Chapters
Shownotes Transcript
If you want access to bonus episodes, reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community, discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast, ad-free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.empirepoduk.com.
In the 2024 Jeep Grand Cherokee L, the journey from point A to point B isn't such a rush. In fact, with three rows of spacious comfort, thoughtfully crafted luxurious design, and an available premium Macintosh audio system, you'll find yourself seeking out the scenic route more often, even if it's just another lap around the block. Jeep. There's only one. Visit Jeep.com to learn more. Jeep is a registered trademark of FCA US LLC.
Travel is all about choosing your own adventure. With your Chase Sapphire Reserve Card, sometimes that means a ski trip at a luxury lodge in the Swiss Alps.
with a few of your closest friends. And other times, it means a resort on a private beach with no one else in sight. Wherever you decide to go, find the detail that moves you with unique benefits at hand-selected hotels from Sapphire Reserve. Chase, make more of what's yours. Learn more at chase.com slash sapphire reserve. Cards issued by JPMorgan Chase Bank and a member FDIC. Subject to credit approval.
Who doesn't love getting something for free? Labor Day deals have arrived at the Home Depot, and right now you can get a free Milwaukee 18-volt extended capacity battery, $159 value, when you buy a select tool. Get longer runtime and more battery life so you can power all your fall projects. Shop Labor Day deals and get a free battery when you buy a select tool at the Home Depot. How doers get more done. Limit one per transaction. Exclusions apply. Full eligible tool list in-store and online.
♪
Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnon. And me, William Durimple. So we are joined by Frederik Logevall, who is author of Embers of War. So nicely pronounced, Anita. I have to say your Swedish pronunciation improves each week on this programme. You're just jealous. Yeah, Frederik said it was very good. The fall of an empire and the making of America's Vietnam. And of course, Frederik, the clue is in the title. We're here to talk about the Vietnam War, the events leading up to it.
And this idea of how Daniel Omavar has a book called America's Hidden Empire and whether this slots into that kind of description. First of all, though, welcome. And didn't I say your name well? Didn't I? Didn't I? You said it so well. And I'm delighted to be with you both. Look forward to this conversation.
and figuring out this thing, the Vietnam War. I should say to our listeners that I have barely been able to get hold of Frederick's book lately because my son, Sam, has stolen my copy and is so deep into it and so enthusiastic about it that I have to sort of go up in the morning while he's sleeping.
Really? That's delightful. Well, Frederick, I hope you're proud of yourself. That's family strife that you've created. That's okay. That's fine. But Frederick, I'm intrigued how you came to this. As a man with a Swedish background, you'd expect French people and old vets and sort of Jimi Hendrix fans to be writing about Vietnam. But how did you come to it? Was it the movies that dragged you in? The full metal jackets and the apocalypse nows or what?
I think it was in part that. I think as an undergraduate in Canada, in Western Canada, in Vancouver, I read an extraordinary book that you will know, The Best and the Brightest by David Halberstam. I don't know that. A mesmerizing, sprawling, arguably overwritten book, but nevertheless, one that I read as an undergraduate. And I thought, I want to learn more about this. I need to understand how it is that the world's greatest power, bit by bit,
got into this conflict first in support of the French. And then after the French had been defeated, decided we're going to do this ourselves. I decided I need to understand better what happened and why. And so as a graduate student at Yale, I delved into this and it's been a kind of
love affair, if you will, a bad love affair, maybe since that time. Lovely area to travel and work. Are there fantastic archives in Saigon and places? Well, I think there are great archives. One of the problems is that the Vietnamese have been, until recently, closed, have not been very open, even though you'd think after you defeat the French, and you defeat or at least, you know, stand up to the Americans, you'd think,
We'll open our archives, but in fact, they have been reluctant to do that. And so we have not been able to get the kind of access that we would like as historians to the Vietnamese materials. What's the reason for the reluctance, do you think? I don't have a good...
answer for this? It's possible that there are actually fewer materials than we imagine. Let's remember that Ho Chi Minh and his lieutenants had to move from spot to spot in the jungle. They were on the go. It's possible that in fact, they didn't produce a lot of documents. And so, we're imagining boxes and boxes and boxes that don't in fact exist. I think it's also possible that
They're just unwilling to really reveal the secrets of their successes and their setbacks. How exciting, though, for future generations of historians to think that there is the possibility of wonderful archives still to come, a rewriting from the Vietnamese side. I think so. And the other thing that's worth saying here is that in the last decade or two,
historians have been able to do wonderful work using Vietnamese materials. And so this is beginning to change. Younger scholars have the linguistic capacity. There's at least some documentary evidence available. And so we're starting to see more of this richer, fuller history coming out. And presumably a lot of the principal participants are still around. Yeah, although fewer and fewer. I mean, I even found in writing Embers of War that
that when I traveled to Vietnam, I could speak to some officials, some were still reluctant, unwilling,
And some of them, frankly, had already passed on. And I think it's been about 15 years since I was working hard on this. Many of them have sadly passed. Yeah, if you think of the veterans of the Second World War who come to sort of D-Day celebrations, they're now in their 90s. Now, I mean, we sort of had a comment about this. You said, you know, they stood up to the Americans, they defeated the French. I think we need to talk about a little bit of context here. The French colonialism and what was then known not as Vietnam, but Indochina.
Indochine, it's such a romantic phrase. Yeah. I wonder if you can just give us a little context of what the French did and how long they held the territory. The French arrived beginning in roughly 1850, little by little. Initially, it was a substantial amount of missionary work.
Some commercial enterprises then started, and little by little, the French became more involved. By 1884, they had completed the conquest of what today is Vietnam. What excuse did they give for turning to arms? It's interesting. It was really three things that I think motivated the French. First and foremost, commercial profit. The raw materials of Indochina were going to be valuable to French manufacturers, but this was also then going to be potential markets.
