ISBN: 0-7006-1431-1
Pages: x + 435

Acknowledgments; Introduction; photos; maps; Epilogue; Notes; Bibliography; Index

   Although it might seem a book in which Ho Chi Minh plays an important role would have little to do with the Second World War, in fact Ho's long and colorful career included a period during which—in the convoluted politics at the end of the war in Asia—he sought American aid against the Japanese and the French in order to ensure the independence of Vietnam before going on to become an adversary of the USA. Bartholomew-Feis examines a wide range of operations in Vietnam by the Office of Strategic Services (forerunner of the CIA), emphasizing OSS contacts with Ho and the Viet Minh, with two primary questions underpinning the book. How much of a role did the OSS play in 1945 in terms of putting Ho and the Viet Minh in a position to seize power and proclaim a provisional government? How much did OSS activities in 1945 contribute to putting the United States in a position where it would have to fight a ten-year war in Vietnam?
   The author begins her book with the Chinese conquest of Vietnam in 111 BC and quickly works her way to the French conquest a couple of thousand years later. Of the Chinese she has little to say, but the French come off very poorly. The colonial masters imposed monopolies on alcohol, salt, and opium to finance their rule, and completely disrupted the traditional Vietnamese system of agriculture, displacing many landless farm laborers to the cities. Exports of rice and rubber—hugely profitable for the French—soared, but the peasantry lived on the edge of starvation. It was in this environment that Ho emerged, and the first chapter, largely utilizing William Duiker's Ho Chi Minh, traces his life through the early years of World War II. The same chapter goes on to describe the progression of events in Vietnam from the outbreak of war, with gradual steps by the Japanese to take control of Indochina as French power and prestige in the Far East waned in the wake of the German victory in 1940 in western Europe.
   Although they indubitably called the shots, the Japanese exercised control of Indochina through the French who in turn continued to exploit the peasants. Due to a variety of war-related causes, including American bombing, the Vietnamese economy collapsed and in the famine of 1944-1945 as many as two million Vietnamese starved to death. Nevertheless, the French colonial administration maintained its facade of independence while the Japanese continued to plunder the country. Newly released from prison in China, Ho crossed the border and returned to his homeland, intent on defeating both the French and the Japanese in order to win independence for Vietnam.
   Having set the stage from that perspective, Bartholomew-Feis backtracks to discuss the origins of American involvement in Indochina. In particular, she looks at Franklin Roosevelt's view of foreign policy and colonialism. FDR took a dim view of colonialism (at least the colonialism practiced by other nations) and especially used Indochina as an example of a colony that should be removed from French control at the end of the war and placed under international trusteeship. That philosophy would, rightly or not, guide the actions of many Americans in Indochina during 1945. William Donovan and the Office of Strategic Services enter the picture in the same chapter. Donovan faced a variety of challenges in Southeast Asia in the last year of the war. Although he apparently did not share FDR's strident anti-colonialism, Wild Bill seems to have remained loyal to the wishes of his president. However, in order to effectively collect intelligence about Indochina in order to help defeat the Japanese, Donovan would need to work with the local French, even though working with them might very well facilitate France's post-war control of the territory, which FDR would not abide.
   By 1945 the four-cornered situation in Indochina saw the Americans, the French, the Japanese, and the Vietnamese maneuvering for the best possible position as the war moved toward a conclusion and the post-war political settlement loomed on the horizon.
   Chapter Three circles back to 1942 to review the earliest Allied intelligence operations in Indochina. This began with the GBT team of Laurence Gordon, Harry Bernard, and Frank Tan who—despite some interesting adventures—seem not to have accomplished any great feats in the early going, but laid the groundwork for future operations that would grow to considerable importance in 1945. Next came USN Captain Milton Miles and his French companion, Robert Meynier, along with Meynier's wife. Although the story of freeing "Princess" Meynier from a German internment camp (by the orders of Giraud rather than de Gaulle) and flying her to Calcutta seems a bit over the top, it makes a great tale. Because the GBT team worked with permission of the Chinese, they could not cooperate with the French. The Miles-Meynier team, on the other hand, with direct ties to the French, was distrusted by the Chinese. Distrust grew to hostility and as a consequence Meynier was relieved in the summer of 1944. Bartholomew-Feis reports conflicting views of Meynier's success, with most of the favorable reviews coming from his patron and friend, Captain Miles. Miles was also in a difficult position, reporting to the Navy even though the OSS wanted complete control over his efforts.
