Jean Sainteny has been present in Hanoi since August 22, 1945 and directly witnessed the days of the August Revolution in Hanoi as well as the Independence Day of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam on February 2. September 1945.
President Ho Chi Minh and Jean Sainteny in 1946.
He described the development of the Independence Ceremony that he witnessed from a very close distance, right from the old Governor-General’s Palace (now the Presidential Palace): “On a high wooden platform erected in Puginier Park (the name of the French colonial period): , has been renamed Ba Dinh Flower Garden), in front of tens of thousands of people, a series of speakers spoke with strong words to varying degrees. Vo Nguyen Giap, Tran Huy Lieu, and Ho Chi Minh, in turn, the masses learned that this was the old revolutionary Nguyen Ai Quoc, solemnly declaring the independence of Vietnam.
“Ho Chi Minh seems to be more flexible than younger comrades, he used thoughtful words in his speech,” said Sainteny – now a major in intelligence, Head of Delegation 5, the network intelligence, operations in Vietnam are being occupied by the Japanese army commented.
Immediately following the new government in Vietnam was established, Sainteny was the representative of France in Vietnam, then was officially recognized as a Commissioner of the French Republic in Vietnam. It was he and President Ho Chi Minh who signed the Preliminary Agreement on March 6, 1946, opening the official relationship between the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and the French Republic. He was also in charge of communication with President Ho Chi Minh’s delegation when he visited France and attended the Summer Fontainebleau Conference in 1946.
The efforts of President Ho Chi Minh, the Government of Vietnam and Sainteny personally did not help prevent the war between the two countries that broke out on December 19, 1946 and lasted for 8 years, leaving many serious consequences. for both sides.
For the French side, it was the humiliation of the defeat of Dien Bien Phu and the need to sign the Geneva agreement, completely abandoning the colonies in Indochina. Even Sainteny himself was injured on the night of the war, when the armored vehicle carrying him was hit by a mine on Trang Thi Street, and he was brought back to France for treatment.
Regret over the failed negotiations led him to write the memoir “The Story of a Missed Peace” (Histoire d’une paix manquée, Fayard, 1967).
In his book, Sainteny gives the thought throughout that France failed in Vietnam because the French government refused to give the Vietnamese independence, as the British did to India in 1948.
“We might have saved this war, might not have exposed and degraded the morale of the army, and maybe we would still have kept a place in Vietnam, otherwise we would have kept it. must be economic, at least in the cultural and spiritual spheres,” he wrote regretfully.
Saintery longingly recalled the troubles that occurred during the most strained period of relations between the two sides, when the gunpowder keg of the war was heating up. For example, on December 12, 1946, when Mr. Léon Blum of the Socialist Party came to power in France and on December 15, President Ho Chi Minh sent Mr. Blum a note, but Saigon was late. delayed in “delivering the letter” and it was not until December 26 that Paris received this note.
Mr. Sainteny analyzed that, in fact, at that time, France did not have a policy on Indochina. And France cannot have such a policy system, because on average, France changes government every three months!
Meanwhile, France was too understanding of the Vietnamese people’s desire for independence. “For a long time, France, through its wisest representatives, has clearly understood the demands of the Vietnamese people. France knows well that the Vietnamese people never give up on demanding independence,” he affirmed. “France also knows that the aspirations of the Vietnamese people have a solid foundation. This people has matured, they are surprisingly easy to absorb the French language and culture. This rapid absorption makes them the most capable of the peoples under the “protection” of France, able to take charge of their own destiny.
He also said that Ho Chi Minh was as nationalist as communist and that France should have taken advantage of that luck. “In any case, when we were able to, instead of excluding Cochinchina from Vietnam, by letting Cochinchina decide its fate through a referendum as intended. The referendum result may differ from declaring Cochinchina self-governing, or it may evolve under more satisfactory conditions,” he recalled, recalling the collapse of the Fontainebleau conference when Admiral d’Argenlieu was in Vietnam announced the launch of the “Autonomous Cochinchina Republic”.
As a follower of the negotiations, Sainteny clearly understood the contradiction that prevented the two sides from agreeing that the Vietnamese side wanted to achieve all the privileges of an independent state, but the French side only wanted to recognize Vietnam. Nam is an autonomous state within the Indochina Federation and the French Union.
Sainteny believes that, on the Vietnamese side, President Ho Chi Minh as well as the Vietnamese government and people fully desire peace. He recalled President Ho Chi Minh’s letter to him, signed on February 24, 1947, when the war had spread and the Vietnamese government had evacuated to the war zone. This letter, not until following Sainteny finished treatment in France to return to the North, he received. He wondered who had kept the letter.
In the letter, President Ho Chi Minh wrote: “There has been a lot of death and destruction. You and I, what do we do now? As long as France recognizes Vietnam’s independence and reunification, immediately conflicts will stop, peace and mutual trust will return, and we can start rebuilding once more. for the common good of our two countries”.
He continued to wonder: If we recognize Vietnam’s “independence and unity”, will it be enough to end the conflict and establish a cooperation?
At the end of the Indochina war, Jean Sainteny was once more appointed by the French government as the first Representative in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam since August 1954. He had a close relationship with President Ho Chi Minh, Prime Minister Pham. Van Dong and the representative of the French Republic attended the funeral of President Ho Chi Minh in September 1969. After returning from the funeral, in 1970, he published his second book, “Facing Ho Chi Minh” (Face à Ho Chi Minh, Éditions Seghers, Paris).
