agreement was reached with the Vichy government whereby French sovereignty over its army and administrative affairs was confirmed, while Japanese forces were free to fight the war against the Allies from Indochinese soil. A large scale movement of troops did not occur until after the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in late June 1941. With the Soviets tied down, the high command concluded that a "strike south" would solve the problems posed for Japan by the American-led oil embargo. To prepare for an invasion of the oil-rich Dutch East Indies, some 140,000 Japanese troops occupied southern French Indochina on 28 July 1941. French troops and the civil administration were allowed to remain, albeit under Japanese supervision. While the Japanese government’s policy of “maintaining peace” in Indochina limited interactions between the Japanese and Vietnamese, the contradiction of mutual coexistence between France, as the “missionary of civilization,” and Japan, as the “liberator of Asia” from Western colonialism, could not be concealed. The tensions contributed to nationalist, anti-colonial feeling. Drawing on the local Coadaist sect, the Japanese began to encourage nationalist groups in Cohinchina from 1943. Following the liberation of Paris in 1944, Japan increasingly suspected that the French authorities would assist Allied operations. In March 1945, a Japanese coup d'état in French Indochina took the Europeans into custody and imposed their direct authority. The coup had, in the words of diplomat Jean Sainteny, "wrecked a colonial enterprise that had been in existence for 80 years." In August 1945, as they faced defeat, the Japanese belatedly created a puppet state, incorporating Cochinchina in the Empire of Vietnam under the nominal authority of the Bảo Đại. The August Revolution and the return of French rule On 2 September 1945, in Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh and his new Front for the Independence of Vietnam, the Viet Minh, proclaimed the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. Already on 24 August the Viet Minh had declared a provisional government (a Southern Administrative Committee) in Saigon. When, for the declared purpose of disarming the Japanese, the Viet-Minh accommodated the landing and strategic positioning of their wartime "democratic allies", the British, rival political groups turned out in force including the syncretic Hoa Hao and Cao Dai sects. On 7 and 8 September 1945, in the delta city of Cần Thơ the Committee had to rely on the Jeunesse d'Avant-Garde/Thanh Niên Tiền Phong (Vanguard Youth), who had contributed to civil defence