"To Go Further Than Words Alone": The World Peace Council and The Global Orchestration of Vietnam War Campaigns During The 1960s

CHAPTER 2
“To Go Further Than Words Alone”: The

World Peace Council and the Global
Orchestration of Vietnam War Campaigns
During the 1960s
Kim Christiaens
Historians have turned a sceptical eye towards the plethora of inter-

national solidarity campaigns staged by communist states, parties, and
movements over international issues such as anti-colonialism, human
rights, and peace during the Cold War. Many tend to see these campaigns
as hollow “agitprop” that aimed, but in the end failed, to buttress the
legitimacy and ideology of the Soviet camp.1 It has been argued that these
1 See for instance Steven L. B. Jensen, The Making of International Human Rights: The
1960s, Decolonization, and the Reconstruction of Global Values (Cambridge: CUP, 2016),
237–274; Nick Rutter, “Look Left, Drive Right: Internationalisms at the Sofia World
Youth Festival of 1968,” in The Socialist Sixties: Crossing Borders in the Second World, ed.
Anne E. Gorsuch and Diane P. Koenker (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013),
193–212.
K. Christiaens (B)
KADOC–Documentation and Research Centre on Religion,
Culture and Society, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium
e-mail: kim.christiaens@kuleuven.be
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 13

Switzerland AG 2022
A. Sedlmaier (ed.), Protest in the Vietnam War Era,
Palgrave Studies in the History of Social Movements,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81050-4_2
14 K. CHRISTIAENS
campaigns were fatally discredited by their association with the Soviet

Union, being mere propaganda tools of communist regimes, which had
little to do with the campaigns developing in the West while being met
with scepticism in the postcolonial world.2 Inadvertently, campaigns even
backfired as they turned into a forum to denounce the Soviet Union
and “real existing socialism”.3 This tendency to consider communist
campaigns on behalf of what became dubbed the “Third World” as a
failure has been reinforced by research that has stressed the contradictions
and conflicts in the relations between Eastern European regimes and the
Third World.4 Such assumptions also appear in accounts of the interna-
tional protest movements spawned by the Vietnam War. Many historians
have indeed pooh-poohed the involvement of communist states, parties,
and peace organisations in what has been considered one of the most
globalized causes célèbres for transnational activism by a myriad of actors
during the Cold War era. They have argued that communist campaigns
against the American war in Vietnam and the solidarity proclaimed by
the Soviet camp and its allies on behalf of the “Vietnamese resistance”
were merely a ploy. Such accounts have maintained that these campaigns
were marked by failures, crippled by competition with China, and stood
at odds with the “radical internationalism” of the so-called New Left,
for whom the Vietnam War offered an opportunity to develop a two-
pronged critique of the Cold War international stalemate imposed by both
the Soviet Union and the United States.5 In this vein, scholarly views of
2 Silvio Pons, The Global Revolution: A History of International Communism, 1917–

1991 (Oxford: OUP, 2014), 277.
3 April Carter, Peace Movements: International Protest and World Politics Since 1945
(New York: Routledge, 2014), 76.
4 See for instance the seminal work by Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War: Third
World Interventions and the Making of Our Times (Cambridge: CUP, 2006); Philip. E.
Muehlenbeck and Natalia Telepneva (eds.), Warsaw Pact Intervention in the Third World:
Aid and Influence in the Cold War (London: I.B. Tauris, 2018).
5 Niek Pas, Sortir de l’ombre du parti communiste français. Histoire de l’engagement de
l’extrême gauche française sur la guerre du Vietnam 1965–1968 (Paris: Institut d’Etudes
Politiques, 1998); Eleanor Davey, Idealism Beyond Borders: The French Revolutionary Left
and the Rise of Humanitarianism, 1954–1988 (Cambridge: CUP, 2015).
2 “TO GO FURTHER THAN WORDS ALONE”: THE WORLD … 15
communist solidarity with Vietnam have remained rather insular. Transna-

tional histories of the mobilization against the US war in Vietnam have
pushed the Eastern Bloc to the margins.6
Such storylines have, however, become difficult to sustain. In recent
years, a new generation of historians has begun to take a fresh look at
the international solidarity cultures developed by and within communist
states, parties, and related campaigns.7 They have not only revealed the
variety of motivations that inspired communist involvement with the post-
colonial world, ranging from anti-imperialist ideology and foreign policy
interests to attempts at internal reform and even dissent. They have also
underscored how such internationalist campaigns—for instance in the
context of the Vietnam War—created and projected alternative “glob-
alizations” during the Cold War, through which ideas and movements
travelled between different and even competing actors within the commu-
nist and postcolonial world.8 Yet, communist solidarity with Vietnam was
not limited to the Eastern bloc, it also included campaigns by commu-
nist organizations and networks in the Western and postcolonial worlds.
Critically, transnational campaigning on behalf of the “Third World” was
often entangled with campaigns that transcended the Cold War divides
and stimulated East-West exchanges.9
6 For a wider criticism of this absence of the Eastern Bloc, see James Mark and Tobias
Rupprecht, “The Socialist World in Global History: From Absentee to Victim to Co-
producer,” in The Practice of Global History: European Perspectives, ed. Matthias Middell
(London: Bloomsbury, 2019), 81–114.
7 David Engerman, “The Second World’s Third World,” Kritika 1 (2011): 183–211;
Tobias Rupprecht, “Die sowjetische Gesellschaft in der Welt des Kalten Kriegs. Neue
Forschungsperspektiven” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 58,3 (2010): 381–399. For
a good overview of recent scholarships, see Artemy Kalinovsky, James Mark and Steffi
Marung (eds.), Alternative Globalizations: Eastern Europe and the Postcolonial World
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2020).
8 James Mark and Péter Apor, “Socialism Goes Global: Decolonization and the Making
of a New Culture of Internationalism in Socialist Hungary 1956–1989,” Journal of
Modern History 87 (2015): 852–891; James Mark et al., “‘We Are with You, Viet-
nam’: Transnational Solidarities in Socialist Hungary, Poland and Yugoslavia,” Journal
of Contemporary History 50 (2015): 439–464.
9 On entanglements between North-South and East-West movements, see Kim Christi-
aens, “Europe at the Crossroads of Three Worlds: Alternative Histories and Connections
of European Solidarity with the Third World, 1950s–1980s,” European Review of
History/Revue Européenne d’Histoire 24 (2017): 932–954.
16 K. CHRISTIAENS
Inspired by these new approaches to bring communist anti-colonial

