National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam

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Flag of the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam

The Viet Cong , abbreviated NFB (Vietnamese MAT Tran Giai Phong Mien Nam Việt Nam ; French National Liberation Front , abbreviated FNL ; English National Liberation Front , abbreviated NLF , in common usage and Viet Cong (Vietnamese Viet-Cong )) was a guerrilla organization that led the armed resistance against the government and the supporting forces of the United States during the Vietnam War in South Vietnam . It was composed of heterogeneous religious, ethnic and political groups, but was dominated by the Communist Party. It was founded in 1960 and officially dissolved in 1977.

term

The term Việt cộng is a short form of the designation Việt Nam Cộng-s „n ("Vietnamese Communist"). The term was coined by Vietnamese exiles in China during the interwar and civil war period. The term Viet Cong was intended to distinguish the Vietnamese communists from their nationalist compatriots, the Viet quoc . The term found its way into Vietnamese lexicons at the end of World War II. Ngo Dinh Diem and his advisors to the United States Information Agency popularized the term in order to push back the name Việt Minh , under which the communists had won the Indochina War, which was common to date . From 1956 the term was used in South Vietnamese publications. From 1958 onwards, Viet Cong was also used by US military and civil servants in Vietnam and the United States. The military abbreviation was "VC". The equivalent of the two letters in the NATO alphabet are Victor and Charlie , which is why the name common among US soldiers for their enemies was Charlie for short .

The official historiography of Vietnam speaks of the "Liberation Army of South Vietnam" or the "National Liberation Front of South Vietnam" ( Mặt trận Dân tộc Giải phóng miền Nam Việt Nam ). However, the name does not seem to have been uniform. In January 1961, Radio Hanoi announced the establishment of the “National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam”, while General Võ Nguyên Giáp spoke of the “South Vietnamese National Liberation Front” in his memoirs. In retrospect, the more general term “National Liberation Front” is often used.

With the establishment of the "Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Republic of South Vietnam" ( Chính Phủ Cách Mạng Lâm Thời Cộng Hòa Miền Nam Việt Nam ) in 1969, the official name used until then disappeared until the organization was finally dissolved in 1977. Instead, between 1969 and 1977 only “the front” ( Mặt trận ) was used. Today the Vietnamese media predominantly use the term “Liberation Army” ( Quân Giải phóng ).

history

During the 19th century, Indochina had become a French colony . Although had Japan this in World War II occupied, however, the French government tried to regain the colony. The resulting Indochina War (1946-1954) against the communist Việt Minh ultimately led to a defeat. The participants at the following Indochina Conference in Geneva decided to temporarily divide the country into North and South Vietnam. All-Vietnamese elections were to take place at a later date. In South Vietnam, the more active US government, Ngô Đình Diệm, set up president. In order to secure his political power, he cracked down on all opposition and persecuted the Việt Minh who remained in the south. They and members of the Communist Party went into hiding and turned to the North Vietnamese government. However, the latter did not want to jeopardize the planned elections and refused any assistance. Diệm could foresee that he would lose the elections and prevented them in July 1956.

A few farmers had already resisted the Diệm government, which was putting them under pressure with its land reform. From this a first resistance movement developed in 1956/1957. In 1958 this numbered around 1700 members from Việt Minh, the Communist Party, Cao Dai and the Hoa Hao sect, but also Catholics and Buddhists. The attacks of the first few years were directed against government officials, of whom 426 were murdered in 1958 and 1959 together. In 1960, between January and May alone, another 780 officers were killed in this campaign of terror. At the same time, the North Vietnamese government began to support the armed resistance in South Vietnam in 1959. The following year, 4,500 communist fighters, whose homeland was in the south, infiltrated South Vietnam. These organized the armed struggle and so it came in 1960 for the first time to major battles with units of the ARVN .

NFB fighters

In March 1960, a conference of former Việt Minh leaders, representatives of the Communist Party, Buddhists, Cao Dai, Hoa Hao and Catholics was held to discuss the formation of an all-party government. This led to the establishment of the “National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam” (NFB). On December 20, 1960, it announced its program on the radio, which it had pursued until 1975. It included the deposition of Diệms, the reduction of imports, lowering of leases, and land reform. Gender, ethnicities and religion should be on an equal footing, US influence should be reduced and a politically neutral course should be taken between the power blocks. To carry out the armed struggle, the NFB formed the "People's Liberation Armed Forces" (PLAF) from the active fighters.

