Giap: The General Who Defeated America in Vietnam (7 page)

Uncle Ho had not been able to attend the meeting. He was still interned in China. When he finally reached Vietminh headquarters in the Viet Bac in late August, he reversed the committee’s decision. He gently but persuasively explained to Giap that his call for a regional uprising was premature. More work needed to be done to build up revolutionary fervor in the liberated zone and elsewhere. Giap recalled Ho’s advice in a memoir: “Now, the period of peaceful development of the revolution is over, but that of the nationwide uprising has not yet begun . . . The present struggle must necessarily proceed from the political form to the military form. But for the time being more importance must be given to the political form.”
¹³

Ho went on to say, however, that the time was right to form a regular army of full-time soldiers recruited from across all Vietnam, out of the various guerrilla units that were operating more or less independently throughout the country, but most effectively in Tonkin. He entrusted this great honor to Vo Nguyen Giap. On December 22, 1944, Giap formed a single platoon of thirty-one men and three women, drawing on seasoned personnel from his own guerrilla units and others that had been operating in Cao Bang, Langson, and Bac Kan Provinces. This platoon was a fighting unit, but its primary responsibility was to move among the population, spreading the word, seeking recruits, and on occasion protecting unarmed political cadres in their work.

Two days after the first Armed Propaganda Unit was formed, the platoon, wielding ancient rifles, pistols, and machetes, successfully attacked two small French outposts manned by French officers and a handful of Vietnamese militia troops. The officers were killed, and the militia troops quickly surrendered to their countrymen. Giap later reflected on the creation of this first platoon as a turning point. After a bewildering series of name changes, this force became known as the People’s Army of Vietnam—PAVN, or simply the People’s Army. We shall refer to it as such for the remainder of the book.

And indeed it was a decisive turning point. These first [armed propaganda] units were set up during the upsurge of the people’s armed
dau tranh
[struggle]. They were composed of Party members or
revolutionary elements, highly conscious politically and carefully selected among members of the workers’ and peasants’ [mass] associations . . . and other revolutionary organizations. Their main activities consisted in carrying out armed propaganda and fighting to raise the masses’ revolutionary spirit and encourage them to armed insurrection.
¹⁴

Working with one or more district guerrilla platoons or companies, the first Armed Propaganda Units were designed to carry out political work, mobilizing the minds of villagers through public speeches and meetings and urging them to refuse to give rice and taxes to French forces, in addition to “repression of traitors, puppet notables and ruffians.”
¹⁵
As it gained strength, the PAVN was to spearhead the Revolution in its fabled “March to the South.” Since the Armed Propaganda Units and the guerrilla units that soon joined this fledgling national force placed a premium on building up combat strength rather than deploying regular units in battle, they usually attacked only when success was virtually guaranteed, and when the situation lent itself to recruiting disaffected indigenous militia members who were currently attached to the French Expeditionary Force (FEF). An operation resulting in the capture of a handful of modern weapons was more valuable than one that inflicted heavy casualties. In fact, during World War II Giap’s army saw precious little combat. It trained rigorously, but outside of training, its work was predominantly political and organizational.

From the formation of the first platoon of the People’s Army in December 1944 through August 1945, Giap worked with herculean effort to build the fledgling army; in doing so, he further refined his methods for waging protracted war through the dual pincers of
dau tranh—
armed struggle and political struggle. The pincers intertwined to create an extremely powerful and resilient social force that amounted to a great deal more than the sum of its parts. The dynamic cross-fertilization of political and military work during World War II would pay enormous dividends during the thirty years of war that lay ahead. “Significantly,” scholar John McAlister points out,

it was the demands created by military preparation and operations which eventually offered the greatest stimulus to political mobilization. Through the physical mobilization of villagers into the nascent Viet Minh armed force, the coordination of local guerrilla efforts of village
self-defense units, and organization of the [armed] propaganda units, the capacity of this structure was tested. Without the military threat posed by the French reoccupation, the Viet Minh would have had to devise other forms of participation and psychological motivation for the political mobilization of the village population. Moreover, as the military requirements of the Viet Minh increased, efforts were made to expand its local organizational capacity.
¹⁶

