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The War of Liberation, 1945-1954

I. A Few Historical and Geographical Considerations

Vietnam is one of the oldest countries in Southeast Asia.

Stretching like an immense S along the edge of the Pacific, it includes Bac Bo, or North Vietnam, which, with the Red River delta, is a region rich in agricultural and industrial possibilities; Nam Bo, or South Vietnam, a vast alluvial plain furrowed by the arms of the Mekong and especially favorable to agriculture; and Trung Bo, or Central Vietnam, a long narrow belt of land joining them. To describe the shape of their country, the Vietnamese like to recall an image familiar to them: that of a shoulder pole carrying a basket of paddy at each end.

Vietnam extends over nearly three hundred and thirty thousand square miles and has a population of approximately thirty million inhabitants. During its thousands of years of history, the Vietnamese have always maintained a heroic tradition of struggle against foreign aggression. During the thirteenth century in particular, they succeeded in thwarting attempts at invasion by the Mongols who had extended their domination over the whole of feudal China.

From the middle of the nineteenth century, the French imperialists began the conquest of the country. Despite resistance lasting dozens of years, Vietnam was progressively reduced to colonial status, thereafter to be integrated in “French Indochina” with Cambodia and Laos. But from the first day of French aggression, the national liberation movement of the Vietnamese people developed unceasingly. The repression used to stifle this movement only increased it the more; so much so, that after the First World War, it began to take on a powerful mass character. It had already won over wide circles of the intellectual and petty bourgeois levels, while penetrating deeply into the peasant masses and the newly forming working class. The year 1930 saw another step forward with the founding of the Indochinese Communist Party, now the Vietnam Workers Party, which took up the leadership of the national democratic revolution of the Vietnamese people against the imperialists and the feudal landlord class.

Just after the start of the Second World War in 1939, France was occupied by the Nazis, while Vietnam was progressively becoming a colony of the Japanese fascists. The Party appreciated in good time the situation created by this new development. Estimating that a new cycle of war and revolution had begun, it set the task for the whole nation to widen the anti-imperialist National United Front, the preparation of armed insurrection, and the overthrow of the French and Japanese imperialists in order to reconquer national independence. The Vietnam Doc Lap Dong Minh (League for the Independence of Vietnam, abbreviated to Vietminh) was founded and drew in all patriotic classes and social strata. Guerrilla warfare was launched in the high region of Bac Bo, and a free zone was formed.

In August 1945, the capitulation of the Japanese forces before the Soviet army and the Allied forces put an end to the world war. The defeat of the German and Japanese fascists was the beginning of a great weakening in the capitalist system. After the great victory of the Soviet Union, many people’s democracies came into existence. The socialist system was no longer confined within the frontiers of a single country. A new historic era was beginning throughout the world.

In view of these changes, in Vietnam the Indochinese Communist Party and the Vietminh called the whole Vietnamese nation to general insurrection. Everywhere the people rose up together. Demonstrations and shows of force followed each other uninterruptedly. In August, the revolution broke out, neutralizing the bewildered Japanese troops, overthrowing the pro-Japanese feudal authorities, and installing people’s power in Hanoi and throughout the country; in the towns as well as in the countryside, in Bac Bo as well as in Nam Bo. In Hanoi, the capital, on September 2, the provisional government was formed around President Ho Chi Minh; it presented itself to the nation, proclaimed the independence of Vietnam, and called on the nation to unite, to hold itself in readiness to defend the country, and to oppose all attempts at imperialist aggression. The Democratic Republic of Vietnam was born, the first people’s democracy in Southeast Asia.

But the imperialists intended to extinguish the republican regime at its first breath and once again transform Vietnam into a colony. Three weeks had hardly passed when, on September 23, 1945, the French Expeditionary Corps opened fire in Saigon. The whole Vietnamese nation then rose to resist foreign aggression. From that day began a war of national liberation which was to be carried on for nine years at the cost of unprecedented heroism and amidst unimaginable difficulties, to end with the shining victory of our people and the crushing defeat of the aggressive imperialists at Dien Bien Phu.

