The August Revolution and the First Indochina War

The August Revolution of 1945 and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam

Japan moved into French Indochina in 1940 but kept the Vichy colonial administration and ruled from behind it. In 1941 Ho Chi Minh and the Indochinese Communist Party founded the Viet Minh (League for the Independence of Vietnam), a united front that put national liberation ahead of class struggle. On 9 March 1945, facing defeat, Japan overthrew the French administration in a coup and set up a nominally independent Empire of Vietnam under Emperor Bảo Đại. In the famine of 1944–1945 one to two million people starved in the Red River Delta of the north. 1 2 3

When Japan surrendered, the Viet Minh launched the August Revolution, taking over government buildings in Hanoi on the 19th; power in the major cities changed hands with little bloodshed. Bảo Đại abdicated in Huế on 30 August. On 2 September in Hanoi’s Ba Đình Square Ho Chi Minh declared the independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, quoting the American Declaration of Independence: “All men are created equal.” No state recognised the new republic, and the Allies continued to recognise French sovereignty. 4 5 1

Under the Potsdam decisions, 200,000 Nationalist Chinese troops under Lu Han occupied the north down to the 16th parallel and British forces the south to disarm the Japanese. Franco-British troops landing in Saigon in September declared martial law and took the city, and from October General Leclerc’s French forces set about reoccupying the south. 1

1946: from negotiation to war

Chiang Kai-shek agreed to withdraw his troops in exchange for the return of French concessions in China and pressed France and the Viet Minh to compromise. On 6 March 1946 Ho Chi Minh and the French envoy Jean Sainteny signed a preliminary accord recognising the DRV as a “free state” within an Indochinese Federation of the French Union and allowing French troops into the north. In the process the Viet Minh purged rival nationalists such as the VNQDĐ, now bereft of Chinese protection. 6 1

But in June High Commissioner Admiral d’Argenlieu broke the accord by setting up an autonomous Republic of Cochinchina, and the Paris negotiations broke down over independence and the unification of the south. In September Ho returned with only a temporary modus vivendi signed with Colonial Minister Moutet. On 23 November, after a customs dispute at Haiphong, the French fleet shelled the Vietnamese quarters, killing between 2,000 and 6,000. Fighting broke out in Hanoi on 19 December, and Ho’s government abandoned the capital for the northern mountains — the formal beginning of the First Indochina War. 7 1 8 9)

The Việt Bắc and the “Bảo Đại solution”

In 1947 Ho Chi Minh and Võ Nguyên Giáp withdrew into the Việt Bắc, the forested mountains of the north. France held the main cities by March, and in October–November Operations Léa and Ceinture struck at the Viet Minh leadership at Bắc Kạn but failed to capture Ho. The war became a guerrilla struggle between a France holding the cities and roads and a Viet Minh holding the countryside and mountains. 1

As a political alternative France turned to the former emperor Bảo Đại. Granted unification including Cochinchina in the Élysée Accords of March 1949, he became Chief of State of the State of Vietnam in June. But France kept control of foreign policy and defence, and the State of Vietnam remained an “associated state” of the French Union. France had refused Ho a similar status two years earlier; it chose Bảo Đại as a moderate option who could rally non-Communist nationalists. 10 11 12 1

1950: the war internationalised

The Chinese Communist victory of 1949 gave the Viet Minh an ally across the northern border. When China and the Soviet Union recognised the DRV in January 1950, the United States and Britain recognised Bảo Đại’s State of Vietnam in February. In April Liu Shaoqi sent Wei Guoqing to head a Chinese Military Advisory Group, and China provided training camps, weapons, food and vehicles. Giáp reorganised his forces into five regular divisions. 1 13

After the Chinese revolution and the outbreak of the Korean War in June, the United States came to see Indochina as a front against communism. Truman secretly authorised financial aid to France in May, and the first supplies arrived on 30 June; by 1954 the United States was paying 80 per cent of France’s war effort. In September–October 1950 Giáp attacked along Colonial Route 4 on the Chinese border, taking Đông Khê and destroying some 6,000 French troops withdrawing from Cao Bằng. France abandoned Lạng Sơn as well, and the Viet Minh held the northern half of Tonkin. 1 14

