American historians have written volumes of books, articles, and theses on the Vietnam War. Retired history teacher John Dellinger described pre-war Vietnam in “The War Makers,” published in Vietnam Magazine in April 1996, depicting a country struggling to emerge from the framework of colonial rule to establish a new identity as a free nation. This transition became a primary reason for the war. The Americans argued that their involvement in Vietnam mobilized military forces and political will to safeguard freedom and promote democracy against the communist aggression. The war in Vietnam was due to different motives, according to each side’s policy and strategy. My research reveals that any country’s involvement in the First and Second Wars in Vietnam was due mainly to economic interests rather than political or military purposes. Otherwise, the Vietnamese communist party and nationalist parties fought each other for their separate aims and aspirations: the communists for the establishment of the communist regime in Vietnam and in the rest of Indochina, while the nationalists fought for the independence, freedom, and prosperity of the country. The different motives of these Vietnamese parties were the prime reasons that foreigners came to exploit them. In addition, since Vietnam occupied a strategic geographic position in the Asia-Pacific region and Southeast Asia, it could at any time be the arena of confrontation between the East and the West, especially during a time of war.
Regarding America’s agenda, Dellinger asserts that five presidents of the United States “owned the war in Vietnam”: Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard M. Nixon, and Gerald R. Ford, Jr. He writes: “None of them owned the war in the traditional way that American presidents had owned earlier wars. But each of them, to a greater or lesser extent, shared the responsibility for the Vietnam War.”1 However, my research suggests Presidents Roosevelt and Truman had been deeply involved in Vietnam & Indochina during World War II. Their involvement shaped the political status of Vietnam long before the Vietnam War began. The policies of these two presidents during World War II would also affect the future “First” and “Second” Vietnam Wars.
Most American historians define the Vietnam War (or the Second Indochina War) as extending from March 1965 to August 1972. American ground forces were committed to battle in March 1965, with the landing of two marine battalions of the III Marine Amphibious Force, at the important seaport of Danang—approximately 380 miles northeast of Saigon. The withdrawal of the last U.S. combat unit, the army’s 3rd Battalion, 21st Infantry, occurred in August 1972.
Some historians expand this definition to include the prior United States military involvement in Vietnam, which had begun some 15 years earlier with the establishment of the U.S. Military Assistance Advisory Group Indochina (MAAGI) in the capital city of Saigon in September 1950. They argue that when the Marines went ashore in 1965, there were already some 23,300 U.S. military advisers in the country. And, although U.S. ground combat forces began a scheduled withdrawal from Vietnam in 1969, all ground forces did not withdraw until August 1972, and the war continued for almost three more years, until the fall of Saigon on the last day of April 1975.
Many Vietnamese historians consider the war in their country as one war instead of two: the First Vietnam War and the Second Vietnam War. For them, the war began March 9, 1945, the day on which the Japanese suddenly attacked the French colonial garrisons in Indochina. The Japanese Ambassador to Saigon came to Hue, the former capital of the Nguyen dynasty, and announced to Emperor Bao Dai that Vietnam was now “independent.” However, the Japanese “independence” and their weakening of the French in Vietnam aroused more secret movements among the Vietnamese people, including the nationalists and the communists in country, overseas, and especially in South China, who were struggling for their own true independence. The earliest recorded contacts between the United States and Vietnam occurred in the summer of 1941, under the Roosevelt administration. However, in the beginning, U.S. policy was one of “non-involvement.” The following details will explain this U.S. policy.
