Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3
NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011
TOP SECRET – Sensitive
- anti-Japanese war, however, is the immediate program of action which is: (1) Organization of the masses — workers, peasants, women, and youth — for the anti-fascist struggle. This has already attained promising successes. (2) Preparation of an insurrection by the organization of the people into self-defense corps. (3) The formation of guerrilla bands and bases 'which will assume greater importance as we gradually approach the time of country-wide military action.'"17
- (3) Competitive Parties
- (a) Dong Minh Hoi
From the outset, the Chinese were suspicious of the Viet Minh. In 1942, they arrested Nguyen Ai Quoc, and imprisoned him. In October, 1942, more than one year after the founding of the Viet Minh, the Kuomintang sponsored a second "united front" of Vietnamese nationalists named the Vietnam Revolutionary League (Viet Nam Cach Menh Dong Minh Hoi). Colocated with headquarters of the Viet Minh in Kwangsi Province, China, Liuchow, the Dong Minh Hoi — as it came to be known — included:
- — The Vietnam Nationalist Party (VNDD)
- — The Vietnam Restoration League (Viet Nam Phuc Quoc Dong Minh Hoi)
- — The Great Vietnam Nationalist Party (Dai Viet Quoc Dan Dang)
- — The Viet Minh
- — The Liberation League (Giai Phong Hoi)
The Dong Minh Hoi was launched with the official sanction of Marshall Chang Fa-kuei, the quasi-autonomous Chinese warlord; its initial program was expressly modeled after the Kuomintang's Three People's Principles of Sun Yat Sen, and its paramilitary organizations were established with a view to close cooperation with the Nationalist Army. However, after more than a year in prison, Nguyen Ai Quoc was released by the Chinese — perhaps on Chang Fa-kuei's orders, and without knowledge or sanction of Chiang Kai-Shek's headquarters — and installed, under the new alias of Ho Chi Minh, as Chairman of the Dong Minh Hoi. The Viet Minh alone profitted by this duality of leadership. Only in the person of Ho Chi Minh, and in Luichow itself, was there any merger of the two "united front" organizations. Afield, and especially in Tonkin, they competed — and occasionally fought — with one another.
The Dong Minh Hoi acquired only modest political and military power in Vietnam, and became a significant political factor there only after Chinese Nationalist forces occupied Tonkin in late 1945. On March 28, 1944,
