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Geneva Conference
Pierre Mendès-France
The Viet Minh benefited from the Communist regime having taken power in China while the French in Vietnam drew from vast resources. The French drew from its colonies: soldiers from Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, sub-Saharan Africa, from the minority of Vietnamese who supported the French, from Vietnam's ethnic minorities and from Laos and Cambodian. The French employed their Foreign Legion - mercenaries of European descent. And the French requested and received U.S. help in funding and equipment, including tanks, the French benefiting from the Cold War. By the end of 1950 the U.S. was paying half of the expense of France's effort in Vietnam. The French did recruit conscripts in France for their war in Vietnam, in order to keep the war from becoming more unpopular at home than it was - a war being called the "dirty war" (la sale guerre) by France's communists and leftist intellectuals, including Jean Paul Sartre.
Diplomatically, France succeeded in gaining U.S. recognition for its puppet king in Vietnam, Bao Dai, and the British recognized France's authority in all of Indochina: Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. The Viet Minh, on the other hand, received diplomatic recognition from the Soviet Union and Communist China.
In late 1950, as China was sending troops into North Korea, the Viet Minh destroyed French forts near the border with China. The fighting dragged on for a couple of years, with the French benefiting from air power, the dropping of napalm, air mobility and paratroopers. The Viet Minh had the desire of a broad spectrum of the Vietnamese population willing to fight to rid their country of foreign rule, and with this the French effort in Vietnam was deteriorating militarily.
This, with pressure from Cambodia, led to the French granting full independence to neighboring Cambodia. In March 1953, Cambodia's king, Sihanouk, went to Paris and advised the French that if they did not grant Cambodia full independence that Cambodians were turn to the guerrilla movement that had arisen. Military the French were in enough trouble by July that on July 3 they declared themselves ready to grant full independence to Cambodia, Vietnam, and Laos. King Sihanouk became a hero in the eyes of his fellow Cambodians and returned to Phnom Penh in triumph. Independence became official on November 9, 1953.
France had already given semi-autonomy within the French Union, and as for independence for Vietnam, rather than negotiations with the Viet Minh the French continued to fight to protect what they considered their interests in Vietnam. The focus of the war was in the extreme northwest of Vietnam, in the province of Dien Bien - a breadbasket area for the Vietnamese. At the village of Dien Bien Phu near the border with Laos, the French concentrated their major force, aimed at cutting off Viet Minh supply lines to Laos. The Viet Minh isolated the French force, forcing the French to rely on air drops for supplies. The U.S., meanwhile had delivered ten more B-26 aircraft and had assigned 200 U.S. aircraft mechanics to maintain the American B-26s and C- 47s. It did not save the situation at Dien Bien Phu for the French. The Viet Minh occupied the highlands around Dien Bien Phu and were able to shell the French with accuracy. For Viet Minh had arisen from guerrilla warfare to confronting the French in pitched battle.
Sensing impending disaster the French requested armed intervention from the U.S. Seventh Fleet. On April 24, 1954, Dulles told President Eisenhower that Paris was begging for air cover from carriers belonging to the U.S. Seventh Fleet. This help was not forthcoming. Eisenhower not happy about France's colonial agenda and he was upset with the French for having put themselves in the an isolated fortress - a blunder well known about military historians. Also it was deemed necessary to get congressional approval for the U.S. to enter the war as the French requested. And in Britain Churchill's government did not approve. On April 26 the Geneva Conference convened, chaired by Britain and the Soviet Union, for the purpose of settling the conflict in Vietnam.
On May 7 the Viet Minh overran the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu. A French commander radioed French headquarters in Hanoi that they were fighting to the finish. He was answered: "Well understood. You will fight to the end. It is out of the question to run up the white flag after your heroic resistance." (Time Magazine, May 17, 1954.)
On May 8, the Viet Minh counted 11,721 prisoners, of whom 4,436 were wounded. As hated foreign invaders they were mistreated. Of the 10,863 prisoners who survived, only 3,290 were repatriated four months later. Those of 3,013 prisoners of Indochinese origin, they were traitors, and their fate is unknown. During the 55 days of warfare at Dien Bien Phu the French lost around 3,000 killed and 8,000 wounded. The Viet Minh suffered 8,000 dead and 12,000 wounded.
In the wake of France's defeat at Dien Bien Phu, France's premier, Joseph Laniel, in June, resigned. On June 19 a new government was formed by Mendès-France, who wanted to give priority to economic expansion, considered empire a liability and favored total withdrawal from Indochina. The war in Vietnam was unpopular, and when Mendès-France offered parliament a choice between supporting him at the Geneva negotiations or sending conscripts to Southeast Asia they voted 471 to 14 to support his ending the war. Opposition to the war's end was led by Roman Catholics concerned about leaving Vietnam's Catholics to communism. And there were those on the political right who were outraged by their country's withdrawal. They heaped verbal abuse on Mendès-France, some of it much of it calling attention his being a Jew.
At the Geneva Conference the Viet Minh was reluctant to accept dividing the country between north and south as the 17th parallel, but arguments by China's Zhou En-lai moved them to agree, with the French to remain in the southern half temporarily, with "Emperor" Bao Dai remaining as President and Ngo Dien Diem, a Catholic, as prime minister in the South and elections promised to re-unite the country in 1956. French forces were to withdraw from the north and the Viet Minh from the south. Laos was acknowledged as fully independent, and the Communists agreed to recognize that independence and the independence of Cambodia and to e withdrawal of their forces from both. An International Control Commission was set up to oversee the implementation of the Geneva Accords, consisting of commissioners from India, Canada, and Poland. The Accords were signed on July 21, 1954
