Embers of War (57 page)

Eisenhower was particularly distraught. Until the Laos invasion, he told the National Security Council on April 28, he had thought the French would ultimately win the war; now that seemed far less likely. French commanders lacked the requisite aggressiveness and moreover had failed to “instill a desire to hold” among the Vietnamese population. With only limited manpower at their disposal, these commanders moreover had allowed their forces to become separated and divided into isolated pockets, each of which could be supplied only by air. The Viet Minh units, meanwhile, were able to wander around the countryside almost at will. The following week the president returned to the theme, first at a meeting of the NSC, then in a letter to the U.S. ambassador in Paris, C. Douglas Dillon. Only two developments, he said, would really save the situation. The first was an official declaration from the Paris government guaranteeing the independence of the Associated States as soon as the war was concluded. The second was a strong and capable new military commander who would accept battle, not shy away from it. Convinced that the French generals in Vietnam, including current commander Raoul Salan, were generally a “poor lot,” Eisenhower called for “a forceful and inspirational leader” in the mold of de Lattre.
²⁴

FRENCH UNION PARATROOPS OPERATING IN THE PLAIN OF JARS IN LAOS, APRIL 1953, IN ORDER TO TRY TO TURN BACK GIAP’S OFFENSIVE. THEY ARE CLAD IN SURPLUS U.S. GEAR.
(photo credit 14.2)

The French had heard this message before, but Prime Minister Mayer could do little but swallow hard and smile. He was frustrated by his government’s dependence on Washington and by the Eisenhower administration’s insistence on a military solution in Indochina at the same time it sought a political settlement in Korea. He fully shared the frustration of President Vincent Auriol, who told Letourneau in late May: “I am more and more worried about the Americans’ [overbearing] attitude. Their involvement in the Indochina war is a catastrophe.”
²⁵
But the problem was insoluble; the Americans in effect called the shots. Any unilateral move to withdraw from Indochina could lead to an immediate end of U.S. aid, which would expose the Expeditionary Corps and the
colon
community to grave dangers, forcing decolonization. It could also complicate Franco-American relations concerning German rearmament and other issues.

The internationalization of the war, which had looked like such a good idea in 1949–50, when Paris leaders worked so hard to secure allied and especially American backing, had become a crushing burden from which there seemed no real relief.

And yet, Mayer saw no option but to go along, to hope for some tactical victories in the field from which a compromise settlement could, some months down the line, be negotiated. He assured Douglas Dillon that a statement of the type Eisenhower wanted regarding independence would be announced in a future speech (it would happen in July), and he said a new commander would soon be sent to Indochina. But he demurred on Eisenhower’s suggestion that he choose either General Augustin Guillaume, commander of French forces in North Africa, or Lieutenant General Jean Valluy, now at Supreme Headquarters, Allied Powers Europe. Guillaume’s health was poor, Mayer noted, while Valluy would inflame Vietnamese nationalist opinion in view of his close association with the Haiphong incident of November 1946 and the overall meltdown that had led to the outbreak of full-scale war the following month. Instead, Dillon was told, Paris intended to appoint General Henri Navarre, chief of staff of French NATO forces in Central Europe, who was little known to U.S. officials and had no Indochina experience.
²⁶

The sense of urgency in Washington was reflected in other ways. In late April, the administration agreed to loan France six C-119 “Flying Boxcars” (with the U.S. insignias painted over) to transport heavy equipment to Laos, and to allow civilian U.S. pilots to fly the planes. The same week the National Security Council approved NSC-149/2, which suggested the possibility of direct American intervention in Indochina in the event of Chinese aggression or, generally, a “basic change” in the situation. Did the Viet Minh invasion of Laos, Special Assistant to the President Robert Cutler asked at a meeting on May 6, constitute such a basic change? In other words, was the United States now prepared to consider a direct military intervention in the conflict? The question was left hanging, suggesting the answer for the moment was no. But that it was raised at all, and that NSC-149/2 won approval, shows how seriously senior policy makers saw the situation.
²⁷

American pressure contributed to another important decision by the Mayer government that spring: the devaluation of the Indochinese piaster on May 10. The move came in response to increased reports of profiteering in the currency as a result of the artificial maintenance of the exchange rate. The operation, which had gone on for several years, consisted of buying U.S. dollars on the French black market for between 350 and 400 francs for each dollar. The dollars were then sold in Indochina for 50 piasters to the dollar. The piasters in turn were converted back into francs at the official, but highly overvalued, rate of seventeen francs for a piaster, with a consequent profit of as much as 150 percent. (The currency’s real value on international markets was eight francs per piaster.) Critics charged that many dollars bought in Paris and sold in Saigon had found their way into the hands of Viet Minh agents, who then used the profits to buy arms with which to kill Frenchmen. Less often mentioned was that this also financed the lavish lifestyles on the Côte d’Azur of Bao Dai and his associates, including the procuring of legions of expensive prostitutes; or that French businessmen and politicians were in on the game.

