My articles in English 1

1.The basic truths on Caodaism

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1h3n_asCWueqUUqYZQHUqNRueErM3QkSv/view?usp=sharing

The Caodaism that appeared in Việt Nam in the 1920s has been the subject of several studies by foreign historians and anthropologists. But its very early breaking up into numerous branches, its documents written with profuse use of chử Nho (Vietnamese Chinese) and the secrecy of the practice of its esotericism were barriers to a true understanding of this new religion.

Most of the texts of the foreign researchers focused on the Caodaism of the Tây Ninh branch, the only one to have owned an army and to have been involved in the war of independence against the French colonizer and that against the Vietnamese communists. This Caodaism has become under the pen of many "the" Caodaism. While there are still many other branches and organizations whose activities have always been purely religious and the fundamentals are what was revealed during the first years of the birth of this religion, far from the pantheon of "saints" venerated only in Tây Ninh: Victor Hugo, Nguyễn Bỉnh Khiêm, Sun Yat Sen,...

This article is the result of the research of a caodaist from a family of caodaists, therefore bathed in this religion since his childhood.

Its objective is to make Caodaism better known, to bring it out of interpretations that are far from reality. Are exposed here the spirituality, the organization, the history of this religion.

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Since the dawn of time, man has sought not to feel abandoned by giving himself explanations for the phenomena of nature that regulate his life. He assigns them a form and a name, then he divinizes and worships them. Thus, gods were created, in the form of elements of creation, thunder, rain, etc., then animals, and even, half-animal half-human entities, then human.

Finally, the monotheistic conception of a single God took over in the Middle East with Abraham, the ancestor of Moses in Judaism, as of Jesus in Christianity, and of Muhammad in Islam. These three religions worship the same God, God among Christians, Allah among Muslims and among the Jews, an ineffable name that can only be spelled Yod-He-Waw-He. His followers live their faith in Him, the Almighty, the Creator, and lead their lives to His Glory until they waged war between them. For there is a long history of killings and misleads in the name of God, due to extremism, intolerance and the ambition of men.

1. BIRTH OF CAODAISM

The three amnesties

For the Caodaists, twice already, the Almighty had wanted to bring the human being back to the path of wisdom and happiness which is the right one. The first amnesty refers to the time of the advent of Judaism (Moses according to a divine Caodaist message) in the West and Primitive Confucianism (Emperor Phuc Hi), Primitive Taoism (Thái Thượng Đạo Quân) and Primitive Buddhism (Nhiên Đăng Cổ Phật, the Ancient Buddha) in the East. The second amnesty refers to that of Christianity (Jesus Christ) and Islam (Mahomet) in the West, and Confucianism (Khong Phu Tseu), Taoism (Lao Tseu) and Buddhism (Cakya Mouni) in the East.

For this third amnesty, He no longer wanted to go through intermediaries as He did before. He revealed himself directly to man through the evocation of spirits, spiritism, a practice common in both the East and the West. Under the name of Cao Đài Tiên Ông Đại Bồ Tát Ma Ha Tát[1], He came as Thầy (Master) to teach to human beings whom He called Con (Child), transmitting Himself the road to human’“deliverance”, the Great Universal Way which could reconcile all the beliefs.

The first Caodaist

The one who is considered to be the first caodaïst is Mr Ngô Văn Chiêu (1878-1932), a civil servant who went through the Mỷ Tho high school as a fellow and who obtained numerous degrees in “French-indigenous” studies. He practised the Three Ways for many years as a follower of the Minh Sư association. He was involved in the evocation of the superior spirits (Cầu Tiên) since 1902 when, during a session at Thủ Dầu Môt, he was advised by a spirit to persevere in the path he had set out.

In 1920, Ngô Văn Chiêu was in Phú Quốc, where he was a Prefect, a district chief (quận trưởng) responsible for the administration of the island. Among the spirits with whom he corresponded in the company of a small team of young mediums, including the 8-year-old Lê Ngưng, there was one in particular who named himself “Cao Đài Tiên Ông” (Immortal Cao Dai) and whom he had already met in 1919 with a friend during a session in Tân An. The teachings received were of great wisdom, and prompted Mr Chiêu to ask permission to venerate him. He also asked him about the form in which he might do so. He received no reply, but a few days later he saw a resplendent left eye in front of him. The Thiên Nhãn, the Divine Eye, was thus adopted and venerated since that time in all Caodaist temples.

[1] There are 12 words in the full invocation in the prayers Nam Mô Cao Đài Tiên Ông Đại Bồ Tát Ma Ha Tát”, 12 is a sacred number. Cao Đài refers to Confucianism, Tiên Ông to Taoism and Đại Bồ Tát Ma Ha Tát to Buddhism.

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[1] There are 12 words in the full invocation in the prayers Nam Mô Cao Đài Tiên Ông Đại Bồ Tát Ma Ha Tát”, 12 is a sacred number. Cao Đài refers to Confucianism, Tiên Ông to Taoism and Đại Bồ Tát Ma Ha Tát to Buddhism.

2.Prince Vĩnh San met General de Gaulle (14 December 1945)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1KBCsmD1r1_P6ZXouIA8MD70uwJmhTHxn/view?usp=sharing

Excerpts from « Việt Nam – L’Histoire politique des deux guerres ( 1858-1954) and (1945-1975) », Nguyen Ngoc Chau, Second edition (2020), preface by Pierre Brocheux, Nombre 7 Publishers, France.

On March 24, 1945, as he was preparing to take power in France, General de Gaulle proclaimed his intention to restore the authority of France in Indochina, and the creation of an “Indochinese Federationˮ, replacing the old “Union Indochineseˮof 1887, still composed of five entities (Cochinchina, Tonkin, Annam, Laos and Cambodia). This “Indochinese Federationˮ would form part of the “French Union” (a word found by Paul Mus)[1] composed of France and its territories, colonies and associated States.

On December 14, 1945, he received in Paris Prince Vĩnh San i.e. the Emperor Duy Tân (1907-1916), the son of Emperor Thành Thái (1889-1907). Duy Tan was arrested in 1916 on his way to join the resistance movement of the former mandarin, Trần Cao Vân (1866-1916), from the Việt Nam Quang Phục Hội (League for the Restoration of Việt Nam) of Phan Bội Châu, and dethroned and sent to exile in the Reunion Island.

Prince Vĩnh San rallied to Free France at the General de Gaulle's call on June 18, 1940 in a predominantly petainist island. He was arrested and imprisoned on May 7, 1942. On November 28, 1942, the day after the island's rally to Free France, he joined the counter-torpedo^[2] Leopard of the Free French Naval Forces as a radio telegrapher. On July 3, 1944, he was incorporated as a simple soldier, and on February 15, 1945, he was appointed corporal. Sent to Madagascar, he distinguished himself by bringing back a battalion of 1,600 Indochinese who revolted against their leaders. By decree of October 29, 1945, signed by General de Gaulle, he was appointed second lieutenant on December 5, 1942, lieutenant on December 5,1943, captain on December 5, 1944 and battalion chief on September 25, 1945.

General de Gaulle had the idea of carrying out his restoration in Indochina in association with France within the frame of the Indochina Federation and the French Union.

According to Duy Tân Emperor of Annam 1900-1945 exiled to the island of Reunion or The tragic destiny of Prince Vĩnh Sanh of his son Nguyễn Phước Bão Vàng, Prince Vĩnh San said that in an only one meeting, de Gaulle and he « had agreed on the essential points, in particular on the question of putting together the three Kỳ » (the three parts of Việt Nam) forming one country which was close to his heart.

«You smile, he said to his adviser Eugène Thébault, but you know very well that, on this point, I will not give up. I would prefer to go home to Réunion! ». The book stated that they had agreed « the widest possible autonomy and without French interference in internal affairs, but however the most extensive possible cooperation. […] And then a very close alliance with France, military and diplomatic ». « Tomorrow in Huế, in Hà Nội, two flags will float side by side ...» said the Prince, happy.

While his political Testament of May 1945 published in France in July 16, 1947 by the daily newspaper Combat, which presented his conception of the future regime of Việt Nam and his role, « was a true declaration of principle of government ». The Việt Nam « national sentiment» was put forward and there was a « close association [with France], but without any subjection». And that position was « on many points, in complete opposition » with the one of the General expressed in his declaration of March 24, 1945.

The book also said that the Prince learned during the meeting with the General that « England was against his return ».

On December 26, 1945, twelve days after his meeting with de Gaulle who agreed on all his requirements regarding his cooperation with France, Vĩnh San died in Central Africa on a plane crash on his way home. According to the official report, the plane ran out of gas, having not found the Bangui Airport.

The book also reported that the General, commenting his death, « did not consider it an accident and saw it as hand of English services ».

Was Prince Vĩnh San murdered? If yes, by whom?

[1] Jean-François Klein on De Gaulle, les Gaullistes et l’Indochine (De Gaulle, the Gaullists and Indochina) by Frédéric Turpin, Indes savantes, Paris, in Moussons, 13-14 |209,406-410.

[2]http://4dw.net/royalark/annam9.php.

3. The Vietnamese Freemasons

https://drive.google.com/file/d/16mlVK_2n88OILJNVJwdlhkizdQcBZYoe/view?usp=sharing

Why there were Vietnamese freemasons during the Indochina time?

This is an excerpt of my book in French and in English « Việt Nam – Histoire politique des deux guerres, guerre d’indépendance (1858-1954) et guerre idéologique (1945-1975) » (Việt Nam – Political history of the two wars, independence war (1858-1954) and ideological war ( 1945-1975)), preface by Pierre Brocheux, published in 2019 and 2020 in France and preface by Professor Janet Hoskins ( USC, LA) and published in 2021.

The Vietnamese Freemasons

Trần Trọng Kim, the Prime Minister of Bảo Đại on 1945 was a member of Les Écossais du Tonkin (he Tonkinese Scottish) Lodge of the Grande Lodge De France (GLDF). Bùi Quang Chiêu (founder of the Constitutionalist Party) gave two lectures to French Lodges on the subjects “Has France lost Indochina?” and “The problem of colonization in front of the colonies”. In January 1926, Phạm Quỳnh, a Minister of Bảo Đại, gave a lecture in his Lodge on “The ideal of Wisdom in Confucian Philosophy”. The lawyer Vương Quang Nhường (member of the Constitutionalist Party), made a paper read at the GLDF convent (general assembly) in France in 1936, devoted to the “Colonial Problem in modern societies”. Lê Văn Trung, the Giáo Tông (Superior) of the Caodaism religion in Tây Ninh wore his apron and made the sign of Masonic distress to the director of the prison where he was brought, who was himself a Freemason. Tạ Thụ Thâu (leader of the Trotskyists), Phạm Ngọc Thạch, the secret member of the Parti Communiste Indochinois (Indochinese Communist Party) who founded the Thanh Niên Tiền Phong (Vanguard Youth), Trịnh Đình Thảo (South Việt Nam Liberation Front in the war between nationalists and communists in the second war), Prince Vĩnh San (the former Emperor Duy Tân) were Freemasons.

The future Hồ Chí Minh was initiated under the name Nguyễn Ái Quấc at the Lodge La Fédération Universelle (The Universal Federation) at the Grand Orient in Paris before declaring in December 1922, in a meeting at the 17th section of the Seine Federation of the French Communist Party, that he believed that “the Freemasons and members of the Ligue des droits de l’homme (League for Human Rights) are practising classes collaboration, not classes struggleˮ. He also approved the resolutions of the 4th Congress of the Third International which prohibited the Communists from joining Freemasonry and some other organizations.^[1]

In Viet Nam, Laos and Cambodia, the “Grand Orient de France” (GO), the “Grande Loge de France” (GLDF) and the “Droit Humain” (DH) created Lodges, first exclusively for French people and then also admitted Vietnamese.

Freemasonry in France during the Third Républic period (1870-1940)

We were in the middle of the Third Republic (1870-1940) in France, a period when the French Freemasons were particularly active. At the very beginning, on 4th September 1870, the “Government of National Defenseˮ consisted of twelve members, among them nine were Freemasons. For Jean-Paul Lefebvre-Filleau, « it became clear that, while defending themselves from politics, the Freemasons of the Third Republic were in fact fully engaged in politics, even going so far as to identify themselves as the guardians of the Republic; more clearly: the guardians of the regime in place.^[2] » Subsequently, « any Republican who wished to run for an office was obliged to take into account the Masonic reality »^[3] and the list of Freemason Republican politicians was very long.

