The August Revolution in Hanoi

On Sunday 19 August 1945 crowds from the city and the surrounding villages streamed from early morning into the square in front of the Opera House in Hanoi. At about half past ten a representative of the Việt Minh – the Communist-led independence front – proclaimed a “general uprising” from the theatre’s balcony. Columns of demonstrators, covered by armed self-defence units, set off for the principal buildings of the capital of Tonkin: the residence of the imperial viceroy, the town hall, the police stations, the Civil Guard barracks and the post office. By evening the city was in their hands. Hardly a shot was fired. The strong Japanese garrison, still formally exercising power in Indochina, did nothing to prevent the takeover.

In Vietnamese historiography this day is regarded as the beginning of the victory of the so-called August Revolution (Cách mạng Tháng Tám). Within two weeks the Việt Minh had taken power across most of the country, Emperor Bảo Đại had abdicated, and on 2 September Hồ Chí Minh proclaimed the independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in Hanoi.

The account of these events needs several qualifications. Power was not being taken from the French – their administration had already been overthrown by the Japanese on 9 March 1945 – but from the Empire of Vietnam, created under Japanese tutelage. The “spontaneous, non-communist” rally that some chronologies mention took place two days earlier, on 17 August, and it was that rally which the Việt Minh took over; the rally of 19 August was already organised by the insurrection committee. Hồ Chí Minh himself was not in Hanoi in those days: he was at a guerrilla base in the mountains and reached the city only around 25–26 August. Bảo Đại announced his abdication on 25 August (the ceremonial handover of the regalia followed on 30 August), and the provisional government was announced at the end of August, not on 19 August.

Vietnam under the Japanese

Japanese troops entered northern Indochina in September 1940, and in the summer of 1941 they occupied the south as well. For four and a half years French Indochina lived under a dual system: the French Governor-General loyal to the Vichy government, Admiral Jean Decoux, retained the administration, the police and the colonial army, while the Japanese made use of the colony’s ports, airfields, railways and rice.

On the evening of 9 March 1945 the Japanese overthrew the French administration and disarmed the French forces. On 11 March Bảo Đại, until then Emperor of Annam under a French protectorate, proclaimed the independence of the Empire of Vietnam, and on 17 April a government was formed with the historian Trần Trọng Kim as prime minister. It was a cabinet of Western-educated intellectuals with no army of its own and limited authority – the Japanese kept control of the military, finance and food supply. Kim’s government nevertheless secured the handover of the former French concessions in Hanoi, Haiphong and Tourane (Đà Nẵng), and in mid-August Japanese consent to the incorporation of Cochinchina, which the French had ruled as a separate colony.

The backdrop to all these events was a catastrophic famine. At the turn of 1944 and 1945 hundreds of thousands of people starved to death in northern Vietnam, in Tonkin and northern Annam. Several causes combined: compulsory deliveries of rice to the Japanese and the French administration, orders to grow industrial crops (jute, oil plants) in place of rice, damage to transport by Allied air raids that cut the north off from the rice surpluses of the Mekong Delta, and natural disasters. The death toll is disputed: estimates range from about 400,000 to 2 million; Vietnamese historiography usually gives about 2 million, while many Western scholars give lower figures. During this time the Việt Minh organised raids on Japanese and government rice stores and distributed grain to the starving – which won it support in the countryside far more effectively than any propaganda.

The Việt Minh and the Americans

The Việt Minh (in full, the League for the Independence of Vietnam) was founded in May 1941 in the Pác Bó cave near the Chinese border on the initiative of Hồ Chí Minh, who after thirty years abroad had returned to the country as a Comintern agent and founder of the Indochinese Communist Party, the forerunner of the Communist Party of Vietnam. The front was meant to unite all supporters of independence whatever their views, but its leadership remained in Communist hands. Its armed forces were commanded by the history teacher Võ Nguyên Giáp. According to both Communist and French sources, in the summer of 1945 the Việt Minh had only a few thousand armed men, but its political network already covered many northern provinces, and in the mountains north of Hanoi it had created a “liberated zone” centred on Tân Trào.

After the March coup the French intelligence network in Indochina ceased to exist, and the Americans needed new informants. Hồ Chí Minh established contact with American intelligence – the Office of Strategic Services – and with General Claire Chennault’s Fourteenth Air Force in Kunming, among other things helping to rescue downed airmen. On 16 July 1945 the OSS “Deer” team under Major Allison Thomas parachuted in near Tân Trào. The Americans trained a few dozen selected Việt Minh fighters in the use of American weapons; the team’s medic treated Hồ Chí Minh, who was then seriously ill. The scale of this assistance is disputed: American authors usually put it at a few hundred weapons, while others write of much larger deliveries. What is certain is that the mere presence of Americans alongside the Việt Minh had political value – it gave the front the image of an Allied partner rather than merely a guerrilla movement.

