Category Archives: Europe

by | 29 June 2025 · 5:18 am

Reuniting Polish Lands, 1300s

From Poland: The First Thousand Years, by Patrice M. Dabrowski (Cornell University Press, 2014), Kindle pp. 52-55:

Even if Poland was in pieces, the lands were developing and its people were thriving. Nor had the broader population lost its identity and connection to the Polish past. Indeed: despite a series of hurdles, an entity to be called Poland once more would come together, as a monarchy, in the early fourteenth century.

…

This coming together was the work of one of the Piast princes, Władysław Łokietek. A grandson of Duke Konrad of Mazovia, Łokietek hailed from neighboring Cuiavia, in the central-northern reaches of the Polish lands. His sobriquet was “Elbow-High,” which suggests the prince was short of stature. What Łokietek lacked in height, he surely made up for in chutzpah. This plucky—and lucky—Piast prince would begin what can be seen as an upward trajectory for the Poles. The vertically challenged Łokietek was chosen prince of Greater Poland after the death of a different Piast ruler, Przemysł II (1257–1296), who was assassinated on Ash Wednesday on orders of the margraves of Brandenburg. The German margraves were unhappy with Przemysł’s attempts to unify the Polish lands: Przemysł had brought together Greater Poland and the seacoast region known as Gdańsk-Pomerania, and in 1295 was even crowned king in Gniezno, albeit of those two regions alone. Łokietek hoped to build on these achievements.

…

The Piast was aided in other, more prosaic ways as well. One was the problem faced by many a medieval dynasty: life was brutish and short. The reign of King Václav II came to an end with his sudden death in 1305. His son and successor, also named Václav (who had become king of Hungary before inheriting Bohemia and Poland from his father), was assassinated in Bohemia the following year. The extinction of the Czech Přemyslid dynasty left the throne open (in fact, it left several thrones open), which was then contested from all sides. Habsburgs, Luxemburgs, as well as a number of Piast princes (if not Łokietek) all sought to claim the throne. Married to a Bohemian Přemyslid princess, John of Luxemburg ultimately proved victorious—thus initiating a new Bohemian dynasty. He would consider himself also heir to the Polish throne.

Tiny but tenacious, Łokietek was not one to abandon the cause of conquest and unification so lightly. Whereas Václav II and subsequent Bohemian monarchs had found support in the Germanized towns, the Piast prince managed to rally the knights (if not the towns) to his side. And he was willing to fight. With Hungarian help, Łokietek reconquered Lesser Poland, Cuiavia, and other territories, thus establishing himself as a legitimate ruler of the Polish lands circa 1306. Holding onto them proved a challenge: for example, at one point burghers rebelled in Kraków and other towns of Lesser Poland, and they had to be subdued. The Polish unifier sought to rid Kraków of the miscreants by use of a shibboleth. Those burghers who could pronounce the four words “soczewica, koło, miele, młyn” [emphasis added] (lentil, wheel, grinds, mill) were allowed to stay. Native German speakers stumbled over the pronunciation of the Polish letters “ł” and “s,” which allowed the authorities to shuffle and rearrange the city’s population. Henceforth, the Kraków burghers would find it politic to Polonize. The process of unification was anything but smooth.

Nonetheless, the Piast was persistent—and his persistence paid off. The sixty-year-old Łokietek was crowned King Władysław Łokietek in 1320. His coronation on January 20 of that year took place not in Gniezno but in Kraków, which had been gaining in political significance since Kazimierz the Restorer moved there in the eleventh century. Still, the Elbow-High succeeded in unifying only two provinces: Lesser Poland and Greater Poland. His Poland had no Mazovia, no Prussia (despite Łokietek’s best efforts, the Teutonic Knights had seized control there), no Gdańsk-Pomerania (treacherously taken by the Teutonic Knights), and no Silesia (the Silesian Piasts did not feel compelled to subordinate themselves to the upstart Łokietek, and they remained firmly in the Bohemian orbit). Once again coronation was an important symbolic act, if still just a beginning.

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by | 28 June 2025 · 9:59 am

Poland Becomes Catholic, 966

From Poland: The First Thousand Years, by Patrice M. Dabrowski (Cornell University Press, 2014), Kindle pp. 28-31:

Mieszko seems to have led the Polanie as of about the year 960. The reason we know of him and his state is that, like the Moravians to the south, the Germans (that is, the Christian population to the west, which was part of post-Carolingian Europe, the eastern part of which was ruled by the German emperor) were beginning to pay attention to this emerging state centered around Gniezno [cf. gniazdo ‘nest’]. Early recorded mention of Mieszko’s doings has come down to us from a Jewish trader, Ibrahim Ibn Jakub, who, while on business in Magdeburg in 966, learned of the existence of a well-organized state that was conquering some of the Slavic tribes to its west. A Saxon monk noted the existence of the dynamically expanding state, which likewise caught the attention of Otto I. Titled Emperor of the Romans by the pope only in 962, the German Otto had pretentions to the same region. Before long, Mieszko’s realm came to be referred to as Poland, or the land of the Poles.

It is customary to date the beginnings of the history of Poland to 966. This choice of date reflects a momentous decision made that year. Until this point, the Polanie and the neighboring tribes in the vicinity of Central and Eastern Europe were for the most part pagans. This was not true of the Germans further west, who had already converted to Christianity in late antiquity or the early medieval period; nor was it true for the Moravians, who had witnessed the ninth-century ministry of Cyril and Methodius, the missionaries to the Slavs, although by this time—a century later—they were under German influence. (Note that Kyivan Rus’, lying further to the east, was baptized only as of 988, but its baptism came from Greek sources, that is, Constantinople.) In this part of the world, of world-historical significance was what religion these pagan rulers chose, and at whose hands they were baptized.

