Embers of War (118 page)

47
De Gaulle quoted in H. W. Brands,
Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt
(New York: Doubleday, 2008), 814.

48
Kimball,
Juggler
, 154.

49
See, e.g., British official documentation for fall 1945, much of which states forth-rightly that FDR went to his grave seeking to prevent a French return to Indochina, and which implicitly therefore sees historical importance in the FDR-Truman transition.

CHAPTER 3:
Crossroads

  
1
Jean Decoux,
À la barre de l’Indochine
(Paris: Plon, 1949), 328.

  
2
David G. Marr,
Vietnam 1945: The Quest for Power
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 13, 55–56; Stein Tønnesson,
The Vietnamese Revolution of 1945: Roosevelt, Ho Chi Minh and de Gaulle in a World at War
(London: Sage, 1991), 221; Decoux,
À la barre de l’Indochine
, 328.

  
3
Summary of MAGIC intercepts, SRS 306, January 20, 1945, MAGIC Far East Summaries, Box 4, Record Group 457, NARA; Stein Tønnesson, “Franklin Roosevelt, Trusteeship, and Indochina,” in Mark Atwood Lawrence and Fredrik Logevall, eds.,
The First Vietnam War: Colonial Conflict and Cold War Crisis
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007), 65–66; G. Sabbatier,
Le Destin de l’Indochine
(Paris: Plon, 1952), 138–39.

  
4
John E. Dreifort,
Myopic Grandeur: The Ambivalence of French Foreign Policy toward the Far East, 1919–1945
(Kent, Oh.: Kent State University Press, 1991), 239.

  
5
Bernard B. Fall,
Last Reflections on a War: Bernard B. Fall’s Last Comments on Vietnam
(New York: Doubleday, 1967), 130; Marr,
Vietnam 1945
, 59; Duong Van Mai Elliott,
The Sacred Willow: Four Generations in the Life of a Vietnamese Family
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 110.

  
6
Tønnesson,
Vietnamese Revolution of 1945
, 242–43.

  
7
Douglas Porch,
The French Foreign Legion: A Complete History of the Legendary Fighting Force
(New York: HarperCollins, 1991), 512; Marr,
Vietnam 1945
, 59.

  
8
Sabbatier,
Le Destin;
Tønnesson,
Vietnamese Revolution of 1945
, 239; Marr,
Vietnam 1945
, 326–27.

  
9
Ellen J. Hammer,
The Struggle for Indochina, 1940–1955
(Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1955), 41; Elliott,
Sacred Willow
, 110.

10
John T. McAlister, Jr.,
Viet Nam: The Origins of Revolution
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1969), 114–15; Tønnesson,
Vietnamese Revolution of 1945
, 244.

11
Martin Shipway,
The Road to War: France and Vietnam, 1944–1947
(Providence, R.I.: Berghahn, 1996), 68; Robert Gildea,
France Since 1945
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 17; Mark Mazower,
Dark Continent: Europe’s Twentieth Century
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998), 209–10.

12
Christopher G. Thorne,
Allies of a Kind: The United States, Britain, and the War Against Japan
(London: Hamish Hamilton, 1978), 621; Dreifort,
Myopic Grandeur
, 241; Marr,
Vietnam 1945
, 327; Hammer,
Struggle for Indochina
, 43.

13
Joseph Buttinger,
Vietnam: A Dragon Embattled
, vol. 1:
From Colonialism to the Vietminh
(New York: Praeger, 1967), 302; D. Bruce Marshall,
The French Colonial Myth and Constitution-Making in the Fourth Republic
(New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1973), 193.

14
Frédéric Turpin, “Le RPF et la guerre d’Indochine (1947–1954),” in
De Gaulle et le Rassemblement du Peuple Français (1947–1955)
(Paris: Armand Colin, 1998), 530–31; Marshall,
French Colonial Myth
, 195.

