Pham Ngoc Thao - Early Vietminh Years

Early Vietminh Years

See also: First Indochina War and 1955 State of Vietnam referendum

Born Phạm Ngọc Thuần, Thảo was one of eleven children of a northern Vietnamese Roman Catholic family. At the time, Vietnam was a French colony. The family held French citizenship but opposed French colonialism. His father, an engineer, once headed an underground communist organisation in Paris, which assisted the Vietminh's anti-French pro-independence activities outside Vietnam. After attending French schools in Saigon, Thuần changed his named to Thảo and renounced his French citizenship. In his high school years at the Lycée Chasseloup-Laubat, Thảo met Trương Như Tảng, who later became a high-ranking member of the Vietcong, a communist guerrilla organisation in South Vietnam. Tảng described Thảo as "my dearest friend" and recalled that they had "spent endless hours talking about everything under the sun. We were closer than brothers."

Thảo spent his teenage years obsessed with his motorcycle. Despite being educated at an upper-class school that mainly catered to children of French colonial administrators and privileged Vietnamese — French was the medium of instruction and Gallic culture and history a major part of the curriculum — Thảo was attracted to nationalist politics. He participated in Hồ Chí Minh's revolutionary campaigns for Vietnamese independence and joined the Vietminh.

In September 1945, Hồ declared independence under the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) following the withdrawal of Imperial Japan, which had seized control of the country from France during the Second World War. At the time, there was a power vacuum, as both Japan and France had been decimated by the war. There was an outbreak of nationalist fervour in Vietnam; Tảng and Thảo joined the Vanguard Youth, an impromptu independence militia. Tảng was assigned to be the leader of the local unit, but he left the movement soon after, leaving Thảo in command. During this period, Saigon was regularly engulfed in riots.

In 1946, France attempted to reassert control over its colony and conventional military fighting broke out. Thảo served with the Vietminh in the Mekong Delta in the far south of Vietnam during the war against French rule from 1946–54. He almost met his end before he had started; he was apprehended by the local communists in Mỹ Tho, who saw his French-style dress and mistook him for a colonial agent. They tied him up and chained him to a block of stone before throwing him into a river to drown. However, Thảo broke free of the weight and swam to safety. Thảo proceeded further south and deeper into the Mekong Delta to the town of Vĩnh Long, where he was again arrested by the local Vietminh. Just as Thảo was about to be executed by drowning, one of the communists realised he was a brother of one of their comrades. Thảo was released and rejoined his family, who lived in the region.

As a leader of the resistance, Thảo was allocated the responsibility of indoctrinating the 1947 batch of recruits with Vietminh ideology. One of Thảo's students was his future enemy, South Vietnamese General and President Nguyễn Khánh. This group became the 410th Battalion and went on to fight near Cà Mau, the southernmost part of Vietnam. By 1949, Thảo was in charge of the Vietminh espionage apparatus around Saigon and organised the guerrilla companies in the countryside. Thảo was also involved in procuring arms. Filipino traders brought arms into southern Vietnam in return for rice, shrimp, pork, gold and banknotes. Following the French defeat in 1954 at Điện Biên Phủ, Thảo helped evacuate communist fighters from South Vietnam and Cambodia in accordance with the terms of the Geneva Conference. Under these Accords, Vietnam was to be temporarily divided at the 17th parallel pending national elections to reunify the country in 1956, and military personnel were to be evacuated to their respective sides of the border. In the meantime, Hồ Chí Minh's Vietminh controlled the north under the DRV while the south was under the French-sponsored State of Vietnam.

However, Thảo remained in the anti-communist south when Vietnam was partitioned and made a show of renouncing communism. He became a schoolteacher and later worked in a bank, as well as the Department of Transport. He consistently refused to turn in the names of his former comrades, claiming that they were merely patriots fighting against the French and were not communists. At the same time, one of Thảo's brothers had been appointed as North Vietnam's ambassador to East Germany, having served as vice chairman of the Vietminh's Resistance Committee for the South during the war against the French. In October 1955, Prime Minister Diệm ousted Emperor Bảo Đại in a fraudulent referendum to determine the form of government of the State of Vietnam. "Republic" received almost 99% of the vote and "monarchy" received a little over 1%. Diệm declared himself president of the newly proclaimed Republic of Vietnam. He scrapped the national elections, citing the fact that South Vietnam was not a signatory to the Accords of the Geneva Conference.