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War & Society Volume 31, 2012 - Issue 2: Bringing Asia into Focus: Civilians and Combatants in the Line of Fire in China and Indochina
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Original Article

A ‘Total War’ of Decolonization? Social Mobilization and State-Building in Communist Vietnam (1949–54)

Christopher Goscha Professor of International RelationsUniversité du Québec à Montréal, CanadaView further author information
Pages 136-162 | Published online: 12 Nov 2013

  • For major reflections on ‘total war’, see the edited volumes: A World at Total War: Global Conflict and the Politics of Destruction, 1937–1945, ed. by Roger Chickering, Stig Förster, and Bernd Greiner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); On the Road to Total War: The American Civil War and the German Wars of Unification, 1861–1871, ed. by Stig Förster and Jörg Nagler (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Anticipating Total War: The German and American Experiences, 1871–1914, ed. by Manfred F. Boemeke, Roger Chickering, and Stig Förster (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); The Shadows of Total War: Europe, East Asia, and the United States, 1919–1939, ed. by Roger Chickering and Stig Förster (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009); La Guerre Totale, ed. by Francois Géré and Thierry Widemann (Paris: Economica, 2001); The People in Arms: Military Myth and National Mobilization since the French Revolution, ed. by Daniel Moran and Arthur Waldron (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); and Jean-Yves Guiomar, L’Invention de la Guerre Totale, XVIIIe XXe Siècle (Paris: Le Félin, 2004).
  • Hew Strachan, ‘Essay and Reflection: On Total War and Modern War’, The International History Review, 22·2 (June 2000), 341–370, especially 353–55.
  • Imlay Talbot, ‘Total War’, Journal of Strategic Studies, 30·3 (2007), 547–70.
  • On the dangers of applying the concept of ‘total war’ indiscriminately to any and every war, see: The Shadows of Total War, pp. 6–7; Mark E. Neely, ‘Was the Civil War a Total War?’, Civil War History, 50·4 (December 2004), 343–458; Strachan, ‘Essay and Reflection’; and Imlay, ‘Total War’. In his study of the ‘southern revolution’ during the Vietnam War, David Hunt speaks of ‘total war’ (he even uses it in his title), but nowhere in his introduction or in his book does he define what he means in theoretical and methodological terms. David Hunt, Vietnam’s Southern Revolution: From Peasant Insurrection to Total War, 1959–1968 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2009). David Bell follows suit in the latest attempt to establish the ‘first’ total war: The First Total War: Napoleon’s Europe and the Birth of Warfare As We Know It (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2007). For insightful critiques of this book see: <http://www.h-net.org/∼diplo/essays/PDF/BellForum.pdf> [accessed 4 June 2012].
  • I argue that the party was in fact weak and hardly in control of the state and society until the early 1950s, if not later. Christopher E. Goscha, Vietnam: Un État né de la Guerre, 1945–54 (Paris: Armand Colin, 2011), Chapter 2.
  • Truong Chinh, ‘Tich cuc cam cu va chuan bi tong phan cong nhu the nao’, 14–18 February 1949, in Cuoc khang chien than thanh cua nhan dan Viet-Nam, Vol. II (Hanoi: Nha Xuat Ban Su That, 1960), pp. 131–33; and especially ‘Tich cuc cam cu va chuan bi tong phan cong’, 14–18 February 1949, in Van Kien Dang Toan Tap, Vol. 10 (Hanoi: Nha Xuat Ban Chinh Tri Quoc Gia, 2001), pp. 25–67.
  • Truong Chinh, ‘Tich cuc cam cu va chuan bi tong phan cong nhu the nao’, 14–18 February 1949, in Cuoc khang chien than thanh cua nhan dan Viet-Nam, Vol. II (Hanoi: Nha Xuat Ban Su That, 1960), pp. 137–39.
  • Nguyen Ngoc Minh, ed., Kinh te Viet Nam tu cach mang thang tam den khang chien thang loi (1945–1954) (Hanoi: Nha Xuat Ban Khoa Hoc, 1966), p. 351; ‘Sac lenh so 126/SL: Ve viec dat nghia vu quan su’, available at: <www.thuvienphapluat.vn> [accessed 4 June 2012]; Tu dien bach khoa quan su viet nam (Hanoi: Nha Xuat Ban Quan Doi Nhan Dan, 1996), p. 664; Bach Khoa Tri Thuc quoc phong toan dan (Hanoi: Nha Xuat Ban Chinh Tri Quoc Gia, 2003), p. 466; and intercepted radio DRV radio communication, ‘Le président du Conseil supérieur de la Défense nationale aux présidents des comités exécutifs et de résistance des Lien Khu’, 5 November 1949, signed by Pham Van Dong, box 10H2941, Service Historique de la Défense (hereafter cited SHD). For a sampling of the mass of directives issued in 1949 in support of the GCO, see the documents reproduced in Cuoc khang chien than thanh, Vol. II and Van Kien Dang Toan Tap, Vol. 10.
