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J 38 PEACE IN VIETNAM ‘and Laos). Here in 1941 the pro-Vichy French administration promptly came to terms with the Japanese, making an artange- ment whereby they were to retain their administrative positions, under general control and supervision of the Japanese. In Vict- nam, then, the Japanese were able to rely upon the French and had no need to make concessions to the leading nationalists. Con- sequently, along with their French collaborators, the Japanese cracked down very hard upon any nationalist activity. Because of this, non-Communist as. well as pro-Communist Vietnamese nationalists were forced to operate underground, a level of political activity in which the Communists were already experienced, Thus, even at this early stage, the most important channel open to Viet- namese who wished to free their country from French control was one where Vietnamese Communists already had an entrenched position. Indeed, the only strong and organized underground in existence was that which had been built up by the Vietnamese Communists under the leadership of Ho Chi Minh. Thus most Vietnamese nationalists, regardless of their political convictions, joined. The ability of the various groups to work togciher was undoubtedly increased by the fact that from the very outset the Vietnamese Communist movement had a strong nationalist bias. Although Ho Chi Minh, the leader of this wide nationalist coali- tion known as the Vietminh, was a Communist whe had spent some time in Russia and China, he held his position by virtue of his nationatism rather than his Communism, as even Ngo Dinh Dicm acknowledged. During World War II the Vietminh received considerable sup- . port from Chiang Kai-shek’s government and, as the war drew to a close, from the American Office of Strategic Services, fore- runner of the CIA. It developed increasing power, and by May 1945 had liberated a part of northern Vietnam from Japanese rule. When Japan capitulated, the Vietminh and supporting groups supplanted the discredited and weakly backed national regime which the Japanese at the eleventh hour had established under Bao Dai, the previous French colonial puppet-emperor of Annam (central Vietnam). The policies of the French in Vietnam in the period after the war were of even greater importance in causing nationalism to