Viet Cong

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Vietcong or National Liberation Front
Việt Cộng or giải phóng quân [Liberation Army]
Participant in the Vietnam War

Flag of the Vietcong
Active 1956—1976
Ideology Communist
Clans/tribes Provisional Revolutionary Government
People's Liberation Armed Forces
Leaders COSVN: Trần Văn Trà (chairman, 1964-76; defence minister for PRG, 1969-76), Phạm Hùng (Politburo member supervising COSVN).

NLF: Nguyễn Hữu Thọ (chairman), Huỳnh Tấn Phát (General Secretary, vice-chairman), Võ Chí Công, Phung Van Cung (vice-chairman).
Headquarters Hanoi, North Vietnam (NLF)
Loc Ninh, South Vietnam (COSVN)
Area of
operations		 Southeast Asia
(Vietnam)
Originated as Vietminh (League for the Independence of Vietnam)
Allies North Vietnam, China, Soviet Union, Cuba
Opponents South Vietnam
United States
Ngo Dinh Diem
Many others...
Battles/wars See full list
"Vietcong" redirects here. For the video game, see Vietcong (computer game).
"Victor Charlie" redirects here. For other uses, see VC.

The Vietcong, or VC, was an army that fought the United States and the South Vietnamese governments during the Vietnam War (1958-75). It had both guerrilla and regular army units, both soldiers recruited in South Vietnam as well as others attached to the regular North Vietnamese army. It was closely allied with the communist government of North Vietnam. The group was formed in the late 1950s by former members of the Vietminh. It played an outstanding role in the Tet Offensive of 1968 and was dissolved in 1976 when North and South Vietnam were officially unified under a communist government.

Contents

[edit] Names

The name Vietcong is from Vietnamese Việt Cộngpronunciation (help·info), which is short for Việt Nam Cộng Sản ("Vietnamese communist"). The word appears in Saigon newspapers beginning in 1956 as part of the "Communist Denunciation Campaign."[1] The earliest citation for "Vietcong" in Engish is from 1957.[2] American forces referred to the Vietcong as Victor Charlie, often shortened to Charlie, from the letters "V" and "C" in the NATO phonetic alphabet.

From 1960 to 1969, the Vietcong was more formally known as the National Liberation Front, a loose translation of the group's formal Vietnamese name, Mặt trận Dân tộc Giải phóng miền Nam Việt Nam (literally, National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam). In 1969, the Vietcong created the Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Republic of South Vietnam, often abbreviated as PRG. Although the NLF was never officially abolished, the Vietcong no longer used the name after PRG was created.

The Vietcong's military wing was known intially as the People's Liberation Army and later as the People's Liberation Armed Forces. In common usage, both names were shortened to Liberation Army (giải phóng quân).

Vietcong fighter, 1973
Vietcong fighter, 1973

[edit] History

By the terms of the Geneva Accord (1954), which ended the Indochina War, France and the Vietminh agreed to a truce and to a separation of forces. Communist forces regrouped in North Vietnam while non-communist forces regrouped in South Vietnam. However, about 5,000 to 10,000 Vietminh remained in the South.[1] In January 1956, South Vietnamese President Ngô Đình Diệm launched a campaign against these remnants, who by this time had been joined by other dissent groups such as the Hòa Hảo. By the end of the year, this campaign was largely successful. But in December 1956, Hanoi secretly decided to take measures to revive the communist insurgency in the South.[3] An assasination campaign began in July 1957 when 17 civilians were killed by machine gun at a bar in Chau-Doc. A district chief and his entire family where killed in September on a main highway.[1] In October 1957, a series of bombs exploded in Saigon and 13 American were wounded.[1] Also at this time, a candestine radio station was set up and proclaimed that a rebellion led by the previously unknown "National Salvation Movement" had begun.[1] Influential journalist Bernard Fall published an article in July 1958 which chronicled the pattern of rising violence and proclaimed that a new war had begun.[1] In March 1959, North Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh proclaimed a "people's war" on the South.[4] Communist assistance to the Vietcong increased dramatically and 4000 of the "regroupees" of 1954 were sent back South via the Hochiminh Trail.[4] In May 1959, the Central Office for South Vietnam was reestablished.[4] COSVN was a military headquarters for the South which had been abolished in 1954. By the end of the year, communist uprisings in the Mekong Delta and the Central Highlands had created "liberated zones" beyond the control of Saigon.[5]

