Vo Nguyen Giap with Viet Minh fighters, 1944.
It was the year after the defeat of France by Nazi Germany that nationalist leader Ho Chi Minh formed the Viet Nam Doc Lap Dong Minh Hoi, or League for the Independence of Vietnam. This was soon shortened to Viet Minh. His military commander, Vo Nguyen Giap, began seizing territory in Tonkin. Four years later, following the collapse of the Japanese in August 1945, the Viet Minh and the much less communist-dominated United Party of Cochinchina were able to fill the political vacuum.
Both Ho Chi Minh and Vo Nguyen Giap were advocates of Mao Zedong’s theory of revolutionary war. Mao, drawing on the fighting in the vastness of China, reasoned that the revolutionary, to buy time to mobilize the political will of the people, should trade space. The struggle for ultimate political supremacy would take place through three stages. These consisted of the ‘safe-base-areas’ preparation phase, a guerrilla-warfare stage to weaken the enemy, and an open-warfare stage when the guerrillas were ready to fight a conventional war. In the case of Indochina, all three were to take place at the same time.
Foremost, the Viet Minh was a revolutionary movement whose goal was the seizure of political power rather than fighting a conventional conflict. Therefore, although Giap organized his forces on traditional lines with battalions, regiments and divisions, the chain of command was firmly in the hands of the political officers. This very much mirrored the control of the Soviet Red Army during the Second World War and the communist Chinese People’s Liberation Army during the Second World War, Chinese Civil War and Korean War.
Vo Nguyen Giap with Viet Minh fighters, 1944.
Direction of the people’s revolution rested with Ho and his government in exile operating in the mountains of Viet Bac. From there he sought to control every aspect of the conflict. From 1946–47, Indochina was divided up into fourteen Minh regions under the direction of a committee that answered directly to Ho Chi Minh. As the war escalated, these administrative zones were simplified to the three kingdoms that became Vietnam.
By 1948, there were just six inter-zones encompassing northwest Tonkin, northeast Tonkin (the division between the two rested on the Red or Hong River), the Red River Delta, north Amman, south Amman (the demarcation line was the city of Hue), and Cochinchina. Each had a controlling committee responsible to the leadership in Viet Bac. Their main task was to raise and train guerrilla forces. Ho called for a general mobilization of all males and females from 18 to 45 in November 1949.
The most basic Viet Minh unit was the very simple village militia. Made up of farmers, their task was to act as labourers carrying supplies, preparing defences and intelligence gathering. It has been estimated that, by 1954, the Viet Minh could call on over 350,000 militia. They formed a cadre of recruits who could also serve with the regional troops, effectively home guard, commanded by the inter-zone committees. They were responsible for protecting their local zone as well as conducting attacks on isolated local French garrisons.
By 1954, these regional troops totalled around 75,000 across the six inter-zones. They, like the militia, were ill-equipped and did not wear uniforms. This meant that they looked like the classic peasant guerrilla. Their main contribution to Giap’s war effort was that they helped tie down French forces the length and breadth of Vietnam. This effectively forced the French to adopt their strongpoint policy in trying to hold and defend territory.
Léo Figuères of the French Communist Party and Ho Chi Minh meet in Vietnam, May 1950. (Photo Stratigraphy)
The Viet Minh comprised village militia, regional troops and Chu Luc or regulars.
The third element was the Chu Luc, or Viet Minh regular force – also known as the Vietnamese People’s Army. This was a conventional army organized to defeat the weakened French military in the open-battle phase of the revolution. The Chu Luc was formed around Ho Chi Minh’s original resistance fighters, and were armed with Japanese, Chinese and captured French weapons. Their uniform consisted of black ‘pyjamas’ and cork, sun helmets, later popularized by the Viet Cong.
In 1950, the status of these units was formalized when sixty battalions were reorganized into five regular infantry divisions. These consisted off the 304th, 308th, 312th and the 316th in the Viet Bac base region, and the 320th in the South Delta base (Red River Delta). They were organized on conventional lines, each with three infantry regiments (of two or three battalions), supported by anti-aircraft guns and heavy mortars. At the end of the year, a sixth ‘heavy’ division was created, known as the 351st. This consisted of three regiments, with artillery and anti-aircraft guns, and one of engineers. This effectively was a firepower support division.
By 1954, the Chu Luc was over 125,000 strong, with the new 325th Infantry Division in the process of being formed in An Khe province. Although Giap had no naval or air force units, he did get assistance from the Chinese. In particular, there are reports of Chinese officers serving with the Chu Luc divisions and Chinese anti-aircraft units serving alongside the Chu Luc at Dien Bien Phu.
The Viet Minh were completely reliant on Communist China for logistical backing. Ho Chi Minh naturally looked to Mao for ideological and materiel support. He spoke fluent Chinese, having lived in China for over a decade. By the late 1940s, Mao was training Vietnamese fighters. His initial aim had been to send Chinese troops to assist Ho once he had secured the border with Indochina. Stalin would not agree to this as he had bigger plans involving Korea. When Ho travelled to Moscow in early 1950 to meet with Stalin and Mao, he was told military assistance was China’s responsibility.
