In the spring of 1965, Ho Chi Minh, then chairman of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Vietnam (now the Communist Party of Vietnam), paid a secret visit to China.
Mao Zedong, who was out on an inspection trip at this time, chose to meet his old friend in his hometown of Changsha, Hunan.
The reunion of old friends is extremely cordial, and the two shake hands and hug with excitement, and the joy is overflowing!
After many years, Ho Chi Minh's makeup appearance has not changed, he is still wearing the familiar beige ka-chi mountain suit, and his body is still so emaciated; what is different is that his gray beard has been very long!
In fact, this is not Ho Chi Minh's first "secret visit to China" since the founding of New China, as early as January 1950, Ho Chi Minh had already visited China.
However, the purpose of Ho Chi Minh's first secret visit to China and this one is basically the same, that is, to hope that the "Chinese brothers" can lend a helping hand to help the Vietnamese people resist the aggressors.
Ho Chi Minh's first visit to China was to jointly discuss with the Chinese and Soviet leaders the grand plan of Vietnam's "War of Resistance Against France," and this time his secret visit to China was for the purpose of the "War to Resist US Aggression."
In the 1850s, in order to open up new markets, France under Napoleon III began to implement a policy of frenzied plunder and expansion, sending troops to Tunisia while extending the black hand of aggression to the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia.
Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia in the Indochina Peninsula are rich in mineral resources and have a very important strategic position in the whole of southern Asia, if the French occupy this place, they can use this as a springboard to invade southern China.
In order to achieve this goal, the French can be said to be doing everything in their power, and after prompting the sharp and complicated class contradictions in Vietnam, they shelled the port of Toulon in Vietnam in 1856 under the pretext that their missionaries were killed by the Vietnamese, waiting for the opportunity to provoke a war of aggression against Vietnam.
Between 1858 and 1884, France waged three colonial wars against Vietnam.
In July 1883, the Vietnamese Emperor Thi Thi Tak died, resulting in infighting in the Nguyen court due to the succession to the throne.
The French took this opportunity and commanded a large army to launch an attack on Kyoto Hue. Due to the weak resistance of the Vietnamese army, they were forced to compromise and signed the Treaty of Hue with it, recognizing the french right to garrison troops throughout Vietnam.
By June 6, 1884, France forced Vietnam to sign a second Treaty of Hue, and Vietnam became a French colony.
In fact, regarding Vietnam's repeated defeats in the "Franco-Vietnamese War" and eventually becoming a French colony, the reason, in addition to the French army's powerful weapons and equipment, the most crucial thing lies in the backwardness of Vietnamese society and political corruption.
At the time of the French invasion of Vietnam, when the Vietnamese Nguyen Dynasty was at its most decaying and corrupt, the internal class contradictions were very acute, and the ruling clique was simply unable to mobilize the people of the whole country to resist foreign insults.
In addition, mistakes in military command are also an important reason for Vietnam's defeat!
Throughout the Franco-Vietnamese War, the Vietnamese rulers remained in a state of blind optimism, foolishly believing that France was thousands of miles away from Vietnam and wanting to colonize here was a fool's dream.
In addition, in actual combat, it is also believed that the enemy's navy is strong and does not dare to fight with it, and tries to wait for the turn of the war situation with simple defense.
Clausewitz said: "War is an act of violence that forces the other side to obey our consciousness", and in order to achieve this, the other side of the war is bound to fight with all its strength until it loses its resistance.
Therefore, this kind of strategy and tactics of simply defending and not waiting for opportunities to attack is bound to be difficult to succeed. It is almost unrealistic to wait for the tide of battle to turn around through passive defenses.
What's more, after the outbreak of war, in order to protect its own interests, the Vietnamese ruling clique even spared no effort to seek perfection and passive defense, prompting capitulationism to gain the upper hand, and eventually making Vietnam a french colony.
But "where there is aggression, there is resistance", this is an eternal truth, the Vietnamese feudal ruling group is corrupt and incompetent, but the Vietnamese people are wise and united.
In the face of the invasion of the French colonists, the Vietnamese people fought against the enemy and were not afraid of violence, and set off a vigorous anti-French guerrilla war throughout the country, insisting on the anti-French struggle for more than 80 years, until 1954, when the French invaders were driven out of Vietnam.
In order to resist the French invaders, Ho Chi Minh conveniently visited the newly established New China in January 1950 and offered to receive Chinese assistance.
Although the new China at that time was in ruins and the domestic situation was still very complicated, it resolutely decided to provide this "neighbor brother" with a total of hundreds of billions of yuan of funds and millions of tons of material assistance free of charge.
In the end, the Vietnamese people finally succeeded in driving the invaders out of their homeland!
However, although the French invaders had been driven away at the time, the situation in Vietnam did not improve much, and the French had just left on the front foot and the Americans on the back foot.
In 1954, after Vietnam won the "Dien Bien Phu Victory", the French invaders were basically driven out of Vietnam.