It is in 966 that the baptism of Mieszko—head of the Gniezno state, this nascent Polish polity—took place. It is both interesting and important that this was facilitated not by the Germans but by a Bohemian (Czech) connection. A Czech state had emerged around the turn of the eighth and ninth centuries; first baptized by Saint Methodius, the Czechs relatively quickly came under Bavarian influence, their church under the bishop of Regensburg. In 965 Mieszko strengthened the connection with this Slavic neighbor by marrying a Bohemian princess, the daughter of Boleslav I. This Dubravka, known variously also as Dąbrówka or Dobrava, was a Christian, and she likely brought some Christian clergy with her to Gniezno. The next year, Mieszko accepted baptism at their hands.

What is important for the future history of Poland is that this was Western, and not Eastern, Christianity—that is, Mieszko was baptized into the Church of Rome, as it was then known. No less important is that baptism came from Bohemia, not from the imperial power to the west. Mieszko furthermore took care to ensure that his state was placed under the care of missionaries. As missionary priests were directly subordinated to the papacy and not to a bishop within any given territory, this gave the nascent Polish church more flexibility because it was not placed under another sovereign state.

Thus began the Poles’ connection with Roman Catholicism, one that dates back a millennium. It is a connection that has stuck. Until very recently, many people around the world associated Poland above all with the man who, until not so long ago, was head of the Universal Church—Karol Wojtyła, better known as Pope John Paul II. During his first trip to Poland after he became pontiff, John Paul II famously declared to his countrymen that “it was impossible, without reference to Christ, to understand the history of the Polish nation, this great thousand-year-old community that so profoundly shapes my existence and that of each of us.” While clearly there is much to this statement, one cannot say that the Christianization of Poland or the Poles’ historic identification with Roman Catholicism were inevitable. Nor (as we shall see) is the belief that all “real” Poles have always been, or must be, Roman Catholics borne out by the country’s history, certainly not if one examines that history in its entirety. (Such Polish paradoxes await the patient reader.)

So what motivated Mieszko’s conversion? The baptism of “Poland” into the larger Roman Catholic family appears to have been, above all, a political decision and not simply (if such matters are ever simple!) a matter of spiritual conversion. It likely extended originally only to Mieszko’s court and entourage, who through the person of his wife and her entourage were pulled into the Christian orbit. Surely Mieszko realized that, by accepting Christianity, he would no longer be subject to incursions from the west—at least, the types of incursions from the eastern marches that doubtless had long been intended to turn these Slavic peoples from paganism to Christianity. By converting, he would deny the Holy Roman Empire the pretext to interfere with his state. The fact that the baptism came at the hands of a missionary who was under papal jurisdiction proved important. The Polish church thus would not be subordinated to the Holy Roman Empire or any other lay power. Moreover, as denizens of a Christian power the Poles could now seek to spread Christianity to other pagan tribes in the region (for example, the Pomeranians or the tribes further east), thus expanding their own influence.

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Filed under Bohemia, Germany, migration, nationalism, Poland, religion, Russia

by | 7 June 2025 · 4:51 pm

French Troops Leave Vietnam, 1956

From Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam, by Fredrik Logevall (Random House, 2012), Kindle pp. 819-821:

THE IMPORT OF THE MOMENT WAS NOT LOST ON LEADERS IN HANOI. They understood only too well that with his victory over the sects in early May 1955, Ngo Dinh Diem had achieved his long-sought objective: the consolidation of power in Saigon as well as staunch American backing for his government. French military and political influence in South Vietnam, meanwhile, had suffered a blow from which it would almost certainly never recover.

For Ho Chi Minh and his colleagues in the north, it was a stinging setback. Once again they had miscalculated, wrongly assuming that France would maintain a strong presence in the south through the elections for reunification scheduled for July 1956—elections that virtually all informed observers thought Ho would win—and thereby keep the United States from becoming more heavily entrenched. “It was with you, the French, that we signed the Geneva agreements, and it is up to you to see that they are respected,” Pham Van Dong, soon to be named DRV premier, had told a visiting French official on New Year’s Day 1955. On the first day of the year, it was still possible for Pham Van Dong to believe that France would follow through in that way; now, four months later, the hope seemed forever dashed. As they had done in 1946, during the negotiations that preceded the outbreak of major fighting, DRV leaders had overestimated the power of what they liked to call “democratic elements” in Paris to tilt French policy in Hanoi’s direction, or at least to ensure compliance among all concerned with the elections provision of the accords. In reality, few in French officialdom were so committed. With events in North Africa increasingly clamoring for attention, Indochina receded from view, and moreover there was the ever-present need to maintain smooth relations with Washington. Try though local French commanders might to assist the sects in their battle with Diem, they never had the full backing of authorities in the metropole.

And so, seemingly overnight, French political and military influence in South Vietnam withered. On May 20, 1955, French forces withdrew from the Saigon area and assembled in a coastal enclave. From there, their numbers steadily dwindled, until on April 28, 1956, the last French soldier departed Vietnam—signifying the symbolic end, some said, of France’s century in the Far East. Earlier in the month, on April 10, there occurred the last parade of French troops in Saigon. Foreign legionnaires in sparkling white kepis, paratroopers in camouflage uniforms and dark red berets, and bearded Moroccans with tan turbans marched by, their flags rippling in the breeze. In the crowd were Vietnamese who wore medals they had won in the service of France. Some could be seen wiping away tears as the troops disappeared out of view, bound for their waiting ships.

…

That month Paris also shut down the Ministry for the Associated States and moved its functions to the Foreign Ministry. And to fully sever the old colonial connection, France withdrew her high commissioner from Vietnam (to be replaced by an ambassador, who was not appointed for more than a year).