The costs of the trafficking to the French treasury were considerable: Credible reports put the losses at 500 million francs per day (roughly $1.4 million). The CIA complained that while it had shut down gold smuggling to Bangkok and Singapore, Air France flights on the Paris-Saigon route continued to operate, with gold shipments of the Banque d’Indochine that were then transferred to Macao for sale to the Viet Minh. These were turned over to the Chinese, who purchased weapons for the Viet Minh through Moscow. The agency determined that French bankers were netting a tidy 50 percent profit on the deal, which put roughly five hundred tons of arms in Viet Minh hands every month.
²⁸

U.S. officials called the situation intolerable and pressed for a devaluation, reminding Paris of their own treasury’s major contribution to the Indochina effort. The French press, meanwhile, ran numerous high-profile stories on the issue—notably the left-wing
L’Observateur
, which in early May published documentary evidence against persons profiting from the traffic, citing names and dates. The stories relied in part on the investigations of Jacques Despuech, a disgruntled ex-employee of the Currency Exchange Office, who withstood lawsuits and attempted bribes, even threats on his life and that of his wife, to publish a book-length exposé titled
Le trafic des piastres
.
²⁹
The government responded to this onslaught by announcing a 40 percent devaluation, which disturbed the artificial economic equilibrium in Indochina and generated uproar among
colons
, many of whom had benefited from the inflated rate. More ominously for the future, the action also angered non-Communist nationalists throughout Indochina, including officials in Bao Dai’s State of Vietnam government. “Of course we are angry,” declared Prime Minister Nguyen Van Tam, who was not known for his nationalist fervor (he had volunteered to serve under General Leclerc early in the war and was a French citizen). The Paris government’s failure to consult with him or his ministers prior to the decision was inexcusable, Tam charged, and it suggested that the whole concept of the French Union should be reexamined.
³⁰

IV

JUST HOW MUCH DELIBERATION WENT INTO THE SELECTION OF
Navarre and the piaster devaluation is open to question, for by now Mayer had something bigger on his mind, namely the survival of his three-month-old government. The assaults came from both left and right, and they concerned economic and social policy as well as what critics saw as Mayer’s too-favorable view of the EDC and its integrated European army.
³¹
But the bloody struggle in Indochina also loomed large, particularly as news filtered in of the Viet Minh offensive in Laos. Mayer now faced, according to one close observer, “an unprecedented parliamentary offensive” over the war. The phrase is somewhat misleading, as there was still no mass antiwar movement in the National Assembly, but it does capture the growing domestic pressure on French leaders to find a way out of what many now called
la sale guerre
(the dirty war). In April, a downbeat Bidault complained to Dulles that the government was “caught in a crossfire” between those who opposed the war on moral grounds and those who said it was ruining France economically. That same month former prime minister Edgar Faure proposed a five-power conference to settle the Indochina conflict diplomatically, while in May a public opinion poll commissioned by
Le Monde
found that two-thirds of French voters favored either a unilateral withdrawal of French forces or a negotiated armistice. Only 19 percent advocated stepped-up military action.
³²

Said a Paris-based British diplomat of the popular mood: “A left-wing man-in-the-street will say that it is a dirty war which ought never to have been started and which ought to be brought to an end as quickly as possible for moral reasons quite apart from material ones. If he is not left-wing but averagely cynical he will say that he wants the war to be terminated because it is no concern of his except in so far as it tends to increase the weight of his taxes; his hearth is not menaced by the Viet Minh and the French lives which are lost in Indo-China are those of volunteer soldiers. If he has some finer feelings he may say that the war ought to be brought to an end because it can clearly never be won and that its continuation is meanwhile weakening France.”
³³

If this man in the street was a reader of books he could pick up two new authoritative works, Philippe Devillers’s
Histoire du Viêt-Nam, de 1940 à 1952
and Paul Mus’s
Viêt-Nam: sociologie d’une guerre
, which provided important historical context and implicitly pointed to the giant obstacles in the way of victory.
³⁴
If he opened the influential
Le Monde
, he could read the complaint that while France was exhausting herself in Vietnam, Germany was becoming the leading power in Europe; while in the afternoon paper
Paris-Presse
, he could read Vietnam correspondent Max Harmier declare that France had neither the tactics nor the means to defeat the Viet Minh.
³⁵
And if his curiosity caused him to peruse
L’Express
, a brand-new weekly magazine modeled on
Time
, he would see story after story attacking the war. The magazine came out firing in its first issue, charging that certain political groups, with vested financial interests in Indochina, were “conspiring” to keep the war going. Featured on the cover was Pierre Mendès France of the Radical Party, who declared on page six, in an interview titled “France Can Bear the Truth”: “We cannot approach problems of economic recovery without resolving the problem of unproductive costs like rearmament and the Indochina War.” No military solution was possible in Vietnam, Mendès France went on, and therefore every effort had to go to gaining a diplomatic settlement, perhaps through direct bilateral negotiations with Ho Chi Minh. “Our negotiating position was better two years ago than it was last year; better last year than it is now; it is probably not as bad now as it will be next year.”
³⁶

More and more, Mendès France was the figure around whom opponents of the war coalesced.
L’Express
, indeed, had come into existence explicitly for the purpose of bringing him into power. When Mayer’s government fell on May 21, speculation turned to the prospect of a Mendès France government. He almost succeeded, gaining broad support except among Gaullists and Communists and winning 301 votes, thirteen short of the number required to form a government. Commented Letourneau to the new Indochina commander Navarre: “I am somewhat worried for the future when I see that 300 members of parliament have voted for the nomination of M. Mendès France, thereby practically stating that they are ready to envisage some way of pulling out of Indo-china.” In fact, the figure was even higher, as Ambassador Dillon ruefully noted in a cable to Washington: If Communist votes were added, it totaled 406 votes in favor of withdrawal from Indochina.
³⁷