Embers of War (25 page)

To those concerned about his Marxism, Ho offered soothing words. Maybe in fifty years, Vietnam would be ready for Communism, he told a group of journalists in Paris the week before, “but not now.” Any change to the economic system would be gradual, and the Vietnamese constitution—modeled, he emphasized, on the American one—contained safeguards for private property. “If the capitalists come to our country, it will be a good thing for them,” he added. “They will make money, but not as it was made in the old days. From now on it is fifty-fifty.”
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Ho knew that this personal success and his reassuring rhetoric would count for little in the end. The bilateral negotiations were what truly mattered. When at last the talks were set to begin, southeast of Paris at the famed palace in the forest of Fontainebleau, playground for generations of French royals, he was dismayed to see no prominent figures in the French delegation, merely midlevel colonial officials and three obscure politicians, all of them unsympathetic to the Vietnamese position. The roster reflected the results of an election in France in early June, which shifted the balance in the Assembly to the right and, generally, to those who shared d’Argenlieu’s views. The new government, under the MRP’s Bidault, saw no reason to compromise with the Vietnamese, and it took this firm position in part because of a letter to MRP chairman Maurice Schumann, dated June 8, from none other than Philippe Leclerc. The general, it seems, had shifted his position dramatically. France, he now wrote, had practically won in Indochina, having in the spring months secured most of the vital points. She therefore should not concede much at Fontainebleau, particularly to Ho Chi Minh, a man who sought only to throw the French out of Vietnam altogether. “I think, under these conditions, that it would be very dangerous for the French representatives at the negotiations to let themselves be fooled by the deceptive language (democracy, resistance, the new France) that Ho Chi Minh and his team utilize to perfection,” Leclerc wrote.
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IV

AND SO LECLERC, NEVER AS FAR FROM D’ARGENLIEU’S HARD-LINE
position as some authors have claimed, now stood more or less right beside him. The French move into Tonkin following the March 6 Accords had gone reasonably well, Leclerc reasoned, with the first units coming ashore at Haiphong on March 8. The French population of Hanoi and Haiphong was giddy with joy at the arrival of its long-awaited army, and at the French forces’ occupation—over the vociferous objections of the Vietnamese—of the Governor-General’s Palace in Hanoi two weeks later. (“It seemed the return of Vietnam’s colonial enslavement,” recalled Bui Diem of watching the French troops reenter Hanoi.) In subsequent weeks, the French strengthened their posture in various spots north of the sixteenth parallel, and though huge tasks remained and fighting continued in the south, the French commander may have noted the progress made and opted to see the glass as half full.
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Whatever its source, Leclerc’s perspective meshed well with that of Bidault. A former history teacher who had studied at the Sorbonne, Bidault had been active in the Resistance during the Nazi occupation, then had served as foreign minister in de Gaulle’s Provisional Government beginning in August 1944. He founded the MRP and served as foreign minister in Félix Gouin’s government in early 1946 before now taking the presidency himself. To Bidault, who would be at the front line of French policy on Indochina for much of the next eight years, and to many of his ministers, war was unthinkable, but the alternative, giving away independence to the “yellow men” (
les jaunes
), who in the past had been so easily dominated, was even more unimaginable. Bidault accordingly instructed the team at Fontainebleau, led by Max André, a die-hard believer in the empire with close ties to the Bank of Indochina, to adhere to a firm posture in the talks, which got under way on July 6. The head of the Vietnamese delegation, Pham Van Dong, meanwhile, was less inclined to compromise than the Giap delegation at Dalat in April had been.
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FRENCH TROOPS ENTER HANOI AS MASSES OF
COLONS
TURN OUT TO CHEER, MARCH 1946.
(photo credit 5.3)

To no one’s surprise, therefore, the old problems immediately resurfaced as the discussions began. The Vietnamese wanted independence and a weak form of association with France. France sought guided
self-government
(the English word was used in internal documents) within the French Union, with France controlling the sovereignty of Vietnam—in other words, the French would hold the crucial ministries. On Cochin China, the Vietnamese held steadfast to the line that it was part of their country, but the French refused to budge. According to Pham Van Dong, André said to him: “We only need an ordinary police operation for eight days to clean all of you out.” France, in other words, had no need to compromise.
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Days and weeks passed, and the gap between the Vietnamese and the French never seemed to narrow. The French had given Ho a giant red carpet at his hotel when he first arrived, as was the custom with visiting heads of state. David Ben-Gurion, the Israeli leader, who was in Paris at the time, remarked that “Ho’s descending fortunes could be measured by the progressive shrinking of the protocolary carpet. On Ho’s arrival it had extended from the sidewalk to his room. As the summer wore on, it was limited to the lobby, then to the staircase, and finally simply to the corridor in front of Ho’s suite.”
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Ho seriously exaggerated the weight of left-wing opinion in France. The hoped-for support from the Socialists and Communists never materialized, notwithstanding the gushing praise that the respective party newspapers heaped on the Vietnamese. Marius Moutet, the beleaguered minister of Overseas France, whose socialist party had lost ground in the recent election, proved unwilling to champion independence for Vietnam, and Communist leader Thorez was likewise equivocal. Over lunch in July, the veteran socialist leader Léon Blum assured Ho, “I will be there at difficult moments. Count on me.” That too would turn out to be false.
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In Saigon, meanwhile, Thierry d’Argenlieu continued his efforts at sabotage. Leclerc had by now left Indochina—in July he was reassigned to North Africa and was succeeded in Indochina by General Jean Étienne Valluy—which made the subversion easier. He declared that the future relationship between France and Indochina could not be decided solely by delegates representing the Hanoi government and that, accordingly, another conference would be convened, this one at Dalat, on August 1. Its purpose would be to discuss an “Indochinese Federation” comprising Cochin China, Laos, and Cambodia, as well as southern Annam and the Central Highlands. Hanoi would not be represented at all. When word of this Dalat plan reached Fontainebleau, Pham Van Dong reacted with fury and broke off negotiations, much to d’Argenlieu’s delight. The two sides eventually returned to the table, but the deep divisions remained. Provisional agreements were drawn up on a range of economic issues, but the stubborn refusal of the French to discuss political issues—notably the status of Cochin China—rendered these agreements worthless to the Vietnamese delegation. Eight weeks of talks, Pham Van Dong concluded on September 10, as the conference drew to a close, had shown only that no basis for serious negotiations existed.
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Ho Chi Minh, not yet willing to abandon all hope, sent his delegation back to Vietnam while he stayed behind in Paris to make one last push for a deal. To reporters he emphasized the DRV’s need for allies and her willingness to go it alone if necessary. The United States, as always, loomed large in his mind. “Your country,” he told American journalist David Schoenbrun on September 11, “can play a vital role for peace in Southeast Asia. The memory of Roosevelt is still strong. You never had an empire, never exploited the Asian peoples. The example you set in the Philippines was an inspiration to all of us. Your ties with France are strong and durable and you have great influence in this country. I urge you to report to your people the need there is to swing the balance toward peace and independence before it is too late for all of us. Do not be blinded by this issue of Communism.”

