1954 Geneva Conference moving South". At the same time, 52,000 people from the South went North, mostly Viet Minh members and their families. The US replaced the French as a political backup for Ngo Dinh Diem, the Prime Minister of the State of Vietnam, who asserted his power in the South. The Geneva conference had not provided any specific mechanisms for the national elections planned for 1956, and Diem refused to hold them by citing that the South had not signed and were not bound to the Geneva Accords and that it was impossible to hold free elections in the communist North. Instead,
War in Vietnam (1954–1959) a desire to maintain French influence. France's painful withdrawal may have led to its lack of cooperation in European defense arrangements that included the United States. France rejected European Defense Community on August 30, 1954, possibly to thank the Soviets for help at Geneva. But it is certain that many French were persuaded that the U.S. and the UK furnished inadequate support to France during the latter phases of the war, and at the Conference. And it is equally certain that American policy in the aftermath of Geneva widely alienated affection for the U.S. in France, and created that lack