Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice book in great condition. Pages in excellent condition. No notes or highlighting. See images. Fantastic book.

About the book >.>.> The ‘Vietnam War’ started in World War II when the dedicated Communist leader Ho Chi Minh and General Vo Nguyen Giap waged guerrilla war against the Vichy-controlled French colonialists and the Japanese who had been allowed to use Indo-China as a base for operations in Southeast Asia. France had in the last century colonized the Indo-Chinese peninsula comprising Tonkin in the north; Annam the mountainous jungle territory in the centre and Cochin-China the comparatively prosperous southern region. Laos and Cambodia also formed part of this sizeable chunk of France’s colonial empire. In September 1945 Ho Chi Minh entered Hanoi the northern capital as a liberator and declared a Democratic Republic of Vietnam. The French were quick to respond in February 1946 with a major expeditionary force entering northern Vietnam from the south. During the next eight years the French waged a bloody war against the Communist Viet Minh forces who fighting a guerrilla war would seldom accept a conventional battle. French strategy was based on holding hundreds of forts which fell one- by-one to the Viet Minh until in 1954 the war was virtually over with the French disaster-at-arms at Dien Bien Phu. Although the South Vietnamese had assisted their French masters their nationalist aims were also strong and as a result of the French withdrawal in 1954 two separate states with widely differing ideologies were established in North and South Vietnam the latter being non-communist and based on democratic principles learned from France if not the French colonists. (SP)