In addition to that, and maybe more interesting, was the national security motivation that the British were involved in this part of the world. The Dutch are obviously here pretty close. We need to claim Indochina if only to keep especially the British involved.
from taking it because it has geostrategic value. And so we want to have a foothold here. So there's that dimension. Did the British resist it? Because the British by 1850s are well, you know, 250 years into their Indian history.
Not so much opposition from the British. I think if you look at French archival materials, which are fascinating for this period, the French anticipated more opposition from London than in fact they got. But the other motivation, the one that maybe interests me the most, is the kind of justifying one, if I can put it that way, which is to the French population.
The argument was, we are in Indochina on a, as they put it, a civilizing mission. It was a version of the white man's burden.
We are bringing civilization. We are bringing God to the heathen. And that's why, dear French compatriots, that's why we're there. That argument was made, but more for public consumption than anything else. So, I mean, that's the front face to the French people. But when it came to French colonial administration and government, what were they like?
I think what they were saying was that this is something we need to do because it's going to profit us both in the strict sense and it's also going to help us in this geopolitical game. Let's remember that this is an age of empire. And, you know, in order to keep up with the imperialistic Joneses, you've got to be playing this game. And this was the part of Asia that the French had decided would be theirs. And there's also this
early romantic attachment on the part of French officials to this beautiful, this landscape. And you can read the letters home, you can read their dispatches and they talk about the infinite,
shades of green, they talk about the beautiful vistas and the beautiful women. You can see early on that they have this kind of romantic attachment to Indochina. And I think that's going to be important going forward. So I suppose the question I was trying to ask and didn't ask very well, was it a paternalistic attitude from the colonial government when they finally do take over Indochina? Or was there a disdain that these people are lesser?
that, you know, they are the term that we've heard in India and in parts of Africa, savages that need to be controlled. I mean, what was the overriding thought? I think there's some of both. And it obviously, as is often the case, it depends on which French colonial official you're talking to. And so some of them
For some of them, it was, you know, these are savages and that's how they should be treated. Others said, you know, I see real potential here and we can bring them the benefits of our wonderful French civilization. And inside every Vietnamese is a Frenchman trying to get out, to paraphrase a later American military official.
I've been reading a lot for my last book on all these early French archaeologists like Sadez and Sylvain Lévy digging up the Khmer and the Cham sites.
And this unbelievable excitement and attachment to it, and this realization that they've stumbled on one of the last great civilizations which has barely been studied by the West. And the magnificence and the scale of these sites, like Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom, is being reported back to Paris and museums assembled of what we would today regard as looted artifacts and so on. Yeah, and one of the problems with the French, it's totally fascinating to me,
is that, well, what will become Vietnamese nationalists as they read the French classics, both fiction and let's say nonfiction, and they begin to understand the basis of French society, they themselves begin to say, ah, democracy, this is an interesting thing.
And in fact, they want to have, in a sense, what the French themselves have. And among other things, that means, in their eyes, independence. These democratic principles that the French preach...
are inconsistent with colonialism in our eyes. And this will become, as time goes by, as we get into the teens and the 1920s, this becomes a real problem for colonial officials. A lot of our listeners are often tickled by connections that they haven't made in the past. And the banh mi sandwich is very popular here. If you go around parts of London, you can get these extraordinary things to eat. And
That French baguette that's filled with these exotic fillings from the East is an exact throwback to that French colonial presence there. And William, I mean, you're interested in the extent to which the French had control over that part of the world. Yes, how far, Frederick, does it extend? I mean, obviously, we all have this focus on Vietnam because of the movies, because of America. It extends deep into Laos, into Cambodia. How far are they ruling directly and indirectly? So by, say, 1900, just to keep it simple.
simple. By 1900, the French really have as part of what becomes known as the Indo-Chinese Union. They have Vietnam, which they've divided into three sections mostly for administrative purposes. Tonkin in the north, Annam in the center, and Cochinchina in the south.
plus, as you're suggesting, Laos and Cambodia. You could really say that there are five entities, if you will, three in Vietnam and then Laos and Cambodia that together make up the Indo-Chinese Union. Are the old monarchies still surviving? Are they still around in their palaces or have they been shipped off or exiled or what have they done with them? They are to a degree surviving. The palaces are occupied.
There is a certain nominal place, I can't think of a better way of putting it, for the monarchies because the French understand that that has a certain utility.
But in de facto terms, this is now French through and through. The French are making the decisions and the Vietnamese, little by little, to get to our next subject of discussion, are beginning to chafe against this and are beginning in the teens, certainly seriously in the 20s, to push back.
Are they looking at Gandhi and seeing what's happening in British India with salt marches and so on? This is, of course, where Ho Chi Minh himself, who's going to be a key figure in our story and who is endlessly fascinating. This is where he, but also many others. It's a mistake to make this very much just about Ho. He and his like-minded are indeed looking abroad. They're looking to see what the Japanese were able to do.
The Japanese took on the Russians and defeated them. We had an episode on the Russo-Japanese War and the extraordinary effects 1905 had around the world. It had a big effect in Vietnam. And then, as you say, the developments in India are being paid close attention to. And as we get into World War I, and as we look at the pronouncements from Woodrow Wilson, the American president, about making the world safe for democracy...
about at least implicitly criticizing colonialism, preaching independence for people all over the world. This is a hugely exciting moment for Ho and again for other Vietnamese nationalists. We're mentioning Ho, but we need to talk about Ho Chi Minh, the real man. We love doing the Marvel stories of this. I mean, where was he born? What was his background? What made him who he was? So he's born in 1890 or 91. Some uncertainty about the actual date.
