"Using French-Indo China as an example, discuss whether nationalism was a more potent agent for National liberation rather than revolutionary communism.".
At 1945, directly following the power vacuum left by Japanese occupation after their defeat of World War II, ICP formed a Vietnamese Independence League- the Vietminh. The Vietminh was an umbrella grouping of anti-French and anti-Japanese nationalists, but with the handle of an umbrella-hence control-held firmly in hidden communist hands. To Ho Chi Minh and the ICP, the success of the national revolution would require mass support, but if the Vietminh were seen as a communist-front organization, it would deter non-communists from participating. Therefore, the Vietminh's manifesto emphasized simple patriotic themes and was designed to appeal to a wide spectrum of Vietnamese nationalist opinion. Later, when the national revolution had been completed, the ICP could abandon its bourgeois and progressive allies' in the Vietminh and move to implement its Marxist-Leninist agenda. With successful establishment of Vietminh, the 1945 August revolution shaped a memorable moment of Vietnam's history and critically contributed in establishment of DRV. The question is, whether nationalism was a more potent agent for national liberation rather than revolutionary communism. To answer this question, it is quite significant to examine the situation of ICP and Ho Chi Minh. Why was nationalism a crucial component of revolution to ICP? What actions of ICP prove the importance of nationalism? And if nationalism was a most potent agent of national liberation, why was communism chosen for the control of Vietminh's revolution? (Kolko,1985).
By the time of August Revolution of 1945, the Vietnamese communists were longing for broad support in order to arrange a number of soldiers and supplies from local people, and intelligence. The numbers of ICP were still small, probably two or three thousand by 1944.