Within a few years, one-third of the elected representatives of the Senate and the House of Representatives were from this society. Some of the masonic ideas were translated into laws, such as the freedom of expression and freedom of the press in 1881. Many politicians, civil servants in the colonies and the metropolis, and several General Governors of Indochina (22 out of 32), High Commissioners (6 out of 8), Military Governors (9 out of 16) and other colonial administrators were Freemasons: Gambetta, Jules Ferry, Camille Pelletan, Auguste Pavie, Paul Bert, Paul Doumer, etc.(article on 13/10/2015 of the Information agency of the Missions Etrangères de Paris ( Paris Foreign Missions) on the collapse on 22^nd September 2015 of a Freemasonry building in Hà Nội).

Freemasonry

It is to be noted that the most diverse personalities are among the Freemasons: fifteen of the forty-five Presidents of the USA until 2020 (including George Washington, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Lyndon B. Johnson and Gerald Ford), Charles X, Edward VI, Edward VII, the Dukes of Kent of England, William I of Germany, Lafayette, Winston Churchill, Benjamin Franklin, Gustave Eiffel, Auguste Bartholdi, Abdel Kader, Rudyard Kipling, Voltaire, Mozart, Salvador Allende, Alexandra David Neel, John.H.Glenn, Edwin Aldrin, Prince Philips, etc.

Freemasonry is not a single international organization but consists of independent initiatory societies called Grand Lodges, groups of Lodges, that recognize each other on the adhesion to a certain number of “landmarksˮ which define each of them. Their objective is the moral and spiritual improvement of their members, to best fulfil their duty towards themself, towards others and towards the Creator called Grand Architect of the Universe. Except in very rare Grand Lodges which stand apart by reflecting on topics about society, discussions on politics and religion, factors of division, are prohibited. The United Great Lodge of England, the first Grand Lodge in the world, on its website, states that its roots « lie with the medieval stonemasons who built their cathedrals and castles » and that « Freemasons use four important guiding principles ​​to help define their path through life: Integrity [Building good people], Friendship [Building together], Respect [Building unity] and Charity [Building compassion] ».

It was therefore normal for several Vietnamese to take advantage of their stay in France to be introduced to Freemasonry, with the sponsorship of their French friends^[4]. They probably thought to find support for their independence struggle from some French politicians who were Masons.

However, the impossibility for the Vietnamese Freemasons to obtain any support from their French brethren for their combat showed that their fraternal bonds remained limited.

Some French Freemasons[5] were even hostile to the creation of Lodges dominated by Vietnamese in Việt Nam, which they said could turn into « fighting hotbeds against the French domination».

[1] Une histoire croisée : l’immigration politique indochinoise en France, 1911-1945 (A cross story: Indochinese political immigration to France), 1911-1945, Pierre Brocheux, May 2009, according to https://indomemoires.hypotheses.org/.

[2]La Franc-Maçonnerie au cœur de la République de 1870 à nos jours (Freemasonry in the heart of the Republic from 1870 to the present day), Jean-Paul Lefebvre-Filleau, Ed. De Borée. 2016.

[3]Histoire de la Franc-Maçonnerie française, 3. La Maçonnerie : Église de la République (1877-1944) (History of the French Free Masonry, 3. The Masonry: the church of the Republic (1877-1944)), Pierre Chevallier, Ed. Fayard 1975, page 26, quoted in La République, c'est la franc-maçonnerie ou la République vue par les écrivains antimaçons français (1880-1914) (The Republic is Freemasonry or the Republic seen by French anti-Mason writers (1880-1914)) by Bruno Clemenceau.

[4] Les Vietnamiens dans la franc-maçonnerie coloniale (The Vietnamese in colonial Freemasonry), an article in Jacques Dalloz's Revue Française de l’Histoire d’Outre-Mer; and Chroniques secrètes d’Indochine (1928-1946), Tome 1 Le Gabaon (Secret Chronicles of Indochina (1928-1946), Volume 1 the Gabaon), by Gilbert David, ed. L’Harmattan.

[5]Jean Lan from La Fraternité tonkinoise Lodge, Paquin from L’Étoile du Tonkin Lodge, and Bouault, from Réveil de l’Orient Lodge are cited in Les Vietnamiens dans la franc-maçonnerie coloniale (The Vietnamese in colonial Freemasonry), an article in the Revue Française de l’Histoire d’Outre-Mer written by Jacques Dalloz.

4.Viet Nam 1954 - A possible choice other than that of Ngô Đình Diệm

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ciDifGmcc4zrvFD0z4_qK14zJQcDIOgy/view?usp=sharing

Excerpts from Việt Nam – L’histoire politique des deux guerres – Guerre d’indépendance (1858-1954) et guerre idéologique ou Nord-Sud (1945-1975) (Viet Nam- Political history of the two wars- Independence war (1858-1954) and ideological war (1945-1975), author Nguyen Ngoc Chau, prefaced by historian Pierre Brocheux in French version (2019-2020) and by professor Janet Hoskins in English version (2021). Informations on

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wAjGtHC4jEfRBtUywxkPcbuf9oMy6ba6/view?usp=sharing

With the Geneva talks and their likely outcome, a change of power in the South was needed. It was necessary to find a Prime Minister appropriate to the new situation because he would have to review everything, build, rebuild, and be prepared in front of a militarily and ideologically powerful North.

Even if the final decision on his choice was up to the head of state Bảo Đại, France and the United States had their say. For France, it was necessary to preserve the property of the French settled for decades, as well as the French culture brought to the country since the beginning of colonization. For the Americans who held the purse strings, the new government had to respond to their desire to contain the expansion of communism, the only objective that led them to take an interest in this distant country.

The U.S. Ambassador to Sài Gòn, Donald Heath, suggested to Bảo Đại a list of names composed of Phan Huy Quát, the Minister of Defence at that time, Nguyễn Hữu Trí, the former governor of North Việt Nam, and the General of the National Army Nguyễn Văn Hinh, and referred it by telegram to the State Department in Washington on 10^th February 1954. Bửu Lộc had just presented his government a month earlier (11^th January 1954).

The potential competitor to Ngô Đình Diệm

Ngô Đình Diệm, who lived at the Maryknoll Junior Seminary in Lakewood in New Jersey in the United States, went to France in May 1953, where were Bảo Đại and most of the Vietnamese living outside Việt Nam, to run his campaign.

In Paris, the city of Vietnamese exiles and intellectuals outside the country, meetings of various groups of the community and discussions on the providential man were in full swing.

Arthur John Langgut wrote in Our Việt Nam: The War 1954-1975, page 84-85: « [Ngô Đình] Diệm was not the only candidate for prime minister under Bảo Đại, and the French considered him hostile to their business interests, which they expected to survive the change of government. The names that the French put forward could be dismissed as collaborators, however, and the most serious alternative to Diệm, Dr Nguyễn Ngọc Bích, had his own liabilities. Although not a communist himself, Bích had fought with the Việt Minh, and his father[1]was prominent in the Cao Đài, an eclectic sect that revered Confucius, Buddha, Jesus, Joan of Arc and Victor Hugo».

Chester L. Cooper[2] said in his book The Lost Crusade - America in Vietnam, pages 122-124, « A group of Vietnamese intellectuals began to meet regularly in Paris to discuss various possible candidates ». « At an early point in the deliberations [Nguyễn Ngọc] Bích was regarded as a leading possibility for the Prime Minister’s post because of his almost mystical appeal to millions of Vietnamese.[...] Bích had joined the Việt Minh because he was convinced there was a chance for non-communist nationalists to band together with the communists in a broad coalition to establish a genuinely free and independent Việt Nam ».

« Ngô Đình Diệm was the favourite candidate of the conservative Catholics but was regarded generally as an honest and hardened nationalist, with a brilliant academic record and practical experience in government. [...]. Diệm first met with the Paris group early in the spring of 1954 and, according to one person present, made a « very bad impression». Bích walked out after one exposure to Diệm and refused to associate himself with any of the subsequent deliberations. One member of the group reported that Diệm was “obscureˮ and “murkyˮ and that his ideas were “obsoleteˮ [...] Despite all this, however, Diệm had strong supporters and even those who were lukewarm or even opposed to him had no strong alternative candidates to put forward.»

Nguyễn Ngọc Bích (1911-1966) was a polytechnician (a graduate from the French École Polytechnique) of the 1931 class, a civil engineer from the French École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées (entered in 1933), a former deputy commander of the Việt Minh Zone 9, and a Member for Rạch Giá of the National Assembly of the RDVN. In 1946, he delayed the advance of the armies of Generals Valluy and Nyo by blowing up several bridges[3], including those of Cái Răng and Nhu Gia, respectively in Cần Thơ and Sốc Trăng in South Việt Nam.

He declined the Communist Party's offer to become a member[4], was made prisoner by the French and was condemned to be executed. He was finally rescued from the firing squad by French officers who were like him graduated from Polytechnique, following an open call of Hoàng Xuân Hãn (polytechnician 1930 class)[5]. These officers based in South Việt Nam put his name on a prisoner exchange list and sent him into exile in France. In Paris, he obtained his diploma of doctor in medicine, set up a publishing house (the Minh Tân editions) to produce works of Vietnamese intellectuals, did medical research and taught at the Faculty of Medicine of Paris (La Pitié-Salpêtrière, team of Professor Gougerot).

He sent his candidacy for the 1961 presidential election, with his partner Nguyễn Văn Thoại, a professor at Collège de France in Paris and a former minister of Ngô Đình Diệm. But the file was deemed ineligible as it would be incomplete and had arrived late[6]. Nguyễn Văn Thoại was a Catholic from a well-known catholic family in the South. His brother Nguyễn Văn Ấm was married to Ngô Đình thị Hiệp one of the two sisters of Ngô Đình Diệm and their son was the future Cardinal Nguyễn Văn Thuận, archbishop of Sài Gòn. Nguyễn Ngọc Bích was the son of one of the founders of Caodaism (three million followers) and a former famous non-communist resistant. His brother Nguyễn Ngọc Nhựt, an engineer graduated from Ecole Centrale de Paris (France), a member of the Việt Minh Ủy Ban Hành chánh Kháng Chiến Nam Bộ (Southern Administrative and Resistance Committee), who was also not communist and had refused to become a Minister in the Bao Đại government, died after three years in prison The team Nguyễn Ngọc Bích - Nguyễn Văn Thoại could give a lot of problems to Ngô Đình Diệm in a competition for the presidency.

Nguyễn Ngọc Bích was not alone. He was part of a secret group of intellectuals – most of them technocrats educated and residing in France – who met regularly, in particular at the Minh Tân publishing house head office, 7 rue Guénégaud, Paris 6^th district (Trường Thi publishers and Bích Vân Thư Xã publishers were its correspondents respectively in Hà Nội and Sài gòn). This made some people call them the “Minh Tân group”.

The group was driven by a common desire to offer the country an outcome other than that of war. It was that of developing the two parts of the country to catch up with its neighbours and avoid depending on China, the real enemy of always: North-South negotiations for economic and trade cooperation, before a peaceful unification in the long term when conditions would be favourable. Trade and economic cooperation could help make the two parts of the country less dependent on foreigners. North Việt Nam would suffer a real problem with the end of rice supply coming from the South rice granary. The logo of Minh Tân publishing house clearly shows the objective of this group: peace.

[1] The father of Dr Nguyễn Ngọc Bích was the prefect Nguyễn Ngọc Tương, one of the five dignitaries who led the new founded Caodaism in Tây Ninh (1926) and who became in 1935 the Giáo Tông (Superior Grand Master) of the Caodaist branch Ban Chỉnh Đạo (Committee for the Rectification of Religion) in Bến Tre.

[2] Chester Cooper was a member of the CIA, an assistant staff at the National Security Council (NSC) in 1953 and 1954, who attended the Geneva conference in the American delegation, and was in direct contact with the CIA in Washington.

[3] Telegram of 11/09/1946 received by the Indochina Committee of "Haussaire Indo Saigon": 25 August Nguyen Ngoc Bich wanted for willful destruction was arrested by the authorities in An Phu Dong [...] Bich admitted to having personally blown up the reinforced concrete bridge of Tân Hương, the metal bridge of the railway, bridge over Lacombe canal and rotating bridge span near Rạch Giá ... »

[4] Told in the late 1980s to the author by Gaston Phạm Ngọc Thuần, who, in the contrary, joined the Party and later became president of the Ủy Ban Hành chánh Kháng Chiến Nam Bộ (Southern Administrative and Resistance Committee), then Ambassador of the RDVN in East Germany. Bích and Thuần lived under the same roof in the resistance before this offer from the Party. Thuần was able to return his Party member card because of his age and his sickness and came to France for treatment. Feeling liberated, he wanted to tell Bích's son what he and his father had discussed all the night in 1945 after their respective responses to the Party. He said that during all his life, he waited for that day because he could not forget what Bích had said to him.