During the first half of the 1960s, the initiative remained on the side of the NFB. The increased US troop presence increasingly resulted in a military stalemate. While the power of the South Vietnamese government was mainly concentrated in the coastal regions and the cities, the NFB had the upper hand in the countryside in many cases. At the beginning of 1968 she tried to expand her area of ​​influence: with the support of North Vietnamese troops , she attacked 14 of 15 provincial capitals including Sàigòn and Huế as part of the Tet Offensive on January 30th . The heavy fighting lasted several weeks and resulted in considerable losses for the NFB. It is estimated that she lost about 40,000 fighters. So weakened, it was no longer able to protect all of its areas of retreat. As a result, it also lost its economic and personnel base as well as its political influence. The importance of the NFB declined from 1968 onwards. It therefore behaved defensively over the next few years and tried to consolidate its remaining base, especially in the Mekong Delta. It was not until the Easter offensive of 1972 that it began to act aggressively again on a larger scale. As a result of the Paris Peace Agreement of January 27, 1973, the "Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Republic of South Vietnam" formed by the NFB in 1969 was effectively recognized. After the war, the NFB was finally dissolved in 1977.

Structure and strategy

organization

NFB members carry a captured American during a prisoner exchange (1973)

Although the NFB was often subsequently portrayed as a purely communist association, its composition has always been heterogeneous. Although the Communist Party as a whole exercised a dominant influence, the practical sphere of influence was more based on local conditions. The communist party was strong in the former Việt Minh areas, but sects dominated politics in the Mekong Delta. In the cities, the influence of Catholics and intellectuals predominated. With the “ People's Revolutionary Party ” ( PRP), the communists had a uniform group within the NFB, which primarily had to take care of ideological and political orientation. Its members played a special role, as they had the right to veto political and military decisions. Its power flowed to the PRP through its connection to the Communist Party in North Vietnam, which ruled there, and made it the determining group within the NFB.

The NFB pursued the goal of building a broad base of supporters within the population. To do this, she relied on political mass organizations that tried to capture the population according to occupation, age and gender. There were mass organizations for farmers, workers, intellectuals, women and young people. The peasant organization of the FLN, which advocated redistribution of the land, had around 1.8 million members in 1963. The women's organization, which in contrast to the prevailing Confucian view of the world, demanded complete emancipation of women, had around 1 million members in 1965. The NFB youth organization was the main recruiting tool for the FLN guerrilla forces and civilian members of the FLN were important in obtaining information and resources. People who were considered enemies of communist ideology because of their social status were excluded from participating in the NFB organizations.

The military arm of the NFB was known as the People's Liberation Army . The basis of the NFB's military efforts were organized part-time soldiers at village level, who were responsible for intelligence gathering and guerrilla actions. Above these locally built cells, there were full-time regional forces that were available to the regional FLN leadership for military operations in a certain area. The last link in the military organization consisted of regular forces operating in battalion strength and subordinate to the Central Bureau for South Vietnam . Both the civil and military organization was congruent with the organizational structure of the Viet Minh, which operated successfully in the Indochina War .

In 1958 the CIA estimated the number of insurgents at 1,700 fighters. Four years later one had to assume 23,000 to 34,000 members. By 1964, the People's Liberation Army had grown to an estimated 51,000 people. According to their own information, the insurgents comprised around 2,000 fighters in 1959, and around 10,000 in 1961.

Methods

An NFB suspect is taken away by a US Marine (1965).

The main recruiting areas were the areas where the Việt Minh used to be strong and in the sect-controlled Mekong Delta . In the other areas, the NFB first had to gain a foothold. To this end, the local population was urged to give fighters shelter or to carry out messenger services. The NFB activists also organized roundtables for political orientation, in which reading and writing were also taught. In the remote mountain areas in the Cambodian border area, this was more successful than in the urbanized parts of the country.