internationalism into transnational histories of the manifold mobiliza-
tions of the Vietnam War era, this chapter looks at one of the most
important and at the same time most contested international commu-
nist organizations during the Cold War, the World Peace Council (WPC)
. Since its establishment as the coordinating body of communist peace
movements allied with the Soviet Union in the late 1940s, the WPC
developed into one of the most important fora for Soviet-sponsored inter-
national campaigns for world peace, disarmament, national independence,
and anti-colonialism.10 It cooperated with other Soviet-sponsored inter-
national bodies such as the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU)
or the World Federation of Democratic Youth (WFDY) , but also with the
Afro-Asian Peoples’ Solidarity Organization (AAPSO) . Headquartered in
Paris, Vienna, and later Helsinki, the WPC made its international reputa-
tion through a series of “world conferences” and public campaigns that
spanned the globe and involved an international assortment of famous
public figures, intellectuals, and artists of the global left. After it had
campaigned against US involvement in the Korean War, Apartheid, and
the nuclear arms race, the WPC developed from the early 1960s onwards
a variety of campaigns to denounce “American imperialism” in Vietnam
and support the “heroic struggle” of the “peace loving forces” of the
Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) and the National Liberation
Front of South Vietnam (NLF). Not only in Eastern Europe, but also
in Western Europe and the Global South, communist parties, and a
host of eminent public figures, such as French philosopher Jean-Paul
Sartre and Chilean writer Pablo Neruda, lent their support to interna-
tional campaigns developed by the WPC, which were celebrated in official
propaganda as “one mighty torrent of a worldwide movement”.11
While several studies have documented the role of the WPC in
campaigns in specific countries revealing the variety of actors and ideas
within the movement, especially in the 1950s and early 1960s, we
10 Petra Goedde, The Politics of Peace: A Global Cold War History (Oxford: OUP,
2019), 15.
11 “On Vietnam: An International Appeal for Action,” Supplement to the Bulletin of the
World Council of Peace, no. 3 (April 1966), 4.
know relatively little about its role in the international campaigns trig-
gered by the Vietnam War.12 There are historians who have suggested
that the WPC was an important forum for the transnational coordina-
tion of campaigns during the Vietnam War, but the internal dynamics,
transnational connections, and motivations that played a role within the
organization as well as its impact on local activism have remained little
understood.13 Partly, this can be related to the elusive nature of the
organization, which included chapters and members from across the
world, received support from various sources, including but not exclu-
sively Eastern Bloc states, and was led by a variety of activists spread across
different institutions and countries. Equally prominent, however, remains
the assumption that campaigns by the WPC were inefficient propaganda
tools of the Soviet camp, paralyzed and discredited by internal conflicts
over issues such as the Sino-Soviet split or the plight of dissidents in the
Eastern Bloc, while being rejected by the New Left.14 Seeing the WPC as
an organization in crisis and decline during the 1960s, the existing liter-
ature still gives the impression that the campaigns staged by the WPC
had little to do with all the grassroots activism developed by radical leftist
groups, which figure so centrally in most accounts and memories of the
transnational mobilization in the context of the Vietnam War.15
Adopting a perspective that looks at both the internal dynamics
within the organization as well as connections with other organizations
12 See for instance Günter Wernicke, “The Communist-led World Peace Council and
the Western Peace Movements: The Fetters of Bipolarity and some Attempts to Break
them in the Fifties and Early Sixties,” Peace & Change 23,3 (1998): 265–311; Günter
Wernicke, “The World Peace Council and the Antiwar Movement in East Germany,” in
America, the Vietnam War and the World, ed. Andreas W. Daum, Lloyd C. Gardner and
Wilfried Mausbach (Cambridge: CUP, 2003), 299–319; Patrick Iber, Neither Peace nor
Freedom: The Cultural Cold War in Latin America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 2015); Carolien Stolte, “‘The People’s Bandung’: Local Anti-imperialists on an
Afro-Asian Stage,” Journal of World History 30 (2019): 125–156; Goedde, The Politics of
Peace.
13 See for instance Holger Nehring, “Pacifism,” in Palgrave Dictionary of Transnational
History, ed. Akira Iriye and Pierre-Yves Saunier (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009),
803–806.
14 Lawrence S. Wittner, One World or None: A History of the World Nuclear
Disarmament Movement Through 1953 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993), 171.
15 See for instance Geoffrey Roberts, “Averting Armageddon: The Communist Peace
Movement 1948–1956,” in The Oxford Handbook of the History of Communism, ed.
Stephen A. Smith (Oxford: OUP, 2014), 322–338; Goedde, The Politics of Peace, 39–40.
18 K. CHRISTIAENS
and movements, this chapter aims to rethink the role of the WPC in
international Vietnam War campaigns during the 1960s. Highlighting
East-West, North-South, and South-South connections as well as a multi-
plicity of agents, it shows how international campaigns developed by the
WPC played, despite their limitations, an important role in transnational
activism far beyond the communist world, sometimes at a very local level,
and not only in Europe but worldwide. Inversely, this chapter also shows
how other Vietnam War campaigns affected the WPC and, in this way,
reconsiders the roots and development of communist internationalism
during the Cold War. To do so, this chapter will proceed in three steps.
The first section zooms in on the WPC as a key site of Vietnamese diplo-
macy, which not only plunged the organization into a deep crisis but
also, paradoxically, became a source of its internal and external legiti-
macy during the second half of the 1960s. The second section reveals
how solidarity with Vietnam became, most notably under the presidency
of the Belgian activist Isabelle Blume (1892–1975), a strategic instru-
ment for the globalization of the WPC, as it served policies of expansion
in Western Europe and the postcolonial world. The third section anal-
yses some developments after 1968, stressing spill-overs to campaigns on
behalf of other Third World issues and the involvement of a broad array
of political and social movements in the Western and postcolonial worlds.
This chapter is based on a unique combination of archives and sources,
which have not so far been brought together. The most important sources
are the papers of Blume—coordinating president of the WPC from 1965
to 1969—kept at the Centre des Archives du Communisme en Belgique
(CArCoB) in Brussels, the archives of the WPC and its French section at
the Departmental Archives Seine-Saint-Denis in Bobigny (DASSD) , the
WPC collection at the International Institute of Social History (IISH) in
Amsterdam, the archives of the Belgian Union for the Defence of Peace
at Amsab-ISG (Ghent), and a variety of other sources, such as Vietnamese
publications and archives of local Vietnam committees across Europe.
Moscow, Brussels, and Helsinki: The

WPC as a Site of Vietnamese Diplomacy
In July 1962, more than 2500 delegates gathered in Moscow to attend
the World Congress for General Disarmament and Peace, staged by the
WPC in cooperation with a host of international and national organiza-

tions.16 The organizers boosted that participants came from more than
100 countries, including hundreds of peace activists from the United
States and Western Europe.17 Besides many Catholic parliamentarians and
priests from Western Europe, the audience included delegations from a
broad range of Third World countries, including 130 activists from India.
The conference dealt with a variety of issues—ranging from disarmament
to solidarity with the Greek peace movement and the decolonization
struggle in Congo. Among the speakers were also delegations of the
Vietnam Peace Committee, the WPC’s chapter in the DRV, and the
NLF, which had been founded two years earlier to combat the US-
backed regime in South Vietnam and achieve the re-unification of the
country. In their speeches at the conference, the Vietnamese delegations
called for international solidarity with their struggle to end the division of
Vietnam, specifically referring to and professing solidarity with the mobi-
lization which had developed internationally on behalf of the Algerian
National Liberation Front. The Vietnamese call in Moscow was not the
first one, since the DRV’s peace committee and the NLF had issued
previous calls for support, but it marked the beginning of a stronger
involvement of representatives of the DRV and NLF with the inter-
national conferences the WPC organized over the coming years. From
1962 onwards, newly established diplomatic representations of the NLF
in Prague and Moscow became centres of what was dubbed “people’s
diplomacy” , aimed at garnering international support for the cause of
the DRV and the liberation of South Vietnam, both among peace and
solidarity movements in Europe and other liberation movements in the
Third World.18 From Prague, Moscow, and Paris, Vietnamese diplo-
mats travelled across different countries and started diffusing information
16 World Congress for General Disarmament and Peace, Collection WPC (1960), IISH.
17 “Report on the World Congress for General Disarmament and Peace” (1962),
Collection WPC (1956–1966), IISH.
18 Robert Brigham, Guerrilla Diplomacy: The NLF’s Foreign Relations and the Viet
Nam War (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999), 19–26; Harish C. Mehta, “People’s
Diplomacy”: The Diplomatic Front of North Vietnam During the War Against the United
States, 1965–1972 (unpubl. PhD diss.: McMaster University, 2009); Harish C. Mehta,
People’s Diplomacy of Vietnam: Soft Power in the Resistance War, 1965–1972 (Newcastle
upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2019); Pierre Asselin, “Forgotten Front: The NLF in
Hanoi’s Diplomatic Struggle, 1965–67,” Diplomatic History (2021), https://doi.org/10.
1093/dh/dhaa091.
20 K. CHRISTIAENS
about the plight of South Vietnam, for instance through the publi-
cation of English and French language publications, internationalizing
their struggle following the example of the Algerian NLF.19 Against this
backdrop, the international networks and conferences of the WPC were
crucial: they allowed access to a broad range of activists and movements
not exclusively drawn from communist milieus, including, for instance,
Western peace movements and church groups as well as a variety of
national liberation movements which had been joining the WPC over the
past years.20 The role of the WPC in the organization of massive anti-
nuclear demonstrations in several Western European countries (such as
the United Kingdom, Italy, France, and Belgium) in the early 1960s as
well as the example of the Algerian NLF’s success in internationalizing its
struggle were important stimuli for the Vietnamese activities within the
international communist peace movement.21
The growing resonance that the Vietnamese endeavours received at
the WPC was intimately linked to the crisis that the latter underwent
in the first half of the 1960s.22 Large conferences, careful orchestra-
tion, and propaganda, funded by the Soviet Union, could not conceal
how the organization, led by the scientist John D. Bernal, was struggling
with different problems, most notably the conflict between Moscow and
Beijing, which split many international communist organizations. Inter-
national conferences of the WPC were marked by fierce debates—often
publicized by Western media—between those, headed by the Ukrainian
writer and leading figure of the Soviet Peace Committee Oleksandr
Korniychuk, who advocated focusing on peaceful coexistence in Europe,
and others, led by Chinese delegations, who prioritized anti-colonialism
and armed liberation in the Third World, not only in Vietnam but also
in Congo and other countries fighting for independence. A report by
a Dutch participant of the WPC conference in Stockholm in December
19 Pierre Journoud, “Diplomatie informelle et réseaux transnationaux: Une contribution

française à la fin de la guerre du Vietnam,” Relations internationales 138,2 (2009):
93–109, 101.
20 Rüdiger Schlaga, Die Kommunisten in der Friedensbewegung – erfolglos? Die Politik
des Weltfriedensrates im Verhältnis zur Aussenpolitik der Sowjetunion und zu unabhängigen
Friedensbewegungen im Westen, 1950–1979 (Münster: Lit, 1991), 220–221.
21 Bulletin of the World Council of Peace 12,7 (May 1965): 4; Luu Van Loi, 50 Years
of Vietnamese Diplomacy 1945–1995 (Hanoi: The Gioi Publishers, 2000), 209–215.
22 Schlaga, Kommunisten.
1961, tasked with preparing the 1962 Moscow conference, noted how
the organization was in complete chaos, paralyzed by heavy discussions.
Next to debates between Indian and Chinese delegations, seemingly
endless disputes and battles were fought between what he called a
predominantly “white” group of delegates who were loyal to the Soviet
focus on disarmament and a “black” group led by China, focusing on
armed liberation struggles against imperialism.23 Against this backdrop,
support for the NLF quickly became the main flashpoint. This was of
huge concern for the leadership of the organization, which was divided
and paralyzed at a moment when peace and disarmament movements
flourished in Europe, fearing to be excluded from international coop-
eration between national liberation movements in the Third World, for
example, concerning the AAPSO and the planned Tricontinental Confer-
ence. The WPC itself remained heavily dependent on financial support
from Moscow. Relations between the WPC leadership and its Vietnamese
members reached rock bottom in April 1964, when Nguyễn Văn Hiếu,
head of the NLF mission in Prague established in 1963, was refused access
to the Presidential Committee’s meeting in Budapest because of concerns
about the polarizing effect of the presence of the NLF.24
Yet, a few months later, the rapprochement between the DRV and
the Soviet Union after the demise of Khrushchev seemed to offer oppor-
tunities to solve the Vietnamese problem. In November 1964, the USSR
issued a statement containing a firm promise of support to North Vietnam
in case of an attack by the United States.25 WPC delegates participated,
together with representatives of several Western and Eastern European
communist parties, in the International Conference for Solidarity with
the People of South Vietnam, held in Hanoi in November 1964. The
start of overt US bombing campaigns in Vietnam in early 1965 and the
growing mobilization among peace movements globally further stimu-
lated the cooperation. In April 1965, Bernal convened an extraordinary
session of the WPC presidency in Stockholm to discuss the situation in
23 “Enkele aspecten van de zitting van de Wereldvredesraad te Stockholm” (16–19

