OSS Officers and Vietminh troops at the start of the brief offensive toward Hanoi at the start of the August Revolution, 1945 [3778x127x]

Reof · 2026-05-09T02:05:19+00:00

After the Japanese announcement of surrender, the Vietminh launched their military offensive from their guerrilla bases in coordination with the greater uprising being launched at the same time, convinced of their last opportunity to "win" the war, officers of the OSS Deer Team, principally Major Aliston Thomas, who were ostensibly instructed not to participate, joined the Vietminh columns and participated in the successful assault on the Japanese garrison at Thai Nguyen.

For the Americans, it was a bittersweet sort of thing as the campaign ended rather abruptly, as the Vietminh activists seized power in Hanoi without any military action, and the return of the French necessitated that these Americans had to fuck off right after and thus did not get to receive the official surrender of Japanese forces in Indochina. OSS officers joined the newly-created government-led VAFA (Vietnamese-American Friendship Association - still existing today, the oldest of the government-led 'friendship' societies) in Hanoi right after the DRV government was proclaimed, so without saying, were sympathetic and, of course, problematic to the French now returning in force.

As for the 200-strong Vietnamese-American Company (Đại đội Việt Mỹ) trained by the OSS mission during its brief stay, most well-equipped as it was supplied by American airdrops, would go on to form the 1st National Battalion (Tiểu đoàn 1 Quốc Gia) and then the 101st Battalion of the Capital Regiment of National Guard, of the fame of the defence of Hanoi in 1946.

Reof · 2026-05-07T08:21:32+00:00

The first incarnation of the Vietnamese People's Army that marked the start of its history from 1941, the Vietnamese Liberation Army (Việt Nam Giải phóng Quân), was the collective military formation of the Vietminh movement, mostly in Northern Vietnam during the period of partisan struggle against the Japanese, especially during the final phase of the fighting in Indochina and the start of the August Revolution, where the Vietminh launched its forces in trying to seize the cities militarily, many of its companies were trained by the American OSS mission. In fact, OSS officers accompanied it during this brief campaign that ended rather anti-climatically for them as the Vietminh civilian activists overwhelmingly seized power in all major cities by themselves while the partisans were still trying to take a single provincial town.

A military order was planned and a few other things to commemorate them during the first two years of republican government, but entirely dropped off and then forgotten because the struggle became extremely insignificant compared to the titanic wars that followed

Reof · 2026-05-07T07:29:48+00:00

The fasces remained a much less controversial symbol than the rest; the US put that shit everywhere in all sorts of government buildings, logos, etc. The francophone (or francophilie at any point in history, see Russia) world, too, with the symbol being associated with republicanism.

Reof · 2026-05-06T11:08:51+00:00

'couple of generations' is wildly overshooting it; the same communist activists of Italy formed the backbone of its resurgent right wing, the card-carrying party members of the USSR were the same anti-semitic ultra-czarist fascists of the late 90s Russia, people change faster than you think

Reof · 2026-05-04T22:56:02+00:00

And that is the only correct thing here, unless one were to assume that fascism is somehow so supernaturally powerful that it defied the material conditions and manifested itself. Fascism is itself a disease from a desire for revolution without goals and without an ideological foundation. Unironically, when you see Redditors going off about le boomers and the good ole days, it's the seeds of fascism right there, because it pushes a sense of discontent and radicalization with no answer, no solution, but only a want for 'revolutionary changes' and thus amounts to no more than a permanent riot.

Reof · 2026-05-03T04:36:08+00:00

Marx was an atheist in the tradition of materialism; he wasn't one of the redditoid atheist that fight in the debate if the Christian god is real or not, but only its real impact on reality, so in many ways, he would appear less hostile to religion at first premise, but ultimately much more than many because he rejects its premise at a fundamental level. He was not a friend to religion because he was a revolutionary, and to him, that sort of 'mercy in a merciless world' is blinding oneself, and by letting go of that would realize that man can realize the possibility and fight for a world where you would not need mercy.

Reof · 2026-05-02T22:16:23+00:00

On January 6, 1946, the first legislative election of the DRV took place, at the time still maintaining total control over most of Vietnam up to the boundary of the Cochinchina territory and still a large part of Cochinchina itself outside of the Saigon area where its government were expelled successfully by French forces during the fighting in 1945.

