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Until 1887 France had subdued the countries of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos and began to expand its colonial power there by establishing the Indochinese Union. When in 1897 all Vietnamese resistance was broken, the French started to centralize the administration, to restrict the autonomy of the villages and to introduce forced labour. Receipts from forced expropriations were used for extending the infrastructure. It was only a small (urban) part of the population who was able to benefit from increasing colonial trade and the establishing of a French determined education. Consequently a small elitist intellectual class developed, among who opposition to French colonization grew. There was also a development of communist tendencies influenced by international circumstances (the revolution in Russia in 1917, the rebellions in China in 1911 and the promise of equalization of all men which communism had conveyed), whereas the world economic crisis doubted capitalism. In the end of the thirties the French power increasingly oppressed people of a different view (anti-colonialists, nationalists, communists). In 1939 2,000 dissidents were arrested. In November of 1940 a revolt of the Communist Party was put down brutally and resulted in about 5,000 arrests and a hundred executions.
Hitler's victory over France in June of 1940 and the Japanese occupation of Southeast Asia shortly after the incident at Pearl Harbor gave an impetus to Vietnamese liberation movements. The French administration backed up by 27,000 soldiers stationed in Vietnam now collaborated with the Japanese in ruling a country of 18 millions inhabitants. In 1941 the resistance formed up within the "Vietminh" (abbr. for "League for the Independence of Vietnam"). The Vietminh, mainly consisting of communist intellectuals, aimed to spread a sense of Vietnamese nationalism within the population. Since the rural population amounted to 95 per cent of the people, they sent intellectuals into the villages serving as commanders, teachers or propagandists. Their success in integrating hundred thousands of people during the post-war years also refers to a large part to a heavy famine (it claimed over a millions deaths), which was caused by inflation and the general exploitation of the country by its belligerent ruling powers. Because of his organizational talent and his indomitable will Ho Chi Minh soon became the undisputed leader of the communist Vietminh. The son of a mandarin at the imperial court in Hue had departed Vietnam in 1912 as a cabin boy and had settled in France, where he had joined the Communist party. In 1930 he had organized the Indochinese Communist party and he should also be the central figure in the revolution. When the Japanese deposed the French puppet government in March of 1945, the Vietminh officially collaborated with the Allies and got support from a unit of the U.S. secret service OSS (Office of Strategic Services), until the surrender of Japan five months later. On September 2 Ho Chi Minh, who even had worked as an OSS agent, proclaimed the independence of his country and ironically U.S. officers and aircraft attended the independence celebrations in Hanoi.
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