  • Truong Chinh, ‘Hoan thanh nhiem vu chuan bi, chuyen manh sang tong phan cong (bao cao o hoi nghi toan quoc lan thu ba)’, Van Kien Dang, toan tap, Vol. 11 (1950) (Hanoi: Nhat Xuat Ban Chinh Tri Quoc Gia, 2001), p. 59.
  • See Goscha, Vietnam.
  • Truong Chinh, ‘Hoan thanh nhiem vu’, p. 59.
  • Lich Su Bo Tong Tham Muu torng Khang Chien Chong Phap (1945–1954) (Hanoi: Bo Tong Tham Muu, 1991), p. 327. Truong Chinh, ‘Hoan thanh nhiem vu’, pp. 43–44.
  • Truong Chinh, ‘Hoan thanh nhiem vu’, p. 63.
  • Kinh te, p. 357. See also: ‘L’Économie Viet Minh’, Indochine/Sud-Est Asiatique, 19 (Juin-Juillet 1953), p. 28.
  • Truong Chinh, ‘Hoan thanh nhiem vu’, pp. 63–65; Truong Chinh, ‘Tong dong vien nhan luc, vat luc, tai luc de chien tang’, Su That, 131 (15 April 1950), in Cuoc khang chien than thanh, Vol. II, pp. 382–86; Pham Van Dong, ‘Phai kien toan chinh quyen cong hoa nhan dan de tong pha cong va kien thiet che do dan chu nhan dan Viet Nam (Bao cao tai hoi nghi toan quo clan thu ba)’, Van Kien Dang, toan tap, Vol. 11 (1950), pp. 186–87; ‘Nghi quyet cua hoi nghi toan quoc lan thu ba ve viec chuyen manh sang tong phan cong tu 21-1 den 3-2-1950’, Van Kien Dang, toan tap, Vol. 11 (1950), pp. 212–14; Kinh te, pp. 351–52.
  • Kinh te, p. 351.
  • Truong Chinh, ‘Hoan thanh nhiem vu’, pp. 63–65; Truong Chinh, ‘Tong dong vien nhan luc’, pp. 382–86.
  • The number of ten million people in DRV Vietnam is found in Kinh te, p. 391. The French also provide the same number, see ‘L’Économie Viet Minh’, p. 29. My rough estimate of six–seven million people living in central (Trung bo) and northern (Bac bo) DRV Vietnam is based on the numbers provided in Lich su cuoc Khang Chien chong Thuc Dan Phap, 1945–1954, Vol. 2 (Hanoi: Nha Xuat Ban Quan Doi Nhan Dan, 1995), pp. 550–54. This source claims the DRV administered two million people in the south.
  • Truong Chinh, ‘Hoan thanh nhiem vu’, pp. 85–103.
  • Vo Nguyen Giap, ‘Nhiem vu quan su truoc mat chuyen sang tong phan cong (Bao cao tai hoi nghi toan quoc lan thu ba)’, Van Kien Dang, toan tap, Vol. 11 (1950), pp. 122–23, 149–51.
  • Vo Nguyen Giap, p. 5.
  • Vo Nguyen Giap, ‘Nhiem vu quan su’, p. 150; Hoang Quoc Viet, ‘Cong tac mat tran va dan van trong nam chuyen manh sang thong phan cong (Bao cao tai hoi nghi toan quoc lan thu 3)’, Van Kien Dang, toan tap, Vol. 11 (1950), pp. 154–78; and Pham Van Dong, ‘Phai kien toan chinh quyen’, pp. 186–87.
  • Charles Tilly. 1992. Coercion, Capital and European States. New York: Wiley-Blackwell, among other works by Tilly.
  • Benoit de Treglode, Heros et revolutionnaires au Vietnam (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2001).
  • See: Greg Lockhart, Nation in Arms: The Origins of the People’s Army of Vietnam (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1989); also his essay ‘In Lieu of the Levée En Masse: Mass Mobilization in Modern Vietnam’, in The People in Arms, pp. 208–33.
  • I treat peasant resistance to communist mobilization, revolution, and state-building in a separate study.
