u/walk0nwalls

Ngày 6/3/1946, CT HCM ký với Sainteny, đại diện của Pháp tại miền Bắc hiệp định Sơ bộ. Hiệp định này cho phép quân đội Pháp thay thế quân TQ giải giáp quân đội Nhật ở miền Bắc. Trước đó, Pháp và Tưởng đã ký hiệp định Trùng Khánh để Tưởng chấp nhận cho Pháp được thế chân tại Bắc Việt. Đổi lại, Pháp trả lại Tưởng nhượng địa của Pháp tại TQ và đường sắt Côn Minh.

Quân Pháp ra Bắc giải giáp quân Nhật nhưng không thể tiếp tục thương thảo được với VNDCCH về vai trò của nước VN. VNDCCH đòi VN phải được độc lập và thống nhất 3 kỳ trong khi HĐ Sơ bộ trước đó đã thống nhất là VN chỉ độc lập trong Liên bang Đông Dương thuộc Liên hiệp Pháp (không phải nước Pháp) và Nam Kỳ có nhập vào 2 kỳ còn lại hay không còn phụ thuộc vào 1 cuộc trưng cầu dân ý.

Mâu thuẫn kể trên khiến cho chiến tranh Việt - Pháp nổ ra vào ngày 19-12-1946. Chính quyền VNDCCH rút lên Việt Bắc tổ chức kháng chiến. Trước đó, vào 1/6/1946, Cộng hòa Nam Kỳ được thành lập, Nam Kỳ ly khai khỏi VNDCCH bằng 1 cuộc bầu cử của Hội đồng tư vấn Nam Kỳ (kiểu như Hội đồng nhân dân hiện nay). Chính quyền này chỉ được người Pháp công nhận. Trên thực tế từ cuối năm 1945, chính quyền VNDCCH đã bị vô hiệu tại Nam Kỳ.

Như vậy, sau khi VNDCCH rút lên chiến khu thì không có 1 chính quyền nào chính thức quản lý Bắc Việt. Người Pháp cần có 1 chính quyền của người Việt để quản lý VN và không muốn biến VN thành thuộc địa như trước 45. Người Pháp muốn biến cuộc chiến Pháp - Việt thành cuộc chiến chống Cộng giữa 2 phe người Việt chứ không phải là cuộc chiến giành thuộc địa của mẫu quốc với dân bản xứ.

Sau khi thoái vị ngày 25/8/1945, vua Bảo Đại thành cố vấn Vĩnh Thụy cho chính quyền mới. Nhưng trong chuyến công cán sang TQ để vận động Tưởng Giới Thạch ủng hộ VNDCCH, Vĩnh Thụy bị bỏ lại TQ (VM thì cho là ông trốn lại). Vĩnh Thụy được 1 số người cưu mang và chuyển tới ở Hongkong.

Thành lập chính phủ

Giải pháp Bảo Đại được cả người Pháp lẫn phe Quốc gia (không CS) người Việt ở Nam Kỳ thấy là tối ưu nhất để thành lập 1 chính quyền của người Việt. Hai bên đều cử đại diện sang Hongkong để thuyết phục Bảo Đại quay lại VN chấp chính. Cựu hoàng không dễ dàng chấp nhận mà ra điều kiện với Pháp về nền độc lập và toàn vẹn lãnh thổ của VN. Cuối cùng, người Pháp phải nhượng bộ, chấp nhận từ bỏ thuộc địa Nam Kỳ vô điều kiện 1 cách chính thức (thông qua quốc hội Pháp). Hiệp định Elysee cụ thể hóa điều đó thành văn bản.

