Embers of War (128 page)

15
Georges Boudarel and Francois Caviglioli, “Comment Giap a faille perdre la bataille de Diên Biên Phu,”
Nouvel Observateur
, April 8, 1983, 97; Giap,
Rendezvous with History
, 86–92.

16
Vo Nguyen Giap, with Huu Mai,
Dien Bien Phu: Diem Hen Lich Su
[Dien Bien Phu: A Historic Meeting Place] (Hanoi: People’s Army Publishing House, 2001), 93–94 (I thank Merle Pribbenow for his translation); Christopher J. Goscha, “Building Force: Asian Origins of Vietnamese Military Science (1950–54),”
Journal of Southeast Asian Studies
34 (2003): 556.

17
Boudarel and Caviglioli, “Comment Giap a faille perdre,” 97.

18
Ibid.; Qiang Zhai,
China and the Vietnam Wars, 1950–1975
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), 38, 45–46.

19
Windrow,
Last Valley
, 266.

20
Simpson,
Dien Bien Phu
, 34.

21
Vo Nguyen Giap,
Dien Bien Phu: Diem Hen
, 183. I thank Merle Pribbenow for his translation. See also Dinh Van Ty, “The Brigade of Iron Horses,”
Vietnamese Studies
43 (1976).

22
Tran Do,
Stories of Dien Bien Phu
(Hanoi, 1963), 30–37.

23
Boudarel and Caviglioli, “Comment Giap a faille perdre,” 99.

24
Ibid.

25
Roy,
Bataille de Diên Biên Phu
, 134–35. See also Pierre Journoud and Hugues Tertrais,
Paroles de Dien Bien Phu: Les survivants témoignent
(Paris: Tallandier, 2004), 104–5.

26
Fall,
Hell in a Very Small Place
, 104.

27
Saigon to SecState, January 3, 1954,
FRUS, 1952–1954, Indochina
, XIII, 1:937–38; Navarre to Monsieur le Secrétaire d’Etat à la Présidence du Conseil, chargé des relations avec les Etats Associés, January 1, 1954, Dossier IV, DPMP, Indochine, Institut Pierre Mendès France (hereafter IPMF); Rocolle,
Pourquoi Dien Bien Phu?
, 243.

28
Bernard B. Fall, “Post-Mortems on Dien Bien Phu: Review Article,”
Far Eastern Survey
27, no. 10 (October 1958).

29
For a lengthy description of such incidents, see Hanoi (Fish) to FO, February 8, 1954, FO 371/112024, TNA.

30
On Atlante, see Phillip B. Davidson,
Vietnam at War: The History, 1946–1975
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 204–13; Fall,
Hell in a Very Small Place
, 45–49; Michel Grintchenko,
Atlante-Aréthuse: Une opération de pacification en Indochine
(Paris: Economica, 2001).

31
Ted Morgan,
Valley of Death: The Tragedy at Dien Bien Phu That Led America into the Vietnam War
(New York: Random House, 2010), 241.

32
Roy,
Bataille de Diên Biên Phu
, 151–54; Boudarel and Caviglioli, “Comment Giap a faille perdre,” 90.

33
Vo Nguyen Giap,
The Most Difficult Decision: Dien Bien Phu: And Other Writings
(Hanoi: Giao, 1992), 21; Goscha, “Building Force,” 557; Hoang Minh Phuong, “Ve mot cuon sach xuat ban o Trung Quoc viet ve Dien Bien Phu,”
Xu’a va Nay
3 (1994): 14.

34
See here the analysis in Goscha, “Building Force,” 557. See also Bui Tin,
Following Ho Chi Minh: The Memoirs of a North Vietnamese Colonel
(Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1995), 20–21; and Giap,
Dien Bien Phu: Diem Hen
, 103.

35
Giap,
Rendezvous with History
, 107–8.

36
Pellissier,
Diên Biên Phu
, 198–207; Giap,
Rendezvous with History
, 108; Boudarel and Caviglioli, “Comment Giap a faille perdre,” 90; Ngo Dang Tri, “Le service logistique du Vietnam dans la bataille de Dien Bien Phu,” in Pierre Journoud and Hugues Tertrais, eds.,
1954–2004: La bataille de Dien Bien Phu, entre histoire et mémoire
(Paris: Société française d’histoire d’outre-mer, 2004), 121.