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by | 5 June 2025 · 12:36 pm

Diem Survives in 1955

From Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam, by Fredrik Logevall (Random House, 2012), Kindle pp. 813-815:

Then, in late April, with [“Lightning Joe”] Collins back in Washington for consultations, Eisenhower and Dulles went further, in effect conceding the ambassador’s point, made during lunch with the president on April 22, that “the net of it is … this fellow is impossible.” They took the plunge. At 6:10 and 6:11 P.M. on April 27, 1955, top-secret cables went out from the State Department to the embassies in Saigon and Paris initiating a process designed to remove Diem and replace him with a leader selected by Generals Collins and Ely (while every effort was to be made to make the new government appear to be chosen by the Vietnamese). Diem was to be told that “as a result of his inability to create a broadly based coalition government, and because of Vietnamese resistance to him,” the United States and France “are no longer in a position to prevent his removal from office.”

Then, near midnight the same day, came word from Saigon: Fighting had erupted in the streets of the city between the Binh Xuyen and the VNA. Almost certainly Diem had been tipped off about the ouster orders, perhaps by [CIA agent] Lansdale, who was by his side almost continuously throughout the crisis. With nothing to lose and much to gain, he then in all likelihood initiated the battle. Diem always denied being the instigator, and it’s not outside the realm of possibility that the Binh Xuyen fired first; conclusive evidence remains elusive. Whatever the case, the violence worked immediately to Diem’s advantage: At 11:56 P.M., Dulles canceled the earlier directives calling for Diem’s removal, less than six hours after they had been issued. In the days thereafter, fierce gunfights continued, leaving five hundred dead and two thousand wounded, and government troops gradually got the upper hand. Leading sect figures surrendered. Trinh Minh Thé was killed by a shot to the back of the head while he watched his troops engaging Binh Xuyen forces, the identity and allegiance of his assassin forever a mystery. Soon the crime syndicate was routed, and Bay Vien, the vice kingpin of Saigon-Cholon, fled to a cushy retirement in Paris. The religious sects retreated slowly into the Mekong Delta background, never again to threaten Diem’s rule.

No less portentous for the future, Diem’s actions in the “Battle of Saigon” made him a heroic figure to many in the U.S. Congress and press. In the Senate, California Republican William Knowland offered a lengthy paean to Diem’s fortitude and courage, and Minnesota Democrat Hubert Humphrey proclaimed that “Premier Diem is an honest, wholesome, and honorable man. He is the kind of man we ought to be supporting, rather than conspirators, gangsters, and hoodlums … who are diabolical, sinister, and corrupt.” Mansfield chimed in too, extolling Diem as the leader of a “decent and honest government.” Members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee registered their opposition to the administration’s withdrawing support from Diem. Democratic congressman Thomas Dodd of Connecticut demanded that Collins be fired in favor of “someone who measures up to the needs of the hour.”

Publisher Henry Luce, in his weekly editorial in Life, could barely restrain himself: “Every son, daughter or even distant admirer of the American Revolution should be overjoyed and learn to shout, if not pronounce, ‘Hurrah for Ngo Dinh Diem!’ ” Diem’s decision to confront the “Binh Xuyen gangsters,” Luce went on, “immensely simplifies the task of U.S. diplomacy in Saigon. That task is, or should be, simply to back Diem to the hilt.” U. S. News & World Report made the same argument in more restrained language, as did The New York Times. The latter added a prediction: “If Premier Ngo Dinh Diem should be overthrown by the combination of gangsters, cultists, and French colonials who have been gunning for him, the communists will have won a significant victory.”

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by | 4 June 2025 · 5:33 am

Catholic Exodus to South Vietnam

From Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam, by Fredrik Logevall (Random House, 2012), Kindle pp. 804-805:

Lansdale also helped facilitate the mass movement of refugees from north to south—though almost certainly his role has been exaggerated in some accounts. Beginning in a serious way in the summer of 1954, waves of refugees, most of them Catholic, went to the south under the provisions of the Geneva Accords permitting civilian regroupment. (Article 14d: “Any civilians residing in a district controlled by one party who wish to go and live in the zone assigned to the other party shall be permitted and helped to do so.”) As hundreds of thousands of refugees descended upon Haiphong in August and awaited evacuation, the French Air Force and Navy, realizing they were unprepared for the onslaught, asked Washington for assistance. The Pentagon ordered the U.S. Navy to mobilize a task force to assist in the evacuation, and in short order, ships were steaming from Subic Bay in the Philippines, bound for Haiphong.

All told, French and U.S. ships would make some five hundred trips in three hundred days, ferrying almost nine hundred thousand people southward, in perhaps the largest civilian evacuation—and largest sea migration—in history to that point. Entire northern Catholic communities abandoned most of their worldly possessions and set off en masse, their priests in the lead, in what the U.S. Navy dubbed Operation Passage to Freedom. The result was a major reordering of the religious balance of Vietnam. Before the exodus, most Vietnamese Catholics lived north of the seventeenth parallel; afterward the majority lived south of it. By 1956, the diocese of Saigon had more Catholics than Paris or Rome. By then, more than a million of Vietnam’s Catholics lived in the south, 55 percent of them refugees from the north.

