American Strategic Deception Bureau

　Not only did Prince Nuuk take the lead in opening a casino, but many high-ranking officials of the kingdom, including Prince Chandaransai, Queen Monile, Lon Nol, Prince Sirimada, Fernandez, etc., also had the same virtue. Their greed was as ugly as that of Marcos, the "capital president" of the Philippines.

　During the reign of Sihanouk, the Chinese capitalists who had been active in the French colonial era were all overthrown and their property confiscated. Of course, the French capitalists in Cambodia were also treated in the same way, and they were so angry that they went to Charles de Gaulle to complain, but how could Charles de Gaulle control Cambodia?

　Ordinary people were also exploited to the point of being utterly devastated: Prince Sihanouk called himself "socialist" largely in order to implement "unified purchase and sale" - forcing farmers to buy rice at low prices, and then selling it on the international market at high prices, making huge profits from the two transactions.

　Sihanouk's main method of making money was so simple and unpretentious. He established the party for himself and governed for himself.

　Many Cambodian farmers who could no longer tolerate the situation secretly sold rice to smugglers and Viet Cong guerrillas. As a result, because their actions affected the financial resources of the powerful, they were immediately brutally suppressed by the Cambodian army. Massacres and killings were common, and the sight of corpses hanging in the woods was not uncommon.

　If it weren't for Lon Nol and Pol Pot, two more abstract insects, the Sihanouk government would have had nothing to shine with.

　In short, in the early 1960s, the Cambodian people's attitude towards Prince Sihanouk was not to say that he was hated, but at least he was not very fond of him. When they heard that Prince Sihanouk had died suddenly, even if the people of the country did not celebrate, at least half of them were secretly happy.

　Since Prince Sihanouk's popularity is so low, and he left such a big bug in the country's political system during his lifetime...

　So, after his sudden death, all kinds of ambitious people began to take action.

　The 19-year-old Prince Ranariddh had just inherited the title of Prince at his father's coffin. He was then told that because his father had refused to become king, there was no throne for him to inherit, and he could not directly become Prime Minister. In this world, there are only hereditary kings, not hereditary prime ministers.

　(Actually, there was. The prime minister of the Dali Kingdom was hereditary, similar to the Shogun of the Japanese shogunate.)

　Next, the Cambodian government quickly surrendered the "Free Khmer" armed forces led by San Ngoc Thanh within a single day, allowing this right-wing anti-monarchy armed force to enter the capital Phnom Penh without disarming. They showed off their military prowess all the way, which did not look like surrender at all, attracting everyone's attention. The Cambodian people all knew that these people were actually mercenaries raised by the US Central Intelligence Agency at a huge cost.

　At the same time, the Cambodian military was also purged and reorganized. Commander-in-Chief Lon Nol's cronies were spreading propaganda, extolling the virtues of democracy and a republic. Had Prince Sihanouk still reigned, the vast majority of officers would have resisted this "rebellion." But now that Prince Sihanouk was dead, his successor, Ranariddh, clearly lacked his father's prestige. Consequently, the military quickly acquiesced to the government's attempt to seize power from the royal family.

　Subsequently, under the joint promotion of high-ranking Cambodian dignitaries such as Lon Nol, Fernandez, Prince Sirik Mada, and Prince Chandarangxay, the National Assembly and the Royal Assembly convened a joint meeting. Prince Ranariddh and Queen Monineath, caught off guard, were also forcibly dragged into the meeting.

　Lon Nol delivered a passionate speech at the conference, declaring that Cambodia had effectively become a republic since Sihanouk had once again abdicated the throne. Therefore, it was time to set things right, follow the world trend, abolish the monarchy once and for all, and transform the Kingdom of Cambodia into the Khmer Republic.

　In response, the vast majority of parliamentarians applauded and cheered loudly. At this time, the Cambodian upper class, which had not yet experienced the nightmares and purgatory of various nightmares, generally felt as if a huge rock was pressing down on Prince Sihanouk's perverted desire for power and control, making it difficult for them to breathe.

　Now that this big rock has been moved away, we must strike while the iron is hot and not allow the next big rock to come down on us.

　Although everyone admits that Prince Sihanouk has made contributions to this country, just like the British expelled Churchill and stripped him of his title as Prime Minister right after the Second World War, the Cambodian and Khmer people have had enough of Sihanouk's turmoil - it's time to end it!

