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According to the Potsdam Conference, British forces, followed by French ones, occupied the southern part of Vietnam, whereas the north was occupied Chinese. In March of 1946 the Vietminh negotiated a compromise with the French by accepting French comtrol for five years in North Vietnam, too, where the sphere of Vietnam influence was greatest. In return the French recognized Vietnam as a free state within the French Union, but subsequently France didn't keep to the agreement. It separated the South (Cochinchina) from Annam and Tonkin in order to maintain absolute control over the region of their greatest economic interest. In November of 1946, a French cruiser shelled Haiphong, a port city in the northern part of Vietnam (Tonkin) for flimsy reasons, claiming the death of 6,000 civilians. This incident meant the beginning of a war which would last (in its various phases) almost thirty years.
The American Indochina policy took a turn after the Second World War. In the 1930s, a competition developed between the United States and Japan concerning the domination of the Southeast Asian market. French monopolies restricted America's economical connections to Indochina. For this reason the French effort to regain control of Vietnam met with opposition of the U.S. under Roosevelt's presidency. Besides Roosevelt spoke against any form of colonialism and attempted to convince the colonial powers to gradually dismiss their possessions in Asia into independence. But for France, Vietnam was of economical importance for its recovery after World War II. When the Japanese moved forward to Indochina in 1941, the French colonies suddenly became strategically important for America. After the Soviet Union had subjugated Eastern Europe, the government of Roosevelt's successor Harry S. Truman endeavoured to contain its expansion and thus the dissemination of communism. For that purpose America had an interest in promoting West European powers in order to establish a balance there. When in 1947 the Vietminh tried to convince their former ally to politically and economically support them in the war against the French offering it economical benefits, the U.S. refused. From the point of view of America, it was no longer a colonial war against a nationalist liberation movement but a struggle against Moscow-directed communism in the periphery. Although there was no evidence of Soviet contact with the Vietminh, Ho Chi Minh was virtually considered as Stalin's representative in Indochina. The "loss" of China for the Communists led by Mao Zetung and the ignition of the first Soviet atomic bomb were decisive for the notion of the "domino theory", which assumed that the fall of Indochina would cause in rapid succession the collapsed of other nations in Southeast Asia. In 1950, the Truman administration, following its "policy of containment" eventually began to supply France with transport and weapons and increasingly took on the expenditure of the war (in 1954 they financed 80 per cent of the expenses of the war). Although the American government was aware of the fact that there was no other nationalist alternative to Ho Chi Minh the U.S. finally recognized the puppet government headed by the former emperor Bao Dai that the French had appointed whereas the Soviet Union and China recognized the Vietminh to be the legitimate government of Vietnam. In spite of U.S. military assistance and the creation of a Vietnamese National Army by General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny the French only achieved short-range successes and their prospect to eventually win the war deteriorated. At the beginning of 1954, the Vietminh commanded by Vo Nguyen Giap encircled 12,000 French soldiers at the valley around Dien Bien Phu near the border to Laos. President Eisenhower and Secretary of State Dulles refused to authorize an American military strike (there were discussions about an air raid). His plan for a "United Action" in Vietnam based on a broad coalition was rejected by Great Britain. In May of 1954 the French troops at Dien Bien Phu capitulated which sealed the final withdrawal of the French from Indochina.
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