There are probably no two places less alike than the cities of Geneva, Switzerland, and Dien Bien Phu. But in 1954, the two places came together in a way that was to cause the destruction of one and a decision on the fate of Indochina in the other. Let us look first at Dien Bien Phu.
It was and is a crossroads town. It is located where three main highways join in north-western Vietnam just ten miles from the Laotian border. The Viet Minh received much of their supplies from China through supply routes from Laos.
In 1953, a new commander of French troops arrived in Vietnam. His name was General Henri Navarre, and like those who came before him, he wished strongly to force the Viet Minh into a major open battle. He felt that a major French force at Dien Bien Phu would draw out the Viet Minh, who would have to battle there in order to secure their Laotian supply lines.
The Korean War had ended in July of 1953, and that fact put pressure on Navarre. The end of the war had caused two changes in the situation in Vietnam. First, the Chinese were no longer caught up in Korea and so were able to send greater amounts of military supplies to the Viet Minh, making them a more formidable enemy. The longer Navarre waited, the stronger his opponents would be. Second, the truce in Korea created an atmosphere in which the search for a political settlement in Vietnam was more important than ever. Westerners were tired of war in Asia. In 1953, the Viet Minh controlled enough of Vietnam to be able to ask a lot in any political settlement. Navarre’s task was to improve the military situation so that France’s position in any political bargaining would be increased.
Late in a football game, when your team is behind by four points, the other team will allow you to get a field goal because they want to stop you from getting a touchdown. Your team would be happy with either a touchdown or two field goals. Navarre was behind by ten points and he wanted a touchdown so the game would be close.
In late November, Navarre began to send paratroops into Dien Bien Phu. His information was that there were no Viet Minh in the area. His information was wrong. Of the first eight hundred French troops to land in the town, forty were killed by two companies of Viet Minh. However, the French soon secured the area and by the end of the month had ten thousand troops in place.
Their first task was to build airstrips, for all of their supplies would have to be brought in by plane. The town was a hundred and seventy rugged miles from Hanoi and was in a hollow surrounded by heavily wooded hills. The French knew that the terrain would prevent them from bringing in any heavy equipment on the ground and believed that it would have the same effect on the Viet Minh.
The French were wrong again.
General Giap, too, saw Dien Bien Phu as a great opportunity, and he developed a plan with four parts to it to take advantage of the situation.
First he gathered a peasant army of some twenty thousand people whose main job would be to cut supply roads through the forests for troops and supplies to move on. These were little more than simple trails, but that was all that was needed. Second, on these trails the trained army troops would move in as quickly as possible, travelling day and night. If the French had known of these two parts of the plan, they would not have been greatly concerned. After all, the reason they came to Dien Bien Phu was to fight the Viet Minh after having drawn large numbers of them to one place.
They expected to win such a battle because the Viet Minh would not have artillery and because they would nor be able to supply large numbers of troops for any long period of time.
The Viet Minh had very few trucks, and the French could easily close off the roads to any vehicles while they brought their own supplies by air. But the Viet Minh did not use trucks or roads or airplanes. They used bicycles. This was the third part of the plan.
Throughout northern Vietnam orders were received to prepare what the Vietnamese called xe tho. The frame of an ordinary bicycle was strengthened so that it could hold up to four hundred pounds of supplies. A bamboo pole was attached to the handlebars to allow the bike to be steered by someone walking along side it and another pole was attached to the seat to provide a balance point. The tires were strengthened by wrapping them with cloth strips cut from the trouser legs of the peasants.
Thousands of xe tho set off for Dien Bien Phu along the new paths pushed by thousands of Vietnamese who were now wearing shorts. By the beginning of 1954, the French had reason to be concerned. They knew the Viet Minh were in the hills and that they (the French), were tied down in the valley until the fighting began. But they were not overly concerned because they did not know how many troops were opposing them; they did not think that these troops had enough supplies; and they were confident that the Viet Minh had no heavy weapons while they themselves had twenty-eight large artillery pieces.
