(Ho Chi Minh 19 July, 1947)

The French were unable to re-establish colonial control over Indochina during the years of 1945-1956 for a variety of reasons. The French were unequipped, unprepared and without the support of their own people to engage in another crippling war. Also, during their absence the Viet Minh had rebuilt, educated, trained and armed the people of Vietnam in preparation for the return of French military forces. Finally the most detrimental mistake of the French authorities was to attempt to solve a political conflict with a military solution.

The French people were not in favour of another long drawn out war as the people on the home front were "war-weary." They only planned the Indochina conflict to last somewhere between two to five years and proposed to hopefully draw the Viet Minh into a large scale conventional...