Ba Cụt and his forces fought the Vietnamese National Army (VNA), the Việt Minh, and the Cao Đài religious movement from 1943 until his capture in 1956. Known for his idiosyncrasies, he was regarded as an erratic and cruel leader who fought with little ideological purpose. His sobriquet came from the self-amputation of a finger as part of a vow during his teenage years to defeat the French colonial forces; he later swore not to cut his hair until the communist Việt Minh were defeated. Ba Cụt frequently made alliances with various Vietnamese factions and the French. He invariably accepted the material support offered in return for his cooperation, and then broke the agreement—nevertheless, the French made deals with him on five occasions. The French position was weak because their military forces had been depleted by World War II, and they had great difficulty in re-establishing control over French Indochina, which had been left with a power vacuum after the defeat of Japan.
In mid-1955, the tide turned against the various sects, as Prime Minister Ngô Đình Diệm of the State of Vietnam and his VNA began to consolidate their grip on the south. Ba Cụt and his allies were driven into the jungle, and their position was threatened by government offensives. After almost a year of fighting, Ba Cụt was captured. He was sentenced to death and publicly beheaded in Cần Thơ.
Early life and background
A young slim man aged around 20, with sharp eyes and nose, wearing a cylindrical traditional Vietnamese cloth headpiece and tunic. Both the headpiece and tunic are black.
Huỳnh Phú Sổ, the leader of the Hòa Hảo
Ba Cụt was born in 1923 in Long Xuyên, a regional town in the Mekong Delta, in the far south of Vietnam. He was orphaned at an early age and adopted by a local peasant family. Ba Cụt was illiterate and was known from childhood as a temperamental and fiery person. The family's rice paddies were confiscated by a prominent landlord, the father of Nguyễn Ngọc Thơ. Ba Cụt's bitter personal experience imbued him with a permanent and fanatical hatred towards landowners. Thơ rose to become a leading politician in the 1950s and played a key role in Ba Cụt's eventual capture and execution.
Vietnam was a tumultuous place during Ba Cụt's youth, particularly in the Mekong Delta. In 1939, Huỳnh Phú Sổ founded the Hòa Hảo religious movement, and within a year had gained more than 100,000 followers. He drew adherents for two reasons: the prophecies he made about the outbreak of World War II and the conquest of South East Asia by Japan, which proved to be correct; and his work as a mystical healer—his patients claimed to have been miraculously cured from all manner of serious illnesses after seeing him, when Western medicine had failed. Sổ's cult-like appeal greatly alarmed the French colonial authorities.During World War II, Imperial Japan invaded and seized control of Vietnam from France; its defeat and withdrawal at the end of the war in 1945 left a power vacuum in the country.
The Hòa Hảo formed their own army and administration during the war, and started a de facto state in their Mekong Delta stronghold. They came into conflict with the Cao Đài, another new religious movement, which also boasted a private army and controlled a nearby region of southern Vietnam centred around Tây Ninh. Meanwhile in Saigon, the Bình Xuyên organised crime syndicate ruled much of the city through its gangster militia.[8] These three southern forces vied for control of southern Vietnam with the main protagonists: the French, who were attempting to re-establish colonial control across the entire nation; and the communist-dominated Việt Minh, who sought Vietnamese independence.
At the time, the many groups vying for power—including their respective factions—engaged in alliances of convenience that were frequently broken. Historian David Elliott said that "the most important eventual cause of the French decline was the inherently unstable nature of the political alliances they had devised ... The history of the French relations with the Hoa Hao sect is a telling illustration of the pitfalls of short-term political deals between forces whose long-term interests conflict."
The Hòa Hảo initially engaged in large-scale clashes with the Việt Minh in 1945, but by mid-1946 the two groups had agreed to stop fighting one another and to fight the French instead However, in June 1946, Sổ became estranged from his military leaders and started the Dan Xa (Social Democratic Party).Because of his charisma, the Việt Minh saw Sổ as a threat and assassinated him, leaving the Hòa Hảo leaderless and causing Sổ's military leaders to go their separate ways. The split caused an increase in violence as the various Hòa Hảo factions engaged in conflicts among themselves.
Career
Ba Cụt joined the Hòa Hảo militia when it was formed in 1943–44 and became a commander within a year. He was feared by his enemies, and was described as "a sort of lean Rasputin." According to Bernard B. Fall, "The hapless farmers who were under the rule of the maniacal Ba Cut fared worse [than those under other military leaders], for the latter [Ba Cụt] was given to fits of incredible cruelty and had no sense of public duty." American journalist Joseph Alsop described Ba Cụt as "war-drunk". Ba Cụt was famous for inventing a torture contraption that drilled a steel nail through the victim's ear, a device he used to force villagers and wealthy landlords to fund his forces.