But while the Vietnamese people were closing their ranks around the provisional government in the amazing enthusiasm aroused by the August revolution, a new factor intervened which was to make the political situation more difficult and more complex. According to the terms of an agreement between the Allies, in order to receive the Japanese surrender, the Chinese Kuomintang forces entered Vietnam north of the sixteenth parallel en masse, while the British forces landed in the South. The Chiang Kai-shek troops took advantage of the opportunity to pillage the population and sack the country, while using every means to help the most reactionary elements among the Vietnamese bourgeois and landlords—the members of the Vietnam Quoc Dan Dang (the Vietnamese Kuomintang) and the pro-Japanese Phuc Quoc (Vietnamese National Restoration Party)—to stir up trouble throughout the country. After occupying the five frontier provinces, they provoked incidents even in the capital and feverishly prepared to overthrow people’s power. In the South, the British actively exerted themselves to hasten the return of the French imperialists. Never before had there been so many foreign troops on the soil of Vietnam. But never before either had the Vietnamese people been so determined to rise up in combat to defend their country.

II. Summary of the Progress of the War of National Liberation

At the outset of the war, the French imperialists’ scheme was to rely upon the British troops to reconquer Nam Bo and afterward to use it as a springboard for preparing their return to the North. They had shamefully capitulated before the Japanese fascists, but after the end of the world war, they considered the resumption of their place at the head of their former colony as an indisputable right. They refused to admit that in the meantime the situation had changed radically.

In September 1945, French colonial troops armed by the British and soon strengthened by the French Expeditionary Corps under the command of General Leclerc,* launched their aggression in Saigon, with the direct support of the British army. The population of Nam Bo immediately rose up to fight. In view of the extreme weakness of its forces at the beginning, people’s power had to withdraw to the countryside after waging heroic street fights in Saigon and in the large towns. Almost all the towns and important lines of communication in Nam Bo and the south of Trung Bo gradually fell into the hands of the adversary.

The colonialists thought they were on the point of achieving the reconquest of Nam Bo, and General Leclerc declared that occupation and pacification would be completed in ten weeks. But events took quite a different turn. Confident of the support of the whole country, the southern population continued the fight. In all the campaigns of Nam Bo the guerrilla forces went from strength to strength, their bases were being consolidated and extended, and people’s power was maintained and strengthened during the nine years of the resistance, until the re-establishment of peace.

Knowing that the invasion of Nam Bo was only the prelude to a plan of aggression by the French imperialists, our Party guided the whole nation toward preparing a long-term resistance. In order to assemble all the forces against French imperialism, the Party advocated uniting all the elements that could be united, neutralizing all those that could be neutralized, and widening the National United Front by the formation of the Lien Viet* (Vietnam People’s Front). It urgently organized general elections with universal suffrage in order to form the first National Assembly of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, which was responsible for passing the Constitution and forming a widely representative resistance government grouping the most diverse elements, including even those of the Vietnam Quoc Dan Dang (the Vietnamese Kuomintang). At that time, we avoided all incidents with the Chiang Kai-shek troops.

The problem then before the French Expeditionary Corps was to know whether it would be easy for them to return to North Vietnam by force. It was certainly not so, because our forces were more powerful there than in the South. For its part, our government intended doing everything in its power to preserve peace so as to enable the newly created people’s power to consolidate itself and to rebuild the country devastated by long years of war. It was thus that negotiations which ended in the preliminary agreement of March 6, 1946,* took place between the French colonialists and our government. According to the terms of this convention, limited contingents of French troops were allowed to station in a certain number of localities in North Vietnam in order to cooperate with the Vietnamese troops in taking over from the repatriated Chiang Kai-shek forces. In exchange, the French government recognized Vietnam as a free state, having its own government, its own national assembly, its own army and finances, and promised to withdraw its troops from Vietnam within the space of five years. The political status of Nam Bo was to be decided by a referendum.

Relations between the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and France were then at a crossroads. Would there be a move toward consolidation of peace or a resumption of hostilities? The colonialists considered the preliminary agreement as a provisional expedient enabling them to introduce part of their troops into the North of Vietnam, a delaying stratagem for preparing the war they intended to continue. Therefore, the talks at the Dalat Conference† led to no result, and those at the Fontainebleau Conference‡ resulted only in the signing of an unstable modus vivendi. During the whole of this time, the colonialist partisans of war were steadily pursuing their tactics of local encroachments. Instead of observing the armistice, they continued their mopping-up operations in Nam Bo and set up a local puppet government* there; in Bac Bo they increased provocations and attacked a certain number of provinces, pillaging and massacring the population of the Hon Gai mining area, and everywhere creating an atmosphere of tension preparatory to attacks by force.

