On October 7, 1947, the long-awaited French offensive into the Viet Bac was launched. Because he was forced to operate with fewer troops than he had anticipated, Valluy scaled down his plans. Instead of encircling the entire area and then attacking from the north as well as the south, he opted for a smaller operation aimed at seizing the heart of the Vietminh redoubt and then consolidating French control over the Red River valley from Hanoi to the border at Lao Cai. General Raoul Salan, who had been placed in charge of the operation, predicted that it would take three weeks to strike off the head of the Vietminh.
Operation Léa, as the campaign was labeled, opened with a parachute drop at Bac Can, on the northern edge of the Vietminh base zone. The area was heavily defended, with mines, barricades, and traps supplementing the tortuous mountain topography. Valluy had hoped to seize the Vietminh command post in the first stage of the operation, and then envelop the area in a pincers movement, with armored units marching westward into the area from Lang Son, while another group would move in from the north. The two groups were to make their juncture at Bac Can.
French troops advanced rapidly and soon located the Vietminh headquarters, but they were unable to capture Ho Chi Minh, who was chairing a meeting at his command post at the time of the attack. As soon as they learned that the French paratroops were so close, Ho, members of the Central Committee, and the general staff departed immediately. With Chu Van Tan, the ethnic Nung in the group, serving as guide, they marched all day over paths slippery with rain, each carrying over his shoulder a small satchel for clothes and necessities, and spent the night in a small corner of the forest. They departed the next morning to find a new headquarters. According to the scholar Bernard Fall, the attackers found burning cigarette butts and Ho Chi Minh’s mail ready for signature on a table in the hut.
During the next few days, French units tried to eliminate any further resistance in the area, but their sweeps did not result in much direct contact with the Vietminh, who had faded quietly into the jungle and then began to harass French forces at locations of their own choosing. Still, Salan reported to his superiors that the operation had been a success, since the main route to China via Cao Bang on the northern border (the last remaining Vietminh contact with the outside world) was severed. Ho Chi Minh was now totally isolated. All that remained, the general averred, were “isolated bands of varying levels of importance, and susceptible to simple police operations.” The Vietminh redoubt, he declared, had practically ceased to exist.14
Seldom in the annals of the Indochinese conflict has a prediction been so wrong, for in actuality the war was just beginning. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that Operation Léa had resulted in at least a temporary setback for the Vietminh, who were forced to dissolve their main-force units and divide them into armed propaganda units similar to those formed on the eve of the August Revolution. During the next few months, Vietnamese leaders made intensive efforts to prepare for the long road ahead. Vietminh commanders abandoned their unsuccessful efforts to engage in conventional tactics and embraced the techniques of guerrilla warfare. To centralize leadership at the local level, committees of resistance and administration (CRAs) were established in every village controlled by the resistance forces. Each village was given the responsibility not only to provide for its own defense, but also to furnish promising recruits for the guerrilla forces under central command.
With his return to the Viet Bac in late December 1946, Ho Chi Minh resumed the life that had appeared to come to an end with his election as president during the August Revolution of 1945. He arrived at the old base area with an entourage of eight men, comprising his personal bodyguard and those responsible for liaison with other units and for food preparation. The group erected a long hut built of bamboo and thatch that was divided into two rooms. One room was assigned for Ho’s personal use, while the other served as dining hall, meeting room, and dormitory for his colleagues. To guard against wild animals, they obtained a shepherd dog, but it was soon killed and eaten by a tiger.
Ho and his companions led a simple life. Their meals consisted of a little rice garnished with sautéed wild vegetables. On occasion, they were able to supplement their meager fare with small chunks of salted meat, thinly sliced and served with peppers. Ho laughingly described it as “conserves du Vietminh.” Sometimes food was short, and all suffered from hunger. Eventually the group began to grow its own food, planting vegetables on the more level plots of ground and manioc along the mountain slopes. By then, Ho had taken up lodging in a separate two-storied house. During the day he worked on the ground floor, but at night he slept on the upper floor as protection against wild beasts and the humidity. His bedding consisted solely of a mosquito net and his clothing. When the group was compelled to move (by the end of the decade, Ho would live in at least twenty different houses as he continually escaped detection by the French), they were able to pack up and leave in minutes. Ho carried a few books and documents in a small bag, while his companions took charge of his typewriter.
Whenever possible, Ho Chi Minh continued to perform his physical exercises, both morning and evening. He enjoyed volleyball and served with a sure hand, although his range was limited. When the opposing team fell behind, players often took advantage of his limited mobility and dunked the ball just over the net, at which time Ho laughingly cried, “You really got me there!” When they were forced to cross a river or a stream, the group stayed near him, especially if the current was strong; nonetheless, he was generally able to keep up, and one deserter claimed to French interviewers that Ho Chi Minh had more capacity to endure hardship than most of his younger colleagues, many of whom suffered periodically from malaria or other debilitating illnesses. On one occasion Ho remarked, “I’m like an old propeller-driven plane, while you are all jets.”15
Eventually, their living conditions began to improve. Around Ho Chi Minh’s residence there were now not only flower beds and vegetable trellises, but also a more formal volleyball court, and a fixed parallel bar for exercises. Ho and his colleagues purchased musical instruments from neighbors in the base area, and occasionally invited these villagers to join them for an evening of entertainment. Ho lectured his visitors about the culture of the lowland peoples and sometimes provided them with medicines to cure their illnesses. But then, in the fall of 1947, Operation Léa forced Ho and his allies to move on.
