Indochina and the Second World War

While hindsight and hypotheticals are always tempting diversion, in looking at the broad picture of Southeast Asia at the end of the Second World War, it cannot be ignored that there were several conflicting movements: generic Western anticommunism that saw the French as protector of the area from Communist expansion, nationalist and anticolonialist movements that wanted independence from the French, and Communists who indeed would like to expand. The lines were not always clear, and some alliances were of convenience.

Prior to his death, Franklin D. Roosevelt made numerous comments about not wanting the French to regain control of Indochina.

In 1999, former U.S. Secretary of Defense and architect of the U.S. involvement in Vietnam Robert McNamara wrote that both sides had missed opportunities. The U.S. had both ignored its own Office of Strategic Services (OSS) intelligence reports on Ho's nationalism, and failed, when the Truman Administration became suspicious he was merely a Soviet pawn, to probe the situation. He found U.S. claims unconvincing that China was a threat, given a millenium of Sino-Vietnamese enmity, as well as Dean Acheson's claim that the French "blackmailed" the U.S. into supporting them. On Ho's part, McNamara believes they misinterpreted the lack of U.S. response to be equivalent to enmity, and, allowed themselves to be blackmailed by the Soviets and Chinese.

1936

In France itself, an anti-fascist Popular Front, included the Center, Left, and Communists, stated a new policy for all French colonies, not just Indochina. A corresponding Indochinese Democratic Front formed.

An unpopular Governor General was replaced, encouraging Vietnamese nationalists to meet a French commission of Inquiry with lists of grievances. By the time the commission arrived, however, the Leftists were now not just members of an opposition, but part of a government concerned about Japanese expansion. Socialist Minister for the Colonies Marius Moutet, in September, sent a message to French officials in Saigon, "You will maintain public order...the improvement of the political and economic situation is our preoccupation but...French order must reign in Indochina as elsewhere." Moutet's Popular Front failed in actually liberalizing the situation, and he was to be involved in a greater failure a decade later.

1937

Throughout East and Southeast Asia, tensions had been building between 1937 and 1941, as Japan expanded into China. The Franklin D. Roosevelt regarded this as an infringement on U.S. interests in China. The U.S. had already accepted an apology and indemnity for the Japanese bombing of the USS Panay, a gunboat on the Yangtze River in China.

1938

The French Popular Front fell, and the Indochinese Democratic Front went underground. When a new French government, still under the Third French Republic, formed in August 1938, among its principal concerns were security of metropolitan France as well as its empire. Among its first acts was to name General Georges Catroux governor general of Indochina. He was the first military governor general since French civilian rule had begun in 1879, following the conquest starting in 1858.

The appointment of Catroux, the first military governor general since civilian rule began in 1879, reflected the single greatest concern of the new government: defense of the homeland, defense of the empire. Catroux's immediate concern was with Japan, who were actively fighting in nearby China.

1939

Both the French and Indochinese Communist parties were outlawed.

1940

After the defeat of France, with an armistice on June 22, 1940, roughly two-thirds of the country was put under direct German military control. The remaining part of southeast France, and the French colonies, were under a nominally independent government, headed by the First World War hero, Marshal Henri Petain, with its capital at Vichy. Japan, not yet allied with Germany, still asked for German help in stopping French supplies, coming from Indochina, to China.

Vichy, Indochina, and Japan

Catroux, who had first asked the U.K. for support, had no source of military assistance from outside France, stopped the trade to China to avoid further provoking the Japanese. A Japanese verification group, headed by MG Issaku Nishimura entered Indochina on June 25.