The United States and the State of Vietnam reaped significant propaganda benefits from the mass exodus to the south in 1954–55. It seemed a perfect example of refugees “voting with their feet,” a damning indictment of the Viet Minh regime, and it was especially notable for the fact that comparatively few people went in the other direction, from south to north. The evacuation received wide play in the American press, with readers learning that the travelers, once they completed the journey, were given “welcome kits” of soap, towel, and toothpaste, and tins of milk labeled “From the people of America to the people of Viet Nam—a gift.” Left out of the accounts was that the exodus was not altogether spontaneous. Though many Catholics needed no incentive to leave the north, Lansdale and his CIA team initiated a campaign to convince the skeptics. In Catholic areas in the north, they broadcast the messages that “Christ has gone to the south” and “The Virgin Mary has departed the north” in order to be with Diem, a devout Catholic. They promised “five acres and a water buffalo” to every relocated refugee. In another gambit, Lansdale arranged for leaflets to be dropped over the same areas showing a map of North Vietnam with a series of concentric circles emanating from Hanoi. The none-too-subtle suggestion: that Hanoi was a likely target for a U.S. atomic bomb.

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by | 1 June 2025 · 5:22 am

Zhou Enlai’s Plan for Indochina

From Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam, by Fredrik Logevall (Random House, 2012), Kindle pp. 739-741:

Vietnamese sources, meanwhile, suggest Zhou Enlai may also have had another motivation for the new line: a desire by the CCP to incorporate Laos and Cambodia into China’s sphere of influence, if only to keep them from falling into Vietnam’s. Better to give the two states neutral status than to allow Ho Chi Minh’s government to dominate all of Indochina.

On June 19, the day before the chief delegates were scheduled to leave Geneva to return home to consult with their governments, Zhou Enlai told Canadian diplomat and China expert Chester Ronning that a settlement was within reach if only France would commit herself to a political solution. China and her allies had made important concessions, Zhou said, and now the French should follow suit. The next morning he reiterated these points to Eden and also expressed his keen desire to meet the new French premier. Eden, stopping in Paris en route to London later in the day, happily passed the message on to Pierre Mendès France. He urged the Frenchman to meet with Zhou at the earliest opportunity. Mendès France, having received the same recommendation from Jean Chauvel, agreed. But where should the meeting occur? The Chinese foreign minister would not go to Paris as long as his government was not recognized by France, while Mendès France feared he would be perceived as a supplicant if he went so soon to Geneva. Dijon was suggested, but the two sides settled instead on the Swiss city of Bern, on the pretext of thanking the Swiss Confederation president for providing a locale for the negotiations. The meeting was arranged for the following Wednesday, June 23, in the French embassy.

An epic encounter it would be. Zhou Enlai, attired not in his usual blue high-collared tunic but in a gray business suit and tie, looked younger and more relaxed than he had in Geneva, and he made an immediate winning impression on Mendès France: “L’homme était impressionnant.” Zhou opened sternly—China feared neither threat nor provocation and considered both to be illegitimate means of negotiation—but then followed a conciliatory line. He had lived in France and felt an attachment to the French people, he said, and moreover his view aligned with the French view, meaning military questions should take precedence over the resolution of political issues in Indochina. Achieving a cease-fire was the first priority. Much to the Frenchman’s satisfaction and relief, Zhou then made clear that he accepted not only the view that Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam should be evaluated separately but also, indirectly, the view that there existed “two governments in Vietnam.” Following an armistice, he went on, there should be elections for reunification of that country under a single government.

Zhou declared that his government—like that of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam—intended to move swiftly toward recognition of Laos and Cambodia and to follow a policy of nonintervention toward both. He even hinted that Beijing would have no objection if one or both of the kingdoms chose to be attached to the French Union. What would not be acceptable, however, would be for the United States to misinterpret this Chinese and DRV policy as an excuse to turn the kingdoms into “bases of aggression.” In order to facilitate national reunification, both Phnom Penh and Vientiane should grant recognition to the resistance movements—Khmer Issarak and Pathet Lao—for the sake of unity. The latter, being a significant presence in Laos, should be granted a zone of administrative control, but Viet Minh forces that penetrated Laotian territory might be withdrawn after an armistice.

Mendès France liked what he heard, and he could see by the expression on Jean Chauvel’s face that the ambassador was pleased as well. The premier agreed that there should be no American bases in Cambodia or Laos, and he voiced support for elections in Vietnam. The vote could not happen immediately, though, and there was moreover the issue of what kind of temporary division to have in the meantime. Did the Chinese government support partition? Zhou Enlai initially evaded a direct answer but then said he favored a formula involving “large sectors.” Mendès France agreed that a “horizontal cut” was possible, but not as far south as suggested by the Viet Minh at Geneva. Everything else, he continued, depended on a resolution of this issue of the regroupment zones. Zhou concurred and said “this [is] also Mr. Eden’s opinion.” With hard work, he speculated, the military negotiators in Geneva ought to be able to reach agreement “within three weeks,” at which point the foreign ministers could return and be ready to sign the documents. Mendès France, finding this time limit (July 15) to be uncomfortably close to his own July 20 deadline for the settlement of all outstanding problems, replied that three weeks “should be regarded as a maximum.”

The meeting drew to a close. Both sides were pleased with the outcome and said they understood each other well, but neither doubted that tough slogging remained. Mendès France flew back to Paris, while his Chinese counterpart, having earlier held sessions with the leaders of the Cambodian and Laotian delegations (he promised them that Beijing would respect their sovereignty and independence), departed for a series of meetings in Asia, among them a two-day secret session with Ho Chi Minh.

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by | 31 May 2025 · 5:52 am

U.S. & France Shift Vietnam Policy

From Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam, by Fredrik Logevall (Random House, 2012), Kindle pp. 727-730:

IF AMERICAN MILITARY INTERVENTION IN VIETNAM WAS AT LONG last off the table, the Eisenhower administration still could not bring itself to take the next step and support a negotiated settlement. Even as each of the other main players in Geneva gravitated toward partition as the preferred solution—Viet Minh and French negotiators made significant progress on the particulars in secret meetings on June 4, 5, and 10, even as Georges Bidault personally remained noncommittal—the administration was loath to sign on. (At least publicly; privately, Bedell Smith told Australia’s Casey on June 13 that he personally accepted the idea of partition.) In domestic political terms, it would be better for the conference to collapse than for it to agree to a compromise with Communists, especially of the Chinese variety.

