Vietnam

SECOND INDOCHINA WAR

Peasants suspected of being communists, 1966
Courtesy United States Army

Citizens of Tay Ninh welcome the United States Army's 25th Infantry Division, August 1966.
Courtesy United States Army

Figure 8. North Vietnam's Administrative Divisions, 1966

Figure 9. South Vietnam's Administrative Divisions, 1966

Newly arrived United States troops board buses at the Bien Hoa Air Terminal, February 1970.
Courtesy United States Army

Interment for 300 unidentified victims of communist occupation of Hue in 1968
Courtesy United States Army

Kham Thien Street Memorial in Hanoi depicting a mother and child standing on a United States Air Force bomb fragment
Courtesy Bill Herod

Bicycles used to transport rice on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, captured during United States operations in Cambodia, spring 1970
Courtesy United States Army

By 1959 some of the 90,000 Viet Minh troops that had returned to the North following the Geneva Agreements had begun filtering back into the South to take up leadership positions in the insurgency apparat. Mass demonstrations, punctuated by an occasional raid on an isolated post, were the major activities in the initial stage of this insurgency. Communist-led uprisings launched in 1959 in the lower Mekong Delta and Central Highlands resulted in the establishment of liberated zones, including an area of nearly fifty villages in Quang Ngai Province. In areas under Communist control in 1959, the guerrillas established their own government, levied taxes, trained troops, built defense works, and provided education and medical care. In order to direct and coordinate the new policies in the South, it was necessary to revamp the party leadership apparatus and form a new united front group. Accordingly, COSVN, which had been abolished in 1954, was reestablished with General Nguyen Chi Thanh, a northerner, as chairman and Pham Hung, a southerner, as deputy chairman. On December 20, 1960, the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam, informally called the National Liberation Front (NLF, Mat Tran Dan Toc Giai Phong Mien Nam), was founded, with representatives on its Central Committee from all social classes, political parties, women's organizations, and religious groups, including Hoa Hao, Cao Dai, the Buddhists, and the Catholics. In order to keep the NLF from being obviously linked with the VWP and the DRV, its executive leadership consisted of individuals not publicly identified with the Communists, and the number of party members in leadership positions at all levels was strictly limited. Furthermore, in order not to alienate patriotic noncommunist elements, the new front was oriented more toward the defeat of the United Statesbacked Saigon government than toward social revolution.

Data as of December 1987