   With the liberation of Paris, most of the Frenchmen in Indochina suddenly came around to a pro-Gaullist, pro-Allied attitude. Nevertheless, inter-Allied rivalries seem to have hampered development of fully effective networks. Despite Chinese insistence on controlling all intelligence activities in the theater, the OSS began to take steps to impose its own control.
   When the GBT team balked at OSS control, Charles Fenn—an OSS agent, but a left-wing outsider in that organization—was assigned to work with them. Incredibly, Fenn ended up dealing with British intelligence on behalf of GBT, accepting money for "operating expenses" from the British, and shielding GBT from the OSS.
   On 9 March 1945 all the rivalries and internal bickering suddenly took a backseat to an unexpected turn of events. After years of running Indochina through the local French authorities, the Japanese took direct control of the administration of the colony. The Japanese had been considering such a move for months, finally taking action as local French attitudes shifted and American forces grew closer, making a USN incursion into the South China Sea—and even an amphibious landing—more likely. Although in some locales the French and their Indochinese troops resisted, the coup succeeded without a hitch. With communications and transportation out of their hands, the Frenchmen who supplied information to the Allies were unable to pass along intelligence of any kind, and the GBT network fell silent.
   This shift in the situation brought about further changes and uncertainties. While remnants of some French ground troops tried to withdraw to the Chinese border, American forces were mostly forbidden from assisting them (although US 14th Air Force flew a few missions in support of the French) but the British, using aircraft based in India, dropped supplies to the hard-pressed Frenchmen. The OSS also inserted the Gorilla Team to accompany one French column to China. In the meantime, Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam (Tonkin and Annam, but not, initially, Cochinchina) all declared independence under "protection" of the Japanese. Bao Dai, the puppet emperor, ascended the Vietnamese throne. Seeing the French so easily turned out of power but realizing one master had simply been substituted for another, local Indochinese independence and/or revolutionary groups—previously ignored by the Yanks—began to lobby for direct American support of their own efforts against the Japanese.

   In the days and weeks following the coup de main the Japanese settled into a new level of control. The French in Indochina seethed with indignation over their treatment at the hands of the Japanese and over the attitudes of the Vietnamese they had long regarded as no more than servants. The French Resistance, especially those regrouping in China, looked for a way to reenter their colony under an Allied flag and the force of arms. The Vietnamese looked for a way out of a miserable situation, and in the north, one possible savior, the Viet Minh, seemed to be gaining momentum. Finally, the Americans continued to wage the war in the Pacific. Toward that end, the OSS in the China theater searched for a new, effective means to gather intelligence and aid the war effort. And Harry Bernard and OSS agent Charles Fenn tried to recover anything that might still exist of the GBT intelligence network and to rebuild it using whatever means necessary. The results of the Japanese coup forced the last three actors—the Viet Minh, the OSS, and the GBT—to work together to defeat a common enemy and remove them from Indochina. The question that remained, however, was whether or not they would be permitted to do so.
   ...Although the OSS and the GBT had had a strained relationship since the moment of their acquaintance, Charles Fenn's participation in the GBT had provided an important link between the two, if not the results anticipated by either party. The OSS remained frustrated over its lack of access to GBT personnel and its inability to gain control over the group. Lawrence Gordon and Harry Bernard, specifically, continued to be irritated by the sustained attempts of the OSS to take them over and by the paucity of supplies "allotted" them by Bill Donovan's organization. Although the GBT and the OSS were mutually aggravated, both experienced a decided jolt of urgency to gain new sources of information as the impact of Operation Meigo became more fully understood. In the days following the coup both organizations quickly reexamined their options. Appearances to the contrary, the GBT network had not completely collapsed, although Bernard and Fenn had to set about rebuilding it with little knowledge of the status of their agents in Vietnam. As for the OSS, French agents still seemed a possible option. The Gorrilla Team had already parachuted into the position of the retreating French, and Lieutenant Ettinger had walked out with Sabattier's forces. But with the French clearly pushed further out of the picture, the OSS had to find other sources of information from within Vietnam.

   The author points out that Major Austin Glass, an OSS agent in southern China, had previously begun to train Vietnamese natives and dispatch them across the border. Although it's unclear exactly how much Glass knew about where those Vietnamese volunteers were coming from, they seem to have been surreptitiously chosen for him by the Viet Minh. Other than that minor effort, the ongoing American cooperation with French and/or Chinese services for various operations had prevented them from seriously utilizing Vietnamese agents against the Japanese. Likewise, Viet Minh approaches to the Americans had gone nowhere, partly because the Chinese discouraged any links with a Vietnamese Communist movement that might be connected to Mao. In the new environment of "independent" Vietnam under direct Japanese control, all that began to change.
