During Ho Chi Minh’s extended absence in south China, the course of the war in the Pacific had been shifting inexorably in favor of the Allies. President Roosevelt’s initial plan to focus the main military effort on the China-Burma-India theater—a plan based on the assumption that Nationalist Chinese military forces could play a major role in the war effort—had been discarded because Washington grew disillusioned with Chiang Kai-shek’s unwillingness to use his troops in offensive operations against the Japanese. In 1943, a new U.S. strategy designed to advance toward the Japanese home islands across the Pacific had already begun to show signs of success. Allied forces had occupied a number of Japanese-held islands in the Pacific Ocean, while military units under the command of U.S. General Douglas MacArthur had engaged in their own island-hopping from New Guinea to the Philippines.
On the Southeast Asian mainland, Japanese military control over Indochina remained relatively secure, but the overthrow of the Vichy government in France after the Normandy invasion in June 1944 increased the temptation among French civilian and military officials in Indochina to shift their allegiance to the Free French movement under Charles de Gaulle, thus arousing doubts in Tokyo as to the future allegiance of the administration of Governor-General Jean Decoux to the alliance with Japan. Japanese occupation authorities inside Indochina increased their efforts to enlist the loyalty of the local population to their own regime.
In the meantime, Ho Chi Minh’s colleagues were attempting to spread the base of the revolutionary movement throughout the northern portions of Indochina. During 1942 and into early 1943, Vietminh cadres began to build guerrilla bases and expand the front’s political presence in the hilly provinces surrounding the Red River delta. In the meantime, the Central Committee directive creating the Vietminh Front had come into the hands of Party members further south sometime in 1942 or 1943, and they began to rebuild the movement painstakingly in various provinces along the central coast and in the Mekong River delta.
Other Party cadres attempted to build a small “security zone” for the Standing Committee (composed of Truong Chinh, Hoang Quoc Viet, and Hoang Van Thu), which was now located at Bac Ninh, about fifteen miles northeast of Hanoi. After the Bac Son uprising, the French had arrested most of the Party cadres in the area, but following its return to the delta, the committee had set up a small “technical unit” in Hanoi to initiate propaganda work within the labor movement there. By the end of 1942, more than one thousand workers had been enrolled in a local National Salvation Association; similar organizations had been founded for youth and women. A small guerrilla unit was established at Gia Lam Airport, just to the north of the city, as the first step in creating this security zone for the Party leadership in the area.
From its base in the Hanoi suburbs, the Standing Committee had been seeking to keep track of the overall situation in the region and the world beyond while also establishing and maintaining communications with all Party units throughout Indochina. Shortly after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, General Secretary Truong Chinh had issued a communiqué analyzing how the changed situation in the world might affect the fortunes of the Vietnamese people and how the Party should respond. In “The Pacific War and the Urgent Tasks of the Party,” he declared that in case of an invasion of Indochina by Chinese nationalist troops, Vietminh forces should welcome them and provide them with assistance, while at the same time warning them that they should not come as conquerors. He thought it likely that the British and the Americans would also decide to invade Indochina, in which case the Party should be willing to make principled concessions to secure their support. “If they agree to aid the revolution in Indochina,” he said, “we may accord them economic advantages.” But if they were to seek to assist the Free French movement under Charles de Gaulle in restoring French control over the area, “we will energetically protest and carry on our struggle to win independence.” If the time were to come when British and American troops began to arrive in each locality, he directed Party cadres to mobilize popular support to install a people’s revolutionary administration, which would then enter into negotiations with the arriving Allied forces. “We should guard against the illusion that the Chiang Kai-shek and Anglo-American troops will bring us our freedom,” he warned. “In our struggle for national liberation we must obviously seek allies—even if they are temporary, vacillating, or conditional—but the struggle must no less be the fruit of our own efforts.”
Truong Chinh concluded by criticizing the proposals of impetuous “leftist” elements within the Party who advocated a nationwide uprising at the moment of Chinese invasion. “Conditions for an uprising in Indochina,” he warned, “are not ripe yet.” The movement in rural areas was more active than in the cities, and in Vietnam more than in neighboring Laos and Cambodia. Chinh did remark that in case conditions were ripe in one local area, a provisional people’s authority could be established there in advance of the general insurrection.27
By early 1943, the likelihood of an invasion of Indochina by Allied forces was increasing. To prepare for the possibility, in late February Truong Chinh convened a meeting of the Standing Committee at Vong La, northwest of Hanoi. In the committee’s view, although the revolutionary movement still suffered from a number of shortcomings, it was on the verge of great advances. It therefore decided to begin planning for the general insurrection; to intensify efforts in all areas to build up the political and military forces of the movement; and to broaden the workers’ movement, because without the participation of the urban population, it would be difficult for the insurrection to succeed in areas vital to the enemy. The committee called for an expansion of labor organizations and the broadening of the democratic front to include French citizens sympathetic to the Free French movement and members of the overseas Chinese community, as well as all patriotic elements within the Vietnamese population.28
While the Standing Committee was making its own arrangements, Party leaders from the two base areas of Cao Bang and Bac Son—Vo Nhai were holding their own conference at Lung Hoang, in Hoa An district, just northwest of Cao Bang. To counter French efforts to suppress the movement, they decided to link up the two base areas and open a communications route toward the Red River delta as a first stage in integrating the Viet Bac with the revolutionary movement elsewhere in the country, as well as to establish reliable means of contact with the Standing Committee. After the conference adjourned, guerrilla units that had retreated toward the frontier to escape French sweeps were ordered to return to their original bases in Bac So—Vo Nhai, and they began to push south toward Tuyen Quang and Vinh Yen, the latter a market town on the fringe of the delta about twenty miles northwest of Hanoi. To facilitate the move southward, revolutionary units of Chu Van Tan’s National Salvation Army in the area were now splir up into two sections and advanced along both sides of the Cau River, which flowed into the Red River delta from the northern mountains.
