Todayinah Ed. says, in which US President John Nance Garner implements the Atlantic Charter in the post-war world. If you're interested in viewing samples of my other work why not visit Todayinah site.
| September 2 |  |
Editor says, what if Cold War logic had been turned on its head by two wiser men?
| Share this Article on: |  Facebook |  Twitter |
In 1945, wisely disregarding the howling protests of the French Union, US President John Nance Garner recognised the Sovereign Nation of Vietnam just one hour after the new Head of State Nguyen Ai Qoc (pictured) issued a declaration of independence in Saigon. Assisting imperialists to put down revolts in former colonies was not only un-American, said Garner, it was surely the quickest route to fast-tracking nations into the Communist World.
A show case for democracyDetermined to honour the "Atlantic Charter" commitments to indigenous peoples in the defeated British and French Empires, Garner recognised the sign of respect that President Qoc was signalling to the United States. Because the Declaration of Independence was broadly similiar to the infant American nation's own announcement to the Imperialists in 1776.
More than that, President Qoc, and his talened military commander Vo Nguyen Giap had been formidable foes in the recent struggle against the Japanese. So much so, that when Operation Deer Team parachuted into a jungle headquarters at Tan Trao north of Hanoi in July they found copies of the American Declaration of Independence and Constitution on the walls and a framed picture of George Washington on the desk. Because the seven OSS men led by Major Allison Kent Thomas were on a mission to help a band of two hundred eilte guerrillas fight the Japanese yet they soon discovered that their leader was seriously ill from malaria, dysentary and other tropical diseases. After administering quinine and sulfa drugs, the team medic and an officer of the Chase Manhattan Bank Paul Hoagland soon exclaimed that "this man doesn't have long for this world".
By the time Qoc had made a full recovery, the Japanese had surrendered and - thanks to the American solidiers - he was fit and well enough to led a hundred thousand man demonstration of nationalism through the streets of Saigon.
In Washington, a new Cold War logic had set in. The philosophy was that any country that didn't join the United States and the Western World was a gain for the Soviets and communism. And Garner was wise enough to see the value of keeping onboard the determined Vietnamese who had a endured a two thousand year struggle for independence. Consequently his strategy of exporting democracy would win the day, the inherently negative policy of containment favoured by the State Department would be wisely disregarded.
Entry posted by Todayinah Editor
© "The Vietnam War for Dummies", Frankum and Maxner (2003)Story Tags
Permalinks: Post, Day. Browse Thread: Beacon of Liberty Source: Wikipedia Labels: Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam, America, Cold War, Forties.
~ This could seriously rewrite the Cold War _and_ Decolonization. I doubt France will jump in bed with the Soviets over this, but a different line in Algiera and French Africa is quite probable without a long and unlimatly unsuccessful Indochinese War.
~ My impresssion was that Garner was pretty conservative, and had been selected by FDR as his running-mate in 1932 and '36 to balance the Democratic ticket. I don't know whether he'd really have supported Vietnamese independence if he'd been president in 1945.
~ 1. Zero chance of Garner as VP. He broke with FDR over the third term and second New Deal. 2. If not FDR your effective choices were Wallace, Byrnes See
~ Eric's right...Garner was quite conservative.
July 16
Editor says, President John Nance Garner honours the Atlantic Charter granting the Vietnamese their freedom in 1945. Because in this post we explore a tragedy - an American field doctor saved the life of Ho Chi Minh. Yet his sincere offer of an alliance to Truman was ignored, and he survived to fight another war that would cause the death of sixty thousand US soldiers.
| Share this Article on: | Facebook | Twitter |
In 1945, on this day Operation Deer Team parachuted into a jungle headquarters at Tan Trao north of Hanoi where they found copies of the American Declaration of Independence and Constitution on the walls and a framed picture of George Washington on the desk.