Bảo Đại đã làm được điều mà VM mong muốn mà không được người Pháp chấp nhận, đó là VN được toàn vẹn lãnh thổ. Khi ký kết HĐ, Bảo Đại ký với TT Pháp kiêm chủ tịch Liên hiệp Pháp, thể hiện vai trò của Bảo Đại như 1 nguyên thủ quốc gia. Trong khi trước đó, CT HCM chỉ được ký HĐ Sơ bộ với Sainteny là 1 ủy viên cộng hòa Pháp (tương đương Thống sứ Bắc kỳ, dưới quyền cao ủy - toàn quyền Đông Dương). Sau đó, CT HCM ký Tạm ước với Moutet (Bộ trưởng Pháp). Tức là người Pháp không coi CT HCM như 1 nguyên thủ quốc gia ngang hàng.

Quốc gia VN có thủ đô đặt tại Sài Gòn, quốc kỳ là cờ vàng 3 sọc đỏ, quốc ca là bài Thanh niên hành khúc của Lưu Hữu Phước được cải lời. Đây chính là quốc kỳ và quốc ca VNCH sau này.

Đến năm 1950, có 35 nước công nhận QGVN và thiết lập ngoại giao. Trong khi đó, phe XHCN thì công nhận VNDCCH cũng chỉ từ tháng 1/1950, sau khi thành lập Cộng hòa nhân dân Trung Hoa. Năm 1952, QGVN đại diện cho VN tham dự hội nghị San Francisco, thủ tướng Trần Văn Hữu đã tuyên bố chủ quyền HS và TS của QGVN, không có nước nào tham dự hội nghị phản đối. Đài Loan và Trung Cộng (lúc đó đã nắm Hoa lục) đều không được tham dự hội nghị.

Nguồn: Dương Quốc Chính

Link to the video in question

Appreciated their commentary so I thought I'd post it here

MEMORY WAR

The Chinese considered the CSP(Biden’s Comprehensive Strategic Partnership) a serious affront. Inside the United States, members of one group found it utterly unacceptable: Vietnamese Americans. The Fourth Civil War for Vietnam ended nearly fifty years ago, but it is not over for survivors and their descendants in the United States. Vietnamese American communities are products of the exodus from Southern Vietnam just before and after the fall of Saigon to communist armies in April 1975. Their "founders" and first leaders have been mostly former ranking members of the defeated RVN government and its armed forces who lost everything because of the civil war Ho Chi Minh instigated and Le Duan won. A good number of them spent years in re-education camps following the communist triumph of 1975. Once the elite of their homeland, they suddenly found themselves working as cooks, janitors, and nail filers - the bluest of blue-collar wage laborers - in the United States. The experience was as tragic as it was humiliating, and they blamed Ho, Hanoi, and Vietnamese communism for it.

For older members of the diaspora in particular, the trauma of loss and persecution resulting from the actions of communist authorities during and after the war endures. Initiatives undertaken by the US government to normalize and improve relations with the SRVN, including the CSP, are odious because they effectively legitimize and reward the very regime that took everything from them. Their anger, refusal to forget, and memories shared with descendants have in many ways kept hostilities alive.
The RVN "heritage" flag remains ubiquitous in so-called Little Saigons - or "Vietnamtowns" - from Orange County, California, to Arlington, Virginia. RVNAF veterans wear their old uniforms on special occasions and still call each other by their last military rank. The Vietnamese refugee ordeal - the trauma of loss and persecution just mentioned - is commemorated and honored each 30 April, "Black April." The war for the soul of Vietnam may be over, but that for its memory is not.

The United States tallied 2.2 million citizens of Vietnamese descent in 2023. That number represents nearly half of the Việt kiều, or overseas Vietnamese, population globally. The largest concentrations are in California and Texas. The city of Westminster in Orange County is an informal Việt kiều capital; its population is 40 percent Vietnamese American.

