University of Virginia Library

The Truman Years

Roosevelt was barely in his
grave before Truman assured
De Gaulle that the United
States would offer "no
opposition to the return of
French authority." There
followed the Cold War in
Europe, the expulsion of
Chiang Kai Shek from China
and the baseless charges of the
Taft-McCarthy-Nixon wing of
the Republican party that
Truman was "soft on
communism." These events
strengthened Truman's
conviction that the installation
of an anti-communist
government in Vietnam was
somehow vital to American
security. By the end of the
French phase of the war in
1954, the United States was
underwriting 80 per cent of its
cost.

President Eisenhower had
the wisdom not to try to
salvage the Drench at Dien
Bien Phu in 1954. ("If to avoid
further Communist
expansion...," Vice President
Nixon said at the time, "we
must .... [put] our boys in, I
think the Executive ... has to
do it.") But Eisenhower did
not have the wisdom to stay
out of Vietnam politically. Yet
even as he went in he did