　Of course, many members of parliament expressed their support for the abolition of the monarchy due to the situation. General Lon Nol, Prince Sirik Mada and San Ngoc Thanh of the "Free Khmer Rouge" had already made full preparations: the entire parliament building was filled with armed soldiers and police inside and outside, and there were also "Free Khmer Rouge" mercenaries trained by the US Central Intelligence Agency outside to prevent the government's soldiers and police from taking action against "their own people".

　In short, under the gun, the legislators began to hold a "democratic" vote to change the national system. Voters had to sign the ballot before putting it in the ballot box.

　——This means they must choose between life and death.

　Although the monarchy has indeed become outdated in the second half of the 20th century, which of these people who staged the coup is a good person?

　However, thinking of the black muzzles of guns pointed at them from inside and outside the building, and thinking of their wives, children and belongings, the council members voted as follows:

　It was unanimously agreed to abolish the monarchy of the Kingdom of Cambodia and change the country's name to the Khmer Republic.

　They also elected the pro-American leader Prince Shri Mada as the head of state of the republic, and Lon Nol as the prime minister, defense minister and commander-in-chief of the armed forces of the republic.

　Watching Lon Nol and Prince Shri Mada proudly walk onto the stage to express their inauguration speech

　The MPs all breathed a sigh of relief, thinking they had escaped a disaster.

　But what they didn't know was that Prince Shrimada's trusted spies had already been closely observing the expressions and actions of every member of parliament, and had confirmed the identities of every member with a grim expression or who was not actively applauding, preparing to arrest and imprison them all after the meeting...

　In short, just four days after Prince Sihanouk was assassinated and before his coffin was buried, the Kingdom of Cambodia had already become the Khmer Republic.

　Of course, despite the change in state system, the abolition of the monarchy, and the arrest of a large number of people, Prince Sihanouk's state funeral was still held as usual, and it was generally considered a grand funeral - Lon Nol and his allies were not so unscrupulous as to vent their anger on the dead, such as feeding Prince Sihanouk's corpse to dogs.

　As for what happened afterwards, Queen Monineath, Prince Ranariddh and the rest of Sihanouk's children were all placed under house arrest, which is also a common practice in palace coups.

　The more serious problem is that the Khmer Republic, established by right-wing pro-American forces, immediately began to strike hard as soon as it was born:

　On the one hand, it disregarded international law and sent troops to expel the embassies of North Vietnam and the Republic of South Vietnam in Phnom Penh, and on the other hand, it issued an ultimatum to Ho Chi Minh in Hanoi, demanding that they withdraw from the eastern border territories of Cambodia that they had previously occupied.

　On the one hand, they purged the country's left-wing political forces, forcing Cambodian moderate left-wing politicians such as Khieu Samphan to flee to the jungles on the border and join the Khmer Rouge guerrillas led by Pol Pot and Ieng Sary, as well as the Viet Cong who supported the Khmer Rouge.

　Thus, faced with Phnom Penh's ultimatum, the Khmer Rouge's plea for assistance, and the accusation of "the assassination of President Kennedy" by world public opinion, North Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh in Hanoi found himself and his revolutionary regime in a predicament where he was easily blamed.

　Author's words: PS: It is unexpected that the relevant departments, which have always been more spiritual than Americans, actually introduced the movie "The American Civil War" this time.

　Although the actual viewing experience may not be very good, and it is far inferior to "Rise of the Planet of the Apes", but what can be said, the sensitivity of the topic alone can attract a lot of box office, right?

　Chapter 293, Ho Chi Minh, the Shovel of the House of Yan! (Part 1)

　Capital of North Vietnam, Hanoi

　Under the bright autumn sunshine, this thousand-year-old ancient city, built by the famous general Gao Pian in the late Tang Dynasty, is now in ruins and desolate everywhere.

　Under a bombing frequency comparable to the Tokyo Raid, Hanoi's cityscape quickly became devastated and devastated. Whether it was the Western-style villas left by the French colonists or the government agencies built after the establishment of North Vietnam, they were all reduced to charred rubble, pockmarked with bomb craters of varying sizes.

