Australia's involvement in the Vietnam War was driven largely by the rise of communism in Southeast Asia after the Second World War, and the fear of its spread which developed in Australia during the 1950s and early 1960s. Following the end of the Second World War the French had sought to reassert control over French Indochina, which had been occupied by Japan. In 1950, as the communist-backed Việt Minh, led by Ho Chi Minh, began to gain the ascendency in the First Indochina War, the Vietnamese nation had two parallel administrations; the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) (recognised by the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China) and the State of Vietnam (SoV), an associated state in the French Union (recognised by the non-communist world). In 1954, after the defeat of the French at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, the Geneva Accords of 1954 split the country geographically, the DRV holding the north of the 17th parallel and the SoV the south.