"The Americans are dreaming their own dream. But they are walking in France's footsteps."

Embers of War is the last word on the First Indo-China War, with a hefty explanation of the circumstances leading to France's attempt to hold on to it's Asian colony, and the consequences of their painful exit. Conquered and colonized by the French in the 19th century, Indochina was lightly held by a few thousand soldiers and secret police when France fell to the Nazis in 1940. Vichy Indochina was absorbed by the Japanese, first with diplomatic illusions, and then in a sudden coup de main. When Japan surrendered in 1945, Ho Chi Minh's nationalist resistance group, the Viet Minh, declared independence. Independence lasted for a matter of months, as Charles de Gaulle's France regarded regaining its colonies as a key part of being a significant player in the postwar order, and sent in troops to enforce that decision.

What followed was the tragedy that we know so well. Ho Chi Minh was both a nationalist and a Communist, but the latter was because in the 1920s the Soviet Union was the only place taking anti-colonialism seriously. He was distrusted by Stalin, and looked to the United States for aid, going so far as to read the American declaration of independence when he took Hanoi in 1945. Truman, needing to keep France and the UK happy in Europe, threw Asians under the metaphorical bus. The hardening lines of the Cold War, particularly with Mao's victory in the Chinese Civil War, soon made it impossible to form a bridge between the Viet Minh and the United States.

France's war dragged on, toppling governments at home and increasingly becoming an American funded war, with the US providing planes, trucks, and ammunition by the tonne. As a consequence of the aid, America demanded a victory which France no longer had the heart to achieve. As villages turned against the government, and mobile columns were ambushed and cut apart, France looked to cut its losses and find some kind of political solution.

Logevall ably links events on the ground to diplomatic manuevering at superpower summits, and livens the book with a human interest chapter on Graham Greene and The Quiet American, and the book's influence on shaping perception of the war. Again and again, the basic incapacity of the French to understand the strength of the Vietnamese desire for independence, and the inability of the American government to think through the contradictions of their policy preferences to something that could actually exist, drive the war towards a terrible escalation.

The Viet Minh decisively defeated the French at the battle of Dien Bien Phu, but that victory was far from inevitable. Viet Minh units were at the end of their morale and endurance, and Vo Nguyen Giap learned the high costs of frontal attacks only by bloody lessons in the Red River delta. Victorious on the battlefield, Ho Chi Minh was forced to accept a partition by Russia and China, who were looking to de-escalate the Cold War for their own reasons. The autocratic Catholic Ngo Dinh Diem would become the American backed President of South Vietnam. By 1960, and the election of JFK, America was fully committed to the bloody war.

All I can say against Logevall is that my electronic copy seemed to drag, but finding out the actual book is 900 pages makes a lot of sense. This is about as heavy a history gets, before it collapses under its own weight.