| Notes |
With the war over in Germany, Bank went to French Indochina to lead teams rescuing French and other Europeans held prisoner by the Japanese. While there, Bank worked with Ho Chi Minh, who was fighting the Vietnamese. Impressed with Minh and his popularity, he suggested to the OSS and the State Department that Minh was extremely popular and would win a free election.
Bank recommended Minh be allowed to form a government after the war. He encouraged the Vietnamese leader to contact the State Department for support for a Vietnam free from the French as part of Roosevelt’s vision of a post-war world in which the British and French colonies would be given their independence. Minh tried several times in the late 1940s and early fifties, but each time his appeal was either ignored or rejected because the Truman and later Eisenhower administrations viewed Ho Chi Minh as a dedicated Communist. By then, the Cold War was underway. |