Loyal to its policy of peace and independence, our government vainly endeavored to settle conflicts in a friendly manner, many times appealing to the French government then presided over by the SFIO (Socialist Party) to change their policy in order to avoid a war detrimental to both sides. At the same time, we busied ourselves with strengthening our rear with a view to resistance. We obtained good results in intensifying production. We paid much attention to strengthening national defense. The liquidating of the reactionaries of the Vietnam Quoc Dan Dang was crowned with success, and we were able to liberate all the areas which had fallen into their hands.

In November 1946 the situation worsened. The colonialists in Haiphong seized the town by a coup de force. After engaging in street fights, our troops withdrew to the suburbs. In December the colonialists provoked tension in Hanoi, massacred civilians, seized a number of public offices, sent an ultimatum demanding the disarming of our self-defense groups and the right to ensure order in the town, and finally provoked armed conflict. Obstinately, the colonialists chose war which led to their ruin.

On December 19, resistance broke out throughout the country. The next day, in the name of the Party and the government, President Ho Chi Minh called on the whole people to rise up to exterminate the enemy and save the country, to fight to the last drop of blood, and whatever the cost, to refuse re-enslavement.

At the time when hostilities became generalized throughout the country, what was the balance of forces? From the point of view of materiel, the enemy was stronger than us. Our troops were thus ordered to fight the enemy wherever they were garrisoned so as to weaken them and prevent them spreading out too rapidly, and thereafter, when conditions became unfavorable to us, to make the bulk of our forces fall back toward our rear in order to keep our forces intact with a view to a long-term resistance. The most glorious and most remarkable battles took place in Hanoi, where our troops succeeded in firmly holding a huge sector for two months before withdrawing from the capital unhurt.

The whole Vietnamese people remained indissolubly united in a fight to the death in those days when the country was in danger. Replying to the appeal by the Party, they resolutely chose the path of freedom and independence. The central government, having withdrawn to bases in the mountainous region of Viet Bac, formed military zones, soon united in interzones, and the power of local authorities was strengthened for mobilizing the whole people and organizing the resistance. Our government continued appealing to the French government not to persist in their error and to reopen peaceful negotiations. But the latter, under the pretext of negotiation, demanded the disarming of our troops. We replied to the colonialists’ obstinacy by intensifying the resistance.

In fact, the French High Command began regrouping forces to prepare a fairly big lightning offensive in the hope of ending the war. In October 1947, they launched a big campaign against our principal base, Viet Bac, in order to annihilate the nerve center of the resistance and destroy our regular forces. But this large-scale operation ended in a crushing defeat. The forces of the Expeditionary Corps suffered heavy losses without succeeding in causing anxiety to our leading organizations or impairing our regular units. It was a blow to the enemy’s strategy of a lightning war and a rapid solution. Our people were all the more determined to persevere along the path of a long-term resistance.

From 1948, realizing that the war was being prolonged, the enemy changed their strategy. They used the main part of their forces for “pacification” and for consolidating the already occupied areas, in Nam Bo especially, applying the principle: fight Vietnamese with Vietnamese, feed war with war. They set up a puppet central government, actively organized supplementary local units, and indulged in economic pillage. They gradually extended their zone of occupation in the North and placed under their control the major part of the Red River delta. During all these years, the French Expeditionary Corps followed a procedure of great dispersion, scattering their forces in thousands of military posts to occupy territory and control localities. But ever growing military and financial difficulties gradually induced the French imperialists to let the American imperialists interfere in the conflict.

The enemy altered their strategy, and we then advocated the wide development of guerrilla warfare, transforming the former’s rear into our front line. Our units operated in small pockets, with independent companies penetrating deeply into the enemy-controlled zone to launch guerrilla warfare, establish bases, and protect local people’s power. It was an extremely hard war generalized in all domains: military, economic, and political. The enemy mopped up; we fought against mopping-up. They organized supplementary local Vietnamese troops and installed puppet authorities; we firmly upheld local people’s power, overthrew straw men, eliminated traitors, and carried out active propaganda to bring about the disintegration of the supplementary forces. We gradually formed a network of guerrilla bases. On the map showing the theater of operations, besides the free zone, “red zones,” which ceaselessly spread and multiplied, began to appear right in the heart of the occupied areas. The soil of the fatherland was being freed inch by inch right in the enemy’s rear lines. There was no clearly defined front in this war. It was wherever the enemy was. The front was nowhere, it was everywhere. Our new strategy created serious difficulties for the enemy’s plan to feed war with war and to fight Vietnamese with Vietnamese and finally brought about their defeat.