On the same day that Nishimura arrived, Vichy dismissed Catroux, for independent foreign contact. He was replaced by Vice Admiral Jean Decoux, who commanded French naval forces in the Far East, and was based in Saigon. Ducoux and Catroux were in general agreement about policy, and considered managing Nakamura the first priority. Ducoux had additional worries. The senior British admiral in the area, on the way from Hong Kong to Singapore, visited Ducoux and told him that he might be ordered to sink Ducoux's flagship, with the implicit suggestion that Ducoux could save his ships by taking them to Singapore, which appalled Ducoux. While the British had not yet attacked French ships that would not go to the side of the Allies, that would happen at Mers-el-Kabir in North Africa within two weeks; it is not known if that was suggested to, or suspected by, Ducoux. Deliberately delaying, Ducoux did not arrive in Hanoi until July 20, while Catroux stalled Nishimura on basing negotiations, also asking for U.S. help.

Reacting to the initial Japanese presence in Indochina, on July 5, the U.S. Congress passed the Export Control Act, banning the shipment of aircraft parts and key minerals and chemicals to Japan, which was followed three weeks later by restrictions on the shipment of petroleum products and scrap metal as well.

Ducoux, on August 30, managed to get an agreement between the French Ambassador in Tokyo and the Japanese Foreign Minister, promising to respect Indochinese integrity in return for cooperation against China. Nishimura, on September 20, gave Ducoux an ultimatum: agree to the basing, or the 5th Division, known to be at the border, would enter.

Japan entered Indochina on September 22, 1940. An agreement was signed, and promptly violated, in which Japan promised to station no more than 6,000 troops in Indochina, and never have more than 25,000 transiting the colony. Rights were given for three airfields, with all other Japanese forces forbidden to enter Indochina without Vichy consent. Immediately after the signing, a group of Japanese officers, in a form of insubordination not uncommon in the Japanese military, attacked the border post of Dong Dang, laid siege to Lam Son, which, four days later, surrendered. There had been 40 killed, but 1,096 troops had deserted.

With the signing of the Tripartite Pact on September 27, 1940, creating the Axis of Germany, Japan, and Italy, Ducoux had new grounds for worry: the Germans could pressure the homeland to support their ally, Japan.

Japan apologized for the Lam Song incident on October 5. Ducoux relieved the senior commanders he believed should have anticipated the attack, but also gave orders to hunt down the Lam Song deserters, as well as Viet Minh who had entered Indochina while the French seemed preoccupied with Japan.

Indochina after the German conquest of France

Roosevelt formalized aid to China in 1940 and 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt gave credits to the Chinese Government for the purchase of war supplies, as it put economic pressure on Japan.

The United States was the main supplier of the oil, steel, iron, and other commodities needed by the Japanese military as it became bogged down by Chinese resistance but, in January, 1940, Japan abrogated the existing treaty of commerce with the United States. Although this did not lead to an immediate embargo, it meant that the Roosevelt Administration could now restrict the flow of military supplies into Japan and use this as leverage to force Japan to halt its aggression in China. After January 1940, the United States combined a strategy of increasing aid to China through larger credits and the Lend-Lease program with a gradual move towards an embargo on the trade of all militarily useful items with Japan.

Through much of the war, the French colonial government had largely stayed in place, as the Vichy government was on reasonably friendly terms with Japan. Japan had not entered Indochina until 1941, so the conflicts from 1939 to the fall of France had little impact on a colony such as Indochina. The Japanese permitted the French to put down nationalist rebellions in 1940.

1941

A contributing factor to the 1941 escalations by Japan, however, resulted when Japan expanded its position in Indochina.

Beginnings of a new anti-colonial force

In February, Ho Chi Minh returned and established his base in a cave at Pac Bo, near the Sino-Vietnamese border.

The Eighth Plenum of the Indochinese Communist Party convened in May. It decided that independence was its first priority rather than ideology, so established the "League for the Independence of Vietnam" (Viet Nam Doc Lap Dong Minh Hoi, Viet Minh for short) was established. All political factions were welcome if they supported action against the Japanese and French; the Communist revolution could occur later.