　In the city's Ba Dinh Square and along the shores of Hoan Kiem Lake, ragged refugees were scattered across the empty spaces, setting up makeshift tents. Sallow-faced residents huddled amidst garbage and sewage, their eyes numb and glazed as they gazed at the shattered buildings that emanated the stench of burnt flesh and corpses.

　Only a few trucks occasionally passed by on the streets, loaded with refugees evacuated to the countryside to avoid air strikes. Many people were crowded next to the train station, waiting to be transferred to the countryside by train, relieving the pressure on the capital's infrastructure, which was on the verge of paralysis, and making the city increasingly empty.

　At the same time, due to the carpet-style strategic bombing launched by the US military in the spring, all departments of the North Vietnamese central government in Hanoi had to move into air-raid shelters and work in underground caves, just like the British War Cabinet and the Japanese Imperial Headquarters during World War II.

　In Hanoi's largest and most solid underground shelter, the flickering electric lights emitted a dim glow. The elderly and frail Ho Chi Minh sat at the conference table, coughing constantly while looking at the map on the table and the documents at hand. Suddenly, he felt a splitting headache.

　Looking up at the people sitting around the conference table, from Le Duan to Vo Nguyen Giap, they all had gloomy faces, as if they were owed millions.

　Alas, how did things turn out like this?

　This spring, the revolutionary army broke through the 17th parallel north and easily captured the ancient capital of Hue. When our southern comrades defeated U.S. imperialism in one battle, seized the capitalist nest of Saigon, and hoisted the red flag on the Sacred Heart of Jesus Church and the U.S. Embassy, ​​that high-spirited scene is still vivid in our minds.

　Although the capital Hanoi was repeatedly bombed by the US Strategic Air Force, resulting in tens of thousands of houses being destroyed and thousands of citizens being displaced, the revolutionaries were very hard-hearted, knowing that this was a necessary price and the enemy's final brutality, and therefore remained unmoved.

　But why did the revolutionary situation suddenly take a turn for the worse at the end of the year, as if it had gone from being in a favorable situation to being in an unfavorable one?

　Although not an inch of land had been lost, the enemy was further mobilized, and the socialist camp also cast a suspicious eye on us.

　In the upcoming dry season battles, the Vietnamese people will probably suffer a lot!

　Of course, the Viet Cong has experienced such ups and downs more than once.

　Ho Chi Minh felt that his life had been full of ups and downs, and that the ups and downs of the revolutionary process were normal, but even when he was about to die, he did not want to be a confused ghost.

　"Tell me, who was responsible for the Phnom Penh incident? Who killed President Kennedy and Prince Sihanouk?

　Anyway, I have never heard of such an action. Was it something the comrades in the South came up with on their own?

　Seeing that everyone seemed unwilling to talk, Ho Chi Minh had no choice but to knock on the enamel cup with a teaspoon, making a clear sound.

　"There's no need to doubt our own comrades! This is all a conspiracy of American imperialism!"

　Li, who is in charge of southern affairs

　Sun immediately replied without hesitation, "We should firmly deny it in public opinion and fight back!"

　"Haha, a conspiracy by American imperialism? This conspiracy is to blow up their own president in public and use it to discredit us?"

　Vo Nguyen Giap laughed in anger, "Comrade Le Duan, please ask yourself, would anyone believe this if you told them?"

　"Whether others believe it or not, I absolutely believe it! Comrade Vo Nguyen Giap, do you really want to believe the enemy's lies?"

　Le Duan shamelessly said, even putting the blame on others, "This is a serious political mistake!"

　"Le Duan!!! What's your attitude? Even at this point, you still refuse to tell the truth in front of your comrades?"

　No matter how good-tempered Ho Chi Minh was, he was still irritated by this scoundrel. "Tell me the truth!"

　After hearing Ho Chi Minh's scolding and roaring, as well as the inquiring looks of others, Le Duan opened his mouth, but no sound came out for a while.

　Because he really doesn't want to tell the truth.

　As Le Duan's personal style, he always tried to fool his comrades in the party, and even his trusted subordinates, and tried not to tell the truth.

　For example, in history, Le Duan sent Pham Van Dong to Paris in 1972 to negotiate a ceasefire with US representatives. In order to prevent leaks, the military intelligence of the southern battlefield that he told Pham Van Dong were all fabricated lies: if he didn't deceive his own people, how could he hide it from the enemy?