After the fall offensive, the conflict settled into what one French military observer described as a “war of stagnation.” Lacking the means to continue offensive operations, Valluy limited himself to more modest efforts in the delta. This respite provided the Vietminh with an opportunity to create a liberated zone in central Vietnam, an area characterized by poor soil and considerable revolutionary potential that stretched more than 200 miles from Faifo to Cape Varella, thus dividing the country virtually in two. In the south, the French were in better shape, since Vietminh units there were a considerable distance from headquarters and almost totally deprived of contacts with their colleagues. With Nguyen Binh’s forces driven ever deeper into the swamps and the mountains, French units tried to isolate their enemy by vigorous pacification operations.
The Vietminh also encountered active opposition in the south from nationalist groups who were becoming increasingly active in seeking to provide a “third force” for non-Communists as an alternative between the Vietminh and the French. In these conditions, the failure of Operation Léa to bring a definitive end to the resistance turned the attention of many nationalists to the political arena, and to Bao Dai. In December, the former emperor met with Emile Bollaert on a French cruiser in the stunning visual surroundings of Ha Long Bay, the site of Ho Chi Minh’s first encounter with Thierry d’Argenlieu. But the results of the talks were meager, as Bollaert refused to be specific on the powers that would be assigned to a future Vietnamese state. At the close of the meeting, Bao Dai reluctantly agreed to sign a joint communiqué, but he quickly disavowed the action under criticism from militant nationalists in the recent
ly formed National United Front. In March 1948, Bao Dai met with representatives of the front in Hong Kong and agreed to form a provisional government led by General Nguyen Van Xuan, a native of the south who had adopted French citizenship, as a ploy to strengthen himself in future talks with the French. After some hesitation, Bollaert agreed to recognize Bao Dai’s new provisional government as a negotiating partner.
In June, talks resumed at Ha Long Bay and eventually the two sides reached agreement on the formation of a new Associated State of Vietnam based on the principle of Vietnamese independence and unity within the French Union. However, the precise meaning of the word “independence” and the specific powers to be allotted to the projected new government remained unsettled. In addition, there was no clear indication as to how the formation of this new non-Communist government could help to bring an end to the conflict with Ho Chi Minh’s DRV. A solution to the Indochina tangle seemed as far away as ever.
For the French, however, one of the key motives for engaging in negotiations with Bao Dai was to lure the United States into providing military and economic assistance in the war against the Vietminh. Attitudes in Washington were indeed moving in a favorable direction, from Paris’s point of view. Although the Truman administration had been exasperated at the French failure to solve the Indochinese problem, it was becoming increasingly concerned at the growing threat of communism in Asia, a concern that reflected not only Communist victories over Nationalist troops in north China but also deteriorating relations with Moscow. In the summer of 1948, Secretary of State George Marshall instructed U.S. diplomatic officials in Asia that nothing should be left undone in the effort to strengthen “truly nationalist groups” in Indochina at the expense of the Communists.
Although U.S. officials had little faith in Bao Dai (most viewed him as a playboy who lacked the stomach for political confrontation), they welcomed the signing of the Ha Long Bay agreement as a “forward step.” When negotiations lagged, they warned Paris that it faced a grim choice between granting true unity and independence to the Vietnamese people within the French Union or losing Indochina altogether. Should France carry through on its tentative commitments, Washington intimated that it might reconsider its existing policy of withholding direct economic assistance to the French in Indochina.
With conditions there increasingly somber, in January 1949 the French finally acceded to Bao Dai’s demand that the colony of Cochin China be included in the proposed Associated State of Vietnam. That concession broke the logjam, and on March 9, 1949, in a ceremony held at the Elysée Palace in Paris, representatives of the two sides signed an agreement whereby France recognized Vietnamese independence and unity within the French Union, subject to formal ratification of the agreement by the French National Assembly. The new state would be empowered to conduct its own foreign affairs, to control its finances, and to create a Vietnamese National Army. The only legal impediments to independence were those restrictions that were imposed by membership in the French Union and the current war situation in Indochina. As it turned out, these restrictions were major indeed.