December 1961), Archives Dutch Communist Party, no. 1303, IISH.
24 Günther Wernicke, “The Unity of Peace and Socialism? The World Peace Council
on a Cold War Tightrope Between the Peace Struggle and Intrasystemic Communist
Conflicts,” Peace & Change 26 (2001): 332–351, 338.
25 Ilya V. Gaiduk, Confronting Vietnam: Soviet Policy Toward the Indochina Conflict,
1954–1963 (Washington: Stanford University Press, 2003).
22 K. CHRISTIAENS
Vietnam with representatives of the DRV and NLF.26 At the same time,
solidarity with Vietnam became the subject of campaigns by commu-
nist internationalist organizations. In the GDR, like in other Eastern
Bloc countries, a Vietnam committee was established within the Afro-
Asian Solidarity Committee in 1965.27 In Western Europe, communist
parties started to mobilize protest against the US war in Vietnam as
well, although often reluctantly for fear of jeopardizing their cooperation
with more moderate groups within the various peace and disarmament
movements.28 The Vietnam War became the central agenda point at the
international meeting of Western European Communist Parties in 1965.
Against this backdrop of expanding mobilization, WPC president
Bernal started the organization of a large-scale conference to be held
in Helsinki in the summer of 1965, with the aim of searching for a
“common language and immediate action needed to put an end to the
war in Vietnam”.29 The response to the Helsinki initiative was significant,
especially among Western European WPC members, and it spurred mobi-
lization by local activists across Europe. The French WPC chapter, the
Mouvement de la Paix, staged a campaign to collect money for sending
50 delegates to the Helsinki conference.30 In April 1965, the Belgian
Union for the Defence of Peace, led by Isabelle Blume, hosted about
75 representatives from 35 countries, including a delegation of activists
from the United States, at the Brussels Palace of Congress to prepare
global campaigns in view of the Helsinki conference.31 Eventually, in July
1965, hundreds of participants travelled to Helsinki, including the French
26 Solidarité avec le Vietnam: Bulletin d’information du bureau de la conférence inter-

nationale de solidarité avec le people du Vietnam contre l’agression impérialiste américaine,
pour la défense de la paix, no. 5 (10 May 1965), 6–7.
27 Wernicke, “World Peace Council,” 302.
28 Rinascita (1 May 1965); De Rode Vaan (24 April 1965); Jean Defrasne, Le pacifisme
en France (Paris: PUF, 1994), 207–221.
29 Helsinki Congress (10–15 July 1965), Fund of the World Peace Council and the
French Peace Movement [WPC], Vietnam 170J 176, ADSSD.
30 Combat pour la Paix, no. 185 (May–June 1965), 23.
31 Bulletin of the World Council of Peace, no. 5 (April 1965), 1–2; “The International
Meeting of Pacifist Forces” (4 April 1965), Archives of the Belgian Union for the Defence
of Peace [BUVV], 135, Amsab-ISG.
Illustration 2.1 Ðinh Bá Thi, the head of the South Vietnamese delegation
presenting a report on the situation in South Vietnam during the Helsinki confer-
ence in July 1965. This conference became an important international meeting
point for contacts with representatives of the DRV and NLF. Ðinh Bá Thi
became the diplomatic representative of the NLF in Budapest.35
philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.32 The WPC counted 1,470 participants

from 99 countries, with delegations from the DRV and NLF as the most
prominent guests.33 The conference was opened with a “Vietnam Day”
at Hesperia Park and concluded by speeches by the Vietnamese delega-
tions praising the universal solidarity with the struggle of the Vietnamese
people (Illustration 2.1).34
In his presentation of the Vietnam Resolution, which was eventually
adopted, and which supported the rights of the Vietnamese people to
independence and sovereignty and the implementation of the Geneva
Accords of 1954, Sartre underlined the aim of the conference to shape
32 “Letter of Yves Cholière to the French Peace Committee” (9 June 1965), WPC,
170J 176, ADSSD.
33 Bulletin of the World Council of Peace, no. 10 (August 1965), 1.
34 Ibid., 2; “World Congress for Peace, National Independence, and General Disarma-
ment” (10–15 July 1965), BUVV, 136, Amsab-ISG.
35 Bulletin of the World Council of Peace, no. 10 (August 1965), 19.
24 K. CHRISTIAENS
one global movement of solidarity in support of the Vietnamese brothers,

arguing that “for action to go further than words alone, it must be
concerted, orchestrated: each initiative must be supported by all the
others”.36
Despite these calls for global unity and the exclusion of a few pro-
Chinese solidarity groups,37 the Helsinki conference became, once again,
a spectacle of the Sino-Soviet split. The Chinese, Albanian, Indonesian,
and North Korean delegations refused to support the official declarations,
as they rejected the link between the liberation struggles and a possible
threat of thermo-nuclear confrontation. They considered peaceful coexis-
tence to be just a foreign policy pursued by the Eastern Bloc countries,
which stood apart from the independence struggles of national libera-
tion movements. These disputes were publicized in international media
claiming a victory of the “Chinese theses”.38 Chao Yi-Min, head of
the Chinese delegation, had indeed fiercely attacked the Soviet Union
and its efforts to render the WPC into an instrument of collabora-
tion with American imperialism. Instead, he called for solidarity between
the socialist countries and movements struggling with imperialism in
Vietnam, Congo, and the Dominican Republic, where the United States
had just intervened in the civil war with a military occupation.39 At the
Helsinki conference, however, the Vietnam War issue ushered in a severe
crisis within the WPC: after the failure to agree on a common campaign
and highly polarized discussions, Bernal resigned from the presidential
office during the conference, and the Belgian activist Isabelle Blume
became the organization’s temporary president.40 To make things worse,
the organization was also on the verge of financial bankruptcy. After China
and other members stopped the payment of their fees, the organization
36 Vietnam. Documents—Messages—Speeches: World Congress for Peace, National Inde-

pendence and General Disarmament, Helsinki, 10–15 July 1965, Supplement to the Bulletin
of the World Council of Peace 12, no. 8 (June 1965), 5.
37 “Resignation Letter” (from the WPC) by Antoine Allard (13 July 1965), Personal
Archives Antoine Allard, Archives du monde catholique, Louvain-la-Neuve; “The Situation
of the Belgian Peace Movement” (July 1965), 3, BUVV, 135, Amsab-ISG.
38 See for instance Neue Zürcher Zeitung (12 September 1965).
39 “Intervention of Chao Yi-Min at the Helsinki Congress” (10–15 July 1965), WPC,
170J 176, DASSD.
40 “Une crise au Conseil mondial de la paix (résumé)” (12 September 1965); “Report
on the London Office by I.M. to I.B.” (1 October 1965), Isabelle Blume papers (IB),
CArCoB.
became even more dependent on (conditional) Soviet support to cover

the costs of the Helsinki adventure.
Yet, importantly, the struggles and internecine disputes about the
Vietnam War, and the eventual failure to overcome them, should not
conceal how the WPC had developed into a key hub for international
Vietnam War campaigns in the first half of the 1960s. For the Vietnamese
representatives, it had indeed provided an important launching pad for
their people’s diplomacy aimed at the international public. Already in
April 1965 the WPC had staged an international press conference of the
NLF in Helsinki, widely covered by international press agencies.41 Viet-
namese contacts via the WPC had become a critical source of inspiration
for local activists in Western Europe even before the start of Operation
Rolling Thunder and the escalation of the war in Vietnam in early 1965.
The Italian politician and journalist Lelio Basso, an icon of Third World
solidarity in his country, used his contacts developed at the WPC to
start up a solidarity committee in support of the NLF.42 Another telling
example of the impact on local activism can be found in Belgium, where
the start of the first organized campaigns in support of the NLF was
closely linked to the Vietnamese campaigns via the WPC. In December
1964, the Belgian peace activist Antoine Allard initiated a nationwide
campaign mobilizing political and material support for the NLF, building
on contacts developed with Vietnamese representatives at the WPC and
responding to their call to stage political and material support.43 The
campaign included the sales of stamps made by the NLF and resulted in
the foundation of a first national solidarity committee with the people of
South Vietnam in Belgium, which cooperated with the Vietnam Peace
Committee in Hanoi.44 This Belgian committee was part of the recently
41 Bulletin of the World Council of Peace 12, no. 7 (May 1965), 4.