　Pham Van Dong mistakenly believed that the North Vietnamese regular army had never crossed the 17th parallel, and that the "Viet Cong fighters" in the southern battlefield were all guerrillas of the National Liberation Front. He therefore claimed that there was no need for North Vietnam to withdraw its troops after the armistice, leaving the Americans speechless.

　"Come on, the numbers of the main divisions you sent south have already been reported in the newspapers! Why are you, a North Vietnamese diplomat, denying it?"

　What’s even more terrifying is that you are not fooling us, but actually believe the nonsense you said... How can we talk about this?

　Because the North Vietnamese had a long history of ignoring facts and deceiving their superiors and subordinates, armistice negotiations during the Franco-Vietnamese, American-Vietnamese, and Sino-Vietnamese wars were extremely difficult. The North Vietnamese negotiators themselves had a completely erroneous understanding of the situation, making it impossible for them to achieve any agreement.

　Just like the Japanese Showa staff during World War II, if they had negotiated with the Allies completely according to the headquarters' war reports, they would definitely not have achieved anything.

　In fact, by the end of July 1945, with German Nazi war criminals on trial at Nuremberg and the two atomic bombs about to be dropped, Japan, in its final secret negotiations with the Chongqing Communist Party, was still unwilling to give up either Manchukuo or the Wang Puppet Government in Nanjing.

　——Ryukyu has been lost, Tokyo has been burned to the ground, and the Japanese archipelago is about to fall, but you still dream of the "lifeline of Manchuria and Mongolia"?

　I wonder what was going on in the heads of those Showa staff? Horse manure?

　Le Duan actually had a similar style in this regard. His main focus was idealism and detachment from reality, and he became more and more like a madman as time went on.

　However, he had not yet completely lost his mind and did not have the courage to lie openly in front of Ho Chi Minh and all the major party cadres.

　So, after hesitating for a while, Le Duan finally reluctantly revealed some truth: "Regarding the assassination of Kennedy in Phnom Penh, it was definitely not planned by comrades in Saigon, nor was it planned by our troops stationed in eastern Cambodia or local Cambodian comrades.

　But Comrade Pol Pot, General Secretary of the Khmer Workers' Party, was an extreme mystic. Most of the time, we didn't even know where he was. He also rarely informed us of any operations he directed, except for requests for aid.

　If he planned this operation alone and was lucky enough to kill two reactionary leaders at once...it doesn't seem completely impossible.

　Of course, I'm more inclined to believe that it was Shan Yucheng's "Khmer Rouge," colluding with high-ranking traitors within the Phnom Penh puppet government, and perhaps even with the involvement of the US CIA, who jointly orchestrated this assassination that shocked the world... There were also many Americans who opposed Kennedy..."

　After hearing Le Duan's explanation full of uncertainty and ambiguity, everyone present frowned.

　——All the North Vietnamese high-level officials in Hanoi know that Pol Pot, the current General Secretary of the Khmer Workers’ Party, is indeed a very difficult guy to deal with.

　Before the end of the Franco-Vietnamese War in 1954, the Khmer Workers' Party, or the "Khmer Rouge," was actually a branch of the Viet Cong.

　The early leaders of the Khmer Rouge, such as San Ngoc Minh, Dus Mok, etc., were basically Vietnamese or of Vietnamese descent.

　Therefore, the Viet Cong at that time could not control the Khmer Rouge as easily as its own arms, but at least it could command and dispatch them like a subordinate department.

　Later, according to the Geneva Armistice Agreement, Viet Cong cadres withdrew from Cambodia, Son Ngoc Minh returned to Vietnam, and Dusmu disappeared in 1962 and was suspected to have been killed. Only then did the local Cambodians represented by Pol Pot come from behind and gain a dominant position within the Khmer Rouge.

　But the Khmer Rouge was still very weak at this time, and at its worst, Pol Pot had only twenty men under his command.

　As he could no longer stay in the capital Phnom Penh, Pol Pot led all the cadres to withdraw from Phnom Penh in February 1963 and moved to the remote jungles in the countryside, where he led the Khmer Workers' Party to establish rural revolutionary bases.

　The army and guerrillas wage revolutionary struggle.

　Apparently, after being subjected to brutal government raids in Phnom Penh and becoming increasingly frightened by the constant stream of traitors, Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, after leaving the capital, adopted a policy of extreme secrecy, completely concealing their existence and referring only to themselves as the "Revolutionary Organization" or "Angka." The identities of their top leaders, even their positions, were kept secret, and they addressed each other only by code names.

