Vietnam and the U.S, to November 1963

"The Vietnam War was an aspect of the Cold War." Henry Kissinger, 11/09/06

At the end of the World War II, Ho Chi Minh's organization, the Viet Minh, had committees throughout Vietnam, and Ho Chi Minh announced Vietnam's independence. Most Vietnamese were overjoyed and looked upon the Viet Minh and Ho Chi Minh as heroes. This was the nationalist aspect that U.S. forces in Vietnam would be fighting. In spirit, Vietnam was independent of foreign rule.

In 1954, France's seven years of war in Vietnam ended in an agreement at Geneva, Switzerland. The agreement held that Vietnam was to be temporarily divided at the 17th parallel. For two years the French were to be allowed to maintain their administration in the southern half of Vietnam. Then elections were to be held to reunite Vietnam.

The Viet Minh abided by the Geneva agreement. It withdrew its military from areas in the south that it had dominated for years. It ruled in the north of Vietnam while the French maintained its puppet regime in the south led by the monarch Bao Dai. And, as agreed to at Geneva, the Viet Minh remained organized and represented in the south.

Elections Denied

Below the 17th parallel the U.S. had been applying its influence. A Christian Vietnamese named Ngo Dinh Diem had been in the United States between 1950 and 1954. There he had met various Americans, among them Cardinal Francis J. Spellman and Senator John F. Kennedy. Diem disliked Vietnam's communists. He was Catholic, and in 1945 the communists in Vietnam had imprisoned him and then exiled him to Chiang Kai-shek's China. Diem's anti-communism attracted the Americans. He had become their hope as an alternative to communism in Vietnam.

While Diem was in the United States he was named prime minister by the puppet king in Saigon, Bao Dai. The Eisenhower administration began giving Diem financial support and began training an army in Vietnam loyal to Diem. Ignoring the Geneva agreement of 1954, Diem and Bao Dai competed in an election for president. Diem's troops guarded the polls, and those who attempted to vote for Bao Dai were assaulted. Observers claimed that the fraud was obvious. In Saigon, for example, Diem claimed more votes than there were registered voters in the entire area. Diem won and proclaimed the Republic of South Vietnam. The elections that were supposed to unite Vietnam were ignored. The Eisenhower administration had recognized that the popularity of the Diem regime could not stand up to the popularity of the Viet Minh and their leader Ho Chi Minh. Eisenhower had feared that Ho Chi Minh would win as much as 80 percent of the vote. This was one of those elections that communists could have won, and people in Washington were not about to surrender to exceptions.

Diem Attacks Supporters of Communism in the South

Diem was a nationalist. He was a man of courage. But he was not popular with the common Vietnamese. He surrounded himself with friends and family and failed to cultivate relations with local leaders and the various political and religious groups in the South. He tried to rule by command. And he sided with large landowners who wanted lands returned to them or payment for lands that had been distributed to people by the Viet Minh. Peasants in the south who were being threatened with a loss of the land given them by the Viet Minh were as ready to fight to keep their land as were farmers in the American West.

Something fundamental to a new war in Vietnam was developing. Communist leadership in North Vietnam saw the Diem regime as illegitimate. They saw it as the creation of and maintained by foreigners. They believed that they and their supporters in the southern half of Vietnam had more right to apply their wills to developments in the whole of Vietnam than did these foreigners. And many in the United States did not see it this way. The Cold War was still on. People in the U.S. believed that Communist aggression had to be deterred.

Diem had begun a campaign against the Viet Minh and communists in the south, and in the process his forces in rural areas became increasingly feared. The Viet Minh and communists in the south struck back -- the beginning of a new guerrilla warfare. In the North the Viet Minh remained aloof, not feeling the pressure of Diem's anti-communist campaign and fearing war with the United States. Under pressure from comrades in the south, the regime in the north, in October 1957, ordered the organization of new fighting units in the south: the Vietcong. Diem's regime started a "strategic hamlet" program -- the rounding up and relocating of peasants into communities surrounded by barbed wire, to separate peasants from communist guerrillas. And the peasants disliked being forcibly removed from their hamlets.

President Kennedy Supports Diem for Awhile

In 1961, France's Charles de Gaulle told President John F. Kennedy that in Vietnam the U.S. would sink "step by step into a bottomless quagmire," however much it spent "in men and money." President Kennedy had begun sending more advisors to Vietnam to help the Diem regime, increasing their number to 800 in 1961. Kennedy allowed U.S. pilots to fly combat missions while pretending to be instructors, and he supported counter-insurgency to overthrow the communists in the North.

Kennedy saw hearts and minds as part of the struggle in Vietnam, and in the face of failures in Vietnam he described the battle in Vietnam as needing to be won by the Vietnamese themselves, not by Americans. Kennedy watched as Diem's reign become more hated by people in the southern half of Vietnam. The Diem family was Roman Catholic and had come into conflict with Buddhists -- a large segment of the South's population. In the city of Hué, Catholics had been permitted to fly the papal banner, but the Buddhists had been prohibited from raising their flag. In May 1963 thousands of Buddhists in Hué staged a protest demonstration. The Diem regime sent troops in armored vehicles against them, and nine of the Buddhists were killed. Diem accused the Buddhists of being communist sympathizers, and in the weeks to come clashes took place between Diem's troops and anti-Diem Buddhists. Buddhist monks began setting themselves afire, creating a sensation around the world, while Diem's sister-in-law, Madame Nhu, described the burnings as a Buddhist barbecue. Then, in August, Diem ordered troops loyal to him to attack Buddhist temples in Hué, Saigon and other cities in the south.

The Kennedy administration was aware of Diem's lack of popularity. He saw that Diem would remain unable to rally the South in the fight against the communists. The Kennedy administration hoped to find an alternative to Diem, and, with U.S. connivance, the Diem regime was overthrown by his generals. Diem was assassinated, and in the South people erupted in joy, people in Saigon bedecking army tanks with flowers and parading joyously through the streets.

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