42 On Basso see Roberto Colozza, “From Italy to France to Vietnam: The Left as Seen
by Lelio Basso,” Vingtième Siècle 115,3 (2012), 103–114.
43 Bulletin of the World Council of Peace 12, no. 7 (May 1965), 4.
44 Nadine Lubelski-Bernard, “L’opposition à la guerre du Vietnam en Belgique (1963–
1973),” in La Guerre du Vietnam et l’Europe, 1963–1973, ed. Christopher Goscha
and Maurice Vaïsse (Brussels: Bruylant, 2003), 307–326; Kim Christiaens, “Diplomatie,
activisme en effectieve solidariteit: Een nieuw perspectief op de mobilisatie voor Vietnam
(1960–1975),” Brood en Rozen: Tijdschrift voor de Geschiedenis van Sociale Bewegingen 18
(2013): 4–27.
26 K. CHRISTIAENS
established pro-Chinese Communist Party of Belgium, which used soli-

darity with Vietnam as an instrument to criticize what it saw as the
betrayal of the Third World by the pro-Moscow Communist Party as
much as the Atlanticist course of the Belgian government.
Also among pro-Moscow communist peace organizations, many
campaigns had clear links with and drew inspiration as well as legiti-
macy from the international contacts via the WPC. Communist peace
campaigners especially used the contacts of the WPC to reach out to
the protest movement that developed in the United States and to profile
their campaigns as part of a truly global movement. The WPC became a
bridge to connect the European mobilization against the American War
in Vietnam with activism in the United States. Members of the Berkeley
Vietnam Day Committee collaborated with the WPC to develop joint
action against the Johnson Administration.45 These international contacts
added further cultural capital and legitimacy to the anti-war campaigns of
the WPC, even among groups that were sceptical about the organiza-
tion, such as the British Committee of 100. The demonstrations that
Western European communist parties and the peace movements they
supported started to stage from 1965 onwards were planned to coincide
with demonstrations in the United States and elsewhere. The global iden-
tity of these campaigns was carefully cultivated and orchestrated by the
WPC in cooperation with Vietnamese diplomatic offices in Paris, Prague,
and Moscow. The ways in which the rather small demonstrations that the
Belgian Union for the Defence of Peace staged in Brussels in the spring
of 1965 resonated globally illustrates the scale on which information was
circulated and shared through the networks of the WPC: the official organ
of the North Vietnamese Communist Party, Nhan Dan, as well as various
books, brochures, and bulletins produced in Hanoi and distributed across
Europe, such as Le Courrier du Vietnam and Solidarité avec le Vietnam,
alongside WPC publications all featured the local campaigns in Belgium
together with their counterparts in the United States, the Middle East,
the Eastern Bloc, and other parts of the world.46
45 “Solidarity Day” (19 November 1965), Archives Jean Terfve; “Vietnam and the
WPC” (1965), IB, CArCoB.
46 See for instance “Belgian CP conveys Anti-US Support to DRV,” Nhan Dan (23
February 1965); Solidarité avec le Vietnam, no. 5 (10 October 1965), 4–5; American Use
of War Gases and World Public Opinion (Hanoi: Foreign Language Publishing House,
The activities of communist peace organizations were not limited to

political solidarity but also included “humanitarian aid”.47 In 1965, the
WPC launched a campaign that mobilized communist peace activists in
various countries to collect medical and sanitary aid for the Vietnamese
resistance, again building on close contacts with Vietnamese representa-
tives at the WPC and the Vietnamese diplomatic offices in Prague and
Moscow. Once more, there was a connection with Algeria: the campaign
was modelled on the example of a similar campaign on behalf of the
Algerian NLF, and it was coordinated by Isabelle Blume, a veteran of
solidarity with Algeria.48 In the United Kingdom, France, the Nether-
lands, and Belgium, medical doctors joined committees that collected
flasks of penicillin-streptomycin and other drugs and medical material
as requested by the Vietnamese diplomatic delegations. In France, the
General Confederation of Labour (CGT) together with the Communist
Party and the French Peace Movement, endorsed the relief campaign
for medical aid, which received ample public attention, for instance in
Le Monde.49 In Belgium, more than 100 medical doctors supported
the national committee, staging blood donations from more than 1100
people and fundraisings in several cities.50 Tonnes of assorted medical
aid were transported from Western Europe to Vietnam with the help of
the Soviet Red Cross, in close cooperation with diplomatic offices of the
NLF in Moscow and Prague. The latter played a coordinating role in this
activism as it was a place from where the WPC chapters drew information,
such as pictures and Vietnamese bulletins, necessary for public campaigns,
expositions, and fundraising activities “in support of the heroic resistance
1966); Supplement to the Bulletin of the World Council of Peace, no. 3 (1966), 4; Bulletin
of the World Council of Peace, no. 3&4 (1965).
47 De Rode Vaan (29 April 1965), 16.
48 On Blume, see José Gotovitch, Isabelle Blume: Entretiens receuillis et présentés par
José Gotovitch (Brussels: Fondation Jacquemotte, 1976); Gotovitch, ‘Grégoire Isabelle’,
Dictionnaire des femmes belges: XIXe et XXe siècles (Brussels: Racine, 2006), 289–292;
“Isabelle Blume,” in Great Soviet Encyclopedia, vol. 3, (New York: Macmillan, 1983), 375.
49 Le Peuple, no. 733 (1–10 September 1965), 29; Le Monde (25 August 1965), 3;
Correspondence with Do-Huu-Chi, First Secretary of the NLF mission in Moscow (1966),
Archives Pierre Le Grève, no. 548, Cegesoma, Brussels.
50 De Rode Vaan (14 October 1965), 19; “Documents about the Committee for
Medical and Sanitary Aid for Vietnam,” BUVV, 98, Amsab-ISG.
28 K. CHRISTIAENS
of the South-Vietnamese people”.51 Significantly, it was Blume, one of

the main initiators of this campaign, who, from 1965 onwards, emerged
as one of the main driving forces behind attempts to renew the WPC
around the issue of the Vietnam War.
Isabelle Blume, Vietnam,

and the Globalization of the WPC
Through the crisis that followed the Helsinki conference in 1965, the
WPC underwent a deep transformation. The leadership of the organiza-
tion came into the hands of a new presidential committee led by Blume,
who became its coordinating president. The composition of the presi-
dential committee elected in Geneva in 1966 reflected the attempted
reorientation of the WPC: the list of more than 40 members included
familiar names like the Soviet writer Ilya Ehrenburg, the East German
biophysicist Walter Friedrich (GDR), Raymond Guyot, high-ranking
member of the French Communist Party, and the Spanish communist
politician and Spanish Civil War veteran Enrique Lister combined with
representatives from beyond Europe, including the Egyptian politician
Khaled Mohieddin , the South African trade unionist and African National
Congress politician J.B. Marks, the Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer,
Romesh Chandra, high-ranking member of the Communist Party of
India, and, significantly, Nguyễn Văn Hiếu, head of the diplomatic repre-
sentation of the NLF in Czechoslovakia.52 In her work, mainly carried
out from her Brussels home but also by a dizzying schedule of travelling
across the globe, Blume was mainly assisted by Chandra, who became
secretary-general of the WPC in 1966 and eventually, in 1977, its pres-
ident. Financially and organizationally, Blume relied on the Institute of
Peace in Vienna, led by the French communist Yves Cholière, from where
she received the financial means to cover the costs of the Brussels secre-
tariat, including a host of telexes, which amounted to thousands of dollars
per year.53 Under Blume’s presidency, solidarity with Vietnam became the
51 “Letter from Ðinh Bá Thi to De Waarheid” (24 August 1965), Dutch Communist
Party Archives, 1384, IISH.
52 “Report on the Geneva Conference” (1966), WPC, 170J 177, DASSD.
53 “Letter Blume to Kemr” (14 July 1967); “Blume to Annie Handt” (1 June 1967),
IB, CArCoB.
centre piece in the reorientation of the WPC, and Blume herself a global
icon of solidarity with Vietnam.54
The new leadership considered the growing mobilization against the
American war in Vietnam an opportunity to bring together the various
independence movements of the Global South with “Western style peace
movements” (like the CND) with their focus on disarmament and East-
West cooperation. The growing interest of pacifist and neutral peace
movements in Vietnam—which the WPC noticed on the occasion of the
Saigon visit of the American “pure pacifist” and civil rights leader A.J.
Muste—strengthened the conviction that the Vietnam War offered the
potential of achieving a simultaneous broadening of the WPC towards
both the Western and postcolonial worlds without the conflicts that this
balancing act had provoked over the previous years.55 Relations with
the NLF and DRV were intensified: their representatives attended the
presidential committee’s meetings and were influential in setting out the
directions of campaigns. The WPC, now professing “total solidarity”
with the Vietnamese people and “total support” for the DRV and NLF,
kept close contact with the diplomatic representatives stationed in Paris,
Budapest, Prague, and Moscow, but also with Hanoi, most notably with
the Vietnamese Committee for World Peace, which Blume visited during
her stay in Vietnam in early 1967 (Illustration 2.2).56
The WPC conference in Geneva in June 1966, symbolically staged
in the city where the Geneva Accords had been signed 12 years earlier,
marked the start of a plethora of new campaigns, which were explicitly
designed to be “global”.57
It became quickly apparent that solidarity with Vietnam was a strategic
choice that was still rooted in the competition with China. The focus on
Vietnam was considered, as admitted by WPC secretary-general Chandra,
a toehold to access liberation movements in Africa and the Middle East,
which hitherto had few contacts with the WPC, or held a rather scep-
tical outlook on the organization. Vietnam was supposed to open Africa
and the Arab world to the WPC, as it offered an opportunity to stress
54 See for instance Kabul Times (29 October 1967), 1.

