Vietnam during World War II
Outbreak of war
In July 1937 troops from Japan invaded China and the Second Sino-Japanese War began . The constant advance of further Japanese troops worried the colonial French and also many Vietnamese. Two months after the start of the war, the Japanese government demanded control of the railway line from Haiphong to the Chinese border from the French in order to prevent the delivery of war material for Chiang Kai-shek's troops via Indochina. The governor-general Georges Catroux , appointed by France in 1938, initially refused, and the Japanese accepted this, as they did not want to get involved in another war.
The beginning of the Second World War in Europe in 1939 initially had little impact on Vietnam. However, the colonial regime increased its repression and, in view of the Hitler-Stalin pact, smashed all communist organizations. Many of their supporters fled to China, where the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Indochina had already moved due to French persecution .
Franco-Japanese dual power
After metropolitan France surrendered in June 1940, Japan began to put pressure on the colonial government. An ultimatum was issued to Catroux threatening Japanese troops to march in if the aid supplies to Chiang's troops were not stopped. In view of the military isolation of Indochina, the governor general decided to stop the aid deliveries.
The new government in Vichy had Catroux replace Admiral Jean Decoux , who was devoted to Marshal Pétain in July 1940 . In order to preserve the French sovereignty in Indochina as intact as possible, Decoux unconditionally also gave in to a second Japanese ultimatum and granted the Japanese the right to march through, to station troops and to use airfields. Through further stationing agreements in 1941, the Japanese strengthened their troops and brought practically all important military bases in Vietnam under their control. Economic cooperation was also organized, with Japan being granted various privileges. For a period of five years, Vietnam was subjected to a Franco-Japanese dual rule. The headquarters of the Japanese Southern Army under Terauchi Hisaichi was in Vietnam from 1941 to the summer of 1943 and from the fall of 1944 to the end of the war .
The French colonial administration was not affected, because due to the collaboration of the Decoux regime, Japan was initially able to limit itself to a system of indirect rule. Tokyo then left internal security entirely to the French, who acted with unprecedented severity against communists and anti-colonial and anti-Japanese groups.
However, the fact that the Japanese officially respected the colonial status quo did not prevent them from providing ideological, financial and military support to Vietnamese nationalists. First and foremost, this support was given to pro-Japanese groups that advocated Vietnam's independence within the framework of a " Greater East Asian Prosperity Sphere " propagated by Japan . In addition, the Japanese began systematically pillaging the country. In addition to natural resources, they requisitioned several million tons of rice, the staple food of the Vietnamese, at arbitrarily set minimum prices. Most of it was processed into fuel for military vehicles or burned in power plants. These policies led to famine in the final year of the war , killing over a million people, and devastating inflation.
The Việt Minh
The only political group that fought against both the French colonial regime, which was loyal to the Vichy government, and the Japanese at the time, was the Việt Minh ( League for the Independence of Vietnam ). It was founded in May 1941 with the significant participation of Hồ Chí Minh, who had returned from China . In addition to the bourgeoisie, it mainly included young, communist-minded intellectuals.
In its first manifesto of October 25, 1941, in addition to the end of colonialism and imperialism, it called for cooperation with all democratic countries (primarily America and China) and the establishment of a democratic republic on the basis of universal and equal suffrage , the nationalization of industry and the creation of a welfare state.
Their success is not least due to Ho Chi Minh. In addition to his great reputation as an internationally experienced revolutionary, he had an outstanding organizational talent and the ability to inspire people for his cause. His integrative power would make him the undisputed leader of the Vietnamese resistance and independence movement for the next four years.
The French resistance
Resistance against the Japanese began to be organized among the French as well. After the French Committee for National Liberation, founded by de Gaulle in June 1943, was recognized by numerous allies as the legitimate government of France, Gaullist resistance groups also formed in Indochina .
While the USA was already supporting the Việt Minh financially in their fight against the Japanese, the Gaullists refused to cooperate, because for them the fight against Japan was only one stage on the way to the complete restoration of the colonial regime. Working with the Việt Minh , which consisted of their hereditary enemies, was simply unthinkable for them. But military action against the Japanese, which the French had secretly prepared, was not to come.