Father's a Confucian scholar, which is interesting. He does come from a traditional background. You're absolutely correct. Father is a scholar of Confucius, among other things. Ho decides early on that he is going to fight for independence for his country. He comes to the attention of the French security services, the Serté, and they begin, even when he is in his late teens,
basically to follow him, to pay attention. I can't hear Sireuté without thinking of Peter Sellers and Spectacus. It's a very different kettle of poisson that we're talking about here, because we're talking about an extreme, violent and repressive situation, aren't we? Oh, no question. And so what happens with Ho is that he begins a life basically abroad. I mean, it's astonishing when you think about the fact that for about three decades,
He is basically away from his native country. He leaves basically because he's feeling the pressure from the security police and he's in Europe, he's in the United States briefly, including in Boston where I live.
And then he's in Paris, which becomes, I think, the city that he loves more than any other. There is a blue plaque to him in the Haymarket in London. Yes. And in a Boston hotel, there's a little plaque that I sometimes take students to because it says that he was here as an assistant chef. Really? And he worked in this kitchen. Yeah. So he's an amazing character. A lot of the revolutionaries who are beginning to undermine British rule at this period in India are...
upper middle class, they often go to university or study law in London. Nehru goes to Trinity College, Cambridge. Gandhi studies law in London. Ho Chi Minh, one gets the impression, is not from that class, that he's working in kitchens and struggling much harder than the slightly bourgeois Indian revolutionaries. Yeah, yeah. No, it's true. And he's substantially self-taught or taught by his father. But he is unusual in that
He loves French literature, loves nothing more than reading the great French novels, French poetry, including when he's in the jungles in Indochina when the war against the French have begun. He'll be sitting there reading Flaubert. Yes, he will relax with French literature. And as I said earlier, Paris is his first love among cities.
And so he has some of those qualities that you're describing, even though he wasn't educated in that same way. At what point does he become Uncle Ho to supporters? The Viet Minh, which is the League for Independence for Vietnam, exists before Ho Chi Minh becomes a part of it.
So when does he become the person who is identified with this independence movement? Well, it's really formed and he's right there at the founding in 1941. But we should back up a little bit because in 1920, after the war is over, he is in Paris and he is involved initially with the French Socialist Party. But once it becomes clear to Hoe,
that the Socialist Party of France is really interested in internal French questions. They don't have that much to say about the empire. In fact, they're kind of supportive of the empire to the extent that they talk about it. He drifts over and helps form the French Communist Party. He's a kind of founding member. It's kind of amazing of the French Communist Party. And then you see this revolutionary who was very much attached to Woodrow Wilson.
to Wilsonian ideas drift slowly but surely in a Marxist-Leninist direction. That Lenin's writings in particular have a powerful effect, I think, on the Yang Ho, and he moves in this direction and then helps found the Indochina Communist Party. Is he the same generation as Mao, or is he a little bit older? He is more or less the same generation. He's a little bit older.
But I would say, broadly speaking, in intellectual terms, in revolutionary terms, I think it's fair to think of them as colleagues, if you will, or contemporaries.
And are they looking at each other? Are they in contact early on? How quickly do they get to know about each other's existence? I think that Ho learns earlier about Mao and his efforts, obviously. And they have interesting interactions later when the war really is beginning against the French. Then the two of them actually meet. Mao gives advice to Ho. Ho is a little bit resistant. He always has this kind of love-hate thing for the Chinese, given the history between the two countries.
Which you still get in Southeast Asia today, don't you? Everyone in Cambodia is busy sort of taking the money of the Chinese, but feeling oppressed by them and not wanting to be swamped by them. Absolutely. And once this is getting ahead of ourselves a little bit, but once the war begins and the communists win the Chinese civil war,
they become more involved in the Indochina War, and they want to direct the Indochina War. And the Viet Minh, to a large extent, try to resist this, even though they need Chinese assistance. It's a really interesting part of the story. Let's skip back. You're quite right. We are sort of hopscotching a little bit ahead. But during the Second World War, you have a Japanese presence in Vietnam. Japan invades, it occupies Vietnam.
In a sort of dramatic and unforeseen blitzkrieg. I mean, it's a huge sort of surprise to everyone, particularly the French. Well, they do. The Japanese are very clever about this because what happens, to cut a long story short, is that the French are defeated by the Nazis in six weeks in 1940 in Europe, an extraordinary development that we all know about.
The Japanese take advantage of this French defeat to swoop into Southeast Asia, take control of Indochina. But they're clever about this because they say, we're going to let the French maintain day-to-day control of Indochina.
but we're going to be the real bosses, but they will maintain control. So as far as ordinary Vietnamese are concerned, they're still responding to French masters and French directives. So you still got some gendarme sitting in the police station, but answering to a Japanese boss. Exactly. And then only in March of 1945, near the end of the war, do the Japanese seize full control in March 1945.
And then, of course, soon thereafter, the Japanese themselves are defeated. But one of the reasons this is so important is I think that experience in World War II
discredits the French in the eyes of many Vietnamese. If these French can't stand up to the Japanese, they're weak. And I think it's key for understanding what happens later. Frederick, tell us about the extraordinary moment that comes next, which is a moment that is often forgotten, when the British effectively reconquer the French colonies for the French, don't they? You get Douglas Gracie with a whole load of Sikh regiments coming from India. And
And the Sikhs are the first to take on Ho Chi Minh. It's not the Americans. It's not the French. It's the Sikhs and Douglas Gracie, a Scotsman. It's just unbelievable. When I wrote Embers of War, and my wife will tell you this is true, there were certain sections where I thought, I said to her, I could write a whole book about this. And this moment in the latter part of 1945 that you're describing is one of those moments. Because what happens is that through an agreement among the allies of World War II,
It is decided that the British will take control in the southern part of Vietnam and nationalist China will take control in the northern part of China. And that's what happens. But what the British also do, Gracie and others, is they free French prisoners.
They arm those French prisoners. And in effect, what they do is they allow the French who are determined, Charles de Gaulle, other French officials are determined to reclaim Indochina and the British help them to do so. And so by the time we get into the spring of 1946, the French are again a force in the southern part of Indochina.