Ethnic Vietnamese in the United States have adjusted and assimilated well to the point of being considered a "model minority," a label some appreciate and others find deeply offensive. Traditional culture, loosely defined to include the culture of the RVN, is their social glue. While Hanoi combatted it for decades because of its alleged feudal, bourgeois, and decadent under-tones, diasporic Vietnamese and those in the United States in particular became its custodians. Sentimental "yellow music" produced in noncommunist Vietnam during the French and American Wars, and other forms of artistic expression banned by DRVN/SRVN authorities after 1975, thrive in California and elsewhere. Nguyen Cao Ky Duyen (b. 1965), the daughter of former RVN Prime Minister and Vice President Nguyen Cao Ky, is a famous singer, songwriter, and ambassador for such "traditional" and diasporic Vietnamese music and culture. Nostalgia for yellow music has even spread to Vietnam itself. Authorities there now tolerate it, and even allow performances by overseas Vietnamese artists.

Vietnamese in Vietnam and those of the American diaspora may be growing closer culturally, but history and politics continue to divide them. The refugee generation is fading fast; the loss and trauma of their experience are not. Their families, and especially their children, remember. Members of the "1.5 generation" who were born in Vietnam and grew up in the United States harbor strong resentment toward Hanoi for the grief and hardship it caused their parents. Their hatred of communism runs deep, especially in California, Texas, and Virginia, where they find strength and validation in numbers, not unlike Cuban Americans in Florida sharing that same hatred of communism for many of the same reasons. Some still engage in clandestine efforts to overthrow the SRVN government and restore the RVN, including broadcasting anti-Hanoi propaganda from neighboring Cambodia. Fascinatingly, they believe the United States betrayed the RVN in 1975 even as they champion its commitment to freedom and democracy today. They exhibit staunchly patriotic tendencies A plurality of Vietnamese Americans (40 percent) identifies as conservative. In 2023 Vietnamese Americans were the only Asian American registered voters to favor the Republican Party
(51 Percent) over the Democratic Party (42 percent). They were also the only Asian Americans to support incumbent Donald Trump over Joseph Biden in the 2020 presidential election. It was no accident that the yellow-and-red-striped RVN flag could be seen flying over the Capitol Building during the 6 January 2021 insurrection/riots!

Younger, US-born Vietnamese Americans tend to be less politically engaged and conservative than their "1.5 generation" parents. They have more or less assimilated fully into American society and culture, manifesting the same despondency and cynicism as other Americans in their late teens and twenties when it comes to voting and politics. They are liberal in their thinking, as college-educated Americans tend to be. Thirty-seven percent of US-born Vietnamese had earned a bachelor's degree and 18 percent a post-graduate degree in 2019 (the figures are 20 and 13 percent, respectively, for all Americans). Many yearn to know more about the native land of their parents and grandparents, who tried to shield them from a painful and often tragic past, and have far less apprehension about visiting Vietnam. Yet others hope to capitalize on their language skills and family connections to pursue business opportunities, or marry. Young Vietnamese Americans have that in common with peers in Vietnam: they are more removed from and therefore less invested in the past. That provides some hope for reconciliation, for mending the deeper wounds of the American War and of the Fourth Civil War for the soul of Vietnam.

***

How should we remember the American war in Vietnam? How should we account for Hanoi's final victory despite repeated military failures, staggering human and material losses, and the near-destruction of the country? What should we make of the war's impact on the Vietnamese?
What did it all mean?

For all the bloodshed, destruction, havoc, and pain it caused, the United States did not spawn conflict in Vietnam and across the rest of the Indochinese Peninsula during the Cold War; it aggravated it. The American War ensued from and was entwined with a Vietnamese civil war that began two decades before US Marines landed on the shores of Da Nang and Washington started raining bombs on North Vietnam. The Vietnamese were the primary agents, the main "movers and shakers," in their own history. This was their war. Specifically, it was Ho Chi Minh's war before it became Le Duan's war. The Americans, like the French before them, were interlopers in Vietnam's thirty-year civil war. Their interventions were certainly consequential, but they did not condition events to the extent the Vietnamese themselves, and the committed communists among them in particular, did. The so-called Vietnam War was Vietnam's American War. Military intervention by the United States was one phase of a larger, longer conflict. It was, to turn an old adage on its head, but a chapter in the history of the Vietnamese and of the Fourth Civil War for the soul of their country.