During World War II, the Germans overran France in the spring of 1940. The French colonials in Indochina could no longer count on any help from France. In addition, uncoordinated defense measures in the South Pacific between the British and the French decreased the real possibility of an effective defense of Southeast Asia and Indochina against Japanese aggression. Although French Indochina hoped for an alliance with the United States, President Roosevelt still clung to his non-involvement policy. The United States repeatedly refused to join Britain and France in an anti–Japanese alliance to protect the South Pacific and the Far East. This opened the door for disaster in Southeast Asia.2
The Roosevelt administration, more than twice, refused all demands to help French Indochina. Pleadings came from French Marshal Jean Pétain of the Vichy government, which had signed an armistice with Hitler in June 1940, and from French governors in Indochina General George Catroux and Admiral Jean Decoux. Several historical events surrounded French requests for help. First, on June 19, 1940, the Japanese addressed an ultimatum to the French governor-general in Indochina, General Catroux, demanding joint control up to the Tonkin borderline provinces of Cao-Bang and Lang-Son that had been under the French domination from 1886 to 1945. Tonkin, with its Yunnan railroad, was Nationalist China’s artery on which flowed supplies from the Allied Forces. The Japanese used this strategic region as a primary base from which to launch attacks on Chiang Kai-shek’s forces in the southwest provinces of China and to control French military activities in Indochina. Without orders from Paris and with the refusal of war equipment from Washington, Catroux acceded to the Japanese demands. He was replaced by Admiral Jean Decoux, who was faced with similar Japanese demands. Decoux, however, applied the tactic of “delaying and parleying,” and told the Japanese to take up the problem with the French government in Vichy. Before they were forced to concede to the Japanese, the Vichy ambassador in Washington once more beseeched the United States to strengthen France’s hand in Indochina. On August 22, 1940, U.S. Under-Secretary of State Summer Welles let Vichy know that the United States was unable to come to aid of Indochina. On August 30, Vichy signed an accord with Japan recognizing Japan’s “pre-eminent position” in the Far East and granted the Japanese in principle certain transit facilities in Tonkin. In Saigon, Decoux ordered General Martin, the French commander in Tonkin, to negotiate with the Japanese delegate, General Nishihara. Franco-Japanese negotiations began on September 5, 1940, in Hanoi and dragged out for weeks. However, the conditions of the initial accord with Japan could not be re-negotiated.
With the Vichy government of Marshal Pétain under the control of Japan’s ally, Germany, Indochina was totally isolated from outside help. The Japanese were growing impatient with the slow progress of the negotiations and decided to provide a demonstration of their power in Tonkin. On September 22, Japanese troops in neighboring Kwang-tung and Kwang-si suddenly attacked the French border forts along the borderline of Cao-Bang and Lang-Son Provinces. Japanese aircraft bombed Hai-Phong, the main military and commercial seaport of Tonkin, and began to land troops to occupy the port. Outnumbered and outgunned, the French border forts were overrun after two days of fighting and lost more than 800 men with thousands more wounded and arrested. This surprise attack was only the beginning of Japan’s ambition in Indochina.
Japan sought to assimilate two main targets under the “Greater East-Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere”: China and Southeast Asia. Indochina, especially Vietnam, was an important target due to its geopolitical position and its two favorable natural naval bays—Ha-Long in Tonkin (North Vietnam) and Cam-Ranh in Annam (Central Vietnam). Once the Japanese occupied Vietnam, they would use these bays as adjoining bases to advantageously launch their operations in any direction by heading north to China, south to Southeast Asia, east to the Philippines, Indonesia, Borneo, and farther to Australia and New Zealand. After the September attack on the frontier of Tonkin, when the Vichy government wired Admiral Decoux to accept the Japanese demands without delay, Japan quickly occupied three air fields in Tonkin and deployed its 6,000 man occupation force in Tonkin, Cochinchina (South Vietnam), and Cambodia. Moreover, 25,000 Japanese troops were authorized to move through Indochina at any time.
Subsequently, Japan brought pressure on the Vichy government to sign a cease-fire agreement in Tokyo on March 11, 1941. From the moment that agreement was signed, the Japanese “negotiated” over Decoux’s head, directly with the Vichy regime. In a July 29, 1941, agreement signed with the Vichy, Japan acquired de facto “control and utilization” of all airports and port facilities in Indochina.