In fact, though, the Viet Minh had almost two hundred artillery units. Each one had been pulled by armies of peasants through the narrow paths and up the hills surrounding Dien Bien Phu. An inch at a time, a half-mile a day, they crept toward Dien Bien Phu. It took three months to move them fifty miles. By late February they were all in place. This was the fourth part of the plan.
And General Giap waited. He would not move until victory was sure. But by mid-March events were closing in all Giap and forcing his hand.
A conference was scheduled to begin in Geneva in late spring to work out a cease-fire agreement in Indochina. Just as the French saw Dien Bien Phu as an opportunity to enter political discussions with a strong military position, so did Giap sec the coming conference as a deadline. If he were to win an important battle against the French in the open field, then Viet Minh negotiators could claim that the French position was hopeless and demand a better political settlement.
The Viet Minh had come silently and invisibly to Dien Bien Phu. On March 12, 1954, they were seen and heard all too clearly. Shortly after five in the afternoon two hundred artillery pieces let loose from the five hills around the French camp. For more than an hour they blasted away at the airstrip and the French camp. When the guns had stopped, the infantry followed the path the shells had taken. One of the seven French strongpoints fell quickly with five hundred of its seven hundred defenders killed. In the next two days two more strongpoints surrendered to Viet Minh assaults.
On March 16, French paratroopers reinforced the troops at Dien Bien Phu. The fresh troops helped a little. The Vietnamese were pushed back slightly, but the French suffered heavy losses in the effort, and this they could not afford. There would be no more reinforcements. The Viet Minh artillery had destroyed the air port and the shrinking French Position was not large enough for paratroopers to land in safety.
Even worse, the closing of the airstrip meant that the French wounded could not be taken out. At Dien Bien Phu there were twelve thousand French troops. The medical team was composed of four doctors and one nurse, Genevieve de Galard. In order to survive, the French had to retake some of their lost territory. Supplies were desperately needed, but much of what was dropped by parachute was landing in Viet Minh hands.
In early April, the French fired all of their mortars and artillery at one Viet Minh position. Then they attacked and fought the Viet Minh hand-to-hand. Slowly they gained ground, but not enough. More than two thousand men were killed on each side and very little had been gained. Nonetheless General Giap was greatly worried. He had lost almost ten thousand troops, who had been killed or wounded. He did not want to lose many more. His troops were unhappy at their heavy losses. The Viet Minh medical situation was even worse than the French. Rather than lose the support of his troops, Giap decided to change his tactics. His soldiers put down their rifles and picked lip their shovels. They began to dig trenches toward Dien Bien Phu.
Slowly the miles of tunnel inched toward the French positions. Only an attack from the air could Stop or slow the progress, but the French did not have the equipment for this. The United States did, and President Eisenhower considered sending bombers to support the French. Indeed, Richard Nixon, who was then vice president, wrote that the United States military had drawn a plan that would include the use of small atomic weapons. Perhaps because of Congressional opposition, including that of Senators Lyndon Johnson and John Kennedy, the American aid plan was never carried out.
The Viet Minh came out of the ground on May 6 and made good progress. When they attacked again on May 7, the French simply stopped fighting. Dien Bien Phu was lost and only further deaths would be gained from continuing.
The eight weeks of battle at Dien Bien Phu had caught the attention of the world. French troops in a far-off corner of the world were holding on against impossible odds, opposed by an enemy that was obviously brave and very skilled at the art of war. This was the stuff of newspaper headlines. When joined with the endless efforts of Genevieve de Galard to save lives and ease pain, one can easily understand that no other event in the world was so closely watched at the time as the battle of Dien Bien Phu.
But thousands of miles away on the hilly shores of Lake Geneva in Switzerland another story was unfolding that was not nearly as exciting as that of Dien Bien Phu, but was in many ways more important.
