Haiphong incident
The Haiphong Incident (also known as the Haiphong massacre or bombing ) was a series of skirmishes between the French armed forces of the Far East Expeditionary Corps and the military and police of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) in the North Vietnamese port city of Haiphong . The fighting began as an incident at a customs inspection on November 20, 1946 and ended in a general attack by the French side with the aim of occupying the city on November 23, 1946. The number of civilian casualties is estimated at several thousand.
The incident fueled the conflict between France and the Viet Minh and culminated in the Indochina War less than a month later .
background
The Second World War had significantly weakened French colonial rule in Indochina . In March 1945, Japanese troops occupied the remaining administrative and military structures of the colony in a coup-like military operation . After Japan surrendered, Chinese national troops, in coordination with the Allies, occupied the colony at the 16th parallel. To the south of it the country was to be secured by British troops until French forces arrived. The Viet Minh were able to operate unhindered in the Chinese occupation zone and established their own state there during the August Revolution , which was not recognized by France or internationally. During the year of Chinese occupation, a modus vivendi was established between the Viet Minh and the French, which was used by both sides for negotiations. The French side was unwilling to risk a military confrontation with the Chinese troops. Due to their material and military inferiority, the Vietnamese side was unable to wage an open war against the expeditionary force. As part of the contractual negotiations, France was granted a military presence in the port of Haiphong, which they brought into position on March 6, 1946, the day the Ho-Sainteny Agreement was concluded . The port, including customs and border controls, should continue to be carried out by the DRV. In September 1946, with the withdrawal of the Chinese troops, the French side no longer prevented the restoration of colonial order by military means.
Battles from November 20 to November 23, 1946
On November 20, 1946, a French landing ship confiscated a Chinese junk and the oil it had already unloaded . There was a confrontation between the French soldiers on land and the armed forces of the DRV in the port. Both sides attribute the opening of firearms to each other. The soldiers who landed were disarmed by the Vietnamese and transported to a police station. The French local commander, Colonel Dèbes, ordered armored vehicles to be in front of the police station. Here, too, there was another firefight. Liaison officers on both sides agreed to release the French soldiers on the same day. However, the military vehicle that was supposed to pick them up was shot at and two inmates were wounded. Meanwhile, there were firefights between French and Vietnamese soldiers in the city center and in the Chinese quarter of Haiphong. The captured French soldiers were released by the Viet Minh on November 20th. The cessation of fighting was mediated by the French commander in Hanoi, General Molière. On November 21, an investigative delegation from Hanoi, consisting of French and Vietnamese military, was shelled by unknown sources, but the city came to rest. The historian Stein Tonnesson sees the fact that the soldiers who went ashore were members of an intelligence service unit directly responsible to the governor, a strong indication that the first incident was staged.
In the background, Molière initially overruled the commander Debès on the French side, who wanted to escalate the fighting until the city was conquered. Molière, in turn, was overruled by the commander of the expeditionary force Jean-Étienne Valluy and the governor of the colony Georges Thierry d'Argenlieu on November 21 and 22. On the evening of November 21, Valluy Debès gave the order by telegram to take the city in battle. Thereby he bypassed the military official channels by excluding Molière. On the Vietnamese side, Ho Chi Minh pursued the policy of a negotiated solution.
On November 23, Debès gave the Vietnamese troops an ultimatum to evacuate the city within three hours. When the ultimatum expired, he ordered a general attack on the city. A defining element of the attack plan was a sea-based artillery bombardment by the French ships lying in the port from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. The aim of the bombing was to destroy the Vietnamese district, which the French leadership suspected of being the Viet Minh. The arterial roads from the city were shot at by fighter planes in low flight . Two villages, one of which is the main escape point for the fleeing civilian population, were also shelled by ship artillery. Given the French superiority in fire, the only thing left for the Viet Minh to do was to withdraw from the city and its civil structures. Most of the Viet Minh fled with the civilian stream of refugees. The following day, French troops controlled the city.
consequences
The death toll is controversial. Consensus on French and Vietnamese sources are at least several thousand dead. The Viet Minh propaganda spread 10,000 to 20,000 dead as victims of the bombing. At the suggestion of French colonial intelligence services, French authorities also distributed such casualty figures with the intention of showing that the communist Vietnamese state could not protect its population from the French military. In a letter from December 1946, Ho Chi Minh reported around 3,000 fatalities in the fighting. The US consul reported around 2,000 deaths to its government.
The escalation in Haiphong convinced the Viet Minh leadership that a military conflict with the colonial power was inevitable and imminent. The Viet Minh then concentrated on building guerrilla structures at the expense of trying to establish state structures in the population centers of northern Vietnam. However, the leadership of the Viet Minh around Ho Chi Minh tried to delay the outbreak of war through negotiations in order to gain time for preparations.