FOR HO CHI MINH, THERE WERE OTHER, MORE IMPORTANT REASONS to temper the celebrations that mid-October day. To begin with, the price of victory over France had been enormous, in both blood and treasure. From 1946 to 1954, the Viet Minh suffered some 200,000 soldiers killed, and an estimated 125,000 civilians also perished, the majority of them in Tonkin.5 Much of the DRV zone, moreover, lay in ruins.
