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.
