ABSTRACT

The Indo-China War lasted eight years, from 1946 to 1954. It was the first phase of what might come to be known as the “Second Thirty Years War”.1

In 1946 in Paris Hô Chí Minh predicted to American correspondent David Schoenbrun how the war would be fought and how it would end. It would be, he said, “a war between an elephant and a tiger”. If the tiger were to stand still the elephant would crush him with his tusks, but the tiger would not stand still. It would hide in the jungle and at night drop on the elephant and tear huge hunks from its hide; eventually the elephant would bleed to death. “That”, Hô confidently predicted, “will be the war of Indochina.”2 Indeed, it played out very much along those lines.