No Indochina war in 1946... no vietnam war in the 60's as consequence

Archibald

Banned
My first post here :)

In OTL Leclerc and Saintony negociated with Ho-chi-minh in spring 1946 and barely avoided war.
In fact a peace treaty was firmed on 6th March 1946 but it was never respected : the Fontainebleau conference to apply it ended in failure on august 6th 1946.

Trouble was D'Argenlieu, which managed to wreck those negociations, then order Suffren cruiser to shell Saigon in november 1946, an event which started an eight-year long war. Then USA become involved, too, until 1975.
In the end Vietnam become communist in 1975, not in 1946.

In brief : peace in Indochina in 1946 mean no war for 30 years in Vietnam.
think it would change many things on the american side, too ?
 
No counterculture.The mid-late 60s are very similar at the early 60s.The economy in late 60s-early 70s is strong and healthy.
 
No counterculture.The mid-late 60s are very similar at the early 60s.The economy in late 60s-early 70s is strong and healthy.

I think there would be a counterculture, but it would either be weaker or it would have to find something else to rally around. I don't think the 1960s counterculture was reliant on Vietnam; it helped, sure, but perhaps it was more along the lines of rebelling against the vanilla American Dream.
 

Archibald

Banned
What was the reason the conference failed? What was the agreement with Ho Chi Minh?

the agreement consisted of three major points
- withdrawal of french troops within five years
- unification of various province of what is actually Vietnam
- Republic of vietnam would stay within the french empire with a better status than it had before.

The 6th march agreement and the fontainebleau conference were linked. seems the conference failed early september 1946 because of problems on unification and independance of Vietnam...

Trouble was d'Argenlieu, which scorned both Ho-Chi-Minh and Leclerc.
He disliked Ho because he considered it as a communist and independantist.

D'Argenlieu had the highest rank in Indochina, and De Gaulle orders in August 1945 had been clear "re-establish french leadership over Indochina".

Seems Leclerc had understood that this was simply impossible considering weak numbers of troops avalaible in the colony at the time...

In brief : had Leclerc replaced D'Argenlieu before november 1946 and shelling of Saigon, maybe peace was possible.

In fact this was proposed to Leclerc in january 1947 as a last atempt to avoid war , but he refused. D'Argenlieu itself was fired in march 1947... too late.

Another interesting conexion is that SFIO leaders Blum and Moutet, which gained power in autumn 1946, already knew Ho-Chi-Minh : in 1920, they had met during a left-wing meeting in Tours (the famous congres de Tours when french communists and socialists divorced... a young cook named Ho was there this day :) )

what about the US space program in the case of no Vietnam war ? Apollo Application Program receive the go-ahead in 1968 ? Big Gemini maybe ?
 
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I think there would be a counterculture, but it would either be weaker or it would have to find something else to rally around. I don't think the 1960s counterculture was reliant on Vietnam; it helped, sure, but perhaps it was more along the lines of rebelling against the vanilla American Dream.

That's true. After all the seeds of the counterculture were already sown in the late 50s.
 

Archibald

Banned
By the way just how big a figure might LBJ look like had he comfortably defeated a Republican in 1968?

Here we are. I've red some interesting things on RFK, Humphrey and Mc Carthy on this board.
Seems LBJ withdrawn from the race mainly because of Vietnam and the Tet offensive.
So if there's no war in Vietnam at all, is LBJ the obvious choice in 1968, competing against Nixon ?
 
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