Most of all, the NFB managed to use the war itself to win over the local population. The NFB settled in the vicinity of a settlement and murdered some government officials. This forced the government to increase its troop presence, which led to resentment among the population who had to feed these troops. The liberation front forced the government troops and officials to withdraw at gunpoint and took over the place. If the government decided to counterattack by military force, intense fighting and the destruction of the place were often the result. This finally drove the population to the NFB. The members of the NFB did not shy away from coercion and violence in order to achieve cooperation among the civilian population, who ultimately stood between the fronts.

politics

Once a place was taken over, the NFB first consolidated its position there by appointing local, but loyal officials. These ensured a land reform that put the farmers in possession of their own land, of which they only had to pay 10 percent in taxes annually. Taxes of 20-40 percent were common among the administrators of the Diem government. Statutes of twelve rules, which should ensure discipline, were passed and, above all, the hatred against the US American "imperialists" was stoked. Re-education courses and the approval of political organizations (e.g. liberation movement of the peasants, liberation movement of women) in the population served this purpose. Especially after 1965, additional taxes and duties were added to finance the war.

literature

  • Cuong Ngo-Anh: Vietcong - anatomy of a force in guerrilla warfare . Bernard & Graefe, Koblenz 1981 ISBN 3-7637-5328-1
  • Marc Frey : History of the Vietnam War . CH Beck, Munich 1998 ISBN 3-406-42078-8
  • Kuno Knöbl: Viet Cong, the uncanny enemy - an experience report with a documentary appendix (2nd edition), Molden Verlag, Munich 1966
  • Douglas Pike: Viet Cong. Organization and technology of the revolutionary freedom struggle . Oldenbourg, Munich 1968
  • Trương Như Tảng: A Vietcong Memoir: An Inside Account of the Vietnam War and Its Aftermath Vintage Books, New York 1986 ISBN 978-0-39-474309-7
  • Michael Lee Lanning, Dan Cragg: Inside the VC and NVA. The Real Story of North Vietnam's Armed Forces. Fawcett Columbine, New York 2008 ISBN 978-0-449-90716-0
  • Ngô Văn: In the land of the cracked bell. The sufferings of Indochina in the colonial era. Ed. and afterword by Tilman Vogt, Christoph Plutte. Series: Certificates & Documents ( Au pays de la cloche fêlée, tribulations d'un Cochinchinois à l'époque coloniale ). Translated by Daniel Fastner. Matthes & Seitz, Berlin 2018

Web links

Commons : National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ William S. Turley: The second Indochina War: a concise political and military history . Rowman & Littlefield, 2009, pp. Xiv.
  2. ↑ Christopher Goscha : Historical Dictionary of the Indochina War (1945-1954). An International and Interdisciplinary Approach. Copenhagen 2011, p. 484
  3. ^ Military History Institute of Vietnam (2002). Victory in Vietnam: The Official History of the People's Army of Vietnam, 1954-1975 , translated by Merle L. Pribbenow. University Press of Kansas. p. 68. ISBN 0-7006-1175-4
  4. ↑ Nguyên Giáp Võ, Russell Stetler: The Military Art of People's War: Selected Writings of General Vo Nguyen Giap 1970, p 206, 208, 210. . See Program of the National Liberation Front of South Viet-Nam . Archived from the original on June 26, 2010. Retrieved September 20, 2019. (1967)
  5. ↑ Depending on the origin of the author, this can be the National Liberation Front (NLF) in English or the French Front National de Liberation (FNL).
  6. ↑ See article ( Memento of April 11, 2005 in the Internet Archive ) in the Viet Nam News .
  7. ↑ Marc Frey: History of the Vietnam War , Munich 1998, p. 64 f.
  8. ↑ Marc Frey: History of the Vietnam War , Munich 1998, p. 65 f.
  9. ↑ Marc Frey: History of the Vietnam War , Munich 1998, p. 165
  10. ↑ Marc Frey: History of the Vietnam War. Munich 1998, p. 66 fu 77.
  11. ^ A b c William J. Duiker: Sacred War - Nationalism and Revolution in a Divided Vietnam , Boston, 1995, pp. 142–146
  12. ^ A b Marc Frey: History of the Vietnam War , Munich 1998, p. 73
  13. ↑ Marc Frey: History of the Vietnam War , Munich 1998, p. 74
  14. ^ Marc Frey: History of the Vietnam War , Munich 1998, pp. 74–76.
  15. ↑ Review by Felix Baum: In the cellar of the Viet Cong. Dschungel, supplement to jungle world , 38, 19 September 2019, p. 14. About internal factional oppositions in the Viet Cong and their violent termination, the victory of the Hồ Chí Minh group, after 1945. For the author, see English or French Wikipedia.