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Ho Chi Minh

April 17, 2023

For other uses, see Ho Chi Minh (disambiguation).

Hồ Chí Minh[a][b] (née: Nguyễn Sinh Cung;[c][3][4] 19 May 1890 – 2 September 1969),[d] commonly known as Uncle Ho (Bác Hồ),[e][7] President Ho (Hồ Chủ tịch)[f] and by other aliases[g] and sobriquets,[h] was a Vietnamese revolutionary and statesman. He served as Prime Minister of Vietnam from 1945 to 1955, and as President of Vietnam from 1945 until his death in 1969. Ideologically a Marxist–Leninist, he was the Chairman and First Secretary of the Workers' Party of Vietnam.[i]

Chủ tịch
Hồ Chí Minh
Portrait of Hồ Chí Minh, c. 1946
1st President of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam
Honoured as
Father of the people
Người cha già của dân tộc
In office
2 September 1945 – 2 September 1969
Preceded byBảo Đại (as Emperor)
Succeeded byTôn Đức Thắng
Chairman of the Workers' Party of Vietnam
In office
19 February 1951 – 2 September 1969
General Secretary
Preceded byPosition established
Succeeded byPosition abolished
First Secretary of the Workers' Party of Vietnam
In office
1 November 1955 – 10 September 1960
Preceded byTrường Chinh
Succeeded byLê Duẩn
1st Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam
In office
2 September 1945 – 20 September 1955
Preceded byTrần Trọng Kim (as Prime Minister of the Empire of Vietnam)
Succeeded byPhạm Văn Đồng
Minister of Foreign Affairs
In office
28 August 1945 – 2 March 1946
Preceded byTrần Văn Chương
(Empire of Vietnam)
Succeeded byNguyễn Tường Tam
In office
3 November 1946 – March 1947
Preceded byNguyễn Tường Tam
Succeeded byHoàng Minh Giám
Full Member of the 2nd and 3rd Politburo
In office
31 March 1935 – 2 September 1969
Personal details
Born
Nguyễn Sinh Cung

(1890-05-19)19 May 1890
Kim Liên, French Indochina
Died2 September 1969(1969-09-02) (aged 79)
Hanoi, North Vietnam
Resting placeHo Chi Minh Mausoleum, Hanoi
Political partyCommunist Party of Vietnam (1924–1969)
Other political
affiliations		French Section of the Workers' International (1919–1921)
French Communist Party (1921–1925)
Spouse
​
(m. 1926)​
Relations
Parents
Alma materCommunist University of the Toilers of the East
Occupation
  • Politician
  • revolutionary
  • pastry chef
Signature
Ho Chi Minh's voice
Ho Chi Minh declaring the independence of Vietnam
Recorded 2 September 1945

Hồ Chí Minh was born in Nghệ An province in the French protectorate of Annam. From 1911, he left French Indochina to continue his revolutionary activities. He was also one of the founding members of the French Communist Party. In 1930, he founded the Communist Party of Vietnam and in 1941, he returned to Vietnam and founded the Việt Minh independence movement, an umbrella group. Then, Hồ led the August Revolution against the Japanese in August 1945, which resulted in the independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. After the French returned to power the following month, Hồ's government retreated to the Việt Bắc region and began guerrilla warfare. The Việt Minh defeated the French Union in 1954 at the Battle of Điện Biên Phủ, ending the First Indochina War, and resulting in the division of Vietnam, with the Việt Minh in control of North Vietnam, and anti-communists in control of South Vietnam. He was a key figure in the People's Army of Vietnam and the Việt Cộng during the Vietnam War, which lasted from 1955 to 1975. Hồ officially stepped down from power in 1965 due to health problems and died in 1969. North Vietnam was ultimately victorious against South Vietnam and its allies. Vietnam was officially unified in 1976. Saigon, the former capital of South Vietnam, was renamed Ho Chi Minh City in his honor.

The details of Hồ Chí Minh's life before he came to power in Vietnam are uncertain. He is known to have used between 50[8]: 582  and 200 pseudonyms.[9] Information on his birth and early life is ambiguous and subject to academic debate. At least four existing official biographies vary on names, dates, places, and other hard facts while unofficial biographies vary even more widely.[10]

Aside from being a politician, Hồ was a writer, poet, and journalist. He wrote several books, articles, and poems in Chinese, Vietnamese, and French.

Early life

Hồ Chí Minh was born as Nguyễn Sinh Cung[3][c][4] in 1890 in the village of Làng Chùa or Hoàng Trù in Kim Liên commune, Nghệ An province, in Central Vietnam which was then a French protectorate. Although 1890 is generally accepted as his birth year, at various times he used four other birth years:[11][page needed] 1891,[12] 1892,[j] 1894[k] and 1895.[13] He lived in his father Nguyễn Sinh Sắc's village of Làng Sen in Kim Liên until 1895 when his father sent him to Huế for study. He had three siblings: his sister Bạch Liên (Nguyễn Thị Thanh), a clerk in the French Army; his brother Nguyễn Sinh Khiêm (Nguyễn Tất Đạt), a geomancer and traditional herbalist; and another brother (Nguyễn Sinh Nhuận), who died in infancy. As a young child, Cung (Hồ) studied with his father before more formal classes with a scholar named Vuong Thuc Do. He quickly mastered Chữ Hán, a prerequisite for any serious study of Confucianism while honing his colloquial Vietnamese writing.[8]: 21  In addition to his studies, he was fond of adventure and loved to fly kites and go fishing.[8]: 21  Following Confucian tradition, his father gave him a new name at the age of 10: Nguyễn Tất Thành.

His father was a Confucian scholar and teacher and later an imperial magistrate in the small remote district of Binh Khe (Qui Nhơn). He was demoted for abuse of power after an influential local figure died several days after having received 102 strokes of the cane as punishment for an infraction.[8]: 21  His father was eligible to serve in the imperial bureaucracy, but he refused because it meant serving the French.[14] This exposed Thành (Hồ) to rebellion at a young age and seemed to be the norm for the province. Nevertheless, he received a French education, attending Collège Quốc học (lycée or secondary education) in Huế in Central Vietnam. His disciples, Phạm Văn Đồng and Võ Nguyên Giáp, also attended the school, as did Ngô Đình Diệm, the future President of South Vietnam and political rival.[15]

His early life is uncertain but there are some documents indicating activities regarding an early revolutionary spirit during French-occupied Vietnam, but conflicting sources remain. Previously, it was believed that Thành (Hồ) was involved in an anti-slavery (anti-corvée) demonstration of poor peasants in Huế in May 1908, which endangered his student status at Collège Quốc học. However, a document from the Centre des archives d'Outre-mer in France shows that he was admitted to Collège Quốc học on 8 August 1908, which was several months after the anti-corvée demonstration (9–13 April 1908).[c]

Later in life, he claimed the 1908 revolt had been the moment when his revolutionary outlook emerged,[citation needed] but his application to the French Colonial Administrative School in 1911 undermines this version of events, in which he stated that he left school to go abroad. Because his father had been dismissed, he no longer had any hope for a governmental scholarship and went southward, taking a position at Dục Thanh school in Phan Thiết for about six months, then traveled to Saigon.[citation needed]

Overseas sojourn

In France

 
Commemorative plaque in Haymarket in London

In Saigon, he applied to work as a kitchen helper on a French merchant steamer, the Amiral de Latouche-Tréville, using the alias Văn Ba. The ship departed on 5 June 1911 and arrived in Marseille, France on 5 July 1911. The ship then left for Le Havre and Dunkirk, returning to Marseille in mid-September. There, he applied for the French Colonial Administrative School, but his application was rejected. He instead decided to begin traveling the world by working on ships and visiting many countries from 1911 to 1917.[16][page needed]

In the United States

While working as the cook's helper on a ship in 1912, Thành (Hồ) traveled to the United States. From 1912 to 1913, he may have lived in New York City (Harlem) and Boston, where he claimed to have worked as a baker at the Parker House Hotel. The only evidence that he was in the United States is a letter to French colonial administrators dated 15 December 1912 and postmarked New York City (he gave his address as the poste restante in Le Havre and his occupation as a sailor)[17] and a postcard to Phan Chu Trinh in Paris where he mentioned working at the Parker House Hotel. Inquiries to the Parker House management revealed no records of his ever having worked there.[8]: 51  It is believed that while in the US he made contact with Korean nationalists, an experience that developed his political outlook. Sophie Quinn-Judge states that this is "in the realm of conjecture".[17] He was also influenced by Pan-Africanist and black nationalist Marcus Garvey during his stay, and said he attended meetings of the Universal Negro Improvement Association.[18][19][page needed]

In Britain

At various points between 1913 and 1919, Thành (Hồ) claimed to have lived in West Ealing and later in Crouch End, Hornsey. He reportedly worked as either a chef or dishwasher (reports vary) at the Drayton Court Hotel in West Ealing.[20] Claims that he was trained as a pastry chef under Auguste Escoffier at the Carlton Hotel in Haymarket, Westminster are not supported by documentary evidence.[21][22] However, the wall of New Zealand House, home of the New Zealand High Commission which now stands on the site of the Carlton Hotel, displays a blue plaque. During 1913, Thành was also employed as a pastry chef on the Newhaven–Dieppe ferry route.[23]

Political education in France

 
Hồ Chí Minh, 1921, going by the pseudonym Nguyễn Ái Quốc, attending a Communist congress in Marseille, France.