In 1947, he led his own faction of the sect after its various military leaders pursued their own policies towards the French and Hồ Chí Minh's Việt Minh in the wake of Sổ's death. At the time, France was in a ruinous financial state following World War II, and was experiencing great difficulty in its attempts to re-establish control over its colonies. In 1950, Ba Cụt was involved in a battle with another Hòa Hảo leader, Nguyen Giac Ngo. He was defeated and driven from the district of Chợ Mới. The French saw the disagreements as an opportunity to divide the Hòa Hảo and gain an anti-Việt Minh ally, and offered material aid, which Ba Cụt accepted.Ba Cụt repeatedly made treaties with the French colonial forces to fight the Việt Minh in return for arms and money, but he broke his end of the bargain and sometimes fought the Cao Đài instead of the communists. Ba Cụt made five such deals with the French, but he abandoned his military responsibilities each time. The French continued to furnish him with supplies despite his disloyalty and unreliability because they lacked the personnel to patrol all of Vietnam, but had spare equipment. The other Hòa Hảo commanders generally had the same general outlook as Ba Cụt; they were stridently opposed to the Việt Minh because of Sổ's assassination, and sometimes fought alongside and received supplies from the French, but at times they lapsed into apathy and refused to attack. Although Ba Cụt was infamous for his temper and cruelty, he was regarded as a moderate in outlook compared to the other Hòa Hảo leaders. The French continued to provide him with equipment despite the fact that when he was seventeen, Ba Cụt had cut off the top of his third finger as a symbol of his commitment to always fight the French.
The most notable instance of Ba Cụt's abandoning the fight against the Việt Minh came in mid-1953. At that time, his forces had been helping to defend the regional Mekong Delta town of Mỹ Tho, but the French decided to transfer more of the military power to their more mainstream allies, the Vietnamese National Army (VNA). As the French tried to undermine his position, tensions with Ba Cụt increased. On June 25, the Hòa Hảo leader ordered his men to evacuate their French-supplied bases; they took their weapons with them and razed the camps. Ba Cụt then withdrew his forces from a string of military posts in the Plain of Reeds and retreated to Châu Đốc in the extreme south of the country. As a result, the French-aligned presence in the Mekong Delta was severely dented and the Việt Minh made substantial gains in the area. Eventually, the French defeat at the Battle of Điện Biên Phủ in northern Vietnam in May 1954 signalled the end of French Indochina.
When the Geneva Conference in July 1954 ended the First Indochina War, it handed North Vietnam to Hồ Chí Minh's Việt Minh, and the south to the State of Vietnam. To reunify the country, national elections were scheduled for 1956, following which the French would withdraw from Indochina. The partition of Vietnam angered Ba Cụt and he vowed not to cut his hair until the nation was reunified. Having fought against the Việt Minh since 1947, Ba Cụt's principal criticism of Prime Minister Ngô Đình Diệm's State of Vietnam government stemmed from his belief that Diệm had been too passive in rejecting the partition, and that half of the country should not have been yielded to the communists.
In mid-1954, General Nguyễn Văn Hinh, the head of the State of Vietnam's VNA, announced that he did not respect the leadership of Prime Minister Diệm, and vowed to overthrow him. The coup never materialised and Hinh was forced into exile,but not before appointing Ba Cụt to the rank of colonel in the VNA in an attempt to undermine Diệm, as the Hòa Hảo warlord was openly contemptuous of the prime minister. In August, Ba Cụt and his 3,000 men broke from the VNA, and fought against it; this put him at odds with most Hòa Hảo leaders, who accepted government payments to integrate their forces into the VNA. The initial military offensive by the VNA against Ba Cụt was a failure, possibly because the details of the planned attack on his forces were leaked to him by a Hòa Hảo member of the National Defence Committee.
During the transition period between the signing of the Geneva Accords and the planned reunification elections, South Vietnam remained in chaos as the VNA tried to subdue the remaining autonomous factions of the Hòa Hảo, Cao Đài, and Bình Xuyên militias. In early 1955, during a battle with the Cao Đài forces of Trình Minh Thế, Ba Cụt was severely wounded by a bullet that penetrated his chest. It seemed that he would die, but a French Air Force helicopter flew in and airlifted him to a colonial hospital. Ba Cụt eventually recovered, and in the meantime, the fighting stopped. By this time, with France preparing to withdraw from Indochina, senior French officers had begun to undermine Diệm's leadership and his attempts to stabilise South Vietnam. The VNA later implicated the French in the organisation of weapons air drops to Ba Cụt, prompting a protest from Diệm's government. Diệm complained to a French general, alleging that Ba Cụt's men were using French equipment that was of higher quality than that given to the VNA.
Last stand against Diệm
See also: Battle for Saigon and State of Vietnam referendum, 1955
A portrait of a middle-aged man, looking to the left in a half-portrait/profile. He has chubby cheeks, parts his hair to the side and wears a suit and tie.
Ngô Đình Diệm, the Prime Minister of the State of Vietnam
In 1955, Diệm tried to integrate the remaining Hòa Hảo armies into the VNA. Ba Cụt was one of four Hòa Hảo military leaders who refused the government offer on April 23, and continued to operate autonomously. At one stage, the Cao Đài, Hòa Hảo and Bình Xuyên formed an alliance called the United Front, in an attempt to pressure Diệm into handing over power, and Ba Cụt was named as their senior military commander. Initially, American and French representatives in Vietnam hoped that Diệm would take up a ceremonial role and allow the sect leaders—including Ba Cụt—to hold government positions.However, Diệm refused to share power and launched a sudden offensive against the Bình Xuyên's Saigon headquarters in late April, quickly crushing them.
