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

by Fredrik Logevall

he had become increasingly persuaded of the Dien Bien Phu battle’s enormous symbolic importance—far greater than the strategic value of the actual territory in contest—and of the very real possibility that its fall could trigger an immediate French withdrawal from Indochina.

As tourists began arriving on the Mall to catch the explosion of cherry blossoms, a few blocks away in Foggy Bottom, fourteen somber-faced men filed into a conference room at the State Department. In the months and years to come, this meeting would take on mythical status, in part due to the reporting of Washington Post correspondent Chalmers M. Roberts, and in part due to the statements at the meeting by Senate minority leader Lyndon Johnson,

The second article bore the title “The Day We Didn’t Go to War,” a standard bit of journalistic hyperbole that nevertheless contained more than a grain of truth.

He also met with Henri Bonnet, the French ambassador to Washington, telling him that a negotiated peace would equal surrender and that partition of Vietnam—an idea slowly gaining currency in London and elsewhere, in which the Viet Minh would have control of the northern portion—was synonymous with defeat.

In fact, though, British participation was essential, at least under present circumstances, as Dulles made clear when Ambassadors Percy Spender of Australia and Sir Leslie Munro of New Zealand arrived at his home the following afternoon.

At this point, Dulles rose and walked over to a bookcase. He pulled out the first volume of Churchill’s monumental history of the Second World War.

According to his assistant Sherman Adams, the president agreed “to send American forces to Indo-China under certain strict conditions”:

Some assert that he deliberately used the April 3 meeting to isolate hawks within the administration such as Radford and Vice President Nixon, whose desire for direct military intervention he did not share.

the best argument is the second one, or a variant thereof: that Eisenhower actively contemplated taking the United States directly into the war and sought a blank check from Congress to free his hands and strengthen his bargaining position vis-à-vis allies, or at least that he wanted to keep open the option of military involvement.

The Laniel government had decided formally to request American intervention at Dien Bien Phu, in the form of Operation Vulture.

When a plainly skeptical George Humphrey, secretary of the treasury, asked whether the Dullesian notion of United Action might not eventually lead to “a policy of policing all the governments of the world,” Eisenhower responded firmly. Indochina, he lectured Humphrey, was the first in a row of dominoes. If she fell, her neighbors would soon topple as well.

Dulles began with a falsehood, asserting that the Joint Chiefs of Staff had recommended, two weeks earlier, the use of air and naval power in Indochina, and that consequently carriers had been deployed from Manila.

Eden resisted. His government could not enter such an agreement before the Geneva Conference, he said, and he indicated skepticism that any allied intervention could be confined to the air and sea. Ground forces would inevitably soon follow.

“I asked this Robertson whether Dulles had entirely given up any idea of trying to play the Chinese off against the Russians at Geneva. He scorned such a thought, said it was no use, never would be, what good had it done you (British) to recognize China, they just spurn you. A wholly inelastic and opinionated man.”

Dulles tried in vain to get his hosts to grant full sovereignty to the Associated States (Bidault’s response: What would be the point of continuing the struggle if Indochina was no longer tied to France?)

“It is hoped the United States will not have to send troops there, but if this government cannot avoid it, the administration must face up to the situation and dispatch forces. Therefore, the United States must go to Geneva and take a positive stand for united action by the free world.

If Dulles and Eisenhower were displeased with Nixon’s choice of words, they didn’t show it. Dulles teased Nixon on the phone about getting his name in the paper and assured him that the president was not disturbed by what he had said. Eisenhower, in a subsequent phone conversation, told Nixon not to worry, he probably would have said the same thing himself.

He muttered dejectedly: “If only Ho Chi Minh were on our side we could do something about the situation. But unfortunately he is the enemy.”

Nobody really understood what the Frenchman was saying. “[He] said he was casting himself to the wolves, into the waves, under the train, but we could not quite make out which wolves, waves, train.”

According to Bidault, the American took him aside during an intermission and asked him whether atomic bombs could be effective at Dien Bien Phu.

In early April, a study group in the Pentagon examined the possibility of using atomic weapons at Dien Bien Phu and concluded that three tactical A-bombs, properly employed, would be sufficient to obliterate the Viet Minh effort there.

Admiral Radford used this finding to suggest the use of the A-bomb to the NSC on April 7.

National Security Adviser Robert Cutler raised the matter with Eisenhower and Nixon the next morning, and they replied that atomic weapons would likely not be effective at Dien Bien Phu. But they agreed, according to the meeting note taker, that “we might consider saying to the French that we had never yet given them any ‘new weapons’ and if they wanted some now for possible use, we might give them a few.”

