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

by Fredrik Logevall

The differences, to be sure, did not go away. As we shall see, there were still those in Washington who were convinced that the United States was on the wrong side of history in supporting French colonial ambitions in Southeast Asia. At the field level in Indochina itself, that conviction was even more widely held. But the thrust of high-level policy was now plainly going in a new direction, which is evident in hindsight but was perceived as well by many at the time. When world leaders convened in San Francisco in late April and May to form the United Nations, senior U.S. officials did not raise the issue of trusteeship for Indochina. On the contrary, U.S. secretary of state Edward Stettinius assured French foreign minister Georges Bidault with remarkable aplomb that “the record is entirely innocent of any official statement of the U.S. government questioning, even by implication, French sovereignty over Indochina.” James Dunn of the State Department’s European desk, a deeply conservative man whom Eleanor Roosevelt once called a “fascist” for his views on colonial matters, spoke in similar terms in San Francisco and worked hard behind the scenes to create a pro-French consensus. A report prepared for Harry Truman on June 2 acknowledged that “independence sentiment in the area is believed to be increasingly strong” but declared that “the United States recognizes French sovereignty over Indochina.” When Truman met Chiang Kai-shek in Washington some weeks later, he dismissed ...