[5] Hoàng Xuân Hãn, a former minister of the Trần Trọng Kim government (1945), issued an open letter to the elders of the Ecole Polytechnique, a letter that can be read in Le temps des Ancêtres, une famille vietnamienne dans sa traversée du XXe siècle » (The time of the Ancestors, a Vietnamese family in its journey in the twentieth century) by the same author, Ed L'Harmattan, 2018. This letter is mentioned in the doctoral thesis entitled Formation des élites scientifiques et techniques à l’École polytechnique française aux XIX^e et XX^e siècles (Training of scientific and technical elites at the French Polytechnic in the 19th and 20th centuries), by Anousheh Karvar, submitted in 1997 to the University of Paris VII Denis-Diderot.

[6] Việt Nam où est la vérité (where is the truth), Trương Vĩnh Lễ, éd. Lavauzelle, 1989. In 1963 and 1964, after the fall of Ngô Đình Diệm, two telegrams from the US Embassy in Sài Gòn to the State Department in Washington, mentioned the name Nguyễn Ngọc Bích. The first of 29/10/1963 (FRUS1961-63v04/d229) stated "... Only three exiles are to be considered: Nguyễn Ngọc Bích very followed and very popular in Cochinchina, Nguyễn Hữu Châu who stood up to his family and was very capable and Nguyễn Tôn Hoàn as a good minister of youth. »", and the second of 21/08/1964 (FRUS1964-68v01/d320), " I mentioned to Rau that we thought the Front might try to capture prominents politicians living in exile and using them to attract the non-Communist Vietnamese [...] Rau says that we should observe in particular Nguyễn Ngọc Bích and Nguyễn Hữu Châu ».

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5. A war that could not be won militarily

A war that could not be won militarily

Initially, the Americans intervened in Việt Nam to contain the communist expansion. Ultimately, they aimed to stop the North from sending troops to the South. It was out of the question that the North be defeated militarily either by an invasion of Allied or South Vietnamese troops or by destructive bombardments, the risk of China's entry into play was too high. Therefore, the combat was not to defeat the enemy but to force them to negotiate. The bombing of the North was targeted at strategic positions carefully chosen so as not to bring the North to the ground. But it required persistence, patience, which the Americans didn’t have. With Ngô Đình Diệm, they counted in hours, in days, and not in years or decades as the Vietnamese did. Impatient to move quickly, they finally gave in and backed away from Hà Nội, adamant, fully supported by China and the USSR. The North not admitting until the end that its troops were in the South, the objective of the Americans to stop sending these troops, finally became ... their own withdrawal from Việt Nam with their detained soldiers released from the prisons of the North! Over time, the hardest rock is eroded by water, and here the rock was not really hard, the Americans voluntarily contained their firepower.

Concerning Sài Gòn, it was stuck. It could never win the war militarily since it was not authorized to wage it on its enemy territories. It suffered what its ally imposed on it, and could, in the best of cases - that is to say, enjoying continuous American support equivalent to that obtained by the North from its communist allies - only maintain the status quo in the face of pressure from the North, with no possibility of defeating it. The cessation of Soviet and Chinese aid would only slow down the dispatch of troops from the North to the South, while its survival depended entirely on the Americans.

The economic development, the only way to escape from defeat: the Khối Kinh Tế-Tài Chánh (Economy-Finance Bloc)

Given the situation in the country, the team of young experts who served as researchers and advisors to President Nguyễn Văn Thiệu proposed to constitute a group of professionals to lead the development of the country's economy and finance, the only way to make it less dependent on foreigners. The whole country was already mobilized for the military war effort. It was decided to appeal to the Vietnamese who went abroad to study, who had acquired experience there. They were exempt from compulsory military service, received a decent living wage, although representing only a tiny fraction of what they could earn abroad, and were provided with accommodation.

They became employees of one of the two institutions known for having resources, the Ngân Hàng Quốc Gia Việt Nam (National Bank of Vietnam, the country's central bank) and the public bank Việt Nam Thương Tín (Commercial Credit of Việt Nam). They were posted where they were needed. It was an opportunity for many young Vietnamese abroad who aspired to return to the country to live with their families, to take the plane back with their wife and children. The success of the defence of the army during the battles of 1972 had given them confidence. From 1973, they returned in numbers from the most diverse countries, the USA, France, Switzerland, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, etc. After a break period, they were assigned to ministries, administrations, industries, etc. They were part of the Khối Kinh Tế-Tài Chánh (Economy-Finance Bloc) led by Doctor Nguyễn Văn Hảo, who got his PhD in Switzerland, and who was appointed deputy Prime minister. Lê Quang Uyển, the young governor of the Ngân Hàng Quốc Gia Việt Nam (the central bank), a graduate from HEC (École des Hautes Etudes Commerciales in Paris), was an active leader of this Bloc.

Many other Vietnamese, despite the war, had begun the process to come back as well. They were stopped in their project by the fall of Sài Gòn on 30^th April 1975.

The battle to win the world opinion

The anti-American sentiment which became almost general since the beginning of the bombing of the North raised many journalists against the United States, made them become ardent defenders of the North and therefore opponents of the South, ignoring what was going on in the country, nor ever having gone there. Olivier Todd was a striking example, but, more honest than some, he finally came to the South in 1973, responding to an invitation from the government, and went through it freely; he even went to visit the areas held by the Việt cộng that he had always supported. He drew from this trip an objective writing partially contradicting what he thought before, indicating that the GRP (Provisional Revolutionary Government) of the FNLSVN was in reality « in the South the secular and ideological arm of the communist government of Hà Nội », that the editor-in-chief of the Nouvel Observateur, of which he was one of the journalists, censored, supported in this by Jean Daniel, the boss of the magazine, because « it is too early to tell »[1]. It was through an interview with the magazine Réalités that he expressed his point of view: he denounced the « pro-[North]Vietnamese attitude [which] stems in part from the anti-Americanism in which the intelligentsia delights, as well as from a feeling of guilt of over-developed whites vis-à-vis third world countries »; he considered that the set of « cookie-cutter stereotypes and passionate reactions aroused by the Vietnam War » had never been put « to the test of reality ». In 1975, he released his book Les Canards de Ca Mau (The Ducks of Ca Mau) (pub. Robert Laffont, 1975), in which he wrote what he then thought of the Vietnamese conflict.

The impact of the 1968 Tet offensive on the USA and RVN

Vis-a-vis the world, the RVN and the United States lost their credit because of the Americans. The North had been able to transform, for the eyes of the whole world, by intelligent propaganda, thanks to the action of the journalists of the occidental world, the ideological war between the communist North and the nationalist South into a war between the Democratic Republic of Việt Nam (the North), and a foreign invader, the United States, whose local ally, the Republic of Việt Nam (the South), was only the almost invisible “puppet” whose American newspapers only spoke badly. The United States imposed its decisions to this “ally” who could only obey: it owned what was important in a war, i.e. the means to do it (money, weapons, ammunition, aircraft, fuel, etc.). Its aid made it worth submitting to its wishes on how to govern the country since it thought that it knew the Vietnamese mentality better than the Vietnamese themselves. Ngô Đình Diệm felt this and tried to avoid it. He did not want the presence of American combat troops on Vietnamese soil, he preferred rather strengthen the power of South Vietnamese troops and to increase American aid, the real solution to this war. Finally, six years after he was overthrown, President Nixon did not do any differently with his “Vietnamisation” programme.

On the other side, North Việt Nam presented itself as a small and weak but independent country, which had to oppose this great power, the most powerful country in the world, to preserve its existence, without one being able to see the slightest shadow, nor the slightest breath, from a great ally behind its shoulders, thanks to the subtlety of the discreet and skilful Chinese and Russians whose help was however paramount to its war effort. And there, the Tết Mậu Thân offensive showed that Hà Nội and the South Vietnamese people were not afraid to oppose this America which was bombing the North and strangling the South of the country.

The impact on Americans

General Trần Độ (1923-2002) who was Deputy Commissioner and Deputy Secretary of the Military Commission of the Liberation Army of South Việt Nam, wrote: « To be honest, we have not achieved the main objective which is to stimulate the general uprising in the South. But we have inflicted heavy casualties on the United States and the puppet army. And it is a great victory for us. As far as creating a lot of unrest in the United States, that is not really our intention, but it came as a lucky and happy consequence ».[2]

Indeed, the negative psychological impact was very strong in America. Johnson's government failed to convince the Americans that the North had indeed been defeated. This military defeat was transformed into a political defeat of the South Vietnamese and Americans, as interpreted by the American press and television, through the way some American journalists and local correspondents interpreted this Tết Mậu Thân offensive. For example, Phạm Xuân Ẩn, the local correspondent for Time magazine, who wrote for Reuters and New York Herald Tribune, very close to Lansdale, head of the Saigon Military Mission, was a secret member of the PCI who died in 2006 as brigadier general of the RSVN army[3]. These communist secret agents aimed to influence the foreign media according to what the Party wanted them to believe and they succeeded to do it fully, especially with the American media.

The attack of the little North Vietnamese David, believed to be alone with its will and courage, against the American giant Goliath, armed with all the most modern weapons, upset all of America. Walter Cronkite, a presenter of the television news on the CBS Evening News between 1962 and 1981, considered to be the most representative of American opinion, said, during the offensive, that the war in Việt Nam could not be won. The increase in American troops would only increase those in the North, and the war would continue but more violently without America being able to win. The horror of the war and the death of many American soldiers also moved America and led many of its citizens to oppose the Việt Nam war. The number of its «boys» dead, from around 400 between 1956 and 1964, rose to 1,863 in 1965, 6,143 in 1966 and 11,153 in 1967. On 18^th February 1968, during the communist offensive, the revelation of the number of Americans killed in a week, 543, and wounded, 2,547, the highest figures since the American intervention in Việt Nam, shocked the whole of America. Especially since many American soldiers were conscripts.

[1] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olivier_Todd. This position of the well-thinking French left intellectuals at the time was also that of Jean Lacouture

[2] Because of his disagreement with some other Lao Động Party leaders, Trần Độ was expelled from the Party on 4^th January, 1999 after 58 years as member.

[3] The Vietnam War’s Great Lie - How the Communists and Pham Xuan An won the propaganda war – article of 13^th February 2018 by Luke Hunt in The Diplomat. The interpretation of the American media was later analyzed in depth by Peter Braestrup in his book Big Story.

6.How the South was defeated

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SEJ_WtxivigMTKqpWTMr3_G-Ubf9bp-G/view?usp=sharing

During the Vietnam War, what were the reasons South Vietnam lost to North Vietnam?

Nguyễn Ngọc Châu (15-05-2021)

President Richard Nixon wrote in 1985 [1] :

The USA has fought for over a decade at great cost and far from their frontiers « to save the people of a small country from communism enslavement ». They « made crucial errors in how [they] went about it ». A « different military and political strategy » could have brought victory in the 1960s. In the end, South Viet Nam lost, not on the battlefront since they successfully fought back during two years the communist violations of the cease-fire, but « on the political front in the United States ». « Defeat came only when the Congress, ignoring the specific terms of the peace agreement, refused to provide military aid to [them] ». « Our abandonment of them in their moment of greatest need was not worthy of our country ».

Ngô Đình Diệm and the American strategies

« In many ways, the Republic of Việt Nam, which left the Year of the Pig, the lunar year of 1959, had experienced unprecedented growth in its economy, political infrastructure and internal stability, political infrastructure and his diplomatic position within the community of nations that made up Southeast Asia and the Pacific. », wrote Ronald Bruce Frankum, Jr.[2]

Despite the achievements of Ngô Đình Diệm since his arrival in 1954, five years later, the opinion of the U.S. Embassy team in Sài Gòn was not encouraging. Ambassador Elbridge Durbrow[3], an expert on the Soviets [and therefore rather a connoisseur of the USSR mentality] said: « While conceding that the RVN had a long-term objective of an ideal of democracy and had succeeded in laying the foundations of such a form of government, [...] Ngô Đình Diệm had made only minimal progress towards achieving this ideal ² ». He wrote to the State Department on 7^th December 1959: « In the area of political development toward a democratic and popular government, Viet-Nam can show only small steps of progress. Furthermore, in great part, these steps amount only to the erection of a facade and the reality of the situation remains one of authoritarian control by the regime[4]».

