Le 13 février 1991, un colloque sur « l’actualité vietnamienne » est organisé au Sénat. Lorsque Georges Boudarel, universitaire à Paris VII et spécialiste du Viêtnam, prend la parole, il est immédiatement interrompu par Jean-Jacques Beucler, ancien secrétaire d’état aux anciens combattants et ancien prisonnier français de la guerre d’Indochine. Ce dernier entend le confondre pour son rôle de commissaire politique dans les camps du Viêt-minh. C’est le début de l’affaire Boudarel qui va opposer durant de longs mois les anciens prisonniers à Georges Boudarel devenu l’incarnation de l’idéologie communiste.Derrière la dimension politique de l’affaire se cachent les souffrances d’une communauté d’anciens combattants de la guerre d’Indochine en mal de reconnaissance. Cette situation a contraint ce groupe mémoriel à s’organiser, à établir des stratégies pour parvenir à une reconnaissance dans l’opinion publique. Cette mémoire « souterraine » va se confronter à l’histoire dans une zone de tension mémorielle, chacune se nourrissant de l’autre. La sociologie pragmatique par son approche du suivi des acteurs nous a permis d’observer l’évolution de cet espace et la manière dont les acteurs-témoins se l’approprient.Dans leurs stratégies, les acteurs témoins ont perçu les avantages qu’ils pourraient tirer de l’utilisation de l’Internet. Cet usage permet une visibilité que n’offraient pas les médias traditionnels. Cette nouvelle donne risque toutefois d’avoir des répercussions sur la discipline historique, notamment en ce qui concerne la prise en compte des traces que génèrent les acteurs-témoins et leur pérennisation. Il apparaît que l’écriture de l’histoire des différents événements contemporains pourrait s’en trouver modifiée / On the 13th February 1991, a colloquium about the « Vietnamese topicality » isorganized at the French Senate. When Georges Boudarel, an academic at Paris VII University and a Vietnam specialist starts to speak, he is immediately interrupted by Jean-Jacques Beucher, former Secretary of State for the Veterans and who is also a former French prisoner of the Indo-China War. The latter wants to confound him for his role as a political commissioner in the Viet-Minh camps. This is the beginning of the Boudarel case confronting former prisoners to Georges Boudarel during long months, and who is now the incarnation of the communist ideology.The sufferings of a community of Indo-China War veterans longing for gratitude are hidden behind the political dimension of this case. The situation compelled this memorial group to organize themselves and to build up strategies in order to get gratitude from the public opinion. This “subterranean” memory is going to face history in a zone of memorial tension, in which each one thrives on each other. The pragmatic sociology thanks to its followed approach of the actors allowed us to see the evolution of this space and how the actors witnesses took over it.In their strategies, the actors- witnesses saw the advantages they could take of the use of Internet. Indeed, it allows a visibility which was impossible with the usual Medias. However, this new order may have repercussions on the historical discipline, especially concerning the traces generated by the actors-witnesses and their perpetuation. It turns out that the writing of history of different contemporary events could be modified.

