Ho Chi Minh

Template:TOC-right 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.

Especially in his early years, he was known by a variety of names. Some of these were political aliases, but others simply were Vietnamese custom of the time. For example, a child was given a "milk name" at birth, but a new name on entering adolescence, typically at age 11. The latter name reflected the parents' aspirations for the child. So, his milk name was Nguyen Sinh Cung., but, at age 11, not yet a political activist, his father renamed him Nguyen Tat Thanh, "he who will succeed". See below for his political and literary aliases; he took on the name Ho CHi Minh, for which he had he identity card of a Chinese reporter, in 1942.

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

He was born on May 19, 1890 , in the village of Kim Lien, in Nam Dan district of Nghe An Province. His father, principally known as Nguyen Sinh Sac but also as Nguyen Sinh Huy, was highly educated in the French colonial system, but had been dismessed from the civil service. His tutor was Hoang Duong, also known as Hoan Xuan Duong or simply as Master Duong. Sac was attracted to Duong's daughter Hoang Thi Loan, and, in 1883, married the woman who was to become Ho's mother.

Ho attended school in Hue and Phan Thiet. As was customary for promising children, he was put into the care of a tutor, Vuong Thuc Quoi.

Foreign travel

He was reported to have attended baking school, in Saigon, in 1911. In June 1911, he presented himself, using the name "Ba", to the captain of the French liner, Amiral Latouche-Trevilk, and became an assistant cook. Reports are conflicting whether he actually led a life at sea for the next two years or so, or merely traveled as a member of ships' crews. He wrote a letter, on September 11, 1911, to the President of France, asking for admission to the Colonial School.

Again, he traveled, settling in London in 1914. Ho apparently was a competent cook, telling, in his autobiography, of working under Auguste Escoffier at the Carlton Hotel. One wonders about the future of the world, and of cuisine, if he had taken Escoffier's offer to train him in the art of cooking. Unquestionably, he had multiple talents.

He appears to have spent some time in New York in 1913, spending at least 1913 in New York. While the documentation about his time in the U.S. is scant, there is at least one letter that he signed Paul Tat Thanh. Pham Van Dong said he had lived in Harlem, was impressed by "the barbarities and ugliness of American capitalism, the Ku Klux Klan mobs, the lynching of Negroes." In 1924, he published a pamphlet, "La Race Noire" ("The Black Race"), criticizing racism in America and Europe.

It is not completely clear when he returned to France, certainly by 1918, but most likely December 1917.

Early revolutionary activities

In 1919, he took on the name Nguyen Ai Quoc ("Nguyen the Patriot"), which was to be his main revolutionary alias until the Second World War. While in France, he was one of the founding member of the French Communist Party in 1920, and spoke on French Indochina before going to Moscow in 1923. He said he was influenced by Lenin's work, Thesis on the National and Colonial Questions, which he read in 1920. As opposed to the general Vietnamese call for independence and reform, this specifically introduced a Marxist-Leninist context.

He attended the Fifth Congress of the Communist International (i.e., Comintern), in 1924, then moved to Guangzhou (Canton), China, teaching revolutionary theory using Marx and Lenin, but also Gandhi and Sun Yat Sen.

1924-1927 was a period during which several nationalist and revolutionary organizations were formed. As Nguyen Ai Quoc, he formed the Viet Nam Thanh Nien Cach Menh Dong Chi Hoi (Revolutionary Youth League). In 1926, after studying translations of Marxist material, he said "only a communist party can [ultimately] insure the well-being of Annam". and wrote the handbook, Duong Cach Menh (The Revolutionary Path), in 1926.

By 1927, he went back to China to avoid arrest by the French; he arranged for some members of the Revolutionary Youth League to attend China's Whampoa Military Academy.

Also in December 1927, Nguyen Thai Hoc founded the non-communist Viet Nam Quoc Dan Dang (VNQDD, Vietnamese Nationalist Party), in Hanoi.

Indochinese Communist Party

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.

Nationalist vs. internationalist split

In Vietnamese communism, there was an increasing split between those focused on advancing worldwide communism, and a more nationalist, although still Marxist, emphasis. Ho was in the latter camp.

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."

By 1939, Ho (Quoc) and colleagues were receiving miitary training in China, in an unusual cooperation between the Kuomintang and Chinese Communist Party.

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

Vietnamese Communist Party documents say he called for insurrection in August, although Duiker describes the August actions as focused more on some rural test cases, preparation for revolution, but still some willingness to negotiate with the French. There was also considerable difference in the political situation in Cochin China and Annam. Patti met with Ho, Giap, Truong Chinh, and possibly a few others on August 27. Jean Sainteny requested American help, approximately on August 28, to meet with Ho.; Giap met with Sainteny the next day.

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.

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. By 1962, Le Duan took increasing control, emphasizing military means (i.e., armed dau tranh). Le Duan's allies included Le Duc Tho and Gen. Nguyen Chi Tranh. Vo Nguyen Giap represented a different strategic faction.

Pham Van Dong, rather like Zhou Enlai in China, was less of an ideologue, concerned more with running a government. Neither Ho nor the various factions tended to regard him as a threat, as he was not interested becoming the highest national leader.

Late years and death

Ho reasserted himself, at the policy level, in March 1964, but never retook full power. 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.

Ho died in 1969. While he had not wanted a state funeral or elaborate memorials, memorials and artwork are common themes. This is not necessarily surprising in a culture with widespread traditions of ancestor veneration and memory of cultural heroes two millenia later, as with the Trung Sisters.