Viet Cong
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 | This article possibly contains original research. |
| National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam Mặt trận Dân tộc Giải phóng miền Nam Việt Nam | |
|---|---|
 Flag of the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam | |
| Leaders | Truong Nhu Tang |
| Dates of operation | 1960—1976 |
| Group(s) | Provisional Revolutionary Government People's Liberation Armed Forces |
| Headquarters | Hanoi, Democratic Republic of Vietnam |
| Active regions | Southeast Asia (Vietnam) |
| Ideology | Marxism-Leninism |
| Allies | People's Army of Vietnam Communist Party of Vietnam |
| Opponents | Republic of Vietnam United States Many others... |
| Battles and wars | See full list |
The National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam (Vietnamese Mặt trận Dân tộc Giải phóng miền Nam Việt Nam), also derogatively known as the Việt Cộng (VC), or the Front National de Liberté (FNL), was an insurgent (partisan) organization fighting the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam) during the Vietnam War. The NLF was funded, equipped and staffed by both South Vietnamese communist sympathizers and the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN).
Its military organization was known as the People's Liberation Armed Forces. or PLAF. The PLAF was,according to the official history of PAVN, strictly subordinated to the Gneral Staff in Hanoi. The name "Việt Cộng", came from the Vietnamese term for Vietnamese Communist (Việt Nam Cộng Sản) and was popularized by Ngo Dinh Diem, first president of South Vietnam. American forces during the Vietnam War typically referred to members of the NLF as Victor Charlie or simply Charlie, from the NATO phonetic alphabet.
Organization
The NLF was nominally independent of the North Vietnamese armed forces and although the leadership of the group was communist, the NLF was also made up of others who were allied with the Front against the regime of Ngo Dinh Diem. The NLF was organized in 1960 at the direction of the Lao Dong Party, which, in 1962, also formed a southern communist, the People's Revolutionary Party (PRP). Ultimate control of the PRP, NLF and associated front organizations rested with Hanoi throughout the conflict. As the war with the Americans progressed, North Vietnamese personnel increasingly formed the military staff and officer corps of the NLF as well as directly deploying their own forces. The PAVN official history refers to the PLAF as simply "part of the PAVN". From the start, Communist cadres also formed the majority of the decision-making strata of the organization, though non-Communists, encouraged by the initial chair, Nguyễn Hữu Thọ, were also involved in this process.
The NLF organization grew out of the nationalist Việt Minh organization during the First Indochina War. By the time the NLF began fighting the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN), the insurgency had a national infrastructure throughout South Vietnam. Rather than having to create "liberated zones" as in a classic insurgency, the NLF was already in control of such zones at the start of the war. The US/ARVN response - conducting large-unit conventional campaigns and simultaneous counter-insurgency operations was ineffective largely due to the fact that the Communist infrastructure in many areas had already been in place for 20 years.
The Tết Offensive and beyond
During the celebration of the Lunar New Year holiday (Tết) in January 1968, the NLF violated a holiday cease-fire and attacked many of the main cities, provincial capitals and military installations throughout South Vietnam. The U.S. embassy in Saigon was attacked, and it appeared at first glance that the PLAF could attack anywhere in the country with impunity. The Tết Offensive came as a surprise to the American public, who had gotten constant optimistic appraisals of the war from General William C. Westmoreland, the U.S. commander in South Vietnam. In the wake of Tết, Westmoreland claimed that the NLF failed to achieve any of its strategic goals and that they achieved a "psychological victory" at best. Westmoreland's assertions have been called into question by Vietnam historians such as David Hunt and Marvin Gettleman, who argued that one of the major aims of Tết was to bring the Americans to the negotiating table. Although the main military forces of the PLAF no doubt suffered tremendous losses due to the offensive, historians differ on the degree to which the NLF suffered as a result of Tết. There is no doubt, however, that after the offensive the cadres of the NLF were filled with North Vietnamese.
The Tết Offensive is sometimes portrayed as a crushing setback for the United States, a military giant humiliated by the NLF. This analysis, however, speaks more to the largely-unanticipated psychological effect that the offensive had on the American public, rather than any military success. The NLF and North Vietnamese had clearly stated goals in launching the offensive, including a mass uprising of the South Vietnamese citizenry in support of the NLF. These goals were not achieved, but the U.S. military, media and public were all caught off guard by the intensity and scope of the offensive, thanks largely to Westmoreland's rather faulty prognostications. American reported Walter Cronkite, for example, stated on February 27, 1968, that the U.S. was "now mired in a stalemate" in Vietnam. The idea that Vietnam could not be won, and instead should be resolved via "disengagement with honor," animated both the Johnson and Nixon administrations and led to the latter's process of "Vietnamizing" the war.
In 1969 the NLF formed the Provisional Revolutionary Government (PRG) whch, after the fall of Saigon in 1975, supposedly represented South Vietnam. The provisional government never effectively controlled any territory or exercised the functions of a government, as this was carried out by the government of North Vietnam. Its principal role was to sign the instruments of reunification with the north, forming the Socialist Republic of Vietnam in 1976. No non-communists were allowed to take part in the transitory PRG government. NLF Minister of Justice Truong Nhu Tang has described how cadres from the north took over the work of his ministry within days of the take-over.
See also
- Viet Cong and NVA strategy and tactics
- Phoenix Program
- Father Buu Dong
- Kit Carson Scouts, "returned" Vietcong combatants
Further reading
- Marvin Gettleman, et al. 1995. "Vietnam and America: A Documented History". Grove Press. ISBN 0-8021-3362-2. (See especially Part VII: The Decisive Year. Discussions of Tet from Westoreland, Hunt and the Pentagon papers are presented as well as Seymour Hersh on My Lai.)
- Truong Nhu Tang. 1985. "A Viet Cong Memoir". Random House. ISBN 0-394-74309-1. (See Chapter 7 on the forming of the NLF, and chapter 21 on the communist take-over in 1975.)
- Frances Fitzgerald. 1972. Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam. Boston: Little, Brown and Company. ISBN 0-316-28423-8. (See the description in Chapter 4. 'The National Liberation Front'.)
- Douglas Valentine. 1990. The Phoenix Program. New York: William Morrow and Company. ISBN 0-688-09130-X.
- Merle Pribbenow (transl). 2002 "Victory in Vietnam. The official history of the people's army of Vietnam". University Press of Kansas. ISBN 0-7006-1175-4