* Ho believed the army’s job was largely going to be propaganda until the conditions were right for war.
* But he also decided that for propaganda purposes, they had to win a military victory within a month of being established, so on 25 December 1944 Giáp led successful attacks against a couple of French outposts.
* Two French lieutenants were killed and the Vietnamese soldiers in the outposts surrendered.
* The Viet Minh suffered no casualties.
* A few weeks later, Giáp was wounded in the leg when his group attacked another outpost at Dong Mu.
* Through the first half of 1945, Giáp's military position strengthened as the political position of the French and Japanese weakened.
* On 9 March the Japanese removed the titular French regime and placed the emperor Bảo Đại at the head of a puppet state, the Empire of Vietnam.
* Bao Dai was the 13th and final Emperor of the Nguyễn dynasty, the last ruling family of Vietnam
* he renamed his country "Vietnam"
* He was 32
* Ho summed up the situation like this: “The Japanese became the real masters. The French became kind of respectable slaves. And upon the Indo-Chinese falls the double honor of being not only slaves to the Japanese, but also the slaves of the slaves—the French.”
* By April the Vietminh had nearly five thousand members, and was able to attack Japanese posts with confidence.
* In one of the ironies of history, between May and August 1945 the United States, keen to support anti-Japanese forces in mainland Asia, actively supplied and trained Giáp and the Viet Minh.
* The U.S. will work with anyone who is the enemy of their enemy.
* Just like they worked with Osama bin Laden and the Mujahideen against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
* Captain Charles Fenn of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) sought out a meeting with Ho in early 1945.
* He had heard about Ho’s organization and about Ho’s role in helping locate downed American pilots and providing intelligence on Japanese troop movements.
* According to Fenn, Ho saved 17 US pilots before the war ended.
* He also heard that when Ho got out of prison in China, he used to drop by the Office of War Information in Kunming in Southern China to read Time Magazine.
* Ho was still hoping to get the support of the US.
* He believed they would be even more eager than the Soviets to help him get rid of the colonialists.
* After their first meeting in March 45, Fenn wrote the following description of the meeting in his diary:
* Ho came along with a younger man named Fam. Ho wasn’t what I expected. In the first place he isn’t really “old”: his silvery wisp of beard suggests age, but his face is vigorous and his eyes bright and gleaming. We spoke in French. It seems he has already met Hall, Blass, and de Sibour [OSS officers in Kunming], but got nowhere with any of them. I asked him what he had wanted of them. He said—only recognition of his group (called Vietminh League or League for Independence). I had vaguely heard of this as being communist, and asked him about it. Ho said that the French call all Annamites communists who want independence. I told him about our work and asked whether he’d like to help us. He said they might be able to but had no radio operators nor of course any equipment. We discussed taking in a radio and generator and an operator. Ho said a generator would make too much noise—the Japs were always around. Couldn’t we use the type of set with battery, such as the Chinese use? I explained they were too weak for distant operation, especially when the batteries run down. I asked him what he’d want in return for helping us. Arms and medicines, he said. I told him the arms would be difficult, because of the French. We discussed the problem of the French. Ho insisted that the Independence League are only anti-Jap. I was impressed by his clear-cut talk; Buddha-like composure, e
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