On July 21 of the same year, the Geneva Agreement on the Indochina Peninsula, which ended the wars in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, was officially signed.
However, in this agreement, it was stipulated that Vietnam would divide the north and south by 17 degrees north latitude, with Ho Chi Minh in the north and Bao The great in the south.
The term "Bao Dae" here refers to the 13th emperor of the Nguyen Dynasty of Vietnam and the last monarch in Vietnamese history, 'Nguyen Phuc Huong'.
Obviously, the 17th parallel here is the same as the 38th parallel on the Korean Peninsula.
On July 17, 1955, the United States, which had suffered a crushing defeat on the Korean battlefield, openly tore up the Geneva Accords, replaced France's position in South Vietnam, and supported Diệm, who had lived in the United States, to launch a coup d'état, depose Bao the Great, become president, and establish the so-called "Republic of Vietnam", which is what we often call "South Vietnam".
Since then, the whole of Vietnam, like North Korea, has been divided into two sides, north and south!
Figure | Diệm
Diệm was born in 1901 to a Catholic family in Quang Binh Province, Nguyen Dynasty, Vietnam, the father of Diệm, who was the head of the Rites Department and the Inner Court of the Vietnamese court.
In 1921, Diệm worked as a librarian at the Hue Royal Library after graduating from the School of Public Administration and Law, which was dedicated to training Vietnamese officials in Hanoi.
Since then, Diệm has long served in the French colonial government, and his political leanings have become increasingly apparent.
In 1932, when Emperor Bao returned to Vietnam and officially declared his pro-government, Diệm entered the cabinet of the puppet government and was appointed as the official Shangshu.
Three months later, diệm resigned in anger after diệm's request to the French to establish a parliament belonging to the Vietnamese was rejected, and he was stripped of all titles by the puppet court, threatened, and arrested.
For more than a decade, vietnam's anti-colonial struggle surged and Diệm's life was difficult, and Diệm was forced to live in seclusion and exile until he returned after the defeat of the French army.
According to the provisions of the Geneva Accords, in 1956 vietnam the north and south needed to reunite the country through elections.
Of course, this is undoubtedly a great news for the Vietnamese people, but things are far from simple.
On July 16, 1956, Diệm announced the annulment of the popular elections scheduled for that year, declaring: "It is only meaningful if it is completely free, and the cancellation of this election is justified." ”
Therefore, the unification plan that had been set up was shelved due to Diệm's unilateral refusal.
In 1959, the South Vietnamese government issued a decree to brutally and bloodily suppress dissidents and people who openly opposed Diệm. And the "dissent" here actually refers to 'communism'.
Subsequently, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Vietnam decided to overthrow the Republic of Vietnam by means of armed struggle, and in December 1960 established the "South Vietnam National Liberation Front".
In the early days of the war, the South Vietnamese National Liberation Front was overwhelming and, after months of fierce fighting, had successfully taken control of much of South Vietnam.
Although the South Vietnamese government had U.S. military assistance, its politics were too corrupt to withstand the expansion of the front.
Under such circumstances, in order to protect its own interests, Kennedy, then US President, ordered a strengthened secret war while deciding to increase military advisers in Vietnam and send the first US special forces.
Since then, the United States has officially participated in the Vietnam War!
After years of struggle behind enemy lines, on August 28, 1963, Ho Chi Minh issued a statement on the situation in Vietnam, strongly demanding that the US imperialist forces withdraw from South Vietnam, and that the south Vietnamese problem must be resolved by the South Vietnamese people themselves.
Mao Zedong, who was far away in Beijing, had been paying close attention to the struggle in South Vietnam, and the day after Ho Chi Minh's statement, Mao Zedong issued a statement entitled "Statement Against the Us-Diệm Clique's Invasion of South Vietnam and the Massacre of the South Vietnamese People."
The statement scathingly states:
"Diệm is a loyal lackey of U.S. imperialism. However, if this lackey has lost its role and even becomes a burden to the US imperialists in pursuing a policy of aggression, the US imperialists will not hesitate to exchange for another lackey, and the fate of Rhee Rhee of South Korea is a precedent. The slaves who are determined to let the US imperialists lead the nose away can only be martyred for the US imperialists in the end. ”
Chairman Mao was worthy of being a great strategist, and Diệm's fate was indeed in his words! During the November 1963 Coup d'état in South Vietnam, Diệm was arrested by the coup d'état soldiers and executed on their way to the military headquarters.
In the years that followed, the puppets arranged by the US imperialists in South Vietnam were replaced several times in succession, but its determination to use them to contain the communist forces in the north was not diminished.
Like the situation on the Korean Peninsula in 1950, the war between The North and South Vietnamese was on the verge of breaking out.
However, as in the early days of the Korean War, the Americans did not pay too much attention to the vietnamese and Chinese statements, and still went their own way, openly planning a series of military operations.
