Viet Cong

Vietcong or National Liberation Front Việt cộng or Quân Giải phóng [Liberation Army]
A Vietcong soldier carries an AK-47 rifle. This photo was taken at an exchange of prisoners of war in February 1973 following the Paris Peace Accords.
Leaders	COSVN: Commander: Trần Văn Trà (1963-1967), (1973-1975). Party secretary: Nguyễn Văn Linh (1961-64), Nguyễn Chí Thanh (1964-1967), Phạm Hùng (1967-1975). NLF: Nguyễn Hữu Thọ (chairman), Huỳnh Tấn Phát (general secretary, vice-chairman), Phung Van Cung (vice-chairman). PRG: Huỳnh Tấn Phát (president), Madame Nguyễn Thị Bình (foreign minister), Trần Văn Trà (minister of defense), Trương Như Tạng (minister of justice)
Dates of operation	1954—1976
Group(s)	National Liberation Front of South Vietnam Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Republic of South Vietnam (PRG) People's Liberation Armed Forces (PLAF) Alliance of National Democratic and Peace Forces Central Office for South Vietnam (COSVN)
Headquarters	NLF and PRG: Hanoi, North Vietnam COSVN: Mimot, Cambodia (1966-72); Loc Ninh, South Vietnam (1972-75)
Active regions	Indochina, with a focus on South Vietnam
Ideology	Communist
Allies	North Vietnam, Soviet Union, China, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Pathet Lao, and the Khmer Rouge (until 1975)
Opponents	South Vietnam United States Ngô Đình Diệm Nguyễn Văn Thiệu
Battles and wars	See full list

"Vietcong" redirects here. For the video game, see Vietcong (computer game).

The Vietcong (Việt cộng), or the National Liberation Front, was an army based in South Vietnam that fought the United States and South Vietnamese governments during the Vietnam War (1959-75). It had both guerrilla and regular army units, as well as a network of cadres who organized peasants in the territory it controlled. Many soldiers were recruited in South Vietnam, but others were attached to the Vietnam People's Army, the regular North Vietnamese army. The Vietcong was closely allied with the government of North Vietnam. The group was formed in the 1950s by former members of the Viet Minh acting on orders from Hanoi. Many of its core members were "regroupees," southern communists who had resettled in the North after the Geneva Accord (1954). Hanoi gave the regroupees military training and sent them back to the South along the Ho Chi Minh Trail in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The Vietcong's best-known action was the Tet Offensive, a massive assault on more than 100 South Vietnamese urban centers in 1968, including an attack on the US embassy. The offensive riveted the attention of the world's media for weeks, but also overextended the Vietcong. Later communist offensives were conducted primarily by the North Vietnamese army. The group was dissolved in 1977 after North and South Vietnam were officially unified under a communist government.

Names

Việt cộng is short for cộng sản Việt Nam ("Vietnamese communist"). The word appears in Saigon newspapers beginning in 1956. The earliest citation for "Vietcong" in English is from 1957. American soldiers referred to the Vietcong as Victor Charlie or VC. "Victor" and "Charlie" are both letters in the NATO phonetic alphabet. "Charlie" referred to communist forces in general, both Vietcong and North Vietnamese.

In communiqués, the Vietcong used the name National Liberation Front of South Viet-Nam (Mặt trận Dân tộc Giải phóng miền Nam Việt Nam). Many writers shorten this to National Liberation Front (NLF). In French, it is called the Front National de Libération (FNL). (The terminology is adapted from the Greek and Algerian National Liberation Fronts.) In 1969, the Vietcong created the "Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Republic of South Vietnam" (Chính Phủ Cách Mạng Lâm Thời Cộng Hòa Miền Nam Việt Nam), abbreviated PRG. Although the NLF was not officially abolished until 1977, the Vietcong no longer used the name after PRG was created. Today's Vietnamese government refers to the group as the "Liberation Army" (Quân Giải phóng), shortened from People's Liberation Armed Forces.

This 23-year-old man nearly starved to death after spending one month in a Vietcong internment camp, 1966.

Relationship with Hanoi

The relationship between the Vietcong and the Hanoi government was highly controversial during the war. Communist and anti-war spokesmen insisted that the Vietcong was an insurgency indigenous to the South. These sources identify the Vietcong with the National Liberation Front, which they stress was a multiparty organization. Anti-communists countered that the Vietcong was merely a front for Hanoi. Numerous statements issued by communist leaders in the 1980s and 1990s confirm that that southern communist forces were strictly under the authority of Hanoi. Nguyễn Hữu Thọ, the NLF's non-communist chairman, was a figurehead and the Revolutionary People's Party, the front's "paramount member", took orders from Hanoi's Politburo, or ruling council. The memoirs of Trần Văn Trà, the Vietcong's top commander and defense minister, detail how policy and personnel decisions were controlled by the Politburo. Trà himself was deputy chief of staff for the North Vietnamese army before being assigned to the South.

