August Revolution

In August 1945 the Viet Minh under Ho Chi Minh seized power across Vietnam as Japanese rule collapsed, declaring the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.

Overview

Famine in 1944 and 1945 that killed up to two million people and the Japanese coup against the French administration in March 1945 created a power vacuum. The Viet Minh, a communist-led front of independence leagues, had built liberated zones and educated cadres for exactly this moment. Within two weeks of the Japanese surrender, its committees took Hanoi, Hue, and Saigon with almost no bloodshed, and Ho read the declaration of independence on 2 September 1945. The French return ignited the first Indochina war in 1946. The revolution founded a state that defeated France in 1954 and reunified Vietnam in 1975 after the longest anticolonial struggle of the century.