First Indochina War

First Indochina War
Part of the Indochina wars, the Cold War in Asia, and the decolonisation of Asia

Clockwise
  • After the fall of Dien Bien Phu, supporting Laotian troops fall back across the Mekong River into Laos
  • French Marine commandos wade ashore off the Annam coast in July 1950
  • M24 Chaffee American light tank used by the French in Vietnam
  • Geneva Conference on 21 July 1954
  • A Grumman F6F-5 Hellcat from Escadrille 1F prepares to land on French aircraft carrier Arromanches operating in the Gulf of Tonkin
Date19 December 1946 – 21 July 1954
(7 years, 7 months and 2 days)
Location
French Indochina
Result
Territorial
changes		 Partition of Vietnam into North and South Vietnam in 1954
Belligerents

Viet Minh

  • Democratic Republic of Vietnam

Pathet Lao

United Issarak Front

French Union

Commanders and leaders
  • Hồ Chí Minh
  • Võ Nguyên Giáp
  • Phạm Văn Đồng
  • Trường Chinh
  • Hoàng Văn Thái
  • ... and others
Strength

Việt Minh:

  • 125,000 regulars
  • 75,000 regional
  • 250,000 irregulars[5]
  • est. 5,000 former Imperial Japanese Army volunteers

France (French Far East Expeditionary Corps):

  • 190,000 main troops
  • 55,000 local auxiliary

State of Vietnam (Vietnamese National Army):

  • 150,000 troops[6]
Casualties and losses

Việt Minh:

  • 175,000–300,000 dead or missing (Western historians' estimate)[7][8][9][10]
  • 191,605 dead or missing (Vietnamese government's figure)[11]

France:

  • 74,220 dead (20,685 Frenchmen)[12]
  • 64,127 wounded

State of Vietnam:

  • 58,877 dead or missing[13]

The First Indochina War (generally known as the Indochina War in France, and as the Anti-French Resistance War in Vietnam, and alternatively internationally as the French-Indochina War) was fought in Indochina between France and the Việt Minh, and their respective allies, from 19 December 1946 until 21 July 1954.[19] The Việt Minh was led by Võ Nguyên Giáp and Hồ Chí Minh.[20][21] The conflict mainly happened in Vietnam.

At the Potsdam Conference in July 1945, the Allied Combined Chiefs of Staff decided that Indochina south of latitude 16° north was to be included in the Southeast Asia Command under British Admiral Mountbatten.[22] The French return to southern Indochina was also supported by the Allies. On V-J Day, September 2, Hồ Chí Minh proclaimed in Hanoi the establishment of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV). Also in September 1945, Chinese forces entered Hanoi, and Japanese forces to the north of that line surrendered to Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek. At the same time, British forces landed in Saigon, and Japanese forces in the south surrendered to the British. The Chinese acknowledged the DRV and the communist-led Việt Minh, then in power in Hanoi, even though they also supported pro-Chinese nationalist factions. The British refused to do that in Saigon, and deferred to the French. The DRV ruled as the only civil government in all of Vietnam for a period of about 20 days, after the abdication of Emperor Bảo Đại, who had governed Vietnam since 1926.

On 23 September 1945, with the knowledge of the British commander in Saigon, French forces overthrew the local DRV government, and declared French authority restored in the south 16th parallel. Guerrilla warfare began around Saigon immediately.[23] After China allowed France to advance north, Hồ Chí Minh agreed to talk with France but negotiations failed. After one year of low-level conflict, all-out war broke out in December 1946 between French and Việt Minh forces as Hồ Chí Minh and his government went underground. As part of decolonization, France talked with nationalists from 1947 and reorganized Indochina as a confederation of associated states within the French Union, based on a major reform declaration of 24 March 1945. In June 1949, they put former Emperor Bảo Đại back in power, as the ruler of the State of Vietnam. France also returned Cochinchina to Vietnam. However, the new state only slowly gained autonomy.[24]

In 1950, the USSR and a newly Communist China recognized the DRV while the US recognized the State of Vietnam. The conflict to a considerable extent turned into a conventional war between two armies equipped with modern weapons. France was helped by the United States, and the Việt Minh by China.[25][26] Guerrilla warfare continued to occur in large areas. French Union forces included colonial troops from the empire – North Africans; Laotian, Cambodian and Vietnamese ethnic minorities; Sub-Saharan Africans – and professional French troops, European volunteers, and units of the Foreign Legion. The use of French metropolitan recruits was forbidden by the government to prevent the war from becoming more unpopular at home. It was called the "dirty war" (la sale guerre) by French leftists.[27] In December 1950, France officially established an army for the State of Vietnam.[28][29] In September 1951, the US began providing direct economic aid to the State of Vietnam.[30]

The French strategy of inducing the Việt Minh to attack well-defended bases in remote areas at the end of their logistical trails succeeded at the Battle of Nà Sản. French efforts were hampered by the limited usefulness of tanks in forest terrain, the lack of a strong air force, and reliance on soldiers from French colonies. The Việt Minh used novel and efficient tactics, including direct artillery fire, convoy ambushes, and anti-aircraft weaponry to impede land and air resupplies, while recruiting a sizable regular army facilitated by large popular support. They used guerrilla warfare doctrine and instruction from Mao's China, and used war materiel provided by the Soviet Union. This combination proved fatal for the French bases, culminating in a decisive French defeat at the Battle of Điện Biên Phủ.[31] An estimated 400,000 to 842,707 soldiers died during the war[14][9] as well as between 125,000 and 400,000 civilians.[9][18] Both sides committed war crimes including killings of civilians (such as the Mỹ Trạch massacre by French troops), rape and torture.[32]