37
Giap, “Most Difficult Decision,” 23–27; Bui Tin,
Following Ho Chi Minh
, 20.

38
Vo Nguyen Giap,
People’s War, People’s Army: The Viet Cong Insurrection Manual for Underdeveloped Countries
(Hanoi: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1961), 170.

CHAPTER 18:
“Vietnam Is a Part of the World”

  
1
Ho Chi Minh, “Report to the Assembly of the DRV,” December 1–4, 1953, in
Ho Chi Minh on Revolution: Selected Writings, 1920–1966
, ed. Bernard B. Fall (New York: Praeger, 1967), 258–69.

  
2
Pierre Asselin, “The DRVN and the 1954 Geneva Conference: New Evidence and Perspectives from Vietnam,” unpublished paper in author’s possession; Truong Chinh, “Making Great Efforts to Smash the French and U.S. Imperialists’ Schemes for Intensifying the War of Aggression,” February 22, 1954, unpublished document in author’s possession.

  
3
NSC 5405, January 16, 1954,
FRUS, 1952–1954, Indochina
, XIII, 1:971–76.

  
4
Memorandum of discussion, 179th meeting of the NSC, January 8, 1954,
FRUS, 1952–1954, Indochina
, XIII, 1:947–54.

  
5
Richard Immerman, “Between the Unattainable and the Unacceptable: Eisenhower and Dienbienphu,” in Richard A. Melanson and David Mayers, eds.,
Reevaluating Eisenhower: American Foreign Policy in the 1950s
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987), 124–25. The other members of the committee were Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Kyes, special assistant to the president C. D. Jackson, Admiral Radford, and CIA director Allen Dulles.

  
6
For the early experience of these mechanics, see Robert K. Scudder, “Tonkin Taxi: Hanoi to Saigon and All the Stops in Between,”
Friends Journal
29 (Winter 2006–7), 8–14.

  
7
James C. Hagerty diary entry for February 7, 1954, Eisenhower Library.

  
8
Eden to Cabinet, November 24, 1953, CAB 129 64, TNA; Eden to Churchill, November 25, 1953, FO 800/784/95, TNA.

  
9
Lloyd note, August 23, 1953, FO 371/103518, TNA.

10
E. J. Kahn, Jr.,
The China Hands: America’s Foreign Service Officers and What Befell Them
(New York: Viking, 1975); and Robert P. Newman,
Owen Lattimore and the “Loss” of China
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992).

11
Paul Wright memorandum, August 22, 1953, FO 371/103518, TNA.

12
Lloyd note, August 23, 1953, FO 371/103518, TNA.

13
Paul Wright memorandum, August 22, 1953, FO 371/103518, TNA.

14
Robert Rhodes James,
Anthony Eden: A Biography
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1987), 158. See also Dominic Sandbrook,
Never Had It So Good: A History of Britain from Suez to the Beatles
, vol. 1:
1956–1963
(Boston: Little, Brown, 2005), 7–8.

15
Eden to Cabinet, November 24, 1953, CAB 129 64, TNA. See here the fine analysis in Kevin Ruane, “Anthony Eden, British Diplomacy, and the Origins of the Geneva Conference of 1954,”
Historical Journal
37, no. 1 (1994): 156–57.

16
Rhodes James,
Eden
, 374–75.

17
Anthony Eden,
Full Circle: The Memoirs of Anthony Eden
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1960), 87.

18
Quoted in Philippe Devillers and Jean Lacouture,
End of a War: Indochina, 1954
(New York: Praeger, 1969), 55. See also Pierre Grosser, “La France et l’Indochine (1953–1956): Une ‘carte de visite’ en ‘peau de chagrin’ ” [France and Indochina (1953–1956): A Visitor’s Pass to the Land of Sorrow], doctoral dissertation, Institut d’études politiques de Paris, September 2002, 483–500.

19
For the consensus in French officialdom that the United States was firmly committed to keeping the war going, see Le Général des Corps d’Armée Valluy à Monsieur le Général d’Armée Chef d’Etat-major Général des Forces Armées, February 4, 1954, Dossier 295, Indochine, Asie-Océanie 1944–1955, MAE.

20
André Siegfried,
L’Année Politique 1954
(Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1955), 511–16.

21
C. L. Sulzberger,
A Long Row of Candles: Memoirs and Diaries, 1934–1954
(New York: Macmillan, 1969), 949.

22
Churchill to Eden, February 8, 1954, PREM 11/648. Churchill wrote: “I think that you are quite right to try your Far East meeting. It is important to keep parleys afloat.”