   On 17 March 1945, less than a week after the Japanese coup in Indochina, Charles Fenn, still attached to the GBT team by the OSS, met with Ho Chi Minh in China and immediately decided Ho was the right man for the job of establishing new intelligence sources in Vietnam. Ho was assigned a radio operator and with Frankie Tan of the GBT flown to the border for a two-week trek back into Viet Minh territory with the promise that weapons and supplies would follow by air, along with Fenn who would serve as liaison to Ho and help oversee the creation of a new network. From the moment of Ho's return to his headquarters, the relationship served both sides well. With American weapons and equipment proving Allied backing for him, Ho became for the time being the undisputed leader of the Viet Minh. In turn, his disciplined organization seemed to hold the promise of a strong, extremely valuable intelligence network for feeding information to the Americans. Thus, approximately halfway through the book (other than the background to Ho's life given in the first chapter) the Viet Minh leader takes the stage for the first time.
   Chapter Seven describes the deepening relationship between Ho and the Yanks. At almost the same moment when Frankie Tan and his GBT colleagues set up camp with Ho, the OSS dispatched Captain Archimedes Patti to Kunming and handed him Project Quail with the goal of creating a new "native" network in Vietnam with special emphasis on the Hanoi-Haiphong region. At this point a series of politically motivated machinations took place. Despite continued objections from some quarters (over ongoing concerns that the Viet Minh would simply cache weapons and supplies to use against the French after the Japanese had departed), Patti, like Fenn, quickly realized Ho was really the only game in town and decided to make arrangements with him. Meanwhile, Laurence Gordon returned from an extended trip to the US and finally ruled that his GBT team would not under any circumstances come under the OSS. Nevertheless—rightly concerned that working with the Viet Minh would in the long run be detrimental to the French—francophile Gordon agreed to be moved from GBT headquarters to other duties so the team could concentrate on working with Ho. Charles Fenn remained as the OSS liaison to GBT, but he was not to parachute into Ho's base after all. Frankie Tan reluctantly returned to China from Ho's base and the OSS-sponsored Deer Team under Major Allison Thomas parachuted in. With a complete American team and ample weapons and supplies, Deer Team promptly began a serious training program to prepare Viet Minh cadres for armed action against Japanese outposts and road traffic. For the most part ignoring Ho's political leanings, the OSS looked for immediate, short-term gains from a strong relationship with the Viet Minh, and in fact many of the Americans at the training camp in Vietnam forged close personal ties with individual cadres.
   By this time it was August 1945, and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki suddenly caused another major shift in the situation in Indochina. By mid-August the Americans were ending their mission to Ho on the assumption that Japan was ready to surrender. The Viet Minh, on the other hand, took a different view.

   As the first conference concluded on August 15 and as Thomas celebrated the news of the "forthcoming" surrender, he and Giap decided to break camp, go see Ho Chi Minh, and head toward Thai Nguyen. Just as Thomas and Giap were leaving for Ho's headquarters, Ho arrived in a sedan chair. Ho reported that the Japanese had given a "complete unconditional surrender" at noon. Thomas issued the arms the Deer Team had been using in training to the Viet Minh soldiers and informed both the trainees and the Americans that they would probably "move out" the next day. That night the Americans and the Vietnamese partied long into the night. "We shot our trip flares and our pyrotechnics before our troops," Thomas recorded. "They all shouted 'Hip Hip Hooray.' We're a bunch of happy boys to-night. [We] will be in pretty bad shape to leave to-morrow morning." As the men drank and celebrated, Trieu Duc Quang talked with the Americans he had come to regard as friends. "Our American friends explained that peace has come and now I don't have to fight anymore," he recalled. "But," Trieu Duc Quang quickly added, "the Japanese were still in my country, and our country was still at war so we had to keep on fighting." As the Deer Team and the Vietnamese-American Force celebrated the Allied victory, neither realized how soon they would be in battle with the Japanese.