In August 1964, the United States planned the "Gulf of Tonkin Incident" and began to continuously increase troops to Vietnam, while carrying out large-scale bombing of North Vietnam.
In early March of the following year, the United States sent another 3,500 Marines to land in Da Nang, Vietnam, and the Vietnam War officially broke out. In June of the same year, U.S. troops began fighting directly against the Vietnam People's Army.
Figure | Ho Chi Minh
In order to resist the aggression of US imperialism, Ho Chi Minh visited China in 1965, and Mao Zedong met with him in his hometown of Changsha, Hunan.
In fact, Mao Zedong already knew the current situation in Vietnam, so he said to Ho Chi Minh during the talks: "President Hu, you are from Vietnam, I am in Hunan, we are a family!" People want people, and things have things, you say! ”
Mao Zedong's rural voice is very heavy, but Ho Chi Minh can understand it!
Because early in Ho Chi Minh's revolutionary career, he participated in the independence and liberation movement of the Chinese people in Guangzhou, Wuchang, Guangxi and other places in China.
In addition, the Communist Party of Vietnam under the leadership of Ho Chi Minh also grew up in a series of anti-imperialist and anti-aggression struggles, such as the Guangzhou Uprising, the Autumn Harvest Uprising, and the Jinggangshan Struggle.
Ho Chi Minh was so touched to hear Mao Say this that he told Mao about the current situation in Vietnam, and then he took out a "note" from his pocket.
This is a schematic map of 12 roads to be repaired and built north of Hanoi, Vietnam. It turned out that after the United States expanded its war of aggression against Vietnam, the Viet Cong government decided to draw more troops from the rear to the front to cooperate in the battle.
However, due to the tight war and the serious shortage of manpower and material resources in Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh had to entrust the heavy responsibility of building roads to his Chinese brothers.
After Mao Zedong heard this, he happily agreed and asked Zhou Enlai to implement this matter!
Zhou Enlai said to Luo Ruiqing and Yang Chengwu:
"This time President Ho Chi Minh brought a road map and asked us to help him build 12 roads. These highways certainly cannot be carried out at the same time, but should be based on the needs of combat and arranged according to the principles of light and heavy, difficult, fast and slow, and rough and stubborn. Commanded by the General Staff! ”
After carefully observing the schematic map of the emergency road repair in northern Vietnam, General Yang Chengwu immediately proposed a plan: "First send 80,000 troops, and then increase or decrease the strength according to the progress." ”
In this way, a note from Ho Chi Minh actually mobilized 80,000 Chinese troops! Of course, china, as a big country, is naturally duty-bound to help its friendly neighbors resist the aggressors.
From June 1965 to August 1973, China successively dispatched two groups of anti-aircraft artillery, minesweepers, railways, logistics and other units, totaling more than 320,000 people, with a maximum of more than 170,000 people in the highest year, to carry out important tasks such as air defense, combat, road construction, national defense engineering, mine clearance and logistics support in northern Vietnam.
Finally, after more than 8 years of hard work, the Chinese people, together with the Vietnamese people, finally defeated the aggression of US imperialism.
On January 27, 1973, the Viet Cong, the South Vietnamese National Liberation Front, the United States, and the Nguyen Van Thieu regime in South Vietnam signed the Agreement on ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam in Paris.
After the signing of the Viet Nam Paris Agreement, the U.S. military completely stopped its war operations against North Vietnam and began to withdraw its troops from South Vietnam in March of the same year.
In August of that year, all the Chinese support forces in Vietnam, which were carrying out the task of "aiding Vietnam and resisting the United States", were all withdrawn to China.
It is worth mentioning that in the course of the entire War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Vietnam, our people's sons and soldiers fought bravely on the battlefield and regarded death as their homecoming; they fought the construction site and endured hardships and grievances, which perfectly embodied the strong combat effectiveness and fine work style of our people's army.
For the liberation and independence of the Vietnamese people and for world peace, more than 4,000 commanders and fighters of the Chinese support force spilled blood on Vietnamese land, and more than 1,000 martyrs who died heroically are still buried on the hills of Vietnam.
Despite the hardships of the war, our people's army attaches great importance to enhancing the friendship between the Chinese and Vietnamese peoples in everything it does, resolutely and strictly implements the "three major disciplines and eight points of attention," does not take a needle and a thread from the local Vietnamese masses, loves every grass and tree in Vietnam, and cares for and loves the Vietnamese people like the compatriots in its own motherland.
Wherever our people's army went, not only did it not commit any crimes in the autumn, but on the contrary, it also built canals and bridges for the local people, treated the sick and saved people, and sent books and lessons, which was enthusiastically supported and strongly supported by the Vietnamese people.
So much so that President Ho Chi Minh has repeatedly praised our people's army as an excellent revolutionary army that "everyone loves when he comes and misses when he leaves."
At the end of the article, let us jointly pay the highest respect to the people's sons and soldiers who resisted US aggression and aided Vietnam!