Embers of War (84 page)

“Rightist tendencies” was political shorthand for lack of commitment, doubt, and combat fatigue. Officers, both junior and senior, were themselves not immune to these maladies as they contemplated the prospect of continued fighting and still more casualties among their men. One of them, a twenty-five-year-old company chief of peasant stock and bearing the initials N.T., years later recalled his feeling upon seeing his entire unit decimated. “You are going to die,” he had told himself in the midst of the action, “there is nothing more to think about.” Though shot in the head, he survived, and he soon rose in rank over the dead bodies of his immediate superiors. Ordered by commanders to launch an offensive against one of the strongpoints, he asked to postpone the attack for a few days because of the exhaustion of his men, who had spent nearly a week digging trenches. “Our men are already overly tired,” he said. “We will certainly win the battle if the attack occurs only one day later.” His plea was rejected. Only three of his seventy-one men survived the engagement. N.T. vowed quietly to himself that he would never again comply with that kind of order, and in later years he would gain the reputation among superiors as being “unruly” for his determination to minimize casualties among his troops.
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Senior commanders also had to contend with the possibility that a French force would arrive from Laos to relieve the garrison (they had become aware of Condor), and—more seriously—the possibility that the United States would intervene with massive airpower. Such a bombardment, they knew, would catch tens of thousands of Viet Minh infantrymen in the open and would surely also destroy the army’s forward supply depots at Tuan Giao. Even if none of this happened, even if everything went according to plan, victory at Dien Bien Phu might turn out to be a defeat if Navarre used this time—when much of the Viet Minh troop strength was concentrated here, in the remote northwest—to organize his defenses in the vital Red River Delta. The uncomfortable fact for Giap was that whereas Dien Bien Phu absorbed perhaps 5 percent of the French battle force in Indochina, it tied down as much as 50 percent of Viet Minh forces and the vast bulk of the military aid from China.

These were arguments for launching the third phase of the battle as soon as possible, and Giap took comfort from the fact that his logistical preparations for the final phase were now almost complete. Before dawn that morning, April 27, scores of Viet Minh trucks, their drivers taking advantage of the miserable weather and low cloud cover, had arrived near the battle zone, laden with ammunition. Similar-size deliveries had occurred in the days before that, some containing also 75mm recoilless guns and fuel.
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But timing was key. The Geneva Conference was under way, and within a week or two, it would turn its attention to Indochina. If Giap’s forces could score an all-out victory at Dien Bien Phu prior to then, it would be a giant boost to Viet Minh negotiators. By the same token, to fail before the eyes of the world by launching the assault prematurely would have potentially disastrous consequences at Geneva. Giap knew he had to choose his moment carefully.

III

JUST HOW THE DRV LEADERSHIP FELT ABOUT GENEVA, AND ABOUT
negotiations more broadly, is not easy to discern from the record, but it’s clear that top officials retained their earlier skepticism and uncertainty. They were poised, after all, to score a smashing victory at Dien Bien Phu, an outcome certain to undermine drastically the French public’s willingness to continue the war. In the Red River Delta, their forces now effectively controlled the central portion of the Hanoi-Haiphong road, while in the country as a whole perhaps 80 percent of the population lived in Viet Minh–held areas. Why risk negotiations in such a situation? In particular, why risk multilateral talks of the type Viet Minh diplomats had never taken part in before?