And Ho Chi Minh is not having this. Ho Chi Minh has just got rid of the French. He doesn't want them back. No, but also, the words are so interesting at this time, because he declares this independent North Vietnam. We're not doing what you're doing in the South. We're not having any more of this bullshit. That's enough of you. Goodbye. And he uses the American Declaration of Independence as a template. I mean, he actually says, all men are created equal. They are endowed by the creator with certain inalienable rights. And that's fascinating.
Fascinating. And also, I mean, directly correlates that Bostonian, I'm guessing, experience of seeing, hearing and imbibing what that did to another country. No question. I mean, think of that scene. Try to imagine being in Ba Din Square in Hanoi on September 2nd, 1945. The Japanese are surrendering on that very day elsewhere. And here is Ho, as you say,
proclaiming Vietnamese independence using the American Declaration. It's just an amazing thing. And so the question becomes,
Was this a sincere homage to the American Declaration, or is he making a play for American support? I conclude in the book that it's some of both, that he really does admire these words and wants them to be the basis for his country's independence. But he's also saying the Americans are by far the most powerful nation in the world. They can help me prevent the French from returning. Therefore, I'm going to do this. And then you get something even more bizarre.
When you begin to get resistance against this by Ho and his supporters,
The British re-armed the Japanese and you have the Japanese and the Sikhs and the Scots fighting Ho Chi Minh. It's really true. And there are these moments in the latter part of 45 into 46 when I would argue it's a very fluid situation for all these reasons with all of these various groups on the ground armed and ready to go.
When, as they say, history could have gone in a number of different ways. Very different directions. Yeah. Very different directions. Ultimately, the French and Ho begin to negotiate. And they negotiate also in Paris in the summer of 1946. Ho is hopeful, but he leaves those negotiations. He leaves Paris, I think, convinced that war is coming. In other words, I think he's been disillusioned.
And he says to his compatriots, we're going to have to fight for this. And that's what happens. And the Americans, how do they respond to his invoking of the founding fathers? I mean, do they hear what he's trying to say? Or what do they do in response when they hear it? You know, I'm a big believer in what we call counterfactual history and what-if history. And I use it a lot with my students. A lot of historians don't like counterfactuals. I do.
One of the great what-ifs is what if Franklin Roosevelt survives? We should remember that Roosevelt died as a young man. We don't tend to think of it this way because he served so many terms. He was 63 years old when he died. The child in relation to today's sliding scale. To a certain American president incumbent. So I mentioned this because I think Roosevelt was disdainful of French colonialism.
Roosevelt believed that the French had been terrible colonizers. He did not want the French to be allowed to return. Had he survived, even into 1946, given America's powerful position on the world stage, I don't think it's hard to imagine that the Americans prevent the French from doing this. Truman, his successor, it's not that he's pro-colonialism.
I just don't think Harry Truman really cares one way or the other about this. And so when the French make a determined effort to come back to Indochina, because for French grandeur, we need the empire.
Truman is not going to stand in their way. You have a kind of neutrality by the United States, to answer your question, that is a de facto support for the French effort. And then over time, that neutrality becomes an overt pro-French posture. And when does that posture translate and how quickly does that translate to boots on the ground and an international effort to support those boots on the ground?
It's a really good question. It begins very much as a bilateral war between France and the Viet Minh. So, when the fighting breaks out in late 1946, it's really these two sides warring against each other.
Little by little, in '47, '48, and then into '49, the Americans become more involved supporting the French. An early version of the domino theory takes hold both in London, in Washington, and the French are very clever at playing on this. That is to say, if we allow Indochina to fall, or even if we allow just Tonkin, that is to say, Northern Indochina to fall,
then pretty soon all the other dominoes will fall as well. It's fascinating to look at British officials. They hold to this view. American officials hold to this view. And so what happens in 48, 49, and especially after Mao wins the Chinese Civil War, is we have got to help the French. We have got to make sure that they win.
Because otherwise, we're going to lose other more important territories. That's clear by 49. And already, things are stirring in the Korean Peninsula. Oh, what I call the twin shocks. The twin shocks have a huge effect, especially on American thinking. The twin shocks being the Soviet detonation of an atomic device and the communist victory in the Chinese Civil War in 49. Then in 50, as you say, when the Korean War breaks out,
That further cements this idea in Washington that we cannot lose more territory.
Plus Berlin Airlift and all the stuff going on in Eastern Europe. So suddenly the whole situation is changing. We're moving from a post-war phase where everyone has been allies suddenly to a situation where a new war, a new enemy and a new dividing line is going up across the world. It's the commie tsunami that people are talking about. That has seized diplomatic, governmental and even societal imaginations.
Yeah, it is. And I think we have to as historians and as people thinking back about that time, I think we have to acknowledge that thinking.
We may now say that it was very foolish for the Americans to support the French. It was foolish for the French to try to do this. And it was. I'm not going to defend it, but it is helpful and I think important to try to put oneself into the position of smart policymakers at the time. And they really did hold this view that the communists were on the march and one needed to find places, certain locations where you need to make a stand to
And it was determined in this case that Indochina, though it wasn't very promising in lots of ways, the French were already losing ground rapidly. Indochina would be that place. How...
How far were these ideas of a sort of massive communist enemy coherent, taking on the West, true? Are the Viet Minh actually being armed by the Chinese? Are the Russians involved yet? Or is this still imagination? Are they still a sort of crackpot army getting arms where they can, how they can? That's a great question. In a way, it goes to the heart of this whole historical effort, if you will.
My own view is, after decades of researching this, and not all historians agree with me, that Ho and his senior colleagues were committed Marxists, Marxist-Leninists, but first and foremost, they were nationalists. And they did not see any sort of contradiction, it seems to me, between those two positions.
