World War II and the founding of the Vietnamese state

In 1938 Ho returned to China and stayed for a few months with Mao Zedong at Yen-an. When France was defeated by Germany in 1940, Ho and his lieutenants, Vo Nguyen Giap and Pham Van Dong, plotted to use this turn of events to advance their own cause. About this time he began to use the name Ho Chi Minh (“He Who Enlightens”). Crossing over the border into Vietnam in January 1941, the trio and five comrades organized in May the Viet Nam Doc Lap Dong Minh Hoi (League for the Independence of Vietnam), or Viet Minh; this gave renewed emphasis to a peculiarly Vietnamese nationalism.

The new organization was forced to seek help in China from the government of Chiang Kai-shek. But Chiang distrusted Ho as a Communist and had him arrested. Ho was then imprisoned in China for 18 months, during which time he wrote his famed Notebook from Prison (a collection of short poems written in classic Chinese, a mixture of melancholy, stoicism, and a call for revolution). His friends obtained his release by an arrangement with Chiang Fa-k’uei, a warlord in South China, agreeing in return to support Chiang’s interests in Indochina against the French.

In 1945 two events occurred that paved the way to power for the Vietnamese revolutionaries. First, the Japanese completely overran Indochina and imprisoned or executed all French officials. Six months later the United States dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, and the Japanese were totally defeated. Thus, the two strongest adversaries of the Viet Minh and Ho Chi Minh were eliminated.

Ho Chi Minh seized his opportunity. Within a few months he contacted U.S. forces and began to collaborate with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS; a U.S. undercover operation) against the Japanese. Further, his Viet Minh guerrillas fought against the Japanese in the mountains of South China.

At the same time, commandos formed by Vo Nguyen Giap, under Ho’s direction, began to move toward Hanoi, the Vietnamese capital, in the spring of 1945. After Japan’s surrender to the Allies, they entered Hanoi on August 19. Finally, on September 2, before an enormous crowd gathered in Ba Dinh Square, Ho Chi Minh declared Vietnam independent, using words ironically reminiscent of the U.S. Declaration of Independence: “All men are born equal: the Creator has given us inviolable rights, life, liberty, and happiness…!”

All obstacles were not removed from the path of the Viet Minh, however. According to the terms of an Allied agreement, Chiang Kai-shek’s troops were supposed to replace the Japanese north of the 16th parallel. More significantly, France, now liberated and under the leadership of Charles de Gaulle, did not intend to simply accept the fait accompli of an independent Vietnam and attempted to reassert its control. On October 6 the French general Jacques Leclerc landed in Saigon, followed a few days later by a strong armoured division. Within three months he had control of South Vietnam. Ho had to choose between continuing the fight or negotiating. He chose negotiations, but not without preparing for an eventual transition to war.

Ho Chi Minh’s strategy was to get the French to make the Chinese in the north withdraw and then to work for a treaty with France in which recognition of independence, evacuation of Leclerc’s forces, and reunification of the country would be assured. Negotiations began in late October 1945, but the French refused to speak of independence, and Ho was caught in a stalemate. In March the deadlock was broken: on his side, Ho Chi Minh allowed parties other than the Viet Minh to be included in the new government, in an attempt to gain a wider base of support for the demands made on the French, and, at the same time, the French sent a diplomatic mission to China to obtain the evacuation of the Chinese soldiers. This was done, and some of Leclerc’s troops were also removed from Haiphong, in the north. Having secured the withdrawal of the Chinese, Ho signed an agreement with the French on March 6. According to its terms, Vietnam was recognized as a “free state with its own government, army, and finances,” but it was integrated into a French Union in which Paris continued to play the key role. Twelve days later Leclerc entered Hanoi with a few battalions, which were to be confined to a restricted area.

The First Indochina War

The agreement was unsatisfactory to extremists on both sides, and Ho Chi Minh went to France for a series of conferences (June to September 1946) and concluded a second agreement with the French government. But the peace was broken by an incident at Haiphong (November 20–23, 1946), when a French cruiser opened fire on the town after a clash between French and Vietnamese soldiers. Almost 6,000 Vietnamese were killed, and hope for an amicable settlement ended. Sick and disillusioned, Ho Chi Minh was not able to oppose demands for retaliation by his more militant followers, and the First Indochina War began on December 19.

After a few months, Ho, who had sought refuge in a remote area of North Vietnam, attempted to reestablish contact with Paris, but the terms he was offered were unacceptable. In 1948 the French offered to return the former Annamese (Vietnamese) emperor Bao Dai, who had abdicated in favour of the revolution in August 1945. These terms were more favourable than those offered to Ho Chi Minh two years earlier, because the French were now attempting to weaken the Viet Minh by supporting the traditional ruling class in Vietnam. But this policy was not successful. The Viet Minh army, commanded by Giap, was able to contain the French and Bao Dai’s forces with guerrilla tactics and terrorism, and by the end of 1953 most of the countryside was under Viet Minh control, with the larger cities under a virtual state of siege. The French were decisively defeated at Dien Bien Phu on May 7, 1954, and had no choice but to negotiate.