Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3
NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011
TOP SECRET – Sensitive
1930–31, and 1940–41: (1) however eager the people were to take up arms, insurrection had to be correctly timed in order to exploit both maximum confusion in enemy ranks and the fullest support from the non-committed; (2) little faith could be placed on defectors from enemy forces — reliance had to rest rather "chiefly on the great masses of the people"; (3) bases for the support of operations had to be carefully prepared beforehand.22 According to its own histories, the ICP began in 1941 to prepare for a general uprising in Vietnam. In Cochinchina, up until April 1945, the ICP continued to operate largely underground and without much regard for the Viet Minh mantle; in Tonkin, however, all ICP undertakings were given Viet Minh identity. Throughout Vietnam, the ICP initiated patient political action: the dissemination of propaganda, the training of cadres, the establishment of a network of cells down to hamlet level. The Central Committee of the ICP adopted this four point program in 1941:
- "1. Develop new organizations among the people, and consolidate those which exist within the Viet Minh.
- 2. Expand organizations into the cities.
- 3. Organize the minority peoples within the Viet Minh.
- 4. Form small guerrilla groups."23
The Viet Minh assigned priority to political tasks ahead of military missions. Cadres were repeatedly impressed with the essentiality of a properly prepared political and material base for guerrilla warfare. Even where the latter was countenanced, they were enjoined to put "reliance on the masses, continual growth, extreme mobility, and constant adaptation."24 In the mountainous region of North Vietnam above Hanoi the first permanent Viet Minh bases were established in 1942–1943. Then followed shadow government by Viet Minh agents, and in September, 1943, after the people had been well organized, the first locally recruited guerrilla forces were fromed under Viet Minh auspices. Not until December 22, 1944, was the first unit of the Viet Minh Liberation Army created, but there is little evidence of concerted guerrilla operations until after March, 1945; by that time the underground organization was pervasive. As of the end of 1944, the Viet Minh claimed a membership of 500,000, of which 200,000 were in Tonkin, 150,000 in Annam, and 150,000 in Cochinchina.25 The aim was for each village to have a Viet Minh committee, responsive to a hierarchy of committees; in most instances where the village committee existed, it was in a position to challenge the government authority. According to Giap, by 1945 the Viet Minh was the de facto government in many areas:
- "There were regions in which the whole masses took part in organizations of national salvation, and the village Viet Minh Committees had, as a matter of course, full prestige among the masses as an underground organization of the revolutionary power."26
On 9 March, 1945, the Japanese overturned the Vichy regime in Indochina, and set up the Emperor of Annam, Bao Dai, as the head of a state declared independent of France, but participating in the Greater East Asia
