As we said in part one of this video, the First Indochina War is often overshadowed by the Second
Indochina War or Vietnam War, despite the fact that it was one of the bloodiest wars
of the 20th century. Where we left off, the Japanese had just lost
the Second World War and Hồ Chí Minh had just taken Hanoi and much of Indochina and persuaded
the puppet-Emperor Bảo Đại to abdicate in what was deemed the August Revolution.
Now that World War II was over, the Japanese let the Việt Minh take control of Indochina
while the French and British were moved into Saigon to restore order and the Chinese
occupied Hanoi. The Japanese in south Vietnam surrendered to a Franco-British task force
led by Generals Philippe Leclerc and Douglas Gracey, while those in the north
surrendered to some 200,000 nationalist Chinese troops under General Lu Han.
Of course, both of these actions compromised Hồ Chí Minh's hold on Indochina.
With the French government reinstated in France, the French wanted their colony back,
and they were willing to fight for it. From September 1945 to March 1946,
the Franco-British task force released Japanese and Vichy French POWs to help them assert control
in Saigon. While they primarily fought the Việt Minh, several other Vietnamese organisations got
involved, fighting on both sides of this six-month war. Ultimately, the task force beat the Việt Minh
back, driving them out of the city and into the countryside. Following the task force's victory,
General Gracey took his soldiers and left Indochina to General Leclerc and his men.
On the other hand, Chiang Kai-shek, the leader of the Chinese Kuomintang or Nationalist Party,
wanted to increase his influence in Vietnam, directly contesting the Việt Minh. To achieve
this, he armed the Việt Quốc, a Vietnamese nationalist party modelled after the Kuomintang.
According to the Red Napoleon, the Việt Quốc was a "group of reactionaries plotting to rely
on Chiang Kai-Shek's Kuomintang and their rifle barrels to snatch a few crumbs." Unfortunately for
the Việt Quốc, the nationalist Chinese troops withdrew from north Vietnam in February 1946,
agreeing to do so if the French let go of their holdings in China,
including Shanghai. Without the Chinese there to protect the Việt Quốc,
the Việt Minh ate them alive, massacring thousands in what was was called the Great Purge.
Without the Chinese nationalists there to bother them, the French moved on the north,
landing in the port of Haiphong. Throughout 1946,
fearing things would return to how they were before World War II,
the Việt Minh opened up peace talks with France. These were known as the Fontainebleau Agreements,
but an actual agreement was never reached, as the French refused to give the Việt Minh the freedom
they wanted. In November, armed clashes broke out in Haiphong, and the French answered by bombarding
the Vietnamese sections of the city, killing 6,000 in what became known as the Haiphong Massacre.
On the 19th of December 1946, the Việt Minh set off explosives in Hanoi's power plant, consigning
the city into darkness, and then started attacking French soldiers and civilians alike.
Red Napoleon's order to his 30,000 soldiers was to "stand together,
go into battle, destroy the invaders, and save the nation." By the 18th of February,
the French had driven the Việt Minh out, and the First Indochina War had begun.
As with every post-World War II conflict, both the Việt Minh and the French enjoyed support from
various foreign nations and internal organisations at different stages of the First Indochina War.
From the get-go, the Việt Minh were advised, trained, and armed by forces of the Chinese
Communist Party or CCP, and even fought side-by-side with them at times. This relationship
became even stronger after the CCP defeated the Kuomintang in the concurrent Chinese Civil War.
To put the CCP's support into perspective, it shipped some 155,000 small arms,
58 million rounds of ammo, 4,600 artillery pieces, over a million artillery shells,
and much, much more war materiel and supplies to Vietnam between 1950 and 1956.
The Việt Minh also had a second red ally in the USSR, which provide weapons, ammunition,
artillery pieces (such as Katyusha multiple rocket launchers), trucks (such as GAZ-51s), fuel,
military advisers, and more. A remnant from World War II, thousands of Japanese soldiers
avoided repatriation and shame at the end of the global conflict to stay in Indochina and fight for
the Việt Minh. As many as 5,000 helped to train the Việt Minh during the First Indochina War,
working out of military installations such as the Quảng Ngãi Army Academy.
