Word: minh
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...despite being virtually penniless, and went out and farmed his rented rice fields side by side with his peasant neighbors. Diem himself left politics before World War II rather than work with the French. In that tradition, Nhu, his wife and family were opposed both to the Red Viet Minh "army of liberation" and to the French with their puppet Emperor, Bao Dai. When the Viet Minh overran Hué, they shot Diem's oldest brother and the brother's only son, for months held Diem himself captive before turning him loose. Nhu and Can both escaped from the Reds...
...after their disastrous defeat at Dienbienphu, the French in desperation met the exiled Diem's demand for Vietnamese independence and sent him back to Viet Nam to try to rally his war-shattered people and to salvage something from the Viet Minh. Two weeks after Diem was installed in Saigon as Premier, the weary and discouraged French sliced Viet Nam in half at the Geneva bargaining table; the Viet Minh took the north with its coal and iron, and Diem was left with the south, including Saigon and the rice-rich Mekong River delta...
...Viet Nam's government hoped to flush six Red battalions and a headquarters company from its longtime stronghold in the mountains. Main object of the month-long operation was to destroy Viet Cong food caches and cut the Reds' main supply line, the 400-mile Ho Chi Minh trail to North Viet Nam through neutral Laos. The Reds had plainly evacuated the area in advance, but Vietnamese officials explained that they did not aim to kill Viet Cong guerrillas, only to isolate them. If successful, said one, the sweep "wall solve 50% of our military problems...
...Laos should fall to the Reds, North Viet Nam's Ho Chi Minh trail (see map), the supply route which cuts through the Laotian thickets to Communist Viet Cong guerrillas in South Viet Nam, would open up, permitting the Reds to pour arms and men into that embattled land. Control of Laos' Mekong River valley would also give the Communists a highway for subversion of neighboring Cambodia and Thailand, which in turn would increase Red pressure on Burma and Malaya...
...three weeks, the Red forces, reinforced by cadres of Viet Minh troop commanders, mortar specialists and artillery advisers from Communist North Viet Nam, had been nibbling away at neutralist positions around the 30-mile perimeter of the grassy, pool-table-flat Plaine des Jarres. Strategically placed in the center of Laos, the plain-named after the ancient stone burial jars still found in the area-controls the approaches to the rest of the country and is the primary access route to North Viet Nam. With the Plaine des Jarres in their hands, the Reds could solidify their hold...