The Korean War (1950-1953) and the First Indochina War (1946-1954) were closely linked. A key event in Asia underlying both wars was the 1949 victory of the communist party, led by Mao Zedong, over the nationalist party in China. With that victory, and the subsequent entry of Chinese troops into the Korean War, understandings of the First Indochina War also began to shift. Among United States leaders, the events of 1949 and 1950 recast the fighting on the Indochina peninsula from a colonial war in which the United States opposed the French, to a part of the Cold War in which the two shared common interests. Even though French leaders remained intent on keeping at least part of Indochina (Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam) as part of their empire, they were content to receive American aid that was earmarked as part of the battle against communism.

Ho Chi Minh and the Việt Minh were likewise careful observers of the Korean War. The Việt Minh quickly understood the implications when the North Koreans and Chinese charged the United Nations military, led by the United States, of using biological weapons. In December 1952 and January 1953, Việt Minh representatives attended a series of lectures and an exhibition where they learned the specifics of biological weapons use in Chinese and North Korea. A simplified version of this information is presented in the pamphlet in Path 1 but the reports collected at this time were extremely detailed and the transcripts and summaries run to over 200 pages.

Chinese scientists and medical doctors emphasized the need for careful research and laid out three reasons they suspected the US and UN militaries of using germ warfare:

1. Diseases that broke out were new to area and time of year;
2. Unusual insects and materials served as vectors;
3. Outbreaks happened after US airplanes flew by.

These scientists also pointed to the context of the US biological weapons program and borrowed the term “bacteriology upside down” from Theodore Rosebury, one of the founders of the US biological weapons program, who later published a warning about them. Finally, these reports argue that patriotic hygiene mass movement was a good way to counter effects of biological warfare. All of these themes were picked up by the Việt Minh in their own investigations. This report is contained in the Ministry of Health file 5402 held in the National Archives of Vietnam Center 3 (NAV3).

Explore the PRC posters shown above and compare them to the Việt Minh images that were used to educate Vietnamese about the use of biological weapons and how to resist them. Both sets of images show the vectors of disease, including rats, flies, and various insects. While these posters emphasize human diseases, pathogens and pests attacking agricultural production were an equal concern for the Chinese, North Koreans, and Việt Minh. Both sets of images also reflected a Manichaean perspective that divided the world into imperialist and non-imperialist camps. By definition, imperialist nations caused war and used biological weapons while non-imperialist ones fought back and had to defend against biological weapons. This worldview is more clearly displayed in the history of biological weapons narrated in the Vietnamese pamphlet shown next. You can also learn more about the First Indochina War through Christopher Goscha's and Phi Van Nguyen's on-line resource site here.