last stand against the advancing Allied armies. Hitler was expected to flee from Berlin and retire to the Alpine Redoubt before the Soviets could enter the capital city, so General William Joseph Donovan, head of the OSS, issued this order: "Tell Bank to get Hitler." "Iron Cross" was canceled almost on the eve of execution because intelligence showed that Hitler had remained in Berlin. (He committed suicide in his Berlin bunker on April 30, 1945.) Additionally, the 101st Airborne and 7th Army divisions were advancing so rapidly they were expected to capture the non-existent Alpine Redoubt before "Iron Cross" could be executed. (Bank's enemy-uniformed volunteers would also be prime targets for allied forces.) With the capitulation of Germany in May 1945, Bank was reassigned to the Pacific theater, where he was inserted into Indochina and linked up with Ho Chi Minh, then leading the resistance to the Japanese. Bank spent considerable time traveling through Vietnam with Ho and was impressed with Ho's manifest popularity among the Vietnamese population. Bank advised the OSS of Ho's great popularity, recommended that Ho be allowed to form a coalition government, and predicted that Ho would win a popular election overwhelmingly if one was conducted. It is not known whether Bank's recommendations reached President Harry S. Truman, but American policy was contrary: Ho was a long-time Communist, having joined the party in the 1920s in Paris, and therefore was considered unacceptable as leader of a coalition government. Some French "Vichy" military forces remained in Indochina, and the United States now consented to the use of these residual forces to block Ho and reinstate Indochina as a French colony. President Truman and later President Dwight D. Eisenhower provided financial support to the French, thus leading to the Indochina War and ultimately the Vietnam War. Bank was accused by French officials of proliferating anti-French propaganda amongst Lao Issara and Viet Minh nationalist groups. These events reached a climax on September 27, 1945, when a British party, led by Peter Kemp crossed the Mekong from their base in northeast Thailand and were surrounded by an armed Viet Minh patrol, who demanded the surrender of a French lieutenant. The Viet Minh assassinated the French lieutenant, even though he was under the protection of the British. An American OSS officer, Lt. Reese, was with Kemp and the French officer and stood aside, stating that he was "neutral". Kemp believed that