The Vietnam War, or Second Indochina War, is infamous. It was one of the most gruesome Cold War era conflicts, and it tarnished the USA's reputation forever. But America isn't the only large western nation the Vietnamese have routed, and for there to be a second Indochina War, there had to be a first.
Here, in the wake of World War II, Ho Chi Minh stood up to the French to expel them from what was then the United States. French Indochina. It was a brutal seven-year conflict that is so often swept under the rug.
In this three-part video, we mean to rectify that. This is the story of the first Indochina war, or as many in Vietnam remember it, the Anti-French Resistance War. As with many of the 20th century's wars, the First Indochina War was sparked by a World War II. On the 25th of June 1940, France fell to the Germans, and the Vichy government, headed by Marshal Philippe Pétain, replaced the Third Republic. At this time, Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia were ruled by the French in what was called French Indochina, so these colonial territories fell under the Vichy administration.
As the Vichy government collaborated with the Germans, with Vichy France ultimately coming under direct German control, it had to collaborate with Germany's soon-to-be Axis allies too, notably Imperial Japan. And the Japanese had had their eyes on Indochina for quite some time. Fighting the Chinese in the concurrent Sino-Japanese War, the Japanese naturally wanted to cut off China's supply lines. One major supply line was the Kunming-Haifeng Railway, which went from the Indo-Chinese port of Haifeng to Hanoi and then into the Chinese province of Yunnan.
Staging their troops in Indo-China, specifically in the region of Tonkin, would allow them to open up a new front against their enemies in China too. With the collaborationist Vichy government now in charge of French Indochina, Japan started laying on pressure in a political sense, and the Vichy government was given an ultimatum. On one hand, they could close all supply routes to China, let Japanese troops pass through Indochina, let Japanese air forces use their air bases, and give the Japanese navy basing rights at Guangzhou. On the other hand, the Japanese could invade. While an agreement was ultimately reached, some Japanese units weren't interested in negotiating, so they attacked the French border post of Dong Dang and the province of Lang Son.
From the 22nd to the 26th of September 1940, Japanese forces marched into northern Indochina. Following that, Japan said sorry, released the French they had taken as POWs, and returned control of the towns they had seized to the French. at least on the surface.
After all, why would they go to war with the French when they could just rule them from behind the scenes and use French Indochina as a base from which they could fight everyone else? Not to mention that puppeteering the French would get a whole lot easier after the Tripartite Pact had been signed on the 27th and Japan officially had Germany on its side. In Vietnam, however, not everyone was happy living under the thumb of Vietnamese Emperor Bao Dai, a puppet of a French government that was itself puppeteered by the Japanese.
The people's lives were more uncertain than ever, and as World War II escalated, they whispered of revolution. Before we get to that, though, the Vichy French were having serious problems in October 1940, just after the Japanese invasion. Emboldened by the fall of France, the Thai Major General, Plaik Pibulsongram, decided to bomb French Indochina and then launch an offensive through Laos and Cambodia to regain territory previously lost to the French.
The Thai army was better equipped, more experienced, and numerically superior to the French, boasting some 60,000 troops as opposed to the 50,000 troops fielded by the French. They also had more aircraft, and more experienced pilots. French naval forces reigned superior in the sea, though.
From early to mid-January 1941, Thailand appeared to have the upper hand, overrunning Laos and pushing into Cambodia. But, on the 17th, French naval forces defeated the Royal Thai Navy in the Battle of Koh Chang, and it seemed the tide was turning. It was shortly after this that Japan stepped in as a mediator, arranging a ceasefire on the 28th.
To satisfy Thailand, the Japanese made the French relinquish swaths of Laos and Cambodia to Bibulsongram. For the time being, this worked very much in Japan's favour, as the Japanese had improved their relationship with Thailand without absolutely destroying their relationship with the French. Now, back to Vietnam and those whispers of revolution.
In February 1941, the leader of the Indo-Chinese Communist Party, a man named Ho Chi Minh, returned home from France and established the Viet Minh in Pak Bo Cave in Vietnam's Cao Bang Province. This was a coalition of communists and nationalists united in an anti-colonial independence movement against the Vichy French and the Japanese. Over the next four years, barring the 14 months he spent imprisoned in China, Ho Chi Minh consolidated his strength, receiving funding from the United States, the USSR, and China, and rallying as many as 1 million Vietnamese to his cause.
On the 22nd of December 1944, he created the Vietnam Liberation Army and made General Vo Nguyen Giap, nicknamed Red Napoleon, its military commander. Just three days later, a contingent of the Liberation Army fought its first battle. and won.
This was the Battle of Caillefat and Nangang, in which Red Napoleon personally led 33 revolutionaries in a raid against two French outposts, killing the outpost's armed French officers and forcing 37 colonial troops to surrender. As loot, Red Napoleon seized 40 rifles, which they would make good use of in the battles to come. By this point in the greater war, Following massive defeats in Burma and the Philippines, things weren't looking so hot for Japan. What pushed them over the edge in French Indochina, however, was the liberation of Paris in August 1944. Fearing an Allied invasion of Indochina, as well as a French uprising following the destruction of the Vichy government back in France, the Japanese stepped out from behind the curtain and seized Indochina from the French in a coup d'etat between March and May. 1945. Here, some 55,000 Japanese overran some 65,000 French and French colonial soldiers throughout Indochina, capturing 15,000 and killing 4,000. Some 3,000 French fled into China, others joined the pro or anti-Japanese guerrilla movements.
At the same time, the Vietnamese were struggling with a different sort of enemy, famine. In the Vietnamese famine of 1945, between 400,000 and 2 million people starved to death as a direct result of the French and Japanese occupation, but also factors beyond their control. Natural disasters, including a series of droughts, floods, and typhoons, destroyed edible crops. The French and Japanese seized, hoarded, and exported food and burned it for fuel.
forced the locals to grow industrial crops instead of edible crops, and generally did a terrible job of managing the distribution of food and alleviating starvation. Allied airstrikes against roads, warehouses, and transportation facilities did not make things any easier. All in all, Japan's coup d'etat cost Vietnam dearly, but the end times were near for the Japanese Empire. On the 6th of August, the US dropped the first bomb on the Japanese home islands, and on the 14th, Japan agreed to surrender. With his people starving and the Japanese laying down their guns, Ho Chi Minh's forces seized Hanoi and most of Indochina, persuading the puppet emperor, Bao Dai, to abdicate.
This was known as the August Revolution, an event punctuated by Ho Chi Minh's famous independence speech, which borrowed language directly from the US Declaration of Independence. But Ho Chi Minh wasn't in the clear just yet. In fact, his first Great War was only just getting started, and by the time of his death, he would be neck deep in the dead.
But we'll save that for part two of this video, now that we've set the stage for the First Indochina War. Before we get to that bloody conflict, did you know about the simultaneous French and Japanese occupation of French Indochina in World War II? What about the famine?
Can you expand on anything we covered in this video? Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section below.