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Contenders: Up to 500,000 anti-Communist troops (Frenchmen. Vietnamese, Thais. Laotians, Cambodians. Moroccans, Senegalese and foreign legionnaires from several nations, including thousands of Germans) v. about 360,000 Communist regulars and irregulars...
...hours' notice, newsmen were called to Saigon's colonnaded Palais Norodom, the seat of French government in Indo-China. There one day last week, beneath whirring fans and a lacquer painting of junks, they were confronted by the two top Frenchmen in Asia: Commanding General Henri Eugene Navarre, and Maurice Dejean, the Commissioner General...
...meeting was convened, the Frenchmen said, so they could deny press reports that there was friction between them. That settled, General Navarre lost no time getting into a defense of his 1953-54 campaign. "We have not been surprised," said Navarre. "The situation is just what we expected ..." The Communists had not taken their current major objectives: the rice-rich Red River Delta around Hanoi, and the encircled French strongpoint at Dienbienphu. And their heavily headlined offensive against Luang Prabang, the royal Laotian capital, "may be considered blocked...
John Foster Dulles, in one of the great diplomatic performances of the generation, defined the anti-Communist position in terms so clear, so acceptable to Britons, Frenchmen and Germans that Molotov's room for propaganda maneuver was taken away. He was boxed into frankness by Dulles' skillful mixture of concession, firmness and lawyerlike analysis...
...Western ministers flatly rejected Molotov's proposal. Their objections were many. The Russian plan would set up all Germany for an ultimate Communist coup. Even those Frenchmen who oppose German rearmament inside a European Army (EDC) were alarmed at German "national armed forces" as an alternative. It looked dangerously like the Reichswehr, which Hitler had built into the Wehrmacht. As for Molotov's proposal that each occupying nation withdraw all its troops from Germany, Bidault commented wryly: "I can well see the advantages for the Soviet Union in withdrawing part of its troops a few dozen kilometers...