History

Origin

By the terms of the Geneva Accord (1954), which ended the Indochina War, France and the Viet Minh agreed to a truce and to a separation of forces. The Vietminh became the government of North Vietnam and communist forces "regrouped" there. Non-communist forces regrouped in South Vietnam, which became a separate state. Elections on reunification were scheduled for July 1956. A divided Vietnam left Vietnamese nationalists livid, but it made the country less of a threat to China. Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai negotiated the terms of the ceasefire with France and then imposed them on the Vietminh.

About 90,000 Viet Minh were evacuated to the North while 5,000 to 10,000 cadres remained in the South, most of them with orders to refocus on political activity and agitation. The Saigon-Cholon Peace Committee, the first Vietcong front, was founded in 1954 to provide leadership for this group. Front groups were favored by the Vietcong to such an extent that its real leadership remained shadowy until long after the war was over, prompting the expression, "the faceless Vietcong."

Led by Ngô Đình Diệm, South Vietnam refused to sign the Geneva Accord. Arguing that a free election was impossible under the conditions that existed in communist-held territory, Diệm announced in July 1955 that the scheduled election on reunification would not be held. After subduing the Hòa Hảo and other militant religious sects in early 1956, Diệm turned his attention to the Vietcong. Within a few months, the Vietcong had been driven into remote swamps. The success of this campaign inspired U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower to dub Diệm the "miracle man" when he visited the U.S. in May 1957. France withdrew its last soldiers from Vietnam in April 1956.

A U.S. propaganda leaflet urges Vietcong to defect using the Chiêu Hồi Program.

In March 1956, southern communist leader Lê Duẩn presented a fourteen point plan to revive the insurgency in the South to the other members of the Politburo in Hanoi. He argued adamantly that war with the United States was necessary to achieve unification. But as China and the Soviets both opposed confrontation at this time, Lê Duẩn's plan was rejected and communists in the South were ordered to limit themselves to economic struggle. Leadership divided into a "North first", or pro-Beijing, faction led by Trường Chinh, and a "South first" faction led by Lê Duẩn.

The Sino-Soviet split widened in the following months, giving Hanoi an opportunity to play the two communist giants off against each other. In November 1956, Lê Duẩn traveled to Moscow with President Hồ Chí Minh and gained approval for a more militant line. The North Vietnamese leadership approved measures to revive the insurgency in December 1956. Hồ stressed that violence was still a last resort. Lê Duẩn was appointed acting party boss soon afterwards, although Hồ is said to preferred the more moderate Võ Nguyên Giáp, Vietminh commander during the Indochina War.

An assassination campaign, referred to as "armed propaganda" in communist literature, began in April 1957. Tales of sensational murder and mayhem soon crowded the headlines. Seventeen civilians were killed by machine gun fire at a bar in Châu Đốc in July and in September a district chief was killed with his entire family on a main highway in broad daylight. In October 1957, a series of bombs exploded in Saigon and left 13 Americans wounded. In early 1958, Lê Duẩn met with the leaders of "Inter-zone V" (northern South Vietnam) and ordered the establishment of patrols and safe areas to provide logistical support for activity in the Mekong Delta and in urban areas. In June 1958, the Vietcong created a command structure for the eastern Mekong Delta. French scholar Bernard Fall published an influential article in July 1958 which analyzed the pattern of rising violence and concluded that a new war had begun.

Launches "armed struggle"

The North Vietnamese Communist Party approved a "people's war" on the South at a session in January 1959 and this decision was confirmed by the Politburo in March. Communist assistance to the Vietcong increased dramatically and the "regroupees" of 1954 were gradually sent to the South via the Ho Chi Minh Trail. In May 1959, the Central Office for South Vietnam was reestablished. COSVN was a military and communist party headquarters for the South, initially located in Tây Ninh Province near the Cambodian border. The "2d Liberation Battalion" ambushed two companies of South Vietnamese soldiers in September 1959, the first large unit military action of the war. This was considered the beginning of the "armed struggle" in communist accounts. An uprising in the Mekong Delta province of Bến Tre in January 1960 and further uprisings in September created "liberated zones" in both the Delta and in the Central Highlands that were beyond the control of Saigon. Following these uprisings, there was a lull in communist activity in South Vietnam while Hanoi focused on events in Laos (1960-61).

To counter the accusation that North Vietnam was violating the Geneva Accord, the independence of the Vietcong was stressed in communist propaganda. The National Liberation Front of South Vietnam was organized in December 1960 as the political wing of the Vietcong. The group's formation was announced by Radio Hanoi and its ten point manifesto called for, "overthrow the disguised colonial regime of the imperialists and the dictatorial administration, and to form a national and democratic coalition administration." South Vietnam's Law 10/59, approved in May 1959, authorized the death penalty for crimes "against the security of the state" and featured prominently in Vietcong propaganda.