The State of Vietnam gained full independence legally in June 1954 although the transfer of power was not yet complete.[33] Despite gaining a great military advantage and controlling most of the country's territory, the Việt Minh had to accept a separation at 17th parallel under Chinese pressure.[34] At the Geneva Conference in July, the new French cabinet of Pierre Mendès France agreed to give the Việt Minh control of North Vietnam, but this was rejected by the State of Vietnam and the US.[35] A year later, in South Vietnam, the Republic of Vietnam was formed as a successor state of the State of Vietnam. After the division, the Indochinese Federation was dissolved in December 1954, followed by the South Vietnamese withdrawal from the French Union Assembly and the withdrawal of French troops from the South.[36] An insurgency, de facto controlled by the communist North, developed against the South Vietnamese governement. This Cold War conflict, known as the Vietnam War, ended in 1975 with the fall of South Vietnam to the North Vietnamese army.

  1. ^ Lee Lanning, Michael (2008). Inside the VC and the NVA. Texas A&M University Press. p. 119. ISBN 978-1-60344-059-2.
  2. ^ Crozier, Brian (2005). Political Victory: The Elusive Prize Of Military Wars. Transaction. p. 47. ISBN 978-0-7658-0290-3.
  3. ^ Fall 1994, p. 63.
  4. ^ Logevall, Fredrik (2012). Embers of War: the fall of an empire and the making of America's Vietnam. Random House. pp. 596–599. ISBN 978-0-375-75647-4.
  5. ^ Windrow 1998, p. 23.
  6. ^ Windrow 1998, p. 11
  7. ^ Fall, Bernard, The Two Vietnams (1963)
  8. ^ Eckhardt, William, World Military and Social Expenditures 1987–88 (12th ed., 1987) by Ruth Leger Sivard.
  9. ^ a b c d e Clodfelter, Micheal (1995). Vietnam in Military Statistics.
  10. ^ Stanley Kutler, Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War (1996)
  11. ^ "Chuyên đề 4 Công Tác Tìm Kiếm, Quy Tập Hài Cốt Liệt Sĩ Từ Nay Đến Năm 2020 Và Những Năm Tiếp Theo, datafile.chinhsachquandoi.gov.vn/Quản%20lý%20chỉ%20đạo/Chuyên%20đề%204.doc" (in Vietnamese). Retrieved 4 April 2023.
  12. ^ Clodfelter 2008, p. 657.
  13. ^ Dommen, Arthur J. (2001), The Indochinese Experience of the French and the Americans, Indiana University Press, p. 252
  14. ^ a b Lomperis, T. (1996). From People's War to People's Rule.
  15. ^ Karnow, S. (1983). Vietnam: a History.
  16. ^ Smedberg, M. (2008). Vietnamkrigen: 1880–1980 [The Vietnam War: 1880–1980] (in Danish). Historiska Media. p. 88.
  17. ^ Eckhardt, William (1987). World Military and Social Expenditures 1987–88 (12th ed.). Ruth Leger Sivard.
  18. ^ a b Dommen, Arthur J. (2001). The Indochinese Experience of the French and the Americans. Indiana University Press. p. 252.
  19. ^ Vo, Nghia M. (August 31, 2011). Saigon: A History. McFarland. ISBN 978-0-7864-8634-2 – via Google Books.
  20. ^ "Ho Chi Minh, President of North Vietnam". Encyclopaedia Britannica. 15 May 2023.
  21. ^ "Vo Nguyen Giap, Vietnamese general". Encyclopaedia Britannica. 15 April 2024.
  22. ^ "Foreign Relations of the United States: Diplomatic Papers, The Conference of Berlin (The Potsdam Conference), 1945, 1945, Volume II".
  23. ^ The Pentagon Papers, Part I, via Wikisource
  24. ^ "The Pentagon Papers, Chapter 2, "U.S. Involvement in the Franco-Viet Minh War, 1950-1954", U.S. Pokicy and the Bao Dai Regime". Archived from the original on 2011-08-06. Retrieved 2011-07-23.
  25. ^ Fall 1994, p. 17.
  26. ^ Goscha 2022, pp. 74–80.
  27. ^ Rice-Maximin, Edward (1986). Accommodation and Resistance: The French Left, Indochina, and the Cold War, 1944–1954. Greenwood.
  28. ^ A Brief Overview of the Vietnam National Army and the Republic of Vietnam Armed Forces(1952-1975) Archived 2009-03-27 at the Wayback Machine, Stephen Sherman and Bill Laurie
  29. ^ Trần Gia Phụng (1 June 2010). "Các lực lượng trong nước trong chiến tranh 1960-1975". danchimviet.com. Archived from the original on 2010-07-11. Retrieved 6 July 2010.
  30. ^ "Historical Documents - Office of the Historian".
  31. ^ Flitton, Dave (7 September 2011). "Battlefield Vietnam – Dien Bien Phu, the legacy". Public Broadcasting System. Archived from the original on 2021-10-30. Retrieved 29 July 2015.
  32. ^ Goscha, Christopher (2016a). The Penguin History of Modern Vietnam. London: Penguin Books. p. 260. ISBN 978-0-14-194665-8 – via Google Books.
  33. ^ "Vietnam, indépendance, Digithèque MJP".
  34. ^ Hastings, Max (2018). Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy 1945-1975. New York. ISBN 978-0-06-240566-1.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  35. ^ Trần Gia Phụng. "Hiệp định Genève 20-7-1954". Việt Báo Online.
  36. ^ United States Department of Defense, ed. (2011). "U.S. and France's Withdrawal from Vietnam, 1954–1956" (PDF). National Archives and Records Administration. The Pentagon Papers.
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