The broad-based nationalist front created by the Indochinese Communist Party (ICP) in 1941 that dominated the struggle against the return of French colonial domination from September 1945. In 1938, as World War II got underway in Asia, Ho Chi Minh left Moscow for Yan’an before making his way back to southern China. During this time, he closely studied the united front strategy the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was using against the invading Japanese. In Chongqing, he renewed his contacts with Zhou Enlai, the CCP’s liaison to the Republic of China now operating in southern China. Ho Chi Minh also renewed contacts with ICP cadres such as Vo Nguyen Giap, Pham Van Dong, and Hoang Van Hoan. He then turned to building a clandestine base within Vietnam, selecting the limestone caves of Pac Bo in Cao Bang province, next to Guangxi province in China.
With the collaboration of the acting secretary general of the ICP, Truong Chinh, Ho Chi Minh shifted the party’s line to creating broad-based support with a view to taking power as World War II spread across the globe. Ho did this during the Eighth Plenum of the ICP Central Committee that met at Pac Bo on 10–19 May 1941. He presided over the approval of a resolution that ignored the Comintern’s line at the time as well as Joseph Stalin’s non-aggression pact with Hitler. With the war now underway in Europe and the French knocked out by the Germans, the resolution called for resistance to the Japanese, opposition to the collaborating Vichy authorities in Indochina, and cooperation with the Chinese.
This meeting also created a broad-based nationalist front, the Viet Nam Doc Lap Dong Minh (Vietnam Independence League), more commonly known as the Viet Minh. Through the Viet Minh, the ICP abandoned its earlier emphasis on class struggle in favour of creating a broad nationalist front to attract support for the “national liberation revolution” (Cach Mang Giai Phong Dan Toc) from all parts of society. A directing committee, the Tong Bo Viet Minh, ran the front from on high, establishing “national salvation” associations in order to organize and mobilize peasants, women, traders, etc. into the movement.
Following the overthrow of the French by the Japanese and then the Japanese by the Allies, the Viet Minh was able to ride a wave of popular discontent to power. With the advent of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) in August–September 1945, the Viet Minh continued to exist as a political party. However, non-communist parties such as the Vietnamese Nationalist Party (Viet Nam Quoc Dan Dang, or VNQDD) successfully cast it as a communist front organization, equating it with the ICP. In May 1946, as armed clashes broke out between the forces of the DRV and the ICP on the one hand and the anti-communist nationalist parties on the other, the DRV created a new national front called the Association of United Vietnamese People (Hoi Lien Hiep Quoc Dan Viet Nam) or Lien Viet for short. Ho Chi Minh was honorary president of this “super” national front, which regrouped all patriotic individuals who had not yet joined the Viet Minh front. The Viet Minh continued to exist until it was formally replaced by the Lien Viet organization during the Second Party Congress in early 1951. The term, however, did not disappear and was used by both the French and the Vietnamese throughout the rest of the war, even though it technically no longer existed during the second half of the Indochina War.