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To many readers of the novel, Pyle seems singularly naïve, but his views on the Third Force are not really at odds with what many actual U.S. officials felt at the time. Greene almost certainly heard this line of argument from others besides Hochstetter—including at second hand from bitter French colonial officers.
The only way to make them so convinced was to build up a genuine nationalist force that was neither pro-Communist nor obligated to France and that could rally the public to its side.
Tall and unarmed, he was an easy target, but he showed complete disregard for his own physical safety, even when at Phat Diem he found himself in the midst of heavy fighting. (This action too features in the novel.) Greene was not at this point pro-Communist, but the talent and fierce dedication of the Viet Minh impressed him. In his article for Life, he acknowledged that many of Ho Chi Minh’s supporters were motivated by idealism and were not part of any monolithic Stalinist movement.
Even worse from the editors’ perspective, Greene saw little chance of stopping Communism in Indochina. The article urged France to prepare herself for retreat from the region and warned Washington that not all social-political problems could be overcome with force. Hughes and Luce, aghast at this message, rejected the piece, despite the fact that Greene also offered up a crude articulation of the domino theory of the type that Fowler ridicules in the novel.
Maybe he was trying to soften the blow of the impending defeat. But it’s also the case that he retained in 1952 a good measure of sympathy for the French cause, and for European colonialism more generally.
Greene ridiculed the charge that he was engaged in espionage—the whole episode, he later said, was a comic adventure featuring funny little Frenchmen tailing him, a deluded old general, and a jolly companion (Trevor-Wilson) with an estimable knowledge of Chinese massage parlors.
Now, two decades later, with the onset of the Cold War and the McCarthyite witch hunts, his view grew darker still. How, he wondered, could a people be at once so smugly self-righteous in their conviction that the American way was best for everyone and so obsessively fearful of the Red menace?25
In one recently declassified memorandum from the period, Lansdale speaks of Thé’s charisma and political strength and calls Thé crucial to achieving America’s aims in Vietnam.32
Greene spent significant time only with one side in this dispute, which no doubt colored his perceptions, but there’s ample additional evidence that in the early months of 1952, relations between French and American officials in Vietnam were more strained than ever.
had barely set foot in the city when he experienced firsthand the French mistrust of all things American.
Simpson initially brushed this tension off as unrepresentative and as stemming from his own lack of experience in the Far East, but he quickly changed his mind. It dawned on him, he later wrote, that “the two so-called allies saw the future of the Indochinese peninsula from entirely different optics.”
He got a fuller taste of that rivalry as soon as he ventured into the field. Although the French High Command had final say on the distribution of American military matériel, a stipulation in the bilateral agreement allowed the U.S. Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) to make suggestions regarding that distribution.
Typically, the visits would take months to schedule, due to “operational requirements” claimed by the French. On the appointed day, French drivers would arrive hours behind schedule and then inexplicably get lost en route to the post. When
They felt we were muscling in on their territory, spreading wild ideas about freedom and independence among the local population, and showing a dangerous tendency toward criminal naïvete in a region we knew little about.”36
On a later occasion, Simpson and Greene, both of them hungover from a late night of carousing, found themselves seated side by side on an early morning flight to Laos.
these Yanks never made a pretense of blending in. Even those who were more low-key and subtle tended to separate themselves from everyone but fellow Americans—a point Congressman John F. Kennedy, it will be recalled, had noted on his visit the previous autumn.
As French officials well understood, their military effort in Indochina served American interests at least as much as it served theirs. If U.S. advice became too meddlesome, or if the administration sought to tie strings to its aid, what then? Might the Paris government simply withdraw from Indochina entirely?2
The possibility of a French withdrawal seemingly grew more real that January, as Paris lawmakers prepared to begin a full-dress debate on Indochina in the National Assembly. De Lattre’s death on January 11, just a few days before the start of the debate, set a somber mood for the proceedings, and it was soon clear that a broad cross section of delegates questioned France’s continued commitment to the war. Views that a year earlier would have been labeled “defeatist,” or “unpatriotic,” were openly expressed, and not merely by the left.
I have never advocated capitulation, but I have asked and am still asking that every avenue be explored for an agreement with the Viet Minh.
Two other factors no doubt shaped the outcome of the vote. One was the growing nationalist restiveness in North Africa, particularly in Morocco and Tunisia.
The alternative view, and the one that won out in the end, was that early disengagement from Vietnam would only intensify nationalist fervor in the Maghreb. (If the Vietnamese can win independence, why can’t we?) For the sake of the empire, then, France had to stay the course in Vietnam.
The question brought to the fore a crucially important difference of opinion among the three Western powers regarding the Cold War in Asia—and, by extension, the ultimate stakes in Vietnam.
France and Britain disagreed. Partly they did so on narrow selfish grounds—the French wanted no diversion of resources from Indochina, while the British feared that Beijing might retaliate for such an assault by attacking Hong Kong or placing it under economic pressure. But Paris and London also sought to avoid escalating Cold War tensions or doing anything to antagonize unduly Moscow and Beijing.
Such a bargain, many analysts speculated, could salvage something out of the Indochina wreckage and was in any event worth pursuing.9
Harry Truman and Dean Acheson had no love for European colonialism, certainly. But better to have the French there than to face the prospect of a Communist victory, which was sure to follow if France withdrew or negotiated a settlement with Ho Chi Minh.
ONE DETECTS SUBTLE BUT IMPORTANT DIFFERENCES HERE IN HOW the French and British on the one hand and the Americans on the other approached the matter of diplomacy with Communist adversaries. Partly the divergence can be chalked up to Washington’s hegemonic position—top dogs are seldom much interested in compromise. But other factors were at work as well.
