France, US, China and I guess britain during ww2?
this post was submitted on 16 Apr 2025
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chapotraphouse
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Douglas David Gracey, (3 September 1894 – 5 June 1964) was a British Indian Army officer who fought in both the First and Second World Wars. He also fought in French Indochina and was the second Commander-in-Chief of the Pakistan Army.
In September 1945, Gracey led 20,000 troops of the 20th Indian Division to occupy Saigon. During the Potsdam Conference in July 1945, the Allies had agreed on Britain taking control of Vietnam south of the 16th parallel (then part of French Indochina) from the Japanese occupiers. Ho Chi Minh, the leader of the communist Viet Minh, proclaimed Vietnamese independence from French rule and big pro-independence and anti-French demonstrations and strikes were held in Saigon.
The French, anxious to retain their colony, persuaded Gracey's Commander in Chief, Lord Mountbatten, to authorise Gracey to declare martial law. Fearing a communist takeover of Vietnam, Gracey decided to rearm French citizens who had remained in Saigon and allowed them to seize control of public buildings from the Viet Minh. In October 1945, as fighting spread throughout the city, Gracey issued guns to the Japanese troops who had surrendered and used them to occupy the city.
According to some socialist and communist commentaries, this controversial decision furthered Ho Chi Minh's cause of liberating Vietnam from foreign rule and precipitated the First Indochina War.
Just after. Britain invaded with France to help the latter re-establish colonial control over vietnam.
I don't even know how to start this or frame it so I'm just going to say the interesting part.
This little blurb feels similar to the thing that opened my eyes and set me on the path to leftism (Amerikkkan military intervention in central and south America). Like it sucks that the author came to Mr. Thach with the ignorance, but it's a really good reply. Maybe the follow up is deciding to be a shitty person about this information, but this part seems neat.
I just want to echo your comment, because that's also exactly what happened to me. Learning about USA interventionism scratched an "itch", made me pause, reflect and conclude: "hey... The USA sucks... They tried to control my country. Why am I still defending them?"
For me, Socialism was inevitable. I owe that to this kind of entry-level facts about the USA that highlight the contradictions of Capitalism.
Mr. Thach went on to say "and we won the last 3 motherfucker"
As a reminder, the five permanent members are China (originally the Republic of China until 1971), France, Russia (as a successor to the USSR), the United Kingdom, and the United States.
so stupid that France is a permanent member.
It's stupid that the UN has an extra special boys club with power to block any meaningful progress in the first place
France being a permanent member is one of Stalin's achievement, because he thought that France might turn socialist or Eastern Bloc friendly post war.
USSR maintained this diplomatic support as the Algerian War raged on
Nowaday, France having nukes and an extensive Penal battalion in west Africa probably helps
they literally only are because the UK didn't want to be "isolated" between the superpowers so they yanked France onto the council so churchill could have a colonialist bloc.
I had to reread this, I thought you were suggesting that the USSR had invaded vietnam
This appears to be from a paywalled FT article but the author is given on the Vietnam category page:—
A new reality began to dawn’: the fall of Saigon, 50 years on
Chris Mullin describes the last days of the Vietnam war and the aftermath
I'm assuming there aren't too many Chris Mullins who are journalists writing about Vietnam and, therefore, he is the former MP with a Wikipedia page that gives this context:—
Having reported from Cambodia in 1973 and 1980, in 1990 he was outspoken on the British Government's record in Cambodia, being a leading voice in some of the first protracted debates on Britain's provision of clandestine military support to Khmer terrorists, allied to the Khmer Rouge.
and
his politics shifted leftward in response to the Vietnam War
and
He has been highly critical of the American strategy in Vietnam and has stated that he believes that the war, intended to stop the advance of Communism, instead only delayed the coming of market forces in the country
This doesn't read like ignorance to me. Like a lawyer prompting a witness, this seems like someone asking the questions that allow the interviewee to give the most effective replies.
I can't read the "reply was devastating" line as being personally devastating to an ignorant journalist, because someone in that position didn't need to write that and put it on show. Instead I read it as being devastating to the naive sentiment, perhaps held by the reader, that Vietnam's only legitimate response was to run to the UN.
The author has an extensive history with the topic and doesn't appear to be blindly anti-Vietnam, so I think you may have the wrong end of the stick here.
Good job, now shut up people are trying to be funny here
This doesn't read like ignorance to me. Like a lawyer prompting a witness, this seems like someone asking the questions that allow the interviewee to give the most effective replies.
I can't read the "reply was devastating" line as being personally devastating to an ignorant journalist, because someone in that position didn't need to write that and put it on show. Instead I read it as being devastating to the naive sentiment, perhaps held by the reader, that Vietnam's only legitimate response was to run to the UN.
Thanks, I got this impression reading it too but I wasn't going to investigate myself so straight to the comments in hopes that someone has already validated my intuition.
Interesting that responding to an attack is an invasion 🤔
Develop your take further please
i don't need to
Oh sorry I got it
What is it about Vietnam that make them want to colonize it so bad? When I think of Cuba it was cash crops and mafia shit, right? I believe there was an undercurrent of disgust for having a socialist regime so close to America. Is Vietnam pure Bug's Life posting where they just don't want to see resistance?
Domino theory and French chauvinism. Cuba was nominally independent long before the revolution. Vietnam was still a French colony before WW2, and France wanted it back.
Literally yes, they called it the "Domino Effect"
And they got their ass beat, yet no communist India sadly
it was kinda one big colonial project that the colonists tag teamed on
France was colonizing it, got kicked out and defeated, so America took up their mantle on their behalf
Dom't forget the british interregnum