Japanese rule
Rumors of French plans, an imminent American invasion of Indochina, the formation of the Provisional Government in France and Japan's defeat in the Battle of the Philippines led the Japanese under Terauchi Hisaichi to question the loyalty of the French soldiers. They benefited from the fact that after the defeat in the Philippines there were enough troops in Indochina to replace the French.
In order to maintain their position of power in Indochina , they presented Admiral Decoux on March 9, 1945 with an ultimatum to immediately submit the French troops to the Japanese high command. When the latter replied evasively, they disarmed the French armed forces within a few hours and occupied all strategically important points in the country ( Operation Meigõ ). The French were completely surprised, so that only a few units of the almost 30,000-strong colonial army were able to withdraw to China with the support of the Việt Minh.
The military disempowerment of the colonial regime was followed in many parts of the country by the dissolution of the French civil administration. About 8,000 French civilians were interned in special neighborhoods. Where the old administrative structures remained, the management functions were taken over by the Japanese. With the approval of Bảo Đại, “independent” Vietnam was proclaimed and a government under Trần Trọng Kim was formed.
Bad weather led to the famine in Vietnam in 1945 , which, beginning with the war crimes trials , was attributed to excessive requisitions by the Japanese for political reasons. Ultimately, however, it brought hundreds of thousands of impoverished Vietnamese to Việt Minh , which, financed by the American OSS , became the official ally of the Allies . At about the same time as the end of World War II through the capitulation of Japan , the August Revolution took place . On September 2, 1945, Ho Chi Minh proclaimed the Democratic Republic of Vietnam .
Japanese troops from August 15, 1945
After the Japanese surrender , initially nothing changed. The French captured in March remained interned until September 26th. Jumping Gaullist troops were fought. In Tonkin around 1,500 Japanese, many of them members of the Kempeitai, went over to the nationalist forces. South of the 16th parallel, the English commander Gen.-Maj. Sent by the South East Asia Command to reestablish the colonial regime used. Douglas Gracey , who initially only had a few hundred Gurkhas , the undisarmed Japanese for guard duties in Saigon as well as in the countryside and in Cambodia under British officers to fight the soldiers of the Vietnamese government. The seriously ill Field Marshal Terauchi was forced to give an assurance that he would personally answer for the discipline of his men. He officially surrendered to Mountbatten , who had therefore traveled, on November 30th, at which point British doctors had already diagnosed him as senile . De Gaulle's FFL representatives - all whites - did not arrive in Indochina until the end of October. For the period from August 15 to December 4, British sources indicate that 72 Japanese disappeared, 132 were wounded, 109 were killed and 478 "deserted" in Cochinchina , that is , fighting on the Vietnamese side against the colonial rulers. If the latter were seized by French forces, they were immediately executed.
In the north, which was supposed to be "liberated" by Chinese national troops , who mainly concentrated on looting, representatives of the Việt Minh reached an agreement on December 6, according to which the remaining 60,000 Japanese would retreat in the direction of the port of Cap Saint -Jacques (today: Vũng Tàu , around 60 km from Saigon) should persuade them to return home. By March 1946 - there were also Japanese from Thailand and Burma - almost 70,000 men were gathered who - with the exception of 600 alleged war criminals - were repatriated. Another 30,000 men followed via ports in the north. Around 1,500 Japanese civilians were shipped from the north from March 1946, while in the south the British held around 5,500 people in Saigon's Chihoa prison until May.
See also
Individual evidence
- ↑ Japanese rice exports had dropped to zero by the end of 1944 due to a lack of transport capacity. Takashi Shiraishi, Motoo Furuta (Ed.): Indochina in the 1940s and 1950s (= Cornell University, Southeast Asia Programm. Translation Series. Vol. 2). Southeast Asia Program - Cornell University, Ithaca NY 1992, ISBN 0-87727-401-0 , and Bùi Minh Dũng: Japan's Role in the Vietnamese Starvation of 1944-45. In: Modern Asian Studies. Vol. 29, No. 3, 1995, pp. 573-618, doi : 10.1017 / S0026749X00014001 .
- ↑ z. B. those landing in the framework of Operation Lambda (kept secret until 1988) to prevent Bao Dai's abdication.
- ^ Peter Neville: Britain in Vietnam. Prelude to disaster, 1945-6 (= Cass Series. Vol. 27). Routledge, London et al. 2007, ISBN 978-0-415-35848-4 .