NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011
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SUPPLEMENT
TO THE REPORT ON VIETNAM
by
GEN. J. LAWTON COLLINS
1. POST-GENEVA CRISIS IN VIETNAM. a. Origin of the Crisis. The immediate cause of the crisis in Vietnam which reached an acute phase in the fell of 1954 was the Geneva Accord. This agreement ended seven years of war by dividing the country at the 17th parallel and awarded administration of Tonkin and northern Annam to a victorious Communist army and regime. Under French leadership Vietnam had participated in the war under conditions which tended to perpetuate the essential features of colonial rule. These conditions discouraged the growth of institutions which night have constituted a bulwark against the Viet Minh in the South even after the enemy had prevailed militarily in he North. Vietnam emerged from the war with nominal independence, but this exerted less popular appeal than the anti-colonial slogans of the Viet Minh. Its so-called National Army at the moment of defeat was neither national nor army. Its civil administration was demoralized. Its government lacked effective control and was faced with the prospect of national elections in 1956 which could reunite the country under Communist control. However, this government, headed by Ngo Dinh Diem since June 1954, was the first nationalist government of Vietnam and with its moral force resolutely opposed the Viet Mình.
b. Diem and his Opposition. (1) Because of its anti-Viet Minh and nationalist character, the Diem Government was unpopular with nearly the entire range of French officialdom. Some French elements hoped for an accommodation between North and South which would permit the French to continue to do business with the entire country. Others nourished the illusion that a quasi-colonial regime could be established and perpetuated in Cochinchina. Under pressure from both sides, the French Government through its representatives in Paris, Washington and Saigon, made repeated representations to the U.S. Government, which had publicly stated its support of the Diem Government, to the effect that Diem had had his chance, had failed, and should be replaced. The negative reply to these overtures was based on the U.S. contention that Diem, owing to circumstances beyond his control, had not had a real chance to prove himself; that to replace him without removing the impediments to his success would only lead to another failure; and that the men suggested by the French to
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