Fact or Fiction?

For the Glory of France offers a plausible explanation of how the American version of the Vietnam War could have been avoided. The story is based on historical fact—the central character, Rudyard Kipling Glynn, Jr., is a composite of several heroic figures who served their nation with honor and dedication during World War II.

The historical record is quite clear. If the United States had taken appropriate measures to keep France from reclaiming her former colony following the end of World War II, thirty years of bloody conflict might have been avoided. For reasons that now seem trivial, the United States, contrary to its grand pronouncements of democracy and independence in documents such as the Atlantic Charter, was unwilling or unable to guide the French on a path that would eventually lead to independence for their former colony.

If there is any historical justification for the thesis of this book, it is contained in the testimony of two witnesses who appeared before Senator J. William Fulbright's Foreign Relations Committee in 1972. In a report entitled, Causes, Origins, and Lessons of the Vietnam War, former OSS Major Frank M. White, Jr. and former Chief of the Division of Southeast Asian Affairs in the State Department, Abbot Low Moffat, made powerful arguments that our involvement in Vietnam could have been avoided in 1945.

Many members of the OSS serving in Indochina saw Ho Chi Minh as more a Nationalist than a Communist, and they strongly believed the U.S. should have supported him in his quest for independence.

This story is based on the premise that if the United States had followed the lead of these OSS agents, we would have prevented the French from reclaiming their former colony, and the thirty-year Vietnam tragedy, including the American phase of the war, would have been avoided.

In 1945 Ho Chi Minh wanted nothing more than to become an ally and friend of the United States. How different the world would be today if only we had listened.