Word: factly
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...young ex-teacher named Vo Nguyen Giap, now the North's military leader. A few months later, Ho founded an independence league called the Viet Minh, and established a base area conveniently near the Chinese border. Ostensibly, the front was intended to lead the anti-Japanese resistance; in fact, it was a sword at the throats of the French...
...major asset was coal, and its continuing abundance has provided North Viet Nam with badly needed foreign exchange. Clearly, intensive efforts were needed in the agricultural sector. Ho's first major program, accordingly, was agrarian reform, and his first mass target was the "exploiting landlords." There were, in fact, few landlords of any size. Nevertheless, the order rumbled down from Hanoi: find the exploiters and execute them. Anywhere from 50,000 to 200,000 Vietnamese were executed?mostly village leaders who were replaced by heretofore landless peasants. As Honey points out: "By forcing the villagers to participate in the deaths...
Compounding the economic problem is the fact that morale has fallen off sharply since the halt in American bombing. As long as U.S. warplanes filled the skies over the North, workers and peasants were inspired to grim extra effort. Now, according to non-Communist foreign visitors recently in Hanoi, many seem to have relaxed their drive. Last June the newspaper Hanoi Moi reported that of 538 specific construction-industry quotas only 328 had been achieved or surpassed. Other papers maintain a steady barrage of complaint against pilferage, slackness and absenteeism, and at the beginning of 1969 the government found itself...
...fact is that the North Vietnamese were reluctant either to suggest or to respond to new initiatives while Ho lay dying. As Historian Lacouture pointed out last week, the key men in Hanoi today are "the executors of Ho Chi Minh's political testament, which really is an appeal to resist to the end." If they are faithful lieutenants, they will not be quick to abandon his policies?or his dreams...
Only Nine. Most of the P.W.s suffered their worst treatment immediately after being captured. Some were forced to sit on a stool for days until they collapsed. Others, said Frishman, were hung by their arms from the ceiling. The fact that life improved when generals visited the camp led Frishman to allow that "possibly the higher-ups in North Viet Nam may not know the truth about our treatment." This supposition seems plausible. The North Vietnamese are extremely sensitive about U.S. public reaction to the war; coverage in the American press is carefully scrutinized by a special section...