Vietnam - the ghost of independence
The Japanese are entering Indochina. They don't yet know that entry is one yen, exit is two...
Japanese troops entering Indochina began disarming French units. Local patriots (and members of the Indochinese Communist Party, of course) decided to take advantage of this: on September 27, 1940, an uprising broke out in Bac Son County, Lang Son Province, and native units of the French colonial troops joined the rebels. The samurai, observing all this, immediately returned. weapon The interned French were allowed to suppress the uprising. By November 13, the last units of the Vietnamese rebels had been defeated.
Monument to the rebels in Bac Son
But then came the big news. Until then, the Vietnamese struggle for independence from France had been expressed mostly through theatrical performances and concerts on patriotic themes. Afterward, the struggle became armed. In Con Son, the red flag with a large gold star in the center was raised over the troops for the first time.
Uncle Ho in the guerrilla detachment
After the uprisings were suppressed, two groups infiltrated Vietnam across the border from the Chinese county of Jingxi. The first consisted of 43 people, some of whom had gained combat experience in the ranks of the Kuomintang. The second consisted of only six people. But among them was Ho Chi Minh. In fact, it was then that he adopted the pseudonym (meaning something like "Enlightener" or "Free Will"), which today is most often considered his given name.
The groups were detachments of the Vietnam Independence League, better known as the Viet Minh, founded in May 1941. The organization was based in the village of Pac Bo in Cao Bang Province, where it also established an underground printing press. The first book published was "The Art of War": one of the organization's members, the young lawyer Vo Nguyen Giap, loved books on military art and adored Sun Tzu and Napoleon! Compared to 30-year-old Giap and 35-year-old Pham Van Dong, 50-year-old Ho Chi Minh seemed like an old man and earned the nickname "Uncle Ho." At first, it was ironic, then respectful.
Comrades, this old man is a native of our area, a peasant who loves the revolution,
"Giap introduced Ho Chi Minh to the squad. The only truth in this was "he loves the revolution"—a biography of a man with a couple hundred aliases that James Bond would envy. And everyone immediately understood this: Ho Chi Minh drew a map of Hanoi from memory and advised the squad commanders to dig toilets first.
Who is this old man who gives us advice on what to do with our shit?!
— one of the young partisans later recalled.
Famine of 1945, Vietnamese children
The organization grew by leaps and bounds: left without oversight from the Hitler-occupied metropolis, French colonial officials engaged in "requisitions"—in other words, they stole everything that wasn't nailed down. Even the clothes of the already impoverished Vietnamese peasants were confiscated, kerosene was drained from lamps, and matches were confiscated.
But the worst came with the arrival of the Japanese: they didn't need rice, but they did need jute and cotton, which they began growing in the former rice fields. As a result, famine began in the most fertile region of Southeast Asia. When, on top of everything else, a drought began in 1944, followed by floods and crop failure, over 1 million people died of starvation in the country, with some resorting to cannibalism. To this day, Vietnamese recall how their elders scolded them as children for their careless handling of food: "If you had lived through 45, you wouldn't have done that!" In response to Japanese antics, armed self-defense units appeared in Vietnamese villages, quickly taken over by "Uncle Ho."
Occupied Vietnam became the focus of attention for various intelligence agencies. After the Japanese staged a coup in French Indochina in March 1945, establishing their rule, a group of agents led by Major Archimedes Patti was dispatched to the peninsula by the OSS (the US Office of Strategic Services, the predecessor of the CIA). The Americans wanted to establish contact with any anti-Japanese forces in the region, and Ho Chi Minh's forces were one of them.
A Comintern agent in the company of OSS agents
American intelligence officers were enchanted by "Uncle Ho": they sincerely believed that the Viet Minh would use the weapons they received exclusively against the Japanese. Naive! Meanwhile, Ho Chi Minh assumed political leadership of the organization and appointed Vo Nguyen Giap commander of the armed forces. True, the first armed unit, the "Propaganda Unit," was small—just 34 fighters, including three women—but it became the foundation of the Vietnam Liberation Army, established in May 1945.
Emperor Bao Dai was most interested in women and yachts, but what else could a French puppet do?
Uncle Ho cleverly used the allies to achieve his own goal—an independent, socialist Vietnam. In August 1945, he contracted malaria and chose an American doctor for treatment. When the Japanese took over, the Viet Minh sided with the French. The Viet Minh leader also fought with them against his rivals—nationalist organizations and Trotskyist cells that had emerged during the Japanese occupation. But in August, Japan surrendered, leaving a power vacuum in the country. The Viet Minh filled it.