Hence the equanimity with which U.S. officials greeted the splits that emerged in restricted sessions in mid-June. The disagreements concerned the authority and composition of an international supervisory commission that would monitor the peace, and the status of Cambodia and Laos. Resolution seemed impossible, and many delegates, Eden among them, concluded that a breakup of the conference was imminent. Dulles was pleased, or at least not disturbed. “It is our view,” he cabled Bedell Smith on June 14, “that final adjournment of Conference is in our best interest, provided this can be done without creating an impression in France at this critical moment that France has been deserted by US and UK and therefore has no choice but capitulation on Indochina to Communists at Geneva and possible accommodation with Soviets in Europe.”

But what if such capitulation and accommodation occurred, or what if the Communists used the failure of the conference as an excuse to try to conquer the whole of the Indochinese peninsula? Robert Bowie, the director of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff, articulated precisely that fear at a meeting of the NSC on June 15. Here was the United States, Bowie said, withdrawing from the Geneva Conference because she found the Communist proposals unacceptable, yet she was unwilling to do anything to bolster the French position. The likely result: The Viet Minh would charge down the peninsula and get more of Indochina than they were demanding at the conference. In the wake of such a development, Nehru and other “Asiatics” would swing to the Communist side. Far better, Bowie asserted, to defend “South Vietnam,” if necessary with four U.S. divisions.

Although U.S. diplomats in Saigon had made similar noises for several weeks, this was a revolutionary idea in the halls of power in Washington.53 Bowie had not merely asserted that partition served American interests better than allowing the negotiations to fail; he had said the southern half of Vietnam was militarily defensible. The five-power staff talks had come to the same conclusion, with a consensus that a line from Thakhek (in Laos) to Dong Hoi—that is, about 17°50’ north—could be defended. For the moment, Bowie found few takers for his argument, but his advocacy gained force among high officials in the days thereafter. Already by June 17, John Foster Dulles could be heard singing a new tune at another meeting of the NSC. Seconding Eisenhower’s comment that the native populations of Southeast Asia viewed the war as a colonial enterprise, the secretary, according to the note taker, said “perhaps the time had come” to let the French get out of Indochina entirely and then try to “rebuild from the foundations.” And later in the same meeting: “For the United States or its allies to try to fight now in the Delta area was almost impossible, if for no other reason than that the French have no inclination to invite us in. They are desperately anxious to get themselves out of Indochina.… Probably best to let them quit.”

The “perhaps” and the “probably” were important. Although in hindsight Dulles’s words constituted a watershed moment—the first clear sign of a monumental policy shift, from keeping the French fighting and resisting negotiations to moving France out of Indochina altogether and “rebuild[ing] from the foundations,” without the taint of colonialism—at the time, in mid-June 1954, neither he nor President Eisenhower knew what they wanted. They still groped hesitantly for some means of reconciling the competing imperatives on Indochina: to keep the nation out of “another Korea” while avoiding any hint of “appeasement” of the Communists. Seeing danger whichever way they turned, especially in a congressional election year, the two men still saw advantages in letting the Geneva meeting collapse without an agreement. On June 12, Smith candidly told Eden that he had just received a “plain spoken” personal message from Eisenhower instructing him to do everything in his power to bring the proceedings to an end as quickly as possible. “We decided,” the president himself would recall of this period in June, “that it was best for the United States to break off major participation in the Geneva Conference. The days of keeping the Western powers bound to inaction by creating divisions of policy among them in a dragged-out conference were coming to an end.”

In Paris, however, one man had a different idea. On June 18, six days after the Laniel government failed to win a vote of confidence (306 to 296), Pierre Mendès France, who had spoken out against this war longer and more fervently than any other leading politician, became France’s new prime minister. In soliciting the National Assembly’s support, the veteran Radical deputy didn’t merely proclaim as his first objective a cease-fire in Indochina; he vowed that he would resign within thirty days of his investiture if an agreement had not been reached. His last act before resigning, he added, would be to introduce a bill for conscription to supplement the professional army in the field, which the Assembly would have to vote on the same day. Mendès France was sufficiently encouraged by the results of the de Brébisson-Ha secret discussions to make this pledge, but he knew it was a gamble. How would the delegations at Geneva respond? Would he be able to bring the Viet Minh, the Americans, the Chinese, the Soviets along? And what about Bao Dai’s State of Vietnam, which that week had had her own change of leadership, one little noticed at the time but with enormous implications for the future? Buu Loc was out as prime minister, replaced by Ngo Dinh Diem. Would Diem, who immediately announced his opposition to any settlement involving partition, upset the Mendès France timetable?

So many questions, so much to work out. And the clock was now ticking.

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Filed under Britain, China, democracy, France, military, nationalism, U.S., Vietnam, war

by | 30 May 2025 · 2:58 pm

Negotiating Partition of Vietnam

From Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam, by Fredrik Logevall (Random House, 2012), Kindle pp. 718-719:

The president had indicated he would not order unilateral intervention, certainly not without the backing of a Congress that showed scant enthusiasm for going in alone. Dulles therefore continued the Franco-American negotiations over intervention, continued to apply pressure on Australia and New Zealand, continued to warn the British and French against agreeing to partition. The latter task became more difficult on May 25, for in restricted session on that day, Pham Van Dong explicitly endorsed the concept—or as explicitly as was possible without uttering the word. Each side would have complete administrative and economic control over its territory, he said in his characteristically staccato French, and would withdraw its military forces from the other zone. A similar arrangement would be implemented in Laos and Cambodia, with one zone for the royal governments of the Associated States and one for the Viet Minh–supported Pathet Lao and Khmer Issarak. Pham Van Dong stressed that his proposal did not represent a violation of the national unity of each country; the division in each case would be temporary and would lead to elections for reunification.