From 1919 to 1923, Thành (Hồ) began to show an interest in politics while living in France, being influenced by his friend and Socialist Party of France comrade Marcel Cachin. Thành claimed to have arrived in Paris from London in 1917, but the French police had only documents recording his arrival in June 1919.[17] In Paris he joined the Groupe des Patriotes Annamites (The Group of Vietnamese Patriots) that included Phan Chu Trinh, Phan Văn Trường, Nguyễn Thế Truyền and Nguyễn An Ninh.[24] They had been publishing newspaper articles advocating for Vietnamese independence under the pseudonym Nguyễn Ái Quốc ("Nguyễn the Patriot") prior to Thành's arrival in Paris.[25] The group petitioned for recognition of the civil rights of the Vietnamese people in French Indochina to the Western powers at the Versailles peace talks, but they were ignored. Citing the principle of self-determination outlined before the peace accords, they requested the allied powers to end French colonial rule of Vietnam and ensure the formation of an independent government.

Before the conference, the group sent their letter to allied leaders, including French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau and United States President Woodrow Wilson. They were unable to obtain consideration at Versailles, but the episode would later help establish the future Hồ Chí Minh as the symbolic leader of the anti-colonial movement at home in Vietnam.[26] Since Thành was the public face behind the publication of the document (although it was written by Phan Văn Trường),[27] he soon became known as Nguyễn Ái Quốc, and first used the name in September during an interview with a Chinese newspaper correspondent.[8] Many authors have stated that 1919 was a lost "Wilsonian moment", where the future Hồ Chí Minh could have adopted a pro-American and less radical position if only President Wilson had received him. However, at the time of the Versailles Conference, Hồ Chí Minh was committed to a socialist program. While the conference was ongoing, Nguyễn Ái Quốc was already delivering speeches on the prospects of Bolshevism in Asia and was attempting to persuade French socialists to join Lenin's Communist International.[28]

 
A 1920 security report by the French Indochinese government on Nguyễn Tất Thành listing his aliases, places of residence, his father's occupation, as well as other information.

In December 1920, Quốc (Hồ) became a representative to the Congress of Tours of the Socialist Party of France, voted for the Third International and was a founding member of the French Communist Party. Taking a position in the Colonial Committee of the party, he tried to draw his comrades' attention towards people in French colonies including Indochina, but his efforts were often unsuccessful. While living in Paris, he reportedly had a relationship with a dressmaker named Marie Brière. As discovered in 2018, Quốc also had relations with the members of Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea like Kim Kyu-sik, Jo So-ang while in Paris.[29]

During this period, he began to write journal articles and short stories as well as run his Vietnamese nationalist group. In May 1922, he wrote an article for a French magazine criticizing the use of English words by French sportswriters.[30] The article implored Prime Minister Raymond Poincaré to outlaw such Franglais as le manager, le round and le knock-out. His articles and speeches caught the attention of Dmitry Manuilsky, who would soon sponsor his trip to the Soviet Union and under whose tutelage he would become a high-ranking member of the Soviet Comintern.[31]

In the Soviet Union and China

External video
  Booknotes interview with William Duiker on Hồ Chí Minh: A Life, 12 November 2000, C-SPAN
 
A plaque in Compoint Lane [fr], District 17, Paris indicates where Hồ Chí Minh lived from 1921 to 1923

In 1923, Quốc (Hồ) left Paris for Moscow carrying a passport with the name Chen Vang, a Chinese merchant,[8]: 86  where he was employed by the Comintern, studied at the Communist University of the Toilers of the East[8]: 92 [32] and participated in the Fifth Comintern Congress in June 1924 before arriving in Canton (present-day Guangzhou), China in November 1924 using the name Ly Thuy.

In 1925–1926, he organized "Youth Education Classes" and occasionally gave socialist lectures to Vietnamese revolutionary young people living in Canton at the Whampoa Military Academy. These young people would become the seeds of a new revolutionary, pro-communist movement in Vietnam several years later. According to William Duiker, he lived with a Chinese woman, Zeng Xueming (Tăng Tuyết Minh), whom he married on 18 October 1926.[33] When his comrades objected to the match, he told them: "I will get married despite your disapproval because I need a woman to teach me the language and keep house".[33] She was 21 and he was 36. They married in the same place where Zhou Enlai had married earlier and then lived in the residence of a Comintern agent, Mikhail Borodin. [33]

Hoàng Văn Chí argued that in June 1925 he betrayed Phan Bội Châu, the famous leader of a rival revolutionary faction and his father's old friend, to French Secret Service agents in Shanghai for 100,000 piastres.[34] A source states that he later claimed he did it because he expected Châu's trial to stir up anti-French sentiment and because he needed the money to establish a communist organization.[34] In Ho Chi Minh: A Life, William Duiker considered this hypothesis, but ultimately rejected it.[8]: 126–128  Other sources claim that Nguyễn Thượng Huyện was responsible for Chau's capture. Chau, sentenced to lifetime house arrest, never denounced Quốc.[citation needed]

After Chiang Kai-shek's 1927 anti-communist coup, Quốc (Hồ) left Canton again in April 1927 and returned to Moscow, spending part of the summer of 1927 recuperating from tuberculosis in Crimea before returning to Paris once more in November. He then returned to Asia by way of Brussels, Berlin, Switzerland, and Italy, where he sailed to Bangkok, Thailand, arriving in July 1928. "Although we have been separated for almost a year, our feelings for each other do not have to be said to be felt", he reassured Minh in an intercepted letter.[33] In this period, he served as a senior agent undertaking Comintern activities in Southeast Asia.[citation needed]

 
Ho Chi Minh worked as a cook all over the world from 1911 to 1928, also in Milano. This plaque in Via Pasubio, on the left next to "Antica Trattoria Della Pesa", remembers one of his workplaces.
 
House on Memorium for Hồ Chí Minh in Ban Nachok, Nakhon Phanom, Thailand

Quốc (Hồ) remained in Thailand, staying in the Thai village of Nachok[35]until late 1929, when he moved on to India and then Shanghai. In Hong Kong in early 1930, he chaired a meeting with representatives from two Vietnamese communist parties to merge them into a unified organization, the Communist Party of Vietnam.[36] He also founded the Indochinese Communist Party.[37] In June 1931, Hồ was arrested in Hong Kong as part of a collaboration between the French colonial authorities in Indochina and the Hong Kong Police Force; scheduled to be deported back to French Indochina, Hồ was successfully defended by British solicitor Frank Loseby.[36] Eventually, after appeals to the Privy Council in London, Hồ was reported as dead in 1932 to avoid a French extradition agreement;[38] it was ruled that, though he would be deported from Hong Kong as an undesirable, it would not be to a destination controlled by France.[36] Hồ was eventually released and, disguised as a Chinese scholar, boarded a ship to Shanghai. He subsequently returned to the Soviet Union and in Moscow studied and taught at the Lenin Institute.[39] In this period Hồ reportedly lost his positions in the Comintern because of a concern that he had betrayed the organization. However, according to Ton That Thien's research, he was a member of the inner circle of the Comintern, a protégé of Dmitry Manuilsky and a member in good standing of the Comintern throughout the Great Purge.[40][page needed][41] Hồ was removed from control of the Party he had founded. Those who replaced him charged him with nationalist tendencies.[37]

In 1938, Quốc (Hồ) returned to China and served as an advisor to the Chinese Communist armed forces.[17] He was also the senior Comintern agent in charge of Asian affairs.[42] He worked extensively in Chungking and traveled to Guiyang, Kunming, and Guilin. He was using the name Hồ Quang during this period.[citation needed]

Independence movement

In 1941, Hồ Chí Minh returned to Vietnam to lead the Việt Minh independence movement. The Japanese occupation of Indochina that year, the first step toward an invasion of the rest of Southeast Asia, created an opportunity for patriotic Vietnamese.[14] The so-called "men in black" were a 10,000 member guerrilla force that operated with the Việt Minh.[43] He oversaw many successful military actions against the Vichy France and the Japanese occupation of Vietnam during World War II, supported closely yet clandestinely by the United States Office of Strategic Services and later against the French bid to reoccupy the country (1946–1954). He was jailed in China by Chiang Kai-shek's local authorities before being rescued by Chinese Communists.[44] Following his release in 1943, he returned to Vietnam. It was during this time that he began regularly using the name Hồ Chí Minh, a Vietnamese name combining a common Vietnamese surname (Hồ, 胡) with a given name meaning "Bright spirit" or "Clear will" (from Sino-Vietnamese 志 明: Chí meaning "will" or "spirit" and Minh meaning "bright").[8]: 248–49  His new name was a tribute to General Hou Zhiming (侯志明), Chief Commissar of the 4th Military Region of the National Revolutionary Army, who helped release him from a KMT prison in 1943.[citation needed]

