The Viet Minh, seasoned by combat against occupying Japanese soldiers during the Second World War   launched a rebellion against the French authority governing the colony of Indochina. After seven years of bloody conflict, the French made their last stand at Dien bien Phu, where they were engaged by the forces of Genera Vo Ngyuen Giap. But contemporary military tactics were unable to defeat successive human wave attacks and the subsequent siege of the base; the French were defeated with devastating losses. The war in Indochina was not very popular with the French public, but the political stagnation of the Fourth Republic resulted in ongoing prosecution of the war. The United States supported the war politically and financially.

After the war, the Geneva Conference on July 21, 1954 made a provisional division of Vietnam at the 17th parallel, with the north being given to the Viet Minh under Ho Chi Minh and the south becoming the Republic of Vietnam under President Ngo Dinh Diem.

A weak state often overshadowed by neighboring China, Vietnam had been absorbed into the colony of French Indochina in 1887. With Western influence and education, Vietnamese nationalism grew until World War II provided a break in French control.

Meanwhile, in 1941 Ho Chi Minh, a trained communist revolutionary, returned to Vietnam and formed the Viet Nam Doc Lap Dong Minh Hoi or Viet Minh. Ho Chi Minh was a founding member of the French Communist Party in the 1920s in Paris. He spent many years in Moscow and participated in the Internationa Comintem. At the direction of Moscow, he combined the various Vietnamese communist groups into the Indochinese Communist Party in Hong Kong  in 1930. Ho Chi Minh created the Viet Minh as an umbrella organization  for all the nationalist resistance movements, de-emphasizing his communist social revolution background.

After WWII, the United States and the USSR entered into the Cold War where both sides were determined to expand their influence over the globe. The Korean War broke out between the North Koreans supported by China and the USSR, and the ROK supported by the US and allied nations. Initially the conflict was limited to North Korean, ROK, and US military forces. However, when General Douglas MacArthur penetrated deep into North Korea, the Chinese flooded the country with an enormous army. The Korean War would have deep implications for the American involvement in Vietnam.

The prisoners taken at Dien Bien Phu were the greatest number the Viet Minh had ever captured: one-third of the total captured during the entire war. The victory by the Viet Minh led to the 1954 Geneva accords.