As for the French, they enjoyed support from the French Union, which has succeeded the
French Empire, at least in name, in 1946. The French Far East Expeditionary Corps
was composed of soldiers from French territories, including but not limited to Morocco, Senegal,
and Tunisia, while some 325,000 Indochinese troops fought for them, too, some under the
former Emperor Bảo Đại's Vietnamese National Army, some with the Kingdoms of Cambodia and Laos, and
some with other anti-Việt Minh organisations in Vietnam. Hoping to prevent the spread of communism
following the CCP's victory in the Chinese Civil War in 1949, the United States quickly became
one of France's biggest supporters. It provided supplies, soldiers, and naval and air assistance,
and even toyed with the idea of dropping a nuke somewhere. Perhaps the US's greatest
contribution was Operation Passage to Freedom, however, where they transported some 310,000
civilians and soldiers out of North Vietnam and into South Vietnam between 1954 and 1955.
Returning to the early days of the war, Red Napoleon avoided a head-on confrontation with the
French, resorting to guerrilla tactics instead. In October 1947, however, the French almost delivered
a knock-out blow. This was Operation Léa, in which the French dropped 1,100 paratroopers on the city
of Bắc Kạn, hoping to catch Hồ Chí Minh with his pants down. While unsuccessful in capturing Hồ Chí
Minh, some 15,000 French troops entered the city as some 40,000 Việt Minh troops closed the noose
on the paratroopers, and the French were able to wound or kill between 9,000 and 10,000 of them.
Offensives like Operation Léa were expensive, though, so France tried to achieve victory through
politics instead. In March 1949, the French entered an agreement with the former emperor
Bảo Đại, granting him control of Vietnam as an autonomous government within the French Union.
This was called the State of Vietnam, and Hồ Chí Minh saw right through it. He wanted, quote,
"real independence, not Bảo Đại independence." That same year, the aforementioned Vietnamese
National Army was created, fighting in league with the Expeditionary Corps.
As we mentioned, the Chinese Communist Party won the Chinese Civil War in 1949,
and this changed the whole dynamic of the First Indochina War. Now, the Việt Minh
could retreat to the Chinese border to pick up vast quantities of weapons and supplies.
Armed by the CCP, Red Napoleon claimed victory after victory in attacks on French garrisons
in north Vietnam. One of his larger victories he claimed was in the Autumn-Winter Border Campaign.
Between the 30th of September and 18th of October 1950,
the Việt Minh wiped out some 8,000 troops of the Expeditionary Force and Vietnamese National Army,
making extensive use of ambush tactics along Route Coloniale 4, from Cao Bằng to Lạng Sơn.
Some of the heaviest fighting took place in the first half of 1951.
Unwilling to lose any more ground to the Việt Minh, the famous French General Jean Marie de
Lattre de Tassigny arrived in Indochina and established a defensive line around Hanoi,
effectively closing it off against the Gulf of Tonkin. This was the aptly named De Lattre Line,
composed of a network of 1,200 concrete blockhouses connected by roads capable of
bearing 30-tonne tanks. In January, Red Napoleon tried to breach the line at Vĩnh Yên but got
completely smashed upon launching a head-on assault with his 308th Division. De Lattre
answered the reckless charge with airstrikes and napalm, killing as many as 1,600 enemy troops
and wounding a further 6,000, according to French estimates. This battle marked the end of the 1951
good times for Red Napoleon, who suffered defeat after defeat testing the de Lattre defences.
The war was not over, though—far from it.
In January 1952, General de Lattre left Indochina with cancer, to which he succumbed soon after,
and Red Napoleon became emboldened, spreading through most of the Tonkin region. The French,
now commanded by General Raoul Salan, had to make a big play,
or Red Napoleon would become too powerful to stop. But we'll save that chapter of the story
for part three of this video, in which we'll reach the bloody conclusion of the First Indochina War.
For now, did you know that the First Indochina War was such a convoluted mess, with all sorts
of foreign powers supplying the Việt Minh and French? Did you know that Japanese soldiers
stayed behind after Imperial Japan's surrender to fight in Indochina? Can you expand on anything we
covered in this video? Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section below.