MSA files, FRC Ace. No. 56 A 632, folder 2A233
Memorandum by James P. Hendrick to C. Tyler Wood1
Confirming our talks on Indochina, there are many problems which I have discussed and am discussing with Sam Hayes dealing with the [Page 605] economic aid program there, and two problems of a more general nature which are being considered at a higher level. For what they are worth, here are my comments on the latter.
Military Situation.
It was obvious even to the superficial observer that the military situation during the four months I was in Hanoi deteriorated considerably. The views of the principal figures in Hanoi, notably General de Linares, General Cogny (de Linares’ successor in charge of North Vietnam operations) and Governor Tri, may be summarized as follows: This is a war in which there are no frontiers. (In this respect it is probably the pattern for future wars.) The enemy is in front, behind, all around. Although the union forces are equal numerically to the Viet Minh, the former must use 65% of their strength to guard supply lines, whereas the Viet Minh, living off the ground and villages they occupy, have no such problem. This means in effect the union forces have only 35% of their troops for offensive operations. They must recruit more men. The only available source for these men is Vietnam. It will take some time to train a Vietnamese army. With union forces presently extended due to the Laotian operation, the Viet Minh are in control of large portions of the delta, and a substantial amount of the five-month rice crop, now being harvested, may fall into their hands. In addition, there is danger of other losses. The twenty-five villages surrounding Dong Quan were placed substantially under Viet Minh control in the last two or three weeks before I left, and the year’s first serious instance of sabotage to the vital Hanoi–Haiphong railroad occurred the latter part of May. The balance of the year is going to be very ticklish. Next year, if the Vietnamese army gets going, success can be partially gained, and in 1955 assured.
The night before I left, I had a long talk with General Trapnell. He expressed his complete dissatisfaction with the way things were going. General Trapnell felt his hands were tied under existing instructions whereby he turns over enormous amounts of American matériel, sees it misused or not used at all, and he can do little or nothing about it.
There is an obvious method of attack on this problem, and fortunately this method is now being adopted.
A military mission is going to Indochina, starting the beginning of next week, headed by General O’Daniel.2 The real purpose of this mission, as I understood it from a talk with the General this morning, is to determine to what extent the United States as a major contributor to the defense effort should have some say as to how this effort is to be directed. General O’Daniel gave every indication of being a hard [Page 606] hitting military man who can come back with some very interesting views on this delicate problem.
Political Situation.
In my capacity as STEM Special Representative I had no more responsibility in the political than in the military field. Nonetheless, I could not help seeing the results of a bad political situation, nor could I keep Vietnamese from coming to me on their own, and telling me things which they claimed they would not tell anyone else.
No one could ask for an abler administrator than Governor Tri in North Vietnam, and on the whole I believe he is popular with the people. The French are not. The simple fact of the matter is that the Vietnamese of the North—and it is in the North that the fighting takes place—want freedom, but if they cannot have it they are by nature more inclined to place themselves under a Chinese yoke than a French yoke.
The man in the rice paddy probably has no concept whatsoever of freedom. He is interested only in security—beyond that his thinking is done for him by village elders.
The village elders are interested in having a minimum of interference. Outside of that they have little interest in how the country is run or by whom.
The businessman is conscious of the restraints placed on him by French exchange controls and by French ownership of all big business. He realizes that he would be no better off—probably worse off—under Chinese domination.
It can be said that the people who are vitally concerned in the matter of freedom and know that they are vitally concerned, are government officials and that small minority which consists of educated people not in the government.
French red tape is notorious. Governor Tri complained to me the last day I saw him that every day he had to send over large numbers of dossiers to the French Comissariat; every day a certain number of his recommendations would be turned down; every day he would have to argue the more important of these cases. He had always succeeded in persuading the French to change their minds when he put the pressure on, because he found the French fundamentally reasonable, but this was a wearing procedure for a man handling the administration of a war area. Those lower down the line do not always find the going so easy. But essentially, their complaint is that they do not trust the French. To some extent this is the expression of an inferiority complex: the French have never trusted the Vietnamese—they have not encouraged their education except in the liberal arts, they do not think they can accomplish anything positive or can be relied on.
[Page 607]Insofar as the non-government intellectuals are concerned, they see the country run by a French-appointed sovereign who in their opinion must accept the dictates of the French. When Bao Dai offered his private plane to help out in connection with the Laotian invasion, the intellectuals construed that not as a generous gesture but as a French maneuver designed to prevent his leaving the country and duplicate the successful appeal of the King of Cambodia to the outside world. They see French Commissioner Gautier installed in the most important building in Saigon, and they feel this building—this symbol of power—should be taken over by the Vietnamese. They hear rumors—in this case reasonably accurate—of situations such as this: the only large coal mine in the country, entirely French owned, grosses 300 million piastres a year, nets 150 million, and the Vietnamese get in taxes 1 million piastres a year. They have studied Vietnamese history and have concluded that their country can only be happy when independent. Despite their hatred of communism, they are not sure that the yellow, Moscow-trained Ho Chi-Minh is not more to be trusted than the white, colonial-minded Gautier.
It was not until the devaluation episode, with the failure to consult the Associated States in advance, that Vietnam President Tam, a French citizen generally sympathetic with the French but an astute politician, found the time ripe for a démarche towards independence. He has now indicated that he wants to negotiate a new agreement with the French. His demands should be carefully studied.
The Department of State has from time to time held the view that since the French pay most of the cost of the war, France can scarcely be blamed for wanting to keep the Associated States entirely within the French union. The Department has also been sympathetic with the view that Indochinese independence would cause troubles in North Africa. Its position on these points is being currently reexamined.
On the basis of my observations in North Vietnam, I would say this:
- We are losing the war.
- It is costing us as well as the French a lot of money.
- Loss of Indochina to the Communists would be serious indeed.
The war cannot be won unless the people develop more of a will to fight than they now have.
The will to fight cannot be developed until some tangible evidence is given that the French are going to grant some specified measure of increased freedom within some specified period of time.
The Indochinese do not trust the French. They do trust the United States. Hence any agreement or statement which can in any way be approved by us will have infinitely greater force than an agreement [Page 608] made with the French alone. This is something which might be borne in mind in connection with the Bermuda conference.3
- Wood was Deputy Director for Congressional Cooperation, Mutual Security Agency. Hendrick, Special Assistant to Wood, was formerly MSA Special Representative at Hanoi. On June 19, this memorandum was transmitted to Harold E. Stassen, Director for Mutual Security; John H. Ohly, Deputy to the Director for Program and Coordination; Brig. Gen. Frank N. Roberts, Senior Military Adviser in the Office of the Director; and Samuel P. Hayes, Jr., Assistant Director for the Far East.↩
- The military mission, headed by Lt. Gen. John W. O’Daniel, USA, arrived in Saigon on June 20. Regarding the mission, see telegram 2552, June 24, p. 616.↩
- A Conference of the Heads of Government of the United States, the United Kingdom, and France (originally scheduled to be held at Bermuda in late May), was postponed first by the French governmental crisis and subsequently by the illness of British Prime Minister Churchill. The meeting ultimately occurred in December 1958.↩