Battle of Ba Gia - Background

Background

During the first half of 1965 there was a sharp escalation of the war in Vietnam. In January 1965, while on a visit to China, a North Vietnamese military delegation met with Chinese Prime Minister Zhou Enlai to discuss the situation. In the meeting the North Vietnamese were advised by Zhou Enlai to step up military operations in South Vietnam, in order to destroy the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) whenever they came out to fight. In March, in response to the National Liberation Front’s appeal for support from socialist troops, Leonid Brezhnev announced that Soviet citizens were volunteering to fight on the side of North Vietnam and the National Liberation Front. However, Hanoi privately informed Moscow that the National Liberation Front only wanted to gain international support, and they did not need actual volunteers.

In April, the Soviet Union’s political support for North Vietnam materialised with the delivery of MiG fighter planes and SAM-2 anti-aircraft missiles, along with large quantities of food and ammunition. In addition, Soviet pilots and other specialists were dispatched to North Vietnam to train North Vietnamese military personnel in the use of advanced military hardware. China, not to be outdone by its Soviet rival, increased the delivery of armaments to North Vietnam at rates which surpassed their commitments in 1964. China also offered logistical assistance to the North Vietnamese military by providing seven divisions of Chinese soldiers for road construction and other projects. The logistical support offered by China had a significant impact on the North Vietnamese military, as North Vietnam needed all its combat divisions to conduct operations, to aide the Pathet Lao in Laos and the National Liberation Front in South Vietnam.

Buoyed by the recent victory in the Binh Gia campaign and the support of their major allies, North Vietnamese leaders began preparing a strategy to defeat South Vietnamese and United States military forces. Le Duan, Secretary of the Communist Party, believed that the South Vietnamese regime was able to survive because they still had a strong army to rely upon. Therefore, to win the war and reunite the country, the South Vietnamese military had to be destroyed completely. Le Duan believed the Communist forces must destroy three or four of South Vietnam’s nine regular army divisions in a series of large battles, and pin down the eleven elite battalions of the South Vietnamese strategic reserve. Thus, North Vietnamese leaders decided to launch a summer offensive with the objective of defeating the South Vietnamese army by drawing them into battle repeatedly with numerous, geographically dispersed attacks.