1949: French Foreign Policy and Postwar Europe
(Leicester, U.K.: Leicester University Press, 1990).

39
Roure quoted in Tønnesson,
Vietnam 1946
, 142.

40
Turpin,
De Gaulle, les gaullistes et l’Indochine 1940–1956
, esp. 219–325. De Gaulle quoted in
Le Monde
, August 26, 1946.

41
D’Argenlieu,
Chronique d’Indochine
, 370; Devillers,
Paris-Saigon-Hanoi
, 311.

CHAPTER 7:
War Without Fronts

  
1
NYT
, February 8, 1947.

  
2
Yves Gras,
Histoire de la guerre d’Indochine
(Paris: Plon, 1979), 162–67; Phillip B. Davidson,
Vietnam at War: The History, 1946–1975
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 47. See also
La Revue des deux mondes
, December 1, 1967.

  
3
See, e.g., Douglas Porch,
The French Foreign Legion: A Complete History of the Legendary Fighting Force
(New York: HarperCollins, 1991).

  
4
Henry Ainley,
In Order to Die
(London: Burke, 1955), 13–14.

  
5
Seymour Topping,
Journey Between Two Chinas
(New York: Harper & Row, 1972), 119.

  
6
Moutet quoted in
Le Monde
, January 2 and January 5, 1947.

  
7
Gras,
Histoire de la guerre d’Indochine
, 175–77.

  
8
Vo Nguyen Giap,
Memoirs of War: The Road to Dien Bien Phu
(Hanoi: Gioi, 2004), 21.

  
9
Truong Chinh,
The Resistance Will Win
(Hanoi: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1960 ed.). See also William J. Duiker,
The Communist Road to Power in Vietnam
(Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1996), 135.

10
Vo Nguyen Giap, “Notre guerre de libération—stratégie et tactique,” April 3, 1947, French translation in TFIN 2
^e
Bureau BR No. 2788/2, June 11, 1947, CP 128, AOM. See also Vo Nguyen Giap,
Mémoires 1946–1954
, vol. 1:
La résistance encerclée
(Fontenay-sous-Bois: Anako, 2003–4), 37–39; and Vo Nguyen Giap,
Unforgettable Days
(Hanoi: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1975), 409.

11
Martin Windrow,
The Last Valley: Dien Bien Phu and the French Defeat in Vietnam
(Cambridge, Mass.: Da Capo, 2004), 93.

12
Bernard B. Fall, “The Anatomy of Insurgency in Indochina, 1946–54,” delivered on April 22, 1965, at the the National War College, Washington, D.C. A copy is in Box P-1, series 1.5, Papers and Reports by Dr. Fall, Bernard Fall Collection, JFKL.

13
An excellent description of the difficulties experienced by the French in this regard is in Windrow,
Last Valley
, 97–100.

14
Ibid., 96–97.

15
British Military Liaison Report, July 11, 1947, FO 474/1, TNA.

16
Windrow,
Last Valley
, 104.

17
Ibid., 99; Joseph Buttinger,
Vietnam: A Dragon Embattled
, vol. 2:
Vietnam at War
(New York: Praeger, 1967), 739–40; George Armstrong Kelly,
Lost Soldiers: The French Army and Empire in Crisis
(Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1965), 47.

18
Buttinger,
Dragon Embattled
, 737–38.

19
Le Ly Hayslip,
When Heaven and Earth Changed Places
(New York: Doubleday, 1989), 4.

20
Memorandum RM-5721-PR.
A Translation from the French: Lessons of the War in Indochina
, trans. V. J. Croizat (Santa Monica, Calif.: Rand Corporation, 1967), 2:56–57.

21
Joseph Buttinger,
Vietnam: A Political History
(New York: Praeger, 1968), 285;
NYT
, January 19, 1947; Singapore to FO, January 30, 1947, CAB 121/742, TNA.

22
See Paris to FO, April 8, 1947, FO 471/1, TNA; David Drake, “Les
Temps modernes
and the French War in Indochina,”
Journal of European Studies
28 (March–June 1998): 25–41.

23
Martin Thomas, “French Imperial Reconstruction and the Development of the Indochina War, 1945–1950,” in Mark Atwood Lawrence and Fredrik Logevall,
The First Vietnam War: Colonial Conflict and Cold War Crisis
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007), 139.