Vichy agreements with Japan about Indochina

Vichy signed the Protocol Concerning Joint Defense and Joint Military Cooperation on July 29. This agreement defined the Franco-Japanese relationship for Indochina, until the Japanese abrogated it in March 1945. It gave the Japanese a total of eight airfields, allowed them to have more troops present, and to use the Indochinese financial system, in return for a fragile French autonomy.

In late November, the United States told the Japanese that it must give up all occupied territories in Indochina and China, and withdraw from the Axis. Especially with U.S. MAGIC communications intelligence on the Japanese diplomatic correspondents, war seemed imminent. A "warning of a state of war" went to U.S. forces in the Pacific.

24,000 Japanese troops sailed, in December, from Indochina to Malaya.

1942

The Chinese organized the Dong Min Hoi coalition to gain intelligence from Indochina, a coalition dominated by the VNQDD. The only actual assets in Indochina, however, were Viet Minh.

During the Japanese occupation, even during French administration, the Viet Minh exiled to China had an opportunity to quietly rebuild their infrastructure. They had been strongest in Tonkin, the northern region, so moving south from China was straightforward. They had a concept of establishing "base areas" (Chien Khu), often mountainous jungle. Of these areas, the "homeland" of the VM was in the Viet Bac near around Bac Can. (see map

Additional Chien Khu developed in Yen Bai, Thai N'Guyen (the "traditional" stronghold of the PCI), Quang N'Gai, Pac Bo, Ninh Binh and Dong Trieu. As did many revolutionary movements, part of building their base was providing "shadow government" services. They attacked landlords and moneylenders, as well as providing various useful services. They offered education, which contained substantial amounts of political indoctrination.

They collected taxes, often in the form of food supplies, intelligence on enemy movement, and service as laborers rather than in money. They formed local militias, which provided trained individuals, but they were certainly willing to use violence against reluctant villagers. Gradually, they moved this system south, although not obtaining as much local support in Annam, and especially Cochin China. While later organizations would operate from Cambodia into the regions of South Vietnam that corresponded to Cochin China, this was well in the future.

Some of their most important sympathizers included educated civil servants and soldiers, who provided clandestine human-source intelligence from their workplaces, as well as providing counterintelligence on French and Japanese plans.

In August, Ho, while meeting with Chinese Communist Party officials, was held, for two years, by the Kuomintang.

1943

To make the Dong Minh Hoi an effective intelligence operation, the Chinese released Ho and put him in charge, replacing the previously Kuomintang-affiliated Vietnamese nationalist.

1944

In 1944, Ho, then in China, had requested a United States visa to go to San Francisco to make Vietnamese language broadcasts of material from the U.S. Office of War Information, the U.S. official or "white" propaganda. The visa was denied.

By August, Ho convinced the Kuomintang commander to support his return to Vietnam, leading 18 guerillas against the . Accordingly, Ho returned to Vietnam in September with eighteen men trained and armed by the Chinese. Discovering that the ICP had planned a general uprising in the Viet Bac, he disapproved, but encouraged the establishment of "armed propaganda" teams.

1945 to the Japanese surrender

The Japanese, on March 9, revoked the French administrative control and took them prisoner. This had the secondary effect of cutting off much Western intelligence about the Japanese in Indochina. They retained Bao Dai as a nominal leader.

Ho's forces rescued an American pilot in March. Washington ordered Patti to do whatever was necessary to reestablish the intelligence flow, and the OSS mission was authorized to contact Ho. He asked to meet Gen. Claire Chennault, the U.S. air commander, and that was agreed, under the condition he did not ask for supplies or active support.

The visit was polite but without substance. Ho, however, asked for the minor favor of an autographed picture of Chennault. Later, Ho used that innocent item to indicate, to other Northern groups, that he had U.S. support. Following the Japanese assumption of power in March 1945, they created a government under Bao Dai. He invited Ngo Dinh Diem to become Prime Minister but, after receiving no response, turned to Trang Trong Kim and formed a cabinet of French-trained but nationalist ministers.

