By Đoàn Thanh Liêm
We are now in 2015 – a remarkable time to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the Independence of Vietnam (1945-2015) and also the 40th anniversary of “ the cessation of hostilities” (1975-2015).
Let’s reflect on the war that lasted almost 30 years and killed more than 3 million Vietnamese – communist and non-communist combined. In this short paper, I’d like to present the general understanding of the majority of the Vietnamese people who are both victims and ultimate witnesses of the war that was primarily “brothers killing brothers” – rather than the war that was imposed upon them by foreign powers. Here are very briefly some main points.
1. The war started in the summer of 1945, right after the Vietnamese communists had power in hand with the defeat of the Japanese in Asia. From 1945 to 1947, the communist forces systematically liquidated all non-communist elements through different regions of the country: North, Central and South Vietnam.
In the North, most of the Đại Việt and Quốc Dân Đảng elite members were killed, the best known being Ly Đông A, Trương Tử Anh, and the famous writer Khái Hưng.
In the South, most of the Trotskysts, such as Tạ Thu Thâu, Phan Văn Hùm, Trần Văn Thạch, as well as the founder of the Hòa Hảo Buddhist sect, Hùynh Phú Sổ, were killed.
In the Central, particularly, about 3,000 Cao Dai were killed in Quảng Ngãi in September 1945, together with about 3,000 other non-communists. This was the most atrocious mass killing, occurring in the first two months of the Vietnamese Communists having the power in their hands.
2. The communists then had the upper hand because they were much better trained and organized than the non-communists. The communist leaders were meticulously trained by Komintern in Moscow during the 1920s, 30s and 40s; the non-communists never had such kind of international political training.
Until 1945, both communists and non-communists were equally repressed by the French colonist authorities; they were in the same prison and did not have any hatred or resentment whatsoever against the other. But right away, once the communists had the power in their hands, this merciless liquidation of the “potential antagonist elements” was practiced all over the country.
These massive and almost simultaneous killings can not be simply attributed to the fanatical lower local agents. The main reason for this “preventive elimination of political opponents” can be precisely found in the Komintern theory of “the Violent Revolution,” as devised by supreme leaders such as Joseph Stalin and Mao Tse Tung.
3. This fratricide war was further aggravated and escalated in the context of the ever-widening global Cold War – especially since the victory of Communist China over the Kuomintang regime (in late1949) as well as the Korean War (1950-53).
There were, however, some misunderstandings to be clarified concerning the right cause of the self-defense of the non-communists against the brutal attack from the communist side. Starting in 1949, the Bao Dai nationalist regime was established and gradually consolidated, thanks to the patient and skillful dealing with the French government. And “the non-communist survivors” rallied under this “nationalist government” to carve out additional territory for their own safety. And after the partition of the country in 1954 following the Geneva Agreement, the Ngô Đình Diệm government continued the “nationalist regime” in the South with due legitimacy.
Certainly there was too much division and conflict between different factions and pressure groups inside South Vietnam – culminating with the overthrow of the Ngô Đình Diệm regime – that ineluctably led to the inevitable weakening of the nationalist ranks and the final collapse of the South’s government in 1975.
Since the reunification of the country under the communist totalitarian dictatorship, the Vietnamese people in general have had no more illusions about the “liberation” or “socialist paradise” as profusely promised by the communist leaders during the long war. But this is distinctively another chapter of our recent postwar history that does not need to be discussed here in this short paper.
Philadelphia, April 27, 2015
