f the contemporary population.
First Indochina War
In 1941, the Viet Minh – a communist and nationalist liberation movement – emerged under the Marxist-Leninist revolutionary Ho Chi Minh, who sought independence for Vietnam from France and the end of the Japanese occupation. Following the military defeat of Japan and the fall of its puppet Empire of Vietnam in August 1945, the Viet Minh occupied Hanoi and proclaimed a provisional government, which asserted national independence on 2 September.
In the same year, the Provisional French Republic sent the French Far East Expeditionary Corps – originally created to fight the Japanese occupation forces – to pacify the Vietnamese liberation movement and to restore French colonial rule. On 23 November 1946, French vessels bombarded the port city of Hai Phong, and the Viet Minh's guerrilla campaign against French forces began soon after. The resulting First Indochina War lasted until 20 July 1954.
Despite taking fewer losses during the course of the war – the Expeditionary Corps suffered one-third of the casualties of the Chinese and Soviet-backed Viet Minh – the French and Vietnamese loyalists eventually suffered a major strategic setback at the Siege of Dien Bien Phu, which allowed Ho Chi Minh to negotiate a ceasefire from a favorable position at the Geneva Conference of 1954. The colonial administration ended and French Indochina was dissolved under the Geneva Accords of 1954, which separated the forces of former French supporters and communist nationalists at the 17th parallel north with the Vietnamese Demilitarized Zone. A 300-day period of free movement was given, during which almost a million northerners, mainly Catholic, moved south, fearing persecution by the communists.
The partition of Vietnam, with Ho Chi Minh's Democratic Republic of Vietnam in North Vietnam, and Emperor Bảo Đại's State of Vietnam in South Vietnam, was not intended to be permanent by
