Where the Domino Fell - America And Vietnam 1945-1995 by James S. Olson, Randy W. Roberts Read Free Book Online

them. At the Potsdam Conference in July 1945, the Allied governments quickly worked out a plan for the Japanese surrender in Indochina. The Chinese would accept the surrender of Japanese forces north of the sixteenth parallel, and the British troops would land in Saigon and deal with the Japanese south of the line. What Truman and the Allies did not understand is that they would have to come to terms with Ho Chi Minh.
     
    Whatever hopes Ho had for securing American assistance died in anticommunist paranoia. After the defeat of Germany and Japan, President Truman and American policymakers began looking at the Soviet Union as a successor to the Axis powers in threatening world peace. They wanted to rebuild Western Europe and thereby create an economic and military barrier to Soviet expansion: The fulcrum of a stable Western Europe was France. But the French were still irritated over Roosevelt’s position on Indochina. The State Department urged Truman to repair the rift by assuring France that the United States would not prevent a French return to Indochina. Truman acquiesced in the revival of the empire. In the summer of 1945 he told Charles de Gaulle that the United States would not undermine the French there. And as the French economy staggered and the communist party there gained strength, moderate French politicians warned that even the most benign discussions of colonial independence played into the hands of the communists.
     
    Ho Chi Minh was prepared to go it alone if necessary. World War II had created an unprecedented opportunity for him. When the Vietnamese saw Japanese troops defeating French soldiers, the myth of French superiority vanished. The service that the French bureaucracy and military in Vietnam thereupon did for Japan deepened popular hatred of France. In 1943 Japan ordered French soldiers to seize the Vietnamese rice harvest for export to Japan and for fuel in Vietnamese factories. Small farmers went bankrupt the first year and starved to death in 1944. Somewhere between 500,000 and two million Vietnamese men, women, and children died in the famine. Ho used the suffering to build his movement. His guerrillas attacked granaries and distributed rice to peasants. They assassinated local landlords along with Vietnamese officials working for the French and the Japanese. Vietminh political organizers spread out into central and south Vietnam preaching nationalism. At the war’s end, more than 500,000 people in Vietnam considered themselves loyal to Ho. The Vietminh ruled whole sections of the country as a quasi-government. By the end of the 1945, Ho would have 70,000 followers under arms.
     
    On September 13, 1945, the British under General Douglas D. Gracey entered Saigon with 2,000 Indian troops, most of them famed Gurkha soldiers. Another 18,000 were scheduled to arrive soon. General Lu Han left southern China with 200,000 soldiers and entered Tonkin on September 20. Most of the Chinese troops were barefoot and starving. When they reached the shops in Tonkin, they ate everything in sight, including bars of soap and wrapped packages, which they had never seen before and mistook for food. Sporadic fighting broke out between the ancient enemies. A month before, Ho had marched triumphantly into Hanoi, convinced that independence was imminent. Now he faced 20,000 British troops, 200,000 Chinese and several thousand unarmed French.
     
    Ho Chi Minh’s dream of independence was quickly fading. General Gracey had no sympathy for the Vietminh. Two weeks before arriving in Saigon, he announced that “civil and military control by the French is only a question of weeks” Gracey rearmed French troops so they could protect French citizens from the Vietminh. On September 22, the French rioted in Saigon, attacking police stations, stores, and private homes, and mugging or shooting Vietnamese civilians on the streets. On September 24, the Vietminh declared a general strike. Water and electricity went off in Saigon,