Whatever date one chooses for the start of the First Vietnam War—September 1945, with the outbreak of fighting in Cochin China, or November–December 1946, with the conflagration in Tonkin—by the start of 1947 there was fighting throughout Vietnam. Both sides had taken the necessary steps toward war, and in hindsight it’s tempting to see the whole thing as inevitable, especially after the failure of the Fontainebleau talks. But wars are never inevitable; they depend on the actions of individual leaders who could have chosen differently, who had, if not a menu of options, then at least an alternative to large-scale violence.
Yet if it takes actions by two sides to make a war, both sides are not always equally culpable. And if it’s true that the Vietnamese fired the first shots on December 19, ultimately France bears primary responsibility for precipitating the conflict. D’Argenlieu, dubbed the “Bloody Monk” by the left-wing press in Paris, had enormous power to formulate policy, often without consulting Paris, and as we have seen, he thwarted the prospects for a negotiated solution at several junctures in 1946; he seemed determined to provoke the Hanoi government into full-scale hostilities. D’Argenlieu, upon returning from a brief visit to France in late December 1946, vowed that France would never relinquish her hold on Indochina. The granting of independence, he declared, “would only be a fiction deeply prejudicial to the interests of the two parties.”
It would be too much, however, to call this “D’Argenlieu’s War.” The high commissioner’s core objective—to keep Indochina French—was broadly shared among officials in Paris as well as colons in Saigon and Hanoi. It is striking, the degree to which all parts of the political spectrum in France in 1945–46 shared the conviction that Indochina ought to remain within the French colonial empire. The left, to be sure, favored bona fide negotiations with Hanoi, but both the SFIO and the PCF were adamant that they did not want to see France reduced to what the Communist newspaper L’Humanité called “her own small metropolitan community.” Both attached importance to reclaiming and maintaining French prestige and saw the preservation of the empire as essential to that task. The Socialists, who dominated French politics in the crucial early postwar years, professed opposition to d’Argenlieu’s efforts to sabotage the March 6 Accords, but in practice they tolerated his actions, just as they tolerated Valluy’s provocations in Haiphong and Hanoi; at the Fontainebleau talks, the Socialist representatives were as intransigent as any on the French side. PCF leaders, meanwhile, despite becoming the largest party in the November 1946 elections (taking 28 percent and 170 deputies), kept a low profile on Indochina in the critical weeks thereafter, anxious as they were to appear a moderate and patriotic force.
Even Léon Blum, a broad-thinking humanist and fundamentally decent man who genuinely despaired at the onset of war, could say at once on December 23, less than a week into the Battle of Hanoi, that the old colonial system was finished and that renewed negotiations were possible only once “order” was restored. Minister of Overseas France Marius Moutet likewise said there could be no talks without an “end to terrorism.”
Most important of all in this constellation of voices on the French political scene was the MRP under Georges Bidault, which opposed not only negotiations with Ho but the granting of independence to any Vietnamese regime. Thrust into the heart of government not long after liberation, the MRP would maintain a tight hold on foreign and colonial policy for years to come and as such would hold extraordinary sway over the speed and complexion of imperial reform. As a group, the party’s leaders lacked experience in colonial affairs, and its senior figures—Bidault, Robert Schuman, and René Pleven—adhered to a rigid and intransigent colonial policy that stood in marked contrast to their often supple and forward-thinking approach to European affairs.
French public opinion, meanwhile, did not register significant opposition to the use of military force in Indochina. Information, for one thing, was hard to come by. In 1946, French newspapers did not have their own correspondents in Indochina, which left journalists dependent on the Associated Press and Agence France-Presse (AFP) for news. D’Argenlieu, deeply suspicious of independent journalism, maintained strict control over the AFP, making it in essence a government propaganda arm. Not surprisingly, therefore, the six main Paris dailies did little in-depth reporting in November and December and generally blamed the Vietnamese for the outbreak of violence. On November 28, after the French bombardment of Haiphong had leveled parts of the city and killed thousands, Le Monde’s Rémy Roure assured readers that, from the French side, “not a single shot had been fired, except in defense.”
Looming large over the entire process was one man: Charles de Gaulle. Though technically absent from the political stage after January 1946, his influence remained enormous, as historian Frédéric Turpin’s careful research makes clear. As leader of the Free French, he had possessed the power in 1944–45 to foil the plans of his country’s colonial lobby; he did not do so. Indeed, the general’s policy during and after World War II had been to reclaim Indochina for France, on the grounds that French grandeur demanded it. The choice of Admiral d’Argenlieu for high commissioner had been his. He, no one else, instructed d’Argenlieu and Leclerc to be uncompromising in their dealings with Vietnamese nationalists and to prepare to use force. During the conference at Fontainebleau, de Gaulle pressed Bidault to resist giving in to Vietnamese demands, and he announced publicly his conviction that France must remain “united with the territories which she opened to civilization,” lest she lose her great power status. Throughout the autumn, he stuck firmly to this position, and in the November-December crisis, he maintained staunch backing for d’Argenlieu’s uncompromising posture. On December 17, de Gaulle hosted the admiral for more than three hours at his home in Colombey-les-Deux-Églises and assured him that as far as Indochina was concerned, it was d’Argenlieu and not the government that represented France.
A week later d’Argenlieu, now back in Saigon, expressed satisfaction with the turn of events. “Personally,” he wrote in his diary, “I have since September 1945 loyally executed the policy of agreement in Indochina. It has borne fruit everywhere, except with the Hanoi government. It’s over.”
It was anything but.
Far Outliers 