Originally posted by hanswu25
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America also opposed the return of French rule. Support was slow in coming & really only became significant when Mao took over in China & the Korean War began. Defeating communism was deemed more important. Even then the price for support was the setting of Vietnam on the path to independence.
The VNQDD fought the French too. In fact, they were one of the leading anti-French groups. The Viet Minh and the French actually collaborated to massacre them in 1946.
The Vietnamese Trotskyists fought French rule. They were systematically assassinated by the Viet Minh.
The Cao Dai opposed French rule. They too were persecuted by the Viet Minh & later the Viet Cong.
In fact, there were rather a lot of people & organizations who opposed or fought the French and were persecuted & even killed by the organization Giap founded & helped to run. it has been one of the great propaganda victories of the C20th to have effectively written so many of these groups out of history in favour of 'only the Viet Minh fought the French'.
By 1950 the French had decided to leave Vietnam (with some help from the US), but were resolved not to leave it in the hands of Communists. Many nationalists who wanted the French gone were prepared to hold their noses & ally with the French in order to stop the Viet Minh winning power. Unfortunately they failed.
As Troung pointed out, Giap fought to install a brutal dictatorship. His organization was happy enough to murder people who were every bit as opposed to the French as they were (in fact, the VNQDD actually refused to negotiate with the French, unlike the VM) in order to create a Communist Vietnam. The organization & then nation he helped to found then proceeded to conquer those parts of Vietnam that did not wish to be Communist and support the overthrow of non-communist regimes in Laos & Cambodia. The price of extending communism to the whole of Indochina is measured in the many millions. Rarely have so many people died for a worse reason.
If the French had stayed they would have granted Vietnam independence within a decade of returning, sparing Indochina the death & destruction that followed. Unfortunately getting rid of the French was only a part of what Giap wanted. The people of Indochina are still suffering for that.
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