Japanese ambitions to occupy strategically located Indochina were very clear to the United States authorities. When it became certain that Vichy would no longer resist Japanese demands to control airports and port facilities in Indochina, President Roosevelt could no longer maintain an attitude of non-involvement. He laid down a series of decisions that would eventually lead to the surprise attack by the Japanese Air Force on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, igniting the Second World War in the Asia-Pacific region between Japan and the United States (and its Allies). On July 26, 1941, three days before the Vichy government signed its agreement with Japan, President Roosevelt ordered the freezing of all Japanese assets in the United States and an embargo on petroleum exports to Japan. Two days before that, the Japanese ambassador to Washington, Admiral Kichisaburo Nomura, was summoned to a meeting with the president of the United States. The president proposed to Nomura a “Complete Neutralization of Indochina” in exchange for a guarantee of Japan’s “right of acquisition of … supplies and raw materials therefrom on a basis of equality.”3
The proposition of a complete neutralization of Indochina continued to be negotiated between the United States and Japan in November 1941. Not surprisingly the political solution was unacceptable to the Japanese government, which considered it merely as an extension to Indochina of the “open-door policy.” In Paragraph 2, Section II, of the Proposition, the United States proposed negotiations between Britain, Japan, China, the Dutch government in exile, and Thailand in order to guarantee Indochina’s neutrality. It demanded “for each of these signatories equality of treatment in trade and commerce with French-Indochina.”4 The proposal would totally ignore the role of France. In reality, had such a political solution be enrealized, it would have completely obstructed the Japanese plan to occupy Indochina. That was the primary cause of the conflict between Japan and the United States.
A secondary, but vital, cause was the issuance of the Executive Order on July 26 (mentioned above) by the president of the United States. While the proposition of neutralization of Indochina might politically harm the Japanese “Greater East-Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere” project, the embargo on petroleum exports to Japan was a death-blow to the Japanese Navy, which was the major expedition force of the Japanese at the Pacific. In other words, the embargo resulted in the Japanese Navy’s insistence on achieving control of Southeast Asia before its petroleum supplies were entirely exhausted.
War between the two strongest powers in the Pacific was inevitable. The details of the causes for the attack on Pearl Harbor and the ensuing war in the Pacific were probably little known or unknown by the majority of the American people. Many did not know how crucial a role Indochina played in the collision between the superpowers in World War II.
The war exploded. On the morning of the Japanese strike on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese also surrounded all French garrisons in Indochina. Governor Decoux was faced with yet another ultimatum: to cooperate with the “Greater East-Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere” in order to keep France’s role in the colony, or face the immediate destruction of his garrisons. Decoux yielded, thus saving 40,000 of his countrymen from the immediate ordeal of incarceration in Japanese concentration camps or death, and saving at least the appearance of French sovereignty over the local population.
As a result of these events, Roosevelt’s political goal for a “complete neutralization” of Indochina failed and the war in the Pacific increased its intensity during the ensuing years from 1942 to 1945. A wave of new United States policies toward the French administration in Indochina surfaced and caused a surprised reaction by the Japanese.
Indochina became the focus of several high-level decisions of consequence to its postwar development. On the United States side, Roosevelt sought to substitute powers other than the colonial French. On January 3, 1943, the British ambassador to Washington, Lord Halifax, asked U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull for clarification on America’s Indochina policy. President Roosevelt took up the matter personally with Halifax and later informed Hull that “he had confirmed to the British ambassador that Indochina should not go back to France but that it should be administered by an international trusteeship.”5 The idea of substitution was officially broached at the inter–Allied level during a conference in Washington on March 27, 1943. The U.S. president suggested to British foreign secretary Sir Anthony Eden that a “Trusteeship” be established for Indochina. The president also instructed Cordell Hull to present the trusteeship idea to the Russians at the Moscow Conference in October 1943. Later, General Joseph W. Stilwell, the U.S. commander in the China Theater, reported that President Roosevelt had in mind a trusteeship under three commissioners—an American, a Briton, and a Chinese.6 British Prime Minister Winston Churchill objected that such a solution that would eliminate the French from Indochina. He stated simply that “he could not conceive of a civilized world without a flourishing and lively France….”7
In the following year, pushing his trusteeship approach, Roosevelt brought up his solution at the Yalta Conference in February of 1945. This time, he proposed an “Indochinese Trusteeship Council” of four international members: Chinese, Russian, French, and Philipino. Again, Churchill apparently vetoed the whole proposal. Roosevelt’s new policy toward Indochina was finally discarded.8 However, the Japanese considered Roosevelt’s new solution as another obstruction to their plan for Indochina. They reacted by staging another sudden attack on all French garrisons in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. On March 9, 1945, at 21:30 hours, the Japanese struck without warning. French garrisons in the colony were surrounded by Japanese troops and the French senior commanders were captured. In just one night, the Japanese overwhelmed and occupied French military camps, airports, and naval bases throughout the three countries of Indochina. All French colonial authorities, military governors, and civilian administrators at the provincial level were killed or arrested. Only in Tonkin were some French generals able to evade the coup with their small units, and escape through the Thai-Highlands area, which was close to Dien-Bien-Phu. The evading French generals established themselves around the airfield of Dien-Bien-Phu, and began calling for Allied supplies and air support. Among them were General Sabattier and his headquarters crew.