In keeping with Communist doctrine, the People’s Army’s structure and training regimen evolved in accordance with changing circumstances. But from the very beginning, Giap instilled in his soldiers the notion that the army and the people must be inseparable and that political work among the people must be continuous. Mistreatment of civilians—stealing, or fraternizing with village women—was severely punished. To a far greater extent than in Western armies, the regular army in Vietnam depended on local civilians for sustenance, shelter, and intelligence on enemy activity.

Political indoctrination occupied more of a Vietminh soldier’s training time than small arms tactics. The two missions of the army as given in official publications of the 1940s were, first, to spread propaganda among the people and attract recruits, and second, to wage armed struggle against the enemy. Giap himself was often heard to say that the soldier’s work as a political agent was at least equal in importance to his work in combat.

When, on March 9, 1945, the Japanese, fearing that the French would turn against them as defeat loomed at the hands of the Allies, and hoping to improve their bargaining position when the war ended, staged a
coup de force,
killing, disarming, and imprisoning virtually all the French forces in Vietnam. Many outposts in northern Vietnam were deserted by French troops fleeing through the mountains toward China, and Japan declined to man these positions in the countryside with its own forces, thus creating a vast power vacuum on the ground in Vietnam and fueling revolutionary militancy in the countryside.

The ignominious defeat of a great Western power by an Asian military establishment that was itself about to be defeated in a world war was exactly what historian Fredrik Logevall says it was: a “pivotal moment” in Indochina, as “it dealt a blow to colonial authority from which it never fully recovered.”
¹⁷
Giap at that time had only 1,000 full-time regulars in his People’s Army, but he fully recognized that he had a golden opportunity to build up its strength and prestige.

The swell of militancy in the countryside in the wake of the coup was exacerbated by a devastating famine that struck northern Vietnam in late 1944 and early 1945, resulting in the deaths of at least 500,000 people. The Japanese refused to ship desperately needed rice from the south, and the French refused to release their own stores of hoarded rice to the Vietnamese people, heightening peasant desperation. Revolutionary forces were able to capitalize on this tragedy, as thousands of angry and starving peasants joined its ranks. In short, conditions were ideal to foment the long-anticipated uprising.

By April 1945, Giap’s PAVN had reached Tran Tao in Bac Thai Province. There it linked up with Chu Van Tan’s guerrilla units, which had been operating to the southeast of Giap near Bac Son. Tan’s units, informally associated with Giap’s PAVN, were now formally incorporated into the People’s Army of Vietnam. At Tan Trao, the Central Committee of the Indochinese Communist Party established a Revolutionary Military Committee responsible for both “the political and military command of the resistance bases in north Viet Nam.”
¹⁸
Giap was its senior officer. Chu Van Tan and Van Tien Dung, Giap’s chief of staff in the American War, were the other members of the committee. In May 1945, Vo Nguyen Giap was promoted to commander in chief of the army, and the entire country was divided into seven resistance zones for military planning purposes.

The collapse of the French presence in the countryside proved a boon to Giap’s campaign to expand the army as he consolidated Vietminh control over ever-larger swathes of territory in the Red River Delta. Around this time the six contiguous northern provinces of the Viet Bac were formally consolidated into a single “Liberated Zone.” In June 1945, the PAVN’s first infantry battalion of some 500 soldiers was formed. The People’s Army was gaining in strength, expanding its capabilities to fight in engagements involving only a few platoons at once.

By July, it was clear to everyone on the ground that Ho and Giap had been correct in their thinking that the impending defeat of the Japanese in World War II would provide the ideal moment to launch the national drive to seize power. But it was equally clear, as William Duiker points out, that “due to the convulsiveness of events as well as the modesty of [Vietminh] military organization and cadres, emphasis [should still be] placed on psychological preparation of the population.”
¹⁹
And indeed, Giap’s mushrooming armed forces engaged in only perfunctory combat operations—so
much so that even sixty years after the events Communist sources seldom mention a specific battle or location of sustained combat.