Pham Van Dong knew the general concept he was outlining would find favor in the British delegation and among many in the press corps. More important, he knew partition had growing support in the French camp. Georges Bidault, anxious to assuage the fears of the South Vietnamese government, remained hostile, but several officials—Claude Cheysson and Raymond Offroy, both of them Indochina specialists, as well as Jean Chauvel and Colonel de Brébisson—were convinced of the wisdom of attempting some kind of division of Vietnam, one that would give each side one of the deltas. A week earlier de Brébisson had commenced a series of face-to-face sessions with the Viet Minh’s Colonel Ha Van Lau, the first such Franco–Viet Minh meeting of the conference. Their initial charge was to discuss the evacuation of the wounded from Dien Bien Phu (it will be recalled that several hundred had been too ill to march to Viet Minh prison camps and had been left behind) as well as a possible exchange of prisoners, but in the days thereafter, they also considered other issues of contention, including the mechanics of a cease-fire and how to achieve the regroupment of the two sides. In the weeks to come, these two colonels, who had fought on opposite sides since the outbreak of the struggle—de Brébisson had been among the first French troops to disembark in Saigon, in November 1945, and Ha, a former clerk in the French colonial administration, had been political commissar in the 320th Division—would contribute as much as anyone to the final work of the conference.

Slowly, almost imperceptibly, Smith seemed to be coming around to the need for some kind of division of the country. At a press conference on May 27, he admitted that one could not ignore Ho Chi Minh’s well-disciplined and formidable fighting force, which controlled a significant proportion of the territory. This Viet Minh position of strength on the battlefield could not be wished out of existence. What the Eisenhower administration sought, Smith continued, was some means of reconciling this reality with American principles, leading to a “termination of hostilities on an honorable basis.”

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by | 27 May 2025 · 11:10 am

Trench Warfare at Dien Bien Phu

From Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam, by Fredrik Logevall (Random House, 2012), Kindle pp. 655-679:

Meanwhile, the enemy drew ever closer. Two weeks earlier Vo Nguyen Giap had abandoned mass assaults in favor of grignotage, or “nibbling away” of the French positions, in a replay of the trench warfare tactics of the Ypres salient in World War I. Hundreds of sappers were deployed to push assault trenches ever closer to the fortifications, a practice, Giap told associates, that would allow the Viet Minh “completely to intercept reinforcements and supplies.” Lead elements would dig a deep hole at the bottom of the trench and pass the dirt to the rear, where it would be immediately put in sandbags, while other workers brought forward logs and wooden beams to provide the diggers with overhead cover. It was a simple, beautifully efficient system. On most nights the defenders of Eliane could hear the clinking of picks and shovels almost under their feet, sometimes with their naked ears and sometimes using crude geophones made of a combination of wine canteens and medical stethoscopes. This too was reminiscent of Passchendaele forty years earlier, when German troops heard miners from Wales digging beneath them on Messines Ridge, in preparation for blasting them out.

Why did Giap shift tactics? With the French seemingly on the ropes in the second week of April, why did he not seek a swift and conclusive victory, a coup de grâce? Mostly because neither he nor his subordinate commanders could accept the casualty rates the French had been inflicting on them in the first month of the fighting. They needed a respite. Of the total number of dead and wounded that the Viet Minh suffered during the battle for Dien Bien Phu, close to half had been suffered already by April 5. Roughly four thousand of these were fatalities. Many of the losses occurred during intense fighting on strongpoints Dominique, Eliane, and Huguette, but French aerial attacks also could have devastating effect. C-47 transports were equipped with depth-charge racks to allow napalm drums to be unloaded swiftly. These were fused to explode twenty yards above the ground. Larger C-119s swept low, then pulled up abruptly while napalm cans slid out. The actual damage done by these attacks was often marginal, especially when poor weather and antiaircraft fire made accurate targeting impossible, but the mere anticipation that such a weapon could fall from the sky was acutely unnerving to defenders.

By mid-April, various reports indicated growing despondency among Viet Minh troops. Fiery speeches by political commissars about sacrifice, duty, and the need to stamp out Franco-American imperialism were duly given, but these worked best on new recruits anticipating quick success; they rang hollow to weary veterans of the frontal attacks who had witnessed comrades being slaughtered all around them and who themselves might have sustained wounds. French radio intelligence picked up agitated dispatches from lower-unit commanders reporting that some units were refusing orders, and a Viet Minh deserter told the French on April 20 that new recruits were despondent about the difficulties of the struggle. The commissars had to press all the harder, especially at recovery stations where soldiers were convalescing, insisting that the fight must go on as long as necessary, regardless of losses.

Many of the new recruits had walked to Dien Bien Phu, often in groups of about a hundred, usually for long distances through difficult terrain, only to find conditions worse after they arrived. Though the People’s Army had the luxury of rotating units between the trenches and rest areas in the surrounding jungle, this brought only limited relief. Even in the rear areas, men generally slept only on bamboo mats or banana leaves on plastic mats. 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. When the rains started for real about April 25, the conditions deteriorated, and not only for those in the trenches. Sickness increased, and the situation for the wounded, deplorable to begin with, deteriorated further. Gangrene cases proliferated. 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. As before, head injuries were a particular problem, and Tung taught the assistants his method of removing foreign bodies by suction and then closing the skull. With no electrocoagulators at their disposal, the team resorted to touching the blood vessels with white-hot platinum wire.

