Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam

by Fredrik Logevall

These officials may have taken their cue from the president. Over the final weeks of 1944, his steadfastness on the issue of France’s return to Indochina had begun to falter, due mostly to British intransigence and perhaps also to his own rapidly failing health. London officials wanted explicit presidential approval for a new plan to use French commandos for an operation inside Indochina aimed at destroying Japanese communications. Roosevelt at first denied the request, but on January 4, 1945, he agreed to look the other way while the saboteurs were deployed. He may have believed that the operation would yield a significant payoff in the war effort, and that the French deployment was too small to make a meaningful difference to the French effort to reclaim control over Indochina. But it’s also possible he had shifted his position and was now prepared to entertain the possibility that France could return to Indochina if she promised to implement sweeping reforms and set a firm timetable for independence.