North Vietnam established the NLF on December 20, 1960, at Tân Lập village in Tây Ninh Province to foment insurgency in the South.

Hanoi gave the regroupees military training and sent them back to the South along the Ho Chi Minh trail in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

The VC's best-known action was the Tet Offensive, an assault on more than 100 South Vietnamese urban centers in 1968, including an attack on the U.S. embassy in Saigon.

[8] Front groups were favored by the VC to such an extent that its real leadership remained shadowy until long after the war was over, prompting the expression "the faceless Viet Cong".

After subduing the Bình Xuyên organized crime gang in the Battle for Saigon in 1955, and the Hòa Hảo and other militant religious sects in early 1956, Diệm turned his attention to the VC.

[14] In March 1956, southern communist leader Lê Duẩn presented a plan to revive the insurgency entitled "The Road to the South" to the other members of the Politburo in Hanoi.

[16] But as China and the Soviets both opposed confrontation at this time, Lê Duẩn's plan was rejected and communists in the South were ordered to limit themselves to economic struggle.

[17] Lê Duẩn's blueprint for revolution in the South was approved in principle, but implementation was conditional on winning international support and on modernizing the army, which was expected to take at least until 1959.

[19] Nguyễn Hữu Xuyên was assigned military command in the South,[20] replacing Lê Duẩn, who was appointed North Vietnam's acting party boss.

[23] The launch of Sputnik in October boosted Soviet confidence and led to a reassessment of policy regarding Indochina, long treated as a Chinese sphere of influence.

[25] French scholar Bernard Fall published an influential article in July 1958 which analyzed the pattern of rising violence and concluded that a new war had begun.

[8] The Communist Party of Vietnam approved a "people's war" on the South at a session in January 1959 and this decision was confirmed by the Politburo in March.

[nb 6] The "2d Liberation Battalion" ambushed two companies of South Vietnamese soldiers in September 1959, the first large unit military action of the war.

[8] A series of uprisings beginning in the Mekong Delta province of Bến Tre in January 1960 created "liberated zones", models of VC-style government.

South Vietnam's Law 10/59, approved in May 1959, authorized the death penalty for crimes "against the security of the state" and featured prominently in VC propaganda.

[40] The "special war" and "strategic hamlets" policies allowed Saigon to push back in 1962, but in 1963 the VC regained the military initiative.

[42][nb 8] Even as Hanoi embraced China's international line, it continued to follow the Soviet model of reliance on technical specialists and bureaucratic management, as opposed to mass mobilization.

[53] Ami Pedahzur has written that "the overall volume and lethality of Vietcong terrorism rivals or exceeds all but a handful of terrorist campaigns waged over the last third of the twentieth century".

[57] General William Westmoreland, the U.S. commander, received reports of heavy troop movements and understood that an offensive was being planned, but his attention was focused on Khe Sanh, a remote U.S. base near the DMZ.

About 75,000 VC/PAVN soldiers were killed or wounded, according to Trần Văn Trà, commander of the "B-2" district, which consisted of southern South Vietnam.

[67] U.S. President Lyndon Johnson and Westmoreland argued that panicky news coverage gave the public the unfair perception that America had been defeated.

[68] Aside from some districts in the Mekong Delta, the VC failed to create a governing apparatus in South Vietnam following Tet, according to an assessment of captured documents by the U.S.

By the end of 1969, there was little communist-held territory, or "liberated zones", in the rural lowlands of Cochin China, according to the official communist military history.

[71] In May 1968, Trường Chinh urged "protracted war" in a speech that was published prominently in the official media, so the fortunes of his "North first" faction may have revived at this time.

"[75] The Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968 led to intense Sino-Soviet tension and to the withdrawal of Chinese forces from North Vietnam.

Beginning in February 1970, Lê Duẩn's prominence in the official media increased, suggesting that he was again top leader and had regained the upper hand in his longstanding rivalry with Trường Chinh.

However, the capture of the Plain of Jars and other territory in Laos, as well as five provinces in northeastern Cambodia, allowed the North Vietnamese to reopen the Ho Chi Minh trail.

[82] Between the beginning of 1974 and April 1975, with now-excellent roads and no fear of air interdiction, the North delivered nearly 365,000 tons of war matériel to battlefields, 2.6 times the total for the previous 13 years.

People considered tainted by association with the former South Vietnamese government were sent to re-education camps, despite the protests of the non-communist PRG members including Tạng.

[86] According to the memoirs of Trà, the VC's top commander and PRG defense minister, he followed orders issued by the "Military Commission of the Party Central Committee" in Hanoi, which in turn implemented resolutions of the Politburo.