« I was able to compare the Nazi and the Vietminh methods.
The Nazis reduced us -Jews, gipsies, opponents of all sides- to an under-humanity but they did not try to convert us. Through hunger and deprivation, the Vietminh brought us to the same state as the Nazis, but on top of that, they expected us to subscribe to their system, to deny our own values, our faith in justice and in our country. »

Colonel Eric WEINBERGER,
Former Buchenwald inmate. Former Vietminh prisoner.

The horrors of the gulag

« Lies written in ink cannot obscure truth written in blood».

Lu Xuan

Chinese writer.

Introduction

As in China and the USSR, a lot of brainwashing took place in most of the Vietminh camps. The methods varied according to geographic areas, war periods and origins of prisoners (Europeans, North Africans, Africans, Asians)

Brainwashing had a sure psychological impact on prisoners and caused the death of a great number of them. It is derived from fundamental principles of Marxism-Leninism that seeks to force a doctrinaire approach on “the masses”. According to General Giap, Chief commander of the People’s Army of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, it is the instrument: “Communism should preach to the people” and should be used to act upon the people and the enemy.

To understand its workings, one needs to go back to the origins of Marxism-Leninism when “permanent re-education” was born to the detriment of every prisoner in the hands of the revolution, whose guilt was taken for granted and proclaimed in advance.

Then it is necessary to look at the particular way it was organized by Vietminh’s Dich Van, i.e. the body in charge of psychological action towards the enemy.

It adapted brainwashing to the prisoners’ mentalities, making it insidious and cynical, playing on the human beings’ best and worst sides, their fears and their hopes, their isolation, physical and moral decay.