55 “Letter Bernal to Blume” (20 April 1966), IB, CArCoB.
56 “Letter Blume to Vietnam Peace Committee, Hanoi” (21 September 1965), IB,
CArCoB.
57 See for instance Vrede: Maandelijks Tijdschrift van de Belgische Unie voor de
Verdediging van de Vrede (July 1966), 5.
30 K. CHRISTIAENS
Illustration 2.2 Isabelle Blume during her travels in Vietnam.58
anti-imperialist ideology and opposition to US imperialism, which was

held responsible for the political turmoil in the region. This became
visible in one of the earliest initiatives of the new leadership, namely
58 Photo Collection Isabelle Blume, CArCoB.

the organization of an international Vietnam conference in Cairo in

December 1966—marking the first conference the WPC staged in Africa.
For Chandra, the Cairo conference, strategically organized in an inter-
national hotspot of African and Arab liberation movements that hosted
the Permanent Secretariat of the AAPSO, confirmed the potential of soli-
darity with Vietnam as a means of approaching new members and allies,
such as the PLO, the liberation movement of Bahrein, the SWAPO in
Namibia, the Zimbabwe African People’s Union, and not least Nasser’s
United Arab Republic itself.59 Blume used this conference to strengthen
several political ties: she travelled to Damascus to visit the Ba’ath party
as well as Palestinian refugees, drawing comparisons between US imperi-
alism in Vietnam and the Middle East where, she argued, US capital had
destroyed the historical “convivence” of Muslims and Jews.60 The confer-
ence gave way to the foundation of new Vietnam committees across Africa
and the Arab world. Through Mohieddin , who had been a member of
the Free Officers Movement, an organizer of the first AAPSO conference
in Cairo, and publisher of the daily Al Messa, the WPC had a particularly
strong ally in Egypt, which not only faced Israel but at that point also
opposed the conservative “Islamic Pact” through which Saudi-Arabia and
Iran aimed to counter Nasser’s influence. Government officials, artists,
and intellectuals played an important role in the organization of the Cairo
conference and the establishment of a national Vietnam committee.61 For
the WPC, this step constituted a decisive experience: it gave an important
impetus to campaigns against Apartheid and Portuguese colonialism, for
instance, through the organization of a conference in Conakry, but also
laid the organizational groundwork for its involvement in campaigns on
behalf of the PLO and what was dubbed the “Arab peoples” in the late
1960s and early 1970s.62
The WPC did, however, not lose Europe out of sight: its leader-
ship, and especially its Western European members, considered solidarity
59 “Information on Africa and the Arab Countries” (1967), WPC, 170J 181, DASSD.
60 John Nieuwenhuys, “Belgium’s Wider Peace Front? Isabelle Blume, the Peace Move-
ment and the Issue of the Middle East (1950s–1970s), in International Solidarity in
the Low Countries during the Twentieth Century: New Perspectives and Themes, ed. Kim
Christiaens, John Nieuwenhuys, and Charel Roemer (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2021), 281.
61 “WPC Presidential Meeting in Prague” (25–27 February 1967), WPC, 170J 181,
DASSD.
62 “Letter Blume to Damantag Camara” (23 January 1967), IB, CArCoB.
32 K. CHRISTIAENS
with Vietnam also to regain ground among peace movements in the

West. In the debates that followed the debacle of the Helsinki confer-
ence in 1965, the leadership had to admit that the organization had
lost the connection with the new peace movements that had emerged
since the early 1960s. To address this, the WPC supported, for instance,
the organization of a conference on Vietnam in Brussels, which sought
to coordinate campaigns in Western Europe by reaching out to other
peace and solidarity movements, including Trotskyite groups.63 Strik-
ingly, the most important target of these efforts were Catholic peace
movements, including Pax Christi International. Ever since its incep-
tion in the early 1950s, the WPC had been able to recruit progressive
Catholic peace activists and clerics, such as the previously mentioned
devout Belgian baron Antoine Allard, or the Abbé Jean Boulier and the
Dominican father Joseph-Marie Perrin from France. The impact of the
Hungarian Uprising of 1956 however, put restraints on this coopera-
tion. Yet, by the mid-1960s, the context became more favourable, inter
alia due to the openness created by the Second Vatican Council towards
dialogue with communism, the growing anti-capitalist criticism and anti-
US sentiment in progressive Catholic milieus, and the start of a Catholic
Ostpolitik.64 This, for instance, inspired the collaboration of progressive
priests in Eastern Bloc initiatives such as the Berlin Conference of Euro-
pean Catholics, where the issue of the Vietnam War became conducive
to East-West cooperation.65 In line with this—and out of disgust for the
anti-communist support for the US war in Vietnam emanating from the
Archbishop of New York, Cardinal Francis Spellman—Blume vigorously
reached out to Pax Christi,66 involving the organization in campaigns
against the US war in Vietnam and in solidarity with the NLF, both
63 “Organizing Secretariat of the Conference for Solidarity with the Vietnamese People:
Invitation to the International Meeting of 15 May 1966,” Archives Pierre Le Grève, 541,
Cegesoma, Brussels.
64 See, for instance Jacopo Cellini, Universalism and Liberation: Italian Catholic
Culture and the Idea of International Community, 1963–1978 (Leuven: Leuven University
Press, 2017).
65 Kim Christiaens and Jos Claeys, “Forgotten Friends and Allies: Belgian Social Move-
ments and Communist Europe, 1960s–1990s,” in International Solidarity, ed. Christiaens
et al., 159–182.
66 “Presidential Meeting in Prague” (25–27 February 1967), WPC, 170J 181, DASSD.
in her home country and internationally.67 In Belgium, the National

Vietnam Committee, established in response to a call by the WPC for
the formation of national Vietnam committees in 1967, included among
its most prominent members, next to activists of the Belgian Union for
the Defence of Peace, the canons François Houtart and Raymond Goor,
the latter a leading member of the Belgian section of Pax Christi and an
observer at the Presidential Committee of the WPC.68 Again, the WPC
as a unique avenue for direct contact with Vietnamese representatives
played a critical role. When explaining his commitment to the WPC to
the media, Goor—recipient of the Lenin Peace Prize in 1975—explicitly
cited the “previously unexperienced opportunity for close contact with
representatives coming from the East, the Middle and Far East, and above
all the Third World”.69 Furthermore, approaches towards Catholic peace
campaigners benefited from the link that the WPC forged between the
Vietnam War and campaigns for peace and security in Europe. When
the East German chapter of the WPC, the Friedensrat, hosted interna-
tional delegations to discuss campaigns for European cooperation and
security in East Berlin in 1967, it staged a programme dedicated to soli-
darity with Vietnam, including a performance of the song “Vietnam, du
bist nicht allein” [Vietnam, you are not alone] by the popular musi-
cian Heinz Kunert and speeches by Vietnamese representatives.70 The
Vietnam War was supposed to showcase the need for peace in Europe. In
turn, the newly emphasised connection with Catholic peace movements
added to the importance given by the DRV and the NLF to the WPC.71
As was repeatedly stressed by DRV and NLF leaders, Catholic support
was seen as an essential strategy to isolate the anti-communist regime
67 Isabelle Boydens, “Un mouvement pour la paix au coeur des tensions nationales
et internationals: Pax Christi. Histoire de la branche francophone belge (1953–1975),”
Belgisch Tijdschrift voor de Nieuwste Geschiedenis/Revue belge d’Histoire contemporaine 25
(1994/95), 481–537.
68 “Recommendations of the World Peace Council” (25–27 February 1967), IB,
CArCoB.
69 Aurélie Stocq, “Le Chanoine Raymond Goor (1908–1996). Prix international Lénine
de la Paix: Itinéraire d’un prêtre au service du rapprochement Est-Ouest et de l’amitié
entre les peoples” (diss. lic., UCL, Louvain-la-Neuve, 2003), 131.
70 “Meeting of Representatives of National Committees for European Peace” (8–10
October 1967), BUVV, 54, Amsab-ISG.
71 “Letter Blume to Vietnamese Committee for the Defence of World Peace” (21
March 1968), IB, CArCoB.
34 K. CHRISTIAENS
in South Vietnam and counter its efforts to enhance its support base in
the West, among which Catholic NGOs featured prominently.72 From
1967, cooperation with Christian peace movements materialised further
in the run-up to the World Conference on Vietnam in Stockholm. Led by
Bertil Svahnström of the Swedish Peace and Arbitration Society, the initia-
tive facilitated cooperation between the WPC and a host of international
NGOs, including Amnesty International, the International Confederation
for Disarmament and Peace (ICDP), Pax Christi International, and the
Christian Conference for Peace. In July 1967, the Stockholm conference
gathered 450 delegates, paying special attention to the role of religious
organizations in opposition to the Vietnam War, which convened in a
special session.73
On the face of it, the international conferences staged in Geneva,
Brussels, Cairo, and Stockholm might appear to be occasional festivi-
ties, orchestrated by Soviet propaganda and money. Yet, they reflected,
activated, projected, and strengthened the diverse and global networks
at work in the WPC. The international conferences of the WPC set in
motion a dynamic that mobilized activists at different levels, as histo-
rian Charel Roemer has convincingly shown in his study on WPC
anti-Apartheid campaigns in the late 1960s.74 In the run-up to the
Stockholm Conference in 1967, for instance, the prominent women’s
rights activist Olga Poblete and the Chilean Peace Committee recruited
a variety of personalities to their newly created Vietnam committee,
including Salvador Allende. Different political parties were represented
setting in motion new initiatives within Chile.75 This is one of many
examples that show how WPC initiatives allowed for a “global orches-
tration of activism” at different levels. The dynamics of these conferences
created a unique space of activism, shaping connections not only with
US activists and Vietnamese representatives, but also with and among
72 For this Catholic engagement in South Vietnam, see, for instance, the collection of
the International Federation of Christian Trade Unions/World Confederation of Labour
kept at KADOC-KU Leuven.
73 Conférence Mondiale sur le Vietnam: Stockholm: 6–9 juillet 1967 (Vienna, 1967), IB,
CArCoB.
74 Charel Roemer, “Connecting People, Generating Concern: Early Belgian Soli-
darity with the Liberation Struggle in South Africa and the Portuguese Colonies,” in
International Solidarity, ed. Christiaens et al., 241–273.
75 “Letter Olga Poblete to Blume” (1 June 1967), IB, CArCoB.
different movements from the East, West, and South. More permanently
and beyond the conferences, the WPC acted as a clearing house of infor-
mation that connected different spaces of activism. This is evidenced in
the global correspondence and travels conducted by Blume. From her
home in Brussels, she kept regular contact with Vietnamese diplomats
in Prague, Hanoi, East Berlin, and Moscow as well as with activists
worldwide, ranging from the United States and Chile via Algeria and
Egypt to India and Japan. Blume and other members of the presidential
committee maintained an intense correspondence with members of the
Vietnam Day Committee in Berkeley. American and European activists
contacted Blume as liaison with the DRV and NLF.76 Others, such as
the internationally active US activist and chairman of the Committee
for International Peace Action Carlton Benjamin Goodlett—one of the
first prominent African Americans to publicly oppose the American war
in Vietnam—relied on financial support from the WPC to travel to
international meetings with European activists (Illustration 2.3).77
Access to information and international mobility were important assets
and formed the source for a variety of campaigns and propaganda efforts
by the WPC. During discussions with representatives of WPC commit-
tees, several national members lamented that campaigning against the
American war in Vietnam War often suffered from a lack of informa-
tion and suitable material: they requested the WPC to provide them with
material such as pictures, books, and other information. In response to
these requests and with the technical and financial support of its Egyptian
chapter, the WPC published 5000 copies of its Black Book: On US War
Crimes in South Vietnam with a preface by Blume in 1966.78 The same
year, the WPC staged a media campaign with a call to stop the US involve-
ment in Vietnam that was to be published in the New York Times and
other newspapers. Financial support and signatures were collected among
76 “Telegram Chandler Davis (International Teach-In Committee, University of

