Nothing was written about the Chinese Nationalist troops that "kept the
peace" in North Vietnam after VJ day 1945 along with French, Viet Mihn,
and British Troops, as we see here:
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The History Place:
September 13, 1945 Sep 13 1945- British forces arrive in Saigon, South Vietnam.
In North Vietnam, 150,000 Chinese Nationalist soldiers, consisting mainly of poor peasants, arrive in Hanoi after looting Vietnamese villages during their entire march down from China. They then proceed to loot Hanoi.
September 22, 1945 Sep 22 1945- In South Vietnam, 1400 French soldiers released by the British from former Japanese internment camps enter Saigon and go on a deadly rampage, attacking Viet Minh and killing innocent civilians including children, aided by French civilians who joined the rampage. An estimated 20,000 French civilians live in Saigon.
September 24, 1945 Sep 24 1945- In Saigon, Viet Minh successfully organize a general strike shutting down all commerce along with electricity and water supplies. In a suburb of Saigon, members of Binh Xuyen, a Vietnamese criminal organization, massacre 150 French and Eurasian civilians, including children.
September 26, 1945 Sep 26 1945- The first American death in Vietnam occurs, during the unrest in Saigon, as OSS officer Lt. Col. A. Peter Dewey is killed by Viet Minh guerrillas who mistook him for a French officer. Before his death, Dewey had filed a report on the deepening crisis in Vietnam, stating his opinion that the U.S. "ought to clear out of Southeast Asia."
October 1945 Oct 1945- 35,000 French soldiers under the command of World War II General Jacques Philippe Leclerc arrive in South Vietnam to restore French rule. Viet Minh immediately begin a guerrilla campaign to harass them. The French then succeed in expelling the Viet Minh from Saigon.
[SIZE=+1]1946[/SIZE]
February 1946 - The Chinese under Chiang Kai-shek agree to withdraw from North Vietnam and allow the French to return in exchange for French concessions in Shanghai and other Chinese ports.
March 1946 - Ho Chi Minh agrees to permit French troops to return to Hanoi temporarily in exchange for French recognition of his Democratic Republic of Vietnam. Chinese troops then depart.
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Wikipedia:
An estimated 2 million Vietnamese, or 10% of the population then, died during the
Vietnamese famine of 1944–45.
[26]
Despite fewer losses — Expeditionary Corps suffered one-third of the casualties of the Chinese and Soviet-backed Viet Minh — during the course of the war, the French and
Vietnamese loyalists eventually suffered a major strategic setback at the
Siege of Dien Bien Phu, which allowed Ho Chi Minh to negotiate a ceasefire with a favorable position at the ongoing
Geneva conference of 1954.
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How accurate this account posted on The History Place measures out
is hard to say, but plenty of awards for the URL site.
If so, the Viet Mihn and local population had already experienced quite
ill foriegn occupation. Unless well led, the former Wehrmacht troops
are going to get bogged down an demoralized just like any other
group. Maybe if Gen. Jean de Tassigny was sent over there to
supervise, he might have been sensible enough for wise management
of the 'resource', as he later did for a year or so before falling to
cancer. Then VP Nixon reported in 1954 of how the native troops
were not treated well by the French Officers and the two did not
mix, to the detriment of military effectiveness, in example.
My guess is French commanders/officers would have likely treated the
former enemies as cheap cannon fodder which would have a double
negative of brutality of the troops towards the populace and a
poor morale. Ho Chi Mihn would have quickly exploited both and
the end could have come quicker.
Hard to say about the famine as the figures range from 300,000
to this wikipedia one of 2,000,000. Certainly there were large scale
deaths (present Vichy French General Jean Decoux estimated 1 million).
At 20% casualty rates, the local populations would have been
enured to death even more, I guess, and the looting poor impression
of former foreign troops would not help the scenario. How would
you over come these issues? Guerrila war is not a simple formula.
When other communists and nationalists complained of Ho Chi Mihn's
deal with the French to get rid of the Nationalist Chinese, he replied
'better to sniff French [manure] for a hundred years than eat Chinese
for a thousand.' Or so it is reported in history books.