That year Indochinese communism was reorganised along national lines. In Cambodia the United Issarak Front was founded in April, and in Laos Prince Souphanouvong convened the Pathet Lao congress in August at the Viet Minh headquarters in Tuyên Quang. In February 1951 the Indochinese Communist Party became the Workers’ Party of Vietnam. 1 15 16

The De Lattre Line and stalemate

General de Lattre de Tassigny, who arrived in December 1950, built a line of fortifications around the Red River Delta. In January 1951 Giáp declared a “general counter-offensive” and attacked Vĩnh Yên, but withdrew after losing 5,000–6,000 men to massive French air attack, and was beaten again at Mạo Khê in March and on the Day River in May–June. De Lattre burned crops in Viet Minh areas, a scorched-earth tactic that deepened Vietnamese anger and proved a strategic failure. 1 17

After de Lattre died of cancer in January 1952 the war settled into stalemate. Hòa Bình was taken and abandoned at heavy cost, and in autumn 1952 Giáp swept the Black River valley of the northwest. In April 1953 the Viet Minh invaded Laos and set up a Pathet Lao government. General Navarre, arriving in May, reported to his government that the war could not be won and that the best France could hope for was stalemate. From 1953 the DRV carried out a land reform under Chinese guidance in which landlords were publicly denounced, imprisoned or executed — errors the government later admitted. 1 18 19

Điện Biên Phủ

To block the Viet Minh route into Laos, Navarre dropped paratroopers into the northwestern valley of Điện Biên Phủ on 20 November 1953 and fortified it. Wei Guoqing is said to have handed Ho a copy of the Navarre plan in October. From December to March Giáp surrounded the 15,000 French troops with more than 40,000 men and artillery hauled onto the surrounding hills, using some 400 Soviet trucks and guns supplied by China. 20 1 13

When the attack began on 13 March, Viet Minh artillery wrecked the airstrips, and the monsoon made parachute supply ever harder. The United States considered Operation Vulture, B-29 raids from the Philippines to break the siege, but cancelled it when Britain refused support. General de Castries’s fortress fell on 7 May. Of some 20,000 French troops at least 2,200 died and 11,721 were captured; Viet Minh casualties were about 25,000. 20 21 1

The Geneva Accords and partition

The conference that opened in Geneva on 26 April took up Indochina the day after Điện Biên Phủ fell. The American Dulles forbade contact with the Chinese delegation and left Geneva in early May; Britain’s Eden wanted a negotiated settlement and France’s Bidault to save face. On 17 June Pierre Mendès France became French prime minister on a promise to achieve a ceasefire within four months. The DRV delegate Phạm Văn Đồng first proposed partition on 25 May, and China’s Zhou Enlai pressed a “realistic and moderate” compromise to forestall American intervention. 22 23 1

The Geneva Accords signed on 21 July divided Vietnam at the 17th parallel as a “provisional military demarcation line” and provided for reunification elections under international supervision in 1956. The Pathet Lao regrouped in two northern Lao provinces and the Khmer Issarak disbanded. Neither the United States nor the State of Vietnam signed. From August hundreds of thousands moved from north to south, and Ngô Đình Diệm, appointed prime minister by Bảo Đại in June, ousted Bảo Đại in a 1955 referendum and became president of South Vietnam. The elections never took place, and the war passed into the Second Indochina War. 22 1 24 25

The Viet Minh lost 175,000–300,000 dead or missing by Western estimates, some 191,000 by the Vietnamese government’s count. The French Union forces lost over 74,000 dead, 20,685 of them from metropolitan France, and civilian deaths are estimated at 125,000–400,000. The victory at Điện Biên Phủ inspired colonial independence movements, and the Algerian War began on 1 November that year. 1