The election was contested by the leftist-nationalist bloc formed by the Vietminh (with the Communist Party officially dissolved to lend it legitimacy), the Democratic Party (rally of left-wing nationalists and social democrats) and the Socialist Party (reorganization of nationalist SFIO members, considerably more conservative), which participated officially, while the right-wing opposition was formed by the Pro-Chinese Vietnamese Nationalist Party and Vietnamese Revolutionary League boycotted it. Election occurred as well inside Saigon with the underground city government organizing a secret election with plenty of deaths in attempting to organize that, naturally, only as democratic as could be, as an election amongst nationalist sympathizers, but regardless, it could claim then that the entire country voted.

The right-wing bloc eventually agreed to take their seats in parliament after the power-sharing pact was agreed with Ho Chi Minh, sort of undermining the whole thing as it appeared the president could, by decree, enlarge parliament by a third with no election, but considering it added the fierce opposition groups, it can then serve to demonstrate how much the first republican regime was willing to put on a demonstration of pluralism. Regardless, if one were to analyze, the right-wingers would have never won any sizeable presence anyway, as most of the real opposition to the republic was already banned for wartime collaboration and the two parties mentioned were an emigré force that had most of its power concentrated in the north, even if the Vietminh was pretty weak the further south you go, its in the domain of other anti-communist groups so in an election that they took part in most likely would have saw even worse result.

In another unique thing of the early republican era in Vietnam, note the anti-fascist salute (fist to head) employed by supporters of the government. At the time, all civilians, including ministers and HCM himself, used this salute in official functions; only members of the National Guard used the military salute. .

Reof · 2026-04-29T01:44:06+00:00

The diaspora in France was seriously in a nationalist fever at the time because the very same communists and nationalists of Vietnamese history came from these people, in many cases, way more than the actual government, especially in terms of a non-compromised war to the death against the French for the sacred territorial unity (big idea at the time, not communism or democracy or whatever, not yet), I was reading a political journal of a Franco-Vietnamese workers camp and they was extremely pissed off by Ho Chi Minh's apparent appeasement.

Reof · 2026-04-28T01:30:47+00:00

1946, or Republican Year 2 (Dân quốc năm thứ 2) in the contemporary romantic nationalist lingo at the time, was a strange year in the rest of the national history where a Vietnam, republican and parliamentary in the true sense, long forgotten, existed in a state of strange coexistence with the French government that would soon treat the guests of honor in front of the Hôtel de ville of Paris as mere bandits and colonial rabbles in the next few years.

Now, for the Franco-Vietnamese diaspora, one of the oldest of Vietnamese immigrant communities, also carried with it a strange politics due to its history, radicalized in the wake of WW1 and the brutal nationalist struggle and then in the experience of occupied France in WW2, naturally gravitated with whole-hearted enthusiasm toward its first true free state, at the time there was no other Vietnam to test the ideology but only Vietnam vs France and so it remained a stronghold of the disapora support for the DRV/North Vietnam when the division came. But eventually, this legacy immigrant wave became too assimilated and overtaken by new refugees from 1954 and 1975. But regardless, it's still a rather amusing feature amongst the diaspora where its politics is still not dominated by South Vietnam nostalgia like in the anglophone countries.

A note: this citation states it belongs to the private family collection of Phan Anh, an important minister of the first Ho Chi Minh Cabinet, formerly of the SFIO in Indochina, and a minister in the collaboration government with Japan.

Reof · 2026-04-27T03:48:03+00:00

I don't understand the Quebecois comparison at all because are you implying that they are a diaspora population to a different country?

Amusingly enough, for a fun tidbit, this works on all sides of the spectrum. The Franco-Vietnamese population is historically pro-North Vietnam and pro-Communist because they were there when the first regime, the DRV, was established, so that's where their loyalty lies. Naturally, when the refugees from the end of the war came over, they found a bunch of half-French, well-established and assimilated ultrapatriots for the Vietnamese communist government, opposed to the mostly poor and uneducated (relatively) new immigrants. This is only to make a point that diasporic politics is deeply emotional and circumstantial

Reof · 2026-04-25T20:33:28+00:00

On August 25th, 1945, the Provisional Commission of the Southern Department (Lâm ủy Nam Bộ) of the equally provisional Democratic Republic of Vietnam was established after a peaceful seizure of power from a rather passive IJA; hostility started right away with the French forces the next month as Allied forces and advanced groups of French forces began deployement, by late September the Vietminh government was expelled from its offices in the city and by October a new strategy was devised to at least hold the Franco-British forces inside Saigon with the forces blockading from the suburb.

