Viet Cong
The Viet Cong[nb 1] was an epithet and umbrella term to call the communist-driven armed movement and united front organization in South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Formally organized as and led by the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam,[nb 2] it fought under the direction of North Vietnam against the South Vietnamese and United States governments during the Vietnam War. The organization had both guerrilla and regular army units, as well as a network of cadres who organized and mobilized peasants in the territory the Viet Cong controlled. During the war, communist fighters and some anti-war activists claimed that the Viet Cong was an insurgency indigenous to the South that representing the legitimate rights for people in South Vietnam, while the U.S. and South Vietnamese governments portrayed the group as a tool of North Vietnam. It was later conceded by the modern Vietnamese communist leadership that the movement was actually under the North Vietnamese political and military leadership, aiming to unify Vietnam under a single banner.[9]
"Vietcong" redirects here. For other uses, see Viet Cong (disambiguation).
National Liberation Front
of South Vietnam
Việt Cộng (VC)
ⓘ
Liberation Front:[4]
- Nguyễn Hữu Thọ, chairman
- Huỳnh Tấn Phát, secretary-general and vice-chairman
- Phung Van Cung, vice-chairman
- Võ Chí Công, vice-chairman
Liberation Army: - Nguyễn Hữu Xuyến (1961–1963)
- Trần Văn Trà (1963–1967, 1973–1975)
- Hoàng Văn Thái (1967–1973)
Central Office: - Nguyễn Văn Linh (1961–1964)
- Nguyễn Chí Thanh (1964–1967)
- Phạm Hùng (1967–1975)
Governance: - Nguyễn Hữu Thọ, president
- Huỳnh Tấn Phát, prime minister
- Mme Nguyễn Thị Bình, foreign minister
- Trần Nam Trung,[5] defense minister
- Trương Như Tảng, justice minister[6]
1954–1959 (as southern Viet Minh cadres)
December 20, 1960 – February 4, 1977
National Liberation Front of South Vietnam- Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Republic of South Vietnam
Central Office for South Vietnam
Liberation Army of South Vietnam
Alliance of National, Democratic and Peace Forces
Indochina, with a focus on South Vietnam
State allies:
North Vietnam
People's Republic of China
Soviet Union
Albania
North Korea
East Germany
Cuba
Romania
Sweden (alleged)[7]
Non-state allies:
State opponents:
South Vietnam
Khmer Republic
Kingdom of Laos
Australia
South Korea
New Zealand
Philippines
Republic of China (Taiwan)
Thailand
United States
Non-state opponents:
North Vietnam established the National Liberation Front on December 20, 1960, at Tân Lập village in Tây Ninh Province to foment insurgency in the South. Many of the Viet Cong's core members were volunteer "regroupees", southern Viet Minh who had resettled in the North after the Geneva Accord (1954). Hanoi gave the regroupees military training and sent them back to the South along the Ho Chi Minh trail in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The Viet Cong called for the unification of Vietnam and the overthrow of the American-backed South Vietnamese government. The Viet Cong's best-known action was the Tet Offensive, an assault on more than 100 South Vietnamese urban centers in 1968, including an attack on the U.S. embassy in Saigon. The offensive riveted the attention of the world's media for weeks, but also overextended the Viet Cong. Later communist offensives were conducted predominantly by the North Vietnamese. The organization officially merged with the Fatherland Front of Vietnam on February 4, 1977, after North and South Vietnam were officially unified under a communist government.
Names
The term Việt Cộng appeared in Saigon newspapers beginning in 1956.[8] It is a contraction of Việt Nam cộng sản (Vietnamese communist).[8] The earliest citation for Viet Cong in English is from 1957.[10] American soldiers referred to the Viet Cong as Victor Charlie or V-C. "Victor" and "Charlie" are both letters in the NATO phonetic alphabet. "Charlie" referred to communist forces in general, both Viet Cong and North Vietnamese.
The official Vietnamese history gives the group's name as the Liberation Army of South Vietnam or the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam (NLFSV; Mặt trận Dân tộc Giải phóng miền Nam Việt Nam).[11][nb 3] Many writers shorten this to National Liberation Front (NLF).[nb 4] In 1969, the Viet Cong created the "Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Republic of South Vietnam" (Chính Phủ Cách Mạng Lâm Thời Cộng Hòa Miền Nam Việt Nam), abbreviated PRG.[nb 5] Although the NLF was not officially abolished until 1977, the Viet Cong no longer used the name after the PRG was created. Members generally referred to the Viet Cong as "the Front" (Mặt trận).[8] Today's Vietnamese media most frequently refers to the group as the "Liberation Army of South Vietnam" (Quân Giải phóng Miền Nam Việt Nam) .[12]
Relationship with North Vietnam
Activists opposing American involvement in Vietnam said that the Viet Cong was a nationalist insurgency indigenous to the South.[85] They said that the Viet Cong was composed of several parties—the People's Revolutionary Party, the Democratic Party and the Radical Socialist Party[4]—and that Viet Cong chairman Nguyễn Hữu Thọ was not a communist.[86]
Anti-communists countered that the Viet Cong was merely a front for Hanoi.[85] They said some statements issued by communist leaders in the 1980s and 1990s suggested that southern communist forces were influenced by Hanoi.[85] According to the memoirs of Trần Văn Trà, the Viet Cong's top commander and PRG defense minister, he followed orders issued by the "Military Commission of the Party Central Committee" in Hanoi, which in turn implemented resolutions of the Politburo.[nb 10] Trà himself was deputy chief of staff for the PAVN before being assigned to the South.[87] The official Vietnamese history of the war states that "The Liberation Army of South Vietnam [Viet Cong] is a part of the People's Army of Vietnam".[11]