But in Ho Chi Minh’s mind there were also compelling reasons to give diplomacy a serious try, while remaining vigilant as always in pressing the military advantage. For one thing, the morale problem at Dien Bien Phu hinted at an important and growing problem for a revolutionary war now in its eighth year: The Vietnamese people, including those in liberated areas, were tired, were longing for a respite from the fighting, were showing signs of losing their fervor for the cause. They wanted an end to the severe economic dislocation necessitated by the demands of war, and they wanted better living standards. The balance of forces, however, still suggested the struggle could go on for a very long time. For vulnerable though the French were in large parts of Indochina, they retained the edge in firepower and had full command of the air. In Saigon and much of the Mekong Delta in the south, their position was strong and would likely remain so for a long time to come. There remained, moreover, the threat of American military intervention, a threat likely to increase as time went by and an outcome to be avoided if at all possible: Defeating France and her Vietnamese collaborators was difficult enough without also adding the mighty United States into the mix. “Our main enemy,” wrote party theoretician Truong Chinh of the internal deliberations that spring, was not France but “the U.S. empire.” As the French “grew weaker by the day,” the Americans “intervened more actively in Indochina by the day.”
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Keeping the United States out of Vietnam meant cultivating support for the DRV internationally, and that too argued for being open to diplomacy. Alienating world opinion by forswearing the chance for peace would be unwise. “We have always followed the situation in the world” and “coordinated with the wishes for peace of the people of the world,” one official said. A negotiated agreement would therefore be a “victory” as it met “the pressing needs of the world’s peace lovers.” In the view of deputy prime minister and foreign minister Pham Van Dong, the DRV needed “the sympathy and the support of all peoples” to contain its enemies and protect its sovereignty.”
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Party officials were less keen to talk about yet another possible consequence of a prolongation of the fighting, namely that the struggle would become increasingly fratricidal over time. Already now, Vietnamese were killing other Vietnamese in larger numbers. Viet Minh strategists remained confident they had the vast majority of people on their side, and they were as contemptuous as always of what party documents habitually referred to as the “puppet army” created by the French, but in quiet moments they expressed concern about the changing nature of the war. The revolutionary cause they championed was based on the principles of national unity and derived its legitimacy from its status as the only real representative of the populace. In the spring of 1954, the revolution was not yet seriously threatened, but how would things look in six months or a year, or in two years?

Above all, Ho Chi Minh knew, negotiations for an end to the war would have to be attempted in Geneva because his patrons in Moscow and Beijing said so. Repeatedly since the end of the Berlin conference in February, the Communist giants had made clear their desire for a political solution in Indochina and had even made their continued material and rhetorical backing of the war effort contingent on the DRV declaring a willingness to seek peace. The Soviet Union still sought improved relations with the West and also hoped to induce France to agree to a tacit quid pro quo—Moscow’s help in facilitating a settlement in Indochina in exchange for Paris saying
non merci
to the proposed European Defense Community. China, for her part, viewed the Geneva meeting as an opportunity to solidify her membership in the great-power club and to forestall an American military intervention near her southern borders. Both Communist powers perceived as well a chance to drive a wedge between the Western powers. Said premier and foreign minister Zhou Enlai on February 27, during a meeting with his associates in the Foreign Ministry: “While France seems interested in reaching a peaceful solution to the Indochina issue, the United States is not. Therefore, it seems that France is reluctant to let the United States put its nose into Vietnam.”
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But how to reach such a “peaceful solution”? The Kremlin came down early on the side of partition, a Korea-type solution that would temporarily divide Vietnam in half. Such a solution would respect France’s continuing strength in Cochin China while also acknowledging the Viet Minh’s effective control of large areas of Tonkin and Annam. It would serve China’s security needs as well, by forestalling an American intervention and by giving her a friendly “buffer” state on her southern frontier. And it would stop the war, if not forever, at least for a time. Already in late January 1954, Moscow instructed its ambassador in Paris to float the partition idea with French leaders. “There would be a provisional armistice line drawn at the 16th parallel,” a U.S intelligence assessment said of this Soviet overture, and “the French would evacuate Hanoi and the Tonkin Delta.”
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The French reacted with caution but did not rule out the idea, and the Soviets were further encouraged when the British government in subsequent weeks began making supportive noises about partition.