Throughout the summer of 1945, mobilization proceeded at breakneck speed. Wherever Liberation Army units marched, young men were recruited into village self-defense sections of twelve men each—these units were not technically part of the PAVN. Rather, they were one of the three types of forces developed to foment revolutionary fervor and defend the revolutionary political infrastructure within the villages. Typically each liberated village put forward five men for service in the full-time People’s Army.
²⁰

In Cochinchina, where local fiefdoms, religious sects, and the Binh Xuyen, a sort of Vietnamese crime syndicate, controlled large pockets of terrain, revolutionary strength lagged behind that of the north. The southern revolutionists, too, lacked a large liberated zone or a major base area for conducting guerrilla operations and training. The Vietminh committee overseeing development of the movement in southern Vietnam operated for a variety of reasons with a high degree of autonomy, although it recognized Ho and the Central Committee as the senior leadership of the Revolution. Its initiatives were often judged to be too adventurous by the Central Committee in Tonkin. Still, as summer approached, revolutionary activity in Saigon and the Mekong Delta accelerated. In the cities in the south, clandestine liberation committees readied themselves for action in anticipation of Japan’s defeat.

The American Office of Strategic Services (OSS) had established a friendly relationship with Ho and Giap in the last year of the war, exchanging small arms, radios, and a limited amount of war matériel in exchange for intelligence on the Japanese and the return of rescued American pilots who had been downed in their attacks on Japanese installations throughout Indochina. Both Ho and Giap formed warm personal contacts with American agents. They hoped to exploit those friendships in the negotiations concerning the fate of Indochina after the war ended.

On August 14, the Empire of Japan surrendered to the Allies. The next day the Japanese installed an “independent” government in Hue under Bao Dai, the titular emperor of Vietnam, but it was a hollow institution that simply added to the confusion that gripped the French as they looked on anxiously from Paris. Just a day earlier the Central Committee of the Indochinese Communist Party had called for a nationwide uprising and
the establishment of an independent republic under a provisional government dominated by Vietminh representatives, with some representation of other nationalist parties. On the morning of August 17, Armed Propaganda Units joined by special assault teams moved into the center of Hanoi. By the end of the day, major government buildings in the capital had been seized. Much to everyone’s surprise, the Japanese put up very limited resistance, and that only in isolated locations on the approaches to Hanoi. The frightened Vietnamese militia of Bao Dai’s puppet administration assembled by the Japanese after the March coup put up no resistance at all. Many dropped their weapons and joined the throngs of Vietminh supporters flooding into the heart of Hanoi. Vietminh paramilitary forces took control of a meeting at the National Theater organized by the puppet regime of Emperor Bao Dai, and within a few days, Bao Dai assented to Ho Chi Minh’s demand that he abdicate.

Soon, the crowd dispersed into the streets chanting, “Support the Vietminh!” In Hanoi, at least, the Japanese troops remained stoic spectators, as several hundred thousand people entered the city from the villages and suburban towns. On the morning of August 19 Giap and his People’s Army troops, about 1,000 strong, marched into the city. On that day, for the first time since 1873, Hanoi was under the complete control of the Vietnamese people.

Elsewhere in the country, the seizure of power took a bit longer. Within a week, most of the towns and cities were firmly under the control of Vietminh liberation committees. The provisional government declared September 2 a national holiday. A wave of excitement and joy swept over most of the nation that day, and nowhere more than in Ba Dinh Square in Hanoi, where Ho Chi Minh presided over a moving ceremony, famously quoting the American Declaration of Independence as he declared his own nation free of foreign domination. Uncle Ho concluded his remarks with a question: “My fellow countrymen, have you understood?” Vo Nguyen Giap, standing next to Ho on the rostrum, recalled that a million people cheered in unison.