United States – Vietnam Relations, 1945–1967: A Study Prepared by the Department of Defense/I. B. Notes

I. B.

FOOTNOTES

1.  Joseph Buttinger, Vietnam: A Dragon Embattled (New York: Praeger, 1967, 2 vols.), I, 172–174.
2.  Ibid.
3.  Data on Vietnamese political parties is drawn principally from U.S. Department of State, Political Alignments of Vietnamese Nationalists (Office of Intelligence Research, Report No. 3708, October 1, 1949), passim.
4.  Ibid., 138 ff.
5.  Ibid.
6.  Ibid., 31–32.
7.  Ibid., 37
8.  Ibid., 138 ff.
9.  Bernard B. Fall, ed., Ho Chi Minh on Revolution (New York: Praeger, 1967, 130–131.
10.  The Hitler–Stalin Pact was signed in August, 1939. On 26 September 1939, France outlawed the Communist Party. Ibid., and Buttinger, op. cit., I, 224–226.
11.  Ibid., 236–250.
12.  Ibid., 242–244.
13.  U.S. Department of State, Political Alignments..., op. cit., 58.
14.  Fall, ed., Ho Chi Minh on Revolution, op. cit., 133–134
15.  George Modelski, "The Viet Minh Complex," in Cyril E. Black and Thomas P. Thorton, eds., Communism and Revolution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964), 189–190. Cf. Bernard B. Fall, The Two Viet-Nams (New York: Praeger, 2nd Edition, 1963), 62.
16.  Vo Nguyen Giap, People's War, People's Army (Hanoi, 1961), 75, quoted in ibid.
17.  U.S. Dept of State, Political Alignments..., op. cit., 60.
18.  Fall, The Two Viet-Nams, op. cit., 62–63.

19.  U.S. Dept of State, Political Alignments..., op. cit., 54–55.
20.  Ibid.
21.  I. Milton Sacks, "Marxism in Vietnam," in Frank N. Trager, ed., Marxism in Southeast Asia (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1959), 150.
22.  Modelski, loc. cit., paraphrasing the official Vietnamese Communist Party history, Thirty Years of Struggle of the Party.
23.  Bert Cooper, John Killigrew, Norman La Charité, Case Studies in Insurgency and Revolutionary Warfare: Vietnam 1941–1954 (Washington: Special Operations Research Office, The American University, 1964), 87–88.
24.  Modelski, op. cit., 189, quoting Thirty Years...
25.  Cooper, et al, op. cit., 88–89. French sources estimated 50,000 Viet Minh in Tonkin as of August, 1944; U.S. Dept of State, Political Alignments..., op. cit., 61.
26.  Cooper, et al, loc. cit.
27.  Some French authors have been prone to credit the U.S. for Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Minh; e.g., Lucien Bodard, The Quicksand War (Boston: Little, Brown, 1967), 221–222. The ranking American official in northern Vietnam in 1945, Brigadier General Philip E. Gallagher, has attested: "...throughout the months before the Japanese capitulation, O.S.S. officers and men operated behind Japanese lines, to arm, lead and train native guerrillas who were organized by the Viet Minh." (A situation report, undated, in the Gallagher Papers, quoted in Bert Cooper, John Killigrew, and Norman La Charité, Case Studies in Insurgency and Revolutionary Warfare: Vietnam 1941–1954 [Washington, D. C.: Special Operations Research Office, The American University, 1964], 107.) But O.S.S. assistance to the Viet Minh-led guerrillas was quite limited, although it gave the Viet Minh the opportunity to proclaim that they were part of the Allied effort against the Japanese. Cf., Fall, Le Viet-Minh: La République Démocratique du Viet-Nam [Paris: Librairie Armand Colin, 1960], 34. Fall, Two Viet-Nams, op. cit., 66–71, details the case for the postwar American aid and comfort to the Viet Minh, which adds up to a more substantial charge — but similarly is without foundation in the record.
28.  Quoted in ibid., 63.
29.  U.S. Dept of State, Political Alignments..., op. cit., 66–67, quoting The Factual Record of the August Revolution (Hanoi, September, 1946).
30.  Fall, ed., Ho Chi Minh on Revolution, op. cit., 141–142.
31.  Buttinger, op. cit., I, 435–436.

32.  U.S. Dept of State, Political Alignments..., op. cit., 146–147.
33.  Hammer, op. cit., 104.
34.  Marvin E. Gettleman, ed., Viet Nam (New York: Fawcett, 1965), 57–59.
35.  Buttinger, op. cit., I, 325–327.
36.  Ibid., 328–331; Hammer, op. cit., 115–116.
37.  Hammer, op. cit., 117, quoting Supreme Allied Command, Southeast Asia, Commission No. 1, Saigon, Political History of French Indochina South of 16°, 13 September – 11 October 1945.
38.  U.S. Dept of State, Political Alignments..., op. cit., 73–74.
39.  Hammer, op. cit., 117
40.  Hammer, op. cit., 120.
41.  Buttinger, op. cit., I, 337
42.  Buttinger, op. cit., 351–354.
43.  Ibid.
44.  Buttinger, op. cit., 356, 634.
45.  Ibid.; Sacks, op. cit., 157; Fall, ed., Ho on Revolution, op. cit., 146.
46.  Sacks, op. cit., 158.
47.  Ibid.
48.  U.S. Dept of State, Political Alignments..., 77–78.
49.  Hammer, op. cit., 150.
50.  Buttinger, op. cit., 371–372.
51.  Ibid., 399–401; U.S. Dept of State, Political Alignments..., op. cit., 78; George A. Carver, Jr., "The Faceless Viet Cong," Foreign Affairs (Vol. 44, No. 3, April, 1966), 350.
52.  Buttinger, op. cit., I, 402–403.
53.  U.S. Dept of State, Political Alignments..., op. cit., 81–82.
54.  Fall, Two Viet-Nams, op. cit., 131.
55.  Hammer, op. cit., 179.

56.  Pham Van Dong (presently Premier, then Vice President) announced in 1950 that promulgation of the 1946 Constitution had been postponed "because several of its provisions require for their application the cessation of the state of war," and in 1951, after Ho had openly aligned with the Sino-Soviet powers, the Viet Minh radio explained that "a gang of traitors" had been evolved in its formulation, and hence a "progressive character was lacking." During the "Rectification of Errors," in late 1956, after the peasant uprisings of that year, the DRV set up a constitutional reform committee. In December, 1958, Ho invited the public to submit recommendations on a new draft basic law, and the second Constitution was promulgated in 1960.

Ibid., 178–181; U.S. Dept of the Army, Pamphlet 550–40, U.S. Army Area Handbook for Vietnam (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1962), 235.
57.  Gettlemen, ed., op. cit., 88–89.
58.  American Consulate General, Saigon, Despatch 34, February 12, 1949.
59.  Op. cit., 90–91.
60.  Vo Nguyen Giap, People's War, People's Army (Hanoi: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1961), 35, also 67–108; Cf., "Let Us Step Up The Theory-Formulating Task of The Party," Hoc Tap (No. 9, September 1966) in Joint Publications Research Service, "Translations from Hoc Tap" (No. 38,660, November 16, 1966), 2.
61.  Ibid.
62.  Fall, Ho on Revolution, op. cit., 206 ff.