Mao’s immediate contribution to the Viet Minh was to build roads up to the border to ferry in supplies. This ensured that the French lost control of the frontier very quickly. In the summer of 1950, Mao announced that he planned to train 60–70,000 Communist Vietnamese soldiers. They probably formed the cadre of the Chu Luc’s regular infantry divisions. Mao though, was soon downgrading his support by the autumn in order to concentrate on the much larger war in Korea. His troops were also sent to occupy hapless Tibet, yet another distraction from events in Indochina.
Ho must have wished Mao lavished the same assistance on Vietnam as he did North Korea. The first regular Chinese troops, designated Chinese People’s Volunteers to obfuscate China’s official entry into the Korean War, crossed the Yalu River in mid-October 1950. The following month, they numbered 200,000 men. By the new year, they were in the South Korean capital Seoul, when another 250,000 men were committed to the battle.
The Viet Minh, unlike their 1960s successors the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army, were initially very reliant on weapons captured from the Japanese and the French. Standard Japanese army small arms included the Nambu pistol, Arisaka Type 99 rifle, Type 100 sub-machine gun, and the Type 96 and 99 light machine gun. The Viet Minh also got their hands on Japanese 81mm and 90mm mortars. They would have particularly prized the Type 92/93 heavy machine guns and the Type 98 20mm cannon, which could be used for air defence. Keeping such weapons in the field though, was dependant on adequate stocks of ammunition. This problem was partly alleviated by the generosity of Stalin’s Red Army.
Although Japanese pistols were largely inferior to their Allied counterparts, their infantry rifles and mortars were as good as most Allied designs. In contrast, Japanese grenades were often ineffective due to poor fuses and explosives. The Japanese tended to neglect their weapons, so the poor, damp storage of ammunition and explosives cannot have helped the Viet Minh.
French colonial forces often had to make do with fairly ancient weaponry dating from the First World War or even older. Most of the more modern guns had been issued to the metropolitan French army. Nonetheless, the Viet Minh employed the standard French MAS-36 rifle and the MAT-49 sub-machine gun. During the Second World War, some American arms were supplied to the Viet Minh by the Office of Strategic Services for use against the Japanese. In later years, the French also transferred American weapons to Indochina that had been issued to their army by the U.S. under the Anfa Plan.
Mao supplied weapons, many of them simply passed on from the Soviet Union, including the Soviet Mosin-Nagant rifle, PPSh-41 and PPS-43 sub-machine guns and the SKS carbine. China and North Korea also made their own versions of the PPSh-41, known as the Type 50 and Type 49 respectively. The Chinese copied the SKS and Kalashnikov, but these did not appear until 1956. Chinese supplies would have included quantities of the Mauser-based Zhongzheng, or Chiang Kai-shek rifle, captured from the defeated Chinese nationalists, and the older Hanyang Type 88 rifle.
The long-term arming of the Vet Minh was never going to be a problem. In 1949, Mao was sitting on a vast arsenal of weaponry thanks to the Soviet Union and America. The Red Army, after defeating the Japanese in Manchuria in 1945, handed over vast quantities of captured weapons. The Chinese Communists were gifted 300,000 rifles, 4,800 machine guns, 1,200 artillery pieces, over 360 tanks and 2,300 trucks. Once the Chinese Communists went over to the offensive, they captured ever-increasing quantities of arms from the disintegrating Nationalist armies.
Much of the U.S. military equipment supplied to the Chinese Nationalist leader, Chiang Kai-shek, to help in the war against the Japanese, ended up being diverted. It was deliberately held back by Chiang, ready for the resumption of the civil war against Mao. There was enough equipment provided for 30 divisions, plus over 1,000 tanks. After the surrender of Japan in September 1945, American equipment flooded into Nationalist China. Washington pledged to equip another forty of Chiang’s divisions. This support, however, made Chiang complacent and overconfident.
Much of this new weaponry was swiftly lost. Mao’s forces captured over 140,000 American rifles during the last four months of 1948. When the nationalist armies systematically collapsed during 1946–49, Mao received a massive windfall of 2,000,000 rifles, 250,000 machine guns, 60,000 pieces of artillery, 940 tanks and armoured cars, and over 130 aircraft. Among all this, were large quantities of American guns that would be used against the French.
However, the bulk of these weapons, and the output from Mao’s military factories, would soon be soaked up by the voracious appetite of the Korean War.
Amongst the heavier weapons Mao provided the Viet Minh was the American 105mm howitzer, examples of which were captured in Korea and China.
