30 April 1975 was the last day of America’s shambolic evacuation from Saigon. Decades of war and Vietnam’s struggle for reunification and independence came to an end. The 50th anniversary of the end of war was remembered in April with parades and huge celebrations on the streets of Saigon, now also known as Ho Chi Minh City.
Three decades before America’s dramatic evacuation from rooftops and elevator shafts, Ho Chi Minh’s declaration of independence, marked the beginning of events that led to wars with two superpowers – France and the United States.
On September 2nd 1945, Ho Chi Minh delivered his Declaration of Independence in Hanoi’s Ba Dinh Square, immediately following the defeat of the Japanese in World War II. The text of the declaration provides a fascinating window into the post-World War II, pre-Cold War international environment. Amidst the idealism of the end of a catastrophic world war, Ho Chi Minh assumed the time would be right to achieve his long-held ambition of reunification and independence for his country and his people.
For a brief time, the winds of change seemed to be blowing in his favour.
Vietnam’s pre-war colonial masters, the French, had surrendered to the Japanese in 1940. They were then shamed by their collaboration with Japan’s brutal domination of Vietnam during the war.
Japan’s surrender was accompanied by a calamitous famine (the French were also complicit) that killed between 1 and 2 million Vietnamese people in the northern half of the country.
Ho might have assumed he could count on the United States for support in his missions too. In those final months of World War II, his Viet Minh forces had collaborated with US intelligence officers in the fight against the Japanese. US President Roosevelt, who passed away months before the end of the war, had expressed support for the idea that Indochina should not return to French colonial hands.
Ho Chi Minh’s forces successfully captured Hanoi in August 1945, with wide popular support. The Viet Minh’s efforts to alleviate the terrible impact of famine were especially recognised by the local population.
Meanwhile in the Imperial Capital of Hue, the Nguyen Dynasty Emperor Bao Dai, abdicated on 25 August, recognising the legitimacy of Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Minh as representatives of the Vietnamese people.
Conditions seemed perfect for Ho Chi Minh’s planned independence declaration.https://ea777vip.com/
His judgment was widely shared – including among the American OSS intelligence operatives that had collaborated with Ho’s Viet Minh against the Japanese in the final months of the war.
It’s no accident that Uncle Ho began his independence declaration referencing both the US Declaration of Independence and France’s Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen. Among other things, he was a brilliant politician. And he sensed he needed to remind the two powers of greatest consequence to his independence project, of their foundational values. He hoped to impress on France and the United States, that the Vietnamese people were entitled to the same self-determination that had fueled their own defining national movements. His declaration also outlines the French betrayal of the Vietnamese people, when faced with Japanese aggression.
Ho’s judgment of the times could not be faulted. However, he could not have anticipated the depth of France’s determination to reclaim its former colonies. Nor could he have anticipated the speed with which the idealism and optimism at the end of World War II, would evaporate as the Cold War began to define international relations.
Ho Chi Minh’s 1945 declaration was modest and reasoned. It marked out for special mention, the founding ideals of France and the United States – the two countries that would in future years, inflict abominable misery on the Vietnamese people, with a loss of 4 million lives across three decades.
It’s a chilling read.
Vietnam’s declaration of Independence is posted (below). Check out the video above for further context.
If you’re interested in history, books and travel, you might be interested in our Vietnam by the Book tour built around three books and Vietnam’s remarkable stories. You can read more about our unique travel experience here.
Photo: Mark BowyerBa Dinh Square Hanoi
Vietnam’s Declaration of Independence 2 September 1945
Delivered by Ho Chi Minh in Hanoi’s Ba Dinh Square
“All men are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights; among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”
This immortal statement was made in the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America in 1776. In a broader sense, this means: All the peoples on the earth are equal from birth, all the peoples have a right to live and to be happy and free.https://ea777vip.com/
The Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, made at the time of the French Revolution, in 1791, also states: “All men are born free and with equal rights, and must always remain free and have equal rights.”
Those are undeniable truths.
Nevertheless, for more than eighty years, the French imperialists, abusing the standard of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, have violated our Fatherland and oppressed our fellow-citizens. They have acted contrary to the ideals of humanity and justice.
Politically, they have deprived our people of every democratic liberty.
They have enforced inhuman laws; they have set up three distinct political regimes in the North, the Centre and the South of Viet Nam in order to wreck our country’s oneness and prevent our people from being united.
They have built more prisons than schools. They have mercilessly massacred our patriots. They have drowned our uprisings in seas of blood.
They have fettered public opinion and practised obscurantism.
The have weakened our race with opium and alcohol.
In the field of economics, they have sucked us dry, driven our people to destitution and devastated our land.
They have robbed us of our ricefields, our mines, our forests and our raw materials. They have monopolised the issuing of banknotes and the import and export trade.
They have invented numerous unjustifiable taxes and reduced our people, especially our peasantry, to extreme poverty.
They have made it impossible for our national bourgeoisie to prosper; they have mercilessly exploited our workers.https://ea777vip.com/
In the autumn of 1940, when the Japanese fascists invaded Indochina to establish new bases against the Allies, the French colonialists went down on their bended knees and opened the doors of our country to welcome the Japanese in.
Thus, from that date, our people were subjected to the double yoke of the French and the Japanese. Their sufferings and miseries increased. The result was that towards the end of last year and the beginning of this year, from Quang Tri province to the North of Vietnam, more than two million of our fellow-citizens died from starvation.
On the 9th of March this year, the French troops were disarmed by the Japanese. The French colonialists either fled or surrendered, showing that not only were they incapable of “protecting” us, but that, in a period of five years, they had twice sold our country to the Japanese.
Before the 9th of March, how often the Viet Minh had urged the French to ally themselves with it against the Japanese! But instead of agreeing to this proposal, the French colonialists only intensified their terrorist activities against the Viet Minh. After their defeat and before fleeing, they massacred the political prisoners detained at Yen Bai and Cao Bang.
In spite of all this, our fellow-citizens have always manifested a lenient and humane attitude towards the French. After the Japanese putsch of March 9, 1945, the Viet Minh helped many Frenchmen to cross the frontier, rescued others from Japanese jails, and protected French lives and property. In fact, since the autumn of 1940, our country had ceased to be a French colony and had become a Japanese possession.
When the Japanese surrendered to the Allies, our entire people rose to gain power and founded the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.
The truth is that we have wrested our independence from the Japanese, not from the French.
The French have fled, the Japanese have capitulated, Emperor Bao Dai has abdicated. Our people have broken the chains which have fettered them for nearly a century and have won independence for Viet Nam. At the same time they have overthrown the centuries-old monarchic regime and established a democratic republican regime.
We, the Provisional Government of the new Viet Nam, representing the entire Vietnamese people, hereby declare that from now on we break off all relations of a colonial character with France; cancel all treaties signed by France on Viet Nam, and abolish all privileges held by France in our country.
The entire Vietnamese people are of one mind in their determination to oppose all wicked schemes by the French colonialists.
We are convinced that the Allies, which at the Teheran and San Francisco Conferences upheld the principle of equality among the nations, cannot fail to recognize the right of the Vietnamese people to independence.
A people who have courageously opposed French enslavement for more than eight years, a people who have resolutely sided with the Allies against the fascists during these last years, such a people must be free, such a people must be independent.
For these reasons, we, the Provisional Government of the Democratic Republic of Viet Nam, solemnly make this declaration to the world:
Viet Nam has the right to enjoy freedom and independence and in fact has become a free and independent country. The entire Vietnamese people are determined to mobilize all their physical and mental strength, to sacrifice their lives and property in order to safeguard their freedom and independence.https://ea777vip.com/