  • Yves Chevrier, Mao et la Révolution Chinoise (Firenze: Casterman, 1993), pp. 93–95.
  • For a theoretically informed and incisive analysis of the creation of the ‘Stalinist cadres’, see Brigitte Studer, ‘L’Etre Perfectible: La Formation du Cadre Stalinien par le ‘Travail sur Soi’’, Genèse, 51 (June 2003), 92–113.
  • For more on the Chinese side, see the essays in New Perspectives on the Chinese Communist Revolution, ed. by Tony Saich and Hans van de Ven (Amonk: M.E. Sharpe, 1995); Twentieth-Century China: New Approaches, ed. by Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom (London: Routledge, 2003); and more recently Elizabeth Perry’s excellent Patrolling the Revolution (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007).
  • Vietnamese communists would move them further into Laos.
  • Comité de résistance administratif de la LK I, no. 8/TD, RDVN, ‘Instructions sur l’élaboration de programme de compétitions patriotiques pour l’échelon de village’, p. 6, box 10H2941.
  • Goscha, Vietnam, Chapter 2.
  • Kinh te, p. 366–67 and above all Benoît de Tréglodé, Héros et Révolution au Viet Nam (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2001) soon to appear in English translation: Heroes and Revolution in Vietnam (Singapore: NUS Press, 2012).
  • Ho Chi Minh, ‘Bai noi tai dai hoi cac chien si thi dua va can bo guong mau toan quoc’, 1 May 1952, in Van Kien Dang toan tap, Vol. 13 (1952) (Hanoi: Nha Xuat Ban Chinh Tri Quoc Gia, 2001), pp. 174–83; and Tréglodé, Héros et Révolution, p. 137.
  • De Tréglodé, Héros et Révolution, Chapters 1–3; Ngo Van Chieu, Journal d’un Combatant Viet Minh, trans. by Jacques Despuech (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1955), p. 184; Kinh te, pp. 367–69; ‘Dai Hoi Toan Quoc Cac chien si thi dua va can bo guong mau’, in Cuoc khang chien than thanh, Vol. III, pp. 244–47; and a myriad of documents reproduced in the Van Kien Dang toan tap volumes for the period 1948–54. On Sino-Soviet hero experiences, see: Yinghong Cheng, Creating the ‘New Man’: From Enlightenment Ideals to Socialist Realities (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2009); and Mary Sheridan, ‘The Emulation of Heroes’, The China Quarterly, 33 (January–March 1968), pp. 47–72.
  • Tréglodé, Héros et Révolution, p. 65.
  • The scholarship on Chinese rectification is immense. See: Vidya Prakash Dutt, ‘The Rectification Campaign in China’, International Studies, 1·1 (July 1959), 28–50; Cheng, Creating the ‘New Man’; Peter J. Seybolt, ‘Terror and Conformity: Counterespionage Campaigns, Rectification, and Mass Movements’, Modern China, 12·1 (January 1986), 39–73. For the Soviet Union, see: Studer, ‘L’Etre Perfectible’, pp. 92–113. For Vietnam, see: Georges Boudarel, ‘L’Idéocratie Importée au Vietnam avec le Maoïsme’, in Daniel Hemery ed., La Bureaucratie au Vietnam (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1983), pp. 31–106.
  • Lich su cuc bao ve — an ninh quan doi nhan dan viet nam (1950–2000) (Hanoi: Nha Xuat Ban Quan Doi Nhan Dan, 2003), available at: <www.quansuvn.net> [accessed 16 November 2011 and since removed from public access] and Lich su Tong cuc Chinh tri Quan Doi Nhan Dan Viet Nam, Vol. I (Hanoi: Nha Xuat Ban Quan Doi Nhan Dan, 2004), pp. 224–25.
  • Cited by Lai Nguyen Ai and Alec Holcombe, ‘The Heart and Mind of the Poet Xuan Dieu: 1954–1958’, Journal of Vietnamese Studies, 5·2 (Summer 2010), pp. 1–90.
  • Bertrand de Hartingh, ‘L’Adoption de la Réforme Agraire par la République Démocratique du Vietnam: Pragmatisme ou Idéologie ?’, Autrepart, 3 (1997), 5–24; his Entre le Peuple et la Nation: La République Démocratique du Viet Nam de 1953 à 1957 (Paris: Ecole Française d’Extrême-Orient, 2003); Edwin Moïse, Land Reform in China and North Vietnam (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1983); Lockhart, Nation-in-Arms; and Alec Holocombe, ‘The Complete Collection of Party Documents: Listening to the Party’s Official Internal Voice’, Journal of Vietnamese Studies, 5·2 (Summer 2010), pp. 225–42: Christine White. 1983. Mass Mobilisation and Ideological Transformation in the Vietnamese Land Reform Campaign, Journal of Contemporary Asia, 13(1), 74–90.
