One of Marr's key contributions in State, war, and revolution is to disaggregate three historical actors which have traditionally been conflated with each other: the DRV state, the
Viet Minh movement, and the ICP.
Viet Minh sources are limited to contemporary documents captured by the French, prisoner of war interrogations, and the writings of Ho Chi Minh and Vo Nguyen Giap.
After several years of compromises with the
Viet Minh, Bao Dai would return to a position of national leadership in 1949, not as emperor in a constitutional monarchy but as head of state in an independent country associated with the French Union.
The French Union Force fortified the region in November 1953 in a massive airborne operation (Operation Castor) to block
Viet Minh transport routes.
For the surging Communist Vietnamese nationalists (
Viet Minh), the battle reinforced their belief in victory.
In opposition to Touby during World War II, Faydang (11) mobilized men to support the Japanese and join the
Viet Minh (12) to attack Touby's pro-French partisans (Lee 1982: 201).
How did war break out between France and the
Viet Minh on December 19, 1946?
Built over two decades (often with mere shovels and bare hands), beginning in the 1940s, the tunnels provided shelter and a base of operations for the
Viet Minh, later the Viet Cong, "peasants in black pajamas," as they were contemptuously dismissed by American soldiers, who wore not boots but so-called Ho Chi Minh sandals, flip-flops with tire cut-out soles, and fought against Japanese, then French and finally American invaders, invaders who brought with them a vastly superior military arsenal to the battlefield, but were still defeated.
Rare is the story told of a Vietnamese soldier who in 1946 served with the
Viet Minh against the French, changed sides in 1950, then became a key member of the South Vietnamese government, was imprisoned by that same government in 1970, then was imprisoned again by the North Vietnamese in 1975, then escaped to the United States in 1979.
His loathing of communism was reinforced when the
Viet Minh captured his brother Ngo Dinh Khoi in 1945.
He fled French police in 1940 and met Ho Chi Minh in southwestern China before returning to rural northern Vietnam to recruit guerrillas for the
Viet Minh, a forerunner to the southern insurgency later known as the Viet Cong.
Grace a sa bravoure et a son engagement, le camarade Mohamed Benomar Lahrach a gravi tous les echelons de l'armee vietnamienne pour terminer general du
Viet Minh.