Interview with North Vietnamese General Anh Tuan (1981)

Interviewer: General, the elections were annulled in 1956. But armed struggles in the South only started three or four years after that. Why so late? Hoang Anh Tuan: The Geneva Agreements on Indochina stipulated that the two regions of Vietnam should hold consultative meetings to organize the general election in order to achieve peaceful unification of the country. The Vietnamese people, both in the North and in the South, and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, in strictly carrying out the Agreements, patiently struggled to have the consultative meetings and the general elections come about. Hoang Anh Tuan: But in answering to all our initiatives, the Diem regime, in following the American neocolonial policies, only stepped up its suppression of all those Vietnamese who demanded that the Agreements be carried out. When the south could not stand the repression against them any more, they rose up in struggle, combining armed activities with political activities, in order to liberate themselves. Hoang Anh Tuan: This struggle of the southern population began with the general uprisings in the final months of 1960. This was at the same time as the creation of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam. In brief, after the people in the South realized that they had failed to get the southern regime to carry out the Agreements through political struggles, they were forced to take up arms to liberate themselves. Interviewer: Could you talk a little bit about the 1968 Tet Offensive? What were the objectives of the Tet Offensive? Was the capture of the cities one of the objectives? And why, for example, did you fight for forty days in a city like Hue? Hoang Anh Tuan: After her Special War against the Vietnamese revolution in the South, the United States still did not abandon its objective of dominating the South. Instead, the United States poured troops into the South to start a direct war against the people in the South, a war that became increasingly large scale from 1965 on. At the height of the war there were more than half a million American troops in Vietnam. Hoang Anh Tuan: Although the United States mounted ever increasingly large and destructive military offensives, it was never able to smash the Vietnamese revolution in the South. On the contrary, the war escalations by the United States only invited further defeats at the hands of the Vietnamese people. Hoang Anh Tuan: Realizing the inevitable American failures, in the spring of 1968, which was during the occasion of the lunar New Year of Mau Than, the armed forces and population in southern Vietnam mounted a large scale offensive. This offensive combined armed attacks and popular uprisings and aimed mainly at the towns and cities of southern Vietnam. That is to say, at the nerve centers of the enemy, at their political and military command centers, in order to deal the enemy severe blows and thereby force the enemy to deescalate the war in stages and to eventually end their aggressive war against South Vietnam. Hoang Anh Tuan: The objective of the strategic offensive in the spring of 1968 was to create severe losses to the enemy in their very nerve centers. It can be stated that virtually all towns and cities under the enemy's control were attacked. Hoang Anh Tuan: In some places the various revolutionary armed forces fought for only a short period and then left. But in many places the fighting was prolonged in order to inflict heavier losses to the enemy. Hoang Anh Tuan: The fighting in Hue was a case in point. The revolutionary armed forces remained there for more than twenty-four days with the objective of inflicting as many losses to the enemy as possible. But when the objective was considered accomplished, the armed units were withdrawn. Hoang Anh Tuan: Some people have thought that the objective of the Spring Offensive of 1968 was to occupy the southern towns and cities and to liberate them. But they are quite mistaken. But this was only an offensive aimed at creating heavy strategic losses to the enemy, thereby contributing to step by step victories that would eventually lead to the complete liberation of the South.

Interviewer: General, could you tell us of your impressions of Saigon when you saw it for the first time. What effects did it have on you? Hoang Anh Tuan: I went to Saigon as a member of the military delegation of the Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Republic of South Vietnam to the Joint Military Commission. When I arrived in Saigon from base area of the Resistance, they took me straight to the headquarters of the Joint Military Commission which was located inside the military compound at Tan Son Nhut airport. Hoang Anh Tuan: Strictly speaking, the headquarters of the Joint Military Commission should have been located in downtown Saigon, which was the administrative center for the southern part of Vietnam. But the Americans and the Nguyen Van Thieu regime were afraid that the revolutionary delegation would be able to extend their influence among the Saigon population. So they made the arbitrary arrangement to place our delegation and the headquarters of the Joint Military Commission inside the military compound in Tan Son Nhut. Hoang Anh Tuan: And they did not extend to us any of the rights and privileges, even the minimum diplomatic privileges, which had been clearly spelled out in the accords signed in Paris. But now and then, as a result of our consistent demands that the Agreements be implemented and that we should be allowed to perform our duties with regard to the accords, the Saigon regime let us go to downtown Saigon in order to work with the International Commission of Control and Supervision[sic] . Whenever this happened, they arranged it in such a way that we would be taken to downtown Saigon in a motorcade which ran at top speed and which was well surrounded by their military police so that we would not have any opportunity of meeting with the inhabitants of Saigon or even enjoying the street scenes. Hoang Anh Tuan: However, these few trips to downtown Saigon did leave certain impressions in my mind. This was one of the largest and most populous cities in Vietnam. And Saigon had a tradition of indomitable struggles. But under the American neocolonial system and the rule of the Saigon regime, the way of life of the people in Saigon had been infected in many ways by the luxury loving American way of life. Saigon had become a city of conspicuous consumers, an American city. Hoang Anh Tuan: Even so, and with the motorcade speeding down the streets as I have just said, I sometimes caught sight of the smiles and endearing looks of the pedestrians who recognized us by chance. This showed that although they were living under the tight control of the American neocolonialists and the American puppet regime, the inhabitants of Saigon still had their minds turned toward the revolution and those who struggled for their liberation.