  • For more on this policy, see Goscha, Vietnam, Chapter 2.
  • Kinh Te, p. 358.
  • Goscha, Vietnam, Chapter 9.
  • Ho Chi Minh, ‘Bao Cao cua Chu Tich Ho Chi Minh’, 25 January 1953; and Van Kien Dang toan tap, Vol. 14 (1953) (Hanoi: Nha Xuat Ban Chinh Tri Quoc Gia, 2001), pp. 14–29.
  • Truong Chinh, ‘Bao Cao cua tong bi thu Truong Chinh tai hoi nghi lan thu 4’, not dated, Van Kien Dang toan tap, Vol. 14 (1953), pp. 48–50.
  • ‘Bao Cao cua tong bi thu Truong Chinh’, pp. 50–52.
  • ‘Bao Cao cua tong bi thu Truong Chinh’, pp. 48, 69.
  • ‘Bao cao cua chu tich Ho Chi Minh ve tinh hinh truoc mat va nhiem vu cai cach ruong dat’, Van kien dang toan tap (1953), pp. 369–83, p. 376–77 for the citation; ‘Thuc hien cac cach ruong dat’, ibid., pp. 384–456, 461–63; and ‘Quan Doi Nhan Dan voi cac cach ruong dat’, ibid., pp. 474–98.
  • Kinh te, p. 215.
  • Kinh te, p. 357 and ‘L’Économie Viet Minh’, p. 28.
  • Cong tac hau can chien dich Dien Bien Phu Dong Xuan 1953–1954 (Hanoi: Tong Cuc hau can, 1979, luu hanh noi bo), pp. 21–22.
  • See Christopher Goscha, ‘Vietnam and the World Outside: The Case of Vietnamese Communist Advisors in Laos (1948–1962)’, South East Asian Research, 12·2 (July 2004), 141–86.
  • Kinh te, pp. 351 and 359.
  • Kinh te, pp. 364–65. On mobilization and state-making in northwest Vietnam during the battle of Dien Bien Phu, see: Christian Lentz’s fine research: ‘Making the Northwest Vietnamese’, Journal of Vietnamese Studies, 6·2 (Summer 2011), 68–105 and his ‘Mobilization and State Formation on a Frontier of Vietnam’, Journal of Peasant Studies, 38·3 (2011), 559–86. Also see: Goscha, Vietnam.
  • Ngo Van Chieu, Journal d’un Combatant, p. 142.
  • Ngo Van Chieu, Journal d’un combatant, p. 145.
  • Ngo Van Chieu, Journal d’un combatant, p. 217.
  • Kinh te, p. 355.
  • John Barber, ‘Women in the Soviet War Effort, 1941–45’, in A World at Total War, pp. 233–43.
  • Dao Huyen Thanh, Dang Duc Tue, Nguyen Xuan Mai, Dien Bien Phu vu d’en face, paroles de bo doi (Paris: Nouveau Monde Editions, 2010), p. 37.
  • Kinh te, pp. 218, 360, 221. On the DRV’s navy, see the entry for ‘navy’ in Christopher Goscha, Historical Dictionary of the Indochina War (1945–1954): An International and Interdisciplinary Approach (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press/NIAS, 2011).
  • Cong tac hau can chien dich Dien Bien Phu, pp. 23, 272–73.
  • Cong tac hau can chien dich Dien Bien Phu, pp. 23–24, 269, 272.
  • Cong tac hau can chien dich Dien Bien Phu, pp. 42–50, 111–112, 143–53, 273; Kinh Te, pp. 216–17, 226.
  • I treat this subject in detail in a forthcoming study.
  • See Christopher Goscha, ‘Hell in a Very Small Place: Cold War and Decolonisation in the Assault on the Vietnamese Body at Dien Bien Phu’, European Journal of East Asian Studies, 9·2 (2010), 201–23.
  • Cong tac hau can chien dich Dien Bien Phu, pp. 111–12, 153. The DRV has not revealed how many of its civilian labourers and soldiers deserted during the Indochina War.
  • ‘Nghi quyet cua hoi nghi ban chap hanh trung uong lan thu sau mo rong’, 15–17 July 1954, Van Kien Dang toan tap, Vol. 15 (1954) (Hanoi: Nha Xuat Ban Chinh Tri Quoc Gia, 2001), p. 224.

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