Ho Chi Minh even managed to find an approach to the puppet emperor of Vietnam, Bao Dai, persuading him to write a letter to France declaring that the only way for the French to maintain their position in the country was to recognize its independence.
General Charles de Gaulle in 1945
L'independence? Qu'est-ce que cela signifite?
"General De Gaulle was surprised. But it was a little too late: on August 25, Bao Dai abdicated, and before doing so, he managed to play a dirty trick on the Gauls by instructing Uncle Ho to form a government. On May 2, 1945, Viet Minh troops marched victoriously into Hanoi. Ho Chi Minh, in Ba Dinh Square, before an enthusiastic crowd of thousands, delivered the speech of his life:
The French fled, the Japanese capitulated, Emperor Bao Dai abdicated. Our people broke the chains of colonial slavery that had bound them for over a century!
Here, in the square, he proclaimed the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.
Ho Chi Minh reads the declaration of Vietnamese independence on May 2, 1945.
All over Vietnam, there have been
Our teachers were very happy. They told us to go out into the streets and celebrate independence with everyone else. They said: even when you are old, you should remember this day,
— wrote one of the schoolchildren from that time. Interestingly, in his speech, Uncle Ho quoted the American Declaration of Independence, which is not surprising: OSS agents stood next to him at the podium, whom he even persuaded to take a photo with—at the ceremony raising the red flag, with its large gold star...
Uncle Ho knew how to talk to the people
It must be said that the refusal to cultivate a local elite played a cruel joke on the French. The country, according to one participant in the events, "starved for a hero to worship"And the charismatic Uncle Ho became such a hero: every Vietnamese home hung his portrait, and this wasn't a centralized administrative decree, but the natural desire of the Vietnamese, fed up with overseas colonizers. No politician in the world enjoyed such popular affection in those years.
However, Ho Chi Minh's actions also worked to enhance his reputation as a people's leader. In areas liberated by the guerrillas, landowners' land was redistributed among the peasants, and the landowners... Nothing good awaited them: the local landowners were servants of the colonial authorities, and the guerrillas weren't the most humane people when it came to collaborators; Viet Minh fighters usually buried them alive.
High Commissioner Admiral Thierry d'Argenlieu
And then... Hm, the British were smart enough to leave India after the war. The French didn't have that kind of brainpower. The thing is, France had a C-minus performance in the first half of World War II, and de Gaulle was very self-conscious about it. If he had chosen the path of granting Indochina independence in 1945, story The region would have followed a significantly less tragic trajectory. In principle, such a development was entirely possible: Pierre Messemer, the official in charge of colonial and overseas affairs, proposed opening negotiations with the Viet Minh. But de Gaulle chose to send Admiral Thierry d'Argenlieu, a staunch imperialist, as High Commissioner to Saigon, tasking him with returning the colony to French control.
Anglo-Indian troops
Incidentally, in some places, for example, in parts of Africa, this worked for a short time (a couple of decades) – there was no Ho Chi Minh or Indochinese Communist Party there. But in Vietnam, they were there. Therefore, what happened next can only be described as a gigantic blunder on the part of de Gaulle. A month after the proclamation of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, on September 12, 1945, Anglo-Indian troops landed in Saigon. French colonists and Japanese prisoners of war were released from prison, and together with the British, they cleared the southern peninsula of Viet Minh forces. Major General Douglas Gracey, the corps commander, announced that
The question of governing Indochina is the exclusive business of France.
Chiang Kai-shek and his "tau-fu"
At the same time, at the request of the Americans, Chiang Kai-shek sent 150 fighters to northern Vietnam to help the Allies regain control of the entire country. These troops apparently suffered from beriberi, and the locals nicknamed them "tau-fu"—"swollen Chinese." But their swollen feet didn't stop the new occupiers from robbing Vietnamese peasants, which further enhanced Uncle Ho's prestige. Furthermore, the "tau-fu" made a significant contribution to arming the Viet Minh—the Chinese were happy to sell weapons to the Vietnamese guerrillas. The French corps arrived in Saigon in October 1945, but was in no hurry to march north—the descendants of Asterix and Obelix needed a year to prepare. That year proved invaluable for Ho Chi Minh.
