communist Vietminh at the Battle of Dienbienphu, French rule in Indochina (1862-1954) was generally unpopular with Vietnamese because it was oppressive and exploitative.
Indochina as the Cork in the Bottle/ the Domino Theory (1943-1960). President Franklin Roosevelt opposed the return of French colonial control over Indochina after the end of World War II. He said in 1943: "France has had that country . . . for nearly one hundred years, and the people are worse off than they were at the beginning" (Chace 263). Nevertheless, in the 1945-1948 period, the United States acquiesced in French efforts to retain control of Indochina because it deemed French cooperation in Europe to be much more important than the outcome of the conflict between France and the Vietminh. (The Vietminh took advantage of the power vacuum created by the Japanese surrender and declared in September 1945 an independent Democratic Republic of Vietnam or DRV in Hanoi. They were forced into the hills by returning French forces). The outbreak of the Korean War and Chinese Communist military intervention in Korea persuaded American Secretary of State Dean Acheson and President Harry Truman that the French war in Indochina was another front in the Western struggle to contain Asian and global communism. Between 1950 and 1954, the United States picked up nearly 80 percent of the cost of the French war effort there, roughly $2 billion in aid (Edmonds 11). Indochina was regarded by the Truman Administration as the 'cork in the bottle,' control of which was critical in preventing the fall of the rest of Southeast Asia with its resources to global communism. As he explained his domino theory to the press on May 7, 1954, President Dwight Eisenhower said: "if someone sets up a row of dominoes, and knocks over the first one . . . it is certain that the last one will go over very quickly" (Brown 230). However, Eisenhower refused to permit American ground troops or even air stri...