How it BEGAN............
The First Indochina War
President Eisenhower’s First Decision
The Geneva Conference (1954
The U.S. reluctantly attended the Geneva Conference where, to achieve peace, Vietnam was granted independence from France and divided at a demilitarized 17th parallel, behind which the Viet Minh were to retreat. “Free” elections would be held in both the North and South in July 1956 to reunify Vietnam under either Ho Chi Minh or Bao Dai (who remained “head of state” but continued to spend most of his time in France). Despite being on the verge of total victory, Ho Chi Minh agreed to the Geneva Accords, bowing to pressure from the Chinese and the Soviets. Anyway, with unification elections coming up, Vietnamese self-determination finally seemed at hand. Back in the U.S., Secretary of State John Foster Dulles went into spin mode. He used Ho’s acceptance of the accords as evidence that the Viet Minh had been influenced by the threat of American airpower from two carriers in South China Sea, and from fear of the atomic bomb. In an interview with Life magazine, Dulles bragged about the peace that the administration had helped achieve in Geneva
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