A study of the antecedents and conduct of the Vietnamese Revolution modelled around the hypothesis that the fall of the French colonial regime and its substitution by a Vietnamese Democratic Republic were the results of two causal chains: Roosevelt's Indochina policy, which effectively created a power vacuum after the Japanese surrender; and the founding of the Vietnamese Communist Party in 1930 and its subsequent construction of a front for the independence of Vietnam. This text considers the crucial fifteen years which culminated in the establishment of Vietnam. This book explores the causes and course of the Vietnamese Revolution of August 1945. Two causal chains are established, one starting with the founding of the Indochinese Communist Party in 1930, the other with President Roosevelt's intense preoccupation from 1943 to 1945 with the future of French Indochina. Tonnesson builds on a wealth of hitherto unexploited archival sources in France, theUnited States, Vietnam, Great Britain and Sweden. The book encompasses the history of the Vietnamese Revolution in discussions of broader theoretical issues, and places it within the context of international developments at the time.
Tonnesson finds that the Vietnamese Revolution was not the result of careful revolutionary planning or correct predictions. It resulted from a power vacuum, following the sudden Japanese surrender. Despite the vision of the Indochinese communist leaders of a unified state on the whole territory of French Indochina, the fact that only today's Vietnam was included in the Republic proclaimed by Ho Chi Minh in September 1945 was due to circumstance, not to plan. The role of President Roosevelt is revealed as a key to the success of the Revolution. A few months before the revolution, a top secret American deception operation contributed to the downfall of the French colonial regime - at the hands of the Japanese. Roosevelt most probably engineered a comprehensive anti-french ploy, which has since remained secret.