ABSTRACT
The French had wanted the division line to be the eighteenth parallel, which in no way reflected military reality, so they got a much better bargain than Ho Chi Minh and his government. The preparations for a peace conference at Geneva had been in existence well before the French surrender at Dien Bien Phu. The Americans opposed the unification of Vietnam under Ho, as did the British initially. Ho's strategy has been compared with the one he adopted in 1946, trying to avoid or end hostilities. On 10 June, the Viet Minh agreed to partition Vietnam temporarily, without any agreement about the date of elections. The core of the Geneva Agreement had been created. On Sunday 18 July, the delegations met at the Palais des Nations in Geneva, the site of so many inter-war conferences in the old League of Nations days. At the time the Geneva Accords, as they are frequently called, caused great bitterness in Vietnam.