15
Quoted in Tony Judt,
Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945
(New York: Penguin, 2005), 100.

16
Shipway,
Road to War
, chap. 2; Hammer,
Struggle for Indochina
, 44.

17
The declaration is excerpted in Philippe Devillers,
Paris-Saigon-Hanoi: Les archives de la guerre, 1944–1947
(Paris: Gallimard/Julliard, 1988), 53–54.

18
Marr,
Vietnam 1945
, 329.

19
Martin Thomas,
The French Empire at War, 1940–1945
(Manchester, U.K.: Manchester University Press, 2007), 213; Hammer,
Struggle for Indochina
, 43–44; Philippe Devillers,
Histoire du Viêt-Nam de 1940 à 1952
(Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1952), 144.

20
Shipway,
Road to War
, 60; Frederick Quinn,
French Overseas Empire
(New York: Praeger, 2000), 233.

21
Tønnesson,
Vietnamese Revolution of 1945
, 315; Shipway,
Road to War
, 126; Buttinger,
Dragon Embattled
, 303.

22
David G. Marr,
Vietnamese Tradition on Trial: 1920 to 1945
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 415–16; David W. P. Elliott,
The Vietnamese War: Revolution and Social Change in the Mekong Delta, 1930–1975
(Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 2007), 33; Buttinger,
Dragon Embattled
, 294.

23
See the analysis in Pierre Brocheux,
Ho Chi Minh: A Biography
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 83–85.

24
William J. Duiker, “Ho Chi Minh and the Strategy of People’s War,” in Lawrence and Logevall, eds.,
First Vietnam War
, 158–59. Ho quoted in Brocheaux,
Ho Chi Minh
, 83.

25
Devillers,
Histoire du Viêt-Nam
, 111.

26
Ho quoted in Hoang Van Hoan,
A Drop in the Ocean: Hoang Van Hoan’s Revolutionary Reminiscences
(Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1988), 187–88.

27
Elliott,
Sacred Willow
, 112–13; Marr,
Vietnamese Tradition
, 416; William J. Duiker,
Ho Chi Minh: A Life
(New York: Hyperion, 2000), 296.

28
Marr,
Vietnamese Tradition
, 408; William J. Duiker,
Sacred War: Nationalism and Revolution in a Divided Vietnam
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1995), 45.

29
Marr,
Vietnam 1945
, 96; Elliott,
Sacred Willow
, 107.

30
Motoo Furuta, “A Survey of Village Conditions During the 1945 Famine in Vietnam,” in Paul H. Kratoska, ed.,
Food Supplies and the Japanese Occupation in South-East Asia
(Houndsmills, U.K.: Macmillan, 1998), 236–37; Nguyen Thi Anh, “Japanese Food Policies and the 1945 Great Famine in Indochina,” in Kratoska,
Food Supplies
, 211–21; Elliott,
Sacred Willow
, 107–8; and Marr,
Vietnam 1945
, 101. See also Robert Templer,
Shadows and Wind: A View of Modern Vietnam
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1998), 48ff.

31
Ngo Vinh Long,
Before the Revolution: The Vietnamese Peasants under the French
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), 133.

32
Marr,
Vietnam 1945
, 104.

33
Nguyen Thi Anh, “Japanese Food Policies,” 221; Elliott,
Sacred Willow
, 113; William J. Duiker,
The Communist Road to Power in Vietnam
(Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1996), 90; Templer,
Shadows and Wind
, 50.

34
The three were Laurence Gordon, Harry Bernard, and Frank Tan. On the GBT and its activities, see Dixee R. Bartholomew-Feis,
The OSS and Ho Chi Minh: Unexpected Allies in the War Against Japan
(Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2006), 63–94.

35
Marr,
Vietnamese Tradition
, 407; William J. Duiker,
U.S. Containment Policy and the Conflict in Indochina
(Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1994), 28.

36
Lloyd C. Gardner,
Approaching Vietnam: From World War II through Dienbienphu
(New York: W.W. Norton, 1989), 62; Elliott,
Sacred Willow
, 113.

