Vietnam War-When the Vietcong flag blew over Notre-Dame

They wrote history without going into the history books: Bernard Bachelard, Noé Graff and Olivier Parraux. On a cold January night in 1969, the three Swiss had the flag of the South Vietnamese liberation movement FNL. As internationalists, they wanted to set an example. They protested against the United States, who had wanted to bomb back into the Stone Age since 1965. But primarily they expressed their solidarity with the Vietnamese. The news and photos went around the world at the time without learning who had attached the red blue banner to France’s most famous cathedral there with the yellow star. And above all: how?

The immediate event for the spectacular campaign was the beginning of the four-sided discussions in Paris to end the war in Vietnam and the inauguration of US President Nixon in Washington on January 20. The peace movement in the USA had made mobile because Johnson’s successor in the White House would probably not make any other Vietnam policy. Dr. Bill Zimmerman was one of the organizers of the protest campaigns that accompanied Nixons enthronement. “Our mood rose when we the front page of the New York Times saw with the two photos. A flag of the South Vietnamese liberation movement had been raised via Notre-Dame in Paris, the place of negotiations to end the war in Vietnam. For four years we had demonstrated and protested in the United States for the end of this war. And others did that all over the world – that was the visible evidence. We were encouraged to continue this fight even more determined – as long as this would be necessary. “

The “New Germany” also reported at the time: “At the famous Paris Cathedral of Notre-Dame, the flag of the FNL blew on Sunday morning at a height of 100 meters. After a few hours of unsuccessful attempts to remove the flag, firefighters had to surrender. Even with the help of fire leaders, it was impossible to get to the flag. The banner could only be brought down with the help of helicopters. “

On May 1, 50 years ago, the tanks of the South Vietnamese liberation movement FNL rolled through Saigon. It was the end of the anti -colonial war that had taken thirty years. And it was the end of the division of the country on the 17th wide degree, because after the Indochino Conference 1954 in Geneva, the country had been shared. The regime in South Vietnam, installed by the colonial power of France and exploited by the protective power USA, refused to participate in overall Vietnamese elections.

Before this anniversary, the report of those three peace activists who then made this headlines worldwide appeared. In the meantime, they are highly adledgeable – everyone is beyond the eighty – they first report in German about that spectacular campaign in Paris. One reads how they prepared for weeks in the library with the study of relevant books, trained in Bern and Lausanne on church tower tips and finally rose to their duck on January 18, 1969 and drove from Lausanne to Paris. For hours, the Banner of the Vietcong fluttered over the French metropolis, visible from afar, a disgrace for the powerful, a triumph for the supposedly weak. Nobody dared to get the top of the tower to get the flag down. It just went down: with the helicopter from which a fireman roped.

This is an episode, a little story in the Cold War that was a hotter in Vietnam. A deputy war, because behind the Vietnamese half and behind the United States the western world was at least class. The report by Marrowx, an emeritus professor, the winery owner Graff and the former sports teacher Bachelard, is more than the report of three veterans who remember their eventful youth. They bind their action into the historical context at the time, seemingly casual and unobtrusively illuminate the background. So you can clarify wonderfully, past the present without lifting the pedagogical-propaganda finger. Her history appeared in the reanimated German military publisher, which gave itself the addition “Anti -Warverlag”. The bookmakers justified the revitalization of the publisher and the new beginning with this book. This is convincing.

By the way, the roof rider, which was climbed at the time, burned like a torch on April 15, 2019. In the book there is a photo on which the fall of the cross on which the FNL flag once blew clearly. You can interpret this as a connection to the past as well as a menetcle as a serious dunning call.

Bernard Bachelard / Noé Graft / Olivier Paraux: Vietcoung in Paris. Milit Adbbity – anticivity virtue, 112 S. S., GR., 14 €.