To Schoenbrun’s reply that Americans did not think Communism was compatible with freedom, Ho nodded in understanding but said the Vietnamese people would not rest until true independence had been won. “If men you call Communists are the only men who lead the fight for independence, then Vietnam will be Communist. Independence is the motivating force, not Communism.… On the issue of independence and the unity of North and South we are all in agreement, Communists, Catholics, Republicans, peasants, workers. If we must, we will fight together for those aims.”

Schoenbrun marveled at the self-assured language. “But, President Ho, this is extraordinary. How can you hope to wage war against the French? You have no army, you have no modern weapons. Why, such a war would seem hopeless to you!”

“No, it would not be hopeless. It would be hard, desperate, but we could win.” History offered many examples of ragged bands defeating modern armies—think of the Yugoslav partisans against the Germans or, further back, simple American farmers taking on the mighty British Empire! “The spirit of man is more powerful than his own machines.” The Viet Minh, Ho stressed, would make full use of the swamps, the thick jungles, the mountains and caves, the terrain they knew so well. “It will be a war between an elephant and a tiger. If the tiger ever stands still the elephant will crush him with his mighty tusks. But the tiger does not stand still. He lurks in the jungle by day and emerges only at night. He will leap upon the back of the elephant, tearing huge chunks from his hide, and then he will leap back into the dark jungle. And slowly the elephant will bleed to death. That will be the war of Indochina.”
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The confident words masked deep private doubts. “Don’t leave me this way,” Ho despaired to Sainteny and Moutet on the same day as the Schoenbrun interview. “Arm me against those who would seek to displace me. You will not regret it.” Ho feared that radical elements among the Viet Minh would resort to force prematurely; perhaps he also feared for his own position of authority, should he return with nothing to show for two months of haggling. He assured the two Frenchmen that his government would respect a meaningful agreement but also warned them: “If we have to fight, we will fight. You will kill ten of us, and we will kill one of you, and in the end it is you who will be exhausted.”
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At midnight on the fourteenth, Ho slipped out of the Hotel Royal Monceau and made his way along the Avenue Hoche to Moutet’s apartment. The Frenchman was already in bed. Ho sat down beside him. One imagines the scene: the gaunt and goateed revolutionary and the portly and gray Moutet discussing the fate of Vietnam in a Paris bedroom in the dead of night. Before long, the two men have attached their initials to a partial agreement, which they call a Modus Vivendi. It seemingly safeguards most of the rights in Indochina that the French have sought, both at Dalat in April and at Fontainebleau, while offering little to the Vietnamese. As for the difficult political questions, it postpones these for future negotiations, which are to start no later than January 1947. Also included is a cease-fire between French and Vietnamese forces in the south, to take effect on October 30. No mention is made of ultimate independence for Vietnam.

Sainteny would later refer to the Modus Vivendi as a “pathetic” agreement that gave Ho “far less than he had hoped for when he came to France.” Just why the veteran revolutionary chose to sign is somewhat of a mystery. Perhaps he simply sought to buy time, both to prepare for war and to see if the November elections in France might produce a government dependent on Communist and Socialist support and more likely to make concessions. He told young supporters on September 15, thinking back to Blum’s promise in July: “Have confidence in Léon Blum, whatever may happen.”
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Later that day Ho left Paris, for the last time. Never again would he set foot in the city he knew so well—better, perhaps, than any other. Despite the numerous frustrations of the previous weeks, he had enjoyed his stay in key respects. He had taken time to visit many of his old Paris haunts, had mingled frequently with French intellectuals and politicians, and had devoured any and all newspapers, and overall the city and its culture undoubtedly stirred something deep in his soul. An intangible but real connection to the colonial overlord remained, despite his decades-long campaign to win independence for his country, and despite his sense that all-out war was drawing ever closer. Nor was he alone in this feeling. It’s a fascinating thing about many Vietnamese nationalists of the period, the degree to which they possessed complex and conflicting feelings about France. Said Ho to author Jean Lacouture earlier in the year: “A race such as yours which has given the world the literature of freedom will always find us friends.… If you only knew, monsieur, how passionately I reread Victor Hugo and Michelet year after year.”
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