23
David Dutton,
Anthony Eden: A Life and Reputation
(London: Hodder Arnold, 1997), 474.

24
A portion of the communiqué is printed in
FRUS, 1952–1954, The Geneva Conference
, XVI:415.

25
Quoted in David Carlton,
Anthony Eden: A Biography
(New York: HarperCollins, 1986), 339. The delegate in question was Livingston Merchant.

26
Dulles to Eisenhower, February 6, 1954,
FRUS, 1952–1954, Indochina
, XIII, 1:1021.

27
Memo of discussion, 186th NSC meeting, February 26, 1953,
FRUS, 1952–1954, Indochina
, XIII, 1:1080–81; Lawrence S. Kaplan, “NATO and French Indochina,” in Lawrence S. Kaplan, Denise Artaud, and Mark Rubin, eds.,
Dien Bien Phu and the Crisis of Franco-American Relations, 1954–1955
(Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 1990), 239.

28
W. D. Allen note, February 24, 1954, FO 371/112047, TNA.

29
Georges Bidault,
D’une résistance à l’autre
(Paris: Les Presses du siècle, 1965), 193; James Cable,
The Geneva Conference of 1954 on Indochina
(London: Macmillan, 1986), 43.

30
Here, as so often on the subject of domestic politics and its impact on U.S. foreign policy, foreign observations are especially astute. Wrote a sympathetic Evelyn Shuckburgh in his diary on February 11: “American public opinion might easily turn on him for agreeing too readily to sit down with the Chinese Communists.” Evelyn Shuckburgh,
Descent to Suez: Diaries, 1951–1956
(New York: W.W. Norton, 1987), 133.

31
William C. Gibbons,
The U.S. Government and the Vietnam War: Executive and Legislative Roles and Relationships
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986), 1:165–66; “Report on Berlin,” February 24, 1954, quoted in Robert F. Randle,
Geneva 1954: The Settlement of the Indo-Chinese War
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1969), 40–41.

32
Dulles to State, February 18, 1954,
FRUS, 1952–1954, Indochina
, XIII, 1:1057.

33
Pierre Pellissier,
Diên Biên Phu: 20 novembre 1953–7 mai 1954
(Paris: Perrin, 2004), 231–32; and James R. Arnold,
The First Domino: Eisenhower, the Military, and America’s Intervention in Vietnam
(New York: William Morrow, 1991), 146–47.

34
Conversation tenue, Comité de défense nationale, March 11, 1954, vol. 297, Série Asie-Océanie 1944–1955, Sous-série Indochine, MAE; Pellissier,
Diên Biên Phu
, 243–45; Joseph Laniel,
Le drame indochinois
(Paris: Plon, 1957), 16–17; Pierre Grosser, “La France et l’Indochine,” 624–37.

35
Devillers and Lacouture,
End of a War
, 62–66; Yves Gras,
Histoire de la guerre d’Indochine
(Paris: Plon, 1979), 541–42; Laniel,
Le drame indochinois
, 79–80.

36
On the urgent need to improve the performance of the VNA, see Général C. Blanc, “Situation d’ensemble,” February 8, 1954, Dossier IV, DPMF Indochine, Institut Pierre Mendès France, Paris.

37
Laniel,
Le drame indochinois
, 82.

38
Jean Lacouture,
Pierre Mendès France
, trans. George Holock (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1984), 201.

39
Text in India,
Parliamentary Debates, Official Report, House of the People
, Part 2, 6th Session, vol. 1, no. 6 (February 22, 1954), cols. 415–16.

40
Pierre Rocolle,
Pourquoi Dien Bien Phu?
(Paris: Flammarion, 1968), 327, as cited in Martin Windrow,
The Last Valley: Dien Bien Phu and the French Defeat in Vietnam
(Cambridge, Mass.: Da Capo, 2004), 363.

41
General O’Daniel, “Report on the U.S. Special Mission to Indochina,” February 5, 1954, Box 1, George Kahin Collection on the Origins of the Vietnam War, Carl A. Kroch Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University.

42
Saigon to State, February 9, 1954,
FRUS, 1952–1954, Indochina
, XIII, 1:1026, 1065–66;
Time
, March 1, 1954.