They were fighting for Vietnamese independence. They were certainly willing to take Chinese assistance and to some extent, Soviet assistance. They needed it, especially as the Americans are becoming much more, and the British to some extent, much more involved helping the French. But I don't think it's fair to say that this was somehow directed by the Chinese or the Soviets. The Vietnamese, the Viet Minh are making their own decisions in waging this war.
That always fascinates me how agency is often taken away from a nation itself. For some reason, people would want to become part, having freed themselves of one type of imperialism, would want to leap into becoming a vassal state for another empire. And that just gets lost so much. Do we have any speeches from Ho Chi Minh himself stating that, you know what,
la, la, la, I don't care about any of this. I just want us to be free. Or does he pander? Because he's got to play to a gallery. The Americans haven't come running to support him. He did the Declaration of Independence. So if he talks to the communists in their language in Russia or China, maybe they'll come and help. He certainly makes these speeches that you describe in which he is saying that we, the Viet Minh, need to be open to all Vietnamese.
including bourgeois, including landowners. He wants the Viet Minh to be a broad organization. And he talks a lot about merely wanting independence for his country. But of course, he's singing a different tune when he's meeting privately with Chinese officials and with Soviet officials. And he's clever in this regard. The other thing that's so interesting about him in this period, which I write about, is how long he holds to the view that the Americans are
founded in opposition to British imperialism. The Americans will ultimately be there for me in the end. He is so reluctant to give up on this notion. I think it's in 48, maybe even in 49, that he finally says to himself, you know what?
the Americans are a lost cause. I'm going to have to do this without them." But until then, he's therefore very reluctant to go whole hog, as we say, in with the communist powers. Let's talk about the end of French rule and how the French are finally defeated, and then what comes next. I'm very interested in this moment in early 1950 when
You do get the communist powers, the People's Republic of China, the USSR, the Soviet Eastern European satellites, all recognizing Ho Chi Minh's government. So you do have this cleavage developing with one half of the world, the communist world, looking to Ho Chi Minh as a legitimate figure and the Western formerly imperialist powers still resisting it. Yeah. No, and that's exactly when you say that's early 1950. It's not a coincidence.
that various textbooks, especially in the United States, begin the story in early 1950. Classic book by George Herring called America's Longest War is 1950 to 1975, I believe. In early 1950, this is what you're getting from the communists, recognizing the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, the DRV. And on the other side, the West, led by the US, drastically upping its support
for the French. So, the war now becomes internationalized in a way that it was not before. As we already discussed, you've got the Korean War that breaks out that summer. You've got one other thing that we've got to mention. In the United States, you've got what's called the second Red Scare. You've got McCarthyism. I argue in the book, and I've argued elsewhere, that I think it has a really important effect on American decision-making with respect to Korea and also with respect to Indochina. That is to say, no American politician
is going to risk being called soft on communism by failing in this case to back the valiant French effort in Indochina. They do insist the Americans, we should mention this briefly, that the French need to move toward granting the Vietnamese more independence. That is something that the Americans at least pay lip service to. But when not much of that happens,
the Americans backed the French war effort anyway. I'm looking at some of the propaganda material from the time because of course, you know, leaflets have always been as much a weapon of war as bullets have. And it's a 1954 pamphlet that shows Vietnam cut into two. And
And the northern side is in black and white and it shows men in uniforms hitting civilians, children crying and a house on fire. And then you've got the south. It's all green. There are bullocks pulling plows. There are people happily working the land. Everything's happy, happy, joy, joy. And it's all in shades of green. How much are people in the north othering the people in the south or people in the south othering the people in the north? Yeah.
Yeah, I think a lot of that goes on. That's a fascinating description that you just gave. I think there's a lot that goes on. And of course, the government both in the south and Saigon and the opposing government in the north is very good at playing to this and at doing this and putting forth this kind of propaganda. What happens, I think, is that the DRV, which is in control in the north, is indeed a repressive government. And we should not discount that. We'll talk about that further, I think, as we go, I'm sure.
But it's also true in the South. The truth is that neither of these places are very good places in which to live in this period. Nevertheless, bit by bit, the Viet Minh gain territory. And how is that? How are they doing so well? What's the reasons for this early Viet Minh success? Because they're not presumably well armed at this point.
No, I mean, it's a question that we will continue to ask, even with respect to the American war. I think that French officials puzzled, American officials puzzled over this question. Why is it that their guys...
are fighting with so much determination than our guys. So this is something they puzzle over at the time. Maybe it's not such a mystery. On the one side, you're really seeking to repel an external presence from your country. It's very hard for an occupied country to see an occupying force as its friend. Particularly if they're white, if they speak another language, if they're behaving in a vaguely racist manner.
And so there's that. They also just become very skilled fighters. They're well-trained. They're motivated. This is their country.
After all, so they know the territory better than certainly the French officers who are fighting maybe with indigenous troops. But nevertheless, this is not their country. That makes a difference. We are approaching now the crucial fulcrum moment of Dien Bien Phu. We're going to take a break and we'll be right back into the first great conflict of the Vietnam War.
Travel is all about choosing your own adventure. With your Chase Sapphire Reserve Card, sometimes that means a ski trip at a luxury lodge in the Swiss Alps.
with a few of your closest friends. And other times, it means a resort on a private beach with no one else in sight. Wherever you decide to go, find the detail that moves you with unique benefits at hand-selected hotels from Sapphire Reserve. Chase, make more of what's yours. Learn more at chase.com slash sapphire reserve. Cards issued by JPMorgan Chase Bank and a member FDIC. Subject to credit approval.
This episode is brought to you by Heineken Silver. When you discover something you love, like a new podcast or beer, you have to tell everyone about it. So when you try new Heineken Silver, a world-class light beer with only 2.9 carbs and 95 calories, you'll want to tell the world how great it is. New Heineken Silver, the world-class light beer with all the taste, no bitter endings. Available at your local Heineken retailer or for delivery at Heineken.com slash silver. Must be 21 plus to purchase. Enjoy Heineken responsibly.
