Growth of the Viet Cong

Roughly 40 years ago, the Communists under Ho Chi Minh, now president of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in the North, began planning their campaign to take over Southeast Asia. Their first step in Vietnam was to seek to seize the leadership in the opposition to French rule. Vietnam was a part of French Indochina at the time. When the Japanese moved in after the fall of France in 1940, dominating the French and occupying all of Indochina, Communists and nationalists alike believed that the time for Vietnamese independence was near. Under Communist leadership and later Communist control, a coalition independence force was formed. This was the Viet Minh (League for the Independence of Vietnam), which launched an eight-year struggle against the French soon after they returned in 1945.

Like the later Viet Cong, the Viet Minh grew from a modest start-but they became larger and much more formidable than the Viet Cong are today. By mid-1954 the Viet Minh had nearly 160,000 regulars and perhaps an equal number of militia. The French, stunned by defeats in conventional battles such as that at Dien Bien Phu and unable to solve the problems of the new kind of war waged by the Viet Minh, were ready to negotiate. At an international conference in Geneva in the summer of 1954, presided over by representatives of Great Britain and the Soviet Union, war-torn Vietnam was divided at the 17th parallel. The northern half, controlled by Communists, became the so-called Democratic Republic of Vietnam; the free southern half became the independent Republic of Vietnam.

Under the terms of the armistice agreement, Communists and anti-Communists were given an opportunity to move to whichever half of the divided country they preferred. Nearly a million from the North were able to move south to freedom during the brief period allowed. Some 90,000 people, mostly men and boys of the Viet Minh army, or future recruits, went north. Tens of thousands of Communists and sizable stocks of arms and ammunition were left in the South to assure an ultimate Communist takeover.

The 17th parallel was not intended to be a permanent "political or territorial boundary." The delegates at Geneva agreed on a "free general election by secret ballot" to be held throughout Vietnam at the end of two years. This would allow the people to decide for themselves their political future, and it would reunify the country. The Communists in the more populous North, with their police state control, were confident of winning the election. The election was not held because the South doubted the possibility of an honest vote in the North and because the election would not have been held under proper international supervision.

Hanoi Adopts Stronger Measures

After 1956 the Communists began to prepare for a stronger effort in the South. This meant reorganizing and expanding their personnel there, both military and political, for the struggle to achieve a "political solution." Such a solution, which the Communists would still welcome, means replacing the strongly anti-communist Government with a controlled neutralist coalition. Occasional assassinations and other acts of terrorism seemed necessary and proper, but initially the main emphasis had been on a campaign of subversion and propaganda to undermine the legal Government. It is difficult to say how much their decision to act more vigorously and openly was influenced by the impatient Communists in the South and how much by their comrades in the North who were alarmed and embarrassed by the obvious contrast between the prosperity of the South and their own impoverished dictatorship.

Viet Cong terrorism was intensified in 1958, and by the end of that year the Viet Cong had an armed force of more than 2,000 regulars supplemented by militia. In 1959 it was decided that the political struggle must be aided by a major armed effort. Open warfare began in 1960, with the overrunning of an RVNAF regimental headquarters at Trang Sup on 20 January.

Hanoi Creates a Screen

The Lao Dong (Communist) Party of Vietnam held its Third Congress in Hanoi in September 1960. Attended by Party representatives from all over Vietnam, the Congress acted to establish the appearance of a local rebellion in the South, while at the same time simplifying and formalizing control of it.

To give the whole Viet Cong operation the necessary appearance of being a true struggle for liberation by an oppressed people, to impart the illusion of legitimacy to actions taken and about to be taken, and to represent the movement in public activities, the Communists decided to set up a "National Liberation Front."

In December 1960, a group of individuals claiming to represent virtually all walks of life and all major ethnic and religious groups of South Vietnam met in the forest northwest of Saigon. There they announced the formation of the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam, a shadow government, which faithfully issued the manifestoes already decreed by the Communist Party Congress in September. Another act of Communist deception was the creation of the People's Revolutionary Party (PRP) in the South. The object of this was to screen the extent of Communist domination of the Front and make it appear that the Front is composed of several organizations. The original members of the PRP were all Communists, but qualifications for admission were made less strict than for the PRP's counterpart in the North, the Lao Dong Party.

Next Page: Hanoi's Political-Military Machine