All men are created equalThe seven OSS men led by Major Allison Kent Thomas were on a mission to help a band of two hundred eilte guerrillas fight the Japanese yet they soon discovered that their leader Nguyen Ai Qoc (pictured) was seriously ill from malaria, dysentary and other tropical diseases. After administering quinine and sulfa drugs, the team medic and an officer of the Chase Manhattan Bank Paul Hoagland soon exclaimed that "this man doesn't have long for this world".
Buried in the field with full military honours, Quoc's deputy eulogised by explaining that their former leader was also known by another name "He who enlightens", in Vietnamese Ho Chi Minh. That man was Vo Nguyen Giap, the ingenius military commander who would mastermind military efforts against the invading Chinese Communists during the nineteen sixties.
In August 1945, one day after Japanese Emperor Hirohito announced surrender, Giap sent a message to President John Nance Garner. He asked the United States to make Vietnam an American protectorate, like the Philippines. The next day, GIap and the Viet Minh took control of Hanoi from the Japanese. Ho marched into Hanoi with Operation Deer Team personnel where Ho broadcast a message to OSS headquarters, speaking English: "National Liberation Committee on VML begs U.S. authorities to inform United Nations the following. We were fighting Japs on the side of the Allies. Now Japs surrendered. We beg the Allies to realize their solemn promise that all nationalities will be given democracy and independence. If the Allies forget their solemn promise and don't give Indochina full independence, we will keep fighting until we get it".
On September 2, 1945 a band marched through Hanoi playing the Star Spangled Banner while OSS officer Colonel Archimedes Patti and Vo Nguyen Giap stood side by side, arms held in salute. The two men are shown in this stance in a photograph in Smith's book on the OSS. Giap declared that day Vietnam Independence Day, and he began his liberation speech with the words, "All men are created equal".
The US President could not agree more and signed up to the idea of a protectorate. It was a done deal, because Garner's vision of America was a beacon of liberty to whom the post-war nations would rally.
Entry posted by Todayinah Editor
© "The Greatest Stories Never Told, 100 tales from History to Astonish, Bewilder & Stupefy", Rick Beyer (2003)Story Tags
Permalinks: Post, Day. Browse Thread: Beacon of Liberty Source: Wikipedia Labels: Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam, America, Cold War, Forties. Editor says, Hoagland saved Uncle Ho, but Truman ignored the later communications from him.
~ The US seems to have a bad habit of foreign relations screw-ups in the post WWII period, so this is an interesting change of events. Now all we need is for Castro to be taken seriously...
~ I think I read a short story with this theme a few years back...
~ I don't know...this might have worked out just fine, but with the Communists' victory in China in 1949, we might have ended up fighting a war to protect Vietnam. The Viets and Chinese traditionally loathe each other anyway...
~ Depends on if we throw in our lot with the Callicized folka that were the ruling class of the RVN... okay, _how_ _much_ we throw in our lot with them.
~ I suspect we'd have given Ho the air, because after all "Indochina" was aat that time under French colonial rule and the USA of 1945 might have been disinclined to hand it over to "inferior" Orientals. And if not, our "protectorate" would have become a sore point later, unless Vietnam were eventually granted full independence like the Philippines (which had been promised independence in 1898, after the Spanish-american War, but only got it in 1946.
~ Ho Chi Minh was a Marxist back in his student days in Paris. His massacre of Catholics and landed peasants had nothing to do with his war against the French. A more interesting scenario was independence based on the local Imperial Family BEFORE the Chinese reached the Indo-China border!
~ Nice idea and it really might have worked except 1. Ho's crowd were avowed marxists and avowed nationalists who were racists in their own right, Their plans for their people did not include democracy or liberty or even return to traditonal Confucian values. They had a stalin style agenda which required a lot of innocent blood to be spilled to fuel it. 2. I doubt the French would care for it and the American state department back then and now still sees itself as an agent of Europe with few exceptions such as the 1956 Suez mess. The French planned very much to return to their decadent prostitution and drug dealing days of old for the benefit of the French treasury which meant ever more exploitation of the Vietnamese. America's 'Progressive's having got us into two world wars and about to get us into cleaning up more european messes seem bent on doing more. Personally, I suspect Ho, having lived in the US for a while had more in mind to con us into backing him to his own ends not those of his countrymen.
