Promotional Information

This book examines the organization, logistics, and tactics of the insurgency mounted by the Viet Minh in Indochina and the French military response.

Table of Contents

Preface to the Revised Edition
Preface to the First Edition
Acknowledgments
Foreword
Introduction
Vietminh Military Doctrine and the War
The Vietminh Military Organization
Vietminh Personnel and Logistics
Vietminh Operations and Tactics
Vietminh Reactions to French Tactics and Air Power
The Rise of the Viet Cong
The Viet Cong Military
American Military Participation and the Viet Cong
Epilogue
Selected Bibliography

About the Author

GEORGE K. TANHAM (1922-2003) graduated from Princeton, served as an artillery officer in Europe during World War II, and then earned a doctorate in history and political science at Stanford. He taught military history at the California Institute of Technology where became a tenured professor and master of student houses. Dr. Tanham spent most of his career with the RAND Corporation, serving as the corporate vice president in charge of the Washington office. He managed rural development efforts in Vietnam for the U.S. Agency for International Development, a program designed to pacify the countryside. Afterward he was special assistant for counterinsurgency at the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok, coordinating a campaign to defeat Chinese-inspired guerrillas in Thailand, an experience he recounted in Trial in Thailand. Among his other books are Securing India: Strategic Thought and Practice and Islam and Conflict Resolution: Theories and Practice.

Reviews

The late Tanham, who managed the US rural development program in South Vietnam during the Vietnam war, first published this work in 1961 in an effort to understand the describe and analyze the military strategy, operations, and tactics of the Vietminh nationalist fight against the French from 1946 to 1954. Not many years after, he updated the work to describe the military aspects of the Viet Cong struggle against the US up to 1967. The two parts are united by the central theme: the Communist integration or orchestration of political, economic, psychological, and military means in order to achieve their goals.
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