Ngô Đình Diệm was far from someone who could blindly obey Durbrow to serve the best interests of the Americans, according to the objectives that they had set for themselves. He needed American help and naturally appreciated them. But he persisted in keeping his freedom to act according to his convictions. « America has a magnificent economy and many good points, he once told a reporter. But does your strength at home automatically mean that the United States is entitled to dictate everything here in Vietnam, which is undergoing a type of war that your country has never experienced? », wrote Nixon in his No more Vietnams¹. The entire team led by Ambassador Elbridge Durbrow criticized the Cần Lao party for all the evils, including corruption, since it was a secret party, and mentioned in the reports to Washington neither the success of its humanitarian and social achievements that it knew well, nor the government's successes. Impatient, it was ulcerated that Diệm thought in terms of years and decades, not days or hours. It wanted an American-style democracy for the country, while the Vietnamese president believed that a strong power and certain tough measures, such as press censorship, were necessary for a war against subversion. While Ngô Đình Diệm demanded troops to be trained in counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism tactics and techniques to defeat the Việt cộng, Durbow spent his time criticizing the ineffectiveness of the Army of the Republic of Việt Nam (ARVN), whereas this one had been formed by the Americans to counter a possible invasion of the North Vietnamese in a conventional war as it had happened in Korea. The request for assistance to increase by 20,000 the number of fighters that Ngô Đình Diệm considered necessary, became for the embassy team a bargaining tool to bring him to democratic reforms and to take away Ngô Đình Nhu: Ambassador Elbridge Durbrow and his advisors Joseph Mendenhall and Francis Cunningham were in contact with personalities from Sài Gòn who, far from the struggle in the countryside and the war that was going on there, wanted more democracy and more power-sharing.

According to the military historian Geoffrey D.T. Shaw (The Lost Mandate of Heaven, The American Betrayal of Ngo Dinh Diem, President of Vietnam), the problems that had arisen between Diệm and Washington had their origins in the American political/diplomatic arena. While Diệm and the U.S. military got along well, the US Embassy and the State Department opposed the direction they had taken. According to the latter, the problem could only be solved in Diệm, who had to make the regime more democratic and less authoritarian and to drive Nhu and his wife away. Thus, the State Department considered the increase in the army and military aid as a lever that would guarantee that Diệm would make the reforms that the American diplomats thought should be made.

The actions of the US Embassy and the State Department, which led the Americans to want to get involved deeper and deeper in the country and to see Ngô Đình Diệm making reforms according to their perspective, annoyed him and his brother Nhu very much.

They needed the Americans, but they did not want the price to be paid was the loss of their freedom of initiative and the complete dependence on the decisions of these foreigners. But this was inevitable. The Vietnamese of the North and the South could only lose their freedom at the hands of those who armed them. For the North, the communisation of the country following the direction taken by China was the price to pay, and perhaps something else.

In May 1963, Ngô Đình Diệm asked what the Americans wanted to do in Việt Nam and requested that 5,000 of their soldiers leave the country early in the summer of the same year. It was not without reason, as the military situation had improved considerably with the new equipment received from the United States. On 17^th May 17, 1963, the agreement on the financing of counter-insurgency, stated: « The current level of support and advisory effort is necessary, but in the light of the improved security and progress of the Programme of Strategic Hamlets (PHS) it is expected that foreign assistance, both in terms of men and equipment, would be gradually reduced ». An article of May 12 by the journalist Unna in the Washington Post quoted Nhu and his statement in an interview « South Việt Nam would like to see half of the 12,000 to 13,000 US military personnel present here leave ». Nhu had to deny these words and display a conciliatory attitude after the strong reaction of the American government.

At the same time, Ngô Đình Nhu made contact with the North, notably through a meeting in the district of Tánh Linh in the province of Bình Tụy with Phạm Hùng[5] (1912-1988), Deputy Prime Minister, responsible for the unification of the two regions since 1958 and former head of the North Việt Nam military delegation in Sài Gòn in the International Control Commission (ICC) established following the Geneva Agreements to monitor their implementation. He also passed through Mieczylaw Maneli, head of the Polish ICC delegation, who came to see him on 2^nd September 1963 at the Gia Long Palace[6]. Nhu had discussed with some generals, among them the general Dương Văn Minh (the “Big Minh”), about his conversation with Maneli. The latter had transmitted to him a proposal from the North-Vietnamese Prime Minister, Phạm Văn Đồng, to begin trade between the North and the South, and had made himself available to Nhu to fly to Hà Nội at any time. French Ambassador Lalouette also offered his services for the same purposes.

On 26th September 1963, more than a month before the coup that ended the brothers Ngô, there was a CIA report on the subject « Possible rapprochement between North and South Việt Nam.

It estimated that « the signs that the GVN [Government of the Republic of Việt Nam], the RDV [the Democratic Republic of Việt Nam i.e. the North] and the French were exploring possibilities of some kind of North-South rapprochement», which Joseph Alsop had indicated in his article of 18^th September 1963 in the Washington Post, did not concern an imminent reunification, but rather « a ceasefire, a formal ceasefire or some variant of neutralization ». « Now, Nhu acknowledges contacts with the North and has dropped transparent hints that the GVN would not necessarily refuse to consider overtures from Hanoi […] there is sufficient possibility of serious Ngo family interest in such latter rapprochement to merit continuing close attention. ».

Already, « in March 1962, Hồ Chí Minh indicated in an interview with Wilfred Burchett [known for his sympathy for the communists] his interest in a peaceful solution to the Vietnam problem [… and] in September [of the same year], the Indian Chairman of the ICC reported that Hồ had said that he was prepared to extend the hand of friendship to Diệm (“a patriot”) and that the North and South might initiate several steps toward a modus vivendi, including an exchange of members of divided families»[7]. This speech deserved to be analysed taking into account the perspective expressed by Hồ Chí Minh in the testament he left for posterity: the construction of Marxism-Leninism was his priority.[8]

The situation in mid-1963 was such that the NSAM (National Action Security Memorandum) No. 263 of 11^th October 1963 planned to withdraw 1,000 U.S. military personnel by the end of 1963 and the end of 1965 for the withdrawal of all military personnel. Thus, the number of soldiers on Vietnamese soil decreased from 16,752 in October 1963 to 15,894 as of 31^st December 1963.

All these were not what the Americans wanted. Some thought that they were involved in the Buddhist crisis behind Thich Trí Quang who took refuge in the US Embassy 70 days after the government repression and even in the assassination of Diệm and Nhu in 1963.

President Nixon would later say, « We made a crucial mistake in South Việt Nam in 1963. The Kennedy government, increasingly angry at President Diệm, encouraged and supported a military coup against his government. This shameful episode ended with the assassination of Diệm and was the beginning of a period of political chaos ». William Colby wrote: « The Americans, by sponsoring the over-throw of Diệm, which I still consider today to be the worst fault of the Việt Nam War...». What thought Dương Văn Minh, who ordered to kill Diệm, when he later knew that Nguyễn Hữu Thọ, the President of the FNLSVN, declared « the fall of the Ngô was for us a present from Heaven.[9]»?

The witch hunt that followed the death of Diệm and Nhu, the dismantling of the network of their followers and their intelligence service, the replacement of those they had appointed (province heads, town leaders, etc…) despite their experience of struggling in a difficult context, without enough competent people to replace them, the « democratization » wanted by the State Department and the Sài Gòn intellectuals, the catastrophic management of the situation by General Dương Văn Minh, weakened the regime. The movements and associations set up by Nhu were dismantled without anything else being put in place. In November and December 1963, the Thanh Niên Chiến Đấu (Fighting Youth) created by Nhu to defend the ấp chiến lược who, in many places, had shown their effectiveness, were demobilized for fear that they would not be loyal to the new government. All this created a vacuum that immediately benefited the Việt cộng for whom the death of Diệm was a miracle.

The number of US advisors increased rapidly and reached 23,300 in a few months after the death of the Ngô. American troops increased from 50,000 (June 1965) to 185,000 (end of 1965), then to 486,600 (end of 1967), and peaked at 543,000 (April 1969)[10] when the 37^th U.S. President of the United States Richard Nixon (1913-1994) decided to replace the American troops with South Vietnamese ones (« Vietnamisation» program). Allies of the USA were also present in South Việt Nam: South Koreans (48,000), Thais (10,000), Australians (a few thousand) and Filipinos.

Later on, the programme of handing over the responsibility of the war to the South Vietnamese started under Johnson, continued under the name of « Vietnamisation » with Nixon (1969-1974). It was simply a coming back to the situation before the Vietnamese generals' coup against Diệm with the approval of the Americans in 1963. The American aid made it worth submitting to American wishes on how to govern the country since they thought that they knew the Vietnamese mentality better than the Vietnamese themselves. Ngô Đình Diệm felt this and tried to avoid it. He did not want the presence of American combat troops on Vietnamese soil because of the negative psychological impact on the country, he preferred rather strengthen the power of South Vietnamese troops and increase American aid, the real solution to this war. Finally, six years after he was overthrown, President Nixon did not do any differently with his “Vietnamisation” programme.

Negative psychological impact in America

The morale of the Hà Nội regime was at its lowest after the Tết Mậu Thân offensive (1968). None of the goals it set out to achieve had been done. No one had risen, its army everywhere had been pushed back with many casualties, and their network of secret agents seriously exposed and decimated.

In the first half of 1969, 20,000 communist troops surrendered to the ARVN, tripling the number from the previous year. Between 75,000 and 85,000 of them were killed during the battles of 1967 and 1968, most of which were southern forces, greatly reducing its power and no longer allowing it to engage in large-scale operations.

General Trần Văn Trà (1918-1996) who led the offensive made a self-criticism in 1982 in his book Kết thúc cuộc chiến tranh 30 năm (The End of the Thirty Years War): « We did not correctly evaluate our forces compared to those of our enemies. We did not fully understand that the enemy still had significant combat capabilities, that our capacity was limited and that the demands exceeded our strength ». This book was banned from publication and resulted in his being struck off from the Party that he joined in 1938, although he was Minister of Defense from 1978 to 1982.

General Trần Độ (1923-2002) who was Deputy Commissioner and Deputy Secretary of the Military Commission of the Liberation Army of South Việt Nam, wrote: « To be honest, we have not achieved the main objective which is to stimulate the general uprising in the South. But we have inflicted heavy casualties on the United States and the puppet army. And it is a great victory for us. As far as creating a lot of unrest in the United States, that is not our intention, but it came as a lucky and happy consequence ».[11]

But Johnson's government failed to convince the Americans that the North had indeed been defeated. This military defeat was transformed into a political defeat of the South Vietnamese and Americans, as interpreted by the American press and television, through the way some American journalists and local correspondents interpreted this Tết Mậu Thân offensive. For example, Phạm Xuân Ẩn, the local correspondent for Time magazine, who wrote for Reuters and New York Herald Tribune, very close to Lansdale, head of the Saigon Military Mission, was a secret member of the PCI who died in 2006 as brigadier general of the RSVN army[12]. These communist secret agents aimed to influence the foreign media according to what the Party wanted them to believe and they succeeded to do it fully, especially with the American media.

The attack of the little North Vietnamese David, believed to be alone with its will and courage, against the American giant Goliath, armed with all the most modern weapons, upset all of America.

Vis-a-vis the world, the RVN and the United States lost their credit because of the Americans. The North had been able to transform, for the eyes of the whole world, by intelligent propaganda, thanks to the action of the journalists of the occidental world, the ideological war between the communist North and the nationalist South into a war between the Democratic Republic of Việt Nam (the North), and a foreign invader, the United States, whose local ally, the Republic of Việt Nam (the South), was only the almost invisible “puppet” whose American newspapers only spoke badly. The United States imposed its decisions on this “ally” who could only obey: it owned what was important in a war, i.e. the means to do it (money, weapons, ammunition, aircraft, fuel, etc

On the other side, North Việt Nam presented itself as a small and weak but independent country, which had to oppose this great power, the most powerful country in the world, to preserve its existence, without one being able to see the slightest shadow, nor the slightest breath, from a great ally behind its shoulders, thanks to the subtlety of the discreet and skilful Chinese and Russians whose help was however paramount to its war effort. And there, the Tết Mậu Thân offensive showed that Hà Nội and the South Vietnamese people were not afraid to oppose this America which was bombing the North and strangling the South of the country.

A war that could not be won militarily

Initially, the Americans intervened in Việt Nam to contain the communist expansion. Ultimately, they aimed to stop the North from sending troops to the South. It was out of the question that the North be defeated militarily either by an invasion of Allied or South Vietnamese troops or by destructive bombardments, the risk of China's entry into play was too high. Therefore, the combat was not to defeat the enemy but to force them to negotiate. The bombing of the North was targeted at strategic positions carefully chosen so as not to bring the North to the ground. But it required persistence, patience, which the Americans didn’t have. With Ngô Đình Diệm, they counted in hours, in days, and not in years or decades as the Vietnamese did. Impatient to move quickly, they finally gave in and backed away from Hà Nội, adamant, fully supported by China and the USSR. The North not admitting until the end that its troops were in the South, the objective of the Americans to stop sending these troops, finally became ... their own withdrawal from Việt Nam with their detained soldiers released from the prisons of the North! Over time, the hardest rock is eroded by water, and here the rock was not really hard, the Americans voluntarily contained their firepower.

