The First Indochina War

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VIETNAM: THE IMPOSSIBLE WAR

The First Indochina War

Vietnam had a long history both as an independent kingdom and major power in its region,
and as a subjugated province of China; its people were both proud of their past glory and
painfully aware of their many years of subjugation. In the mid-nineteenth century, Vietnam
became a colony of France. And like other European possessions in Asia, it fell under the
control of Japan during World War II. After the defeat of Japan, the question arose of what was
to happen to Vietnam in the postwar world. There were two opposing forces attempting to answer
that question, both of them appealing to the United States for help. The French wanted to
reassert their control over Vietnam. Challenging them was a powerful nationalist movement within
Vietnam committed to creating an independent nation. The nationalists were organized into a
political party, the Vietminh, which had been created in 1941 and led ever since by Ho Chi Minh,
a communist educated in Paris and Moscow, and a fervent Vietnamese nationalist. The Vietminh had
fought against Japan throughout World War II (unlike the French colonial officials who had
remained in Vietnam during the war--as representatives of the Vichy regime--and had collaborated
with the Japanese). In the fall of 1945, after the collapse of Japan and before the Western
powers had time to return, the Vietminh declared Vietnam an independent nation and set up
a nationalist government under Ho Chi Minh in Hanoi.
Ho had worked closely during the war with American intelligence forces in Indochina
in fighting the Japanese; he apparently considered the United States something like an ally.
When the war ended in 1945, he began writing President Truman asking for support in his struggle
against the French. He received no reply to his letters, probably because no one in the State
Department had heard of him. At the same time, Truman was under heavy pressure from both the
British and the French to support France in its effort to reassert control in Vietnam. The
French argued that without Vietnam, their domestic economy would collapse. And since the
economic revival of Western Europe was quickly becoming one of Truman's top priorities, the
United States did nothing to stop the French as they moved back into Vietnam in 1946 and began to
struggle with the Vietminh to reestablish control over the country.
At first, the French had little difficulty reestablishing control. They drove Ho Chi
Minh out of Hanoi and into hiding in the countryside; and in 1949, they established a nominally
independent national government under the leadership of the former emperor, Bao Dai--an
ineffectual, westernized playboy unable to assert any real independent authority. The real power
remained in the hands of the French. But the Vietminh continued to challenge the French
dominated regime and slowly increased its control over large areas of the countryside. The
French appealed to the United States for support; and in February 1950, the Truman administration
formally recognized the Bao Dai regime and agreed to provide it with direct military and economic
aid. For the next four years, during what has become known as the First Indochina War, Truman
and then Eisenhower continued to support the French military campaign against the Vietminh; by
1954, by some calculations, the United States was paying 80% of the France's war costs. But the
war went badly for the French anyway. Finally, late in 1953, Vietminh forces engaged the French
in a major battle in the far northwest corner of the country, at Dien Bien Phu, an isolated and
almost indefensible site. The French were surrounded, and the battle turned into a prolonged
and horrible siege, with the French position steadily deteriorating. It was at this point that
the Eisenhower administration decided not to intervene to save the French. The defense of
Dien Bien Phu collapsed and the French government decided the time had come to get out. The
First Indochina War had come to an end.

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