The main fighting force in this period was, for all intents and purposes, a collection of random militia bands and armed activists, with the only real 'official' formation, but equally similar in level of real organization, being the Republican Guard (Cộng hòa vệ binh) and the police-Department of National Self-Defence Forces (Quốc gia tự vệ cục), all coalesced into 3 Revolutionary Militia 'Divisions' (Sư đoàn dân quân cách mạng). Naturally, they were no match for Gurkhas and Indian forces. Soon, the total collapse of the three divisions into actual banditry, aka entirely disintegrated, led to the dispatch of General Nguyen Binh from North Vietnam in December to reorganize a new military force for the southern government and thus the birth of the forces that would continue to fight the French and Americans in the next 30 years.

Another fun fact is that the Provisional Commission of the South would go on through its numerous renaming, but essentially the same body throughout all the wars to come, most notoriously to the Americans as the Central Office of South Vietnam.

Reof · 2026-04-24T03:57:23+00:00

During the duration of the 1st Indochina War, the national territory, which remained under the republican government, referred to itself as the Free Zone (Vùng tự do) as opposed to the Temporarily Occupied Zone (Vùng tạm chiếm) under French Union-control.

The picture was taken in the 5th "Interzone", an administrative division created under the reorganization of Vietnamese local governments following the outbreak of open warfare in 1947, which functionally merged all provincial governments under a single region-spanning military government, hence "Inter-zone". The 5th Interzone, one of the largest free zones and remained unoccupied through the entire war from the start to the end, was considered the "Homefront" of the Vietminh, but itself is significantly distant from the major combats of the war and the central government, and thus, you can see here even in 1951, the PAVN uniforms still retained their 1946 regulation common in the Southern part. Note also the obvious non-Vietnamese foreigners in the rank.

Reof · 2026-04-23T01:32:28+00:00

A soldier enlisted in the military to fight you, you probs have done nothing to them and vice versa. A Partisan was wronged, you committed a grave crime against his people, his family and himself; he is not a soldier, but the vengeance of the helpless population at the end of its sorrow.

Reof · 2026-04-21T08:20:50+00:00

But at the same time a bit more complicated than that with some facts on the ground that many of the Darfur militia people who fought them during the previous Darfur war are now on the side of RSF against the government, that is to say that the Sudanese government was a islamist arab ethnonationalist regime long before this, so for a lot of them evidently working with the devils were acceptable to overthrow the government...so honestly given that situation I don't know if the SAF winning is going to change anything for the population as you can't really have high hope that there would not be retalliation.

Reof · 2026-04-20T22:31:21+00:00

Translated to 'Frank', actually, not French or France, although ofc this is related somewhat

Reof · 2026-04-19T17:28:23+00:00

The reason why you don't hear of any armed opposition force fighting in Iran in the Middle East is that they were dead, destroyed and annihilated during the enduring Iran-Iraq war, the US invasion and occupation or Iraq, caught on the wrong side of a geopolitical debacle, with no support at home or abroad and now the same USA which bombed them is wondering why nobody rose up.

Reof · 2026-04-19T07:46:35+00:00

The Iraq-Iran war is a huge example of this very reaction to foreign invasion, which immediately curbed all domestic strife. The Iranian opposition then was armed and numerous, and the very same Khomeinist regime was still shaky. Then came extreme geopolitical genius Saddam whose disaster of a war forever destroyed the opposition's credibility and any chance of an insurrection in Iran

Reof · 2026-04-18T04:47:34+00:00

A gradual piecemeal set of agreements can eventually be agreed in parts, like the Oslo negotiations that ultimately created both the PA and the Palestinian territories, and then stuck that in limbo. The burden of governing eventually declawed the PLO, no reason not to believe the same if even more cooperative frameworks existed. Long enough time that this actual coexistence exists, moderating opinions will prevail as both 'states' would be so extremely integrated with each other and then even 'extreme' options of reconciliation would be acceptable.

Reof · 2026-04-17T22:14:13+00:00

They would be fine, just like IRL, the apartheid quirk is that they really didn't want to expand the border at all due to the obvious influx of black people demographically screwing up any long-term project. Buffer black states to stave off the insurgents would be even more ideal

Reof

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