In January 1948, the ICP Standing Committee, reflecting its confidence that conditions were shifting inexorably in favor of the revolution, formally decreed the end of the first stage of withdrawal and the opening of the second stage of equilibrium. Vietminh forces would now begin to initiate battles with the enemy. As part of their new approach, Party leaders now decreed that increased efforts should take place to organize the masses in neighboring Laos and Cambodia to contribute actively to the struggle for national liberation. By expanding the field of revolutionary operations throughout the territory of Indochina, Vietminh strategists hoped to divide French forces and make them increasingly vulnerable to attack. According to a Party document written in August 1948, if the Rhine River was viewed as Britain’s first line of defense for Great Britain in World War II, the Mekong served the same purpose for the Vietnamese. As Truong Chinh put it in an article written in 1947, “If the enemy attacks us from above, we will attack him from below. If he attacks us in the north, we will respond in Central or South Vietnam, or in Cambodia or Laos. If the enemy penetrates one of our territorial bases, we will immediately strike hard at his belly or back … cut off his legs [and] destroy his roads.”16
Party operatives had been active in neighboring Laos and Cambodia since 1935, when the ICP held its first national congress in Macao—responding to Moscow’s belief that the revolutions in all three Indochinese countries should be linked together—and called for the future creation of an Indochinese federation under Vietnamese guidance that would be similar to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. But efforts to build up ICP cells among urban workers (many of them of Vietnamese or Chinese extraction) in these two countries had achieved only minimum success until after World War II, when local nationalist forces created new organizations—known as the Lao Issara and the Khmer Issarak, respectively—to promote the struggle for national independence. As the Franco-Vietminh conflict got under way in early 1947, Party cadres in Laos and Cambodia were ordered to establish contact with these organizations and to place them firmly under Vietnamese guidance. Cadres were carefully instructed, however, to avoid condescension in their dealings with the Lao and Khmer peoples and to recognize their sensitivity to incipient signs of Vietnamese domination.17
The only cloud in this brightening sky was the growing danger of U.S. intervention in the Indochina conflict. Although the United States refused to consider an offer to provide direct assistance until Paris formally ratified the Elysée Accords, the pressure for U.S. entry into the war was growing. If that should take place, the Vietminh would be in dire need of a powerful patron. With Moscow seemingly indifferent to the plight of the Vietminh, Ho and his colleagues had only one option to counter the French gambit toward Washington, They would turn to China.
Since the end of World War II, ICP leaders had little contact with their counterparts in the Chinese Communist Party. In the spring of 1947, radio contact was established with Communist headquarters in Yan’an, and Zhou Enlai and Ho Chi Minh assumed the responsibility of exchanging information between the two parties and seeking ways of providing mutual assistance. Contacts also took place between Vietminh units and scattered CCP elements operating in the provinces adjacent to the border, and in a few cases the two sides were able to cooperate in joint operations against the French. According to one French source, sometime in 1946 Communists along the border created a joint Sino-Vietnamese unit (called the Doc Lap, or Independence, Regiment) to engage in guerrilla warfare against French administration in the area. This group operated especially among the local minority Nung and Tho populations on both sides of the frontier. At first, however, Vietminh leaders appear to have kept such relations limited to avoid complications in their relations with local nationalist elements.18
As the tide of the Chinese Civil War began to shift significantly toward the Communists in 1948, People’s Liberation Army units became more active along the border and took part increasingly in local operations in cooperation with Vietminh units. The extension of Communist power into south China worried the French, and in March General Salan, who had recently replaced General Valluy as commander of the FEF, recommended aggressive action to restore French control over the border region before the anticipated victory of Communist forces in China.
To carry out new operations in the Viet Bac, Salan requested a substantial increase in the size of French forces. His recommendations, however, carried an implicit criticism of government inaction, and in April he was replaced by General Blaizot on the grounds that he was too young and lacked sufficient military experience. On his arrival in Indochina, Blaizot recommended a tactical retreat from the border to strengthen French forces in the northern delta in preparation for a major attack on the Viet Bac. High Commissioner Léon Pignon (Bollaert had also been replaced) agreed, but was less sanguine about Blaizot’s planned military offensive.
To reconcile the two men’s differences,
Paris sent General Revers on an inspection trip in May 1949. Revers was critical of the existing strategy in both political and military areas, expressing doubt over the viability of the corrupt Bao Dai government and recommending that leadership over the French effort be placed in a high commissioner possessing both political and military powers. But he was also pessimistic about the possibility of a military solution, holding the view that the best that could be achieved was to improve the situation for a negotiated settlement. To promote such a result, he recommended an effort to strengthen the situation in Tonkin until the United States could be persuaded to introduce its own forces. For such a policy to be effective, the border needed to be secured, but French forces were inadequate to secure the entire area. As a stopgap, Revers recommended that defense of the border be based on the eastern region stretching from Mong Cai to That Khe. The remainder of the frontier would be evacuated.
With the weakening of the French position and the arrival of the first PLA units on the frontier, Vietnamese prospects began to improve. In early 1949, Vietminh guerrillas launched attacks along the border area. French intelligence sources reported that these operations had been coordinated with Chinese units on the northern side of the frontier. One report alleged that on one occasion in late March, PLA units briefly occupied the city of Mong Cai and then retreated back across the border. Another declared that in April, Vo Nguyen Giap had signed a provisional agreement with Chinese Communist representatives at Jingxi calling for cooperation and a fusion of the two armies in the border area. According to a U.S. diplomatic source, that month Vietminh radio announced that units of the PLA had arrived in the frontier region and were already providing “important support” to the Vietminh.19
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