<Li> Mang Yang Pass </Li> <P> The First Indochina War (generally known as the Indochina War in France, and as the Anti-French Resistance War in Vietnam) began in French Indochina on 19 December 1946, and lasted until 20 July 1954 . Fighting between French forces and their Viet Minh opponents in the south dated from September 1945 . The conflict pitted a range of forces, including the French Union's French Far East Expeditionary Corps, led by France and supported by Bảo Đại's Vietnamese National Army against the Viet Minh, led by Ho Chi Minh and the People's Army of Vietnam led by Vo Nguyen Giap . Most of the fighting took place in Tonkin in northern Vietnam, although the conflict engulfed the entire country and also extended into the neighboring French Indochina protectorates of Laos and Cambodia . </P> <P> At the Potsdam Conference in July 1945, the Combined Chiefs of Staff decided that Indochina south of latitude 16 ° north was to be included in the Southeast Asia Command under British Admiral Mountbatten . Japanese forces located south of that line surrendered to him and those to the north surrendered to Generalissimo Chiang Kai - shek . In September 1945, Chinese forces entered Tonkin, and a small British task force landed at Saigon . The Chinese accepted the Vietnamese government under Ho Chi Minh, then in power in Hanoi . The British refused to do likewise in Saigon, and deferred to the French there from the outset, against the ostensible support of the Viet Minh authorities by American OSS representatives . On V-J Day, September 2, Ho Chi Minh had proclaimed in Hanoi the establishment of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV). The DRV ruled as the only civil government in all of Vietnam for a period of about 20 days, after the abdication of Emperor Bảo Đại, who had governed under Japanese rule . On 23 September 1945, with the knowledge of the British commander in Saigon, French forces overthrew the local DRV government, and declared French authority restored in Cochinchina . Guerrilla warfare began around Saigon immediately, but the French gradually retook control of the South and North of Indochina . Hô Chi Minh agreed to negotiate the future status of Vietnam, but the talks, held in France, failed to produce a solution . After over one year of latent conflict, all - out war broke out in December 1946 between French and Viet Minh forces as Hô and his government went underground . The French tried to stabilize Indochina by reorganizing it as a Federation of Associated States . In 1949, they put former Emperor Bảo Đại back in power, as the ruler of a newly established State of Vietnam . </P> <P> The first few years of the war involved a low - level rural insurgency against the French . In 1949 the conflict turned into a conventional war between two armies equipped with modern weapons supplied by the United States, China and the Soviet Union . French Union forces included colonial troops from the whole former empire (Moroccan, Algerian, Tunisian, Laotian, Cambodian, and Vietnamese ethnic minorities), French professional troops and units of the French Foreign Legion . The use of metropolitan recruits was forbidden by the government to prevent the war from becoming even more unpopular at home . It was called the "dirty war" (la sale guerre) by leftists in France . </P>

Identify one key event of the end of the ww2 1st indo-china war
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