First Indochina War

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First Indochina War
Part of the Indochina Wars and the Cold War in 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 Central Vietnamese 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
Date 19 December 1946 – 21 July 1954 Location French Indochina Result Việt Minh victory[13][14][15][16] French recognition of communist Việt Minh in North Vietnam[17][18] Fall of the Indochinese Federation on 30 December 1954[19] Start of the Vietnam War Withdrawal of South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from the French Union in 1955 and 1957[20] Territorial changes Autonomy and independence of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia[10] Division of Vietnam between North Vietnam and South Vietnam in 1954
Belligerents
Việt Minh DR Vietnam Lao Issara (1945–1949) Pathet Lao (1950–1954)[1]: 12–3  Khmer Issarak[2] United Issarak Front (1950–1954)[3] Supported by:  China (1950–54)[4][a]	French Union France State of Vietnam (1949–54) Bình Xuyên Hòa Hảo Cao Đài Catholics Việt Nam Quốc Dân Đảng Nationalist Party of Greater Vietnam[8] Vietnamese Pure Land Buddhist Laity Association[9] Other Vietnamese anti-communists Cochinchina (1946-49) Tonkin (1946-49) Annam (1946-49) Kingdom of Cambodia Kingdom of Laos Vietnam National Rally (1946–47) Anti-communist Vietnamese groups in Cochinchina Union National Front (1947–49)[10] Vietnam Revolutionary League Other Vietnamese anti-communists Other anti-communist forces[11] Supported by:  United States (1950–54)[12]
Commanders and leaders
Hồ Chí Minh Võ Nguyên Giáp Phạm Văn Đồng Trường Chinh Hoàng Văn Thái Nguyễn Bình † Vương Thừa Vũ Lê Trọng Tấn Souphanouvong Kaysone Phomvihane Son Ngoc Minh Tou Samouth Chen Geng	Charles de Gaulle Felix Gouin Vincent Auriol René Coty Philippe Leclerc Jean-Étienne Valluy Roger Blaizot Marcel Carpentier Jean de Tassigny Raoul Salan Henri Navarre Paul Ély Alphonse Pierre Juin Lê Văn Hoạch Huỳnh Phú Sổ Nguyễn Văn Xuân Ngô Đình Diệm Nguyễn Hải Thần Nguyễn Tường Tam Norodom Sihanouk Sisavang Vong Thaddeus Lê Hữu Từ Nguyễn Văn Hinh Bảo Đại Vũ Hồng Khanh Donald R. Heath[21]
Strength
Việt Minh: Regulars: 125,000 Regional: 75,000 Irregulars: 250,000[22] Former Imperial Japanese Army volunteers: est. 5,000[citation needed] Total: est. 450,000	France: Expeditionary Corps: 190,000 Local auxiliary: 55,000 State of Vietnam: Vietnamese National Army 150,000[23] Total: est. 395,000
Casualties and losses
Việt Minh: 175,000–300,000 dead or missing (Western historian estimated)[24][25][26][27] 191,605 dead or missing (Vietnamese government's figure)[28]	French Union: 74,220 dead (20,685 being French)[29] 64,127 wounded State of Vietnam: 58,877 dead or missing[30] Total: est. 134,500 dead or missing
400,000–842,707 total killed[31][26][32] 125,000–400,000 civilians killed[26][33][34][35]

The First Indochina War (generally known as the Indochina War in France, and as the Anti-French Resistance War in Vietnam) was fought between France and communist Việt Minh, and their respective allies, from 19 December 1946 until 21 July 1954.^[36][37] Việt Minh was led by Võ Nguyên Giáp and Hồ Chí Minh.^[38][39] Most of the fighting took place in Vietnam, which became a French Union's autonomous country in 1949, although the conflict also extended into other protectorates in French Indochina such as Laos and Cambodia.^[40][41] While the war against the Việt Minh and allies was for France to reclaim Indochina, it had elements of a civil war during the Cold War as Indochinese countries became significantly independent and the war involved the United States and China.^{[42][43][1]: 12–3}