Concerning Sài Gòn, it was stuck. It could never win the war militarily since it was not authorized to wage it on its enemy territories. It suffered what its ally imposed on it, and could, in the best of cases - that is to say, enjoying continuous American support equivalent to that obtained by the North from its communist allies - only maintain the status quo in the face of pressure from the North, with no possibility of defeating it. The cessation of Soviet and Chinese aid would only slow down the dispatch of troops from the North to the South, while its survival depended entirely on the Americans.

U.S. Congress leaves South Vietnam to its fate

President Richard Nixon sent several letters to President Nguyễn Văn Thiệu which were the subject of an article in the New York Times of 30th April 1975. These letters dated 14th November 1972, 17th and 20th January 1973 and 5th January 1974, which were held by the former Planning Minister Nguyễn Tiền Hưng, contained the American President's commitment that if the other side violates the Paris Agreements, the United States would come back to help South Việt Nam.

However, at the end of the Watergate affair [13]launched in 1972, a federal law, the War Powers Resolution Act, was passed in 1973 to limit the initiative of the President in the event of military conflict in forcing him to obtain authorization from Congress for an intervention of more than 60 days, and arms exports and aid abroad.

The battles at the level of the divisions between the North and South armies were numerous in 1973 and 1974. The army of the South took back at a high price the territories attacked by that of the North. Sa Huỳnh in Quảng Ngãi, invaded by a North Vietnamese division, was taken over by the 2nd ARVN division after three weeks of intense combat. In June, the North Vietnamese division which had occupied Trung Nghĩa west of Kontum was expelled after three months of fighting with the ARVN. At the end of 1973, the ARVN had 80,000 victims, the highest figure in a year since the start of the conflict.

Army morale, however, was falling apart with scarcer supplies and ammunition becoming rare. The South suffered from cuts in American aid on which it depended economically and militarily. Also, the price of many necessities had more than doubled since the ceasefire. The economic crisis, due to the oil shock of 1971, began in 1973 with the price of a barrel quadrupled and important consequences in the country as in all the economies of the world.

Sir Robert Thompson said in his book Peace is not at Hand, (London, 1974) that he was not afraid of the ARVN’s ability to fight, but was rather afraid that the American aid would be cut. And that was what happened, with the efforts of the pacifists and Senator Edward Kennedy. On 6th May 1974, Congress decided to cut US aid to South Việt Nam by $ 233 million, making Sir Robert Thompson said that « the main lesson to be learned from the Việt Nam War is never to consider the Americans as reliable allies » [14].

After lowering the amount of aid in 1974, the United States Congress reduced that of 1975. Aid for military needs fell from US$ 1 470 million to US$ 700 000 million, which had to take into account the high inflation due to the rise in the price of oil in 1973. Economic aid was also lowered, with the particularity of no longer being able to be used to buy fertilizers for farmers!

On 15th April 1975, Nguyễn Tiến Hưng, the Minister of Economic Development and Planning was sent by President Thiệu to Washington to request a loan of US$ 3 billion repayable in 3 years with the proceeds from the sale of petroleum discovered offshore, the 16 tons of gold that were stored in the basement of the National Bank of Việt Nam building, and the products of exported rice. But it was too late. On 18th April, the Senate Defense Committee voted against any military aid to the RVN, and the Foreign Affairs Committee authorized Gerald Ford to use the US army to bring the Americans out of Việt Nam.

The consequences for the army and its ability to react to combat were significant, as severe savings became essential. No «one by one» replacement as the Americans had the right to do under the Paris agreements was made. South Vietnamese aviation could provide only 50% of the flights required, helicopters could only operate at 70% of their capacity, 200 aircraft had to remain in hangars, 400 pilots undergoing training in the United States were repatriated, aviation forces reconverted into infantry troops, 4,000 cars to be immobilized and their parts used for the maintenance of those that could still be used ...

« Towards the end of 1974, beginning of 1975, [the General] Cao Văn Viên let me know that the ammunition had fallen to 6 months or 9 months of stock if we economize. I told him that his estimate was based on ordinary combat intensity, but after the attack on Phước Long and then Ban Mê Thuột, he would not last more than 3 months. There was nothing more to hope for from the Americans », wrote Nguyễn Xuân Phong, a member of the South Vietnamese delegation to the Paris negotiations, in his letters.

According to General Cao Văn Viên himself [15], by mid-1975, South Việt Nam would run out of fuel and by June 1975, the ARVN would run out of ammunition. At the end of 1974, ammunition was rationed because it was so scarce, 1.6 bullets per day per rifle, 10.6 bullets per day for machine guns, 0.3 shells per day for a mortar, 6.4 shells per day for artillery 105.

The Paris “peace” agreements

The Paris Peace accords signed at the Majestic Hotel in Paris on 27^th January 1973 - which gave Henry Kissinger (USA) the Nobel Prize, the North-Vietnamese Lê Đức Thọ having refused it - were mainly aimed to allow the United States to withdraw in honour, with the bonus of the release of their captured soldiers. There was a ceasefire on the spot (standstill ceasefire), but which did not in any way settle the presence of the army of the North on the soil of the South. The Americans had to leave, but they had already withdrawn: in December 1972 there were only 26,000 non-combat soldiers remained. The South could receive military aid from the United States but based on a one-for-one replacement. It was said that the communists and the government of Sài Gòn could not « receive » additional troops on the soil of the South and were obliged to withdraw all their troops from Laos and Cambodia, without indicating any deadline. The agreement provided that, upon the announcement of peace, representatives of the GRP and the government of Thiệu would meet in the presence of neutral personalities of their choice to constitute a National Council of Reconciliation and National Concord which would agree on a future government. This unrealistic clause was never taken seriously by any of the protagonists.

A month after the signing of the Paris agreements, reports from the American intelligence services informed Nixon that the Hồ Chí Minh trail was cluttered with trucks bringing equipment and soldiers to the South while the 15 North Vietnamese divisions which had participated in the 1972 attack were still there.

The book Lịch sử Quân Đội Nhân Dân (History of the People's Army) published in Hà Nội in 1994 by the People's Army publish house, indicated that « from January to September 1973, the material sent to “battlefield Bˮ was 140,000 tons, four times that of 1972. It was made up of 80,000 tons of war material (27,000 tons of weapons, 8,000 tons of fuel and petroleum products and 40,000 tons of rice) and 45,000 tons of supplies for the population of the liberated areas. 10,000 tons of weapons were stored along the Annamite Range. More than 100,000 officers and troops comprising two infantry divisions, two artillery regiments, an air defence division, a tank regiment, an engineering regiment, and various units were sent in 1973 to the south to strengthen the troops fighting there »...« From the beginning of 1974 to the end of April 1975, 823,146 tons of material were sent to the South, representing 1.6 times the weight transported during the previous 13 years »...« During 1973 and 1974, more than 150 000 young people had joined the army »...« Compared to 1972, supplies were multiplied by 9, weapons and ammunition, by 6, rice, by 3, petrol and fuel, by 27 ».

The American are no more interested by Viet Nam

By early 1972, there were 95,000 Americans left in Vietnam, including only 6,000 fighters. The Cold War was in “relaxationˮ (“détenteˮ in French). The « Realpolitik » led by Nixon and Kissinger wanted to put aside the ideological dimension of the Cold War and establish a stable geopolitical state of the world. In Europe, under the leadership of Chancellor Willy Brand of the German Federal Republic (RFA, West Germany), as part of his Ostpolitik, relations between the two Germanys were beginning to normalize with the four-party Berlin agreement signed on 3rd September 1971. In Asia, an unexpected friendly encounter between American and Chinese ping-pong athletes in Japan in 1971 paved the way for an American visit to China. The United States and the People Republic of China had not been in relations since the inception of the former in 1949. This event paved the way for a revival in Sino-American relations with the secret meeting between Henry Kissinger and Prime Minister Chou En Lai in July 1971 and the February 1972 visit to China of US President Richard Nixon where he met Mao Tse Tung and signed the Shanghai Communiqué. With Brezhnev, whom Nixon met on 22^nd May 1972, numerous agreements were signed in various fields, military (SALT I which deals with long-range nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles) as well as economic and cultural.

The Americans are no more interested by Viet Nam. They were there to defend their own interest, by fear of the communist expansion to all the South-East Asia, then the entire word including the USA. This danger doesn’t exist anymore. They did everything to leave without taking into account the promises given to their former ally.

[1] Plus jamais de Vietnams (No more Vietnams), Richard Nixon, Albin Michel, Paris (1986) and Arbour House, NY (1985).

[2] Vietnam, year of the rat, Elbridge Burbrow, Ngô Đình Diệm and the Turn in US Relations, 1959-61, Ronald Bruce Frankum Jr.

[3] U.S. Ambassador to Vietnam from 14^th March, 1957 to April 1961.

[4] FRUS 1958-1960, Volume I: Vietnam, 260, Dispatch 153, 7^th December, 1959.

[5] Mủa hè máu lửa (Summer on fire and in blood), [general]Đổ Mậu,

[6] Thesis of Master's Degree, The Vietnam War: Lost or Won? Vũ Ngự Chiêu, Uni-versity Wisconsin-Eau Claire, 1977, under the direction of Professor Richard D. Coy.

_[7] FRUS, 1961-1963, Volume IV, Vietnam, August-December 1963, D151.

[8] See 17.3. the will of Hồ Chí Minh.

[9] Việt Nam où est la vérité (Việt Nam where the truth is), Trương Vĩnh Lễ, prefaced by Jacques Chaban-Delmas, pub. Lavauzelle, 1989.

[10]Only 10% to 25% of the American troops really fought, a large proportion was involved in logistics or administrative tasks.

[11] Because of his disagreement with some other Lao Động Party leaders, Trần Độ was expelled from the Party on 4^th January, 1999 after 58 years as member.

[12] The Vietnam War’s Great Lie - How the Communists and Pham Xuan An won the propaganda war – article of 13^th February 2018 by Luke Hunt in The Diplomat. The interpretation of the American media was later analyzed in depth by Peter Braestrup in his book Big Story.

[13] In 1972, burglars were arrested in the Democratic Party premises in the Watergate building in Washington. The ensuing investigation, aided by revelations made by the Washington Post which was informed by a mysterious informant nicknamed Deep Throat, led to the discovery of a listening system in the White House and the involvement of President Richard Nixon. This affair, called the Watergate affair, resulted in the resignation of President Nixon in 1974.

[14] Nhìn lại Sử Việt (The history of Việt Nam reconsidered), Lê Mạnh Hùng, Ed. THXBMDHK, 2013.

[15]The final collapse, general Cao Văn Viên, Washington DC, US Army, Centre of Military History, 1983, document on 30^th April, 1975 written for the Institute of Military History of the American Infantry. In Nhìn lại Sử Việt (page 270), Lê Mạnh Hùng quoted Strategy and Tactics (Washington DC, US Centre of Military History, 1980) where colonel Hoàng Ngọc Lung wrote that « some regional forces had to buy grenades with their own money in the military zone IV, …»

7.Ngô Đình Diệm and the Americans

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1d0SdtBSAAYjRJeqVgdzr1TCKa9QrIcO9/view?usp=sharing

Ngô Đình Diệm and the Americans

Nguyễn Ngọc Châu

Excerpts from “ Viet Nam – Histoire politique des deux guerres – Guerre d’indépendance (1858-1954) et guerre idéologique ou Nord-Sud (1945-1975) “ ( Viet Nam- Political history of the two wars _ Independence war (1858-1954) and ideological or North-South war (1945-1975) ) preface by Pierre Brocheux, author Nguyễn Ngọc Châu, published by Nombre 7 (France) in 2020.

* * *

« In many ways, the Republic of Việt Nam, which left the Year of the Pig, the lunar year of 1959, had experienced unprecedented growth in its economy, political infrastructure and internal stability, political infrastructure and his diplomatic position within the community of nations that made up Southeast Asia and the Pacific. », wrote Ronald Bruce Frankum, Jr.[1]

From that moment, however, until his fall in 1963, Ngô Đình Diệm was engaged in the struggles of internal and external threats, as he explained in his speech of 7^th July 1960 on the occasion of the sixth anniversary upon taking office. He spoke of what he considered to be the country's two major problems: « the double pressure of internal and external factors which sought to overthrow the Republic ». By external he wanted to talk about North Việt Nam, but especially the United States without mentioning them or expressing an opinion on their policy, and by internal, there were not only the Việt Cộng but also the political class of Sài Gòn, always plotting, frustrated not to be associated with power while putting itself in the position of an opponent of the government. While everyone was plotting against him, he focused on improving the army and managing internal security, and exhibiting their achievements (victory of the 5th Regiment in the U Minh Forest for example), or, as he did on May 18, he challenged the media at a press conference in Bình Túy. He asked them to criticize government officials when they abused their power, and in return, he received the cooperation of several newspapers, including the Sài Gòn mới (New Sài Gòn), the Tin mới (New information) and the Dân Chúng (The Population).