November 9
Editor says, what if Kennedy had pulled out of Vietnam, yet his initial engagement plan had been radically different? This story was published in the November 2009 edition of Changing the Times Magazine.
| Share this Article on: | Facebook | Twitter |
In 1963, on this day US President John F. Kennedy signed Executive Order No. 11110 in the Oval Office. Accordingly the force of law was given to the planned withdrawal of all American personnel absolutely no later than the end of 1965. Because just four months after a Vietnamese Buddhist by the name of Thich Quang Duc set himself on fire in a Saigon street (pictured), the security situation in the country was rapidly deteriorating.
Bear any burden, pay any priceIn so doing, the Kennedy brothers were backtracking big-time on a key inauguration pledge to "Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty. This much we pledge - and more".
Yet two other Catholic brothers had even more reason to regret listening to those warm words, the Vietnamese Dictator Ngo Dinh Diem and his younger brother Ngo Dinh Nhu. Because on the celebration of Buddha's 2,527 birthday on May 8th, the Diem Regime had ordered the Catholic deputy in Hue to prevent the Buddhists from flying their own flag. A wave of religious fervour swept the county. And just about the last thing South Vietnam needed right now was a religious feud, and so a group of generals led by Doung Van Minh and Tran Van Don acting unilaterally without US approval overthrew the Diem regime and executed the brothers and their sister-in-law, the anti-Buddhist "dragon lady" Madame Nhu. The US-financed Nationalist Chinese Armies who had sustained Diem in power since 1962 also evacuated the country. Those departing soldiers had been resettled by the French in 1950 in what was then Chochin China and expanded over time by local recruitment.
Commander R. Sargent Shriver was the last American out of Saigon. He told Embassy staff that it was a matter of deep regret that the Peace Corps had been unable to complete their mission in Vietnam.
Entry posted by Todayinah Editor
© "The Vietnam War for Dummies", Frankum and Maxner (2003)Story Tags
Permalinks: Post, Day. Browse Thread: Beacon of Liberty Source: Wikipedia Labels: Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam, America, Cold War, Forties. ~ Timing is ever so slighlt off. . The Diems are already dead and the US look like equine feces for approving the coup and THEN bugging out. Now if the coup and murders had not happened we would have been out MUCH faster than 1965. Once the US was bugging out the Diem regime implodes. France brokers a face saving neutralist regime while Diem, Nhu and their ten thousand closest supporters leave for Paris. We are out by Easter of 1964. We also probably inherit several million refugees or look REAL bad.
~ IIRC, the Viet Cong was still intact, so a northern takover is not a given here....
~ Kennedy did issue and order for the withdrawal of about 1,000 troops. Three weeks later, he was assassinated, and one of incoming President Johnson's first acts in office was to rescind that order.
That said, I doubt Kennedy would have issued an order for total withdrawal that early. The Republicans would have skewered him for it in the 1964 election campaign. If he were going to withdraw, he'd wait to issue the order until after he'd been safely re-elected.
~ Instead of the last copter off the roof of the embassy you have a shrinking perimeter around the few remaining ports while 7th fleet does a Dunkirk on steroids.
~ This is a steroid-free zone, mister! :)
~ All it would have taken to win the war in Vietnam at any time was a month long campaign of blockade of North Vietnamese ports and pounding some railroad bridges near China. That's it. It worked in 72 and would have worked in 63, and half a million lives would have been saved.
~ In 1962 the Soviets still had the use of the Chinese rail net. Wouldn't have worked the way Linebacker II did.
~ I don't know if South Vietnam could have been saved---as I understand it, the people running it were both corrupt and seen as pro-French by ordinary folks. That said, after 1975 the Vietnamese people found out why replacing King Log with King Stork was a baaad idea...
