7 Ho Chi Minh 7operation) against the Japanese. Further, his Viet Minh
guerrillas fought against the Japanese in the mountains of
South China. After Japan’s surrender to the Allies in 1945,
Ho Chi Minh’s forces entered Hanoi, and on September
2 Ho Chi Minh declared Vietnam independent.
All obstacles were not removed from the path of the
Viet Minh, however. According to the terms of an Allied
agreement, Chiang Kai-shek’s troops were supposed to
replace the Japanese north of the 16th parallel. More sig-
nificantly, France refused to relinquish its former colony,
and within three months French troops had control of
South Vietnam. Ho had to choose between continuing the
fight or negotiating. He chose negotiations, but not with-
out preparing for an eventual transition to war.
The First Indochina War
The agreement, reached in March 1946, was unsatisfac-
tory to extremists on both sides, and the First Indochina
War began on December 19. Using guerrilla tactics, the
Viet Minh had control of most of the countryside, with
the larger cities under a virtual state of siege by the end of
- The French were decisively defeated at Dien Bien
Phu on May 7, 1954, and had no choice but to negotiate. At
the Geneva Accords, it was decided that Vietnam was to
be divided at the 17th parallel—creating a North Vietnam
and South Vietnam—until elections, scheduled for 1956,
after which the Vietnamese would establish a unified
government.
The Second Indochina War
Ultimately, the elections that were to guarantee the coun-
try’s reunification were postponed indefinitely by the