…

THE ASSAULT BEGAN ON MAY 1, AT THE USUAL TIME: LATE AFTERNOON. All day long evidence had accumulated in General de Castries’s command bunker that something was afoot, and by early afternoon the deadly smell of all-out assault hung in the air. Probing attacks down the trench lines were being made in greater strength, and radio intercepts detected the presence of Viet Minh battalions in concentration. The previous three nights had seen more downpours, and on April 29 some parts of the garrison reported three feet of standing water in the trenches. Their boots and clothing perpetually soaked, the men were also hungry, for everyone was now on half rations. April 30 brought a modicum of good news, in the form of an agreement by the American crews from CAT to resume their C-119 flights, in exchange for a promise from the French Air Force to do a better job of suppressing enemy flak (a promise it failed to keep). Supply drops increased dramatically that day and on May 1, and when the assault began, there was again three days of food available, along with desperately needed ammunition.

Just before five o’clock in the afternoon, the artillery barrage commenced. More than one hundred Viet Minh field guns opened up over the whole area of the camp. Bunkers and soggy trenches collapsed under the bombardment, many of their occupants buried alive. After three hours, the firing slackened, whereupon the entire 312th and 316th Divisions stormed up the eastern hill positions of Eliane and Dominique and the 308th targeted Huguette. Dominique 3, defended by a motley mix of Algerians and Tai, fell quickly, and by 2 A.M. Eliane 1 had succumbed as well. In nine hours of fighting, the garrison had lost 331 killed or missing. Was this the beginning of the end? Senior French commanders feared it was. Colonel Langlais wired Hanoi soon after the assault began: “No more reserves left. Fatigue and wear and tear on the units terrible. Supplies and ammunition insufficient. Quite difficult to resist one more such push by Communists, at least without bringing in one brand-new battalion of excellent quality.”

…

What a task they faced! Giap’s attacking force consisted of four infantry divisions, plus thirty artillery battalions and some one hundred guns. In response, the defenders could offer very little except the courage and fortitude borne of desperation. In this respect it was to their advantage that their perimeter had shrunk: It now consisted mostly of portions of Huguette, Claudine, and Eliane, perhaps one thousand yards square, plus the isolated Isabelle three miles to the south. To cover the approach to the hospital, which that morning held more than sixteen hundred wounded, and improvised strongpoint christened Juno had been created between Claudine and Eliane. Total troop strength stood at roughly 4,000, though in terms of infantry in the central sector it was closer to 2,000. There were Foreign Legion and Vietnamese parachutists, Moroccan Rifles, Tai from various dissolved units, French paratroop battalions (half of them Vietnamese), Arab and African gunners, and, down on Isabelle, still some Algerians. The greatest concentration of men, some 750 parachutists, was deployed at the point of maximum import and danger, the top of Eliane.

At four P.M., the Viet Minh artillery bombardment began. Its purpose was mostly to cover the assembly of assault infantry in forward positions, and it featured the unleashing of a wholly new weapon in the 351st Heavy Division’s arsenal: the “Stalin Organs.” Modeled on the twelve-tubed Katyusha rocket launchers that the Red Army had used with devastating effect against the Wehrmacht in World War II, these projectors announced their presence with the terrifying screeching noise of their rockets, which one legionnaire likened to the sound of a passing train. The explosions that followed were louder and often more destructive than those of shells of larger caliber, for the explosive made up a greater proportion of the rocket’s weight. Several of the rockets scored direct hits, destroying munitions stores, pulverizing sodden earthworks, and doing serious damage to the medical supplies depot. That night the garrison’s senior medical officer cabled Hanoi: “Situation of the wounded extremely precarious due to flooding and collapse of several dugouts.… Urgent need of all medical supplies; my stocks are destroyed.”

…

Sometime before eleven (accounts differ on the exact time), a massive explosion shook the earth under Eliane 2. In a tactic reminiscent of the Union at Petersburg in 1864 and the British at the Hawthorn Redoubt in 1916, the Viet Minh had driven a mine shaft under Eliane 2 and loaded it with three thousand pounds of TNT. Veterans recalled a muffled rumbling under their feet, followed after a pause by a giant geyser of earth and stones thrown into the air. The garrison suffered massive casualties, but the key French blockhouse did not fall, and the Viet Minh foolishly paused before advancing. This delay gave the defenders under Captain Jean Pouget precious time to man the lip of the crater and open a murderous fire on the approaching infantry. Three hours later, with Pouget’s men still holding out, he asked for reinforcements. He could hold Eliane 2, he told HQ over the wireless, with just one additional company. None was available, replied the major on the other end. “Not another man, not another shell, my friend. You’re a para. You’re there to get yourself killed.”

Pouget did not die. After acknowledging the major’s message, he announced his intention to sign off and to disable the radio. 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. “The swine,” he grumbled, grasping the irony. He put three bullets through the radio and went out to join his men. A few minutes before five o’clock, he and his last handful of soldiers were surrounded and captured.

The end was near. On May 7, the sun went up for the last time on the fortified French camp. Eliane 4 and 10 were still holding out at daybreak, but by midmorning both were gone.

…

The Battle of Dien Bien Phu was over. The Viet Minh had won. Vo Nguyen Giap had overturned history, had accomplished the unprecedented, had beaten the West at its own game. For the first time in the annals of colonial warfare, Asian troops had defeated a European army in fixed battle.

