Page:Pentagon-Papers-Part I.djvu/209

Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3 NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011 TOP SECRET – Sensitive ::Military Objectives: To unify the various armed forces...


 * "October 1946: We must show to the French Government and people and to the world at large that the Vietnamese people are already in posession of all the required conditions to be independent and free, and that recognition of our freedom and independence is a necessity...


 * "December 1946: Compatriots! Rise up! Men and women, old and young, regardless of creeds, political parties, or nationalities, all the Vietnamese must stand up to fight the French colonialists to save the Fatherland...


 * "April 1948: The nation has its roots in the people. In the Resistance War and national reconstruction, the main force lies in the people..."


 * 6.

The sincerity of Ho's nationalism, then and since, seems as beyond question as that of Stalin, or Harry Truman. Among his countrymen, Ho was preeminent among all nationalists. Ho had led the forces which welcomed the Allies as they entered Indochina to accept the surrender of Japanese forces there; Ho headed the DRV in 1945–1946 when national unity, independence, and peace seemed close at hand. Ho was popular, respected, even revered. He cultivated an image calculated to appeal to the peasant: venerable age, rustic austerity, and humility. He insisted on "Uncle Ho" in introducing himself, and it was an "Uncle Ho" that the countryside came to regard him. No other Vietnamese was so widely known, or so universally respected. Moreover, unlike any of his competitors, he had at his service a disciplined political organization of national scope, trained in the arts of revolution, and skilled in the techniques of mobilizing opinion and stimulating political action. In truth, then, Ho was, to the extent that such existed in 1945 or 1946, the embodiment of Vietnamese nationalism.

The historical problem, of course, is to what extent Ho's nationalist goals might have modified his communist convictions. To many observers of the day, Ho seemed to place the former above the latter not solely as a matter of dissemblance, as he might have done in the simultaneous dissolution of the Party and the formation of the Marxist Association, but as a result of deeply held doubts about the validity of communism as a political form suitable for Vietnam. Sainteny who negotiated the 6 March 1946 Accord with Ho for France wrote that: "His proposals, his actions, his attitude, his real or assumed personality, all tended to convince that he found a solution by force repugnant..." Bao Dai is reputed to have said that: "I saw Ho Chi Minh suffer. He was fighting a battle within himself. Ho had his own struggle. He realized communism was not best for his country, but it was too late. Ultimately, he could not overcome his allegiance to communism." During the negotiations for a with the Rh