Toronto) to Blume” (15 July 1967), ibid.
77 “Letter Carlton Benjamin Goodlett to Walter Diehl” (17 July 1968), ibid.
78 Black Book: On US War Crimes in South Vietnam, ed. Committee for the Denun-
ciation of War Crimes Committed by the US Imperialists and their Henchmen in South
Vietnam (Vienna: World Council of Peace, 1966); “Letter Blume to the International
Peace Institute, Vienna” (20 December 1966), IB, CArCoB.
36 K. CHRISTIAENS
Illustration 2.3 WPC president Isabelle Blume became an international icon

of solidarity with Vietnam and an important liaison between Vietnam War
campaigners in North America and Western Europe and the DRV and NLF. The
American activist and mathematician Chandler Davis asked Blume to interme-
diate with diplomats of the NLF and DRV to attend activities of the International
Teach-in Committee at the University of Toronto, 15 July 1967.79
its member organizations.80 Blume was also involved in the project that
eventually became the 1967 movie Loin du Vietnam, a collaborative effort
of several accomplished cineasts. Inspired by the initiative of the Russell
Tribunal on Vietnam, which aimed to publicize testimonies about US war
crimes in Vietnam, Blume contacted the Dutch filmmaker and member of
79 “Telegram Davis to Blume,” see Fn. 56.

80 “Letter Esther Brinch (Danish Vietnam Committee) to Blume” (17 September
1966), ibid.
the Dutch Peace Council Joris Ivens in July 1966, suggesting “a six-part
feature-length composite Vietnam film”.81 Subsequently, Chris Marker
recruited a collective that included Jean-Luc Godard and William Klein.82
The film was supported and internationally distributed by the WPC,
along with other movies such as the 1966 Soviet production Mekong on
Fire, which Blume sent personally to Yugoslavia.83 Similarly, the stylishly
layouted WPC bulletin Perspectives was not only distributed in Europe
but also in ten Arab countries (including Algeria, Syria, and Lebanon)
and nineteen African countries (including Tanzania, Congo, and Kenya)
providing an important source of information for solidarity campaigns
and local activists worldwide.84 In January 1967, for instance, Japanese
students from Osaka expressed their appreciation of the bulletin to the
WPC, acknowledging that they used the material in their campaigns. They
asked Blume for an official message of support.85 The French journalist
Jean-Pierre Vittori, editor in chief of Perspectives and a famous activist
against French colonialism in Algeria, regularly travelled across the world
to report on solidarity activities. Vittori, together with other members
of the WPC, participated in the International Leipzig Documentary and
Short Film Week in 1967. The Leipzig festival repeatedly featured films
and solidarity activism concerning the Vietnam War. In 1967, Loin du
Vietnam won the Silver Dove.86
The international networks of the WPC were also important in the
circulation of Eastern European and especially East-German initiatives and
propaganda material, which found their way to local committees in the
81 Ian Mundell, “Far from Vietnam—Inside Vietnam: The Genesis of the Collective
Film Loin du Vietnam,” Ivens magazine 9 (November 2003), 25–27.
82 “Letter Blume to M. Oltramare” (31 October 1966), IB, CaRCoB; Thomas Waugh,
The Conscience of Cinema: The Works of Joris Ivens 1926–1989 (Amsterdam: Amsterdam
University Press, 2016), 482.
83 See the chapter by Rutar/Vučetić in this volume?
84 “Meeting of the WPC Presidency in Prague, February 1967: Information concerning
Africa and the Arab countries,” 6, IB, CArCoB.
85 Letter „Hitoshi Nagano to Heinz Bader“ (9 January 1967), ibid.
86 Günter Jordan, Unbekannter Ivens: Triumph, Verdammnis, Auferstehung (Berlin:
Bertz + Fischer, 2018), 321–322.
38 K. CHRISTIAENS
West and lent support to the Russell Tribunal.87 The WPC’s ambitions to
coordinate and “orchestrate” a “global movement”, however, remained
difficult to achieve due to the divergent interests and varying involvement
of national committees and members. Many Eastern European member
organizations lacked a close relationship with Blume, whereas others, such
as the Friedensrat in the GDR, tended to dominate the discussions as
solidarity with Vietnam became a critical instrument to denounce West
German imperialism and complicity with the United States.88 Material
aid campaigns were mainly organized at a bilateral level, for instance
through specific Vietnam committees, which in the Eastern Bloc relied on
governmental support and were usually embedded in Afro-Asian solidarity
committees.89
Contestation and Reorientation: 1968 and Beyond

Throughout the second half of the 1960s, China and its supporters
continued their efforts to discredit the WPC as an instrument of Soviet
imperialism.90 After China left the AAPSO in 1967, competition and
rivalry continued, not only about Vietnam but also concerning the
anti-colonial struggles in Southern Africa.91 Pro-Chinese parties and
movements in Western Europe undermined efforts by Communist Parties
and the related peace movements to position themselves at the lead of
“unitary” national Vietnam solidarity committees, which were formed
partially in response to campaigns of the WPC. Drawing on their own
contacts and networks, for instance with the diplomatic representation of
the DRV and NLF in Paris, Maoist groupings set up alternative struc-
tures, which openly competed with committees that remained loyal to
the WPC. A major difference was that the Maoists remained predom-
inantly locally organized. Next to the continuing rivalry with Beijing
87 Comité Vietnam près le comité de Solidarité afro-asiatique en République Démocra-

