Did Truman show great vision in1946 (after WW II) by supplying France with arms and ships to invade Vietnam?

Question

At the end of the war in 1945, France had no army, no arms, no navy, no ships, and no planes. And Allied Supreme Commander Eisenhower refused to give France a drop of oil or anything else after de Gaulle would not send support for our soldiers during the "Battle of the Bulge".

Yet, somehow, one year later, France had all that stuff and could send an army half way around the world to invade Vietnam, chase Ho Chi Minh and his government into the jungle, and set up a puppet government. Your history books and your newspapers will not tell you where France got all that stuff, but the fact is that there was no possible source other than an executive order by Harry S. Truman!

When a French division was surrounded and captured at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, many of the prisoners were speaking German! SS war criminals had joined the Foreign Legion after WW II!

In his memoir ("Mandate for Change"; 1958), President Eisenhower wrote that over 80% of the Vietnamese supported Ho Chi Minh.

I am surprised and disappointed. You are my fellow Americans. You pledged your allegiance to our nation (under God!) every morning in school, from K to 8. But it meant nothing to you - a complete loss of time.

That nation was created by our Founding Fathers, men who hated colonialism above all else and risked their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to defeat it.

And you really believe that empires have the right to subjugate foreign populations and suppress uprisings and declarations of independence?

Shame! Shame! Shame!

Go back where you came from!

(1) Those who do not respect History are doomed to suffer through its repetition.
(2) Doubts about factual accuracy are expected, but, ethically speaking, should be specific and fact-based.
(3) The French army and navy were totally destroyed in 1940. Find a good dictionary and look up "war" and "defeat".
(4) Any event prior to the French invasion of 1946 is totally immaterial and irrelevant. It was an unprovoked invasion of one nation by another contrary to the U.N. charter and all the laws of civilization.
(5) Before more doubts are expressed, perhaps you should go to your local library and check out and read "In Retrospect" (1996?) by Robert MacNamara, Secretary of Defense under Lyndon B. Johnson. He wrote the book thirty years after he resigned the office in mid-war because he could no longer look his son in the eye. In the book, he wrote that the entire war from beginning to end was "wrong, terribly wrong".

(1) On Germans in the French Foreign Legion:
The French government depended on volunteers to suppress a foreign population and was having trouble with enlistments. Sound familiar? The Foreign Legion is famous for always being glad to accept anybody without questions about their past.

Besides, I was there, Charlie. I was an interpreter in French and German for the 4th Cavalry Squadron, VII Corps, during WW II. When I heard the prisoners being interviewed on French TV in 1954, they were speaking German.
And that's the troof!

(2) On Community Guidelines:
I asked a perfectly legitimate question about politics and backed it with facts and logic.

Your first point about Japanese occupation during WW II was totally irrelevant to my question.

Your second point about Community Guidelines and "soapbox" came out of right field beyond the foul line. The truth is that you are totally incapable of dealing with principles, facts, and logic.

Truman was President from 1944, following Roosevelt's death, until Eisenhower was inaugurated in 1953. Supplying equipment to de Gaulle was the only involvement he had with Vietnam.

Roosevelt, on the other hand, made sure that Ho Chi Minh got some help and encouragement while his guerilla army was holding down 5 Japanese divisions in French Indo-China. The Michelin rubber plantations were very important to Japan.

Truman repaid that important wartime service by starting a war that killed 3 million Vietnamese and 57,000 Americans. Such gratitude.

Ed Harley
Error No. 1: On March 9, 1945, the Japanese overthrew the French administration and disarmed the French army. After the Japanese surrender, Ho Chi Minh declared the independence of Vietnam. Before the French fleet invaded on March 9, 1946, there were no French troops in control anywhere in Vietnam.

Error No. 2: The US didn't support the French in Indo-China to get French support against Chinese Communists, who were out of power a thousand miles away, recovering from the war, and hiding from Chiang Kai-shek.
Truman financed the French invasion to roll back the grossly over-rated communist threat to capitalism. Truman was too short-sighted to uderstand the currents of history. Colonialism was finished. In a similar way Bush doesn't understand that the Shi'ites will never give a drop of oil to the Sunnis and the Sunnis will never pay a shekel of tax to a Shi'ite government. A president has to know history, geography, culture, philosophy, and to pick good advisors.