His authority extended only to Tonkin and Annam; the Japanese simply replaced the former French officials in Cochin China; Cao Dai and Hoa Hao members also gained power there.

U.S. postwar policy

Franklin D. Roosevelt had expressed a strong preference for national self-determination, and was not notably pro-French. He quotes Cordell Hull's memoirs, saying that Roosevelt

entertained strong views on independence for French Indo-China. That French dependency stuck in his mind as having been the springboard for the Japanese attack on the Phillipines, Malaya, and the Dutch East Indies. He could not but remember the devious conduct of the Vichy Government in granting Japan the right to station troops there, without any consultation with us but with an effort to make the world believe we approved.

After his death, however, the Truman administration, having experienced very real confrontations such as the Berlin Blockade in 1948-1949, where the French were allies in dealing with the Blockade. French forces also had a key the defense of Western Europe from the Soviet expansion that had already taken much of Eastern Europe. Truman saw the French as necessary allies. The rise of the Chinese Communists in 1949 and the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950 strengthened the hand of those who saw resistance to Communism in East and Southeast Asia as dominating all other issues there. Ousted Chinese Kuomintang under Chiang Kai-Shek, exiled to Taiwan, had strong U.S. political allies such as Claire Chennault. Increasingly, and especially with the rise of Joe McCarthy, there was also, at the public level, a reflexive condemnation of anything with the slightest Communist connection, or even generally leftist.

It should be observed that some of the anticommunists were indeed right: certain nations did become Communist. It is a separate matter whether Communism turned out to be the existential threat that it was believed at the time, but, again, hindsight is a luxury.

During this period, France was perceived as more and more strategic to Western interests, and, both to strengthen it vis-a-vis the Soviet Union and Western Union, and against the perceived threat of Ho and the Chinese Communists, the U.S. would support French policy. Vietnamese nationalism or the discouragement of colonialism was really not a matter of consideration.

This was a time of intense concern about Communism, not unreasonably just after the Berlin Blockade and during the Korean War. Nevertheless, the anticommunism sometimes grew very emotional, and this was exploited by Joseph McCarthy and others that U.S. politicians did not want to challenge.

Laos, also a proto-state in the French Union, became of concern to the U.S. After the Japanese were removed from control of the Laotian parts of Indochina, three Lao princes created a movement to resist the return of French colonial rule. Within a few years, Souvanna Phouma returned and became prime minister of the colony. Souphanouvong, seeing the Viet Minh as his only potential ally against the French, announced, while in the Hanoi area, the formation of the "Land of Laos" organization, or Pathet Lao. Unquestionably, the Pathet Lao were Communist-affiliated. Nevertheless, they soon became a focus of U.S. concern, which, in the Truman and Eisenhower administrations, was more focused on anticommunism than any nationalist or anticolonialist movement.

In contrast with other Asian colonies like India, Burma, the Philippines and Korea, Vietnam was not given its independence after the war. As in Indonesia (the Dutch East Indies), an indigenous rebellion demanded independence. While the Netherlands was too weak to resist the Indonesians, the French were strong enough to just barely hold on. As a result Ho and his Viet Minh launched a guerrilla campaign, using Communist China as a sanctuary when French pursuit became hot.

1945 after the Japanese

Just after the Japanese surrender, before the Japanese-imprisoned French returned to their desks, Vietnamese guerillas, under Ho Chi Minh, had seized power in Hanoi and shortly thereafter demanded and received the abdication of the apparent French puppet, Emperor Bao Dai. This would not be the last of Bao Dai.

In August 1945, two three-man French teams, under COL Henri Cedile, the Commissioner for Cochin China, and MAJ Pierre Messmer, Commissioner for northern Indochina, parachued, from U.S. aircraft, into Indochina. They were the first new French representatives. Cedile was almost immediately given to the Japanese. He was driven to Saigon, seminude, as a prisoner. Messmer was held by Vietnamese, and his team was given poison; one died before they escaped to China. Jean Sainteny later became the Commissioer for the north.