The American War merely delayed the inevitable in the end. Because of it, the collapse of the regime in Saigon and the victory of communist armies happened in 1975 instead of a decade earlier. With Le Duan at the helm, Hanoi was never going to give up on its goal of reunifying the country under communist authority. No price was too great and no sacrifice was too small for his regime to achieve that outcome and meet other core objectives. Vietnamese communist armies and North Vietnamese civilians manifested astounding resolve and resilience throughout the war However, they persevered and triumphed because their leaders, and Le Duan in particular, gave them no choice. Much as historians of the war and others have praised the merits of the brave men and women who sacrificed so much to secure their country's complete independence and reunification - and they certainly were brave - those men and women ultimately acted on orders from authorities in Hanoi. Nationalism and patriotism admittedly were powerful motivational forces for them, but they did not dictate the course of the anti-American and anti-RVN war effort; Le Duan did that.

The outcome of the American War was determined not by the patriotism of its people or the sum of its battles, but by the grit, resourcefulness, and remarkable organizational skills of Le Duan and other Vietnamese communist leaders. These men carefully and meticulously managed their struggle and the human and material resources necessary to sustain it for as long as necessary. They were obsessed with discipline and internal cohesion, and adhered to their basic positions with unshakable tenacity.
Despite daunting logistical challenges and tragic miscalculations of their own doing, they maintained close and effective control of their party and armed forces. Those forces lost many if not most battles, but successes on the political and diplomatic fronts offset all setbacks on the military front, including dismal failures in the Tet and Spring-Summer Offensives, allowing Hanoi to win the war. Tuong Vu is absolutely correct when he writes that "[w]ithout Hanoi's determination to unify the country under its rule, Vietnam would likely remain divided today, as China and Korea still are."4

Still other, related factors contributed to the final triumph of Vietnamese communist leaders. The most notable were their fixation with defending the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Vietnam; their dogged commitment to reunification and independence on their terms; their centralization of political authority and supremacy in policymaking; their intolerance and swift repression of dissent; their adeptness to bounce back after devastating defeats; their unmatched capacity to control information as well as to rouse, rally, and mobilize civilians on both sides of the Seventeenth Parallel; their superior skills at manipulating and harnessing world opinion through ingenuous use of diplomatic tools, contacts, and channels; their ability to take advantage of the Sino-Soviet dispute to exact maximal material support from both Moscow and Beijing; and, finally, their cold-heartedness and capacity to callously disregard the death and suffering of so many of their own compatriots. All things being equal, Hanoi's victory in the American War demonstrated that the formula for success in a struggle against a powerful enemy is not resolute armed struggle exclusively, but the careful calibration of military, political, and diplomatic activities under the direction of a single-minded, puritanical, and unwavering leadership. In the misapplied words of an American historian, Le Duan and the communists won because, fundamentally, they waged a "better war."

RVN leaders, the RVNAF, and their partisans resisted the onslaught against them valiantly and for as long as circumstances permitted. They lost because their enemies outperformed them, less militarily than in other domains. Noncommunist nationalists and anticommunists in the South failed to unite and form a single, cohesive front. Their leaders never overcame or mended the social, regional, sectarian, and ethnic fractures dividing them. Conversely, communists excelled at creating and fostering unity, in both action and thought. They did this using disinformation, force, intimidation, and coercion, but it worked. As that suggests, the contrasting political systems in place above and below the Seventeenth Parallel had a lot to do with the deficiencies of one side and the triumphs of the other. A dictatorship of the VWP - of the "proletariat," officially - managed the North. It turned the DRVN into a police state that demanded and strictly enforced popular compliance and conformity with the will of the authorities. Southern leaders, for their part, tried - not very hard, sometimes - to uphold the democratic and republican principles enshrined in both RVN constitutions and championed by noncommunist nationalists, even as they fought unrelenting communist armies. That was challenging, to say the least.