Ngô Đình Diệm practised a classic policy whereby the one who was elected, commanded in his way with his party, and not with opponents within his government, which was quite natural. In this sense, he deviated from the current practice in the country which was to set up a « front » to involve everyone against the communists, a solution that had always shown its limits. The actual results, other than satisfying the egos of some politicians who wanted a piece of power, were, in fact, negligible, especially when it was in the context of a war against subversion and terrorism, not a conventional one. But in seeking efficiency in the management of such a war without wasting time and taking into account the existence of those who were not in his camp, and by not admitting contradictions or suggestions of having fewer firm hands, he became for everyone a despot having all the faults of the world, especially when it relied on a secret party, and who says secret says corruption, hidden misdeeds, etc.

At that time, Ngô Đình Diệm had to undergo the following pressures:

1. Culture shock between the Americans responsible for U.S. politics in Southeast Asia and the personality of a man not accustomed to bowing to strangers who wanted to impose their laws on him. This gave rise to myths about the regime which proved to be unjustified and untrue once events had passed (corrupt dictator favouring Catholics and intolerant of other religions, etc.). « You think you can have a meeting of spirits with Diem... but I'm telling you it's impossible. For a Westerner, Diem doesn't just come from another culture and another hemisphere. He comes from another planet » wrote journalist Denis Warner in “The Last Confucianˮ.

2. Apathy, or constant struggle for control of the power of a segment of the French-educated Vietnamese society, rebellious, grouchy and never pleased - most of this intelligentsia living in Sài Gòn, far from the fighting and the terror reigning in some campaigns - posing as an opponent of the government calling on the Americans to put pressure on him.

3. Increase in unrest created by the decision of North Việt Nam in 1959 to send troops to the South and the Việt cộng of the South to create in 1960 the National Front for the Liberation of South Việt Nam, in a subversive war where the part of psychological warfare through lies and terror held a huge place.

4. Attack of several journalists of the American press who sought not objectivity, but rather all means to write sensationalism and to bring down the regime, encouraged by secret agents of the PCI working as local correspondents.

The US Embassy team in Việt Nam

Despite the achievements of Ngô Đình Diệm since his arrival in 1954, five years later, the opinion of the U.S. Embassy team in Sài Gòn was not encouraging. Ambassador Elbridge Durbrow[2], an expert on the Soviets [and therefore rather a connoisseur of the USSR mentality] said: « While conceding that the RVN had a long-term objective of an ideal of democracy and had succeeded in laying the foundations of such a form of government, [...] Ngô Đình Diệm had made only minimal progress towards achieving this ideal ¹ ». He wrote to the State Department on 7^th December 1959: « In the area of political development toward a democratic and popular government, Viet-Nam can show only small steps of progress. Furthermore, in great part, these steps amount only to the erection of a facade and the reality of the situation remains one of authoritarian control by the regime[3]».

Ngô Đình Diệm was far from someone who could blindly obey Durbrow to serve the best interests of the Americans, according to the objectives that they had set for themselves. He needed American help and naturally appreciated them. But he persisted in keeping his freedom to act according to his convictions. « America has a magnificent economy and many good points, he once told a reporter. But does your strength at home automatically mean that the United States is entitled to dictate everything here in Vietnam, which is undergoing a type of war that your country has never experienced? », wrote Nixon in his No more Vietnams³³⁷[4]. The entire team led by Ambassador Elbridge Durbrow criticized the Cần Lao party for all the evils, including corruption, since it was a secret party, and mentioned in the reports to Washington neither the success of its humanitarian and social achievements that it knew well, nor the government's successes. Impatient, it was ulcerated that Diệm thought in terms of years and decades, not days or hours. It wanted an American-style democracy for the country, while the Vietnamese president believed that a strong power and certain tough measures, such as press censorship, were necessary for a war against subversion. While Ngô Đình Diệm demanded troops to be trained in counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism tactics and techniques to defeat the Việt cộng, Durbow spent his time criticizing the ineffectiveness of the Army of the Republic of Việt Nam (ARVN), whereas this one had been formed by the Americans to counter a possible invasion of the North Vietnamese in a conventional war as it had happened in Korea. The request for assistance to increase by 20,000 the number of fighters that Ngô Đình Diệm considered necessary, became for the embassy team a bargaining tool to bring him to democratic reforms and to take away Ngô Đình Nhu: Ambassador Elbridge Durbrow and his advisors Joseph Mendenhall and Francis Cunningham were in contact with personalities from Sài Gòn who, far from the struggle in the countryside and the war that was going on there, wanted more democracy and more power-sharing.

But it is true that the regime increasingly did not admit contradictions and opponents, and thus, gradually moved away those who had sympathy for it from the start. Michigan State University, which set up a group providing assistance and advice to Ngô Đình Diệm since his inception in 1955, including those for the implementation of the Constitution, had tense relations with him after having published reports and articles in 1960 criticizing him. He rejected these criticisms and severed relations with the group in 1962. Some who had cooperated with him became his critics, like the former minister Trần Văn Đỗ who represented the State of Việt Nam at the Geneva conference.

[…]

According to the military historian Geoffrey D.T. Shaw (The Lost Mandate of Heaven, The American Betrayal of Ngo Dinh Diem, President of Vietnam), the problems that had arisen between Diệm and Washington had their origins in the American political/diplomatic arena. While Diệm and the U.S. military got along well, the US Embassy and the State Department opposed the direction they had taken. According to the latter, the problem could only be solved in Diệm, who had to make the regime more democratic and less authoritarian and to drive Nhu and his wife away. Thus, the State Department considered the increase in the army and military aid as a lever that would guarantee that Diệm would make the reforms that the American diplomats thought should be made.

Ngô Đình Diệm wanted to reduce the American presence (May 1963)

The actions of the US Embassy and the State Department, which led the Americans to want to get involved deeper and deeper in the country and to see Ngô Đình Diệm making reforms according to their perspective, annoyed him and his brother Nhu very much.

They needed the Americans, but they did not want the price to be paid was the loss of their freedom of initiative and the complete dependence on the decisions of these foreigners. But this was inevitable. The Vietnamese of the North and the South could only lose their freedom at the hands of those who armed them. For the North, the communisation of the country following the direction taken by China was the price to pay, and perhaps something else.

In May 1963, Ngô Đình Diệm asked what the Americans wanted to do in Việt Nam and requested that 5,000 of their soldiers leave the country early in the summer of the same year. On 17^th May 17, 1963, the agreement on the financing of counter-insurgency, stated: « The current level of support and advisory effort is necessary, but in the light of the improved security and progress of the Programme of Strategic Hamlets (PHS) it is expected that foreign assistance, both in terms of men and equipment, would be gradually reduced ». An article of May 12 by the journalist Unna in the Washington Post quoted Nhu and his statement in an interview « South Việt Nam would like to see half of the 12,000 to 13,000 US military personnel present here leave ». Nhu had to deny these words and display a conciliatory attitude after the strong reaction of the American government.

Ngô Đình Nhu 's contacts with the North (1963)

At the same time, Ngô Đình Nhu made contact with the North, notably through a meeting in the district of Tánh Linh in the province of Bình Tụy with Phạm Hùng[5] (1912-1988), Deputy Prime Minister, responsible for the unification of the two regions since 1958 and former head of the North Việt Nam military delegation in Sài Gòn in the International Control Commission (ICC) established following the Geneva Agreements to monitor their implementation. He also passed through Mieczylaw Maneli, head of the Polish ICC delegation, who came to see him on 2^nd September 1963 at the Gia Long Palace[6]. Nhu had discussed with some generals, among them the general Dương Văn Minh (the “Big Minh”), about his conversation with Maneli. The latter had transmitted to him a proposal from the North-Vietnamese Prime Minister, Phạm Văn Đồng, to begin trade between the North and the South, and had made himself available to Nhu to fly to Hà Nội at any time. French Ambassador Lalouette also offered his services for the same purposes.

On 26th September 1963, more than a month before the coup that ended the brothers Ngô, there was a CIA report on the subject « Possible rapprochement between North and South Việt Nam.

It estimated that « the signs that the GVN [Government of the Republic of Việt Nam], the RDV [the Democratic Republic of Việt Nam i.e. the North] and the French were exploring possibilities of some kind of North-South rapprochement», which Joseph Alsop had indicated in his article of 18^th September 1963 in the Washington Post, did not concern an imminent reunification, but rather « a ceasefire, a formal ceasefire or some variant of neutralization ». « Now, Nhu acknowledges contacts with the North and has dropped transparent hints that the GVN would not necessarily refuse to consider overtures from Hanoi […] there is sufficient possibility of serious Ngo family interest in such latter rapprochement to merit continuing close attention. ».

Already, « in March 1962, Hồ Chí Minh indicated in an interview with Wilfred Burchett [known for his sympathy for the communists] his interest in a peaceful solution to the Vietnam problem [… and] in September [of the same year], the Indian Chairman of the ICC reported that Hồ had said that he was prepared to extend the hand of friendship to Diệm (“a patriot”) and that the North and South might initiate several steps toward a modus vivendi, including an exchange of members of divided families»[7]. This speech deserved to be analysed taking into account the perspective expressed by Hồ Chí Minh in the testament he left for posterity: the construction of Marxism-Leninism was his priority.[8]

[…]

16.1. The situation in the South

Ngô Đình Diệm was reluctant to see the number of American advisors increase. He did not want foreign combat troops on the country's soil, and preferred more economic aid and more training of Vietnamese troops, to develop them and make them capable of fighting in an anti-insurgency war. He had made it known to Johnson when the latter came to Việt Nam in May 1961 still as Kennedy's vice-president. In May 1963, Diệm requested that 5,000 American military personnel leave the country in the early summer of that year, not without reason, as the military situation had improved considerably.

Indeed, with the new equipment received from the United States, the military situation became more comfortable. Thus, on 9^th September 1963, at Áp Bắc, the battle of battalions 261 and 514 of the FNLSVN with the Division 7 ended with 82 Việt cộng bodies on the ground - a number higher than that of the ARVN soldiers felt in the first battle of Áp Bắc - and 100 dead and wounded carried away by the defeated. This fact was later confirmed in the book Cuộc đo sức thần kỳ (Surprising competition) of Lê Quốc San of the communist camp. Similarly, the battle at Bãi Ai, Chương Thiện in October 1963, where the Division 21 had to cross an area of swamps with water to the chest to attack, was reported with positive ratings in the New York Times by Halberstam, the journalist who made an article full of criticisms on the first battle of Áp Bắc.

The difficulties of the early days of the ấp chiến lược (strategic hamlets) were mostly levelled out, and the repeated attacks of the Việt cộng proved that their existence bothered them greatly. The number of attacks in the summer of 1963 of the ấp chiến lược in the four provinces of Long An, Định Tường, Vĩnh Bình and Kiến Hòa of the Mekong Plain was equivalent to that of all the other 37 provinces of South Việt Nam.

[…]

The situation in mid-1963 was such that the NSAM (National Action Security Memorandum) No. 263 of 11^th October 1963 planned to withdraw 1,000 U.S. military personnel by the end of 1963 and the end of 1965 for the withdrawal of all military personnel. Thus, the number of soldiers on Vietnamese soil decreased from 16,752 in October 1963 to 15,894 as of 31^st December 1963.

[…]

The assassination of Diệm et Nhu

[…]

?President Nixon would later say, « We made a crucial mistake in South Việt Nam in 1963. The Kennedy government, increasingly angry at President Diệm, encouraged and supported a military coup against his government. This shameful episode ended with the assassination of Diệm and was the beginning of a period of political chaos ». William Colby wrote: « The Americans, by sponsoring the over-throw of Diệm, which I still consider today to be the worst fault of the Việt Nam War...». What thought Dương Văn Minh, who ordered to kill Diệm, when he later knew that Nguyễn Hữu Thọ, the President of the FNLSVN, declared « the fall of the Ngô was for us a present from Heaven.[9]»?

[…]

However, the witch hunt that followed the death of Diệm and Nhu, the dismantling of the network of their followers and their intelligence service, the replacement of those they had appointed (province heads, town leaders, etc…) despite their experience of struggling in a difficult context, without enough competent people to replace them, the « democratization » wanted by the State Department and the Sài Gòn intellectuals, the catastrophic management of the situation by General Dương Văn Minh, weakened the regime. The movements and associations set up by Nhu were dismantled without anything else being put in place. In November and December 1963, the Thanh Niên Chiến Đấu (Fighting Youth) created by Nhu to defend the ấp chiến lược who, in many places, had shown their effectiveness, were demobilized for fear that they would not be loyal to the new government. All this created a vacuum that immediately benefited the Việt cộng for whom the death of Diệm was a miracle.