Grimace Mox, Hello Kitty Keychains, Teenie Beanies! For a limited time, your favorite McDonald's collectibles filled with memories and magic are now on collectible cups. Get one of six when you order a collector's meal at McDonald's with your choice of 10-piece McNuggets or a Big Mac. Come get your cup.
While you still can. Ba-da-ba-ba-ba. At participating McDonald's for a limited time while supplies last. ♪
Welcome back. Anyone who has ever taken the slightest interest in the Vietnam War knows that the beginning of the fighting, there is this extraordinary moment at Dien Bien Phu, when the French colonial forces are besieged on a mountaintop by the Viet Minh. Frederick, take us there. It's certainly one of the great military encounters of the 20th century. I mean, think about this place in remote northern Vietnam,
Think about the French decision to make a stand here because of a conviction on the part of French commanders that even if the enemy can get his guns up on the hillside, there'll be easy pickings for our artillery. And so the French are convinced that they're setting a trap for the Viet Minh. And in fact, General Giap, Vinh Nguyen Giap, the Viet Minh commander,
Makes the better argument ultimately, which is he says, no, I think I can take on the French right here. I can amass sufficient amounts of artillery through backbreaking labor, getting them up and down the hillsides and then in place.
In fact, it'll be the French who are sitting ducks on the valley floor. And this battle begins in March 1954. The world is paying close attention. Time magazine is there. The early first television reporters are there. Yes. Graham Greene flies in to see the French position and Greene thinks this is not going to go well for the French. And of course, he's right about this. So he's filled with foreboding as he leaves.
which is a really interesting part of the story. But in fact, as you say, it becomes the great climactic battle of the French-Indochina war. It ends in the French surrendering in
in May of 1954. What happens to provoke that? Is it that they've run out of food, they've run out of ammunition, that they've been outgunned? What's the military end of the story? It's basically the Viet Minh slowly and effectively tightening the noose. So they're getting closer and closer to the French positions on the valley floor.
And day by day, it just gets worse for the French. Now, what's interesting here is that there's a debate going on in Washington and to some extent in Paris and London about what to try to do to save the French position. And there is serious consideration in Washington supported by, among others, Richard Nixon, who's the vice president under Eisenhower, which is to try to save the French position through massive aerial bombardment of the admin positions.
There is a scenario in which the United States becomes involved militarily in the Indochina struggle a decade before it actually does, and it's here in the spring of 1954. There's even a nuclear dimension to this option. That is, you would use tactical nuclear weapons
on the Viet Minh positions. And when the French learn about this, they say, wait a minute, you're going to kill Frenchmen. You're going to kill everybody if you use these tactical atomic weapons here. And so they basically say, no, don't do this. So after two months or slightly less than of fighting, the French are defeated. Is there a formal surrender? There's a surrender at Dien Bien Phu. Yes, indeed. And we can say symbolically, it's really the end of the war. But in fact...
at the Geneva conference, which has begun at this time. So the great powers are meeting in Geneva. It is at that conference, subsequent to the Dien Bien Phu defeat, that a decision is made to divide the country in two.
North and South. The Korean solution. Basically the Korean solution. And Ho and his government will take charge in the North. And in the South, there will be an anti-communist government. It comes ultimately under the control of Noh Din-Siem, who is backed by the United States. And you have this fateful division of the country. It's supposed to be temporary, two years.
Elections for reunification are supposed to take part by 1956. They, of course, don't happen.
And it sets us, therefore, on the path to what will become known as the Second Indochina War or the American War that is more familiar to Americans. And the reason those elections don't happen after two years, as suggested in Geneva, is because the Americans block it. They say, no, we're not doing that anymore. To some extent, yes. But I think it's no denzim, denzim.
this rather extraordinary figure who is the leader of South Vietnam. It is Diem who says, I'm not going to have these elections. Communists will never agree to free elections. We won't be able to depend on any outcome. I'm not even going to have consultations for these elections. The Americans were wanting Diem to go through the motions, pretending to maybe have the elections. So you should at least consult with them. And it's Diem,
who is driving the hard line here and he says, "I'm not even going to consult with them." So the bottom line is that both, I guess it's fair to say that both the South Vietnamese and the Americans ensure that no elections happen. The British are interesting here because the British can see that in fact, Ho is likely to win any election. You can see this in the British documents. They can see that we probably can't win.
But some British officials say, well, we should nevertheless go through with these elections because they are, after all, called for in the Geneva Accords. What's the British role here? Why are they having an opinion at all? The British role is that they were the co-chairs of the Geneva Conference with the Soviet Union. So they have a certain authority here. They're, of course, also an important part of the Western Alliance, especially important to the Americans. When Dwight Eisenhower is weighing the possibility of military intervention to save the French position,
I argue in my book, he might well have gone through with it had the British supported it. But Churchill and Eden, really interesting part of the story. Churchill and Eden say, "No, you're not going to have British support for any kind of military intervention. We can't defeat the Viet Minh. Even if we save the French here, we're not going to be able to save them ultimately."
And so you can see how the British rule matters. Can we talk about Zim a little bit? Because, I mean, just looking at a picture, he looks like a well-groomed accountant with very clean fingernails. So, I mean, you know, sort of is a strong man of the South. It doesn't fit with the image. Tell us about him and where he comes from and what makes him who he is.
I suspect his fingernails were very clean indeed. This guy was nothing if not well-groomed. He was a Catholic in a predominantly Buddhist country. He had spent time at an American seminary in New Jersey.