In the final analysis, the system in the North proved more adaptable and suited to the circumstances. It did not permit public dissent and protest that could be exploited by enemies and otherwise compound other pressing problems. Leaders did not have to worry about public opinion, the domestic and foreign press, Buddhist and student activism, and the meddling of allies in their business. Le Duan answered to no one, except perhaps his closest comrades in the upper echelon of the party.
Conversely, RVN President Nguyen Van Thieu was constantly in the crosshairs of his political rivals and gave them ample ammunition to contest his rule. The DRVN imposed its legitimacy on Northerners; the RVN had to earn it from Southerners. Thieu struggled mightily to do that, too.
Internationally, Hanoi was much shrewder than Saigon in marketing its cause. Its diplomatic struggle was sophisticated and efficient. Equivalent undertakings by Saigon and the RV Ministry of Foreign Affairs were gauche and pathetic. The DRVN and the NLF/Viet Cong secured far greater material, moral, and political support from outside as a result.
And while neither government could live nor fight within its means, Beijing and especially Moscow stuck by Hanoi until the end, whereas Washington effectively deserted Saigon after withdrawing the last of its troops. Hanoi's better war was facilitated by its better system - human rights and civil liberties notwithstanding.

The failure of decision-makers to correctly appraise the extent of their counterparts' commitment to their strategic goals may well have been the greatest tragedy of the American War. Each government proved incapable of understanding the other's intentions, and the degree of its motivation to realize them. Washington never had a clear sense of who Le Duan was, of his steely resolve to win, or even that he called the shots in Hanoi. Le Duan and the VWP Politburo never grasped, or else refused to acknowledge, the depth of Johnson's desire to avoid a humiliating defeat in Vietnam, on the one hand, and of Nixon's dedication to peace with honor, to dignified exit from the war, on the other. Above all, communist leaders always underestimated the hardiness of rivals in Saigon, and Thieu in particular. Thieu himself had a better understanding of Hanoi and Washington than both ever had of him and his regime. But that mattered little given his treatment by the Americans and the contempt Vietnamese communists had for him. In retrospect, there was a profound failure by both Hanoi and Washington during the American War to correctly assess the identities, personalities, and general proclivities of each other's decision-makers. And that was another reason the war lasted as long as it did and proved so costly and devastating in the end.

By this rationale, the American failure in Vietnam stemmed in large part from Washington's inability, or refusal, to understand, not Vietnamese culture and history generally, as so many Western scholars have maintained, but the North's political culture and the identity, worldview, resoluteness, and ruthlessness of decision-makers there specifically. Hanoi's triumph over the United States and the RVN had to do far less with historical determinism than with manipulation of contemporary circumstances and astute policymaking by Le Duan and his comrades.

Vietnam's American War claimed the lives of approximately 1.3 million Vietnamese, according to conservative estimates. Of those, more than a third were North Vietnamese and Viet Cong soldiers; some 600,000 were civilians, the rest consisting of RVNAF combat deaths. By official Vietnamese account, 981,000 PAVN and LAF troops died in the war. The bodies of more than 300,000 of them were never recovered. The number of their RVNAF counterparts unaccounted for remains unknown, but is presumably in the tens of thousands. Beyond its human cost, the war tore families apart, shattered individual lives and dreams, squandered human potential, and wasted an entire generation of young men and women.
In the end, Hanoi secured the total victory it had sought since Le Duan took over the reins of power from Ho Chi Minh in 1963-4. But it was a Pyrrhic victory of the saddest and most tragic kind. Today, the mere mention of the name "Le Duan" is enough to make Northerners who lived through the war cringe. The party still instrumentalizes and exploits the cult of Ho Chi Minh to legitimate itself and the policies of the SRVN government. Conversely, it has for all intents and purposes erased Le Duan from its history. He was merely one among several of "Uncle" Ho's loyal disciples, official histories undeviatingly - and falsely - insist.