These were the first of the officers who would replace the French officials that had worked under Vichy rule. High officersm such as Admiral Decoux, would be sent back to France and sometimes tried for collaboration, but Cedile and Sainteny generally kept the French lower-level staff.

A brief revolution

Ho Chi Minh declared independence in September. In a dramatic speech, he began with

All men are created equal. The Creator has given us certain inalienable rights: the right to Life, the right to be Free, and the right to achieve Happiness...These immortal words are taken from the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America in 1776. In a larger sense, this means that: all the peoples of the world are equal; all the people have the right to live, to be happy, to be free. [turning to the Declaration of the French Revolution in 1791, "It also states Men are born, must be free, and have equal rights. These are undeniable truths.

Ho's declaration had none but emotional impact; the French soon reestablished their authority after the Japanese surrendered. We have no way to know how much of this Ho believed, but it should be remembered as an example of how he understood the thinking of those who would become his enemy, while Lyndon Baines Johnson and Robert S. McNamara never seemed to grasp his beliefs in the willingness to accept protracted war and great losses, in the interest of eventual control.

Cochin China, at this time, was far less organized than Tonkin. Cao Dai set up a state around Tay Ninh, while Hoa Hao declared one in the Can Tho area. These sects, along with a non-Viet Minh Trotskyite faction, formed the United National Front (UNF), which demonstrated on August 21. The Viet Minh, however, called for the UNF to accept its authority, else let the French to declare all Vietnamese nationalism a Japanese proxy, and the UNF tentatively accepted this on the 25th.

The non-Communist nationalists became increasingly suspicious believing the Viet Minh Committee of the South was cooperating with COL Cedile. Mass demonstrations took place in Saigon on the 2nd, and shots were fired at it; the perpetrators were not identified.

Return of French control

Through the OSS Patti mission, often through emissaries, from the fall of 1945 to the fall of 1946, the United States received a series of communications from Ho Chi Minh depicting calamitous conditions in Vietnam, invoking the principles proclaimed in the Atlantic Charter and in the Charter of the United Nations, and pleading for U.S. recognition of the independence of the DRV, or — as a last resort — trusteeship for Vietnam under the United Nations.

On 21-21 September 1945, British Gurkhas, under MG Douglas Gracey, took the central prison back from the Japanese, releasing French paratroopers. Cedile, with those paratroopers, captured several Japanese-held police stations on the 22nd, and then took control of the administrative areas on the 23rd. Some Viet Minh guards were shot. French control was reasserted.

Patti's guidance was that the U.S. had essentially given up the idea of a trusteeship, but still, at the U.N. foundation conferences, the U.S. was in favor of gradual independence. But while the U.S. took no action on Ho's requests, it was also unwilling to aid the French.

It has been suggested that the Viet Minh accepted a significant number of Japanese troops, estimated by Goscha as at least 5,000, who had no immediate way to get back to Japan, and often had ties to the local culture. Their experience in a conventional military would have been welcome.

1946

President Franklin D. Roosevelt (in office 1933-45) detested French colonialism, but Harry S. Truman (in office 1945-53) was more interested in the French as an anticommunist ally, so he helped them to return in 1946. The Patti mission of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS was the predecessor to CIA) observed the situation from Kunming, China, starting in 1942, and then in French Indochina, including direct discussions with Ho Chi Minh.

In March, the new Vietnamese Assembly met for the first time, under Ho; it had VNQDD and Dong Minh Hoi participation, but the Permanent Committee, which operated when the Assembly was not in session, was all Viet Minh.

France establishes control

Reports on 20 March 1946 described attacks by units as large as 1,000 men in Cholon and Bien Hoa. A French detachment was ambushed at (San Jay), south Annam.

By parachute landing, the French took control of Hoa Binh, capital of the Moang tribe and offering Giap several movement options:

• from the Tonkin highlands staging area, to the lower Red River delta
• move against Hanoi from the south.
• supply northern central Vietnam.