Geneva is a strange city. Certainly it is as different from Dien Bien Phu as could be. Until 1815, it was an independent republic. In that year it joined the Confederation of Switzerland, which is itself an unusual nation. Surrounded by land and surrounded by Germany, Austria, Italy and France, the Swiss use three different languages (French, Italian, and German). Despite its position in the middle of some of the most powerful nations in Europe, Switzerland has chosen to remain neutral in all wars since 1815 and other nations have respected that, even in tile middle of World War I and World War II.
Because of this neutral position, Switzerland has often been chosen as the headquarters for international organizations such as the Red Cross. It has also often been the meeting place for important international conferences.
Just such a conference met in that city on April 27, 1954. Its purpose was to discuss a cease-fire in Indochina. But this meant more than discussing the military aspects of that war. All parties knew that an agreement on a military cease-fire would have to include some political decisions. In other words, the parties had not met to say, “Everyone will stop fighting on July 17 at noon.” They also had to discuss which Vietnamese group would rule in what part of the country. The Viet Minh controlled important parts of South Vietnam by military force. These parts were under die political control of the French-sponsored government in Saigon. Some decision had to be made as to who was really in charge.
At the conference were Great Britain, France, the United States, the Soviet Union, Communist China, Cambodia, Laos, South Vietnam and the Viet Minh. When we use the name “South Vietnam” at this point in this story, we mean the French-sponsored puppet government which, on paper at least, ruled the entire nation. In fact it ruled only in parts of the south and in some small parts of the north around Hanoi.
The French, British, Russians and Chinese came to Geneva with fairly similar ideas in mind. All expected that the conference would agree on a plan whereby Vietnam would be temporarily divided between north and south. The fighting would stop and troops would return home. The nation, at some future time, would be made one again by elections.
Unfortunately, two countries were against the plan: the United States and South Vietnam. Their reasons were the same. Both believed that national elections would result in a Viet Minh victory. In fact, everyone expected that that would happen. The French certainly did, and they were ready to deal with a Ho Chi Minh government after the war.
The American felt that such a victory would be because the Viet Minh would convince people that the South Vietnamese government was really just another French government. The Viet Minh would picture themselves as the true nationalists and the election would be seen by the people of Vietnam as a contest between the French (South Vietnam) and the nationalists (Viet Minh). To the Americans, this was seen as a trick, but in fact it was very close to the truth. While the leaders of South Vietnam were not just tools of the French, they were Catholic, like the French; they spoke French and wore Western clothing. If they did not want to be ruled by the French, they certainly wanted to be like them. Whatever else the Viet Minh were-communists, Russians or Chinese agents-they were also the only strong nationalist group in the nation, the only ones with broad popular support.
Part of the United States government also felt that a military victory over the Viet Minh was still possible. Unfortunately, that part was the State Department. The military leaders in the United States did not share that view. And the State Department had special reasons for ‘wanting to believe in a military victory. That department was blamed by many for the communist takeover in China and for allowing the Korean War to end up about where it had started after a great loss of life. The department and its leader, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, were deeply worried about being labeled as “soft on Communism.”
The State Department was not just worried about what people thought about it, though. Communist forces had taken over much of Eastern Europe after 1946, and the Korean War itself began when the communist North Koreans invaded South Korea. Fears about communist imperialism were based on very recent events. The French felt, though, that Vietnam was a special case. Their view was that Ho Chi Minh was a nationalist first and that by careful negotiation at Geneva they could keep the century-old French relationship with Vietnam even under communist leadership. Moreover, they were not as sure as the United States that a communist government in Vietnam would try to expand its power over all of lndochina and into other parts of Southeast Asia.
This concern about expansion of communist influence was known as the “domino” theory. The idea was that if Vietnam fell, the other nations in the areas would tip over like dominoes. It was to avoid this result that the United States had spent four billion dollars in support of the French military effort.
The United States came to Geneva with the idea in mind that it would convince its major allies, France and Great Britain, to oppose a division of Vietnam. It proposed instead that the three nations join in opposition to any possibility of communist control. Such a union would include possible joint military action.