In the vital Tonkin area, Japanese action was particularly brutal. Lang-Son was the center of the tragedy. After the last message calling for help was sent to General Sabattier’s headquarters, the Lang-Son garrison was completely massacred by the Japanese; only one man survived. The last message of the doomed Lang-Son was a request for a supply of water and air support. It was a hopeful call for an American intervention. But there was no response.
The nearest American field commanders to Lang-Son at that time were General Claire L. Chennault, the famous father of the “Flying Tigers” and commander of the 14th Air Force in Yunnan, and his direct superior, General Albert C. Wedemeyer. General Wedemeyer was commander-in-chief in the China Theater at Kunming; he also was the senior military adviser to Chiang Kai-shek and was nominally operating under Chiang’s authority. After receiving the call for help from French General Sabattier, Chennault immediately sent liaison officers with light aircraft to make contact with Sabattier’s headquarters at Dien Bien Phu. These U.S. officers had made a rapid survey of the most urgent needs of the French and arranged for air supply drops and coordination of air support. However, in the following days neither air supply nor air support were allowed, which left many French messages unanswered. Thus, the French troops were left unaided to face their tragic destiny in Indochina, especially in Lang-Son.
After the Japanese take-over on March 9, 1945, the total number of French troops massacred or captured in the country exceeded 35,000. More than 250 officers and 4,000 soldiers were killed or massacred while retreating to China. Only 320 officers, 2,150 Europeans, and 3,300 Vietnamese soldiers survived the 800-mile trek to Yunnan.9 In the three countries of Indochina, the Japanese forced all Frenchmen into concentration camps and treated them severely.
The French, who were unaware of the United States’ presidential policies, could not believe the unwillingness of the United States to assist and respond to their vital requests from Indochina in March 1945. After the war, General Chennault explained why he cut all contacts with French General Sabattier just after he had sent his liaison officers to Sabattier’s headquarters: “Orders arrived from Theater headquarters [the China Theater of General Wedemeyer] stating that no arms and ammunition would be provided to French troops under any circumstances…. General Wedemeyer’s orders not to aid the French came directly from the U.S. War Department. Apparently it was then American policy that French-Indochina not be returned to the French. The American government was interested in seeing the French forcibly ejected from Indochina so the problem of postwar separation from their colony would be easier.”10
General Albert C. Wedemeyer also conveyed the reasons for his rigid refusal to aid the French. He had met President Roosevelt in March 1945. Roosevelt admonished him not to provide any supplies to the French forces operating in the area. This instruction to General Wedemeyer was only an extension of Roosevelt’s previous order on that matter. Indeed, on October 13, 1944, Roosevelt had addressed a memorandum to secretary of state Cordell Hull that the United States should not do anything with regard to resistance groups or any other matter in Indochina. This instruction was transferred to the U.S. War Department and became a military order which restricted American military from ever authorizing support for any French military mission that could be accredited to the U.S. South-East Asia Command. This is why French requests for American assistance and military supplies to fight the Japanese in Indochina were unanswered. President Roosevelt’s policy of eliminating the French from Indochina was clear.
