Declaration of independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam
The declaration of independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam was written by Hồ Chí Minh and announced in public at the Ba Đình square in Hanoi on 2 September 1945. It led to the foundation of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, replacing the Empire of Vietnam under the Nguyễn dynasty and Emperor Bảo Đại, who abdicated on August 25.
This declaration was a declaration of independence from France, but France had initially never recognized the DRV. France formed the independent and unified State of Vietnam within the French Union when the Élysée Accords took effect on 14 June 1949, as an alternative method to solve the Vietnam question. This associated state would become the Republic of Vietnam. The declaration is also considered the foundation of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam although this state was actually formed on 2 July 1976.
History
, under the Nguyễn dynasty, became two protectorates of France in 1883, but during World War II, Japan occupied the country from 1940. During this period, Ho Chi Minh created the Viet Minh in 1941 to coordinate resistance against both French colonial authorities and Imperial Japanese occupying forces. This group fought a guerrilla war against the Japanese and were to a degree supported by the Americans in 1945 via the Office of Strategic Services. In March 1945, Japan overthrew French rule in Indochina.On August 22, 1945, the OSS agent Archimedes Patti, who had met Ho Chi Minh in southern China, arrived in Hanoi on a mercy mission to liberate allied POWs and was accompanied by Jean Sainteny a French government official. The Japanese forces informally surrendered but the only force capable of maintaining law and order was the Imperial Japanese Army, and so remained in power and kept French colonial troops detained.
Japanese armed forces allowed the Việt Minh and other nationalist groups to take over public buildings and weapons without resistance, which began the August Revolution against the Nguyễn dynasty and its Empire of Vietnam, a Japanese puppet state established right after Japan overthrew the French. On the morning of August 26, 1945, at No. 48 Hàng Ngang, Hà Nội, Chairman Hồ Chí Minh presided over a meeting of the Communist Party of Vietnam, which he had called. The meeting unanimously decided to prepare to proclaim independence and to organize a large meeting in Hà Nội for the Provisional Revolutionary Government to present itself to the people. That was also the day that Vietnam officially promulgated the right of freedom and established a democratic republic system.
On August 30, 1945, Hồ Chí Minh invited several people to contribute their ideas toward his Declaration of Independence, including a number of American OSS officers. OSS officers met repeatedly with him and other Viet Minh officers during late August, and Patti claimed to have listened to Ho read to him a draft of the Declaration, which he believed sounded very similar to the United States Declaration of Independence.
The signatories of the declaration were Ho Chi Minh, Trần Huy Liệu, Võ Nguyên Giáp, Chu Văn Tấn, Dương Đức Hiền, Nguyễn Văn Tố, Nguyễn Mạnh Hà, Cù Huy Cận, Phạm Ngọc Thạch, Nguyễn Văn Xuân, Vũ Trọng Khánh, Phạm Văn Đồng, Đào Trọng Kim, Vũ Đình Hòe, and Lê Văn Hiến.
On 2 September 1945, Ho Chi Minh read the Declaration of Independence during a public meeting in front of thousands of people at what is now Ba Đình Square. He announced the birth of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam as an independent republic. After reading the declaration, Ho Chi Minh stood up, grabbed the jade-encrusted silver "Sword of the State", and walked over to the microphone. He pulled the blade out of its sheath, raised it as high as he could reach, and loudly declared: "This sword is meant to behead traitors."
Under the 1946 Ho–Sainteny Agreement, France recognized the DRV as a free state within the French Union, but not as a fully independent or unified nation. The First Indochina War broke out in December 1946 between France and the DRV, leading to the establishment of the anti-communist associated State of Vietnam on July 2, 1949.