Ronald D. Traylor

History 6393

Review Five

March 22, 2000

Lloyd C. Gardner, Approaching Vietnam: From World War II Through Dienbienphu,

1941-1954 (New York: W.W. Norton, 1988).

In the introduction to Approaching Vietnam, Lloyd Gardner maintained that most studies of United States involvement in Vietnam begin with the fall of the French fortress of Dienbienphu to the Vietminh in 1954. Gardner took strong exception to such a narrow time-frame focus, and insisted that an understanding of the events leading to the engagement of United States forces in French Indochina required moving the examination back in time prior to the American entrance into World War II. He stressed the role played by the United States in the time leading up to the surrender, and noted that American arms and equipment supplied up to eighty percent of the French needs for the siege. Hence, the fall of the bastion simply served as a signpost in the war’s transition from one conducted by French troops to one conducted by American forces. In a larger sense, though, Approaching Vietnam is a comparison of the differing goals of the United States, Great Britain, and France with regard to Southeast Asia, and serves as a demonstration of their incongruous diplomatic approaches to the region.

Both Great Britain and France possessed colonies in Southeast Asia at the beginning of World War II, and those possessions were regarded as critical components of the empires of the two western nations. Britain was later accused of being soft concerning the 1931 Japanese invasion of Manchuria in order to persuade the Japanese to bypass British possessions. Vichy France (hoping not to lose all its influence in the area) renounced its claims to Indochina (which included Cambodia and Laos, as well as the three regions of Vietnam: namely, Tonkin in the north, Annam in the middle, and Cochin China in the south) in favor of a sort of Japanese protectorate six months prior to Pearl Harbor. Both Great Britain and France had every intention of reclaiming their colonies at war’s end, and that led to policy conflicts with the United States.

Franklin Roosevelt was a strong anti-colonialist, as demonstrated by the wording of the Atlantic Charter (agreed to by Winston Churchill) with regard to the “right of all people to choose the form of government under which they will live.” Intended as a reference to Nazi occupied Europe, Roosevelt chose to broaden its meaning to include the colonial possessions of the signatories. Churchill bridled at that, claiming that his job description did not include presiding over the breakup of the British Empire. The colonial issue served as a point of contention between the two leaders. Additionally, Roosevelt had no sympathy for the French loss of their Southeast Asia possessions, saying that “Indo-China should not go back to France. France has had the country…for nearly one hundred years, and the people are worse off than they were at the beginning….The people…are entitled to something better than that.”

The people of Indochina did not passively await a decision by the western powers concerning their future. Nationalist impulses already existed within the region, and took the form of anti-Japanese (and later, anti-French) guerrilla troops (the Vietminh) led by Ho Chi Minh and General Vo Nguyen Giap. Those troops received aid from the Office of Strategic Services (the precursor to the Central Intelligence Agency), whose personnel accompanied Ho to Hanoi at war’s end and were present when Ho proclaimed the existence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in Tonkin.

The Vietminh acknowledged that many of their members were Communists, but insisted that they were “nationalist first and party members second.” The Truman administration, already involved in the beginnings of its Cold War confrontations with the Soviet Union, insisted on the existence of monolithic Communism controlled from Moscow. The American perception of the Vietminh as a Communist organization, coupled with the new “containment” policy was enough to turn the United States against Ho’s nationalist movement. Additionally, and maybe more important to the United States at the time, French acquiescence in the movement to rearm Germany was critical to American containment aims in Europe. As a result, the United States hesitated to make any decisions that might offend the French (taken advantage of and played like a Stradivarius by the French Old Diplomats) and result in the failure of German policy. The two factors (really just one, under the umbrella term “containment”) contributed mightily to American support of French attempts to regain Indochina.

The diplomatic recognition of the People’s Republic of China by the British (against American wishes), the presence in northern Vietnam of Ho Chi Minh and the control of southern Vietnam by the Emperor Bao Dai, the explosion of an atomic bomb by the Soviets, the advent of the Korean War and the PRC entry into that war were all factors that forced a reassessment by the United States of its Indochina policy. By 1950, the United States moved to spread the responsibility for its anti-Communist program through the creation of a regional defense organization, based loosely on NATO, to cover Southeast Asia. This attempt was temporarily abandoned because of an unwillingness to include brown and yellow Asiatic peoples in the organization. Additionally, America fought creeping Communism in Indochina through the surrogate French army, but increasingly came to favor the withdrawal of the French in favor of indigenous troops trained by the United States (a plan adamantly opposed by the French).

The French decided to create a fortress at Dienbienphu from which they could defeat the Vietminh. The French thought the site impregnable, but the Vietminh proved otherwise. They laid siege to the fort, and the French position became increasingly untenable. The question of direct American intervention was raised, but the Eisenhower administration hesitated to bear the burden alone. Requests to the British government for an alliance were unproductive. The pragmatic British, with a similar approach to the one taken with regard to Allied China policy during World War II, desired to prevent a Communist takeover but accepted the unlikely chances of that happening. Unable to get the French to accept the use of indigenous troops, and rebuffed by the British, the United States was forced to the conference table at Geneva just in time for the fall of Dienbienphu on May 7, 1954. The legacy of the fall of Dienbienphu and the Geneva Conference was the partitioning of Vietnam into two parts, the eventual withdrawal from Vietnam by the French, the installation in the south of the Diem regime in anticipation of nationwide elections two years hence, and the ultimate takeover by the United States of the task of South Vietnam’s defense.

Several questions suggest themselves to me as a result of reading this book. First, what was the real Eisenhower like? Was he a golf-playing innocent who left policy decisions to his cabinet and staff, or was he a hard-nosed realist who cut his teeth on the Allied disagreements of World War II? And, was John Foster Dulles the unyielding, stubborn Presbyterian painted by Gardner. Did he lie not only to the British about consensus within the United States government for action in Indochina, but to the Congressional delegations from whom he needed support? Did Ho, at the beginning, consider himself a nationalist first and a Communist second, and did American unwillingness to treat with him, or Russian/Chinese pressure to toe the ideological line play the greatest role in his final decision?

Approaching Vietnam was a wellspring of information on the background of the American involvement in Vietnam, but that is also its greatest liability. Information on the part of the uninformed is always welcome, but is useful only when fully explained. Gardner assumes a knowledge of the period not possessed by this reader (for example, he never really explains the purposes behind the Geneva Conference, but rather dives in without giving the background). The book is well written and easy to understand. It is made more enjoyable than most studies by Gardner’s use of humor and irony. As an overview of the period, it is of great value, and perhaps a second reading might minimize the complaints I have voiced. I have added it to my personal bookshelf. I give it an eight. It’s got a good beat, and you can dance to it.