How Poland, other Eastern European Countries and Soviet Union Tried to Settle the Vietnam War through Negotiations, 1965 - 1968 4219-SG119

PURPOSE OF THE COURSE: In the 1960s, the United States became involved in war in Southeast Asia in the belief that an expansion of communism from North Vietnam to South Vietnam was the beginning of a drive by either China or the Soviet Union – or both -- to spread anti-democratic, anti-capitalist government throughout the region. As the war intensified, various governments and individuals tried to bring the two main parties – the Democratic Government of [North] Vietnam and the United States – to a negotiating table to work out a political settlement that would stop the killing.

Poland was the country most deeply involved in those attempts. The main reason was that in the Geneva Accords of 1954, which brought an end to the French Indochina War that had raged since the end of World War II, a three-nation International Control and Supervision Commission (ICC) was established to make sure the Accords were followed and to supervise military activity in the two newly established zones. The three members were Poland, representing the communist nations; Canada, representing the West, and India, which was scrupulously neutral. The ICC was headquartered outside Saigon but its members – particularly the Polish member, traveled often to Hanoi – on an airplane maintained by the French, which the ICC owned. The ICC from the beginning was ineffectual.

Hungary tried its hand at settlement as well and so did the governments of Czechoslovakia and Rumania for a time. Except for a brief attempt by British Prime Minister Harold Wilson and Soviet Prime Minister Alexei N. Kosygin in February 1967, the Soviet Union was involved only peripherally out of a fear that it might antagonize the Chinese government of Mao Tse-tung. However, it did nothing to discourage other members of the Warsaw Pact from doing what they could.

This course will explore the attempts of the Warsaw Pact countries to try to settle the Vietnam War. It will emphasize three points: First, that there was within the Pact a feeling of great humanity expressing itself in an attempt to stop killing. Second, that the nations of the Warsaw Pact may have been satellites but were not puppets of the Soviet Union. Third, that the United States government had little understanding of how the Warsaw Pact operated during that period.

It will also give the students information on how information for current news and history are gathered and presented to the public.

BACKGROUND: In 1954, France lost its war with a movement led by Ho Chi Minh to prevent the Vietnamese people from establishing independence in the French colony of Indochina. The final battle was at Dien Bien Phu in northwestern Vietnam in which the insurgent forces out-gunned, out-smarted and out-lasted a besieged French army that capitulated in humiliation after a 55-day siege. The French government agreed to a settlement in Geneva that included a temporary division of Vietnam into two zones: a communist-controlled North Vietnam (the Democratic Republic of Vietnam or DRV) and a pro-west South Vietnam (the State of Vietnam). The agreement provided that by July 1956, there would be elections in both the North and the South aimed at unifying the two military zones into one independent Vietnam. The Geneva Conference was intended to settle both the Korean War and the French Indochina War. There were separate accords signed on Indochina for Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam.

The signers were Cambodia, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, France, Laos, the People's Republic of China, the State of Vietnam, the Soviet Union, and the United Kingdom. The United States took part in the conference, acknowledged that the agreement existed but refused to sign. South Vietnam refused to recognize the election deadline.

From the first days after the accords, South Vietnam was confronted with an insurgency by an organization called the National Liberation Front (the Viet Cong), which received strong support from North Vietnam. The deadline for an election in1956 had long passed and the French had abandoned their role as protector of the South Vietnamese government. The early 1960s were the height of the Cold War. The United States stepped in to prevent, it thought, the spread of communism. It feared a so-called domino effect. If South Vietnam fell, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore were next.

SUBSTANCE OF THE COURSE: From 1960 to 1964, the situation worsened and soon it was a major war between the United States and South Vietnam on one side and North Vietnam and the NLF on the other. At first the United States provided only military advisers to the South Vietnamese army but in 1964 it began sending ground combat troops to the country.

American President Lyndon Johnson said he would go anywhere and speak to anyone to settle the war. This course will deal with the sincerity of Johnson’s oft-repeated remark and the sad outcome resulting in the deaths of 55,000 American soldiers, sailors and airmen and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese. It will bring to light for the students the activities and characters of three prominent Polish diplomats and one American of Polish descent who was the United States ambassador in Warsaw at the time.

The Poles were Adam Rapaczki, foreign minister; Bogdan Lewandowski, in charges of Poland’s relations with international organizations; Jerzy Michalowski, director general of the foreign ministry, and, most importantly, Janusz Lewandowski, the Polish delegate to the ICC. The American was John A. Gronouski, who had been awarded the ambassadorship for his help in winning elections by the Democratic Party.