The veteran revolutionary's studies at the I.V. Stalin Communist University of the Toilers of the East were well worth it. He spent the year granted by the French uniting all anti-colonialist forces under one umbrella—his own. To begin with, he absorbed the non-communist youth organization "Vanguard of Youth." Those leaders who refused to align themselves with the Viet Minh were imprisoned, and their organizations were subjugated. In rural areas, he eliminated several thousand unreliable "kulaks." On January 4, 1946, he held national elections, which he predictably won (let's leave the accusations of election fraud to the conscience of Western historians—Uncle Ho had enough authority for a landslide victory).
Le Duan is Uncle Ho's successor.
In the south, open warfare was impossible; the fertile Mekong Delta was completely dominated by the French. Completely? Not quite: the colonialists managed to drive the Viet Minh out of the cities, but the activists retreated to the countryside and jungle. The most active guerrilla commander here was Ho Chi Minh's future successor, Le Duan, a seasoned underground fighter who had been trained in the "prison universities" that had been the forge of communist cadres in French Indochina.
Senator from French Guiana Gaston Monnerville
Why did France cling so tightly to the Empire, which was slipping from its grasp? The answer lies in the history of World War II: fighting France existed precisely by relying on its colonies—the metropolis was either occupied by the Germans or ruled by the Vichy government.
Without the Empire, France today would be nothing more than a liberated country... Thanks to its Empire, France became a victorious country,
"—said Gaston Monnerville, a black senator from French Guiana, in the summer of 1945. Therefore, the governments of the Fourth Republic, completely incompetent and weak in the metropolis, behaved with utmost ruthlessness in the colonies: when about a hundred Frenchmen were killed during riots in Algeria in May 1945, "Philibert's friends" retaliated by killing around 25 Algerians, and 90 Malagasy during the suppression of the uprising in Madagascar.
But the French clearly couldn't have managed it alone: after the war, the country's prestige wasn't high enough to allow such exercises. Oddly enough, France's colonial policy was supported by the Americans. What were their motives? Well, the fact is that Truman and company were terribly doctrinaire, and they viewed all anti-colonial movements as communist. And they hated communists far more than they disliked the colonial authorities. And Thierry d'Argenlieu's struggle with Ho Chi Minh fit perfectly into this pattern: the admiral was a staunch supporter of the colonial Empire, and Uncle Ho was a staunch communist. In fact, this is precisely why the Americans didn't provide the French with such extensive aid in either Algeria or Madagascar.
However, this wasn't yet obvious to Ho Chi Minh at the time: during the war, the Viet Minh and the French had been allies in the fight against the Japanese. So in July 1946, he arrived in Paris for talks on the future of Vietnam. The Vietnamese leader was greeted as a head of state, with all due honors, but it came at a low price! At Fontainebleau, Uncle Ho was told in no uncertain terms that they weren't going to negotiate with him, but rather convey instructions. De Gaulle declared right away:
Together with the overseas territories the French opened up to civilization, France is a great nation. Without these territories, it will cease to be so.
After which he added:
A regular police operation and eight days will be enough for us to get rid of you.
How can you recognize Vo Nguyen Giap in this photo? By his wide, captivating smile...
Ho Chi Minh returned to Tonkin and began preparing for war. There was no doubt that it was inevitable: General Philippe Leclerc, commander of French forces in Indochina, declared the Viet Minh an enemy of France and promised to defeat them as quickly as possible. He was deceived by the appearance of Defense Minister Vo Nguyen Giap—a broad smile and a good-natured demeanor. Appearances can be deceiving—a commander more ruthless in his own and others' losses would be hard to find! Leclerc quickly realized this, but on November 28, 1947, he died in a plane crash over Algiers. All military and civilian power fell into the hands of Thierry d'Argenlieu, who believed the Viet Minh could be quickly crushed:
It is impossible for us to deal with Ho Chi Minh; we must find other people with whom we can come to an agreement.
The High Commissioner decided to restore the abdicated Emperor Bao Dai to the throne.
Viet Minh soldier Nguyen Van Tieng with an antipersonnel mine on a pole. He was lucky—some only got their grandfathers' swords...
But first, Ho Chi Minh had to be dealt with. In November 1946, the Vietnam Liberation League camps near Haiphong were bombed from the air and shelled from the sea, killing thousands of people, but not many guerrillas—intelligence was far from always reliable. On December 19, Thierry d'Argenlieu issued an ultimatum to the Viet Minh: withdraw their forces from the city. In response, Ho revolted, his troops captured Hanoi, and held it for 60 days—the Viet Minh generals had learned from their experiences in Stalingrad! When the French succeeded in driving the Vietnamese forces out of the city, they declared victory and the complete restoration of control over Tonkin. Naive! The war was just beginning...
All illustrations used are taken from open sources.
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