In the meantime, guerrilla detachments in Cao Bang pushed south in the direction of Bac Can and Lang Son. In August 1944, small groups of shock troops commanded by Vo Nguyen Giap—advancing, he later remarked, “like a snowball”—created new base areas and carried on propaganda activities as far south as the mountainous area just north of Thai Nguyen, a provincial capital on the edge of the delta. In a ravine in the middle of the jungle near Lang Coc they established a linkage with detachments of Chu Van Tan’s National Salvation Army pushing west from Bac Son—Vo Nhai. The first elements of the future liberated base area were finally coming into place.
As it turned out, the confidence reflected in such decisions was somewhat premature. By the summer of 1943, French colonial authorities had become increasingly concerned at reports of a possible future invasion of the area by Chinese Nationalist troops, and they were well aware of the growing level of cooperation between Chinese authorities and Vietnamese nationalist elements living in exile in south China. That fall, Governor-General Decoux launched a military campaign to clear resistance ele
ments out of the Viet Bac and establish a stronger French presence in the area. French patrols intensified, and authorities offered large rewards for anyone who would provide information on the location of resistance leaders. To facilitate government control, officials sought to group the local population into surveillance zones. Several dozen Communists were caught in the net, while others were forced to flee to more isolated areas.29
Similar problems plagued the attempt to build up the movement in Hanoi. The Standing Committee’s “technical unit” to promote revolutionary propaganda among the urban population had been suppressed in the spring of 1943. Party leaders tried to establish a municipal committee in the city, but that effort too was thwarted by the French security forces. Party operatives were now having difficulty recruiting in urban areas because of the reduction in the size of the labor movement in all cities, a consequence of declining economic activities during the war. Commerce had been badly hit by the war, while taxes and war requisitions by the authorities were at punitive levels. Although many Vietnamese workers chafed under stern Japanese discipline and sympathized with the cause of the revolution, some feared to take part in demonstrations and work stoppages. In August, Hoang Van Thu was betrayed to the French by a double agent; he was executed in May 1943. Truong Chinh managed to evade capture at a French checkpoint only by posing as a foreman directing labor in the nearby rice fields.
By mid-1944, however, the situation for the insurgents was beginning to improve. In the Viet Bac, French pacification efforts had some success in reducing the extent of Vietminh operations, but the end result was to bring about the concentration of guerrilla forces in resistance base areas, as activists began to create secret cells safe from the enemy; these cells later became the basis for rapid expansion of the movement. Similar growth was beginning to take place in rural areas in central and south Vietnam. At the same time, steadily worsening economic conditions throughout Indochina eventually led to a measurable increase in urban discontent and a rising incidence of strikes. Although the goals of the strikers were generally economic rather than political, the ferment facilitated the Patty’s recruitment efforts, while sympathy for the workers among students and middle-class citizens promoted the cause.30
In a burst of confidence, an ICP committee representing three provinces in the border region met in July 1944 to discuss a proposal by Vo Nguyen Giap to initiate guerrilla war with a view to create a liberated base area. Some in attendance had concerns about whether the area could be held against a possible concerted counterattack by the French. They also questioned whether guerrilla forces were prepared to carry on a protracted struggle against both the French and the Japanese. Eventually the conference tentatively agreed to Giap’s proposal, while reserving judgment on whether guerrilla operations should be unleashed immediately or delayed until a later date. But the meeting failed to reach a consensus on whether to start building a liberation army. When Giap began to initiate the process on his own initiative, Vu Anh (who was a senior member of the Central Committee) countermanded the order.
