The Anti-French Resistance War was fought between France and Việt Minh (Democratic Republic of Vietnam), and their respective allies, from 19 December 1946 until 20 July 1954.^{[203 ]}Việt Minh was led by Võ Nguyên Giáp and Hồ Chí Minh.^[204] Most of the fighting took place in Tonkin in Northern Vietnam, although the conflict engulfed the entire country and also extended into the neighboring French Indochina protectorates of Laos and Cambodia.

The first few years of the war involved a low-level rural insurgency against the French. By 1949 the conflict had turned into a conventional war between two armies equipped with modern weapons, with the French supplied by the United States, and the Việt Minh supplied by the Soviet Union and a newly communist China.^[205] French Union forces included colonial troops from the empire - North Africans; Laotian, Cambodian and Vietnamese ethnic minorities; Sub-Saharan Africans - and professional French troops, European volunteers, and units of the Foreign Legion. It was called the "dirty war" (la sale guerre) by leftists in France.^[206]

The French strategy of inducing the Việt Minh to attack well-defended bases in remote areas at the end of their logistical trails was validated during the Battle of Nà Sản. French efforts were hampered by the limited usefulness of tanks in a forested environment, the lack of a strong air force, and reliance on soldiers from French colonies. The Việt Minh used novel and efficient tactics, including direct artillery fire, convoy ambushes, and anti-aircraft weaponry to impede land and air resupplies together with a strategy based on recruiting a sizable regular army facilitated by large popular support. They used guerrilla warfare doctrine and instruction developed from China, and used war materiel provided by the Soviet Union. This combination proved fatal for the French bases, culminating in a decisive French defeat at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu.^[207]

Both sides committed war crimes during the conflict, including killings of civilians (such as the Mỹ Trạch massacre by French troops), rape and torture.^[208] At the International Geneva Conference on July 21, 1954, the new socialist French government and the Việt Minh made an agreement which gave the Việt Minh control of North Vietnam above the 17th parallel, an agreement that was rejected by the State of Vietnam and the United States. A year later, Bảo Đại would be deposed by his prime minister, Ngô Đình Diệm, creating the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam). Soon an insurgency, backed by the communist north, developed against Diệm's anti-communist government. This conflict, known as the Vietnam War, included large U.S. military intervention in support of the South Vietnamese.