He had gotten to know various political figures. He got to meet John F. Kennedy, which is interesting. And he was a devout Catholic. He was also a sincere nationalist. We should not belittle Ngo Dinh Diem, as was happening in some of the early scholarship on the war. He had his own ideas for his country's future. He was personally courageous. He could compete with Ho Chi Minh in terms of his
determined belief in Vietnam and its future. Where he could not compete with Ho was in winning the support of the majority of the population. That was going to be a fatal problem for Diem to the end. And tragically, also, he competed with Ho in his repressiveness and his lack of openness to oppositions.
No question. There is repression of opponents in the North. There is oppression and repression against opponents of the South Vietnamese regime in the South. Is Ho Chi Minh publicly on show at this period? Is he appearing on television in the way that we're used to leaders appearing today? Or is he sort of underground and faceless? I wouldn't say he's appearing a lot in terms of the public face of Ho, but his government is now in charge.
in North Vietnam for the first time since this struggle began, they have a place that they can go to. We should give a physical portrait of the two men. So you have Diem, who is, as Anita says, an accountant who's besuited, carefully combed hair, wears a tie. In contrast, Ho Chi Minh looks like a sort of sage from a sort of kill bill. But also dressed in army fatigues there as well. You know, he's a man who fights. And I think in his case...
It's at least partly affected. What I mean by that is that I think Ho understands that he needs to be seen as a simple man, as a humble man, as somebody who is a man of the people. And I think he chooses his garb. He chooses his attire accordingly. And I think it's quite clear he's doing that on purpose. He is wraith-like. He's very skinny. He's got the beard. Ziem is a very different character. He's portly.
He looks like somebody who hasn't missed a meal in a very long time. He wears the sharkskin suits, the tie, the black shoes. He cuts a very different figure. And this is part of the problem as Americans begin to see is that he's not interested in being out amongst the people. He doesn't understand that part of the thing that a political leader must do is to win popular backers.
including in the countryside, not just in urban areas of South Vietnam. But they still pour aid into his coffers. I mean, we see that President Eisenhower puts over a billion dollars into his coffers. I mean, the state is artificial. His part of it is propped up entirely by American interests. Oh, there's no question about this. And are the Chinese now properly armning the Viet Minh?
Oh, yes. And you're getting lots of support for North Vietnam, as it's now becoming to be called, for the Democratic Republic of Vietnam from both the Soviet Union and China. And it's critically important because already now, Ho and his government are finding that it's in some ways easier to fight a war than it is to govern a country. And so they have to learn right here in 55, 56, 57, that
how to go about doing this and also consider the question of reunification. Once it becomes clear that the election is not going to happen,
What are they going to do? Are they going to just consolidate their power in the north, or are they going to have to fight again, this time to reunify the country under their control? That becomes a pressing question for them. I went to dinner last week with the former war correspondent, James Fox, who covered Dian Benfu and was in all this action at the time. And on his wall, he's got a picture of Ho Chi Minh from this period.
And I thought at first it was Hailey Selassie. He's got very dark skin. He's wearing this sort of white outfit and he's got a donkey and he's out there. It's an extraordinary picture. This very charismatic looking character. Oh, he is. It's a very good point that you make because I think this is something we don't appreciate enough is the charisma of
of this figure, which ultimately allowed him to become one of the most recognizable figures of the 20th century, which is kind of amazing when you think about it. But that sounds like a great photograph. In respect of actually changing the way in which North Vietnam functions, I mean, is he instituting land reforms? Is he allowing people with different ideas to exist in that same area? Or is he persecuting Catholics? I mean, you know, we know that Zim is a Catholic. What does his North Vietnam look like?
His North Vietnam becomes a very repressive state. We should be quite clear about this. He will acknowledge some of the mistakes, quote unquote, that they make. He will express regret for some of the repressive actions. But the truth is that Catholics are persecuted. Landowners are persecuted. The land reform that they have promised takes a very different turn in reality. He still has broad popular support.
but it's far from universal. And this is one of the things that the regime, the government's going to struggle with, not only here in the latter half of the 1950s, as they slowly become around to the idea that they're going to have to fight again
in South Vietnam and against probably the Americans. But even beyond this, in terms of internal governance, this is something that's going to be an acute problem, it's fair to say, for the Hanoi government. Well, it takes us so neatly into a pivotal year, and that's 1961. Eisenhower is out and
John F. Kennedy is in. Does he come with a lot of baggage and preconception about what he wants to do about Vietnam? Or is this a blank slate that becomes coloured very quickly? No, I think he comes in with interesting, with important ideas. He's the subject of my current research. And so this is very much close to me right now. What's fascinating about John F. Kennedy is that he travels to Indochina in 1951. What is he at that point? He's a congressman.
He is a young congressman, travels there with his brother Bobby and their sister Patricia. This is the height of the French War. So if you imagine these three Kennedy siblings there on the scene, and he writes in his diary, which we have access to. It's right there at the Kennedy Library.
He writes, in effect, the French aren't going to be able to win this war. Western military arms cannot defeat revolutionary nationalism in this part of the world and perhaps elsewhere. By implication, I think that young JFK is saying the French can't do it and neither could the United States.
Very, very interesting. Are you the first to have seen that diary? I'm not sure I'm the first. I think I'm maybe the first to have written about it in some depth. But one of the things that I have to figure out as I write this biography of JFK is what happened in that decade between him traveling and being so prescient and becoming president.
Did he change his view? Did he become more optimistic about the possibility of defeating communism in Indochina? I don't think he did. I think he was still a gloomy realist about the prospects in South Vietnam. And yet, this is the paradox, that same Jack Kennedy,
boosts American involvement after the insurgency begins. We haven't really talked about that, but an insurgency develops supported by North Vietnam. Within South Vietnam. Within South Vietnam. And I think this insurgency, which I argue is in part indigenous to South Vietnam, but also directed by the North, becomes more and more of a problem. JFK has to deal with this soon after taking office.
