The Vietnam War officially ended on April 30, 1975. The (People’s) North Vietnamese Army entered Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City), unifying North and South. This brief Daily Heller originally appeared on Jan. 28, 2018, and we’re revisiting it today ahead of the historic 50th anniversary. The war ended two years after the Paris Peace Accords were signed in 1973. President Nixon declared it “Peace with honor.”
Before the U.S. got entangled in preventing the dominoes from falling in Indochina—as they did in Korea—with Vietnam becoming a Communist foothold, the French fought the nationalist Viet Minh.
The Viet Minh evolved into a fighting force strong enough to trounce the French colonial army. Formed in the 1940s, the nationalists sought Vietnamese independence. After the occupying Japanese imperialists were defeated by the Allies in World War II, the Viet Minh saw their opportunity, but France demanded the return of its colonial property. Fierce guerrilla warfare ensued. And although the U.S. condemned French colonialism, it was essential to retain Western alliances with France. So America picked up the sword from defeated France—and ultimately fell on it.
Many Vietnamese allied with French Marxists, trade unionists and political radicals sought revolution and release from French colonial domination. Marxist theory promised racial equality, an end to colonialism and better lives for workers and peasants. The best-known of the nationalists to emerge in this postwar period was Nguyen Sinh Cung—later known as Ho Chi Minh—who sought a Paris peace conference for Vietnamese independence, only to be ignored.
In contrast, there’s a myth that the Vietnamese rebels were a ragtag militia (known as the Viet Cong, the military wing of the National Liberation Front). A book by Eric Deroo and Christophe Dutrone, Le Viet Min (Les Indes Savantes, 2008), stakes out the visual history of the movement and its military. Here are some of the propaganda and paraphernalia that inspired and motivated the “North Vietnamese” to drive the French from their country, only to have the vacuum filled by American advisors and ground troops.
The post The Daily Heller: When France Fought the Viet Minh appeared first on PRINT Magazine.