Communist Party leader Ho Chi Minh. After the Vietnamese Communist forces, or Viet Minh, defeated the French colonial army at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954, the colony was granted independence. According to the ensuing Geneva settlement, Vietnam was partitioned, ostensibly temporarily, into a communist North and a non-Communist (and, some hoped, an eventually democratic) South. The former was to be ruled by Ho Chi Vietnam warMinh, while the latter would be under the control of Emperor Bao Dai. In 1955 the South Vietnamese monarchy was abolished and Prime Minister Ngo Dinh Diem became president of a new South Vietnamese republic. Some signers of the Geneva accords hoped that elections to unify the two republics could be scheduled to take place in 1956, but such elections were never held. The RVN government of President Diem, with the support of US President Eisenhower, had no interest in holding elections that threatened to bring Communist influences into the South's government. In addition, the communists did not want to hold free elections in the North, fearing the results of forced co-operation with Diem and his supporters. Neither the US nor the two Vietnams had signed the election clause in the accord, and were thus not bound to honor it. Initially, it seemed that a partitioned Vietnam would become the norm, similar in nature to the partitioned Korea created years earlier. After the communists consolidated their power in the North, they formed the National Liberation Front (NLF or Viet Cong) as a guerrilla movement in opposition to the South Vietnamese government. (The RVN and the US referred to the NLF as Viet Cong, short for Viet Nam Cong San, or "Vietnamese Communist" The NLF itself never called itself by this name). In response to the guerilla war, the United States began sending military advisors in support of the government in the South. North Vietnam and the USSR supported the NLF with arms and supplies, advisors, and regular units of the North Vietnamese Army, which were transported via an extensive network of trails and roads which became known as the Ho Chi Minh trail.
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