Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3
NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011
TOP SECRET – Sensitive
organizations in futile causes; submerge the Party in a broader cause, behind a national front.
The example of successful revolution most often held out by DRV leaders has been the "Augus t Revolution" of 1945· The official DRV history points out that this uprising was successful because, under Party leadership, there had been: (1) a careful preparing of the people in both ideology and organization, including the training of cadres, the build-up of bases of resistance, and the organization of armed forc es -- peoples' war, peoples' army; (2) a seizing of the right opportunity; (3) "launching the revolutionary high tide of the whole people" -- meaning the forming of a "national front" organization which could command the support of the majority of the people, including "all class es , nationalities, and religions"; (4) a skillful combining of military and political "struggle" -- that is, the employment of both forms of r evolutionary endeavor, and the gradual shift in emphaSis from political to military methods; (5) dividing the enemy by proselyting his armed forces, civil service, and citizenry. 179/ The first two lessons , on preparation for and careful timing of revolution, have received particular stress. Party history is accurate: Ho Chi Minh carefuJ.ly husbanded his forces and waited for the moment to strike. Virtually all the energies of the Viet Minh from 1943 through the spring of 1945 were devoted to the patient development of a political infrastructure in rural areas, and the building of guerrilla strong- holds in the mountains adjacent to China. Ho permitted his armed forces to begin systematic guerrilla warfare only after the Japanese set up an independent Vietnam under Bao Dai in March, 1945· Even then, how ever, he used them sparingly. There was supposed to have been a Vi et Minh conference in June, 1945, to signal the "general uprising," but Ho Chi Minh delayed convening of this conference because h e vTaS convinc ed that uprising would be premature . Although DRV histories do not say so, there is, in fact, every indica tion that when the "Augu st Revolution" was launched, it came not as a conscientious, coordinated effort controlled by Ho and his lieutenants , but as another more or less spontaneous rebellion. 180/ Confronted with the prospect of being a bystander while others won-victory, Ho hastily convened the deferred conference on 16 August 1945, and formally com- mitted the Viet Minh to the overthrow of Bao Dai and the expulsion of the French and Japanese. Within three weeks, the independence of the DRV was proclaimed, and Ho was installed in Hanoi as its president.
One example DRV historians do not often cite is the inc eption of tbe long and ruinous Resistance War which began in
December, 1946. From all appearances, the DRV leaders still entertain serious doubts over the wisdom of going to war against France at that juncture. There is evidence that the incidents which opened the war in December, 1946, had not been condoned by HO J and that he re-committed the Viet Minh to military action only reluctantly, and after events had issued their own dictum. Moreover , communist literature on the Resistance War of 1945-195L~ abounds with reproach for loca l leaders
