Ho Chi Minh's Declaration of Independence and the First Indochina War
On 2 September 1945, days after Japan's surrender, Ho Chi Minh stood before a crowd in Hanoi's Ba Dinh Square and proclaimed the independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, opening his declaration with language borrowed from the American Declaration of Independence. France, determined to restore its Indochinese empire, refused recognition, and by late 1946 full-scale war had broken out between French Union forces and the Viet Minh, the communist-led nationalist movement Ho had founded in 1941 and armed under the military command of Vo Nguyen Giap. The First Indochina War (1946-1954) settled into a costly stalemate in which French conventional forces controlled cities and roads while the Viet Minh commanded the countryside, sustained after 1949 by weapons and training from newly communist China. It culminated in the 57-day siege of Dien Bien Phu, a fortified French airbase in a remote valley that Giap's forces, hauling heavy artillery through jungle terrain by hand, encircled and overran on 7 May 1954, inflicting roughly 2,300 French dead and taking nearly 11,000 prisoners. The defeat, announced the day before the Geneva Conference opened its Indochina session, broke French political will to continue the war. The Geneva Accords of 21 July 1954 partitioned Vietnam at the 17th parallel pending elections that were never held, creating the communist North under Ho Chi Minh and the US-backed South that would fight the war that followed.
- Year: 1945 CE
- Category: Military
