Viet Minh

• 1. The Cave at Pác Bó

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  On the 19th of May 1941, in Pác Bó, Cao Bằng province, Ho Chi Minh founded the organization known as the Việt Minh. Its full name, the League for Independence of Vietnam, captured the front's declared purpose. By the end of 1944, it claimed 500,000 members across Tonkin, Annam, and Cochinchina. What made such rapid growth possible in a country under foreign occupation? How did a communist-led organization attract Buddhist monks, Catholic associations, and former colonial bureaucrats? And after Ho Chi Minh declared the Democratic Republic of Vietnam on the 2nd of September 1945, why did nearly a decade of war still follow? The answers stretch from the mountains of northern Vietnam to a conference table in Geneva.

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• 2. A Front, Not a Party

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  Ho Chi Minh's Indochinese Communist Party provided the Việt Minh's core leadership, but the organization deliberately stretched beyond its communist core. The Democratic Party of Vietnam joined the coalition in 1944; the Socialist Party of Vietnam followed in 1946. Buddhist, Catholic, Cao Đài, and Hòa Hảo associations each established their own pro-Việt Minh branches. The Bình Xuyên armed group, commanded by Dương Văn Dương, joined in 1945. A faction led by Lê Văn Viễn later broke away and supported the State of Vietnam and France. The Viet Minh also built parallel mass organizations aimed at every sector of society. The National Salvation Women's Union, the National Salvation Workers' Union, and the National Salvation Children's Union were all founded in 1941. By enrolling workers, women, children, and religious communities, the coalition assembled a social base no single party could have reached alone. Not all these groups shared communist ideology. Until 1948, the Viet Minh officially shelved class struggle and the dictatorship of the proletariat, focusing instead on national independence. Colonial-trained bureaucrats and former officials of the Empire of Vietnam also joined and helped the Viet Minh consolidate power in 1945. Their participation was useful but came at a cost: it slowed the communist core's ability to impose radical economic changes. After communist China and the Soviet Union recognized the organization in January 1950, the party began purging the remaining bourgeois elements from its ranks.

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• 3. Famine, War, and Land

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  On the 19th of July 1945, five hundred Việt Minh fighters raided the Tam Dao internment camp in Tonkin. They killed fifty Japanese soldiers and officials and escorted French civilian captives to the Chinese border. Raids on rice storehouses in occupied areas helped relieve the famine gripping the country. The Việt Minh had also fought the Japanese 21st Division at Thái Nguyên. This military pressure ran alongside a rapid expansion of the organization's political reach. In Quảng Ngãi province alone, national salvation associations had enlisted 100,000 peasants by mid-1945. That same summer, the Vanguard Youth in Cochinchina grew to 200,000 members. In the northern Việt Bắc region, where Việt Minh forces took territorial control, the organization immediately distributed land to the poor. They abolished the corvée, the system of compulsory unpaid labor, and established literacy classes in quốc ngữ, the romanized script for Vietnamese. They also declared universal suffrage and democratic freedoms in zones they controlled. The resistance received funding from the United States, the Soviet Union, and the Republic of China, all motivated by their own opposition to Japan. The Vietnam Liberation Army was established in 1944 under Võ Nguyên Giáp. It would soon be tested not against Japan but against France.

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• 4. The French War

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  Within days of Japan's surrender, the Chinese Kuomintang army arrived in northern Vietnam to supervise the repatriation of Japanese forces. In the South, Franco-British forces attacked Viet Minh positions from the 23rd of September 1945 onward. A three-way negotiation produced a brief arrangement. France gave up certain rights in China; the Viet Minh accepted a temporary French return in exchange for independence promises; the Chinese withdrew. Those promises collapsed within months. Negotiations between the French and the Việt Minh broke down in December 1946, beginning nearly ten years of fighting. Vietnamese called it the French War. The Việt Minh recognized early that formal military training was scarce. In June 1946, they established a training school in Quảng Ngãi province. Japanese defectors who chose to remain in Vietnam served as instructors, training more than four hundred Vietnamese soldiers there. Some of those graduates later served as generals in the subsequent conflict with the United States. Stefan Kubiak was among the foreign volunteers who trained young Viet Minh insurgents in the use of modern firearms. French General Jean Étienne Valluy pushed the Việt Minh from Hanoi in the early phase of the war. In late 1947, French forces encircled the Viet Minh base at Việt Bắc. The encirclement inflicted serious damage but failed to destroy the Viet Minh forces. The French withdrew. France also pursued a political solution, negotiating with former Emperor Bảo Đại to establish the State of Vietnam in June 1949. The United States recognized this new state in February 1950. The Chiến dịch Biên giới, the 1950 Borderland Campaign, linked the Chinese and Vietnamese borders. The People's Republic of China provided the Việt Minh with sheltered bases and heavy weapons. With that support, the Viet Minh gained the capacity to press against French-held positions. The battle that ultimately forced France to the negotiating table came at Điện Biên Phủ.