 
Hồ Chí Minh (third from left, standing) with the OSS in 1945

In April 1945, he met with the OSS agent Archimedes Patti and offered to provide intelligence, asking only for "a line of communication" between his Viet Minh and the Allies.[45] The OSS agreed to this and later sent a military team of OSS members to train his men and Hồ Chí Minh himself was treated for malaria and dysentery by an OSS doctor.[46]

Following the August Revolution organized by the Việt Minh, Hồ Chí Minh became Chairman of the Provisional Government (Premier of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam) and issued a Proclamation of Independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.[47] Although he convinced Emperor Bảo Đại to abdicate, his government was not recognized by any country. He repeatedly petitioned President Harry S. Truman for support for Vietnamese independence,[48] citing the Atlantic Charter, but Truman never responded.[49]

In 1946, future Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and Hồ Chí Minh became acquainted when they stayed at the same hotel in Paris.[50][51] He offered Ben-Gurion a Jewish home-in-exile in Vietnam.[50][51] Ben-Gurion declined, telling him: "I am certain we shall be able to establish a Jewish Government in Palestine".[50][51]

In 1946, when he traveled outside of the country, his subordinates imprisoned 2,500 non-Communist nationalists and forced 6,000 others to flee.[52] Hundreds of political opponents were jailed or exiled in July 1946, notably, members of the Nationalist Party of Vietnam and the Dai Viet National Party after a failed attempt to raise a coup against the Viet Minh government.[53] All rival political parties were hereafter banned and local governments were purged[54] to minimize opposition later on. However, it was noted that the Democratic Republic of Vietnam's first Congress had over two-thirds of its members come from non-Việt Minh political factions, some without an election. Nationalist Party of Vietnam leader Nguyễn Hải Thần was named vice president. They also held four out of ten ministerial positions (Government of the Union of Resistance of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam [vi]).

Birth of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam

Following Emperor Bảo Đại's abdication in August, Hồ Chí Minh read the Declaration of Independence of Vietnam on 2 September 1945[55] under the name of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. In Saigon, with violence between rival Vietnamese factions and French forces increasing, the British commander, General Sir Douglas Gracey, declared martial law. On 24 September, the Việt Minh leaders responded with a call for a general strike.[56][page needed]

In the same month, a force of 200,000 National Revolutionary Army troops arrived in Hanoi to accept the surrender of the Japanese occupiers in northern Indochina. Hồ Chí Minh made a compromise with their general, Lu Han, to dissolve the Communist Party and to hold an election that would yield a coalition government. When Chiang forced the French to give the French concessions in Shanghai back to China in exchange for withdrawing from northern Indochina, he had no choice but to sign an agreement with France on 6 March 1946 in which Vietnam would be recognized as an autonomous state in the Indochinese Federation and the French Union. The agreement soon broke down. The purpose of the agreement, for both the French and Vietminh, was for Chiang's army to leave North Vietnam. Fighting broke out in the North soon after the Chinese left.

Historian Professor Liam Kelley of the University of Hawaii at Manoa on his Le Minh Khai's Asian History Blog challenged the authenticity of the alleged quote where Hồ Chí Minh said he "would rather smell French shit for five years than eat Chinese shit for a thousand," noting that Stanley Karnow provided no source for the extended quote attributed to him in his 1983 Vietnam: A History and that the original quote was most likely forged by the Frenchman Paul Mus in his 1952 book Vietnam: Sociologie d'une Guerre. Mus was a supporter of French colonialism in Vietnam and Hồ Chí Minh believed there was no danger of Chinese troops staying in Vietnam. The Vietnamese at the time were busy spreading anti-French propaganda as evidence of French atrocities in Vietnam emerged while Hồ Chí Minh showed no qualms about accepting Chinese aid after 1949.[57][58]

 
Võ Nguyên Giáp (left) with Hồ Chí Minh (right) in Hanoi in 1945

The Việt Minh then collaborated with French colonial forces to massacre supporters of the Vietnamese nationalist movements in 1945–1946,[59][60][61] and of the Trotskyists. Trotskyism in Vietnam did not rival the Party outside of the major cities, but particularly in the South, in Saigon-Cochinchina, they had been a challenge. From the outset, they had called for armed resistance to a French restoration and an immediate transfer of industry to workers and land to peasants.[62][63] The French Socialist leader Daniel Guérin recalls that when in Paris in 1946 he asked Hồ Chí Minh about the fate of the Trotskyist leader Tạ Thu Thâu, Hồ Chí Minh had replied, "with unfeigned emotion," that "Thâu was a great patriot and we mourn him, but then a moment later added in a steady voice 'All those who do not follow the line which I have laid down will be broken.'"[64]

The Communists eventually suppressed all non-Communist parties, but they failed to secure a peace deal with France. In the final days of 1946, after a year of diplomatic failure and many concessions in agreements, such as the Dalat and Fontainebleau conferences, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam government found that war was inevitable. The bombardment of Haiphong by French forces at Hanoi only strengthened the belief that France had no intention of allowing an autonomous, independent state in Vietnam. The bombardment of Haiphong reportedly killed more than 6000 Vietnamese civilians. French forces marched into Hanoi, now the capital city of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. On 19 December 1946, after the Haiphong incident, Hồ Chí Minh declared war against the French Union, marking the beginning of the Indochina War.[65] The Vietnam National Army, mostly armed with machetes and muskets immediately attacked. They assaulted the French positions, smoking them out with straw bundled with chili pepper, destroying armored vehicles with "lunge mines" (a hollow-charge warhead on the end of a pole, detonated by thrusting the charge against the side of a tank; typically a suicide weapon)[66] and Molotov cocktails, holding off attackers by using roadblocks, landmines and gravel. After two months of fighting, the exhausted Việt Minh forces withdrew after systematically destroying any valuable infrastructure. Hồ was reported to be captured by a group of French soldiers led by Jean Étienne Valluy at Việt Bắc in Operation Léa. The person in question turned out to be a Việt Minh advisor who was killed trying to escape.

According to journalist Bernard Fall, Hồ decided to negotiate a truce after fighting the French for several years. When the French negotiators arrived at the meeting site, they found a mud hut with a thatched roof. Inside they found a long table with chairs. In one corner of the room, a silver ice bucket contained ice and a bottle of good champagne, indicating that Hồ expected the negotiations to succeed. One demand by the French was the return to French custody of several Japanese military officers (who had been helping the Vietnamese armed forces by training them in the use of weapons of Japanese origin) for them to stand trial for war crimes committed during World War II. Hồ Chí Minh replied that the Japanese officers were allies and friends whom he could not betray, therefore he walked out to seven more years of war. [67]

In February 1950, after the successful removal of the French border blockade, (Battle of Route Coloniale 4) he met with Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong in Moscow after the Soviet Union recognized his government. They all agreed that China would be responsible for backing the Việt Minh.[68] Mao Zedong's emissary to Moscow stated in August that China planned to train 60,000–70,000 Viet Minh shortly.[69] The road to the outside world was open for Việt Minh forces to receive additional supplies which would allow them to escalate the fight against the French regime throughout Indochina. At the outset of the conflict, Hồ reportedly told a French visitor: "You can kill ten of my men for every one I kill of yours. But even at those odds, you will lose and I will win".[70] In 1954, the First Indochina War came to an end after the decisive Battle of Dien Bien Phu, where more than 10,000 French soldiers surrendered to the Viet Minh. The subsequent Geneva Accords peace process partitioned North Vietnam at the 17th parallel.

Arthur Dommen estimates that the Việt Minh assassinated between 100,000 and 150,000 civilians during the war.[71] By comparison to Dommen's calculation, Benjamin Valentino estimates that the French were responsible for 60,000–250,000 civilian deaths.[72]

Becoming president

The 1954 Geneva Accords concluded between France and the Việt Minh, allowing the latter's forces to regroup in the North whilst anti-Communist groups settled in the South. His Democratic Republic of Vietnam relocated to Hanoi and became the government of North Vietnam, a Communist-led one-party state. Following the Geneva Accords, there was to be a 300-day period in which people could freely move between the two regions of Vietnam, later known as South Vietnam and North Vietnam. During the 300 days, Diệm and CIA adviser Colonel Edward Lansdale staged a campaign to convince people to move to South Vietnam. The campaign was particularly focused on Vietnam's Catholics, who were to provide Diệm's power base in his later years, with the use of the slogan "God has gone south". Between 800,000 and 1,000,000 people migrated to the South, mostly Catholics. At the start of 1955, French Indochina was dissolved, leaving Diệm in temporary control of the South.[73][74]