During the fighting, the Hòa Hảo attempted to help the Bình Xuyên by attacking towns and government forces in their Mekong Delta heartland. Ba Cụt's men blockaded the Mekong and Bassac rivers and laid siege to various towns, stifling the regional economy. Soon after, they retreated to a Hòa Hảo citadel on the banks of the Bassac. After reinforcing their base, the Hòa Hảo proceeded to fire mortars across the water into the city of Cần Thơ, which stood on the opposite side of the river.
With the Bình Xuyên vanquished, Diệm turned his attention to conquering the Hòa Hảo. As a result, a battle between government troops led by General Dương Văn Minh and Ba Cụt's men commenced in Cần Thơ on June 5. Five Hòa Hảo battalions surrendered immediately; Ba Cụt and three remaining leaders had fled to the Cambodian border by the end of the month.The soldiers of the three other leaders eventually surrendered, but Ba Cụt's men continued to the end, claiming loyalty to the Emperor Bảo Đại. Diệm responded by replacing the officers of Bảo Đại's personal regiments with his own men and used the royal units to attack Ba Cụt's rebels.Knowing that they could not defeat the government in open conventional warfare, Ba Cụt's forces destroyed their own bases so that the VNA could not use their abandoned resources, and retreated into the jungle. Ba Cụt's 3,000 men spent the rest of 1955 evading the 20,000 VNA troops who had been deployed to quell them, and a reward of one million piasters was put on their leader's head. Ba Cụt scattered trails of money in the jungles, hoping to distract his pursuers, but to no avail.
Despite his weak military situation, Ba Cụt sought to disrupt the staging of a fraudulent referendum that Diệm had scheduled in order to depose Bảo Đại as head of state. Ba Cụt distributed a pamphlet condemning Diệm as an American puppet, asserting that the prime minister was going to "Catholicize" the country—the referendum was partly funded by the U.S. government and various Roman Catholic organisations.Diệm had strong support from American Catholic politicians and Cardinal Francis Spellman, and his brother Ngô Đình Thục was a bishop. Ba Cụt said that the referendum was a means "for Diem to gather the people from all towns and force them to demonstrate one goal: to depose Bao Dai and proclaim the puppet Diem as the chief-of-state of Vietnam."On the day of the poll, Ba Cụt's men prevented voting in the border regions that they controlled, and ventured out of the jungles to attack polling stations in Cần Thơ. Despite that disruption, Diệm was fraudulently credited with more than 90% of support in Hòa Hảo-controlled territory, and a near unanimous turnout was recorded in the area. These results were replicated across the nation, and Diệm deposed Bảo Đại.
Eventually, Ba Cụt was surrounded, and sought to make a peace deal with the Diệm government to avoid being taken prisoner. Ba Cụt sent a message to Nguyễn Ngọc Thơ, the public official who oversaw the civilian side of the campaign against the Hòa Hảo, asking for negotiations so that his men could be integrated into mainstream society and the nation's armed forces. Thơ agreed to meet Ba Cụt alone in the jungle, and despite fears that the meeting was a Hòa Hảo trap, he was not ambushed. However, Ba Cụt began asking for additional concessions and the meeting ended in a stalemate. According to historian Hue-Tam Ho Tai, Ba Cụt's lifelong antipathy towards Thơ's family influenced his behaviour during his last stand. Ba Cụt was arrested by a patrol on April 13, 1956, and his remaining forces were defeated in battle.
Trial and execution
Dishevelled man dressed in white folds his arms as he stands in the dock.
He is guarded by two soldiers, one with a machine gun.
The courtroom is crowded.
Ba Cụt in Cần Thơ Military Court, 1956
Diệm's government put Ba Cụt on trial. During the proceedings, Ba Cụt theatrically removed his shirt so that the public gallery could see how many scars he had suffered while fighting the communists. This, according to him, demonstrated his devotion to Vietnamese nationalism. He challenged any other man to show as many scars. However, Diệm's judge was unimpressed; Ba Cụt was found guilty of committing multiple murders, and sentenced to death. Diệm's adviser, Colonel Edward Lansdale from the CIA, was one of many who protested the decision. Lansdale felt that the execution would tarnish Diệm—who had proclaimed the Republic of Vietnam (commonly known as South Vietnam) and declared himself President—and antagonise Ba Cụt's followers.Ngô Đình Nhu—Diệm's younger brother and chief adviser—said that a reprieve was not possible, as the army, particularly Minh, was opposed to clemency. Some sections of the southern public were sympathetic to Ba Cụt, who was compared to a character from the Wild West.
Ba Cụt was publicly guillotined[ on July 13, 1956, in Cần Thơ. Some followers, led by a hardcore deputy named Bay Dom, retreated to a small area beside the Cambodian border, where they vowed not to rest until Ba Cụt was avenged. Many of his followers later joined the Vietcong—the movement that succeeded the Việt Minh their leader had fought—and took up arms against Diệm.
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