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• 5. Geneva's Broken Promise

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  On the 7th of March 1951, the Viet Minh merged with the National United League of Vietnam to form the Vietnamese United Front. In late 1953, the organization launched a land reform program. It turned out to be a disaster. In Geneva, Switzerland, peace negotiations the following year divided Vietnam at the 17th Parallel as a temporary measure. The French army would retreat south; the Viet Minh army would retreat north. Elections to unify both zones were promised for 1956. Civil administration of North Vietnam transferred formally to the Viet Minh on the 11th of October 1954. Ho Chi Minh became Prime Minister of a socialist North Vietnamese government. From his home in France, Emperor Bảo Đại appointed Ngô Đình Diệm as Prime Minister of South Vietnam. Neither the United States nor Diệm's State of Vietnam signed the Geneva Accords. The non-communist Vietnamese delegation objected strenuously to any partition of the country. Việt Minh delegate Phạm Văn Đồng proposed reunification elections supervised by local commissions. The United States countered with the American Plan, calling for elections under United Nations oversight instead. The Soviet delegation rejected that. The promised elections never happened. CIA Director Allen Dulles addressed the political reality in a secret memorandum. He acknowledged that 'The evidence shows that a majority of the people of Vietnam supported the Viet Minh rebels.' Using secret CIA funding, Diệm rigged the 1955 referendum, removed Emperor Bảo Đại, and declared himself president of the Republic of Vietnam. Viet Minh cadres secretly kept in the South launched an armed insurgency against the Diệm government. North Vietnam occupied portions of Laos to supply these fighters, who became known as the National Liberation Front. The conflict escalated into what the world came to call the Vietnam War. On the 10th of September 1955, the Vietnamese United Front became the Vietnam Fatherland Front. That organization is recognized today as the Viet Minh's modern incarnation in Vietnamese politics.

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• 6. Cambodia and Laos

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  In Laos, the Viet Minh trained and supplied the Lao Issara, an organization of Laotian communists. Its leaders included Phetsarath, Souphanouvong, Kaysone Phomvihane, and Phoumi Vongvichit. French intervention split the movement into a non-communist faction and a communist one. The non-communists under Phetsarath established the Kingdom of Laos within the French Union. The communist wing refused the French offer and fought alongside the Vietnamese during the First Indochina War. In 1950, the communist faction renamed itself Pathet Lao, or Laos Nation, continuing under Souphanouvong, Kaysone Phomvihane, and Phoumi Vongvichit. In Cambodia, between 3,000 and 5,000 Cambodian communist cadres were branded with a label Norodom Sihanouk used as a dismissal: Khmer Việt Minh. These were left-wing members of the Khmer Issarak movement who had regrouped in the United Issarak Front after 1950. Their leaders included Son Ngoc Minh, Tou Samouth, and Sieu Heng. Most went into exile in North Vietnam after the 1954 peace settlement. Many married Vietnamese women during those years in exile. Sihanouk's public mockery of the Cambodian leftists had an unintended consequence. It increased the influence of the hardline, anti-Vietnamese faction within the Communist Party of Kampuchea, led by Pol Pot. In 1978, the Khmer Issarak and United Issarak Front veterans helped found the Cambodian Salvation Front. That organization invaded Cambodia alongside the Vietnamese army and overthrew the Pol Pot state.

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