As far as the Free French were concerned, General De Gaulle promised a bloody return to Indochina: “As painful as that development was locally, I must say that from the point of view of national interest, I willingly envisaged that hostilities would commence in Indochina … in view of our position in the Far East, I thought it essential that the conflict should not end without us become, there also, involved as belligerents…. French blood shed on Indochinese soil would give us an important voice in later settlements.”11 Later, he would keep his promise.
After neutralizing the French forces in Indochina, the Japanese declared Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia independent of colony rule. France lost control over these three countries after 60 years of rule. In Vietnam, on March 11, 1945, Emperor Bao Dai declared Vietnam “independent” and called in scholar Tran Trong Kim to form the first cabinet for the government of the State of Vietnam. However, the Japanese manipulated all military and economic activities of the country. They controlled the flow of rice and other food that led to the biggest mass starvation in Hanoi and several provinces in the North; through the end of March 1945, two million people died according to Vietnamese historian Cao The Dung.12 These disastrous events were certainly observed by Washington.
Most American historians disregard the affects of policy decisions made by the Roosevelt administration regarding Indochina. However, President Roosevelt’s preoccupation with eliminating the French from this colony certainly changed the course of history of the three countries of Indochina, especially Vietnam.
The death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, on April 12, 1945, created a hiatus for months of American postwar planning for Indochina. During that period, a historic fatal meeting occurred between an American Office of Strategic Services (OSS) officer, Major Archimedes Patti, and the Indochinese Communist Party’s leader, Ho Chi Minh. Their meeting evolved out of the disorder and confusion between the groups of the Chinese and the Vietnamese communists and nationalists who were struggling against the Japanese for their independence. With 8,500-man colonial garrisons under Japanese captivity after their coup in Indochina in March 1945, Major Patti was left without any potential ally until Ho Chi Minh approached him. They met in secret at the Vietnamese border.
This critical meeting affected for two decades the decisions and policies of the various presidents of the United States toward Indochina. It also affected the American media and American students in their anti-war campaigns and movements during the 1960s.
In spring 1945, Major General William J. Donovan, the head of the Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), needed experienced men for Indochina. Major Patti was selected because of his previous successful missions in North Africa and Italy. Patti’s specific instructions were to establish an intelligence network throughout the entire peninsula of Indochina. The assignment was a high priority since Indochina was strategically centered between the three vast political theaters: mainland China, the South Pacific, and Southeast Asia. Major Patti arrived at the OSS branch of Kunming in mid–April 1945, with his special team OSS-202, called the “Deer Team,” to expand intelligence operations into Indochina. At that time, Kunming was the strong ally of the forces of Chiang Kai-shek and the focal point of the Allied Forces’ activities to support Chang’s resistance against the Japanese.
Before setting up the first secret rendezvous with Ho Chi Minh on April 30, 1945, Patti had several contacts with a French intelligence officer, Major Jean Sainteny. Sainteny was his counterpart and leader of a Free French intelligence team in Kunming. Sainteny’s team was called M-5, or Mission 5, and had been establishing a sizable intelligence network along the border of Indochina. Sainteny appealed to Patti since the French had prepared clandestine units and needed weapons. At that point, Major Archimedes Patti would come to a historic decision not to rely on the French but on the Viet-Minh and their leader, Ho Chi Minh.
Later, Patti recalled his historic meeting with Ho Chi Minh: “From a practical viewpoint, Ho and the Viet-Minh appeared to be the answer to my immediate problem of establishing relations in Indochina. I started to work with them very, very closely.”13 Certainly, as a new American authority in Kunming, Major Patti did not know exactly who Ho Chi Minh was, but he had some of Ho’s records in the OSS files. What he needed was a suitable way to establish an intelligence network behind the lines of Indochina. He was faintly aware that Ho was a communist and had been in Moscow for some training there. In addition, his Viet-Minh had a party front line. Patti saw that Ho’s ultimate goal was to attain American support for the cause of a free Vietnam and felt that desire presented no conflict with American policy.