The Chinese too were attracted to the idea. Beijing’s ambassador in Moscow, Zhang Wentien, told Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov on March 6 that a division along the sixteenth parallel would be “very advantageous” for Ho Chi Minh and as such “should be accepted if it is put forward officially.” A few days later Zhou Enlai told Ho via telegram that conditions were ripe for a greater emphasis on the diplomatic struggle, and that, no matter what the likely outcome of the Geneva Conference, “we should actively participate in it.” Partition should be seriously considered, Zhou went on, because “if a ceasefire is to be achieved, it is better that a relatively fixed demarcation line be established so that [the Viet Minh] can control an area that is linked together.” As for where the line ought to be, the Chinese statesman singled out the sixteenth parallel as “one of our options.”
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The VWP Politburo met three times in March to discuss negotiating strategy for Geneva, more specifically the notion of partition. Details from the meetings are sketchy, but we can guess that the sessions were stormy. Earlier in the month, the DRV ambassador in Beijing, Hoan Van Hoang, had shown little enthusiasm for partition when his Soviet counterpart brought up the matter. How can you find a demarcation line, Hoang asked, when there are no front lines? Over time, though, as the early assault on Dien Bien Phu failed to yield a decisive victory, the thinking in the Politburo swung in favor of partition, or at least against outright opposition. Members agreed to consider the possibility, so long as the division was temporary. The demarcation line would reflect the balance of military forces and would be as far south as possible. A party statement avoided mention of partition but extolled Geneva as “a victory for the forces of democracy” that, “together with big victories in the military field,” would make “our people in the occupied areas happy, and the puppets confused and concerned.”
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VWP instructions concerning the May Day celebrations stressed the need to encourage the people to write petitions to the government to express their “support of the Geneva Conference with a view toward finding ways for peacefully solving the Korean problem and putting an end to the war in Indochina.”
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Still, it must have been with mixed feelings that Ho Chi Minh in late March arrived in Beijing, accompanied by Pham Van Dong, the DRV’s deputy prime minister and foreign minister, for a pre-Geneva strategy session. His powerful allies were telling him to take half a loaf rather than the whole thing, even though his forces were winning on the battlefield. This was hardly what he wanted to hear, even if he had his own reasons for exploring a compromise diplomatic settlement. He and his comrades had not fought for seven-plus years to gain only partial control of the country. Now he had to listen as Mao and Zhou urged him to score a victory at Dien Bien Phu and thereby achieve results at Geneva, but they also cautioned him to have “realistic expectations” regarding how much could be achieved in the negotiations—shorthand, in all probability, for the estimation that the DRV would not come away from the conference with control over all of Vietnam. The Vietnamese, according to Chinese sources, agreed on both points.
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From there the Vietnamese went on to Moscow, accompanied by Zhou Enlai, for meetings with top Kremlin leaders including Nikita Khrushchev and Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov. Khrushchev, emerging as the main man in the post-Stalin leadership struggle, shared Stalin’s general lack of interest in Indochina; like Stalin he saw struggle there mostly in terms of what it meant for European issues, and he hoped at Geneva to undermine the EDC, with its plan for German rearmament. Khrushchev cautioned his visitors against expecting great results from the conference but pledged—cryptically—that the Soviet Union would support the DRV’s interests. When Zhou Enlai returned to the Soviet capital later in April, Molotov insisted on the need to have a realistic Soviet-Chinese-Vietnamese strategy at Geneva, since the Western powers would surely stand up for their interests. But even though the Americans would no doubt try to sabotage the conference, Molotov continued, savvy negotiating by the Communist allies could bring forth a political settlement on favorable terms. Zhou Enlai agreed.
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Much would depend, though, on the outcome at Dien Bien Phu. As April drew to a close and the various delegations arrived in Geneva, the Communist allies were in full accord that General Giap needed to score a knockout blow against the French garrison, and to do so before the Indochina discussions began in earnest—or at least before they reached their critical stage. Mao Zedong, always a keen student of military tactics and strategy, had insisted already on April 3 that the fortress “should be conquered resolutely” and that once conditions were ready, the Viet Minh should start a general attack as swiftly as possible.
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Giap had waited, determined to have every piece in place before initiating the final phase of the battle. He could delay no longer.