Error No. 3. The French army did as well in Vietnam as the US army, with far less firepower and technology. Again, as in Iraq, there was no understanding of the culture and history of the land. They could not understand the nationalist movement that had motivated the peasants, who were mad as hell and weren't going to take it anymore!

If you had a million Americans in Vietnam you would still be unable to make a 90% Bhuddist population pay taxes to a Catholic elite clique.

The US didn't have to beg the French for support against the USSR. The French needed our help badly to get back on their feet. Surely, you heard of the Marshall Plan.

Me too - There was no other source for the war materials. Britain was exhausted and needed to hold on to India and Africa. Germany and Italy were destroyed. The USSR wouldn't help a capitalist nation defeat a communist nation. And where would France get the money to pay for war materials. Think about it.

Answer 1

France made the return of Vietnam the price for joining NATO. Vichy had ceded Vietnam peacefully to the Japs and administered it for them, only Ho and his (French) communists put up any real resistance and managed to really hurt the Japanese. And they did it with minimal US logistics support. When the OSS asked Ho what he needed to get started, he asked for a dozen .45's and an autographed photo of Flying Tiger leader Claire Chennault.

After the war, Ho offered the US an alliance and military bases in return for recognition and 900 teachers. Truman sold the Viets out to the French. It was a far worse betrayal than Yalta of an occupied people. The French used Japanese POW's as occupation troops until an army could be brought in from Metropolitan France.

It was also America's greatest diplomatic blunder of the 20th Century. The Vietnamese are China's equivalent of the Bogeyman. US Bombers based out of China might have deterred Chinese intervention in the Korean War and certainly would have weakened it.

And, by the late 1950's, for the third time in 40 years, the US had taken over another war that France had lost and could have prevented. The cost, not only in blood and treasure, but in US prestige and the hamstringing of US policy world wide have been devastating.

Vietnam was a lot worse than what's happening in Iraq, but only so far. Corporate greed, fact blind ideology and Jingoism threaten to make Iraq even worse and that failure may prolong the Terror War by decades.

Answer 2

I'll take Butterbar's statements one step further. DURING the war, the French were "allowed" to govern Vietnam by the Japanese. When Japan surrendered, complete rule of the region reverted (in fact) to the French.

Truman and Eisenhower both supported the French because they perceived this would draw France to support the U.S. against the Soviet Union. To them, supporting France against the Chinese Communists made good sense. In hind sight, it may have been bad judgement, but made perfect sense at the time.

The reason this turned out to be a poor decision in hind-sight, is because nobody in the U.S. at that time had any idea how ungreatful or cowardly the French were capable of.

Answer 3

Indochina was a French colony long before WW2, they did not just "invade" it after WW2, but, in typical European fashion, reinstated their rule. You have grossly mischaracterized France's relationship with Vietnam.

As for military, the French did have a military. They had an army. Not much of a Navy or Air Force, sure, but there you are again, another incorrect statement.

And do you have any support for your claim that SS war criminals were in the FFL? The French had no love for Germans after the war, and especially for SS war criminals, so I find that claim very hard to accept.

Answer 4

You are going to have to chomp down your Freedom Fries and understand that all wars depend upon the political situations of their time. I am not going to place the blame for the Viet Nam War on Harry Truman, because I am not sure he would be the "only" source for War Materials. But, who knows?

It angers me to see people accusing the French of cowardice. During World War 2, my brother was in France. If it had not been for the brave souls in the French Underground, he may not have lived to come home. They helped many, many Americans caught on French soil, hid them and cared for them for weeks until rescue could be arranged. They also blew up Nazi strongholds, bridges and other escarpments, doing what they could to hamper the Occupying Army.

Answer 5

The French had a presence in Indo-China long before World War II.

Answer 6

Hello,,this was just the right training grounds for the NEW WORLD ORDER, what Germans didn't join were working with the united states, and developing new special forces groups ( like the SS) to help stir the rest of the world into the frenzy of confusion for a common goal, MONEY = POWER=CONTROL, and the people of this world are going to pay for it ( through "legal"taxation) until death.

Answer 7

The first answer is EXACTLY correct. In fact, I believe the French were in Vietnam in the 1800s. Your question is very, very shaded. Check your history.

Answer 8

The good ol' Cold War.

The missteps of sixty years ago.

Not politics at all,my man.

That's history....