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.^[44] On V-J Day, September 2, Hồ Chí Minh proclaimed in Hanoi (Tonkin's capital) the establishment of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV). In late September 1945, Chinese forces entered Tonkin, and Japanese forces to the north of that line surrendered to Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek. At the same time, British forces landed in Saigon (Cochinchina's capital), and Japanese forces in the south surrendered to the British. The Chinese acknowledged the DRV under Hồ Chí Minh, then in power in Hanoi. The British refused to do that in Saigon, and deferred to the French, despite the previous support of the Việt Minh by American OSS representatives. 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 during French colonial period and later Japanese military occupation in World War II.^[45]

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 Cochinchina. Guerrilla warfare began around Saigon immediately,^[46] but the French gradually retook control of much of Indochina. 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. Faced with an outdated and inadequate guerrilla army alongside a weak and unstable government like the Việt Minh, the advantage initially tilted heavily towards France.^[47][48][49] As part of the decolonization trend, France wanted to apply the March 24, 1945 declaration on Indochina to give more freedom and democracy to this territory. The war with the communists forced France to choose another solution to apply this declaration in Vietnam, especially when the leftists came to power at the end of 1946 and the following year announced that France would grant independence and unification to another Vietnamese government.^[50][51] The French tried to stabilize Indochina by reorganizing it as a confederation of Associated States. On 8 March 1949, after negotiations with native anti-communists, they put former Emperor Bảo Đại back in power, as the ruler of a newly established State of Vietnam, a sovereign associated state with reunification of 3 territories: Tonkin and Annam protectorates and Cochinchina colony.^[52] France then gradually transferred power to this government.^[42] On 3 February 1950, the United States was the first country recognizing this nominally independent state. Later the two countries established diplomatic relations.^[42] On 8 December 1950, it was allowed by France to have its own national army (Vietnamese National Army) but was still partly controlled by France. From here, the French army in Vietnam officially became the French Union army and side by side with the Vietnamese National Army to fight communism in the war.^[53] During the war, this army's role was particularly weak and dependent on the French army, while American military aid to Vietnam had to go through France. However, the United States began providing direct economic aid to Vietnam in September 1951.^[42][54] The first few years of the war involved a low-level rural insurgency against the French. The war spread to Laos and Cambodia when the Việt Minh supported small resistance factions, Pathet Lao and Khmer Issarak, which were nationalist coalition forces against the French but were in fact dominated by communists under the control of Việt Minh communists.^[55]

During the Cold War in 1950 the conflict to a considerable extent turned into a conventional war between two armies equipped with modern weapons, with the French supplied by the United States, and the Việt Minh supplied by the Soviet Union and a newly communist China. China's help for the Việt Minh turned the situation upside down in favor of the Việt Minh.^[56][57][58] 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.^[59]

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 1952 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 through China.^[60] The involvement of the US and China reached its climax at Điện Biên Phủ.^[61][62] Chinese help for the communist Việt Minh proved fatal for the French Union, culminating in a decisive French defeat at the Battle of Điện Biên Phủ.^[63] An estimated 400,000 to 842,707 soldiers died during the war^[31][26] as well as between 125,000 and 400,000 civilians.^[26][35] Both sides committed war crimes including killings of civilians (such as the Mỹ Trạch massacre by French troops), rape and torture.^[64]

On 4 June 1954, the State of Vietnam gained full independence from France, marking the completion of France's transfer of power to Vietnam.^[65][66][b] On 30 December 1954, the Indochinese Federation was dissolved.^[68] Before that, at the International Geneva Conference on 21 July 1954, the new French government of Pierre Mendès France and the Việt Minh agreed to end the war and give the communist Việt Minh control of North Vietnam above the 17th parallel,^[69][70] but this was rejected by the State of Vietnam and the United States.^[71] A year later, Bảo Đại would be deposed by his prime minister, Ngô Đình Diệm, creating the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam). Soon an insurgency, backed by the communist north, developed against Diệm's anti-communist government. This proxy conflict, known as the Vietnam War, included large U.S. military intervention in support of the South Vietnamese and ended in 1975 with the defeat of South Vietnam to the North Vietnamese,^[72][73] leading to Vietnamese reunification under a communist state in 1976.^[74]

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