This last paragraph seems to be an astounding claim. Has the author never heard of the 1905 Siege of Port Arthur in the Russo-Japanese War? Or the 1842 Retreat from Kabul and other British defeats during the many Anglo-Indian wars. Did the Russian Empire suffer no defeats as it expanded across Central Asia? Did the Dutch VOC suffer no defeats in Southeast Asia, including Vietnam, Cambodia, and Formosa? The colonial era and its many wars started long before the 20th century.

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by | 26 May 2025 · 4:09 pm

Wide Support for Dividing Vietnam

From Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam, by Fredrik Logevall (Random House, 2012), Kindle pp. 662-666:

Keeping the United States out of Vietnam meant cultivating support for the DRV internationally, and that too argued for being open to diplomacy. Alienating world opinion by forswearing the chance for peace would be unwise. “We have always followed the situation in the world” and “coordinated with the wishes for peace of the people of the world,” one official said. A negotiated agreement would therefore be a “victory” as it met “the pressing needs of the world’s peace lovers.” In the view of deputy prime minister and foreign minister Pham Van Dong, the DRV needed “the sympathy and the support of all peoples” to contain its enemies and protect its sovereignty.”

Party officials were less keen to talk about yet another possible consequence of a prolongation of the fighting, namely that the struggle would become increasingly fratricidal over time. Already now, Vietnamese were killing other Vietnamese in larger numbers. Viet Minh strategists remained confident they had the vast majority of people on their side, and they were as contemptuous as always of what party documents habitually referred to as the “puppet army” created by the French, but in quiet moments they expressed concern about the changing nature of the war. The revolutionary cause they championed was based on the principles of national unity and derived its legitimacy from its status as the only real representative of the populace. In the spring of 1954, the revolution was not yet seriously threatened, but how would things look in six months or a year, or in two years?

Above all, Ho Chi Minh knew, negotiations for an end to the war would have to be attempted in Geneva because his patrons in Moscow and Beijing said so. Repeatedly since the end of the Berlin conference in February, the Communist giants had made clear their desire for a political solution in Indochina and had even made their continued material and rhetorical backing of the war effort contingent on the DRV declaring a willingness to seek peace. The Soviet Union still sought improved relations with the West and 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. China, for her part, viewed the Geneva meeting as an opportunity to solidify her membership in the great-power club and to forestall an American military intervention near her southern borders. Both Communist powers perceived as well a chance to drive a wedge between the Western powers. Said premier and foreign minister Zhou Enlai on February 27, during a meeting with his associates in the Foreign Ministry: “While France seems interested in reaching a peaceful solution to the Indochina issue, the United States is not. Therefore, it seems that France is reluctant to let the United States put its nose into Vietnam.”

But how to reach such a “peaceful solution”? The Kremlin came down early on the side of partition, a Korea-type solution that would temporarily divide Vietnam in half. Such a solution would respect France’s continuing strength in Cochin China while also acknowledging the Viet Minh’s effective control of large areas of Tonkin and Annam. It would serve China’s security needs as well, by forestalling an American intervention and by giving her a friendly “buffer” state on her southern frontier. And it would stop the war, if not forever, at least for a time. 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.” The French reacted with caution but did not rule out the idea, and the Soviets were further encouraged when the British government in subsequent weeks began making supportive noises about partition.

The Chinese too were attracted to the idea. Beijing’s ambassador in Moscow, Zhang Wentien, told Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov on March 6 that a division along the sixteenth parallel would be “very advantageous” for Ho Chi Minh and as such “should be accepted if it is put forward officially.” A few days later Zhou Enlai told Ho via telegram that conditions were ripe for a greater emphasis on the diplomatic struggle, and that, no matter what the likely outcome of the Geneva Conference, “we should actively participate in it.” Partition should be seriously considered, Zhou went on, because “if a ceasefire is to be achieved, it is better that a relatively fixed demarcation line be established so that [the Viet Minh] can control an area that is linked together.” As for where the line ought to be, the Chinese statesman singled out the sixteenth parallel as “one of our options.”

The VWP Politburo met three times in March to discuss negotiating strategy for Geneva, more specifically the notion of partition. Details from the meetings are sketchy, but we can guess that the sessions were stormy. Earlier in the month, the DRV ambassador in Beijing, Hoan Van Hoang, had shown little enthusiasm for partition when his Soviet counterpart brought up the matter. How can you find a demarcation line, Hoang asked, when there are no front lines? Over time, though, as the early assault on Dien Bien Phu failed to yield a decisive victory, the thinking in the Politburo swung in favor of partition, or at least against outright opposition. Members agreed to consider the possibility, so long as the division was temporary. The demarcation line would reflect the balance of military forces and would be as far south as possible. A party statement avoided mention of partition but extolled Geneva as “a victory for the forces of democracy” that, “together with big victories in the military field,” would make “our people in the occupied areas happy, and the puppets confused and concerned.” VWP instructions concerning the May Day celebrations stressed the need to encourage the people to write petitions to the government to express their “support of the Geneva Conference with a view toward finding ways for peacefully solving the Korean problem and putting an end to the war in Indochina.”

Still, it must have been with mixed feelings that Ho Chi Minh in late March arrived in Beijing, accompanied by Pham Van Dong, the DRV’s deputy prime minister and foreign minister, for a pre-Geneva strategy session. 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. He and his comrades had not fought for seven-plus years to gain only partial control of the country. Now he had to listen as Mao and Zhou urged him to score a victory at Dien Bien Phu and thereby achieve results at Geneva, but they also cautioned him to have “realistic expectations” regarding how much could be achieved in the negotiations—shorthand, in all probability, for the estimation that the DRV would not come away from the conference with control over all of Vietnam. The Vietnamese, according to Chinese sources, agreed on both points.

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