All the parties at Geneva called for reunification elections, but they could not agree on the details. Recently appointed Việt Minh acting foreign minister Pham Van Dong proposed elections under the supervision of "local commissions". The United States, with the support of Britain and the Associated States of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, suggested United Nations supervision. This plan was rejected by Soviet representative Vyacheslav Molotov, who argued for a commission composed of an equal number of communist and non-communist members, which could determine "important" issues only by unanimous agreement.[75] The negotiators were unable to agree on a date for the elections for reunification. North Vietnam argued that the elections should be held within six months of the ceasefire while the Western allies sought to have no deadline. Molotov proposed June 1955, then later softened this to any time in 1955 and finally July 1956.[76] The Diem government supported reunification elections, but only with effective international supervision, arguing that genuinely free elections were otherwise impossible in the totalitarian North.[77] By the afternoon of 20 July 1954, the remaining outstanding issues were resolved as the parties agreed that the partition line should be at the 17th parallel and the elections for a reunified government should be held in July 1956, two years after the ceasefire.[78] The Agreement on the Cessation of Hostilities in Vietnam was only signed by the French and Việt Minh military commands, with no participation or consultation of the State of Vietnam.[79] Based on a proposal by Chinese delegation head Zhou Enlai, an International Control Commission (ICC) chaired by India, with Canada and Poland as members, was placed in charge of supervising the ceasefire.[80][81] Because issues were to be decided unanimously, Poland's presence in the ICC provided the Communists with effective veto power over supervision of the treaty.[82] The unsigned Final Declaration of the Geneva Conference called for reunification elections, which the majority of delegates expected to be supervised by the ICC. The Việt Minh never accepted ICC authority over such elections, insisting that the ICC's "competence was to be limited to the supervision and control of the implementation of the Agreement on the Cessation of Hostilities by both parties".[83] Of the nine nations represented, only the United States and the State of Vietnam refused to accept the declaration. Undersecretary of state Walter Bedell Smith delivered a "unilateral declaration" of the United States position, reiterating: "We shall seek to achieve unity through free elections supervised by the United Nations to ensure that they are conducted fairly".[84]

 
Hồ Chí Minh with East German sailors in Stralsund harbor during his 1957 visit to East Germany
 
Hồ Chí Minh with members of the East German Young Pioneers near Berlin, 1957

Between 1953 and 1956, the North Vietnamese government instituted various agrarian reforms, including "rent reduction" and "land reform", which were accompanied by political repression. During the land reform, testimonies by North Vietnamese witnesses suggested a ratio of one execution per 160 village residents, which if extrapolated would indicate a nationwide total of nearly 100,000 executions. Because the campaign was concentrated mainly in the Red River Delta area, a lower estimate of 50,000 executions was widely accepted by scholars at the time.[85][86][l] However, declassified documents from the Vietnamese and Hungarian archives indicate that the number of executions was much lower than reported at the time, although it was likely greater than 13,500.[87][88][89]

Vietnam War

As early as June 1956 the idea of overthrowing the South Vietnamese government was presented at a politburo meeting. In 1959, Hồ Chí Minh began urging the Politburo to send aid to the Việt Cộng in South Vietnam; a "people's war" on the South was approved at a session in January 1959, and this decision was confirmed by the Politburo in March.[90][91] North Vietnam invaded Laos in July 1959 aided by the Pathet Lao and used 30,000 men to build a network of supply and reinforcement routes running through Laos and Cambodia that became known as the Hồ Chí Minh trail.[92] It allowed the North to send manpower and material to the Việt Cộng with much less exposure to South Vietnamese forces, achieving a considerable advantage.[93] To counter the accusation that North Vietnam was violating the Geneva Accord, the independence of the Việt Cộng was stressed in communist propaganda. North Vietnam created the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam in December 1960 as a "united front", or political branch of the Viet Cong intended to encourage the participation of non-Communists. [90][91]

At the end of 1959, conscious that the national election would never be held and that Diem intended to purge opposing forces (mostly ex Việt Minh) from the South Vietnamese society, Hồ Chí Minh informally chose Lê Duẩn to become the next party leader. This was interpreted by Western analysts as a loss of influence for Hồ, who was said to have preferred the more moderate Võ Nguyên Giáp for the position.[94] From 1959 onward, the elderly Hồ became increasingly worried about the prospect of his death, and that year he wrote down his will.[95] Lê Duẩn was officially named party leader in 1960, leaving Hồ to function in a secondary role as head of state and member of the Politburo. He nevertheless maintained considerable influence in the government. Lê Duẩn, Tố Hữu, Trường Chinh and Phạm Văn Đồng often shared dinner with Hồ, and all of them remained key figures throughout and after the war. In the early 1960s, the North Vietnamese Politburo was divided into the "North first" faction who favored focusing on the economic development of North Vietnam, and the "South first" faction, who favored a guerrilla war in South Vietnam to reunite Vietnam shortly.[96] Between 1961 and 1963, 40,000 Communist soldiers infiltrated into South Vietnam from the North.[90]

In 1963, Hồ purportedly corresponded with South Vietnamese President Diem in hopes of achieving a negotiated peace.[97] During the so-called "Maneli Affair" of 1963, a French diplomatic initiative was launched to achieve a federation of the two Vietnams, which would be neutral in the Cold War.[98] The four principal diplomats involved in the "Maneli affair" were Ramchundur Goburdhun, the Indian Chief Commissioner of the ICC; Mieczysław Maneli, the Polish Commissioner to the ICC; Roger Lalouette, the French ambassador to South Vietnam; and Giovanni d'Orlandi, the Italian ambassador to South Vietnam.[98] Maneli reported that Hồ was very interested in the signs of a split between President Diem and President Kennedy and that his attitude was: "Our real enemies are the Americans. Get rid of them, and we can cope with Diem and Nhu afterward".[98] Hồ also told Maneli about the Ho Minh Chi Trail, which passed through officially neutral Cambodia and Laos, saying "Indochina is just one single entity".[99]

At a meeting in Hanoi held in French, Hồ told Goburdhun that Diem was "in his way a patriot", noting that Diem had opposed French rule over Vietnam, and ended the meeting saying that the next time Goburdhun met Diem "shake hands with him for me".[100] The North Vietnamese Premier Phạm Văn Đồng, speaking on behalf of Hồ, told Maneli he was interested in the peace plan, saying that just as long as the American advisers left South Vietnam "we can agree with any Vietnamese".[101] On 2 September 1963, Maneli met with Ngô Đình Nhu, the younger brother and right-hand man to Diem to discuss the French peace plan.[102] It remains unclear if the Ngo brothers were serious about the French peace plan or were merely using the possibility of accepting it to blackmail the United States into supporting them at a time when the Buddhist crisis had seriously strained relations between Saigon and Washington.[101] Supporting the latter theory is the fact that Nhu promptly leaked his meeting with Maneli to the American columnist Joseph Alsop, who publicized it in a column entitled "Very Ugly Stuff".[101] The possibility that the Ngo brothers might accept the peace plan contributed to the Kennedy administration's plan to support a coup against them. On 1 November 1963, a coup overthrew Diem, who was killed the next day together with his brother. [101]

Diem had followed a policy of "deconstructing the state" by creating several overlapping agencies and departments who were encouraged to feud with one another to disorganize the South Vietnamese state to such an extent that he hoped that it would make a coup against him impossible.[103] When Diem was overthrown and killed, without any kind of arbiter between the rival arms of the South Vietnamese state, South Vietnam promptly disintegrated.[104] The American Defense Secretary Robert McNamara reported after visiting South Vietnam in December 1963 that "there is no organized government worthy of the name" in Saigon.[105] At a meeting of the plenum of the Politburo in December 1963, Lê Duẩn's "South first" faction triumphed with the Politburo passing a resolution calling for North Vietnam to complete the overthrow of the regime in Saigon as soon as possible while the members of the "North first" faction were dismissed.[106] As South Vietnam descended into chaos, whatever interest Hồ might have had in the French peace plan ended, as it become clear the Viet Cong could overthrow the government in Saigon. A CIA report from 1964 stated the factionalism in South Vietnam had reached "almost the point of anarchy" as various South Vietnamese leaders fought one another, making any sort of effort against the Viet Cong impossible, which was rapidly taking over much of the South Vietnamese countryside.[107]

As South Vietnam collapsed into factionalism and in-fighting while the Viet Cong continued to win the war, it became increasingly apparent to President Lyndon Johnson that only American military intervention could save South Vietnam.[108] Though Johnson did not wish to commit American forces until he had won the 1964 election, he decided to make his intentions clear to Hanoi. In June 1964, the "Seaborn Mission" began as J. Blair Seaborn, the Canadian commissioner to the ICC, arrived in Hanoi with a message from Johnson offering billions of American economic aid and diplomatic recognition in exchange for which North Vietnam would cease trying to overthrow the government of South Vietnam.[109] Seaborn also warned that North Vietnam would suffer the "greatest devastation" from American bombing, saying that Johnson was seriously considering a strategic bombing campaign against North Vietnam.[110] Little came of the backchannel of the "Seaborn Mission" as the North Vietnamese distrusted Seaborn, who pointedly was never allowed to meet Hồ. [111]

