1941, Feb. 2001. The Encyclopedia of World History

The Encyclopedia of World History. 2001.


1941, Feb

With the anti-Fascist united front policy from the previous year, the Bac Son commando units, as they were renamed, were reorganized into the First Company of the National Salvation Army. They were destroyed in an ambush by French troops that September, but they created a tradition and a powerful legacy in the anticolonial fight.	1

July 21

Although France was obliged to yield effective military control of Indochina to the Japanese, the French Indochinese government still retained some political, economic, and military sovereignty.	2
During the war years, Hô Chi Minh, like his Chinese allies to the north, formed a united front organization known as the VIÊT MINH (the shortened name of the Viêt Nam Doc Lap Dong Minh, or the League for the Independence of Vietnam). During the major famine of 1944–45, exacerbated by Japanese military confiscations of goods and destruction of property, the Viet Minh orchestrated the relief work; some 2 million people, however, starved to death. Guerrilla troops were based in a “liberated area” near the Chinese border and were under the command of VO NGUYÊN GIAP (b. 1912), who had been trained under the Chinese Communists in their main anti-Japanese base in Yan'an. In Vietnam, in contrast to other parts of Southeast Asia, the Viêt Minh's anticolonialism meant that they never allowed themselves to be compromised by the Japanese.	3


The Encyclopedia of World History, Sixth edition. Peter N. Stearns, general editor. Copyright © 2001 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Maps by Mary Reilly, copyright © 2001 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.