And the result is, though he resists committing ground troops in 1961, even though his advisors want him to do that, he does boost US involvement substantially. What is the form that the insurgency take? Is it bombs going off at roadsides, cafes exploding like in the Quiet American and that sort of thing? Yes, it's very much that, that grenades will be rolled down movie theater aisles,
tossed into cafes in Saigon. There's also more, if you will, conventional fighting that happens in villages, smaller towns in South Vietnam. Little by little, the insurgency captures more ground throughout the South. Kennedy and his associates and Diem and his associates
have to decide how do we respond to this increased fighting. I wondered whether, you know, you were talking about what happened to the, you know, 10 years earlier JFK, the younger and JFK, the 1961 remake. And I wonder if it is a lot to do with the fact that he's been humiliated in Cuba by the Russians and he feels it. You know, he feels that communism actually is out to get him and is making him look silly and he has to flex because of that.
Yeah, I think those developments, the Bay of Pigs disaster in April of 1961, soon after he takes office, is humiliating, as you say. He had a pretty terrible encounter with Khrushchev in Vienna soon thereafter, where one could argue he was somewhat bullied by Khrushchev. I'm not sure that's actually true, but that's a conventional view. So I think you're absolutely right that the broader context is key to understanding his decision-making, also part of that context.
is this domestic political one. Democrats throughout the Cold War feel vulnerable to the charge from Republicans that they are soft on communism. The Republicans become very good at using that club to beat up on Democrats. And I think Kennedy feels that Johnson will feel it later, which we need to discuss.
and he'll feel it in spades. Put those two things together, and it becomes more understandable why this Kennedy, who I still believe is deeply internally skeptical of a military solution in South Vietnam, why he nevertheless decides, I'm going to boost our involvement. I'm going to send more aid. I'm going to start sending more advisors. That's key. More advisors to South Vietnam.
in 61 and especially in 62, you see this pretty marked increase in US involvement. So we're talking about CIA operatives in civvies who are just flying around in helicopters and basically saying, this is what you should be doing. This is what our intel tells you you should be doing. Yeah, no question that the CIA becomes more involved in 61 and 62, but also the Pentagon under Robert McNamara. There are just more military advisors who are now
directing the South Vietnamese military, which is known as the ARVN, the Army of the Republic of Vietnam. And of course, as you can imagine, as more Americans accompany South Vietnamese troops into the field, more Americans will die. And so little by little, you start to see Americans who come home dead, which will increase the pressure on the Kennedy administration and in a sense, reduce the political maneuverability that Jack Kennedy has.
Yeah, and William made the really important point earlier that this war will be televised in a way that no other war has been televised before. So you have, I mean, by the summer of 1963, you've got American newspapers, American media saturated with what's going on in Vietnam. It's on the news bulletins, Cronkite's talking about it. You know, you've got it.
everywhere and everywhere. And then you have that image of the stoic Buddhist who sets himself on fire as protest. Extraordinarily famous image. Is this Buddhists who are protesting against Zim or can we boil it down to that, that we should have a say in what happens in our own country? What is the story behind that image?
Yeah, I think it's exactly as you say and made a couple of really important points that we need to unpack. One of them is the importance of television. And it's ironic that John F. Kennedy, it's a theme in the volume of the biography that I'm working on now, that he understood television way better than other Democrats and other Republicans did.
His father had been a Hollywood mogul. Joe Kennedy preached the importance to all of his kids of being good on camera. They understood that television was a total game changer. So JFK understood this. And as you say, in the summer of 1963, print journalists and TV journalists
are paying attention to this struggle in a way that they had not done before. And then a Buddhist monk, as you say, lights himself on fire. This is flashed across the world on front pages. I think it makes, as I argue in a previous book, Choosing War, it is at this moment in the summer of 1963 that Vietnam becomes for the first time a day-to-day front page
foreign policy issue for the United States with hugely consequential meaning. Let's just talk about that image just for a moment longer, because this is the 60s. This is peace and love, man. This is where people in robes are not carrying guns. And you have that image that's being filtered back to America of a man who is unarmed, who is wearing the robes of Buddhism, and yoga is spreading, and people are sort of chanting all over the United States in the 60s.
and he is on fire. And I mean, there can be no more eloquent an argument, can there? Not in the eyes of many Americans.
No, and I think savvy US officials understood the problem. Are they panicking? I mean, have you seen sort of communiques where they're going, oh God, what are we going to do about this? Yeah, certainly. See, if not panic, at least acute alarm that this image, Malcolm Brown had been tipped off that this was going to happen, a journalist. And so Malcolm Brown shows up with his camera, with a photographer to record this image.
It shows, among other things, that the Buddhists were savvy to the publicity that they wanted to get. But you're absolutely right that U.S. officials saw the problem that this was creating, the broader Buddhist crisis of which this was a part.
and the repression by the Saigon government of these Buddhists. So do the Buddhists regard it as a sort of Catholic coup d'etat, that the Catholics have taken over our country and we've got to get it back for Buddhism? I think that's a very good way of putting it. That is the source of this anger. And it points to something else we should acknowledge, which is the limits of American culture.
influence. Even though Ngo Dinh Diem is entirely dependent on the United States for his support, for military aid, for economic aid, he's able to basically call the shots. We should not be talking about a puppet.
Or if it's a puppet, it's a puppet that is in some ways controlling the puppeteer. And that is something that US officials also have to deal with. Hence, the growing conviction in the summer and fall of 1963 in the councils of the administration, in the halls of power,
Do we need to have a change of government? Do we need to force Ngo Dinh Diem out? That is quite the cliffhanger to end this episode on. Please join us for the next episode of Empire, where we continue talking to the wonderful Frederick about Vietnam and America. And when not one, but two shots are fired that will change the world. Till then, it's goodbye from me, Anita Arnon. And goodbye from me, William Durrenpool.