For centuries, Vietnam resisted occupation by foreign powers, including China, France and Japan. During the Vietnam War, nationalists under Ho Chi Minh and General Giap framed the conflict as a struggle for independence. Using both guerrilla and conventional tactics, they successfully opposed United States (US) and allied intervention.
The US and its allies saw the Vietnam War as part of a struggle against international communism.
People on the other side thought of themselves more as nationalists fighting against foreign invaders and colonialists. The war against the US was seen by many Vietnamese as another in a series of conflicts for independence.
Vietnam was under Chinese rule for almost 1,000 years before gaining independence in the 10th century. During the centuries that followed, the Vietnamese repelled 3 invasions by the fearsome Mongols and resisted further Chinese attempts to regain control. They finally defeated a vast invasion force sent by the Chinese Ming Dynasty in the 15th century.
Following its victory over the Chinese, Vietnam began to expand southwards at the expense of Champa, a kingdom whose remnants were ultimately incorporated into Vietnam by the early 19th century.
Further Vietnamese expansion was halted by the French, who forcibly established themselves as colonial masters at the end of the 19th century. French colonial rule was interrupted in 1940 when the Japanese invaded Vietnam. The Vietnamese endured terrible hardships during the Japanese occupation, which lasted until the end of World War II in 1945.
After the war, the French tried to regain control of Vietnam despite local and worldwide anti-colonial sentiment. Eight years of war followed before the French were defeated by the Viet Minh, or the League for the Independence of Vietnam, led by Ho Chi Minh, who became president of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam).
The Vietnam People's Army existed within the Viet Minh movement and lasted until the Vietnam War and beyond. Between 1946 and 1972, the Vietnam People's Army was commanded by General Vo Nguyen Giap, Ho Chi Minh's military strategist since the early 1940s and a veteran of the struggle against the Japanese. Much of the credit for the defeat of the US and, before that, the French has been given to Giap. He was a brilliant but ruthless commander who was prepared to expend as many lives as were necessary to achieve victory.
Ho Chi Minh was a communist. But in the early stages of the Vietnam War, he instructed his lieutenants to make sure the Vietnamese people understood that they were fighting for Vietnam, not for communism.
In a critique of continuing US aid to South Vietnam during the final period of the war, General Giap commented that 'even when they withdrew their troops they would still continue to transform Vietnam into a new colony of theirs.' And when Saigon fell to the Vietnam People's Army in 1975, Giap spoke publicly of Vietnam's 'tradition of fighting against foreign invasion.'
The Vietnamese thought of the Americans as they had the French, the Japanese and the Chinese. As colonialists who sought to occupy their country. They called their struggle against the most recent invaders 'the American War'.
The Vietcong
The word 'Vietcong' was first used in the late 1950s. It appeared in South Vietnamese newspapers as an abbreviation of cong san Viet Nam, which simply meant 'Vietnamese communist'. Many of the original Vietcong were from the south of the country. They had gone north after 1954 when Vietnam was divided. In the north, they received political and military training before being sent back to the south.
In the 1960s, US soldiers began referring to the Vietcong as the VC and, more colloquially, as 'Charlie', which derived from the phonetic alphabet's rendering of the letter C in VC. The slang term 'Charlie' quickly came to include all communist forces.
According to the Vietnamese, however, the Vietcong were part of the North Vietnamese Army or Vietnam People's Army, commanded by General Vo Nguyen Giap. The Vietcong based in South Vietnam included both guerrilla and regular formations, with even the guerrillas possessing a regular army structure. In addition, the Vietcong consisted of a 'main force' of permanent troops, as well as cadres for recruiting and 'organising' South Vietnamese peasants.
Rather confusingly, the Vietcong often called themselves the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam to maintain the appearance of being a nationalist, southern-based movement, rather than a communist and North Vietnam-controlled organisation. Communist propaganda played a part in creating the impression that the Vietcong and the North Vietnamese Army were separate entities.
The Americans thought of their Vietnamese foes as being either Vietcong guerrillas or North Vietnamese regular troops. Although this distinction between guerrillas and conventional soldiers does not entirely reflect how the Vietnamese thought of themselves or operated, it became widespread. This perception also determined how most Westerners understood – and continue to think about – the communist forces in the Vietnam War.
The Viet Cong fought as guerrillas or as regular soldiers, depending on the circumstances.
In 1963, they won a notable victory at Ap Bac in a set-piece battle with South Vietnamese forces. But, perhaps inevitably, the Vietcong are better remembered for guerrilla-style operations, such as ambushes, sabotage and assassinations conducted against the Americans and their allies.
At times, the Vietcong also engaged in extortion and inflicted terror on South Vietnamese people. There is evidence of Vietcong massacres of local Catholic and Montagnard communities.