Born in Algiers, Savary served as a naval officer during the interwar period. With the fall of France, he joined Free French forces in 1940. After the war, he became a member of the Consultative Assembly, served as secretary general for Austrian and German affairs 1946–1947, joined the Section française de l’Internationale ouvrière (SFIO), and was elected to the Assembly of the French Union during which time he became interested in colonial affairs. In 1949, as the Chinese communists moved to take all of China, the SFIO – then part of the ruling coalition government – sent Savary to Indochina and authorized him to enter into contact with the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV). With a green light from Léon Pignon, high commissioner for Indochina, and Paul Coste-Floret, minister of Overseas France, Savary used his socialist connections in Indochina to organize a meeting with General Nguyen Binh, the commander-in-chief of the DRV’s armed forces in the south. Savary sounded out the Vietnamese as to talks to resolve the war diplomatically. The DRV was open to the idea of arranging a meeting between Savary and Ho Chi Minh. However, when Savary asked for permission to meet with Ho Chi Minh, the Henri Queuille government refused. In his meetings and speeches to the SFIO leadership, Savary insisted that the French should negotiate a way out of the Indochina War. DRV nationalism, he insisted, was for real and the majority of Vietnamese wanted an end to French colonial rule. He also underscored the lack of popular Vietnamese support for the Bao Dai solution. Savary called on his party to make an attempt to contact the resistance, “c’est la seule chance d’arrêter la guerre”, he insisted. But given that the SFIO was still part of the ruling coalition, the leadership did not want to open discussions with the DRV and thereby make itself vulnerable to attacks from the Right and even from the conservative, colonially minded wing of the socialist party. It was only when the SFIO entered into opposition in 1952 that Savary was able to push his party, with Louis Caput and others, towards the idea of negotiating an end to the war. Despite Savary’s offer to use his socialist contacts to help open talks with the DRV, Georges Bidault only accepted when things turned bad during the battle of Dien Bien Phu. In April 1954, Bidault authorized Savary to travel to Moscow to open meetings with the DRV ambassador Nguyen Luong Bang before moving on to meet the DRV leadership in northern Vietnam. Determined to winning at Dien Bien Phu, the Vietnamese were not interested. Savary returned to France empty handed. The endgame would be negotiated at Geneva. See also GENEVA CONFERENCE.