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Chief of State. In the fall of 1945, after Hiroshima and the Japanese collapse, Ho Chi Minh took the decision of his life. Despite the repeated cautions of Moscow, 4,000 miles away (the Red Chinese were still isolated in their caves), Ho struck for power. "General offensive on all fronts," Viet Minh Military Order No. 1 proclaimed, and Ho's men in black, emerging in cohesion from jungle lairs, received the surrender of many Japanese and their arms. A French commissioner, parachuting down to reclaim the colony, found himself stripped seminude, and under arrest. But Ho's victory was not to pass unchallenged.
Under the Big Three agreement at Potsdam, the Nationalist Chinese came in to occupy Hanoi and the North, the British (which meant the French, who arrived in British ships) came to liberate Saigon and the South. Ho defied them. "We hold these truths to be self-evident," Ho proclaimed, declaring his Viet Nam independent. The great deception began.
Ho Chi Minh sent a golden opium set to the Chinese Nationalist commander and persuaded him that the Viet Minh was the right outfit to keep check on the French. "I love France and French soldiers. You are welcome. You are all heroes," Ho Chi Minh later declared, and the French decided that Ho was a useful man to watch the Chinese. "Americans are the liberators of the free world," Ho cried out, bidding for U.S. moral support, and OSS officers mingled convivially with the Viet Minh as Ho turned to more serious problems. Serious Problem No. 1 was the Nationalist element of the Viet Minh, which was getting uneasy. One by one Nationalist leaders were assassinated; Ho professed to be saddened by such unruly behavior.
Serious Problem No. 2 was the French: there was a new determination in them, a special kind of pride born of French anxiety to wipe out the humiliations of the war and to re-emerge as a great power. As such, the French were quite definite about Indo-China: they wanted it back. With a ruthlessness and skill that matched Ho's own, the French army speedily got control of the South and could not be kept out much longer from Hanoi. So Ho negotiated: when the French army came back into the North, as the Chinese withdrew, Ho consented to lead his "Democratic Republic of Viet Nam" back within the French Union. The French recognized Ho as Chief of State.
The Onset of War. With guards of honor and flags, Ho Chi Minh returned to Paris to settle the details. There is evidence that Ho genuinely wanted agreement at this stage: Moscow was making its postwar play for French friendship, and Ho, with little more than guerrillas behind him, was a long way out on a limb. But the French became more and more stubborn, and Ho saw his conquest fading. Ho made the mistake of relying for support upon French Communists, which further stiffened the French negotiators. Meanwhile, in Indo-China, French-Viet Minh relations were disintegrating: lives were taken on both sides.