   Inexplicably, Thomas disobeyed a series of orders and dragged along his unhappy Deer Team to accompany and/or assist the Viet Minh in their attack on the Japanese outpost at Thai Nguyen. The author remarks that at this point Deer Team seems to have thought Thomas quite mad, ignoring his men in order to play military games with the Viet Minh even though the war was over, and "laughing for no reasons." After almost a week, the Viet Minh controlled the town, although it remains unclear how much the "battle" was directed by Thomas and how much by his new friend, Vo Nguyen Giap. Different historians seem to take different perspectives on this action, including the possibility it was merely theater designed to impress the Americans.
   Thomas wasn't the only one who seemed to go beyond his orders to support the Viet Minh at this late stage. While the Deer Team, which was supposed to have remained at Ho's camp, watched Thomas play wargames in Thai Nguyen, Archimedes Patti led another OSS team into Hanoi by air on 22 August 1945. The Viet Minh had already taken control of the city on the 19th, with the Japanese offering no opposition. Likewise, the Japanese offered no resistance to the small OSS party and the Americans set about releasing Allied POWs, gathering intelligence, and monitoring the situation in Tonkin. While the French remained completely isolated (and at risk of attack by armed Vietnamese), the Viet Minh managed to gain Patti's tacit support even though he was supposed to remain neutral. Partly this seems to have been due to Patti's personal view of the situation and partly because of astute steps by the revolutionaries to unrealistically magnify the public perception of the closeness of their relationship with the Americans. Patti and Ho continued to develop a strong working relationship, setting up howls of protest from the French as well as many members of the OSS team.
   On 2 September Ho declared the independence of Vietnam, with what appeared to be the acquiescence of Patti and, by extension, the Unite States. In the midst of complaints about Patti's lack of neutrality by those opposed to the Viet Minh, Thomas and his Deer Team arrived in Hanoi and he was promptly relieved for disobeying orders and accompanying the Vietnamese to Thai Nguyen. Meanwhile, General Lu Han's Chinese armies marched to Hanoi to arrange to disarm and take surrender of Japanese troops north of the 16th parallel. Rather inexplicably, against Chiang Kai-shek's instructions Lu Han cooperated with the Vietnamese provisional government, snubbed the French, and even sold weapons to the Viet Minh. While Bartholomew-Feis does well to explain the motivations (basically anti-colonialist) of the pro-Vietnamese Americans, the reasons for Lu Han's stance seem less well explained, although at least one other commentator has suggested the Chinese general simply wanted peace in the countryside while he extracted maximum profit from the country via a massive currency scam, and another writer suggests the Chinese became heavily involved in the opium trade. At any rate, the Viet Minh soon won over General Philip Gallagher, the American adviser attached to Lu Han.

   Although Gallagher could not speak for the U.S. government, he was now the highest-ranking American military authority in Hanoi, and his actions and words commanded the attention of many. Like Patti, Gallagher seemed to believe that he was following the directive of the late President Franklin Roosevelt. According to Gallagher's personal papers, "guidance on U.S. policy available" to him at the time "was apparently based on the concept that Indochina would ultimately come under a United States' Trusteeship." Gallagher, again, like Patti, consistently maintained that he was strictly neutral in his dealings with all parties. Regardless of what he believed, his actions further alienated the French. French historian Bernard Fall criticized Gallagher, claiming that although Gallagher and his staff "acted as if the French did not exist," their behavior toward Sainteny "could be explained on the basis of orders from Washington." However, Fall concluded, "their personal attitude of callousness toward the Frenchmen...exacerbated matters needlessly."
   French frustrations with the situation mounted as the date for the official Japanese surrender ceremony drew near. On September 28, beneath the flags of the Allied nations—American, Chinese, British, and Russian—arrayed in the Governor-General's Palace, General Tsuchihashi signed the official surrender document before a small crowd of American military officers, Chinese officers and civilians, and a sprinkling of Vietnamese witnesses. Conspicuously absent from the ceremony were the flags and representatives of France or the Vietnamese Provisional Government, for neither was recognized by General Lu Han as an official participant in the war. Although Lu Han had invited Ho Chi Minh and members of his cabinet, Vietnam was not yet recognized by anyone as an independent nation, and Ho had no official status; hence, he chose not to attend "for reasons of health." Although General Alessandri was invited, he too shunned the ceremony because Lu Han refused to fly the French flag or seat Alessandri in the official section.
   Gradually, and often indirectly, Gallagher too was becoming identified as anti-French and sympathetic to the Vietnamese cause. Sainteny charged Gallagher with being "openly hostile" to the French and with delaying the return of peace to the area. He saw Gallagher as a representative of a group of Americans who believed they were rising up against France's colonial past in the name of "infantile anti-colonialism that blinded them."