When Vu Anh and Vo Nguyen Giap arrived in Jingxi in mid-September to greet Ho Chi Minh and accompany him back to Pac Bo, Giap reported on the decisions reached at the July conference and outlined the plan. Ho Chi Minh pointed out that the recommendation to launch an offensive campaign in the Viet Bac was based on local conditions only and took no account of the situation elsewhere in the country. He believed that to throw all of the forces into a large-scale insurrection would run the risk of a major setback greater than the one encountered at the end of 1943. Although the movement was growing in strength, in no region of the country were the Party’s forces prepared to launch armed struggle in support of the uprising in the Viet Bac, The enemy could thus concentrate his forces against the fighters in the border region, whose forces in any case lacked sufficient regular armed units to serve as a pivot. “The phase of peaceful revolution has passed,” he concluded, “but the hour of the general insurrection has not yet sounded.” He felt that political struggle was no longer sufficienr, but armed insurrection still too dangerous to undertake; that the struggle must begin to shift from the political to a violent stage, but for the moment, political activities must continue to have priority.31
Ho Chi Minh did offer some consolation to his young colleague. While rejecting Giap’s proposal to begin the creation of a people’s liberation army, he agreed to begin the formation of the first units of such a future army. “If we are not the strongest,” he noted, “it is no reason for us to be destroyed without a response.” The following day, Giap later recalled, Ho offered the suggestion that these new revolutionary units be temporarily labeled the “Army of Propaganda and Liberation of Vietnam,” since they would be primarily engaged in the task of mobilizing the political force of the masses in preparation for the future insurrection.
Vo Nguyen Giap and Vu Anh remained one more day at Pac Bo to study the situation and draw up plans for the new armed propaganda brigades. Ho gave them some parting advice: “Secrecy, always secrecy. Let the enemy think you’re to the west when you are in the east. Attack by surprise and retreat before the enemy can respond.” On his return to the Bac Son—Vo Nhai base area, Giap proceeded to set up the first new units. The thirty-four members of the first brigade were specially selected by leading cadres and included a number of graduates from the training program in south China. From Ho Chi Minh in Pac Bo came a message of congratulations, written on a tiny piece of paper hidden in a pack of cigarettes:
The propaganda brigade of the Vietnamese Liberation Army is called to be the elder brother for a numerous family. I hope that still other brigades will soon see the light of day. However modest in its beginnings, it will see open before it the most brilliant perspectives. It is the embryo of our future liberation army, and has for its field of battle the entire territory of Vietnam, from north to south.
With the formation of the first units of the armed propaganda brigades on December 22, 1944, the shape of the future revolutionary armed forces—to be known as the Vietnamese Liberation Army (Viet Nam Giai phong Quan, or VLA)—began to take form. The armed propaganda brigades represented the movement’s first fledgling regular force units. They would supplement guerrilla forces organized and directed at the district level, as well as self-defense militia units recruited in local villages under Party control. Just two days after they saw the light of day, these new units won victories in assaults on French posts in the villages of Phai Khat and Na Ngan as enemy forces, taken by surprise by the intensity of the assault, were almost wiped out. The victors carried away not only the pride in their success, but also a number of weapons, while the defenders suffered more than seventy casualties. The news of the victories spread like wildfire throughout the Viet Bac.
Back in Pac Bo, Ho Chi Minh was continuing to promote the movement in his own way. In October, he wrote a “Letter to All Our Compatriots,” in which he analyzed the current situation and said “the opportunity for our people’s liberation is only in a year or a year and a half. The time approaches. We must act quickly!”32
On November 11, 1944, a U.S. reconnaissance plane piloted by Lieutenant Rudolph Shaw encountered engine trouble while flying over the rough mountainous terrain along the Sino-Vietnamese frontier. Shaw was able to parachute to safety, but the incident had been observed by French authorities stationed in the vicinity, and patrols were dispatched to locate him. Members of a local Vietminh unit were the first to reach him, however, and they decided to deliver him to Ho Chi Minh. For the next several days, the Vietminh troops led the American pilot over mountains and jungle trails toward Pac Bo, walking at night and resting during the day in caves to avoid the enemy. In the end, it took almost a month to cover a distance of only forty miles.
None of Shaw’s escorts had been able to communicate with him (according to his own account, they communicated only when he said “Vietminh! Vietminh!” and the Vietnamese responded, “America! Roosevelt!”), but when he arrived at Pac Bo, Ho Chi Minh greeted
him effusively in colloquial English: “How do you do, pilot! Where are you from?” Shaw was reportedly so excited that he hugged Ho and later said to him, “When I heard your voice, I felt as if I were hearing the voice of my father in the United States.”33
To Ho Chi Minh, the arrival of the downed American pilot was equally fortuitous. Ever since the U.S. entrance into the War in December 1941, he had seen U.S. support for his movement as a possible trump card in his struggle against Japanese occupation forces and the French. After being released from prison in Liuzhou in the fall of 1943, he had spent considerable time at the library of the U.S. Office of War Information (OWI) there and had undoubtedly become aware of reports that President Roosevelt had no liking for European colonialism and was seeking to find the means of restoring to the colonies of Southeast Asia their independence after the end of the war. Roosevelt clearly had a particular animus against the French role in Indochina, and was quoted on one occasion as having remarked: “France has milked it for one hundred years. The people of Indochina are entitled to something better than that.” Although Ho Chi Minh was well aware that the United States was a capitalist society, he had always expressed admiration for its commitment to democratic principles and may have felt that Roosevelt himself might lead the United States on the path of greater economic equality and social justice.34
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