They abandoned it in October 1950.

Major engagements

Ho failed to reach a temporary agreement between the French and the most intensely anti-French elements of the Indochinese Communist Party. As a result, The growing frequency of clashes between French and Vietnamese forces in Haiphong led to a French naval bombardment in November 1946, killing from 6,000 to 20,000. This incident and the arrival of 1,000 troops of the French Foreign Legion in central and northern Vietnam in early December convinced the communists, including Ho, that they should prepare for war.

On December 19, the French demanded that the Vietnamese forces in the Hanoi area disarm and transfer responsibility for law and order to French authority. In response, the Viet Minh attacked the city's electric plant and other French installations around the area. Forewarned, the French seized Gia Lam airfield and took control of the central part of Hanoi.

Marius Moutet, Minister of Overseas France, later said there would have been few suriving Frenchmen in Hanoi had there not been an agreement with the Viet Minh. Moutet had, in 1936, also been minister for the colonies and espoused real change.

1947

It must never be forgotten that France had strong leftist and Communist internals, not always agreeing with one another and certainly not with the various Indochinese groups. Nevertheless, politics inside France definitely affected Indochina.

At this time, the French still saw Bao Dai as a key part of the solution.

French operations early in the year

By late January, the French had retaken most of the provincial capitals in northern and central Vietnam; the Viet Minh stayed in the countryside rather than confront the French on terms favorable to the French. They continued to control most of the rural areas, concentrating on building up its military strength and setting up guerrilla training programs in "liberated" areas. Seizing the initiative, however, the French marched north to the Chinese border in the autumn of 1947, inflicting heavy casualties on the Viet Minh and retaking much of the Viet Bac region.

Leon Pignon, political adviser to the French Commander in Indochina, and later High Commissioner, wrote in January, 1947, that:

Our objective is clear: to transpose to the field of Vietnamese domestic politics the quarrel we have with the Viet Minh, and to involve ourselves as little as possible in the campaigns and reprisals which ought to be the work of the native adversaries of that party.

Debate in France

Indochina policy was the heart of debate, during March, in the French National Assembly, with the Communists walking out on three occasions. A Radical Socialist, not a member of the Right, accused the (Communist) Third International of provoking Indochinese nationalism as a means to Soviet imperialism.

Action in Indochina

The Cochin China (southern) Viet Minh executed Huynh Phu So, leader of the Hoa Hao religious sect, in April. Both the Hoa Hao and Cao Dai sect soon allied with the French.

In May, 1947, Minister of War Coste-Floret announced in Paris that: "There is no military problem any longer in Indochina . . . the success of French arms is complete." Within six months, though ambitious armored, amphibious, and airborne drives had plunged into the northern mountains and along the Annam coast, Viet Minh sabotage and raids along lines of communication had mounted steadily, and Paris had come to realize that France had lost the military initiative. In the meantime, the French tried equally ambitious and equally unproductive political appeals.

A French emissary demanded Ho surrender, and they were not able to compel him with force. This left them with little alternative but Bao Dai. By the fall of 1947, however, they tried military measures. Ho responded, "There is no place in the French Union for cowards. I would be one were I to accept."

Operation "Lea", launched in October, started with a parachute assault that found Ho's mail still on his desk, but the French never same so close again. The rest of the operation varied in success; the Viet Minh might cut off a French force, but if they could not force a quick defeat, they would not do well against an organized relief force unless they specifically had prepared to ambush it. They also found it unwise to meet mobile French units in the open. As the Viet Minh, even in regimental strength, learned how to fade away when conditions did not favor them, they would fight again another day. The French ended the operation in about a month. A month later, a similar French campaign certainly hurt the Viet Minh, but could not defeat them. The Viet Minh, by falling back, often put the French in the position of holding terrain they could not adeuately garrison. In 1947, French forces had the wisdom not to try to hold weakly, as opposed to their later actions at Dien Bien Phu.