37
Fenn unpublished memoir, quoted in Bartholomew-Feis,
OSS and Ho Chi Minh
, 154–55.

38
Charles Fenn,
Ho Chi Minh: A Biographical Introduction
(New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1973), 132.

39
Bartholomew-Feis,
OSS and Ho Chi Minh
, 156–57; Fenn,
Ho Chi Minh
, 75–77.

40
Fenn,
Ho Chi Minh
, 76–78; Bartholomew-Feis,
OSS and Ho Chi Minh
, 156–57.

41
Tran Trong Trung oral history, Hanoi, June 12, 2007 (I thank Merle Pribbenow for making this oral history available to me); Gary Hess,
The United States’ Emergence as a Southeast Asian Power, 1940–1950
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1987), 170; and Duiker,
Ho Chi Minh
, 293–94.

42
See the fine account in Bartholomew-Feis,
OSS and Ho Chi Minh
, 193–205. See René J. Défourneaux,
The Winking Fox: Twenty-two Years in Military Intelligence
(Indianapolis: ICA, 2000), 134–96; and Lisle Rose,
Roots of Tragedy: The United States and the Struggle for Asia, 1945–1953
(Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1976), 53–54.

43
This is a theme in Bartholomew-Feis,
OSS and Ho Chi Minh
. And see also the recollections of Henry Prunier, a member of the mission, in Christian G. Appy,
Patriots: The Vietnam War Remembered from All Sides
(New York: Viking, 2003), 38–41.

44
René J. Défourneaux, “A Secret Encounter with Ho Chi Minh,”
Look
, August 9, 1966, 32–33; Bartholomew-Feis,
OSS and Ho Chi Minh
, 205–15; Tran Trong Trung oral history, Hanoi, June 12, 2007. I thank interviewer Merle Pribbenow for making this oral history available to me.

45
Quoted in Robert Shaplen,
The Lost Revolution: The U.S. in Vietnam, 1946–1966
(New York: Harper & Row, 1966), 35.

46
Ronald H. Spector,
In the Ruins of Empire: The Japanese Surrender and the Battle for Postwar Asia
(New York: Random House, 2007), 96–101; T. O. Smith,
Britain and the Origins of the Vietnam War: U.K. Policy in Indo-China, 1943–1950
(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 21–33.

47
An indispensable account is Mark Atwood Lawrence,
Assuming the Burden: Europe and the American Commitment to War in Vietnam
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 68–74. And see
Causes, Origins, and Lessons of the Vietnam War:
Hearings before the Committee on Foreign Relations, U.S. Senate, 92nd Cong., 2nd sess., June 9–11, 1972 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1973), 167, 175–76.

48
Ronald H. Spector,
Advice and Support: The Early Years of the U.S. Army in Vietnam, 1941–1960
(Washington, D.C.: Center for Military History, 1985), 45.

49
Spector,
Advice and Support
, 45; Hess,
United States’ Emergence
, 152–53; Thorne,
Allies of a Kind
, 95.

50
Dreifort,
Myopic Grandeur
, 248–49.

51
Ibid., 249–50.

52
NYT
, September 16, 1945; Charles de Gaulle,
The Complete War Memoirs of Charles de Gaulle
, trans. Jonathan Griffin and Richard Howard (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1998), 926.

CHAPTER 4:
“All Men Are Created Equal”

  
1
William S. Logan,
Hanoi: Biography of a City
(Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2000), 77.

  
2
Ibid., 95–96.

  
3
Mark Sidel,
Old Hanoi
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 27.

  
4
William J. Duiker,
Ho Chi Minh: A Life
(New York: Hyperion, 2000), 316; David G. Marr,
Vietnam 1945: The Quest for Power
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 489.

  
5
William J. Duiker,
Sacred War: Nationalism and Revolution in a Divided Vietnam
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1995), 48; see also Bui Diem with David Chanoff,
In the Jaws of History
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987), 33–36.