tique Allemande, L’engagement ouest-allemand dans l’intervention des Etats-Unis au
Vietnam: Une documentation (Berlin, 1967), I.
88 See for instance: ibid., 7.
89 Solidarité avec le Vietnam: Articles. Reportages. Informations, no. 6 (1968), 31–33.
90 “Yves Cholière and Angel Dominguez to the members of the WPC” (31 January
1967), IB, CArCoB.
91 Jeremy Friedman, Shadow Cold War: The Sino-Soviet Competition for the Third World
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015).
and its allies, the other obvious issue that would detrimentally affect
campaigns by the WPC was the crushing of the Prague Spring in August
1968. The leadership of the WPC—just like many of its national chap-
ters—emerged deeply divided about the question of how to react to the
events in Czechoslovakia. There were national peace councils—such as
the French one—that compared the invasion by Warsaw Pact troops to
the US violence in Vietnam or the conduct of Israel in the Middle East.92
Moreover, the Prague crisis undermined policies of cooperation with non-
communist groups in joint campaigns and committees, and widened the
gap with radical leftist groups, who were also quick to draw parallels
between the violence of the Warsaw Pact troops in Prague and US bombs
over Vietnam. In the months following August 1968, many national
campaigns and committees set up by WPC chapters in Western Europe
witnessed splits and the birth of alternative Vietnam solidarity commit-
tees. Activists now sought to merge solidarity with Vietnam with support
for Eastern European dissidents. In the early 1970s, exiled Czechoslovak
dissidents organized around the journal Listy and supported by China
were keen to make inroads into Vietnam solidarity campaigns.93 Headed
by Jiří Pelikán, a former president of the World Federation of Democratic
Youth and figurehead of communist anti-colonial solidarity, this group
proclaimed a common struggle against US and Soviet imperialism among
the European new left.
Rather than stifling communist interest in Vietnam War campaigns, the
Prague crisis underlined their strategic importance to communist peace
campaigns. After the summer of 1968, Vietnam initiatives at the level
of communist peace organizations and parties intensified, and this was
also true of the WPC. In a statement sent out to all WPC members
in September 1968, Blume and Chandra regretted that the events in
Czechoslovakia divided the movement with the undesirable consequence
of legitimizing a continuation of US imperialism in the Third World.
They denounced the hypocrisy of the United States and its allies, whom
92 See for instance “Letter of the National Peace Committee in Bulgaria” (5 November
1968), WPC, 170J 152, DASSD; “Letter from H. M. Elamin to the Dutch Peace Coun-
cil” (24 September 1968), WPC, Vietnam, IISH; also see the divergent reactions in the
personal papers of Isabelle Blume.
93 Kim Christiaens, Jos Claeys and Idesbald Goddeeris, “Connecting the East to
the South: Eastern European Dissidents and Third World Activism during the 1970s,”
Ventunesimo Secolo 46 (2020): 33–57.
40 K. CHRISTIAENS
they accused of using solidarity with the victims of the Prague crisis
to deflect attention from their imperialist involvement in Vietnam. The
WPC called on its members to “redouble solidarity” with the heroic
people of Vietnam at a moment when the “Johnson administration is
doing everything in its power to divert the attention of the peoples of
the world from Vietnam, and thus have a free hand for the deliberate
escalation of its aggression”.94 The increased interest within the WPC
in Vietnam War campaigns obviously related to attempts at overcoming
the negative impact of the crushing of the Prague Spring: they aimed to
show how the events in Czechoslovakia paled in comparison with the US
violence and repression in Vietnam. Eventually, the WPC, again resorted
to solidarity with Vietnam in its attempts to restore unity and legiti-
macy. The presidential committee, which convened in Lahti (Finland) in
November 1968, launched a new programme of solidarity campaigns on
behalf of the NLF. In December, commemorations of the eighth anniver-
sary of the foundation of the NLF were launched in conjunction with a
campaign calling for the recognition of the NLF at the peace negotia-
tions in Paris.95 As North Vietnamese publications and propaganda were
keen to report, WPC members across the world translated these ambi-
tions into a variety of campaigns.96 These campaigns not only focused on
protesting the American war in Vietnam, but also on “effective solidar-
ity” to support the DRV and NLF and their position at the four-party
negotiations in Paris, for instance by sending messages to the negoti-
ating parties in Paris.97 Vietnamese representatives, e.g. Hoàng Minh
Giám, Minister of Culture of the DRV and Nguyễn Ðú,c Vân, representa-
tive of the NLF in Romania, featured prominently in these campaigns.
Vietnamese diplomatic delegations built on the networks of the WPC
to travel across Western European countries to visit governments, soli-
darity committees, and political parties.98 In November 1968, Yves Farge,
94 “Statement Isabelle Blume and Romesh Chandra” (4 September 1968), WPC 1960,
IISH.
95 “Letter Vietnamese Committee for the Defence of World Peace (Hanoi) to the World
Peace Council” (15 November 1968), IB, CArCoB.
96 See for instance Solidarité avec le Vietnam, no. 47 (April 1969), 14–15.
97 Presidium of the Stockholm Conference, “Message to the People of North and
South Vietnam” (15 December 1968), IB, CArCoB.
98 “Letter Romesh Chandra, 20th December, anniversary of the NLF” (4 December
1968), ibid.
member of the presidential committee of the WPC, presided an interna-

tional meeting with Vietnamese delegates staged in Paris on the occasion
of the NLF anniversary followed by a reception at the luxury hotel George
V.99 In Belgium, the WPC campaign resulted in a first visit by Vietnamese
representatives to the country meeting solidarity committees and political
parties.100
From 1968 onwards, most Vietnam War initiatives of the WPC were
realized through the Stockholm Conference on Vietnam. WPC support
continued mainly through Romesh Chandra, who participated in the
coordinating committee established after the first conference in 1967.101
Sessions of the Stockholm Conference on Vietnam—six between July
1967 and November 1970—attracted hundreds of delegations to the
Swedish capital in search of information, avenues of solidarity, and inter-
national coordination. The organizers of the Stockholm conferences
formulated the political demand of a total, immediate, and uncondi-
tional withdrawal of US troops, while also seeking to synchronize activism
(e.g. with the International Mobilisation Day on 15 November 1969),
and the organization of material and humanitarian aid.102 The Stock-
holm conferences remained an important forum for exchanges between
activists worldwide involving a significant number of delegations from
the Third World, including representatives from AAPSO as well as from
Algeria, Sudan, and Syria.103 The East German writer and member of
the Friedensrat Ruth Kraft, for instance, recounted inspiring meetings
with activists from France and Chile during the Stockholm Conference
in March 1970 and how these activists relied on channels and avenues
offered by the GDR for the transport of material support and the circu-
lation of information.104 Information on the Vietnam War in the form of
99 On Farge see Jean Maitron, Claude Pennetier and Gilles Vergnon, “Farge Yves,
Louis, Auguste,” Dictionnaire biographique, mouvement ouvrier, mouvement social, vol. V
(Paris: Éditions de l’Atelier, 2009), 136–138.
100 Vrede: Tijdschrift voor internationale politiek en vredesproblemen (November 1968),
1–2; also see Christiaens, “Diplomatie”.
101 “Programme of the Stockholm Conference” (26 September 1967), IB, CArCoB.
102 Conférence de Stockholm sur le Vietnam: Lettre d’information 6 (8 December 1969),
7.
103 “List of Participants to the Emergency Action Conference,” Stockholm (May 16–18,
1969), BUVV, 54, Amsab-ISG.
104 Solidarité avec le Vietnam, no. 17 (1970), 10–11.
42 K. CHRISTIAENS
pictures, bulletins, and stylish brochures found their way from the WPC
and its national chapters to a broad array of groups. Dutch activists, for
instance, extensively collected and used material drawn from the Stock-
holm Conference to illustrate their bulletins. In the first half of the 1970s,
the WPC continued to be prominently represented in different initia-
tives of the Stockholm Conference, such as the World Assembly of Peace
and the Independence of the Peoples of Indochina staged in Versailles in
February 1972.105
Despite this continuing involvement, the WPC itself—since 1968
headquartered in Helsinki—seemed to prioritize other themes, mainly
dealing with the decolonization struggle in Africa, anti-Apartheid, and
the Middle East as well as peace and cooperation in Europe. Commu-
nist peace organizations and parties remained active in campaigns against
the US war in Vietnam, but the networks of the WPC seemed to have
lost much of their importance. WPC delegations to international confer-
ences on the Vietnam War were increasingly dominated by representatives
from Africa and Asia, with only a limited number of representatives from
Eastern European countries, mainly coming from the Soviet Union and
the GDR. Various reasons may account for this, such as the growing
activity and role of diplomatic representations of the DRV and the Provi-
sional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam, which established
direct working relationships with many national peace movements to
gain diplomatic recognition and support in Western European countries.
Furthermore, the WPC again entered a deep crisis.106 The functioning of
the organization at the international level remained complicated by diver-
gent interests and varying commitments of national members. In the late
1960s, WPC campaigns went in different directions, often depending on
strategies and interests of its members. As a result of the internal crisis
provoked by the Prague crisis, Blume’s presidency came to an end in
1969. She remained active in the WPC until her death in 1975, but
reoriented herself towards other issues, such as campaigns on behalf
of the plight of Greece under the Colonels’ Regime. Greece after the
105 “Assemblée mondiale de Paris” (11–12 February 1972), Jean Verstappen papers
(private collection), Brussels.
106 “World Peace Council Commission on Problems of Structure,” Budapest (12–13
September 1970), WPC, 186J 17, DASSD; “Report of the Secretary-General concerning
organization projects and the structure of the WPC [1971], IB, CArCoB; Blume, Le
mouvement de la paix: Un témoignage (Brussels: Gamma Press, 1996), 183–185.
coup of 1967 became seen as “Europe’s Vietnam”, showcasing how

