Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3
NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011
TOP SECRET – Sensitive
of movements be furnished the ICC, and specified points of entry and departure be employed. Neither the DRV nor the GVN cooperated with the ICC in all respects. The U.S., though it took steps to maintain the appearances of compliance through 1960, especially on personnel ceilings, and although it considered itself hampered by the Settlement, was able to provide in that time over $50,000,000 per annum worth of military assistance to the GVN.82 The failure of the Geneva Settlement to control the arming of Vietnam, with its concomitant heightened fears and potential for violence, no less than in the case of the plebescite and the refugees, was directly antecedent to the insurgency in South Vietnam.
- 2. PAVN Modernizes
At the close of hostilities, the Viet Minh probably had some 300,000 to 400,000 men under arms—about 130,000 regulars of which all but about 70,000 were concentrated in North Vietnam and Laos. (See Map, ff.)83 The French had fielded 420,000 troops, including about 200,000 Vietnamese. Both sides received extensive aid from non-combatants, the French chiefly from the U.S., and the DRV chiefly from China. One recent estimate puts relative volumes of aid as follows:84
COMPARISON OF TONNAGE OF U.S. AID TO FRANCE WITH CHINESE COMMUNIST AID TO VIET MINH
| U.S. Aid | Chinese Aid | |
| 1951 | 7,200 tons/month | 10 to 20 tons/month |
| 1953 | 10,000 tons/month | 500 to 600 tons/month |
| 1954 | n.a. | 4,000 tons/month (as of Dien Bien Phu) |
The differences between the two aid programs were, of course, significant beyond tonnages. The Chinese aid was largely infantry arms and ammunition, while U.S. shipments ranged across the whole costly and complicated inventory of the U.S. armed forces. More importantly, in contrast with the highly visible U.S. participation, Chinese aid was clandestine; neither the donor nor the recipient has owned to the aid program to this date, and in maintaining the flow without attribution the DRV developed procedures which stood it in good stead after Geneva.
The DRV, from all U.S. intelligence has been able to discern, commenced the reorganization and refitting of its Peoples’ Army of Vietnam (PAVN) concurrently with occupation of Tonkin behind the withdrawing French. U.S. evidence indicated that shipments of military materiel from China and the Soviet significantly exceeded in kind and
