First Indochina War facts for kids
Quick facts for kids First Indochina War |
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| Part of the Indochina Wars of the Cold War | |||||||||
 A French Foreign Legion unit patrols in a communist controlled area. |
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| Belligerents | |||||||||
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 United States (1950-1954) |
 China Soviet Union |
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| Commanders and leaders | |||||||||
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French Expeditionary Corps
Vietnamese National Army
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 Ho Chi Minh, Vo Nguyen Giap Souphanouvong |
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| Strength | |||||||||
| French Union: 190,000 Local Auxiliary: 55,000 State of Vietnam: 150,000 Total: ~400,000 |
125,000 Regulars, 75,000 Regional, 250,000 Popular Forces/Irregulars Total: 450,000 |
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| Casualties and losses | |||||||||
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French Union: 75,581 dead, Total: ~560,000+ dead, wounded or captured |
Combined total: 300,000+ dead, 500,000+ wounded, 100,000+ captured Total: 900,000+ dead, wounded or captured |
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| 150,000+ civilians killed | |||||||||
The First Indochina War was fought in French Indochina from December 19, 1946, until August 1, 1954. Other names for the war are the French Indochina War, Anti-French War, Franco-Vietnamese War, Franco-Vietminh War, Indochina War, Dirty War in France, and Anti-French Resistance War in contemporary Vietnam. The war was fought between the French Union's French Far East Expeditionary Corps, led by France and supported by Emperor Bảo Đại's Vietnamese National Army on one side, and the Việt Minh, led by Hồ Chí Minh and Võ Nguyên Giáp on the other. Most of the fighting took place in Tonkin in Northern Vietnam, but the conflict spread over the entire country and also extended into the neighboring French Indochina protectorates of Laos and Cambodia.
The French reoccupied Indochina after the Second World War. The territory had been part of the Empire of Japan before. The Việt Minh launched a rebellion against the French authority. The first few years of the war involved a low-level rural insurgency against French authority. However, after the Chinese communists reached the Northern border of Vietnam in 1949, the conflict turned into a conventional war between two armies which had modern weapons supplied by the United States and the Soviet Union.
French Union forces included colonial troops from the whole former empire (Moroccan, Algerian, Tunisian, Laotian, Cambodian, Vietnamese and Vietnamese ethnic minorities), French professional troops and units of the French Foreign Legion. The use of metropolitan recruits was forbidden by the governments to prevent the war from becoming even more unpopular at home. It was called the "dirty war" (la sale guerre) by supporters of the Left in France and intellectuals (including Sartre) during the Henri Martin Affair in 1950.
The French had the strategy of pushing Việt Minh into attacking a well defended base in a remote part of the country at the end of the logistical trail. This strategy was validated at the Battle of Na San. The big problem of the war was the lack of construction materials (especially concrete). Because of difficult terrain without roads, tanks could not be used, and providing air cover was difficult. This made it almost impossible to effectively defend the area.
After the war, the Geneva Conference on July 21, 1954, made a provisional division of Vietnam at the 17th parallel. The Việt Minh received control over the north, in a territory called Democratic Republic of Vietnam under Hồ Chí Minh. The area south of the 17th parallel was turned into State of Vietnam under Emperor Bảo Đại. This was done to prevent Hồ Chí Minh from gaining control of the entire country. A year later, Bảo Đại would be deposed by his prime minister, Ngô Đình Diệm, creating the Republic of Vietnam. Diem's refusal to enter into negotiations with North Vietnam about holding nationwide elections in 1956, as had been suggested by the Geneva Conference, would eventually lead to war breaking out again in South Vietnam in 1959 - the Second Indochina War.
Images for kids
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French Indochina (1913)
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Võ Nguyên Giáp and Hồ Chí Minh (1945)
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Japanese troops lay down their arms to British troops in a ceremony in Saigon after the surrender of Japan.
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Commander of the C.L.I. (Corps Léger d'Intervention) arriving in Indochina.
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Telegram from Hồ Chí Minh to U.S. President Harry S. Truman requesting support for independence (Hanoi, February 28, 1946)
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Hồ Chí Minh and Marius Moutet shaking hands after signing modus vivendi 1946 after Fontainebleau Agreements
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French foreign airborne 1st BEP firing with an FM 24/29 light machine gun during an ambush (1952)
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Captured French soldiers, escorted by Vietnamese troops, walk to a prisoner-of-war camp in Dien Bien Phu
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The 1954 Geneva Conference
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China supplied the Việt Minh with hundreds of Soviet-built GAZ-51 trucks during the 1950s.
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Anti-communist Vietnamese refugees moving from a French LSM landing ship to the USS Montague during Operation Passage to Freedom in 1954
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Bois Belleau (aka USS Belleau Wood) transferred to France in 1953
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A 1952 F4U-7 Corsair of the 14.F flotilla which fought at Dien Bien Phu
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French-marked USAF C-119 flown by CIA pilots over Dien Bien Phu in 1954
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A poster celebrating the 60th anniversary of the French recognition of North Vietnamese independence
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French Indochina medal, law of August 1, 1953
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See also
In Spanish: Guerra de Indochina para niños
