Vietnam, Protest, and Counterculture 447agreements with the French were null and void and, on December 19th,
General Vo Nguyen Giap, the Viet Minh commander, called for armed resis-
tance. The next day Ho appealed to the entire population to rise against the
French: “Men and women, old and young, regardless of creeds, political par-
ties, or nationalities, all the Vietnamese must stand up to fight the French
colonialists to save the Fatherland. Those who have rifles will use their rifles;
those who have swords will use their swords; those who have no swords will
use spades, hoes, or sticks. Everyone must endeavor to oppose the colonialists
and save his country... The hour for national salvation has struck! We must
sacrifice even our last drop of blood to safeguard our country.” A conflict that
the Vietnamese would come to call The First Indochina War was beginning.
As the war began, French forces held huge advantages over the Vietnamese
in terms of manpower, weapons, transport, and military organization. Native
forces, however, were fighting in their own country for their own liberation
and livelihood. That factor, morale, was vitally important, perhaps more crucial
than military abilities, though the Vietnamese proved repeatedly that they were
fierce fighters as well. The French Union Forces—comprised of French and
Vietnamese troops—grew from 70,000 men in the early 1940s to over
500,000 by 1954; the French Expeditionary Corps [FEC], the occupying army,
increased from 70,000 troops at the outset of World War II to 115,000 in
1947, and 180,000 by the 1950s; the Vietnamese National Army [VNA], cre-
ated by the French and consisting of Vietnamese soldiers, had about 375,000
troops in it by 1954. That meant the Viet Minh were facing, in total, nearly 1
million enemy forces. General Giap, meanwhile, had about 300,000 Viet Minh
and militia fighters under his charge, with only a third equipped with small
arms initially, and no naval or air forces. Even as they acquired military sup-
plies from China during the war, Ho and Giap would always be outgunned
by the French and their western supporters [just as they would be by the
Americans later].
But in the end technology would not be decisive. The Viet Minh controlled
the loyalty of the population and Vietnamese morale remained high. To the
people, Ho was a daily living symbol of resistance and freedom, and he was
one of them. He “used to live among the peasants, wear brown cotton clothes
like theirs, and live by the same restrictions as everybody else.” This was the
“Uncle Ho” persona that the world would come to know in the following
decades. He could also be a hardheaded military strategist, telling a French