Second Indochina War

The **Second Indochina War** also known as the **Second Anti-French Resistance War** was fought between France and North Vietnam in January 1962. North Vietnam was supported by the Soviet Union and China while France fought alone due largely to a general shift in Western policy towards decolonization following the Anglo-Libyan War. The war ended in a French victory, though it did not fully eliminate communist influence in Vietnam.

Since 1950, France had maintained a large military presence in southern half of the province of Annam and in Cochinchina. Though North Vietnam was never formally recognized by France and had been denied entry to the United Nations by the Western bloc in 1960 a ceasefire was in place between the French and the Viet Minh between 1950 and 1962. The victory of the western-backed Republic of Korea in the Korean War had made the Viet Minh cautious against launching any new offensives against the French while domestic political turmoil kept French attention away from Indochina.

The situation drastically changed in 1961, when international pressure forced the United Kingdom to recognize an independent Libya despite a British military victory over the Libyan revolutionaries. The incident pushed France to end its boycott of the UN in order to be able to defend its actions in the event the international community supported a French colony against the metropole. It emboldened North Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh, who viewed Libyan revolutionary leader (and later Prime Minister) Muammar Gaddafi's political victory over the British as a sign that similar international support would be extended to Vietnam against France.

In January, 1962, the Viet Minh finally broke the ceasefire and surged into the French-occupied half of Annam. Despite the utter failure of the Viet Minh to capture the French-held cities of Hue and Da Nang, Ho Chi Minh was confident enough in his supposed upcoming victory that he sent a large number of volunteers to fight the French in Algeria, which declared its independence with the secret backing of the East German Stasi that same month.

Fearing the possibility of being bogged in guerrilla wars on two different continents at once, the French responded to the Viet Minh offensive with a swift invasion of North Vietnam. Against all odds, the French managed to capture Hanoi and the surrounding areas by the month's end. After less than 4 weeks, the war was declared over. Though a Viet Minh insurgency would continue to harass French forces; it, for the time being, lacked the numbers to continue a full scale war against the French military. Having lost popular support for the time being, Ho Chi Minh went into hiding in the Vietnamese countryside.

In France, the victory in Indochina proved to greatly restore the influence and prestige of the Radical Party, which had been in decline. In the following November 1962 elections, this all but destroyed the Gaullist movement, which had been calling for a French Fifth Republic, and severely weakened the French Communist Party. The Radical Party would remain in nearly uncontested control of French politics until the political crisis that began in the second half of the Algerian War.