   With Gallagher in Hanoi, Patti was transferred back to China on 29 September, but—in some measure because of his actions—the Viet Minh were well established in Tonkin, the French were in no position to regain their colony, the Japanese were quiet, and the Chinese and Americans were for the most part supportive of Ho Chi Minh. The same could not be said of the situation to the south in Cochinchina.
   In Cochinchina, the Viet Minh occupied Saigon—except for facilities guarded by the Japanese—without opposition on 25 August, and on 1 September the first echelon of OSS Detachment 404, commanded by Captain Peter Dewey, arrived to take care of American POWs and protect American interests. Rightly or wrongly, the Americans were soon informed that all Westerners at the Continental Hotel (serving as OSS HQ) would be killed by a Vietnamese mob demonstrating in the city, and Japanese troops—still armed—were employed to protect the hotel and disperse the crowd. Some reports indicate the Japanese had actually precipitated the incident to embarrass and belittle the Americans. In fact, armed Japanese combat units remained in place, but there were virtually no Allied troops on the ground, so the Japanese continued to hold most of the cards, despite their defeat and impending surrender, and they generally allowed the Viet Minh free rein in the city and the countryside.
   The British were charged with dealing with the Japanese south of the 16th parallel, but leading elements of their troops didn't arrive until 6 September, and they "...expected to deal with the Japanese, not the Viet Minh." The British clearly were unprepared for the Viet Minh, and they immediately butted heads with Detachment 404 over OSS meetings with the group. The British also began freeing and rearming local French troops, who retaliated against the Viet Minh. In attempting to impose order on the city, the British—intentionally or otherwise—effectively brought themselves into conflict with the Viet Minh provisional government and its armed cadres. Upping the ante, the British insisted Japanese combat units must disarm the Viet Minh and police Saigon.
   Although the Japanese would not cooperate directly with the French, they reluctantly followed British orders under the threat of being branded war criminals if they failed to obey. The British used the Japanese to push the Viet Minh out of key areas, then took control of those Japanese-held localities and arms, and immediately handed the district and weapons to the French. On 23 September rearmed French troops attacked parts of the city still held by the Viet Minh. When Dewey, the leader of Detachment 404, protested the unnecessary violence, the British ordered him out of Saigon for fear he was inciting the Vietnamese. By that time, however, the violence was already spiraling out of control as the Viet Minh counterattacked, blockaded the city, and murdered European civilians. Among those killed at a Vietnamese roadblock while riding in a jeep without an American flag (having been forbidden to fly the flag by the British) was Captain Dewey. The author points out that conspiracy theories have raged over the years, variously laying blame on the Viet Minh, Vietnamese bandits, the Japanese, the French, and even the British. In any event, the OSS detachment was withdrawn soon afterwards, but the battles in Cochinchina continued unabated as increasing numbers of French troops arrived, fully equipped with American weapons and vehicles. On 9 October 1945 "...the British-French Civil Affairs Agreement...gave the French colonial authority over the administration of Vietnamese affairs." Bartholomew-Feis makes it clear that, whatever the eventual ramifications, the British decision to restore French colonial rule in Cochinchina, unlike the calm situation in Tonkin, set southern Vietnam aflame.
   But the overall situation was shifting yet again, as the author explains in her Epilogue. Upon the death of Roosevelt, American anti-colonialism had begun to wane as Harry Truman and the State Department started to focus on the shape of the post-war world within the context of containing the Soviet Union. Restoring Asian colonies to their European masters seemed the best way to build a bulwark against Soviet influence and expansionism, and by the autumn of 1945 the actions of OSS men on the ground in Vietnam had become increasingly out of step with official policies in Washington, DC. In any event, the OSS contingents were soon evacuated and the United States effectively withdrew from Vietnam.