In late 1964, People's Army of Vietnam combat troops were sent southwest into officially neutral Laos and Cambodia.[112] By March 1965, American combat troops began arriving in South Vietnam, first to protect the airbases around Chu Lai and Da Nang, later to take on most of the fight as "[m]ore and more American troops were put in to replace Saigon troops who could not, or would not, get involved in the fighting".[113] As fighting escalated, widespread aerial and artillery bombardment all over North Vietnam by the United States Air Force and Navy began with Operation Rolling Thunder. On 8–9 April 1965, Hồ made a secret visit to Beijing to meet Mao Zedong.[114] It was agreed that no Chinese combat troops would enter North Vietnam unless the United States invaded North Vietnam, but that China would send support troops to North Vietnam to help maintain the infrastructure damaged by American bombing.[114] There was a deep distrust and fear of China within the North Vietnamese Politburo, and the suggestion that Chinese troops, even support troops, be allowed into North Vietnam, caused outrage in the Politburo.[115] Hồ had to use all his moral authority to obtain Politburo's approval.[115]

According to Chen Jian, during the mid-to-late 1960s, Lê Duẩn permitted 320,000 Chinese volunteers into North Vietnam to help build infrastructure for the country, thereby freeing a similar number of PAVN personnel to go south.[116] There are no sources from Vietnam, the United States, or the Soviet Union that confirm the number of Chinese troops stationed in North Vietnam. However, the Chinese government later admitted to sending 320,000 Chinese soldiers to Vietnam during the 1960s and spent over $20 billion to support Hanoi's regular North Vietnamese Army and Việt Cộng guerrilla units.[117]

To counter the American bombing, the entire population of North Vietnam was mobilized for the war effort with vast teams of women being used to repair the damage done by the bombers, often at a speed that astonished the Americans.[118] The bombing of North Vietnam proved to be the principal obstacle to opening peace talks as Hồ repeatedly stated that no peace talks would be possible unless the United States unconditionally cease bombing North Vietnam.[119] Like many of the other leaders of the newly independent states of Asia and Africa, Hồ was extremely sensitive about threats, whether perceived or real, to his nation's independence and sovereignty.[119] Hồ regarded the American bombing as a violation of North Vietnam's sovereignty, and he felt that to negotiate with the Americans reserving the right to bomb North Vietnam should he not behave as they wanted him to do, would diminish North Vietnam's independence. [119]

In March 1966, a Canadian diplomat, Chester Ronning, arrived in Hanoi with an offer to use his "good offices" to begin peace talks.[120] However, the Ronning mission foundered upon the bombing issue, as the North Vietnamese demanded an unconditional halt to the bombing, an undertaking that Johnson refused to give.[120] In June 1966, Janusz Lewandowski, the Polish Commissioner to the ICC, was able via d'Orlandi to see Henry Cabot Lodge Jr, the American ambassador to South Vietnam, with an offer from Hồ. [120] Hồ's offer for a "political compromise" as transmitted by Lewandowski included allowing South Vietnam to maintain its alliance with the U.S, instead of becoming neutral; having the Viet Cong "take part" in negotiations for a coalition government, instead of being allowed to automatically enter a coalition government; and allowing a "reasonable calendar" for the withdrawal of American troops instead of an immediate withdrawal.[121] Operation Marigold as the Lewandowski channel came to be code-named almost led to American-North Vietnamese talks in Warsaw in December 1966 but collapsed over the bombing issue.[122]

In January 1967, General Nguyễn Chí Thanh, the commander of the forces in South Vietnam, returned to Hanoi, to present a plan that became the genesis of the Tet Offensive a year later.[123] Thanh expressed much concern about the Americans invading Laos to cut the Ho Chi Minh Trail, and to preempt this possibility, urged an all-out offensive to win the war with a sudden blow.[123] Lê' Duẩn supported Thanh's plans, which were stoutly opposed by the Defense Minister, General Võ Nguyên Giáp, who preferred to continue with guerrilla war, arguing that the superior American firepower would ensure the failure of Thanh's proposed offensive.[124] With the Politburo divided, it was agreed to study and debate the issue more.[125]

In July 1967, Hồ Chí Minh and most of the Politburo of the Communist Party met in a high-profile conference where they concluded the war had fallen into a stalemate. The American military presence forced the PAVN to expend the majority of their resources on maintaining the Hồ Chí Minh trail rather than reinforcing their comrades' ranks in the South. Hồ seems to have agreed to Thanh's offensive because he wanted to see Vietnam reunified within his lifetime, and the increasingly ailing Hồ was painfully aware that he did not have much time left.[126] With Hồ's permission, the Việt Cộng planned a massive Tet Offensive that would commence on 31 January 1968, to take much of the South by force and deal a heavy blow to the American military. The offensive was executed at great cost and with heavy casualties on Việt Cộng's political branches and armed forces. The scope of the action shocked the world, which until then had been assured that the Communists were "on the ropes". The optimistic spin that the American military command had sustained for years was no longer credible. The bombing of North Vietnam and the Hồ Chí Minh trail was halted, and American and Vietnamese negotiators held discussions on how the war might be ended. From then on, Hồ Chí Minh and his government's strategy, based on the idea of not using conventional warfare and facing the might of the United States Army, which would wear them down eventually while merely prolonging the conflict, would lead to the eventual acceptance of Hanoi's terms, materialized.

In early 1969, Hồ suffered a heart attack and was in increasingly bad health for the rest of the year.[127] In July 1969, Jean Sainteny, a former French official in Vietnam who knew Hồ secretly relayed a letter written to him from President Richard Nixon.[127] Nixon's letter proposed working together to end this "tragic war", but also warned that if North Vietnam made no concessions at the peace talks in Paris by 1 November, Nixon would resort to "measures of great consequence and force".[127] Hồ's reply letter, which Nixon received on 30 August 1969, welcomed peace talks with the U.S. to look for a way to end the war but made no concessions, as Nixon's threats made no impression on him. [127]

Personal life

 
Hồ Chí Minh holding his god-daughter, baby Elizabeth (Babette) Aubrac, with Elizabeth's mother, Lucie, 1946

In addition to being a politician, Hồ Chí Minh was also a writer, journalist, poet[128] and polyglot. His father was a scholar and teacher who received a high degree in the Nguyễn dynasty Imperial examination. Hồ was taught to master Classical Chinese at a young age. Before the August Revolution, he often wrote poetry in Chữ Hán (the Vietnamese name for the Chinese writing system). One of those is Poems from the Prison Diary, written when he was imprisoned by the police of the Republic of China. This poetry chronicle is Vietnam National Treasure No. 10 and was translated into many languages. It is used in Vietnamese high schools.[129] After Vietnam gained independence from France, the new government exclusively promoted Chữ Quốc Ngữ (Vietnamese writing system in Latin characters) to eliminate illiteracy. Hồ started to create more poems in the modern Vietnamese language for dissemination to a wider range of readers. From when he became president until the appearance of serious health problems, a short poem of his was regularly published in the newspaper Nhân Dân Tết (Lunar new year) edition to encourage his people in working, studying or fighting Americans in the new year.

 
Hồ Chí Minh watching a football game in his favorite fashion, with his closest comrade Prime Minister Phạm Văn Đồng seated to Hồ's left (photo right)

Because he was in exile for nearly 30 years, Hồ could speak fluently as well as read and write professionally in French, English, Russian, Cantonese and Mandarin as well as his mother tongue Vietnamese.[8] In addition, he was reported to speak conversational Esperanto.[130] In the 1920s, he was bureau chief/editor of many newspapers which he established to criticize French Colonial Government of Indochina and serving communism propaganda purposes. Examples are Le Paria (The Pariah) first published in Paris 1922 or Thanh Nien (Youth) first published on 21 June 1925 (21 June was named by The Socialist Republic of Vietnam Government as Vietnam Revolutionary Journalism Day). In many state official visits to the Soviet Union and China, he often talked directly to their communist leaders without interpreters, especially about top-secret information. While being interviewed by Western journalists, he used French.[citation needed] His Vietnamese had a strong accent from his birthplace in the central province of Nghệ An, but could be widely understood throughout the country. [m]

As President, he held formal receptions for foreign heads of state and ambassadors at the Presidential Palace, but he did not live there. He ordered the building of a stilt house at the back of the palace, which is today known as the Presidential Palace Historical Site. His hobbies (according to his secretary Vũ Kỳ) included reading, gardening, feeding fish (many of which are still[when?] living), and visiting schools, and children's homes.[citation needed]

Hồ Chí Minh remained in Hanoi during his final years, demanding the unconditional withdrawal of all non-Vietnamese troops in South Vietnam. By 1969, with negotiations still dragging on, his health began to deteriorate from multiple health problems, including diabetes which prevented him from participating in further active politics. However, he insisted that his forces in the South continue fighting until all of Vietnam was reunited regardless of the length of time that it might take, believing that time was on his side.[citation needed]

Hồ Chí Minh's marriage has long been swathed in secrecy and mystery. He is believed by several scholars of Vietnamese history, to have married Zeng Xueming in October 1926,[132][33] although only being able to live with her for less than a year. Historian Peter Neville claimed that Hồ (at the time known as Ly Thuy[33]) wanted to engage Zeng in the communist movements but she demonstrated a lack of ability and interest in it.[132] In 1927, the mounting repression of Chiang Kai-shek's KMT against the Chinese Communists compelled Hồ to leave for Hong Kong, and his relationship with Zeng appeared to have ended at that time.[133] In addition to the marriage with Zeng Xueming, there is a number of published studies indicating that Hồ had a romantic relationship with Nguyễn Thị Minh Khai.[134] As a young and high-spirited female revolutionary, Minh Khai was delegated to Hong Kong to serve as an assistant to Ho Chi Minh in April 1930 and quickly drew Hồ's attention owing to her physical attractiveness. [135] Hồ even approached the Far Eastern Bureau and requested permission to marry Minh Khai even though the previous marriage with Zeng remained legally valid.[136][137] However, the marriage was unable to take place since Minh Khai had been detained by the British authorities in April 1931.[138][137]

Death

With the outcome of the Vietnam war still in question, Hồ Chí Minh died of heart failure at his home in Hanoi at 9:47 on the morning of 2 September 1969; he was 79 years old.[5][139] His embalmed body is currently on display in a mausoleum in Ba Đình Square in Hanoi despite his will which stated that he wanted to be cremated.[8]: 565 

The North Vietnamese government originally announced Hồ's death on 3 September. A week of mourning for his death was decreed nationwide in North Vietnam from 4 to 11 September 1969.[140] His funeral was attended by about 250,000 people and 5,000 official guests, which included many international mourners.