Dulles himself, at this very Paris meeting, formally raised the matter of atomic weapons and their possible use, though without explicit reference to Indochina.

Dulles produced a draft letter, addressed to Bidault, stating that while U.S. intervention at Dien Bien Phu was now impossible, Washington was nevertheless ready to move “armed forces” into Indochina, provided France and other allies so desired, for the purpose of defending Southeast Asia. The letter was handed to Eden, who skimmed it and passed it on to Bidault. Several minutes ticked by as he read it and considered his options. He was still primarily interested in Dien Bien Phu, and he remained leery of internationalization, but perhaps this was a way to salvage something out of the wreckage. He cleared his throat and said yes, he would be prepared to receive the letter formally.51 Suddenly events stood at a new watershed: United Action was back with a bang, and the war seemed about to be internationalized.

The prime minister said he doubted Britain would be willing to help save Indochina for France when she had not been willing to save India for herself. It was almost incomprehensible, Radford confided to Richard Nixon three days later, that the same Churchill who had understood the seriousness of the Communist menace so fully back in 1947 and 1948 could make such a foolish statement, could equate the two crises in terms of their importance.57

It did not help Radford’s cause that British officials judged him a rather dim bulb, lacking in subtlety and always seeming, as one said, to be “raring for a scrap” with Beijing.

In Washington, Dwight Eisenhower, sounding very much the hawk, fumed about London’s obstructionism and “morbid obsession” with World War III.

It would be a “little war,” and under the administration’s massive retaliation policy, such interventions were to be avoided—nations

Viet Minh forces in Indochina in late April 1954, as superimposed on a map of the United States, were spread from Vermont down to Savannah, Georgia.

Fighting had been raging, in this analogy, around a fort near Rochester, New York, while nightly attacks were common in New England, in the Carolinas, and with thrusts made into western Pennsylvania.

Most of the paratroopers and legionnaires had now been in action for at least forty-five days—the point after which, studies of World War II soldiers show, fatigue no longer causes merely dangerous carelessness but physical and emotional breakdown.

Grauwin meanwhile faced an enemy of a different sort, as maggots invaded the infirmary and laid their eggs under bloody bandages and plaster casts. “At night,” Grauwin later recalled, “it was a shocking sight to watch those repugnant little white worms moving over the hands, the faces, and in the ears of the sleeping wounded.” He tried to reassure the panic-stricken men that the maggots, by eating dead and infected tissue, were hastening the healing process.

On the night of April 23–24, one of the mostly American-piloted C-119 “Flying Boxcars” had been hit by two 37mm shells from a Soviet antiaircraft gun. The pilot made it back to base, but the next day the American pilots, who were being paid roughly $2,000 a month for the job, announced they would no longer make the run to Dien Bien Phu; the risks were simply too great, and the French fighter pilots whose job was flak suppression were not doing a good enough job.

Few had mosquito nets, and malaria was endemic. Quinine to treat the illness was in short supply, so much so that soldiers would have to pass around a cup of water containing one dissolved tablet, take a sip, and send it on.

Ton That Tung remained the only real surgeon on his side, and along with his six assistants he waged a hopeless struggle to treat the wounded, lacking modern drugs and instruments and sometimes forced to operate while standing knee-deep in water.

With no electrocoagulators at their disposal, the team resorted to touching the blood vessels with white-hot platinum wire.

The Politburo of the Vietnamese Workers Party (VWP) was concerned enough about flagging morale to discuss the matter in a meeting on April 19.

“Rightist tendencies” was political shorthand for lack of commitment, doubt, and combat fatigue.

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.

in the country as a whole perhaps 80 percent of the population lived in Viet Minh–held areas.

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.

The Kremlin came down early on the side of partition, a Korea-type solution that would temporarily divide Vietnam in half.

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.”

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.

The Vietnamese, according to Chinese sources, agreed on both points.

the Communist allies were in full accord that General Giap needed to score a knockout blow against the French garrison,

“Not another man, not another shell, my friend. You’re a para. You’re there to get yourself killed.”38

A Viet Minh operator who had been eavesdropping broke in and told him not to wreck the set just yet—a song was coming on. Through the static Pouget could hear the strains of “Chant des Partisans,” a wartime anthem of the French Resistance.

Some hours earlier de Castries and his principal subordinates had concluded the game was up, and that a breakout would only result in a massacre.