Brinks Hotel, Saigon, following a Vietcong bombing on Dec. 24, 1964. Two American officers were killed.

The Vietcong grew rapidly and an estimated 300,000 members were enrolled in "liberation associations" (affiliated groups) by early 1962. As the insurgency reached a crisis level, the U.S. government, led by President John F. Kennedy, responded by substantially increasing aid to South Vietnam. The USS Core arrived in Saigon with 35 helicopters in December 1961. By mid-1962, there were 12,000 U.S. military advisors in Vietnam. During the "special war" of 1961-63, the Vietcong conducted guerilla attacks on the "strategic hamlets," avoided direct confrontation with U.S. forces, and kept the North Vietnamese army on a peace footing. The Vietcong won its first military victory against South Vietnamese forces at Ap Bac in 1963. At a landmark party meeting held in December 1963, North Vietnamese leaders debated the issue of "quick victory" vs "protracted war". After this meeting, the communist side geared up for a maximum military effort and North Vietnamese troop strength increased from 174,000 at the end of 1963 to 300,000 in 1964. Soviet aid to North Vietnam soared following a visit to Hanoi by Soviet Premier Aleksei Kosygin in February 1965, including up-to-date surface-to-air missiles. The U.S. would have 200,000 soldiers in South Vietnam by the end of the year. In January 1966, Australian troops uncovered a tunnel complex which had been used by COSVN. Six thousand documents were captured, revealing the inner workings of the Vietcong. COSVN retreated to Mimot in Cambodia. As a result of an agreement with the Cambodian government made in 1966, weapons for the Vietcong were shipped to the Cambodian port of Sihanoukville and then trucked to Vietcong bases near the border along the "Sihanouk Trail", which replaced the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

Many Vietcong units operated at night, and employed terror as a standard tactic. Rice procured at gunpoint sustained the Vietcong. Anyone who aided South Vietnamese or U.S. forces was killed or tortured as a matter of policy. Notable Vietcong atrocities include 48 killed in the bombing of My Canh floating restaurant in Saigon in June 1965 and a massacre of 252 Montagnards in the village of Dak Son in December 1967 using flamethrowers.

A victim of a Vietcong attack on the village of Dak Son, December 1967.

Tet Offensive

Although its activities otherwise focused on rural areas, in 1968 the Vietcong conducted a dramatic series of attacks on urban areas known as the Tet Offensive. The offensive was the brainchild of General Nguyễn Chí Thanh, a member of the North Vietnamese Politburo. He submitted a plan to Hanoi in May 1967. After Thanh's death in June, implementation fell to others, notably Trần Văn Trà, commander of the "B-2" front facing Saigon. During the war, Trà was referred to by the pseudonym "Trần Nam Trung" so that his status as a general in the North Vietnamese army could be concealed.

At this point, the U.S. had about 500,000 troops in Vietnam. In January and February of 1968, some 80,000 Vietcong struck more than 100 towns with orders to "crack the sky" and "shake the Earth." The offensive included a commando raid on the U.S. Embassy in Saigon and a massacre at Huế of about 3,500 residents. House-to-house fighting between Vietcong and South Vietnamese Rangers left much of Cholon, a section of Saigon, in ruins. The Vietcong used any available tactic to demoralize and intimidate the population, including the assassination of South Vietnamese commanders.

The Vietcong created an urban front in 1968 called the Alliance of National, Democratic, and Peace Forces. The group's manifesto called for an independent, non-aligned South Vietnam and stated that "national reunification cannot be achieved overnight." In June 1969, the alliance merged with the NLF to form a "Provisional Revolutionary Government."

The offensive was undertaken in the hope of triggering a general uprising, but urban Vietnamese did not respond as the Vietcong anticipated. About 75,000 communist soldiers were killed, according to Trà. "We did not base ourselves on scientific calculation or a careful weighing of all factors, but...on an illusion based on our subjective desires," Trà concluded. Aside from some districts in the Mekong Delta, the Vietcong failed to create a governing apparatus in South Vietnam following Tet, according to an assessment of captured documents by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. The breakup of larger Vietcong units increased the effectiveness of the CIA's Phoenix program (1967-72), which targeted individual leaders, as well as the Chiêu Hồi Program, which encouraged defections. By the end of 1969, there was no longer any communist-held territory, or "liberated zones," in South Vietnam, according to the official communist military history. There were no predominantly southern units left and 70 percent of communist troops in the South were northerners.

The flag of the Provisional Revolutionary Government, adopted in 1969, is a variation on the Flag of North Vietnam.