　For example, "Leader A", "Comrade B", etc.

　Therefore, the vast majority of grassroots revolutionary cadres do not even know who their general secretary is, let alone other senior leaders.

　——Somewhat similar to the Tarot Club in "Lord of the Mysteries", most members don't know who the leader "The Fool" is for a long time.

　The Viet Cong only had a strong control over the Khmer Rouge organization in northeastern Cambodia. The Cambodian Communist Party cadres who withdrew in accordance with the Geneva Agreement returned to northeastern Cambodia in recent years in order to open up the Ho Chi Minh Trail and rebuilt their organization there.

　However, the bases that Pol Pot led the Khmer Workers' Party to establish in the northern inland jungle and western border areas were far away from the Viet Cong troops stationed along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The Viet Cong stationed in the east were out of reach of them and had no control over them.

　In fact, we know that the leader of "Angka" is Pol Pot thanks to the Viet Cong and a group of cadres who withdrew from Cambodia.

　What's more troublesome is that Pol Pot was a man with extremely strong nationalist ideas. Due to the centuries-long ethnic hatred between the Khmer and Vietnamese peoples - which can be roughly compared to the relationship between the Greeks and Turks - he always had a high degree of distrust of the Viet Cong.

　The communication between the two sides was disconnected most of the time, and the communications sent by the Viet Cong were generally "read only but not replied".

　The Vietnamese Communist Party even had to rely on newspaper news in Phnom Penh to learn about Pol Pot's "Angka"'s new activities.

　Just like the recent assassination of President Kennedy and Prince Sihanouk on Monivong Street in Phnom Penh, which caused a global uproar, Le Duan, while steadfastly denying and refusing to speak up, also tried relentlessly to contact Pol Pot to learn whether he was responsible. However, Pol Pot never responded.

　What's more, even if Pol Pot denied it, would the Vietnamese Communist Party believe him?

　Of course, although he was unwilling to give Pol Pot a guarantee, Le Duan still insisted that the assassination of Kennedy should be a CIA conspiracy!

　-

　When Ho Chi Minh learned that even Le Duan did not know who assassinated Kennedy, and could not find the real murderer, nor could he provide strong evidence to whitewash him, he immediately sighed, knowing that he would probably never be able to get rid of the label of "presidential assassin".

　No matter how Hanoi denies and defends itself, the Americans and the entire Western camp have obviously decided to regard Ho Chi Minh as the real murderer!

　This was bound to inspire a shared hatred of the enemy from top to bottom in the United States, and the desire to fight would boil over. Since the founding of the United States, countless countries have fought wars with the United States. However, Ho Chi Minh was the first enemy leader to successfully assassinate the US president.

　What a humiliation! It's no less humiliating than Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor!

　It is obvious that the United States, which is now in its golden age, is at its most arrogant, presumptuous and proud. From top to bottom, it will not tolerate such an open slap in the face - according to intelligence forwarded by the Soviet Union, at this moment in all walks of life in American society, the moderates on the issue of the Vietnam War have completely lost their voices, and hard-line war advocates are everywhere shouting "revenge" and "don't forget Kennedy"!

　Therefore, after Kennedy's funeral, the US military would definitely launch the most brutal and crazy attack on North Vietnam.

　After all, God cannot shed blood, and the majesty of the world overlord cannot be offended.

　Since North Vietnam knocked out the United States' front teeth with a slap, it will have to face the "Imperial Counterattack" like a thunderous tsunami!

　At the same time, this confusing Kennedy assassination case would also cause the socialist camp's international aid to Vietnam to shrink significantly in the short term. No matter how Vietnam denied and explained, the Soviet Union and China believed that "the little brother Vietnam seemed a bit too extreme."

　If they dare to rashly assassinate the President of the United States now, we can’t even imagine what incredible things they will do in the future!

　Are you a revolutionary organization? Or a terrorist organization?

　Although it cannot be said that the Bolsheviks absolutely did not engage in assassinations, it is true that assassinations alone could not win the victory of a country's revolution!

　Just like the Assassin assassin of the Old Man in the Mountain, no matter how many times his assassinations are successful, in the end he can only be confined to a castle.