Ho Chi Minh

Template:TOC-right Born as Nguyen Tat Thanh and known by several names associated with his political career, Ho Chi Minh (1890-1969) was a revolutionary against French rule in then-Indochina, who became President of the (Communist) Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) after the partition of Indochina in 1954. He remained the national leader, certainly symbolically and at least part of the time operationally, through the rest of his life.

While he died before the forcible unification of North Vietnam and South Vietnam in 1975, his symbolic importance was such that the former Southern capital of Saigon was renamed Ho Chi Minh City.

Early life

Born in 1890, in Nghe An Province, to a former French colonial official who had resigned in protest, Ho attended school in Hue and Phan Thiet. He traveled abroad, working as a cook on a French ship, in 1911, then as a seaman for several years, and settled in London. After moving to France in 1920 he became a founding member of the French Communist Party.

Following World War I, under the pseudonym Nguyen Ai Quoc (Nguyen the Patriot), he was among the founders of the French Communist Party, received training in Moscow, and went to China in 1924, where he organized a revolutionary organization among Indochinese exiles.

Ejected from China in an anticommunist crackdown in 1927, he returned, in 1930, and founded the Indochinese Communist Party on February 18. From the roots of the party, he formed an independence organization, the Viet Minh.

In July 1939, he advised the Comintern that his party should be moderate in its demands; to seek independence is "to play into the Japanese fascists’ hands." He spoke of broad-front tactics to include Indochinese nationalists as well as French "progressives". His position was clearly Stalinist: "With regard to the Trotskyites there can be no compromise, no concession. We must do everything possible to unmask them as agents of fascism and annihilate them politically."

Second World War

When Japan occupied French Indochina in 1940 and collaborated with French officials loyal to France's Vichy regime. Ho, contacted the Allies and assisted actions against the Japanese in South China and Indochina. Especially in Indochina, however, the Allies were cautious about causing tensions with the French, after the fall of the pro-Axis Vichy French government.

On February 8, 1941, he established his headquarters in the Coc Bo Grotto, in a mountain near Pac Bo hamlet of Cao Bang Province. He made a statue of Karl Marx out of one of the stalagmites, and named the spring running in front of the grotto entrance after Vladimir Lenin and the highest mountain peak also after Marx. The Ministry of Tourism plans to develop as a historical site.

In the spring of 1941, the Communists reorganized into what became the Viet Minh The Chinese arrested him soon afterwards. During the Japanese occupation, even during French administration, the Viet Minh exiled to China had an opportunity to quietly rebuild their infrastructure. They had been strongest in Tonkin, the northern region, so moving south from China was straightforward. They had a concept of establishing "base areas" (chien khu) or "safe areas" (an toan khu), often mountainous jungle. Of these areas, the "homeland" of the VM was near Bac Kan Province. (see map

In 1943, the Chinese released him from jail and allowed him to head the Dong Min Hoi coalition, initially dominated by the VNQDD party. formed in October 1942 but had but had accomplished little. The Allied goal was to get better intelligence from Indochina, where only the Viet Minh actually had personnel.

Ho's associates in China asked for U.S. recognition in August 1944. The analysis department of the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (OSS) became aware of his activities in the Tuyen Quang-Bac Kan-Lang Son-Thai Nguyen provinces, informing the field missions in 1945. LTC Paul Helliwell, the OSS Secret Intelligence (i.e., clandestine human-source intelligence) chief in Kunming, China, gave Ho a small number of weapons in March 1945.

He directed that the Armed Propaganda Brigade be formed in December 1944: "Armed Propaganda Brigade for the Liberation of Viet Nam shows that greater importance is attached to its political than to its military action. It is a propaganda unit...the most resolute and energetic cadres and men will be picked from the ranks of the guerilla units in the provinces of Bac Can , Lang Son and Cao Bang". According to Hammer. by 1945, it had organized 10,000 soldiers led by Vo Nguyen Giap, who recruited both from ethnic Vietnamese and Montagnards.

Attempt at independence

Having called for insurrection in August, on September 2, 1945, Ho declared independence for Vietnam, as the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV), but was soon under a French crackdown on revolutionary activity. By September 12, the Bank of Indochina had closed the DRV and declared it bankrupt. Ho, Pham Van Dong, and Vo Nguyen Giap decided to launch "Gold Week", asking for contributions.

In March 1946, he signed a treaty with the French, along with the VNQDD leader, Vu Hong Khanh. They agreed not to resist the French on their return. Neertheless, the situation declined, until, in November, the French shelled Haiphong, killing an estimated 6,000 people. The Viet Minh struck back in December; Ho, who was ill, fled.

As the U.S. Office of Strategic Services missions left Hanoi, their commander, MAJ Archimedes Patti, had personal disciussins with Ho and Giap. Patti, talking privately with Ho, asked him how he had decided Communism was the way,and he responded that he did not consider himself a true Communist, but a "national-socialist". He had come to communism through meetings of anticolonialists, in Britain in 1913. at that point, he did not understand the differences among socialism, communism, trade unions, and even pollitical parties. At the time, Communism was by no means unified; there had been the Socialist Party, Bolshevik October Revolution, and Lenin's Third International.

For Ho, reading Lenin's Thesis on the National and Colonial Questions was a turning point. That made Leninism his guide for years, but he objected to the U.S. considering him a puppet of Moscow. Rather than making him a hard-line Communist in American terms, he was repaying 15 years of training with party work.

In 1948, however, U.S. State Department analysts estimated that the "Vietnamese Communists are not subservient to Moscow," and it had been the "French colonial press that had been strongly anti-American,...to approximating the official Moscow position."

First Indochina War

On February 7, 1950, France ratified treaties that created the French Union, of the three Vietnamese regions, Laos, and Cambodia. On February 7, The U.K. and U.S. recognized Bao Dai as chief of state of Vietnam.

In early 1950, he gave up on obtaining an agreement with France, and obtained recognition of the DRV from the Soviet Union and China. U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson said the Soviet recognition "should remove any illusions as to the 'nationalist' nature of Ho Chi Minh's aims, and reveals Ho in his true colors as the mortal enemy of native independence in Indochina". He remained the national leader through the Indochinese revolution.

The Two Vietnams

Ho remained active in leadership until his health declined and he became more of a symbol. Nevertheless, he addressed North Vietnam shortly before the Tet Offensive in January 1968, which was symbolically important to many in the People's Army of Viet Nam

Late years and death

By the 1960s, Ho was primarily a symbol rather than an active leader.