24
Journal Officiel
, Assemblée Nationale, March 18, 1947, pp. 879–82; Mark Atwood Lawrence,
Assuming the Burden: Europe and the American Commitment to War in Vietnam
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 156–59; Thomas, “French Imperial Reconstruction,” 140–41.

25
Cooper to Atlee, April 1, 1947, FO 474/1, TNA; Ellen J. Hammer,
The Struggle for Indochina, 1940–1955
(Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1955), 197.

26
Lawrence,
Assuming the Burden
, 160; William I. Hitchcock,
France Restored: Cold War Diplomacy and the Quest for Leadership in Europe, 1944–1954
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998).

27
Lawrence,
Assuming the Burden
, 170–71; Paris to FO, April 1, 1947, FO 474/1, TNA.

28
A corrective is Lawrence,
Assuming the Burden
.

29
Quoted in Robert L. Beisner,
Dean Acheson: A Life in the Cold War
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 60.

30
Walter Lippmann,
The Cold War: A Study in U.S. Foreign Policy
(New York: Harper & Row, 1947).

31
Eric Hobsbawm,
Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century, 1914–1991
(London: Michael Joseph, 1994), 236–37.

32
Philippe Devillers,
Vietnam and France
(Paris: Comité d’études des problemes du Pacifique, distributed by Institute of Pacific Relations, 1950), 2.

33
Lawrence,
Assuming the Burden
, 172ff.

34
Marshall to Caffery, February 3, 1947,
Pentagon Papers. United States–Vietnam Relations, 1945–1967: Study Prepared by the Department of Defense
(Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1971), 8:98–99.

35
Jean Chauvel, “L’Indochine,” February 10, 1947, Bidault Papers, File 128, Archives nationales, Paris (hereafter AN); Lawrence,
Assuming the Burden
, 181.

CHAPTER 8:
“If I Accepted These Terms I’d Be a Coward”

  
1
Bollaert was not actually Ramadier’s first choice to take over as high commissioner. Several weeks before, Ramadier had offered the post to General Leclerc and had attempted to sweeten the offer by granting him broad new powers. Leclerc declined, influenced perhaps by the cautionary words of Charles de Gaulle. “They want to use you,” de Gaulle warned him. “You don’t know politics.… They will make you take the responsibility for abandoning Indochina.… They will make you the instrument of capitulation.” Philippe Devillers,
Histoire du Viêt-Nam de 1940 à 1952
(Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1952), 397.

  
2
Coste-Floret quoted in
Combat
, May 14, 1947. See also Robert Shaplen,
The Lost Revolution: The U.S. in Vietnam, 1946–1966
(New York: Harper & Row, 1966), 58.

  
3
See the essays in David Chandler and Christopher E. Goscha, eds.,
L’espace d’un regard: Paul Mus et l’Asie
(Paris: Les Indes savantes, 2006); Paul Mus,
Le déstin de l’Union Française de l’Indochine à l’Afrique
(Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1954); John T. McAlister, Jr., and Paul Mus,
The Vietnamese and Their Revolution
(New York: Harper & Row, 1970), 7–8. For Mus’s own description of his childhood, see Paul Mus,
L’angle de l’Asie
, ed. Serge Thion (Paris: Hermann, 1977), 214–15. Mus was an inspiration for Frances FitzGerald’s classic work
Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1972). She dedicated the book to the memory of Mus.

  
4
Douglas Porch,
The French Foreign Legion: A Complete History of the Legendary Fighting Force
(New York: HarperCollins, 1991), 527; Phillip B. Davidson,
Vietnam at War: The History, 1946–1975
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 47–49.

  
5
Quoted in Susan Bayly, “Conceptualizing Resistance and Revolution in Vietnam: Paul Mus’ Understanding of Colonialism in Crisis,”
Journal of Vietnamese Studies
4 (Winter 2009): 196.

  
6
David Chandler, “Paul Mus (1902–1969): A Biographical Sketch,”
Journal of Vietnamese Studies
4 (Winter 2009), 174; Paul Mus,
Viêt-Nam: Sociologie d’une guerre
(Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1952), 312, 372; Paul Mus,
Ho Chi Minh, le Vietnam et l’Asie
(Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1971), 79. See also Devillers,
Histoire du Viêt-Nam
, 404. Some accounts have the encounter occurring on May 11.