To avoid the appearance of violating the Geneva Accord, the independence of the Vietcong was stressed in communist propaganda. The National Liberation Front was organized in December 1960 as the political wing of the Vietcong. In 1962, the People's Revolutionary Party was created as a separate communist party for South Vietnam. The NLF and associated front organizations had their headquarters in Hanoi throughout the conflict.

Aftermath of a Vietcong bombing in a residential area of Saigon.
Aftermath of a Vietcong bombing in a residential area of Saigon.

By 1961, the insurgency was at a crisis level and the U.S. government, led by President John F. Kennedy, responded by substantially increasing aid to South Vietnam.[5] The Vietcong defeated government forces in major battle at Ap Bac in 1963. In 1964, Trần Văn Trà, a general in the North Vietnamese army, was appointed chairman of the COSVN, the Vietcong's top military position. He served in this position until 1976. COSVN reported to General Nguyen Chi Thanh, a member of the North Vietnamese Politburo. i.e. not to NLF. After Thanh's death in 1967, COSVN reported to Politburo member Phạm Hùng, previously Thanh's deputy.

Some 200,000 U.S. soldiers were sent to Vietnam to fight the communists in 1965 and in 1968 the number of U.S. soldiers in Vietnam peaked at 500,000.[6] Although its activities otherwise focused on rural areas, the Vietcong played an outstanding role in the dramatic Tet Offensive of the 1968, which included a series of attacks on urban areas and a commando raid on the U.S. Embassy in Saigon.

This offensive was undertaken in the hope of triggering a general uprising. However, urban Vietnamese did not respond as the Vietcong anticipated and the offensive exhausted the organization. Later communist offensives, such as the Easter Offensive of 1972 and the final 1975 offensive, were predominately staffed by the North Vietnamese regular army. After the communists captured Saigon in 1975, the Provisional Revolutionary Government, a Vietcong front organized in 1969, nominally governed the whole of South Vietnam until North and South were merged officially in 1976.

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b c d e f http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/pentagon/pent14.htm
  2. ^ Oxford English Dictionary, "Viet Cong"
  3. ^ James Olson and Randy Roberts, Where the Domino Fell: America and Vietnam, 1945-1990, 67 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991)
  4. ^ a b c The History Place - Vietnam War 1945-1960. Retrieved on 2008-06-11.
  5. ^ a b http://www.olive-drab.com/od_history_vietnam_advisors.php
  6. ^ http://libcom.org/history/1957-1975-the-vietnam-war

[edit] See also

[edit] Further reading

  • Marvin Gettleman, et al. 1995. "Vietnam and America: A Documented History". Grove Press. ISBN 0-8021-3362-2. (See especially Part VII: The Decisive Year. Discussions of Tet from Westoreland, Hunt and the Pentagon papers are presented as well as Seymour Hersh on My Lai.)
  • Truong Nhu Tang. 1985. "A Viet Cong Memoir". Random House. ISBN 0-394-74309-1. (See Chapter 7 on the forming of the NLF, and chapter 21 on the communist take-over in 1975.)
  • Frances Fitzgerald. 1972. Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam. Boston: Little, Brown and Company. ISBN 0-316-28423-8. (See the description in Chapter 4. 'The National Liberation Front'.)
  • Douglas Valentine. 1990. The Phoenix Program. New York: William Morrow and Company. ISBN 0-688-09130-X.
  • Merle Pribbenow (transl). 2002 "Victory in Vietnam. The official history of the people's army of Vietnam". University Press of Kansas. ISBN 0-7006-1175-4