It soon became clear, though, that the American plan was not acceptable to its allies. That meant that any agreement coming out of Geneva would involve a temporary division followed by elections, which was what the other countries wanted. Since such a plan meant a communist takeover, the United States took steps to remove itself as a visible party in Geneva. The American group sent its highest ranking member away from Geneva. In this way Dulles felt that he could avoid the impression that America was bound by any agreement reached. The United States would not take part in the Geneva Conference. It would just be an observer.
At least that was what the public saw. While it is true that the United States did not talk directly with its “opponents”-the communist countries-it is also true that the United States made its position known to France and Great Britain. These American views had a great effect on the positions taken by its friends. The United States was having it both ways. It looked as if it had walked out of the conference and was free to say that it did not approve any agreement reached in Geneva. At the same time it was saying to its allies “we do not like this idea of dividing the country and holding elections, but if that is what you are going to do, here is how we would like to have you do it.”
This type of negotiation is common and not as evil as it may sound. If there was someone you were nor talking to, but you needed them to do something for a team or club, you might have another person talk to them for you. That would not be very different from what the United States was doing. The United States had a goal that is knew it could not reach at Geneva. The failure to reach that goal meant that the United States wanted to be free to take other actions to reach it. In order to have that freedom, it could not be seen as agreeing to the results in Geneva. But it also had an interest in seeing to it that Geneva ended as favourably as possible from the American point of view.
In private then, the United States told its allies that it would “respect” a division of Vietnam. That is, it would not publicly support a division, but it would not fight against it. In fact, the main American concern as the negotiations neared an end in July was the possibility of elections. The United States’s position was that elections should be delayed as long as possible. No date should be set for a vote. The American view was that Ho Chi Minh would easily win any election held in the near future. It was hoped that, by delaying the election, democratic forces in South Vietnam would gain enough support among the people to win later on. What Secretary of State Dulles did not realize was that what America was hoping for was a lot like looking for somebody to run against George Washington at the end of the American Revolution. Anyone foolish enough to run was certainly not able to win.
The final agreement did not make the State Department happy. The four main parts of the agreement were: a division of Vietnam along the seventeenth parallel (roughly in the middle of the nation); elections to be held in July of 1956 for the purpose of reuniting the nation; a three-nation International Control Commission consisting of India. Canada and Poland to control the cease-fire and the elections; and the removal of all French troops within three hundred days. No new troops from foreign nations were to be brought in.
The United States and South Vietnam did not sign the agreement. Instead each nation made a statement. The American statement said two rather strange things. First, that it would “refrain from the threat or use of force to disturb” the agreements. Second, that it would look at any violations with grave concern. The statements are odd because the first seems to say that the United States would fully respect the agreement, which is quite close to approving it. The second part hints that the United States would use force to make sure the agreement was followed. The Americans were saying that they accepted, as they had to, the heat of the agreement but that they were keeping their options open.
Maybe, the best way to sum up the American position is by saying that the United States was not happy about the agreement, but would not use force to oppose it unless someone else broke the agreement, in which case the United States was ready to act.
The South Vietnam reaction was more direct. That government simply rejected the agreement and refused to be bound by it. In later years there would be a lot of argument about whether the South Vietnamese had not actually agreed to be bound by some pans of the document. While a chapter could be spent on that debate, it is fair to say that South Vietnam was never legally or morally bound by the agreement. By French treaty, Vietnam had been a free nation since June 4. While that freedom was allowed for political reasons, it made South Vietnam a nation. No other nation’s actions could bind it, and it did not bind itself.
Dien Bien Phu and Geneva ended one phase of the story of Vietnam and began another. In that phase the United States would become a major party in a war that was more visible than any in history. It was seen and heard every night on television throughout the world. Hundreds of thousands of Americans fought in it and as many fought against it.
It is odd then that the next phase begins with one man acting behind the scenes and earning himself the nick-name “the Quiet American.”