Representatives from 40 countries and regions were also presented. During the mourning period, North Vietnam received more than 22,000 condolences letters from 20 organizations and 110 countries across the world, such as France, Ethiopia, Yugoslavia, Cuba, Zambia, China, the USSR and many others, mostly Socialist countries.

He was not initially replaced as president; instead, a "collective leadership" composed of several ministers and military leaders took over, known as the Politburo. During North Vietnam's final campaign in 1975, a famous song written by composer Huy Thuc [vi] was often sung by PAVN soldiers: "Bác vẫn cùng chúng cháu hành quân" ("You are still marching with us, Uncle Hồ").[citation needed]

During the Fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975, several PAVN tanks displayed a poster with those same words on it. The day after the battle ended, on 1 May, veteran Australian journalist Denis Warner reported that "When the North Vietnamese marched into Saigon yesterday, they were led by a man who wasn't there".[141]

Legacy

 
Hồ Chí Minh Mausoleum, Hanoi.

The Socialist Republic of Vietnam still praises the legacy of Uncle Hồ (Bác Hồ), the Bringer of Light (Chí Minh). It is comparable to that of Mao Zedong in China and of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il in North Korea. Although Hồ Chí Minh wished for his body to be cremated and his ashes spread to North, Central, and South Vietnam, the body instead is embalmed on view in a mausoleum. His image is featured in many public buildings and schoolrooms, and other displays of reverence.[142] There is at least one temple dedicated to him, built-in then Việt Cộng controlled Vĩnh Long shortly after his death in 1970.[143]

 
Hồ Chí Minh statue and a yellow star as depicted in the Vietnamese flag
 
Hồ Chí Minh statue outside Hồ Chí Minh City Hall, Hồ Chí Minh City

In The Communist Road to Power in Vietnam (1982), Duiker suggests that Hồ Chí Minh's cult of personality is indicative of a larger legacy, one that drew on "elements traditional to the exercise of control and authority in Vietnamese society."[144] Duiker is drawn to an "irresistible and persuasive" comparison with China. As in China, leading party cadres were "most likely to be intellectuals descended [like Hồ Chí Minh] from rural scholar-gentry families" in the interior (the protectorates of Annam and Tonkin). Conversely, the pioneers of constitutional nationalism tended to be from the more "Westernised" coastal south (Saigon and surrounding French direct-rule Cochinchina) and to be from "commercial families without a traditional Confucian background".[145]

 
Shrine devoted to Hồ Chí Minh

In Vietnam, as in China, Communism presented itself as a root and branch rejection of Confucianism, condemned for its ritualism, inherent conservatism, and resistance to change. Once in power, the Vietnamese Communists may not have fought Confucianism "as bitterly as did their Chinese counterparts", but its social prestige was "essentially destroyed." In the political sphere, the puppet son of heaven (which had been weakly represented by the Bảo Đại) was replaced by the people's republic. Orthodox materialism accorded no place to heaven, gods, or other supernatural forces. Socialist collectivism undermined the tradition of the Confucian family leader (Gia Truong). The socialist conception of social equality destroyed the Confucian views of class.[146][147]

 
Temple devoted to Nguyễn Sinh Sắc, Hồ Chí Minh's father

Duiker argues many were to find the new ideology "congenial" precisely because of its similarities with the teachings of the old Master: "the belief in one truth, embodied in quasi-sacred texts"; in "an anointed elite, trained in an all-embracing doctrine and responsible for leading the broad masses and indoctrinating them in proper thought and behavior"; in "the subordination of the individual to the community"; and in the perfectibility, through corrective action, of human nature.[148] All of this, Duiker suggests, was in some manner present in the aura of the new Master, Chi Minh, "the bringer of light", "Uncle Hồ" to whom "all the desirable qualities of Confucian ethics" are ascribed.[149] Under Hồ Chí Minh, Vietnamese Marxism developed, in effect, as a kind of "reformed Confucianism" revised to meet "the challenges of the modern era" and, not least among these, of "total mobilization in the struggle for national independence and state power."[150]

This "congeniality" with Confucian tradition was remarked on by Nguyen Khac Vien, a leading Hanoi intellectual of the 1960s and 70s. In Confucianism and Marxism in Vietnam[151] Nguyen Khac Vien, saw definite parallels between Confucian and party discipline, between the traditional scholar gentry and Hồ Chí Minh's party cadres.[152]

A completely different form of the cult of Hồ Chí Minh (and one tolerated by the government with uneasiness) is his identification in Vietnamese folk religion with the Jade Emperor, who supposedly incarnated again on earth as Hồ Chí Minh. Today, Hồ Chí Minh as the Jade Emperor is supposed to speak from the spirit world through Spiritualist mediums. The first such medium was one Madam Lang in the 1990s, but the cult acquired a significant number of followers through another medium, Madam Xoan. She established on 1 January 2001 Đạo Ngọc Phật Hồ Chí Minh (the Way of Hồ Chí Minh as the Jade Buddha) also known as Đạo Bác Hồ (the Way of Uncle Hồ) at đền Hòa Bình (the Peace Temple) in Chí Linh-Sao Đỏ district of Hải Dương province. She then founded the Peace Society of Heavenly Mediums (Đoàn đồng thiên Hòa Bình). Reportedly, by 2014 the movement had around 24,000 followers.[153]

The Vietnamese government's attempts to immortalize Hồ Chí Minh was also met with significant controversies and opposition. The regime is sensitive to anything that might question the official hagiography. This includes references to Hồ Chí Minh's personal life that might detract from the image of the dedicated "the father of the revolution",[154] the "celibate married only to the cause of revolution".[155] William Duiker's Ho Chi Minh: A Life (2000) was candid on the matter of Hồ Chí Minh's liaisons.[8]: 605, fn 58  The government sought cuts in the Vietnamese translation[156] and banned distribution of an issue of the Far Eastern Economic Review, which carried a small item about the controversy.[156]

Many authors writing on Vietnam argued on the question of whether Hồ Chí Minh was fundamentally a nationalist or a Communist.[157]

Depictions of Hồ Chí Minh

 
Ho Chi Minh pictured with children in a photo by state media

Busts, statues, and memorial plaques and exhibitions are displayed in destinations on his extensive world journey in exile from 1911 to 1941 including France, the United Kingdom, Russia, China, and Thailand.[158]

Many activists and musicians wrote songs about Hồ Chí Minh and his revolution in different languages during the Vietnam War to demonstrate against the United States. Spanish songs were composed by Félix Pita Rodríguez, Carlos Puebla and Alí Primera. In addition, the Chilean folk singer Víctor Jara referenced Hồ Chí Minh in his anti-war song "El derecho de vivir en paz" ("The Right to Live in Peace"). Pete Seeger wrote "Teacher Uncle Ho". Ewan MacColl produced "The Ballad of Ho Chi Minh" in 1954, describing "a man who is the father of the Indo-Chinese people, And his name [it] is Ho Chi Minh."[159] Russian songs about him were written by Vladimir Fere, and German songs about him were written by Kurt Demmler.[citation needed]

Various places, boulevards, and squares are named after him around the world, especially in Socialist states and former Communist states. In Russia, there is a Hồ Chí Minh square and monument in Moscow, a Hồ Chí Minh boulevard in Saint Petersburg, and a Hồ Chí Minh square in Ulyanovsk (the birthplace of Vladimir Lenin, a sister city of Vinh, the birthplace of Hồ Chí Minh). During the Vietnam War, the then-West Bengal government, in the hands of CPI(M), renamed Harrington Street to Ho Chi Minh Sarani, which is also the location of the consulate general of the United States in Kolkata.[160] According to the Vietnamese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as many as 20 countries across Asia, Europe, America and Africa have erected monuments or statues in remembrance of Hồ Chí Minh.[161]

International influence

 
Hồ Chí Minh bust in Kolkata, India

Hồ Chí Minh is considered one of the most influential leaders in the world. Time magazine listed him in the list of 100 Most Important People of the Twentieth Century (Time 100) in 1998.[162][163] His thought and revolution inspired many leaders and people on a global scale in Asia, Africa and Latin America during the decolonization movement which occurred after World War II. As a communist, he was one of the few international figures who were relatively well regarded in the West, and did not face the same extent of international criticism as much as other Communist factions, going to even win praise for his actions.[164]