[…]

The situation had deteriorated considerably, both politically with the continuation of civil unrest, as well as militarily as government troops, despite some successes, still failed to regain the initiative. NSAM 288 issued on 17th March 1964 called on the government of South Việt Nam to put the country in a state of war and launch a general mobilization, and to authorize South Vietnamese ground operations in Laos for border control purposes. General William Westmoreland, a veteran paratrooper of World War II and Korea, replaced General Paul Harkins as head of MACV. The number of US advisors increased rapidly and reached 23,300 in a few months. The Americans realized that the southern regime was in a bad shape, declared supporting General Nguyễn Khánh and did all they could to prevent any new coup. Until then, the only operations against North Việt Nam were leaflet launches and some spy missions on its soil. The Americans now thought that perhaps it should be punished directly to be forced to stop sending troops to the south. But they never thought they would go so far as to defeat it since nothing was prepared for that purpose. The North Vietnamese, who were warned, through the ICC Canadians, of the Americans possible reaction, replied that if the Americans wanted war, they would have it and they would lose it.

[…]

With the birth of the Second Republic in November 1966 and the stabilization of the political situation, the government concentrated on the struggle to get to the heart of the campaign and to develop it. After training, agents from the Xây Dựng Nông Thôn (Rural Construction) were sent by teams of about 60 men to live with the peasants and to help in the development of the villages. The success of this campaign depends on the security provided by the security forces, the weakness of these could not avoid the wrath of the opposing side, and many of their leaders were murdered or abducted. In the first half of 1967, more than 3,000 of them perished or disappeared. Despite the danger and difficulty of the task, the programme had some small successes until the end of 1967.

[…]

16.2. The escalation of North Việt Nam

At the 9th meeting of the Central Committee of the Lao Động Party in Hà Nội (December 1963), it was decided to drastically increase the sending of troops and weapons to the South. The report of the meeting stated that « the disturbances that have occurred in the puppet army and government, as well as the disintegration of the oppressive movements of Diệm (such as the Cần Lao Nhân Vị party, the forces of the Thanh Niên Cộng Hòa (Republican Youth), the network of áp chiến lược (strategic hamlets), as well as the terrorist security apparatus and reactionary catholic organizations), have created favourable conditions for us [...]Our enemies no longer have the ability to withstand large-scale attacks ». It estimated that it took two to three years for the South to fall entirely into the hands of the North.

In March 1965, an FNLSVN report seized by American forces indicated that it had been able to reverse the balance of forces, and that most of the military and paramilitary forces at the hamlets and villages had been wiped out and replaced by its own, and that 80 per cent of the ấp chiến lược (strategic hamlets) had fallen into its hands. The tactics of besieging the post to destroy the reinforcements (công đồn đả viện) had paid off. The aim was to besiege a strategic hamlet or post with superior forces and to ambush and annihilate reinforcements sent by the enemy before disappearing.

[…]

16.3. The American escalation

[…]

American troops increased from 50,000 (June 1965) to 185,000 (end of 1965), then to 486,600 (end of 1967), and peaked at 543,000 (April 1969) when the 37^th U.S. President of the United States Richard Nixon (1913-1994) decided to replace the American troops with South Vietnamese ones (« Vietnamisation» program). Allies of the USA were also present in South Việt Nam: South Koreans (48,000), Thais (10,000), Australians (a few thousand) and Filipinos.

Only 10% to 25% of the American troops really fought, a large proportion was involved in logistics or administrative tasks.

[…]

After the Tết Mậu Thân offensive (1968)

The morale of the Hà Nội regime was at its lowest after the Tết Mậu Thân offensive (1968). None of the goals it set out to achieve had been done. No one had risen, its army everywhere had been pushed back with many casualties, and their network of secret agents seriously exposed and decimated.

In the first half of 1969, 20,000 communist troops surrendered to the ARVN, tripling the number from the previous year. Between 75,000 and 85,000 of them were killed during the battles of 1967 and 1968, most of which were southern forces, greatly reducing its power and no longer allowing it to engage in large-scale operations.

General Trần Văn Trà (1918-1996) who led the offensive made a self-criticism in 1982 in his book Kết thúc cuộc chiến tranh 30 năm (The End of the Thirty Years War): « We did not correctly evaluate our forces compared to those of our enemies. We did not fully understand that the enemy still had significant combat capabilities, that our capacity was limited and that the demands exceeded our strength ». This book was banned from publication and resulted in his being struck off from the Party that he joined in 1938, although he was Minister of Defense from 1978 to 1982.

General Trần Độ (1923-2002) who was Deputy Commissioner and Deputy Secretary of the Military Commission of the Liberation Army of South Việt Nam, wrote: « To be honest, we have not achieved the main objective which is to stimulate the general uprising in the South. But we have inflicted heavy casualties on the United States and the puppet army. And it is a great victory for us. As far as creating a lot of unrest in the United States, that is not our intention, but it came as a lucky and happy consequence ».[10]

Indeed, the negative psychological impact was very strong in America. Johnson's government failed to convince the Americans that the North had indeed been defeated. This military defeat was transformed into a political defeat of the South Vietnamese and Americans, as interpreted by the American press and television, through the way some American journalists and local correspondents interpreted this Tết Mậu Thân offensive. For example, Phạm Xuân Ẩn, the local correspondent for Time magazine, who wrote for Reuters and New York Herald Tribune, very close to Lansdale, head of the Saigon Military Mission, was a secret member of the PCI who died in 2006 as brigadier general of the RSVN army[11]. These communist secret agents aimed to influence the foreign media according to what the Party wanted them to believe and they succeeded to do it fully, especially with the American media.

The attack of the little North Vietnamese David, believed to be alone with its will and courage, against the American giant Goliath, armed with all the most modern weapons, upset all of America. Walter Cronkite, a presenter of the television news on the CBS Evening News between 1962 and 1981, considered to be the most representative of American opinion, said, during the offensive, that the war in Việt Nam could not be won. The increase in American troops would only increase those in the North, and the war would continue but more violently without America being able to win. The horror of the war and the death of many American soldiers also moved America and led many of its citizens to oppose the Việt Nam war. The number of its «boys» dead, from around 400 between 1956 and 1964, rose to 1,863 in 1965, 6,143 in 1966 and 11,153 in 1967. On 18^th February 1968, during the communist offensive, the revelation of the number of Americans killed in a week, 543, and wounded, 2,547, the highest figures since the American intervention in Việt Nam, shocked the whole of America. Especially since many American soldiers were conscripts.

The « Vietnamisation » of the war in the South

The programme of handing over the responsibility of the war to the South Vietnamese started under Johnson, continued under the name of « Vietnamisation » with Nixon (1969-1974). It was simply a coming back to the situation before the Vietnamese generals' coup against Diệm with the approval of the Americans in 1963. And that was what Ngô Đình Diệm wanted. Nixon made a lot of noise about it as a strategic subject, following the October 1969 report by Sir Robert Thompson, the British advisor, who indicated that with adequate economic and military aid, the forces of South Việt Nam would have in the space of two years the capacity to repel any action of the communists without the aid of American troops.

Vis-a-vis the world, the RVN and the United States lost their credit because of the Americans. The North had been able to transform, for the eyes of the whole world, by intelligent propaganda, thanks to the action of the journalists of the occidental world, the ideological war between the communist North and the nationalist South into a war between the Democratic Republic of Việt Nam (the North), and a foreign invader, the United States, whose local ally, the Republic of Việt Nam (the South), was only the almost invisible “puppet” whose American newspapers only spoke badly. The United States imposed its decisions on this “ally” who could only obey: it owned what was important in a war, i.e. the means to do it (money, weapons, ammunition, aircraft, fuel, etc.). Its aid made it worth submitting to its wishes on how to govern the country since it thought that it knew the Vietnamese mentality better than the Vietnamese themselves. Ngô Đình Diệm felt this and tried to avoid it. He did not want the presence of American combat troops on Vietnamese soil, he preferred rather strengthen the power of South Vietnamese troops and to increase American aid, the real solution to this war. Finally, six years after he was overthrown, President Nixon did not do any differently with his “Vietnamisation” programme.

On the other side, North Việt Nam presented itself as a small and weak but independent country, which had to oppose this great power, the most powerful country in the world, to preserve its existence, without one being able to see the slightest shadow, nor the slightest breath, from a great ally behind its shoulders, thanks to the subtlety of the discreet and skilful Chinese and Russians whose help was however paramount to its war effort. And there, the Tết Mậu Thân offensive showed that Hà Nội and the South Vietnamese people were not afraid to oppose this America which was bombing the North and strangling the South of the country.

* * *

The Americans imposed their methods without taking into account the reluctance of Ngô Đình Diệm, and even got involved in the project to eliminate him. And finally they turned back to do what he had recommended, i.e. to just support the vietnamese to do the war and not have american troops on the Vietnam soil. And the Americans continued to get involved, not to help the South Vietnamese, but to protect themselves. Until the moment when no longer fearing for their country because communication was established with China, they did everything to leave without taking into account the promises given to their former ally.

[1] Vietnam, year of the rat, Elbridge Burbrow, Ngô Đình Diệm and the Turn in US Relations, 1959-61, Ronald Bruce Frankum Jr.

[2] U.S. Ambassador to Vietnam from 14^th March, 1957 to April 1961.

[3] FRUS 1958-1960, Volume I: Vietnam, 260, Dispatch 153, 7^th December, 1959.

[4] Plus jamais de Vietnams (No more Vietnams), Richard Nixon, Albin Michel, Paris (1986) et Arbour House, NY (1985).

[5] Mủa hè máu lửa (Summer on fire and in blood), [general]Đổ Mậu,

[6] Thesis of Master's Degree, The Vietnam War: Lost or Won? Vũ Ngự Chiêu, Uni-versity Wisconsin-Eau Claire, 1977, under the direction of Professor Richard D. Coy.

[7] FRUS, 1961-1963, Volume IV, Vietnam, August-December 1963, D151.

[8] See 17.3. the will of Hồ Chí Minh.

[9] Việt Nam où est la vérité (Việt Nam where the truth is), Trương Vĩnh Lễ, prefaced by Jacques Chaban-Delmas, pub. Lavauzelle, 1989.

[10] Because of his disagreement with some other Lao Động Party leaders, Trần Độ was expelled from the Party on 4^th January, 1999 after 58 years as member.

[11] The Vietnam War’s Great Lie - How the Communists and Pham Xuan An won the propaganda war – article of 13^th February 2018 by Luke Hunt in The Diplomat. The interpretation of the American media was later analyzed in depth by Peter Braestrup in his book Big Story.

8.Why the French Indochina War (1945-1954) ?

Why the French Indochina War (1945-1954)?

Nguyễn Ngọc Châu

Excerpts from « Việt Nam – L’histoire politique des deux guerres – Guerre d’indépendance (1858-1954) et guerre idéologique ou Nord-Sud (1945-1975) » ( Viet Nam- Political history of the two wars – Independence war (1858-1954) and Ideologic or North-South war (1945-1975)), Nguyen Ngoc Chau, Nombre 7 pub., 2020).

The Indochina War was the one that France led from 1945 to 1954 in Laos, Cambodia and Việt Nam, the three countries that formed "Indochina" when it still dominated them.

The creation of the Indochinese Union (1887)

The three countries had fallen into the hands of France as it advanced in the conquest of their territories in 1858 - with the attack of Đà Nẳng (Việt Nam) which it called Tourane - to the creation of the Indochinese Union by the decrees of 17 and 20 October 1887. It was then composed of Việt Nam – divided into three kỳ (regions or countries, kỳ meaning flag), Cochinchina in the south, Annam in the centre and Tonkin in the north – and Cambodia and was administered by a Governor-General of Indochina (GGI). Cochinchina was a colony ruled by a governor while the other three parties were protectorates each managed by a "superior resident". The Laotian protectorate established in 1893 and the 1300 km2 Kouang Tcheou Wan (or Guangzhouwan) 广州湾territory in South China with a 99-year lease signed in 1898 were later added to this Indochinese Union.

The Japanese prevail in Indochina (1941)

The French colonial government stopped using the railway from Hải Phòng to Vân Nam (Yunnan, China) to send arms and ammunition to Chiang Kai Chek of China after a message of pressure from the Japanese in October 27, 1938. War had broken out between China and Japan on July 7, 1937, following an incident [1] and the Japanese had taken Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai and Nanjing.

