Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3
NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011
TOP SECRET – Sensitive
that the Central Committee of the ICP may have actually ordered subordinate echelons to refrain from violence, communists, first in Cochinchina, and then in Tonkin, led armed uprisings. The results were disasterous for the rebels. The Japanese, who probably encouraged the revolts to the extent they could, stood aside while the French reacted swiftly and savagely to crush the Vietnamese. 12 Numerous ICP and other nationalist leaders died in the fighting, or in the harsh ministrations of French colonial justice which followed. The outcome of the rebellions of 1940 and 1941 was thus yet another French purge, exile of Vietnamese nationalist movements. While small scale covert operations continued in Vietnam, party headquarters were forced to move abroad, mostly to Nationalist China. In 1946, the Vietnamese government published a tract which acknowledged its debt to China:
- "Thus it came to pass that southern China became the by-word of all Vietnam revolutionists. It was the birthplace of the Vietnam revolutionary movement, the base from where were directed all revolutionary activities 'beyond the border' — on Vietnam's own territory." 13
Chinese motives for sponsoring the Vietnamese nationalists included a desire to acquire intelligence of Japanese forces on their southern flank, and to tie down Japanese through sabotage and other operations in Indochina; there may have been a longer range interest in political influence over postwar Indochina.
In May, 1941, the head of the ICP, Nguyen Ai Quoc — the person later to be called Ho Chi Minh — convened the Eighth Plenum of the ICP Central Committee to approve the forming of a new united front organization to which Vietnamese patriots wishing to resist the Japanese and oppose the French might rally. The Party meeting was followed by a "congress" of Vietnamese nationalists who had recently escaped from their homeland, and others who had been in exile for years; there were also representatives of the "national liberation associations" of workers, peasants, soldiers, women, and youth — most of them ICP organized and dominated. The "congress" adopted the recommendations of the ICP leaders, and established the Vietnam Independence League, Viet Nam Doc Lap Dong Minh Hoi, which became known as the Viet Minh. Nguyen Ai Quoc was named General Secretary of the new League, and most of its key positions were assigned to ICP members. Nguyen Ai Quoc issued a letter on the occasion, including the following appeal:
- "Compatriots throughout the country! Rise up quickly! Let us follow the heroic example of the Chinese people! Rise up quickly to organize the Association for National Salvation to fight the French and the Japanese.
- "Elders!
- "Prominent personalities!
- "Some hundreds of years ago, when our country was endangered by the Mongolian invasion, our elders under the Tran dynasty rose up