Ho will forever remain an iconic figure, the most famous Vietnamese political leader of the Twentieth Century. His global stature as the archetypal revolutionary nationalist endures, overly simplistic, reductionist, and misleading as that characterization is. More to the point, Ho Chi Minh provided the vision that guided the Vietnamese communist revolutionary project and spawned the Fourth Civil War for Vietnam.
However, it was not Ho but the hardnosed Le Duan who realized that vision and saw the war to its successful culmination. As to the communist nation-building and transformational project, both men failed on all counts. The Vietnamese themselves had to pay a terrible price for all this, but after thirty years of fratricidal and internationalized warfare, their country was finally reunified under one fully sovereign government.
Vietnam has come a long way since the "Great Spring Victory" of communist armies in 1975. Its future is bright, but it will take some time before the wounds of war heal completely, if they ever do. In this rendition, set against the backdrop of the Cold War, David did not come out unscathed from his contest with Goliath.

More pictures here:

https://imagesdefense.gouv.fr/fr/catalogsearch/advanced/result/?ref_reportage=HA+52-101&p=1

Citation: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/16118944221130231

Thomas, Martin & Asselin, Pierre. (2022). French Decolonisation and Civil War: The Dynamics of Violence in the Early Phases of Anti-colonial War in Vietnam and Algeria, 1940–1956. Journal of Modern European History. 20. 513-535. 10.1177/16118944221130231. This article draws together historical sources and political science insights to test the emergence of civil war at the end of empire. It focuses on civil conflict in two French colonial territories, Vietnam and Algeria, during and immediately after 1945. It investigates the civil war dynamics of local, often intra-ethnic contests among anticolonial oppositionists. Concentrating on the early, formative years of insurgent violence, we aim to demonstrate that elements of civil war pre-existed the supposed outbreak of decolonisation conflicts – 1946 in Vietnam and 1954 in Algeria. Our approach combines narrative assessments of the early phases of these conflicts with analysis of their civil war dynamics. As we seek to demonstrate, cycles of internecine killing, massacre and counter-massacre, normalized summary killing, maltreatment of detainees, and loss of distinction between civilians, seditionists, and ‘traitors’. Our argument is that decolonisation violence in both Vietnam and Algeria may be usefully rethought in civil war terms.

Daughter of ARVN General Cao Văn Viên, Lan Cao

“The war was over as far as the Americans were concerned. They had their peace at last…

Soon after the Paris agreement was signed, the North stopped its lip licking and attacked. Here was the bewildering military reality. Thirteen enemy divisions and seventy-five regiments, more than 160,000 troops in all, were still in place in our country. There were also arms and troops that poured down the Ho Chi Minh Trail, more than four times the numbers that took part in prior attacks.”

“The air force was ordered to reduce air support, tactical airlifts, and reconnaissance flights by half and to reduce helilifts by 70 percent. We were told to retire more than two hundred aircraft and cancel pre existing orders for upgrades. We were instructed to recall four hundred pilots from training in the United States. The navy inactivated more than six hundred vessels and river craft and reduced river patrols by 72 percent. Not one plane, ship, or boat was replaced after the peace treaty. 

Our ammunition supply rate had to be reduced. The daily allowance for rifles was set at 1.6 rounds per man. Cliff said the daily allowance for the Americans when they were still in the war was 13 rounds. For machine guns, it was 10.6 rounds (while it was 165 for the Americans). For mortars, it was 1.3 rounds (and 16.9 for the Americans).

While we were conserving, the enemy was profligate. 

At Tống Lê Chân border camp, soldiers of the Communist army shelled the base three hundred times, using more than 10,000 rounds, over a sixteen-week period. "

Citation here: https://archive.is/V7hYN

Always remember that the Communists never held a monopoly on anti-colonialism and only facilitated the end of being the only anti-colonialists by murdering and betraying all the others

Curious

Tự giết những người khôn có tài mà vẫn còn thua chế đô từ trên 5 thập niên qua.