Vietnamization

The severe communist losses during Tet allowed the U.S. to gradually withdraw combat forces and to shift responsibility to the South Vietnamese, a process called Vietnamization. Pushed into Cambodia, the Vietcong could no longer draw South Vietnamese recruits. The old "North first" vs "South first" split reemerged with Trường Chinh urging a "protracted war" (guerilla warfare) in May 1968. COSVN rejected this view as "lacking resolution and absolute determination." The Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968 led to intense Sino-Soviet tension and to the withdrawal of Chinese forces from North Vietnam. The overthrow of the Sihanouk government in 1970 cut the Sihanouk Trail and left the Vietcong faced with a hostile Cambodian government. Communist strategy was revised in 1970 to rely on the North Vietnamese regular army, or Vietnam People's Army, supplied via a revived Ho Chi Minh Trail. The 1972 Easter Offensive was a direct North Vietnamese attack across the demilitarized zone between North and South. Despite the Paris Peace Accords, signed by all parties in January 1973, fighting continued. In March, Trà was recalled to Hanoi for a series of meetings to hammer out a plan for a massive offense against Saigon.

In response to the anti-war movement, the U.S. Congress passed the Case-Church Amendment to prohibit U.S. military intervention in Vietnam in June 1973 and reduced aid to South Vietnam in August 1974. With U.S. bombing ended, communist logistical preparations could be accelerated. An oil pipeline was built from North Vietnam to Vietcong headquarters in Loc Ninh, about 75 miles northwest of Saigon. (COSVN was moved back to South Vietnam following the Easter Offensive.) The Ho Chi Minh Trail, once a treacherous mountain trek, was upgraded into a drivable road. Between the beginning of 1974 and April 1975, the communists delivered nearly 365,000 tons of war material to battlefields, 2.6 times the total for the previous 13 years.

The success of the 1973-74 dry season offensive convinced Hanoi to accelerate its timetable. When there was no U.S. response to a successful communist attack on Phước Bình in January 1975, South Vietnamese morale collapsed. The next major battle, at Buôn Ma Thuột in March, was a communist walkover. After the Fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975, the PRG moved into government offices there. As a result of a debate within the Communist leadership, it was decided to uproot the bureaucracy of the Republic of Vietnam and assign authority over the South to the Vietnam People's Army. The PRG was thus reduced to the role of a nominal administration. Perhaps 1 million people considered tainted by association with the former South Vietnamese government were sent to reeducation camps, despite the protests of the non-communist PRG members including Justice Minister Trương Như Tạng. Without consulting the PRG, North Vietnamese leaders decided to rapidly dissolve the PRG at a party meeting in August 1975. North and South were merged as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam in July 1976 and the PRG was dissolved. The NLF was merged with the Vietnam Fatherland Front in February 1977.

See also

• Viet Cong and PAVN strategy, organization and structure
• Kit Carson Scouts, former Vietcong who worked with U.S. Marines
• Vietnam People's Army, the North Vietnamese army.

External links

• Tet Offensive 1968, US Embassy & Saigon fighting. CBS News footage of the Tet Offensive.
• Vietnam War - Hue Massacre 1968. A heartbreaking tribute to the dead of Huế by Trịnh Công Sơn, Vietnam's most beloved composer.
• The Wars for Vietnam: 1945-1975. Primary documents concerning the Vietnam War, including peace proposals, treaties, and platforms.
• Digger History, VC Tunnels. At one point, Vietcong tunnels stretched from the Cambodia border to Saigon.
• The Viet Cong 1965-1967 - part 1 and The Viet Cong 1965-1967 - part 2. What was it like to be a VC? After a hard day's work blowing up bridges and derailing trains, you'd return to base, settle back, and watch village girls dance for you. Or at least that's how they show it in this recruiting video.
• "Tiên vê Sài Gòn" (Forward to Saigon.) This propaganda video features singing Vietcong and newsreel footage from the 1975 offensive.

Further reading

• Marvin Gettleman, et al. Vietnam and America: A Documented History. Grove Press. 1995. ISBN 0-8021-3362-2. See especially Part VII: The Decisive Year.
• Truong Nhu Tang. A Viet Cong Memoir. Random House. ISBN 0-394-74309-1. 1985. See Chapter 7 on the forming of the Vietcong, and Chapter 21 on the communist take-over in 1975.
• Frances Fitzgerald. Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1972. ISBN 0-316-28423-8. See Chapter 4. "The National Liberation Front".
• Douglas Valentine. The Phoenix Program. New York: William Morrow and Company. 1990. ISBN 0-688-09130-X.
• Merle Pribbenow (translation). Victory in Vietnam: The Official History of the People's Army of Vietnam. University Press of Kansas. 2002 ISBN 0-7006-1175-4