From surrender to uprising

News of Japan’s impending surrender reached Tân Trào in mid-August. On 13 August the leadership of the party and the Việt Minh set up the National Insurrection Committee, which that night issued the order for a general uprising. On 16 August the so-called National Congress met at Tân Trào and chose a National Liberation Committee headed by Hồ Chí Minh – the nucleus of a future government. That same day Giáp’s unit, accompanied by the American team, set out towards the Japanese garrison at Thái Nguyên, where from 20 August there were several days of sporadic clashes.

In Hanoi itself, however, the situation slipped out of the imperial authorities’ hands faster than the leadership in the mountains expected. After Emperor Hirohito’s broadcast of 15 August the Japanese no longer had either the will or the orders to defend the puppet government. Trần Trọng Kim’s government had already resigned at the beginning of August and was carrying on only in a caretaker capacity. The imperial viceroy of Tonkin, Phan Kế Toại, with whom the Việt Minh had been holding confidential talks, stepped down on 17 August.

That day the civil servants’ association organised a rally in front of the Opera House in support of Kim’s government and its independence policy. According to Vietnamese accounts it drew tens of thousands of people. Việt Minh activists, acting on a plan prepared in advance, forced their way onto the platform, pulled down the yellow-and-red imperial flag and unfurled the red banner with a yellow star. The rally turned into a demonstration for the Việt Minh, and part of the crowd marched to the viceroy’s residence. That same evening the local party committee for Tonkin – Nguyễn Khang and Trần Tử Bình – decided, without waiting for orders from Tân Trào, to launch an uprising in Hanoi on 19 August.

19 August

From dawn, processions from the city’s districts and the surrounding villages converged on the square in front of the Opera House; Vietnamese accounts speak of hundreds of thousands of participants, a figure that is hard to verify. After the uprising was proclaimed, the crowd and the self-defence units occupied the viceroy’s residence (Bắc Bộ phủ), whose guard laid down its arms without resistance. By the afternoon the town hall, the police stations, the post office and the prisons had been taken over. The only serious crisis came at the Civil Guard barracks, where Japanese tanks surrounded the insurgents and demanded that they disarm. In the evening a delegation of the committee met the Japanese command; according to its members, the Japanese agreed not to interfere in Vietnamese affairs in exchange for a guarantee of their soldiers’ safety. The Japanese ambassador in Hanoi reported to Tokyo that on the afternoon of 19 August he had been “invited” to a meeting with the Việt Minh leaders, who were already being treated as the authorities.

That day the People’s Revolutionary Committee of Tonkin and the People’s Revolutionary Committee of Hanoi were formed, and on 20 August these authorities were presented to the public in front of the former viceroy’s residence. Victory in the northern capital set off a chain reaction: provincial governors and mayors who had been waiting to see how events developed began handing over their offices to local Việt Minh committees. On 23 August the Việt Minh took power in Huế, the imperial capital, and in Haiphong, and on 25 August in Saigon, where, however, it had to share influence with the Cao Đài and Hòa Hảo sects, the Trotskyists and other groups.

Abdication and a new state

In those days Bảo Đại appealed for recognition of Vietnam’s independence to President Harry Truman, King George VI, Chiang Kai-shek and General Charles de Gaulle, warning the last of these that any attempt to restore French rule would meet with universal resistance. He received no reply. After telegrams from Hanoi demanding that he step down, he announced his abdication on 25 August, saying that he would rather be a citizen of an independent country than the ruler of an enslaved one. On 30 August in Huế he handed the imperial seal and sword to a delegation of the new authorities, ending the rule of the Nguyễn dynasty. According to his later memoirs, he also gave way because he regarded the Việt Minh as a movement backed by the Americans and capable of winning Allied recognition for Vietnam – and because he wanted to avoid bloodshed. He became “supreme adviser” to the new government.

Hồ Chí Minh arrived in Hanoi around 25–26 August and took up residence in a house on Hàng Ngang Street. The National Liberation Committee was transformed into a provisional government, whose composition was announced on 28 August: Hồ Chí Minh became chairman and foreign minister, and Giáp minister of the interior. On 2 September, in Ba Đình Square, Hồ Chí Minh read the declaration of independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, which opened with a quotation from the American Declaration of Independence. On the same day Japan signed the instrument of surrender in Tokyo Bay.

Significance

The August Revolution exploited the brief power vacuum between Japan’s surrender and the arrival of the Allies. Back in July it had been agreed at Potsdam that the Japanese in Indochina would be disarmed by the Chinese north of the 16th parallel and by the British to the south; this principle was repeated in General Order No. 1. In September General Lu Han’s Chinese troops entered the north and tolerated Hồ Chí Minh’s government, while in the south the British arrived and soon helped the French to regain Saigon. Negotiations with France, the agreement of March 1946 and their failure led in December 1946 to the outbreak of the First Indochina War, which did not end until 1954. In Vietnam 19 August is marked as the anniversary of the August Revolution, and 2 September as the national day.