Only too familiar with imperfect outcomes, with solutions that were neither black nor white but various shades of gray, most European statesmen in the post–World War II era presumed that national interests were destined to conflict and saw diplomacy as a means of reconciling them. They were prepared to make the best of a bad bargain, to accept the inevitability of failures as well as successes in international affairs.
Truman and the Democrats knew all too well that GOP critics were ready to pounce on any diplomatic deal, to equate compromise with “appeasement,” and to revive support for General Douglas MacArthur’s argument that there was “no substitute for victory.”
Sure enough, when the election campaign geared up in the spring, Republican spokesmen asserted that the White House had been foolish to agree to negotiations on Korea, and that it was compounding the error by continuing them in the face of incontrovertible evidence that the Communists were using the time to build up their forces there.13
More and more, however, hawks like Bidault were becoming an endangered species in Paris, and to a great many others, even a disadvantageous deal now looked better than continuing a seemingly endless war against a determined foe backed by China.
China would never permit the defeat of the Viet Minh, he said publicly, and therefore an armistice should be sought. Negotiations were under way to end the fighting in Korea; why not seek an international agreement for Indochina? The Americans were horrified. They pressured Letourneau to retract his statement, and Acheson assured the National Security Council that the Frenchman had misspoken:
More to the point, Acheson elaborated, Washington must “impress upon the French the folly of giving up the offensive strategy so brilliantly launched and carried out by de Lattre in favor of a mere holding operation.”14
position. The United States, it declared, would oppose negotiations leading to a French withdrawal. Should Paris nevertheless prefer such a course, the United States would seek maximum support from her allies for collective action, including the possibility of air and naval support for the defense of Indochina.
campaign. In Vietnam, de Lattre’s successor as commander in chief, Raoul Salan, had been dealt a blow right from the start, having to order the Hoa Binh evacuation in February and then put the best face on the operation. (He described the retreat as a “tactical maneuver” that would free up more of his troops to tackle the danger in the Red River Delta.)
Salan was elegant, courteous, and reserved; he had about him an air of mystery. As de Gaulle said of him, “there was something slippery and inscrutable in the character of this capable, clever, and in some respects beguiling figure.”
It would be an agonizing choice for the French, Giap knew: If Salan accepted battle in the northwest, he would draw crucial resources away from the delta to fight in an area desperately short of airfields and passable roads for his motorized troops.19
Intelligence reports suggested it would be somewhere west of the Red River, but both the strength and direction of his thrust remained frustratingly unclear.
For the French High Command, the result was reminiscent of the border defeats of October 1950, even if this time the French human and territorial losses were lower. A dispirited French reserve officer summed up the feeling of many: “It looks as though from now on the Indo-Chinese war is to be a permanent nightmare.”26
Operation Lorraine was a miserable failure, costing some 1,200 Expeditionary Corps casualties altogether and failing to draw Giap into major combat. What’s more, the Viet Minh commander had taken advantage of the French diversion of resources to the operation to increase infiltration behind the De Lattre Line.28
In the Tai highlands, as in so much of Vietnam, the terrain and vegetation gave the Viet Minh the choice of seeking or refusing combat, of quickly dispersing when danger arose and reassembling later.
The terrain caused other problems for the Expeditionary Corps. There were few clear landmarks, and maps of the region were approximate, making navigation difficult at best. Usable roads were essentially nonexistent, and French units often found themselves wielding machetes to cut paths through the thick forest vegetation. In the valleys, the bamboo slowed movement, as did the tall elephant grass on the ridges. Although mules were sometimes available for heavy weapons and radios, troops generally had to lug their own food, water, and ammunition. Shortages abounded, not least with respect to
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This is what the helplessly wounded and abandoned French soldier most dreaded: not that enemy troops would find him, but that he would be set upon by the rats.30
The myth arose among French Union soldiers that the enemy was in his natural element in these highlands, able to move swiftly and easily through even the most difficult terrain and to subsist on the most meager of rations. In fact, most Viet Minh troops were not from the region at all, but from the coastal plains and the two deltas. They too were unfamiliar with much that they encountered and had to adjust to the twilight under the jungle canopy and to the new living conditions.
It was brutally difficult, and captured French officers “told us later they could not understand how we could have done it. They did not comprehend how our forces could appear … hundreds of kilometers from our bases. One French officer said it was a surprise to see our peasants carrying supplies for the Army, without soldiers guarding them. For the French always have to guard their porters.”
The French were in an insoluble dilemma, Giap noted: “Either they try to extend their strong-points once again, with their depleted manpower, in which case they spread themselves thin, or else they move out of their strong-points, which frees territory and population to us.”32
Giap’s intelligence officers told him that the French had only five weak battalions in place; in reality, they gathered nine full-strength battalions, supported by aircraft. Having constructed what they referred to as a base aéro-terrestre (air-ground base), the French girded for battle.33
Fierce fighting ensued, and some outposts changed hands several times, but the defenses held and the attackers withdrew. Viet Minh losses were heavy. Giap paused, in order for the rest of his force to arrive.
Still undervaluing the size of the defending force, Giap launched his second assault after dark on November 30, using thick-packed herds of water buffalo to clear paths through the mines and punch holes in the barbed wire ringing the airstrip. Again he was beaten back with heavy casualties.
Most people continued to support the Viet Minh, if only because of their leading role in the independence struggle, but there were worrying signs of disaffection, not least among the peasantry, who formed the backbone of the revolution.
By 1952, the source of manpower from cities had more or less dried up, in part due to French success in disrupting the Viet Minh apparatus in urban areas. The Viet Minh were forced to use more aggressive methods to obtain conscripts in the rural areas, creating further alienation among peasants. There were even widespread reports that some peasants had migrated to other areas to avoid serving.39