   How much of a role did the OSS play in 1945 in terms of putting Ho and the Viet Minh in a position to seize power and proclaim a provisional government? How much did OSS activities in 1945 contribute to putting the United States in a position where it would have to fight a ten-year war in Vietnam? Bartholomew-Feis reviews all the evidence and concludes that the OSS really played a minor part in the larger events. While Ho Chi Minh was a master of manipulating the OSS by playing the "anti-colonialist" card to gain sympathy, and likewise a master of making it appear that his movement had the support of the US government, in fact the Americans in Tonkin did little to assist the Viet Minh. Instead, it was the initial acquiescence of the Japanese, and then the relative indifference on the part of Lu Han's Chinese armies, that allowed the revolutionary forces to gain and maintain control in Hanoi. If anything, the book underplays the role of Lu Han's Chinese armies in determining the course of events in Tonkin. The minimal influence of Detachment 404 in Saigon was even less relevant to the course of events. Although the OSS teams certainly managed to aggravate the French, they were little more than a few American cowboys carrying out tactical tasks in an unfamiliar environment. The wider uprising against French colonialism was certain to have erupted eventually, no matter what the actions of men like Fenn, Thomas, Patti, and Dewey. Those men had little direct supervision from above and absolutely no control over American policy. And, while it's possible the United States threw away an opportunity for an entirely different relationship with Vietnam, in the tangled politics at the end of World War II and with the unavoidable realities of the Cold War, it's difficult to conceive how a few OSS men could have altered history.

   The Americans on the ground found their words and actions taken very seriously by the Vietnamese and the French, both of whom saw U.S. support as a powerful element in determining the future of Indochina. But it must also be remembered that the Vietnamese, in particular Ho Chi Minh, were also important actors in this relationship. Many have written that Ho had an affinity for America and Americans because he always asked questions and had comments and was ready to engage in pleasant dialogue. Although this may be true, a more objective view is that he was simply a politically astute and polite host and had the social graces, especially on a one-on-one level, to make a visitor feel important. He could speak of French history and society, of his travels to the United States and of American history, and one would suspect the same, when the occasion presented itself, of Thailand, China, or the Soviet Union. He knew how to use the rhetoric, even when sincere, that would appeal to the visitor of the moment. Vis-a-vis his relationship with the men on the ground, his conduct was both sincere and expedient—based on the hope that they might send back favorable reports that might help garner him U.S. recognition.
   Part of this wish came true. The men did, overall, send back positive reports. But the rest was a false hope that imbued both his own country and the Americans there with considerably more power than either of them had at the time. In fact, if not for the U.S. war in Vietnam, after the dust of 1945-1946 had settled, few would have looked back on the exchanges between the Americans and Viet Minh or questioned American motives and activities at all. The reports the Americans on the ground had filed would have quietly settled into the dust, completely devoid of the controversy and heartache that marks most things touching on the U.S. relationship with Vietnam.

   For the most part, the author doesn't dwell too long on the larger political and philosophical issues. She focuses on the action on the ground in Vietnam. While other authors, such as David Marr, tackle broader and deeper aspects of the revolution, Bartholomew-Feis titles her book The OSS and Ho Chi Minh, which rightly indicates a more narrow perspective. Moreover, the title might be more accurately rendered as "The OSS and the Viet Minh" or "The OSS in Vietnam" because Ho is completely missing from many parts of the book. This is definitely not intended to be an investigation of the internal workings of the Viet Minh, an exploration of French policies, or a complete record of American decision-making. Instead, the author intentionally concentrates on the OSS and its interaction with Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Minh. In doing so, she makes good use of quotations taken from firsthand US, French, and Vietnamese sources. She also utilizes some of the best historians—including Duiker and Marr as well as Stein Tonnesson and Ellen Hammer—on closely related topics, reporting and evaluating their sometimes conflicting views, such as the actual role of Allison Thomas at Thai Nguyen and the extent to which the Japanese supplied weapons to the Vietnamese in August and September. Overall, the author takes a mostly favorable view of OSS activities (unlike, for example, Peter Dunn, who excoriates the OSS in Vietnam and paints an unflattering picture of Dewey's death) and seems sympathetic toward the Vietnamese, but has little good to say about the French or British. The tome is heavily documented with extensive endnotes, many of which convey considerable additional information for those willing to flip to the back of the book.
   The author uses a start-and-stop approach with overlapping threads and much doubling back and moving back and forth in time, but she usually does so to good effect. It's true that she sometimes seems slightly uncertain about some events outside of Indochina (for example, one passage seemingly places the Battle of Britain before the fall of France), but that's very minor and hardly noticeable. The book is engagingly written, easy to understand, and full of detail and nuance about the OSS in Vietnam not readily available elsewhere.
   The OSS and Ho Chi Minh is one of the best books published so far this year, and a strong candidate for our end-of-the-year awards.
   High recommended.
   Available from online booksellers, local bookshops, or directly from University Press of Kansas.
   Thanks to UPK for providing this review copy.