The Vietnamese people have always harboured an extraordinarily strong patriotic drive. But the government formed by Ho Chi Minh (1890-1969) after the Declaration of Independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) on the 2nd September 1945, the group that was to represent majority Vietnamese opinion until and after 1975, was spearheaded by the Vietminh (League for Vietnam's Independence) - a movement that did not define itself as Nationalist, but rather as an expressly Communist group. When the people of Vietnam looked for leadership, this was the obvious group to choose - the only movement prepared and willing to step in (other, more nationalist resistance groups had prematurely flourished and failed, as shall be discussed). In the Vietnam that found itself suddenly free at the close of the Second World War, no other lobby was ready, no group presented itself nationally as the Communists were and did. The Liberation Army that seized control of town after town was the military arm of the Viet Minh, formed in 1944 under Vo Nguyen Giap (b. 1912), an element of a movement that published its manifesto in February 1930, that had begun preparation and ideological training in the late 1920's in Guangzhou under Ho Chi Minh. Given the long preparation carried out by the Vietminh, the progression to the declaration of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam as a Communist nation with Ho at its head was a natural one. Whilst that development seems logical given the conditions of the day, the manner in which those conditions were reached (or manipulated) has been the subject of intense debate. Was that natural progression one in which the ideologists of Communist revolution 'captured' the Nationalist movement, exploited a nationalistic fervour to produce the desired revolt, using the front of the Viet Minh to blend their esoteric dogmas with the more easily understood nationalist cause of resistance? This is a perception held by many modern historians - that, in effect, Communists are the parasites of the modernization process. This attitude was and is encouraged by examination of advice given to Asian revolutionaries by their Soviet counterparts; Grigori Zinoviev (1833-1936) - later to die by Stalin's order - argued in 1922 that Communists should co-operate with the rising nationalists in Asia, gain the leadership of their movement, and then cast aside the genuine national leaders. For by itself, the tiny Indochina Communist Party could never have hoped to attract the support of politically engaged Vietnamese, let alone the hearts and minds of the nation at large. This is the essence of the currently accepted analysis of the revolutionary Vietnamese setting - that the Communist lobby exploited a majority furious with the abuses of French rule, sliding Communism into a dominant role in Vietnamese life. The majority of people had not fought for a communist government, but to be rid of the colonial occupying power. Such a perception, as shall be discussed, is representative of the Western reading of the whole Southeast Asian region of the day. The Vietnamese people were accustomed to the use of violence to protect their independence; perennial opposition to expansionist China meant that few peoples in Asia had been compelled to fight longer and harder to retain their identity as a separate and independent state than the Vietnamese. Whilst the ability and commitment of the Vietcong in resistance to outside power has been recognised, the strong sense of Vietnamese identity in and of itself has never really been acknowledged beyond the most simplistic of terms by external observers, perhaps because of the difficulty of comprehending how such an emotion can form when looking at the odd shape of the nation on a map. Such a lack of awareness allows supposed Vietnam specialists to assert that the dominant Vietnamese self-assessment is the extent to which the country is not Chinese (and, to a lesser extent, not French) rather than entering into a more significant analysis of how a national identity formed: how, whilst certainly influenced by feelings of encirclement and domination, Vietnam also developed a separate, distinct sense of self. This, whilst a sense that has only relatively recently manifested itself in territorial demands, is a longstanding emotion and sense, in and of itself. Given an understanding of that sense or merely an awareness of its existence, the willingness of the Vietnamese to combat the most powerful nation on Earth, though certainly impressive, needs little explanation; this work has attempted to explore a more difficult question - why they chose the dogma that served them. The idea that the majority of the Vietnamese people had not fought for a communist government, but to be rid of the colonial occupying power is in truth the presentation of a false dichotomy. The fact that a group within a broad movement participates for different reasons from another group does not necessarily imply exploitation or pretense. Neither does the fact that one has a strong political ideology such as socialism forbid the possession of any other political inclination, such as patriotism. The concept of a socialist exploitation of Vietnamese nationalism will be opposed here: a discussion of the disputed importance of nationalism to the Vietnamese Communist movement in resistance, and of Communism to the nationalist movement, will form the subject of this essay. The unity of Vietnam under Communist government in 1975 seems a fitting end to the period to be considered. Much of interest - the politics behind partition, or the Communist-led conduct of war with America, for example - can be considered only briefly; fortunately, these are issues considered in great depth elsewhere. The central issue to this work shall be the development of the Communist movement in French Indochina, and the thesis herein shall be that nationalism and Marxist-Leninism occupied a symbiotic relationship in the motivation of the Communist movement and its chief practitioners in the nation once again known as Vietnam.

This thesis examines the American Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) sent to French Indochina, from 1950 to 1956, when the United States provided major monetary and material aid to the French in their war against the communist Viet Minh. MAAG observed French units in the field and monitored the flow of American materiel into the region. Relying upon primary research in the National Archives, the thesis departs from previous interpretations by showing that MAAG held generally positive assessments of France‟s performance in Indochina. The thesis also argues that MAAG personnel were more interested in getting material support to the French, than in how that material was used, to the point of making unrealistic assessments of French combat abilities. By connecting primary research with the greater history of Cold War American military assistance, the thesis contributes to the scholarship on American involvement in Vietnam.

The United States engagement in Vietnam began during the Second World War. With military bases established in China, the U.S. took part in fighting the Japanese troops in the Pacific theatre. When France surrendered to Nazi Germany in 1940, Japan would take over the French Indochina and the war would spread to Vietnam as well. In order to collect intelligence on Japanese targets, the Americans needed to operate secret services on the ground. After the Japanese coup de main in 1945, they would eventually partner with Ho Chi Minh and his organization Viet Minh. The Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the wartime predecessor of the CIA, provided intelligence training and equipment, while the Viet Minh would assist with valuable information on Japanese troops. To some extent, the OSS helped Ho Chi Minh and Viet Minh accede to power in Vietnam after the war.