May 5
Editor says, what if a man of peace brought the Second World War to an unorthodox conclusion Please note that the opinions expressed in this post do not necessarily reflect the views of the author(s).
| Share this Article on: | Facebook | Twitter |
In 1945, on this day low flying American and British bombers released thousands of white doves over the City of Tokyo.
Peace breaks outAfter several days of behind-the-scenes negotiations the Gozenkaigi (Japanese leadership) decided, in principle, to accept generous proposals for conditional surrender. John Nance Garner had only recently entered the White House following the sudden demise of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The new President was the son of a former Confederate cavalry trooper, famously described by the British journalist Alistair Cooke as "the last public man linking America of the Civil War and America of the Nuclear Age". Garner had the gift of perspective resulting from a genuine insight into long-term history. Japan was ready to surrender, and there was absolutely no need to be a damn-fool and usher in apocalyptic weapons to bring the war to a speedy conclusion; best to set up a beacon of liberty to whom the post-war nations would rally.
Entry posted by Todayinah Editor
© Today in Alternate History, 2004-.Story Tags
Permalinks: Post, Day. Browse Thread: Beacon of Liberty Source: Wikipedia Labels: John Nance Garner, World War II, Peace, Tokyo, Allies. ~ Interesting, though I'm not sure Garner had the personality to do this. Perhaps Henry Wallace, if the so-called "Guru Letters" hadn't surfaced?
~ I like it, but I think the Japanese leadership was so far in denial that nothing short of the A-bombs would have gotten through to them. They were a long, long way from facing reality, even as of 1945.
~ 2 Eric Lipps: Garner had all the imagination of a lobotomized fruit fly.
~ Fantasy do not make history. The imperial Japanese army generals were about to fight to the bitter end. They had no qualms taking their people down with them. The mass suicide of civillians on Saipan prefering death to capture speaks to their character loud and clear. As for Okinawa, Okinawans are an assimilated culture that the Japanese had patch over to them. Most soldiers surrendering in Okinawa were either native Okinawans or Koreans or Formosans. The idea of 'peace' for the leaders of Japan was their crimes go unpunished and their ill gotten gains still remain in their hands. Few Americans would go for that.
~ I agree with the comment referring to the fantasy of the Garner so called theory my father was with the BCOF in Japan after the second war and I followed on during the Korea campaign with the Australian Military forces. I am able to emulate my Dad's feelings and findings of the Japanese public's and also the Ex- Japanese Imperial Forces views on this matter.
Firstly the feelings of the Japanese hierarchy was they never surrendered they only ceased activities and the "A" bomb was the catalyst that made them unable to retaliate and the hopes and intentions of them were to lick their wounds and revive to the extent that they could continue the aggression.
Fortunately it was not to be for them because by this time the public had - had enough and refused to cooperate especialy after the second bomb was dropped, both my father and I amongst the many other troops of different countries have seen sights no man should have to be allowed to suffer and the suffering of the then enemy was terrible but unfortunately necessary as it was made very clear to us that they the Japanese would had kept going to the last group of fanatics.
As ungodly and terrible as it was the "A" Bomb did activate a cessation in the war and there is no denying it......jazzman
~ My old man was part of the American occupation forces and then part of the American forces in Korea. He served with the Rangers. While he was in Japan he mixed a lot with the locals. Made friends with at least one Kamikaze pilot. At the same time, Japan's leadership was not so pricipled as this fantasy goes, they were developing a large arsonal of Biological weapons which they readily used in China on the Chinese people. I do not dought Japanese generals would use them if they were developed enough to work. They could use their ballooo bombs to shower the Americna continent with anthrax and any other number of germs. They could use aircraft lauched from I-400 class submarines, and; let us not forget the pacific crossing six engine Fugaku long range bomber they were developing.
~ This probably would have made the Kyūjō Incident much more severe, but not necessarily impossible to overcome.
Older Posts
© Today in Alternate History, 2013-. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
