Why was Vietnam divided into north and south sections?

Question

Why was Vietnam divided into north and south sections?

Answer 1

The outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950 marked a decisive turning point. From the perspective of many in Washington, what had been a colonial war in Indochina was transformed into another example of communist expansionism directed by the Kremlin. Chinese military advisors arrived in North Vietnam in July 1950, and in September the U.S. created a Military Assistance and Advisory Group (MAAG) to screen French requests for aid, advise on strategy, and train Vietnamese soldiers. By 1954, the U.S. had supplied 300,000 small arms and spent US$1 billion in support of the French military effort and was shouldering 80 percent of the cost of the war. The Vietminh received crucial support from the Soviet Union and China. Chinese support in the Border Campaign of 1950 allowed supplies to come from China into Vietnam. Throughout the conflict, U.S. intelligence estimates remained skeptical of French chances of success.

The Battle of Dien Bien Phu marked the end of French involvement in Indochina. The Viet Minh and their mercurial commander Vo Nguyen Giap handed the French a stunning military defeat. France had earlier declined the American offer of nuclear weapons to break the Vietnamese siege and on May 7, 1954, the French Union garrison surrendered. At the Geneva Conference the French negotiated a ceasefire agreement with the Viet Minh. Independence was granted to Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam.

Vietnam was temporarily partitioned at the 17th parallel, and under the terms of the Geneva Convention, civilians were to be given the opportunity to freely move between the two provisional states. Elections throughout the country were to be held, according to the Geneva accords, but never took place. Around one million northerners, mainly Catholics, fled south, fearing persecution by the communists. It is estimated that as many as two million more would have left had they not been stopped by the Vietminh. In the north, the Vietminh established a socialist state the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and engaged in a land reform program in which the mass killing of perceived “class enemies” occurred. Ho Chi Minh later apologized.  In the south a non-communist state was established under the Emperor Bao Dai, a former puppet of the French and the Japanese. Ngô Đình Diệm became his prime minister. In addition to the Catholics flowing south, up to 90,000 Vietminh fighters went north for “regroupment” as envisioned by the Geneva Accords. However, in contravention of the Accords, the Vietminh left roughly 5,000 to 10,000 cadres in South Vietnam as a “politico-military substructure within the object of its irredentism.” The last French soldiers left Vietnam in April 1956. The Chinese completed their withdrawal from North Vietnam at around the same time.

Answer 2

At the end of World War II Vietnam declared its independence, however, France continued its control until soundly defeated by Ho Chi Minh's Communist forces in 1954.

Shortly thereafter, based on the Geneva Accord, Vietnam was divided into two parts; the Communist North and the anti-Communist South.

Answer 3

After the Viet Minh kicked the French out in 1954, Vietnam was temporarily partitioned into northern and southern zones pending unification on the basis of internationally supervised free elections to be held in 1956. But South Vietnam, backed by the United States, refused to hold the elections.

Answer 4

  Viet Nam had never been a single unified nation until 1975 when the force of Communist arms united its three sections. Hanoi in the north, Hue in the center, and Saigon in the south have always existed as separated components, and during French Occupation each region had a different legal standing. Vietnamese regional influences always mattered more than a national viewpoint. Each part had different linguistic, historical,religious and cultural traditions. Each had great suspicions about the others, and each harbored some degree of ambition to dominate and rule the others.

The political separation into North and South was the fiction required to end the French occupation. The Communists got one part, Bao Dai got the other two parts, center and south. Neither side had the slightest expectation of holding elections or abiding by any results there of. The Soviets and Americans were "observers" of the agreement to divide, and knew there could not, and would not be, free elections. The Geneva Accords established only one fact: France would leave the territories of the Viets, Laos, and Cambodia included.

The division reflected the political realities on the ground and among the Vietnamese people. The agreement left all other matters to the future to be settled between the respective Vietnamese parties--by force of arms.