In 1987, UNESCO officially recommended that its member states "join in the commemoration of the centenary of the birth of President Hồ Chí Minh by organizing various events as a tribute to his memory", considering "the important and many-sided contributions of President Hồ Chí Minh to the fields of culture, education and the arts" who "devoted his whole life to the national liberation of the Vietnamese people, contributing to the common struggle of peoples for peace, national independence, democracy, and social progress".[165]

One of Hồ Chí Minh's works, The Black Race, much of it originally written in French, highlights his views on the oppression of peoples from colonialism and imperialism in 20 written articles.[166][167] Other books such as Revolution which published selected works and articles of Hồ Chí Minh in English also highlighted Hồ Chí Minh's interpretation and beliefs in socialism and communism, and in fighting against what he perceived to be evils stemming from capitalism, colonialism, and imperialism.[168]

See also

Explanatory notes

  1. ^ /ˌhoʊ tʃiː ˈmɪn/ HOH chee MIN,[1] Vietnamese: [hò cǐ mīŋ] ( listen), Saigon: [hò cǐ mɨn].
  2. ^ Chữ Hán: 胡志明
  3. ^ a b c His birth name appeared in a letter from the director of Collège Quốc học, dated 7 August 1908.[2]
  4. ^ The North Vietnamese government initially announced his death on 3 September in order to prevent it from coinciding with National Day. In 1989, the Politburo of unified Vietnam revealed the change, along with changes which were made to his original will, and it revised the date of death to 2 September.[5][6]
  5. ^ Or simply as Bác, pronounced [ɓǎːk].
  6. ^ or more formally as President Ho Chi Minh (Chủ tịch Hồ Chí Minh)
  7. ^ including Nguyễn Tất Thành, Nguyễn Ái Quốc, Văn Ba and over 50–200 aliases.
  8. ^ including Người cha già của dân tộc ('Father of the people')
  9. ^ Predecessor of the current Communist Party of Vietnam
  10. ^ In his application to the French Colonial School – "Nguyen Tat Thanh, born 1892 at Vinh, son of Mr. Nguyen Sinh Huy (sub doctor in literature)"
  11. ^ He told Paris Police (Surete) he was born 15 January 1894.
  12. ^ Dommen (2001), p.340 gives a lower estimate of 32,000 executions
  13. ^ He sometimes went on-air to deliver important political messages and encourage soldiers.[131][page needed]

References

  1. ^ "Ho Chi Minh". Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary.
  2. ^ Vũ Ngự Chiêu (23 October 2011). . Hợp Lưu Magazine (in Vietnamese). Archived from the original on 7 January 2019. Retrieved 10 December 2013. Note: See the document in French, from Centre des archives d'Outre-mer [CAOM] (Aix)/Gouvernement General de l'Indochine [GGI]/Fonds Residence Superieure d'Annam [RSA]/carton R1, and the note in English at the end of the cited article
  3. ^ a b Trần Quốc Vượng. "Lời truyền miệng dân gian về Hồ Chí Minh". BBC Vietnamese. Retrieved 10 December 2013.
  4. ^ a b Nguyễn Vĩnh Châu. . Hợp Lưu Magazine. Archived from the original on 3 December 2013. Retrieved 10 December 2013.
  5. ^ a b Nguyễn Xuân Tùng (18 September 2014). "Giới thiệu những tư liệu về Di chúc của Chủ tịch Hồ Chí Minh" [Introduction to documents related to President Ho Chi Minh's will] (in Vietnamese). Ministry of Justice (Vietnam). Retrieved 1 October 2021.
  6. ^ Ngo, Tam T. T. (2018). "The Uncle Hồ religion in Vietnam". In Dean, Kenneth; van der Veer, Peter (eds.). The Secular in South, East, and Southeast Asia. Springer. p. 219. ISBN 978-3-319-89369-3.
  7. ^ "Uncle Ho's legacy lives on in Vietnam". BBC News. 6 June 2012. Retrieved 25 April 2022.
  8. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Duiker, William J. Ho Chi Minh: A Life. New York: Hyperion, 2000.
  9. ^ Duncanson 1957, p. 85.
  10. ^ Pike 1976.
  11. ^ Trần Dân Tiên 1994.
  12. ^ Yen Son. "Nguyen Ai Quoc, the Brilliant Champion of the Revolution." Thuong Tin Hanoi. 30 August 1945.
  13. ^ Ton That Thien 18, 1890 is the most likely year of his birth. There is troubling conflicting evidence, however. When he was arrested in Hong Kong in 1931, he attested in court documents that he was 36. The passport he used to enter Russia in 1921 also gave the year 1895 as his birth date. His application to the Colonial School in Paris gave his birth year as 1892
  14. ^ a b Hunt 2016, p. 125.
  15. ^ "Ngo Dinh Diem and ho Chi Minh". nguoiviet.com. 3 November 2018.
  16. ^ Tucker 1999.
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Bibliography

  • Ang, Cheng Guan (2002). The Vietnam War from the Other Side. RoutledgeCurzon. pp. 55–58, 76. ISBN 978-0-7007-1615-9.
  • Brocheux, Pierre (2007). Ho Chi Minh: A Biography. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-85062-9.
  • Dommen, Arthur J. (2001). The Indochinese Experience of the French and the Americans. Indiana University Press. ISBN 9780253338549.
  • Duncanson, Dennis J (1957). "Ho Chi Minh in Hong Kong 1931–1932". The China Quarterly. 57 (Jan–Mar 1957): 85.
  • Duiker, William J. (1982). The Communist Road to Power in Vietnam. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press. OCLC 864836133.
  • —————— (2000). . Hyperion Books. ISBN 9780786887019. Archived from the original on 13 May 2021. Retrieved 13 May 2021.
  • —————— (2012). Ho Chi Minh: A Life. Hachette Books. ISBN 9781401305611.
  • Fall, Bernard. B (1967). Last Reflections on a War. Doubleday. ISBN 9780805203295.
  • Gaiduk, Ilya (2003). Confronting Vietnam: Soviet Policy Toward the Indochina Conflict, 1954-1963. Stanford: Stanford University Press. ISBN 0804747121.
  • Forbes, Andrew; Henley, David (2012). Vietnam Past and Present: The North. Chiang Mai, Thailand: Cognoscenti Books.
  • Hunt, David (1993). The American War in Vietnam. SEAP Publications. ISBN 0877271313.
  • Hunt, Michael H. (2016). The World Transformed 1945 To the Present. New York City: Oxford University Press. p. 125. ISBN 978-0-19-937102-0.
  • Jacobs, Seth (2006). Cold War Mandarin: Ngo Dinh Diem and the Origins of America's War in Vietnam, 1950–1963. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 9780742573956.
  • Karnow, Stanley (1983). Vietnam: A History. New York: Penguin Books. ISBN 9780712600101.
  • Langguth, A.J. (2000). Our Vietnam: The War 1954–1975. New York: Simon and Schuster. ISBN 9780743212441.
  • Lanzona, V.A.; Rettig, F. (2020). Women Warriors in Southeast Asia. Routledge Studies in the Modern History of Asia. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-1-317-57184-1. Retrieved 19 November 2021.
  • Logevall, Fredrik (2012). Embers of War: The fall of an Empire and the making of America's Vietnam. Random House. ISBN 978-0-679-64519-1.
  • Marr, David G. (2013). Vietnam: State, War, and Revolution (1945–1946). University of California Press. ISBN 9780520954977.
  • —————— (1984). Vietnamese Tradition on Trial, 1920-1945. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-90744-7. Retrieved 17 November 2021.
  • Moise, Edwin E. (1988). "Nationalism and Communism in Vietnam". Journal of Third World Studies. University Press of Florida. 5 (2): 6–22. JSTOR 45193059.
  • Neville, Peter (2018). "Chapter 3: Survival". Ho Chi Minh. Routledge Historical Biographies. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-0-429-82822-5. Retrieved 17 November 2021.
  • Nguyen, Lien-Hang T (2012). Hanoi's War: An International History of the War for Peace in Vietnam. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 978-0807882696.
  • Pike, Douglas (1976). Ho Chi Minh: A Post-War Re-evaluation. 30th Annual Congress of Orientalists. Mexico City. Retrieved 21 December 2017 – via Vietnam Center and Sam Johnson Vietnam Archive.
  • Quinn-Judge, Sophie (2002). Ho Chi Minh: The Missing Years 1919 – 1941. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0520235335.
  • Shafer, D. Michael (1988). Deadly Paradigms: The Failure of U.S. Counterinsurgency Policy. Princeton University Press. ISBN 9781400860586. JSTOR j.ctt7zvtwm.
  • Trần Dân Tiên (1994). Những mẩu chuyện về đời hoạt động của Hồ Chủ tịch [The tales of the life of President Ho]. Nhà xuất bản Chính trị quốc gia [National Political Publishing House].
  • Tôn Thất Thiện (1990). Ho Chi Minh and the Comintern. Singapore: Information and Resource Center. ISBN 978-9810021399.
  • Tucker, Spencer C. (1999). Vietnam. UCL Press. ISBN 9781857289220.
  • Turner, Robert F. (1975). Vietnamese Communism: Its Origin and Development. Hoover Institution Press.
  • Valentino, Benjamin (2005). Final Solutions: Mass Killing and Genocide in the 20th Century. Cornell University Press. ISBN 9780801472732.
  • Vu, Tuong (2010). Paths to Development in Asia: South Korea, Vietnam, China, and Indonesia. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781139489010.
  • Zinn, Howard (1995). A People's History of the United States: 1492–present. New York: Harper Perennial. pp. 460–461. ISBN 978-0-06-092643-4.