US imperialism, exploiting the Cold War, was not only threatening the
Third World but also Europe itself; in this way it illustrated the neces-
sity of East-West cooperation to counter US involvement.107 Others,
like Romesh Chandra, continued their work mainly with an orientation
towards Africa and Asia. However, the East German Friedensrat, through
its financial means and alignment with GDR foreign policies, increasingly
succeeded in dominating activities of the WPC: together with other Euro-
pean members of the WPC and in accordance with Soviet foreign policies,
it succeeded, for instance, in shifting attention to solidarity with the
“Arab world” , anti-Apartheid, and, most notably, campaigns for Secu-
rity and Co-operation in Europe.108 At the same time, the continued
involvement of Chandra, Blume, and other members helped to build
connections in real and imagined terms between Vietnam War campaigns
and other causes in the Third World. For the ANC, PLO, and many
other national liberation movements, WPC Vietnam War campaigns had
indeed been a crucial place to forge South-South solidarity, which also
offered models and inspiration that accounted for continuities and cross-
movement mobilization between different campaigns. The initiative of
the Stockholm Conference, for instance, to establish an International
Commission of Inquiry into the war crimes of the United States in
Vietnam in 1970 would three years later give way to a similar commission
against Augusto Pinochet’s military junta.
Conclusion
The commitment of the WPC to international Vietnam War campaigns
was riddled with many problems and hurdles, internally and externally.
The rivalry with China in the early 1960s induced by the Sino-Soviet
split was followed by a plethora of other problems that undermined and
potentially crippled the organization. Even Soviet support was at times
uncertain and limited. Blume and Chandra regularly complained about
the lack of financial support, as well as the divergent policies followed by
its Eastern bloc members who met in separate meetings. Many aspects of
107 Kim Christiaens, “‘Communists are no Beasts’: European Solidarity Campaigns on

Behalf of Democracy and Human Rights in Greece and East–West Détente in the 1960s
and Early 1970s,” Contemporary European History 26 (2017), 621–646.
108 “L’Union Soviétique et le monde arabe,” Temps Nouveaux 42 (October 1971), 1.
44 K. CHRISTIAENS
this history remain unknown, partly due to the limitations of the sources.
Yet, nevertheless, the WPC was one of the most important international
and even global networks for Vietnam War campaigns during the 1960s.
Although this network was at times elusive and to a large extent finan-
cially, ideologically, and organizationally dependent on (varying) Soviet
support, the organization and its Vietnam War campaigns were led by an
international assortment of activists, with a strong involvement of activists
from Western Europe and the Third World. These campaigns—together
with those developed by other international communist organizations
such as the World Federation of Democratic Youth or the World Feder-
ation of Trade Unions—played a crucial role in interconnecting local
activism and campaigns in different regions of the world, not least
via bringing activists together in real and imagined terms and widely
spread propaganda material, thus creating an enormous space of transna-
tional activism.109 During the second half of the 1960s, Isabelle Blume
and Romesh Chandra were “ubiquitous” to some, becoming global
icons of solidarity with Vietnam and embodying Soviet support for
anti-colonialism and anti-imperialism.
The role of the WPC and its leadership in international campaigns
was to a large extent buttressed by their close contact with Vietnamese
diplomacy and their efforts at internationalizing the struggle of the NLF.
Despite the apparent lack of a coherent ideological framework, which was
probably expedient given the diverse nature of the clientele the WPC
sought to orchestrate, the constant underlying focus was on the “global”
aspect of the task and on “humanitarian approaches” that sought to keep
their distance from calls for armed struggle.
Approaching the WPC as a space of solidarity helps to open new
perspectives for rethinking the global history of Vietnam War activism
and brings into view ideas and actors that have received little attention in
mainstream accounts of the mobilization of social movements in the era
of the Vietnam War, but which are indispensable for a broader under-
standing of crucial transnational exchanges. The WPC offers a bridge
that connects two fields that have mostly been studied separately, namely
the political history of Vietnamese transnational diplomacy and the social
109 On the impact of the World Federation of Democratic Youth on activism in

the Netherlands see Rimko van der Maar, “Hooligans without Borders: Transnational
Perspectives on the Dutch Anti-Vietnam War Movement (1965–1975),” in International
Solidarity, ed. Christiaens et al., 192.
and cultural history of the protest movements.110 Next to the impact

of Vietnamese diplomacy on activism at different levels and in different
regions, this chapter has revealed the role of Catholic and Christian peace
movements, which the WPC considered a strategic ally throughout the
1960s and whose involvement in Vietnam War campaigns has been over-
shadowed by attention to more radical leftist groups. Furthermore, this
chapter has shown how solidarity with Vietnam cannot be understood
without considering East-West interactions over the entire 1960s. The
mobilization over the Vietnam War drew on East-West contacts and
networks, as became evident in the ways in which Western activists relied
on channels and opportunities offered by the WPC. Western activists
travelled East to attend international conferences, to access information,
and to encounter Vietnamese representatives based in places like East
Berlin, Prague, and Moscow. The other way around, the Vietnam War
became a source of legitimation for campaigns that advocated peace,
security, and cooperation in Europe, and these ideas provided impor-
tant dimensions of legitimacy to campaigns developed by the WPC and
its members. As stated in a 1967 publication on “Europe and Vietnam”
by the Czechoslovak WPC chapter, communist solidarity campaigns with
Vietnam drew a link between the consolidation of a peaceful Europe able
to manage its own affairs by pursuing “total détente” and the liberation
of Vietnam and the Third World countries from the chains of US impe-
rialism.111 This belief in the globalization of détente echoed ten years
later in a speech delivered by WPC president Romesh Chandra during an
international conference on anti-Apartheid and anti-colonialism, in which
he linked the “defeat of imperialism” in Vietnam with the signing of
the Helsinki agreements in 1975, declaring that both events projected
a global mission for a peaceful “new Europe, from which the voice of
peace rings out to proclaim solidarity with the struggle of all peoples
of the world”.112 Next to this connection with East-West détente and
the new light it helps to shine on communist campaigns on behalf of the
110 Lien-Hang T. Nguyen, Hanoi’s War: An International History of the War for Peace
in Vietnam (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012).
111 Informations: L’Europe et le Vietnam (Prague: Czechoslovak Committee of the
Partisans of Peace, 1967).
112 World Conference against Apartheid, Racism and Colonialism in Southern Africa,
Lisbon, June 16–19 1977 (Lisbon: Portuguese National Committee against Apartheid,
Racism and Colonialism in Southern Africa, 1977), 78.
46 K. CHRISTIAENS
Third World, this history of the WPC also shows how campaigns involved
and relied on a myriad of actors in the Third World, and in this way laid
the foundations for important continuities and cross-overs with a variety
of other international solidarity movements that developed in the 1960s
and 1970s, including the anti-Apartheid struggle, resistance against the
Pinochet dictatorship, or campaigns on behalf of Palestine. It was prob-
ably here that the global orchestration pursued by the WPC had its most
profound and long-lasting impact.
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"To Go Further Than Words Alone": The World Peace Council and The Global Orchestration of Vietnam War Campaigns During The 1960s

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CHAPTER 2

“To Go Further Than Words Alone”: The

Historians have turned a sceptical eye towards the plethora of inter-

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 13

campaigns were fatally discredited by their association with the Soviet

2 Silvio Pons, The Global Revolution: A History of International Communism, 1917–

communist solidarity with Vietnam have remained rather insular. Transna-

Inspired by these new approaches to bring communist anti-colonial

Moscow, Brussels, and Helsinki: The

WPC in cooperation with a host of international and national organiza-

19 Pierre Journoud, “Diplomatie informelle et réseaux transnationaux: Une contribution

23 “Enkele aspecten van de zitting van de Wereldvredesraad te Stockholm” (16–19

26 Solidarité avec le Vietnam: Bulletin d’information du bureau de la conférence inter-

philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.32 The WPC counted 1,470 participants

one global movement of solidarity in support of the Vietnamese brothers,

36 Vietnam. Documents—Messages—Speeches: World Congress for Peace, National Inde-

became even more dependent on (conditional) Soviet support to cover

41 Bulletin of the World Council of Peace 12, no. 7 (May 1965), 4.

established pro-Chinese Communist Party of Belgium, which used soli-

The activities of communist peace organizations were not limited to

of the South-Vietnamese people”.51 Significantly, it was Blume, one of

Isabelle Blume, Vietnam,

54 See for instance Kabul Times (29 October 1967), 1.

Illustration 2.2 Isabelle Blume during her travels in Vietnam.58

anti-imperialist ideology and opposition to US imperialism, which was

58 Photo Collection Isabelle Blume, CArCoB.

the organization of an international Vietnam conference in Cairo in

with Vietnam also to regain ground among peace movements in the

in her home country and internationally.67 In Belgium, the National

76 “Telegram Chandler Davis (International Teach-In Committee, University of

Illustration 2.3 WPC president Isabelle Blume became an international icon

79 “Telegram Davis to Blume,” see Fn. 56.

Contestation and Reorientation: 1968 and Beyond

87 Comité Vietnam près le comité de Solidarité afro-asiatique en République Démocra-

member of the presidential committee of the WPC, presided an interna-

coup of 1967 became seen as “Europe’s Vietnam”, showcasing how

107 Kim Christiaens, “‘Communists are no Beasts’: European Solidarity Campaigns on

109 On the impact of the World Federation of Democratic Youth on activism in

and cultural history of the protest movements.110 Next to the impact

Colonies,” in International Solidarity in the Low Countries during the Twen-

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