At that time, Dean Rusk, deputy chief of staff with the Allied Command in Asia at Kunming, sent a message to Washington to seek advice on American policy toward Indochina. For months, nothing happened. Finally, after Patti had been in Kunming for a few months, Rusk received from his Joint Chiefs of Staff an equivocal memorandum suggesting that “America’s anti-colonial policy had been abandoned.” This would mean that “the British went back to India and Burma, the Dutch back to Indonesia, the French back to Indochina, and the United States reverted to the pre-war situation,” Rusk concludes.14 There was no evidence that Major Patti had been aware of this policy change. In fact, he was left alone in charge of US affairs in Indochina with contrary instructions that he previously received from the White House through his superior, General Donovan. That was the first paradox.
Major Patti decided to work for the mutual interests of both the Deer Team and the Viet-Minh. He was mesmerized by Ho’s oratory and hypnotic quality during their meeting. Ho let Patti know that the Viet-Minh would make available an equal force of 1,000 guerrillas to assist any American operation in Indochina. Ho also agreed to provide guides and give protection and shelter to Patti’s Deer Team. In turn, Patti sent a fifty-man OSS group led by his deputy to parachute into a small village that was about 75 miles northeast of Hanoi, to establish a headquarters for the Viet-Minh. This mountainous village was called Tan-Trao and Ho’s headquarters was placed at Pac-Po. The Deer Team then spread out with Vo Nguyen Giap’s troops to secure and protect Pac-Po. Later, in 1946, Pac-Bo became Ho Chi Minh’s main headquarters and base during the First Indochina War.
At Ho’s headquarters, Patti felt that the Viet-Minh could do more for the Deer Team. He decided to train and arm them with modern weapons for joint combat operations. In just one month his OSS team trained about 200 handpicked future leaders of the Viet-Minh, who would lead the war against the Americans twenty years later.
However, the most catastrophic aspect of the Ho-Patti liaison that devastated the United States anti-communist efforts in Indochina in the 1960s and the early years of 1970s were the “credentials” Patti collected on Ho Chi Minh. During the period of joint operations at the border of Vietnam in June 1945, the OSS mission’s collective final report advised Washington of extraordinary statements regarding Ho Chi Minh’s qualifications. The report stated that Ho was the only legitimate national leader of Vietnam. Major Patti himself believed that Ho Chi Minh was not a hardened communist but was foremost a nationalist. His opinion was fully supported in field reports by other OSS operatives, which only became public at a Senate hearing in 1972. These OSS reports became the basis for anti-war marches and movements against the government by American students. These reports also crucially influenced the United States Legislature, which sought to decide the fate of South Vietnam.
Interviewed by the American media in 1972, Patti remembered that he met Ho Chi Minh for the first time on the last day of April 1945. Between April 30, 1945, and April 30, 1975, more than 2.8 million American troops followed Major Archimedes Patti to Vietnam. More than 58,000 of them and at least 2 million Vietnamese died in the controversial Vietnam War.
The OSS, especially Major Patti and his Deer Team and later the CIA, did not know the real Ho Chi Minh. They considered Ho first a nationalist and second a communist. In reality, Ho Chi Minh had always been a dedicated international communist behind his Vietnamese manners and patriotic zeal. Indeed, for all his life Ho had used the nationalist catchphrases in almost every one of his public utterances and meetings to attract and excite the Vietnamese populace. His speeches motivated the Vietnamese to sacrifice their lives for the nation’s independence and he tried to convince international opinion to support his justification for the war, but all the while he never lost sight of his communist party’s goals. The OSS failure to recognize Ho Chi Minh as a potential international communist leader would only be learned by U.S. politicians and intelligence officials some thirty years later.
In summary, the death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in April of 1945 left the American policy toward Indochina in a prolonged hiatus and created uncertainty for six successive American presidents. Furthermore, the OSS’s Major Archimedes Patti left Washington for an intelligence mission in Indochina that created a paradox regarding the U.S. stand against communism and led to the loss of tens of thousands of American lives in the Vietnam War.