Geneva Accords partition Vietnam

The Geneva Conference met from April to July 1954, and its Accords were signed on 20 and 21 July. They ended the war between France and the Viet Minh with a ceasefire and a temporary military line at the 17th parallel. Viet Minh forces would gather north of the line and French Union forces to the south. Nationwide elections, to unify the country, were scheduled for July 1956. Cambodia and Laos were recognized as independent states.¹²

The conference opened as the French garrison at Dien Bien Phu was falling, on 7 May. France's new prime minister, Pierre Mendes France, had promised to reach a deal within a month of taking office or resign. The Soviet foreign minister Molotov and China's Zhou Enlai pressed the Viet Minh delegate, Pham Van Dong, to accept a split at a line farther south than his side wanted, because both powers wanted to avoid a wider war. The United States, led by Eisenhower and Dulles, did not sign, and the new anti-communist government of the south, led by Ngo Dinh Diem, refused to be bound.¹²³

For 300 days people could move freely between zones. About 800,000 to a million northerners, most of them Catholics, went south, while far fewer moved north. The promised elections were not held, since Diem and the United States feared that Ho Chi Minh would win. The line meant to be temporary became a border, and by the end of the decade a new insurgency began in the south. The accords are remembered as the start of the divided Vietnam that led to the Vietnam War.¹³