Notably, by 1950, thanks to Chinese and Soviet aid, the Viet Minh started to deploy automatic anti-aircraft guns. The first loss to such weapons occurred on 19 January 1950, when a French air force P-63 Kingcobra was shot down over Thai-nguyen. Key among these deliveries was the Soviet M1939 37mm anti-aircraft gun based on the Bofors 40mm. This was issued to the 367th Regiment serving with the 351st Division.
Up to two regiments’ worth of 37mm guns were deployed at Dien Bien Phu, which ensured the French air force received a hot reception. There have been reports of an entire Chinese anti-aircraft regiment being committed to the battle, but this has never been substantiated. The Viet Minh also had 12.7mm and 14.5mm heavy machine guns acting in an anti-aircraft role.
Viet Minh logistics were surprisingly sophisticated and highly efficient, despite French efforts to cut their supply lines. Ho Chi Minh introduced conscription in 1942, and eventually all peasants were required to undertake three months’ labour every year. This usually meant digging defences or acting as porters in support of operations. To keep a Viet Minh division in the field for a month required around 50,000 porters each carrying 20kg. In some areas, bicycles were supplied, which meant porters could manage 70kg on the outward journey.
By 1952, Chinese aid was pouring over the border into the Viet Bac region by rail and then by road at a rate of 3,000 tonnes a month. This was gathered at Bac Kan, then distributed to units in the field. In 1953, almost 600 Soviet trucks were available for this job. The rapid Viet Minh build-up around Dien Bien Phu was, in part, thanks to these vehicles.
Supplies were first delivered to the Chinese rail heads at Hokow (Hokou) and Nanning. The latter offered the shortest route into northeastern Tonkin, with provisions being trucked from Nanning to the border town of Chan-Nun-Kawan, and from there on to Lang Son and Cao Bang. This attracted the attention of the French air force, so some convoys took a more circuitous route heading northwest on the Nanning–Kunming road before turning south to Cao Bang. On either route, movement usually happened after dark. To the west, a narrow-gauge railway ran from Kunming to Hokow, from where supplies could be trucked to Lao Kai. This though was not up and running until 1953, so it was not as important at the Nanning supply routes.
The guerrillas’ armoury included a wide variety of booby-traps intended to main or kill. The Viet Minh, and later the Viet Cong, became masters at improvising deadly and often despicable mines and booby-traps. These were used against convoys and foot patrols. They not only employed standard French and Chinese devices, but also produced homemade ones, using a variety of containers and explosives. Mines could be detonated by direct contact with either the mine or an electrical firing device, or by hand-operated electrical firing, or by trip wire. Mines were normally placed on well-travelled roads, trails, road bridges and footbridges. Aerial bombs, grenades, mines and mortar rounds were also used, often placed in trees.
Much more primitive impaling devices were employed, triggered by trip wire or manual release. Such devices included homemade crossbows, the spiked deadfall, mace, the Malayan gate and the trapeze swing. These were usually designed to strike the victim in the chest, and the only way to avoid them was by immediately falling backwards. The guerrillas also dug primitive but effective pit traps, the most common of which was a concealed punji pit full of stakes. There were also ankle traps, spike boards and sideways-closing traps to catch the unwary. These were often contaminated with human waste or other infectious materials containing bacteria. The fear of mines and booby-traps often greatly slowed down French operations.
Ho Chi Minh standing third from the left with an American liaison team in 1945.
As the three phases of revolutionary warfare were largely interchangeable, this made it very difficult, if not impossible, for the French to seize and hold the initiative. The French tactic of taking and securing ground inevitably meant that they had to then wait and see how the Viet Minh responded. Even when they went over to the offensive, such as at Hoa Binh and Dien Bien Phu, they faced the same problem. This meant the Viet Minh held the initiative for much of the war.
The French made little effort to counter the Vet Minh’s political campaign to garner popular support amongst the population. Their generals concluded wrongly that, over time, a combination of mobile operations and static defences would defeat the revolutionaries’ guerrilla and conventional warfare tactics. They were to be proved wrong.
In their guerrilla operations, the Viet Minh focused on infiltration and ambush to fight the French. The latter had no answer to infiltration, as the guerrillas looked like the peasants, enabling them, as Mao put it, to move among them 'as a fish swims in the sea'. All the French could do was try and seal off areas, for example, with the outposts on the Cao Bang–Lang Son ridge and the De Lattre Line.
The Viet Minh excelled at ambushes, especially as the French insisted on moving mainly along roads and waterways. Even when the French went over to the offensive, such as in Operation Lorraine, they still stuck to the roads and rivers. All the Viet Minh had to do was stop the lead vehicles of a convoy in a steep wooded valley, before pouring fire down to destroy it.
However, when Giap tried to fully enter the conventional warfare stage in 1951, he did this far too soon, resulting, thanks to French defensive measures, in defeat at Vinh Yen, Mao Khe and Phat Diem. The tactics of sending suicide squads to try and break through also favoured the French defenders, who responded with machine guns, artillery and napalm. It would be another two years before Ho and Giap were confident enough to again fight set-piece battles.