World War II was a pivotal event for the future of communism in Vietnam. In 1940, Japan demanded the right to strategically position troops in French Indochina and take advantage of the region's vast natural resources. Recently coalesced as a pro-Axis power, Vichy France agreed in return for Japanese recognition of continued French authority over the territory. However, due to Japanese occupation and the collapse of significant French resistance to Hitler in Europe, colonial authority in Indochina was severely weakened.
As American and allied Europe were distracted, the Communist Party began to consolidate an insurgency to seize power at the end of the war. In 1940, Ho Chi Minh returned to south China after spending several years in the Soviet Union and in May 1941, he organized a meeting of the top leadership of the Communist Party launching a new movement to secure Vietnamese national independence. In order to broaden its appeal to all Vietnamese individuals and groups opposed to French colonial rule, the newly created political arm of the insurgency, the Vietminh
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In March 1945, facing imminent defeat at the hands of the allied powers, Japan seized power in Indochina from the French, leaving the countryside almost wholly without colonial administration. By taking advantage of a disastrous famine causing the loss of over a million people and despite the Japanese whose policy forbade relief work and French in action, the Vietminh confiscated rice stocks and helped feed the starving and homeless Vietnamese people, further promoting their cause. The Vietminh were becoming widely recognized as the primary political force fighting for national independence and social justice in