I've not seen the Al-Jazeera documentary but I'm a little puzzled by the timeline presented here. HCM arrived in France between the 13 June 1946 and left on 15 September. De Gaulle had left the presidency of the Gouvernement Provisoire de la République Française (GPRF) on 20 January, and he did not return to power until 1958. Unless I've missed something the two men never met. In any case, de Gaulle did not play an active role in what happened after he left the stage. It is true, however, that there were disagreements on both sides about the future on Vietnam, and I'll try to summarize the situation in the years 1945-1946.

Indochina viewed from France

One important thing to consider is that the very notion of "decolonization" was not a thing in France at that time (the word did not even really exist in its current sense in French before 1952). The only French party that had supported the independence of the colonies before WW2 was the Communist Party (PCF, funded in 1920), but in the 1930s the fight against fascism had made the PCF put anticolonialism on the back burner. The colonies were here to stay, and all that France could do was to make some vague promises of reforms, hoping that they would not anger the "Parti Colonial", that informal network of colonial interests that linked colonists, politicians, businesses, and a host of intellectuals. The idea that colonies would be part of France for all the foreseeable future was even made stronger during WW2, as both Vichy and the Gaullists used the imperial "Greater France" in their propaganda. In 1944, the Gaullist Jacques Stern could wax lyrical about "forty million continental Frenchmen and sixty million overseas Frenchmen, white and colored". Colonial troops that had rallied to the Free French participated to the war and Leclerc's own 2nd Armored Division included about 25% men of African origin.

From a political perspective, progress was limited. The Roosevelt administration disliked the way France handled its colonies and wanted to replace its colonial rule by an international trusteeship. This forced the Free French to be more accommodating when it came to colonial policies. Henri Laurentie, director of Political Affairs at the Commissariat des Colonies, pushed for an imperial federalism under French tutelage. In 1943, de Gaulle promised for Indochina

a new political status where, within the framework of the federal organisation, the freedoms of the various countries of the Union are extended and enshrined.

However, early 1944, the Brazzaville Conference, which gathered administrators of (Free) French Africa, stated in its conclusion:

The finality of the work of civilisation accomplished by France in the colonies rules out any idea of autonomy, any possibility of evolution outside the French Empire; the possible constitution, even distant, of self-governments in the colonies is to be ruled out.

On 24 March 1945, the GPRF issued a Declaration that put the five "countries" of Indochina (Tonkin, Annam, Cochinchina - the three ky that constituted Vietnam -, Cambodia, Laos) within an "Indochinese Federation" that was itself part of the "French Union". Its citizens were promised "democratic freedoms", but there was no mention of independance or self-determination. France retained sovereignty on economy, defense and diplomacy.

But nobody in France actually knew what was truly going on there.

In August 1945, the GPRF sent to Indochina several trusted men, all former Resistance fighters, with the goal to enforce the Declaration of 24 March. Pierre Messmer and Jean Cédile where parachuted as "Commissioners of the Republic" in Tonkin and Annam respectively, and were quickly captured by the Việt Minh. Another Gaullist, Jean Sainteny, was sent directly to Hanoi where he landed in an American plane on 22 August. Vice-admiral Thierry d'Argenlieu and General Philipe Leclerc, two high-ranking officers close to de Gaulle, were appointed with the mission to "re-establish French sovereignty in the territories of the French Union". Leclerc arrived first in early October in Saigon to command the French expeditionary corps, while d'Argenlieu, the High Commissioner for Indochina, arrived several weeks later. D'Argenlieu was - nominally - in charge of having France rule over Indochina again. De Gaulle did not accept the existence of a "native" governement but agreed that some talks could be held. For de Gaulle and d'Argenlieu, the Declaration of 24 March was the only horizon. Diplomat Jacques de Folin notes in his memoirs that there is a disagreement between de Gaulle's later claim (in 1954 and 1970) that he did not want French troops in Hanoi, and his instructions to Leclerc in October 1945 (Folin, 1993)

Your mission is to re-establish French sovereignty in Hanoi and I am surprised that you are still not there.

Indochina from the ground

In June 1940, Admiral Jean Decoux was appointed Governor General of Indochina, where he started applying Vichyite policies and collaborating with the Japanese, who installed army bases there and otherwise let his administration rule Indochina. By 1944, as France was being liberated, Decoux got in touch with the Free French. The Japanese became worried that this former ally could turn on them and ousted him in a coup on 9 March 1945. They had emperor Bảo Đại declare independence and appointed a puppet government, headed by scholar Trần Trọng Kim. Opinions differ about how much of a puppet the short-lived "Empire of Viet-Nam" was, but the cabinet was decently professional and, in a few months, it paved the way for true independence, starting reforms that were symbolical (renaming streets named after French people) or more practical (creating a truly Vietnamese educational system). Then the atomic bombs fell, and Vietnam turned into chaos.

In July 1945, the UK, USA, URSS and China got together in Postdam, and without informing de Gaulle (Roosevelt had been dead for 3 months, but anti-French sentiment still prevailed in the US administration), divided Vietnam at the 16th parallel, with China and the UK in charge of the North and South respectively. Meanwhile, with the French and the Japanese no longer in charge, every nationalist party in Vietnam, including HCM's Communist-led Việt Minh (though officially a "tentpole" league), rushed to take power. In the South, on 23 September, French soldiers freshly liberated from Japanese prison camps and rearmed by the British regained control of Saigon, taking revenge on the Vietnamese. Vietnamese groups massacred French civilians. In Hanoi, on 2 September 1945, Ho Chi Minh read in front of a huge crowd the declaration of independence of Vietnam: the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) was born.

Meanwhile, de Gaulle's envoys were still struggling to understand the situation. Cédile and Messmer were held prisoner. Cédile, who was kept naked for a while, tried to explain the Declaration of 24 March to the amused Việt Minh. In his memoirs, Messmer wrote that he realized then that the Declaration was hopelessly outdated:

It only took a few weeks to erase sixty years of French colonisation, the imprint of which seems to me to have been neither deep nor solid.

In Hanoi, Sainteny and his men were holed up in the former Palace of the Governor and basically kept prisoner there by the Vietnamese and the Japanese. Sainteny witnessed the disciplined crowds hailing the birth of the DRV on 2 September, and watched in amazement (and dread) the Annamites taking over the former capital of French Indochina. It was only by the end of September that he was appointed Commissioner of the Republic and able to start official negociations with the Vietnamese and the Chinese.

The military situation was different between the two halves of the country. In the South, a coalition of British forces led by General Gracey and French troops led by Leclerc (with Japanese troops under British command) started driving out the oorly organized Việt Minh and nationalist forces. By February 1946, Leclerc had the main population centres and communication lines south of the 16th parallel under French control again, though the French still had to fight a night-time guerrilla.

In the North, HCM held Hanoi, but he had to deal with competing, and occasionally hostile, Vietnamese nationalists, and he had an uneasy relationship with the Chinese, now a 180,000 men army who were pillaging and living off the land with no date given for their departure.

-> Part 2