Vietnam
Up until World War II, France had maintained control of Vietnam. But it was events that occurred during World War II that would lead to the First Indochina War. In 1940 the Japanese invaded French Indochina and allowed their army to be stationed there during the war with permission from the Vichy government in France.
In 1941, the Viet Minh was formed in Vietnam. They were a communist and nationalist liberation movement that called for independence from France and for an end to the Japanese occupation. By 1945, Japan sought to use the natural resources of Vietnam to fund the war and therefore underwent a full-scale military takeover of the country in March. But by August 1945, the Japanese had been defeated and therefore the occupation in Vietnam fell as well.
The Viet Minh took their chance to occupy Hanoi and declare independence for Vietnam on September 2, 1945. The French were not willing to let their colony go that easily, and the Provisional Government of the French Republic send the Far East Expeditionary Corps to try and get Indochina back under French rule. In response, the Viet Minh began a guerrilla war against the French which lasted until 1954.
The path to unity and independence was not an easy one. In 1954 the colonial administration ended and Indochina was split into Ho Chi Minh’s Democratic Republic of Vietnam and Emperor Bảo Đại’s State of Vietnam. In 1955, the Prime Minister of the State of Vietnam Ngô Đình Diệm overthrew the emperor and declared himself president of the Republic of Vietnam. Increased tensions between north and south Vietnam would lead to the Vietnam war that ended in 1976 with the unification of Vietnam as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.