Word: minh
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Most immediately threatened rimland country is Indo-China, where a French army (150,000 men) has been unable to put down Communist Ho Chi Minh's rebels (see below). The Indo-Chinese Reds probably cannot win without direct intervention by Red China...
With the monsoon season waning, Communist-led Viet Minh rebels began to apply rising pressure against scattered French outposts along IndoChina's rugged, 550-mile border with Red China. Four Communist battalions attacked the isolated clay fort at Dongkhe (100 miles north of Hanoi), overpowered its 200 French Foreign Legion defenders in a hand-to-hand fight. They also shelled Thatkhe, ten miles south of Dongkha, while other Communist forces massed near the French-Chinese frontier...
French authorities chalked up the attacks to "muscle-flexing" by some 20,000 Viet Minh troops trained and equipped in Red China during the summer. Said French Commander in Chief General Marcel Carpentier: "It is probable that Viet Minh will launch new attacks in the near future, but for the moment Viet Minh is not capable of seizing important French military positions...
...French, however, were disturbed by two factors: Viet Minh troops appeared better trained than before, and somehow had stepped up their fire power...
...Minh and his government are prisoners of the sinister Tong Bo, the Communist Party Politburo, and in particular of five of its members, rising young extremists who really run the show. The most important is Vo Nguyen Giap, the Vietminh's frail, passionate, 38-year-old Minister of National Defense. Vo Nguyen Giap, a Communist since his teens, was first arrested when he was 18. His wife died in a French jail four years ago. More than anyone else, he created the Vietminh army. A ruthless and bloodthirsty man, he has coldly directed the liquidation of anti-Communists...