Upon receiving an ultimatum on June 19, 1940, the French immediately ceased all transit of material to China and accepted the presence of a Japanese border control commission. Governor-General Georges Catroux (1877-1969) had responded favourably to Japanese pressure without first referring to the metropolis and was, for this, replaced, by a decree of June 20, 1940, by Admiral Jean Decoux (1884-1963) commanding the navy in the Far East. In a telegram to Paris on June 26, 1940, he justified himself as follows: "When you are defeated, when you have few planes and anti-aircraft defence, no submarines, you try to keep your property without having to fight and you negotiate. That's what I did. I'm 4,000 leagues away from you and you can't do anything for me...! ».[2]

By a treaty signed on August 30, 1940, in Tokyo, Japan recognized France's sovereignty over Indochina and the Paracels and Spratleys Islands, while France recognized Japan's major role in the Far East and permitted it to use military means in Indochina. The military treaty that supplemented it, signed on September 22, 1940, at Hà Nội after another ultimatum from the Japanese, specified the authorization for the Japanese to use three airports in north Việt Nam, to station 6,000 men north of the Red River, and to transit a maximum of 25,000 men.

The weakness of the French army, which was aggravated by the massive desertion of newly recruited local troops, had led General Catroux to oppose any activity against the Japanese. He had done everything to avoid it, going so far as to seek the help of the British and the Americans, but to no avail. In July 1944, General de Gaulle appointed General Eugène Mordant (1885-1959) as leader of the resistance from Kunming in China and Calcutta in India and ordered him to parachute transmission equipment and weapons.[3]

On the night of December 7, 1941, the Japanese fully controlled Hà Nội and warned Admiral Decoux that they had attacked Pearl Harbour the same day and that a treaty between Japan and France on Indochina was ready to be signed. By this agreement, ratified two days later, France forbade itself from obstructing Japanese operations in the Far East and granted Japan the right to use all the resources in Indochina that it saw fit. Conversely, the 4,000 French troops and nationals were not imprisoned as happened with the British and Dutch in Malaysia and Indonesia.

The Japanese used Indochina as a base of operations to South-East Asia (Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, etc.), from 1942.

The Japanese coup de force (March 9, 1945)

Indochina was the only place conquered by the Japanese where power was left to the colonizer. In early 1945, they retreated there following the defeat of the Battle of the Philippines. At the same time, U.S. aircraft attacked the port of Sài Gòn and their fleet in the China Sea, sinking 28 ships and damaging 13 others. Expecting an imminent landing of the Americans, they decided to take power to avoid being attacked from behind: they were aware of the existence of General Mordant and his networks.

On paper, at the beginning of March 1945, the Japanese forces were less numerous than those of the French: 55,000 against 60,000, but the proportion of fighters at the disposal of General Tsuchihashi was greater: 35,000 against 30,000. In addition, they were all Japanese while the French soldiers were heterogeneous: Europeans, Vietnamese, Cambodians, Laotians, mountain minorities. After placing forces near important points throughout Indochina, on March 9, 1945, they caught the French by surprise[4] by carrying out an operation prepared in the greatest secrecy called Meigo Sakusen (action of the moonlight). At the same time, they attacked the French troops and those of the Indochinese guard everywhere. Admiral Decoux himself was arrested on the evening of March 9, 1945, at the palace of the general government where an appointment had been made by Ambassador Yatsumoto to " conclude an agreement on rice deliveries in 1945 " and to discuss privately " military expenditures ". In forty-eight hours, more than two thousand French soldiers, including members of General Mordant's resistance force, to which were added many non-Frenchmen, lost their lives, either killed in action or murdered. General Émile Lemonnier and Colonel Robert, who had defended themselves to the end of their ammunition at Lạng Sơn, and the resident General Aphelle, were beheaded on the spot. General Mordant himself had to capitulate and was imprisoned until the Japanese were defeated. 15,000 [5][6] men of the French armed forces were imprisoned, including 12,000 Europeans. Others took refuge in China.

Indochina no longer belonged to France (1945)

Japan chose to restore freedom to the Centre Việt Nam, Cambodia and Laos, and to put under the control of its army the two regions South and North Việt Nam where the bulk of its defence forces were located. [7]

"Japan was forced to take over in Indochina because of the subversive activities of the French resistance. It was receiving weapons and intended to hinder the movements of our army", was the message of the Japanese ambassador to Indochina to emperor Bảo Đại. Then he said, "We want to give Asia back to the Asians. I am in charge of handing over to Your Majesty the independence of Vietnam."

Bảo Đại declared the independence of Việt Nam on March 11, 1945, almost six months before Hồ Chí Minh, by repealing the French protectorates in these terms:[8] "In the world situation and that of Asia in particular, the government of Vietnam publicly proclaims that from this day the protectorate treaty with France is abolished and that the country resumes its rights to independence". He ended with a declaration of acceptance of Japan's support within the framework of its Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.

On August 14, 1945, the Japanese officially handed over the South to the Huế court, and Bảo Đại announced its annexation, thus reunifying Việt Nam. Responsibilities for civil guards, security, police, etc. fell to Huế's court the next day.

The Japanese Surrender (1945)

Japan having rejected the ultimatum of the allies (USA, United Kingdom and USSR) of the Potsdam Conference (July 17, 1945 – August 2, 1945), on August 6, 1945, an atomic bomb was launched by the Americans on the city of Hiroshima (340,000 inhabitants), where was the command centre of the Second Army of General Shunroku Hata which defended the western part of Japan. Nagasaki (195,000 inhabitants) was the target of a second bomb on August 9, 1945. Russia's invasion of Manchuria on August 8, these bombings and the surrender of Guandong's Japanese army on August 10, caused Japan to officially surrender on September 2, 1945, after Emperor Hirohito's radio address on August 15, 1945. Regarding Indochina, the allies decided, without consulting France, to entrust the restoration of order in the area below the 16th parallel to the United Kingdom and the one above it to the Republic of China.

The creation of the Democratic Republic of Việt Nam (September 2, 1945)

The demonstration of August 17 with about twenty thousand people proclaiming in front of the Great Theatre of Hà Nội their support to the Việt Minh hitherto unknown, was followed by that of August 19, 1945, which ended with the capture by the Việt Minh of the town hall, the Treasury, the Post Office, etc... and the arrest of emperor Bảo Đại's government representative.

Emperor Bảo Đại decided to abdicate. In the abdication act of 25 August, he stated: "It is better to be a citizen of an independent country than to be king of a slave country." On August 25 or 30 [9], 1945, the Golden Sword and the imperial Gold Seal were presented to the representatives of the Việt Minh [10] . Thus disappeared the empire of Việt Nam.

Hồ Chí Minh decided to proclaim the country's independence on September 2, 1945, which was also the date of Japan's official surrender. The Việt Nam Dân Chủ Cộng Hòa (Việt Nam Democratic Republic – RDVN)was born, with the flag of Việt Minh, a yellow star on a red background, as its emblem. Moved, many people joined the movement.

This seizure of power in Hà Nội was followed by others in some northern cities because the government did nothing to keep it. In some places, it was done with the members of a nationalist party, such as in Quảng Yên with the Việt Cách. In Hải Phòng, Hà Nội's script was reused, except that the city authorities, among whom there were three infiltrated Việt Minh, decided themselves to remit power. In others, there was fighting either with the Bảo An ( emperor Bao Đại police), as in Hà Đông when the Việt Minh wanted to take the camp of the Bảo An whose leader was a member of the VNQDD, or with nationalist parties, as in Sơn Tây, Phúc Yên, Vỉnh Yên and Phúc Thọ, where these were well established.

France wanted to recover Indochina lost to the Japanese (1945)

It was believed that France had been eliminated from the scene of the ancient countries of Indochina. It had allowed the Japanese to settle there following some ultimatums, use it as a base of operations towards Southeast Asia, and finally be driven out on the night of March 9, 1945. And in October 1943 its demand to have a military delegation in the SEAC (South-East Asia Command) had been refused by the Allies of the Pacific War (the United States, the United Kingdom and the USSR), as well as his offer in early 1945 to participate in any action of General Douglas Mac Arthur in Indochina.[11]

U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt was against the return of France to Indochina. For him, the principle "every people had the right to choose the form of its government" was valid for everyone, and the colonies had to be placed under an international mandate to prepare for becoming independent. But he died too early (April 12, 1945) to be able to oppose the desire of France.

For British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, only the countries occupied by Nazi Germany were concerned with the subject of independence, and that of the countries of the British Empire would depend on the Commonwealth. Concerning Indochina, he was already thinking of post-war Europe and preferred the return of France to Indochina. He considered France "extremely sensitive, close to being a sick person, with everything that it considered to have lowered it", as mentioned in a report by his Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Not supporting France on Indochina could provoke its anger and "generate incalculable consequences" in both continents and not just one.

For General de Gaulle, it was necessary to prove France's credibility as a great power. And this required a return of France to Indochina.

On March 24, 1945, as he was preparing to take power in France, he proclaimed his intention to restore the authority of France in Indochina, and the creation of an "Indochinese Federation", replacing the old "Indochinese Union" of 1887, still composed of five entities, the associated States which would be an integral part of the "French Union" (a word found by Paul Mus) [12] composed of France and its territories, colonies and associated States.

"Hà Nội was perceived as the last stage of national restoration", wrote Jean-François Klein12 on the policy of de Gaulle at that time.

Lord Mountbatten, the head of SEAC (South-East Asia Command), a realist, said to General Leclerc: "Reconquering Indochina, it is not serious. The world has changed. You will not succeed ".

The end of the Indochina War (1954)

Lord Mountbatten was right. The French were unable to reconquer Indochina. The Việt Minh were not always the “guerrilleros” that the French army had known. They defeated the French in many battles, anxious to free their country from those who wanted to dominate it. They were also unfailingly supported by China and the USSR who equipped, trained and advised them. The last battle, that of Điện Biện Phủ where 11,721 defenders on the French side surrendered to the Việt Minh, ended France's dream.

The Geneva Conference in 1954, which brought together all the belligerents and their international supporters, formalized the separation of Việt Nam into two parts, one managed by the Communists and the other by those who did not want this regime, and the definitive leave of France. The French finally had to return home after nine years of fighting in Việt Nam for nothing.

Their adventure is said to have caused 400,000 to 450,000 victims (killed or missing) including "12,997 French officers and soldiers and 17,810 Legionnaires and Tirailleurs African and North Africans". [13]

3 000 billion of old Francs had been spent, of which 614 billion by the USA as part of its aid to France in the last years. [14]

And we did not count all the tears of the mothers, wives, children and relatives of those who had fallen during this nine-year war.

[1] At the Ligou bridge still called Marco Polo bridge, the Japonese pretexted to look for one of their soldiers who had disappeared and to have received some shots and wanted to search all the houses. In front of the refusal of the Chinese, they brought some reinforcements and captured Peking. The soldier had in fact past two hours in a whorehouse.

[2] Indochina French 1854-1954, Pierre Montagnon, Text message, ed. Tallandier, 2016.

[3] http://www.anai-asso.org/NET/document/le_temps_de_la_guerre/le_temps_de_la_guerre_19401955/2guerre_indochine /le_coup _de_force_japonais_du_9_mars_1945/index.htm#.

[4] Vietnam 1945: The Quest for Power (Vietnam 1945: The quest for the power), David G. Marr.

[5] The piastre and the rifle, the cost of the war Indochina 1945–1954, Hugues Tertrais, Committee for history economical and financial of France.

[6] The general Biting a Left a book In the service of France in Indochina, 1941-1945 (Saigon, printing Frenchwoman Overseas, 1950).

[7] The alone State fully sovereign ally at The Empire of the Japan was the Kingdom from Thailand.

[8] Việt Nam: a state born in the war 1945-1954, by Christopher Gossha.

[9] Depending on the information source.

[10] During the night of 19/12/1946, after a fighting between Việt Minh and French in Hà Nội, the Golden Seal and the imperial Gold Sword broken in two were put in a metallic container gutted from its petroleum and buried by the Việt Minh on the run. Rediscovered in 1952 by the French army they were given back to Bảo Đại by the intermediary of his second wife, Mộng Điệp, who received them at a ceremony in Đà Lạt in presence of the mother of the former emperor. Mrs. Mộng Điệp made the sword repaired and brought it with the seal in France in 1953 to remit to Bảo Đại (ref: The Time of, Ancestors : one Family Vietnamese in his crossing of the Twentieth century Nguyễn Ngọc Châu, Harmattan pub., 2018).

[11] The SEAC was called with irony by Americans " Save England's Asiatic Colonies".

[12] Article from Jean-François Klein on De Gaulle, the Gaullists and Indochina by Frédéric Turpin, ed. Indes Savantes, Paris, in Moussons, 13-14 |209,406-410.

[13] History of the war Indochina, general Yves Gras (Denoël, coll. "The adventure Colonial de la France", 1992)

[14] The piastre and the rifle, the cost of the war Indochina 1945-1954, Hugues Tertrais, Comité pour l'histoire économique et financière de la France.(Committee for economical and financial history of France).

9.The financing of the Thống Nhất Metropole Sofitel Hotel in Hà Nội in 1992

Go to the following link, please

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1W_dIBoAyapeHC0EhGPQ_S4idLK0GFDNe/view?usp=sharing