Prisoners Ho and Giap

[Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Lea

WI the French had managed to capture Ho Chi Minh and Vo Nguyen Giap during that operation?

[Damar1]

It seems unlikely that France would hold down Indo-China indefinitely. It would also take some great strategy on the part of the French to cut off the escape route of Giap and Ho--along with thousands of other Vietnamese forces who fled with them. My guess is the Vietnamese would continue fighting the French. They may not be as organized, but the anti-French forces would be there.

Having said that, it's interesting to see what kind of independent Vietnam would develop, assuming that Giap and Ho don't find a way out of the predicament in this scenario.

[ljofa]

It'd have been a real coup for the French but without American support in SE Asia, their ultimate efforts would have floundered as the USA were unwilling to support French colonial "adventures" post WW2. The French might have executed the leaders leading to a civil war amongst various factions but ultimately, Moscow or Peking would have sent in a puppet to prop up their interests and the French wouldn't have been able to sustain a lengthy campaign - unless they borrowed heavily from the Nazi school of "dealing with opponents".

[Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy]

It seems unlikely that France would hold down Indo-China indefinitely.

They didn't want to, they wanted their puppet regime (the State of Vietnam, I don't know if it existed in '47) to control Vietnam.

It'd have been a real coup for the French but without American support in SE Asia, their ultimate efforts would have floundered as the USA were unwilling to support French colonial "adventures" post WW2.

The Viet Minh got their asses kicked pretty badly in the early years of the war, it was only after the Nationalists lost China that things started going really well for them.

[Damar1]

There is so much that would be impacted by this capture---as unlikely as it seems in OTL. To make it relatively simple, though, I wanted to look at SE Asia:

1) Malaysia---there the British mounted a counter-insurgency campaign that held off the Communists in this country. Does this still happen in the ATL

2) Indonesia---the Indonesian Communist Party (PKT) was one of the largest in the world. General Suharto assumes control of the country in 1965, and with some help from the West, massacred hundreds of thousands. This is in the name of fighting Communism. The pt is, does the PKT get to be so large in the ATL, are they a concern for the West (assuming Ho and Giap are still out of the way), or are they dealt with differently?

3) Cambodia--so much here would be affected. Although they didn't necessarily get along with their Vietnamese counterparts (esp. in the late 1970s), in OTL the Communists in this country worked early on with the Vietnam Workers Party. There are many questions for here this ATL--mainly, what happens to the Cambodian Communists? Do the Khmer Rouge ever become remotely powerful? One thing, in the ATL the US may become less interested in Cambodia, as w/o American conflict in the region, no Ho Chi Minh Trail (no Ho Chi Minh for that matter), and presumably no need to bomb neighboring countries. Who controls Cambodia in the 1970s, or even earlier?

Well, it would affect the region to say the least.