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Toward the end of 1946, events moved decisively toward war. The talks in France broke down and Ho returned to Indo-China. There was a sharp, unexpected encounter at Haiphong, where French naval units, claiming that they had been attacked, bombarded the city. Ho prepared with guile for the onset of war. On Dec. 15 he congratulated the new French Premier Leon Blum (an old Socialist friend), and Ho's Interior Minister expressed a "sincere desire for fraternal cooperation." On Dec. 19 Ho ordered the Viet Minh army to attack the unsuspecting French army and civilian population in Hanoi. "For every ten men that you kill," Ho, man of war, warned the French, "we will kill one of yours. It is you who will have to give up in the end."
For seven years the fighting was a standoff: the French held the cities, but could not sweep the jungles; the Viet Minh presided over the jungles, but could not storm the towns. The political war was also a standoff: the French brought back Bao Dai, an ex-puppet of the Japanese, to reinspire Vietnamese nationalism on their behalf—but they got nowhere; the Viet Minh lost friends by their brutal emphasis upon forced labor, and by further purges of their nationalist element. But for the Indo-Chinese people, the war was an unrelenting horror: at war's end a staggering 2,000,000 Indo-Chinese civilians were homeless. Ho's patient preparation was finally rewarded last spring, when the Communists struck characteristically on two fronts 5,000 miles apart: with Red China field guns and Russian rocket launchers, they crumbled the valiant French garrison at Dien-bienphu; with Chou En-lai and Molotov, they crumbled Western resolution at Geneva. One day last month, in one of the most extraordinary spectacles of Asia's long, unfolding panorama, French tanks withdrew from Hanoi before Viet Minh infantrymen wearing sneakers.
"We Are Winning!" With victory, Ho Chi Minh's prestige reached a new high in Asia. Nationalists of many lands, for all their objection to Communism, could not help taking pride in the exploits of an Asian army against their old masters from Europe. Indo-China's wait-and-seeists no longer needed to wait and see. "We are winning! Why stay with the losers?" cried Viet Minh women, urging Vietnamese soldiers to desert. "Do you want your sons to curse your names?"
Besides the heady stimulant of victory, the Viet Minh could also claim:
¶ The most effective jungle army in Southeast Asia, indoctrinated so deeply that there is a Red cell in every platoon, and commissars discuss politics with the wounded in the hospitals.
¶ The best general in Southeast Asia, Vo Nguyen Giap, 42, top law student of his time at Hanoi University, graduate of Chinese military schools. A Communist since the late '30s, he is sometimes temperamental and needs to be watched by party theologians, but his hatred for the French is unwavering: his first wife went to jail for calling the Tricolor a "flag of dogs," and died of typhoid there.
¶ A solid political organization. Ho Chi Minh has destroyed the Viet Minh's Nationalist elements, and he is unquestioned master of the Viet Minh Politburo.