Further reading

Essays

  • Bernard B. Fall, ed., 1967. Ho Chi Minh on Revolution and War: Selected Writings 1920–1966. New American Library.

Biography

  • Osborne, Milton. "Ho Chi Minh" History Today (Nov 1980), Vol. 30 Issue 11, p40-46; popular history; online.
  • Morris, Virginia and Hills, Clive. 2018. Ho Chi Minh's Blueprint for Revolution: In the Words of Vietnamese Strategists and Operatives, McFarland & Co Inc.
  • Jean Lacouture. 1968. Ho Chi Minh: A Political Biography. Random House.
  • Khắc Huyên. 1971. Vision Accomplished? The Enigma of Ho Chi Minh. The Macmillan Company.
  • David Halberstam. 1971. Ho. Rowman & Littlefield.
  • Hồ chí Minh toàn tập. NXB chính trị quốc gia
  • Tôn Thất Thiện, Was Ho Chi Minh a Nationalist? Ho Chi Minh and the Comintern. Information and Resource Centre, Singapore, 1990
  • William J. Duiker. Ho Chi Minh: A Life. New York: Hyperion, 2001

Việt Minh, NLF and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam

War in Vietnam

  • Frances FitzGerald. 1972. Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam. Little, Brown and Company.
  • David Hunt. 1993. The American War in Vietnam, SEAP Publications
  • Ilya Gaiduck 2003 Confronting Vietnam: Soviet Policy Toward the Indochina Conflict, 1954–1963, Stanford University Press
  • Nguyen Lien-Hang T. 2012 Hanoi's War: An International History of the War for Peace in Vietnam, University of North Carolina Press

American foreign policy

External links

 
Wikisource has original works by or about:
Ho Chi Minh
 
Wikiquote has quotations related to Ho Chi Minh.
 
Wikimedia Commons has media related to:
Hồ Chí Minh (category)
  • Chi Minh Ho (1890–1969) at IMDb
  • Works by or about Ho Chi Minh at Internet Archive
  • The Drayton Court Hotel
  • Hồ Chí Minh obituary, The New York Times, 4 September 1969
  • Ho Chi Minh Selected Writings in PDF format
  • Satellite photo of the mausoleum on Google Maps
  • Final Tribute to Hồ from the Central Committee of the Vietnam Workers' Party[permanent dead link]
  • Bibliography: Writings by and about Hồ Chí Minh
Political offices
Preceded byas Emperor President of North Vietnam
2 September 1945 – 2 September 1969 		Succeeded by
Preceded byas Prime Minister of the Empire of Vietnam Prime Minister of North Vietnam
2 September 1945 – 20 September 1955 		Succeeded by
Party political offices
Preceded by
New title
 Chairman of the Workers' Party of Vietnam
1951–1969 		Succeeded by
None
Preceded by First Secretary of the Workers' Party of Vietnam
1956–1960 		Succeeded by

April 17, 2023
minh, other, uses, disambiguation, hồ, chí, minh, née, nguyễn, sinh, cung, 1890, september, 1969, commonly, known, uncle, bác, hồ, president, hồ, chủ, tịch, other, aliases, sobriquets, vietnamese, revolutionary, statesman, served, prime, minister, vietnam, fro. For other uses see Ho Chi Minh disambiguation Hồ Chi Minh a b nee Nguyễn Sinh Cung c 3 4 19 May 1890 2 September 1969 d commonly known as Uncle Ho Bac Hồ e 7 President Ho Hồ Chủ tịch f and by other aliases g and sobriquets h was a Vietnamese revolutionary and statesman He served as Prime Minister of Vietnam from 1945 to 1955 and as President of Vietnam from 1945 until his death in 1969 Ideologically a Marxist Leninist he was the Chairman and First Secretary of the Workers Party of Vietnam i Chủ tịchHồ Chi MinhPortrait of Hồ Chi Minh c 19461st President of the Democratic Republic of VietnamHonoured asFather of the peopleNgười cha gia của dan tộcIn office 2 September 1945 2 September 1969Preceded byBảo Đại as Emperor Succeeded byTon Đức ThắngChairman of the Workers Party of VietnamIn office 19 February 1951 2 September 1969General SecretaryTrường ChinhLe Duẩn acting Preceded byPosition establishedSucceeded byPosition abolishedFirst Secretary of the Workers Party of VietnamIn office 1 November 1955 10 September 1960Preceded byTrường ChinhSucceeded byLe Duẩn1st Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of VietnamIn office 2 September 1945 20 September 1955Preceded byTrần Trọng Kim as Prime Minister of the Empire of Vietnam Succeeded byPhạm Văn ĐồngMinister of Foreign AffairsIn office 28 August 1945 2 March 1946Preceded byTrần Văn Chương Empire of Vietnam Succeeded byNguyễn Tường TamIn office 3 November 1946 March 1947Preceded byNguyễn Tường TamSucceeded byHoang Minh GiamFull Member of the 2nd and 3rd PolitburoIn office 31 March 1935 2 September 1969Personal detailsBornNguyễn Sinh Cung 1890 05 19 19 May 1890Kim Lien French IndochinaDied2 September 1969 1969 09 02 aged 79 Hanoi North VietnamResting placeHo Chi Minh Mausoleum HanoiPolitical partyCommunist Party of Vietnam 1924 1969 Other politicalaffiliationsFrench Section of the Workers International 1919 1921 French Communist Party 1921 1925 SpouseTăng Tuyết Minh m 1926 wbr RelationsBạch Lien or Nguyễn Thị Thanh sister Nguyễn Sinh Khiem or Nguyễn Tất Đạt brother Nguyễn Sinh Xin brother ParentsNguyễn Sinh Sắc father Hoang Thị Loan mother Alma materCommunist University of the Toilers of the EastOccupationPoliticianrevolutionarypastry chefSignatureHo Chi Minh s voice source source source track Ho Chi Minh declaring the independence of VietnamRecorded 2 September 1945Hồ Chi Minh was born in Nghệ An province in the French protectorate of Annam From 1911 he left French Indochina to continue his revolutionary activities He was also one of the founding members of the French Communist Party In 1930 he founded the Communist Party of Vietnam and in 1941 he returned to Vietnam and founded the Việt Minh independence movement an umbrella group Then Hồ led the August Revolution against the Japanese in August 1945 which resulted in the independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam After the French returned to power the following month Hồ s government retreated to the Việt Bắc region and began guerrilla warfare The Việt Minh defeated the French Union in 1954 at the Battle of Điện Bien Phủ ending the First Indochina War and resulting in the division of Vietnam with the Việt Minh in control of North Vietnam and anti communists in control of South Vietnam He was a key figure in the People s Army of Vietnam and the Việt Cộng during the Vietnam War which lasted from 1955 to 1975 Hồ officially stepped down from power in 1965 due to health problems and died in 1969 North Vietnam was ultimately victorious against South Vietnam and its allies Vietnam was officially unified in 1976 Saigon the former capital of South Vietnam was renamed Ho Chi Minh City in his honor The details of Hồ Chi Minh s life before he came to power in Vietnam are uncertain He is known to have used between 50 8 582 and 200 pseudonyms 9 Information on his birth and early life is ambiguous and subject to academic debate At least four existing official biographies vary on names dates places and other hard facts while unofficial biographies vary even more widely 10 Aside from being a politician Hồ was a writer poet and journalist He wrote several books articles and poems in Chinese Vietnamese and French Contents 1 Early life 2 Overseas sojourn 2 1 In France 2 2 In the United States 2 3 In Britain 3 Political education in France 4 In the Soviet Union and China 5 Independence movement 5 1 Birth of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam 6 Becoming president 7 Vietnam War 8 Personal life 9 Death 10 Legacy 10 1 Depictions of Hồ Chi Minh 11 International influence 12 See also 13 Explanatory notes 14 References 14 1 Bibliography 15 Further reading 15 1 Essays 15 2 Biography 15 3 Việt Minh NLF and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam 15 4 War in Vietnam 15 5 American foreign policy 16 External linksEarly life EditHồ Chi Minh was born as Nguyễn Sinh Cung 3 c 4 in 1890 in the village of Lang Chua or Hoang Tru in Kim Lien commune Nghệ An province in Central Vietnam which was then a French protectorate Although 1890 is generally accepted as his birth year at various times he used four other birth years 11 page needed 1891 12 1892 j 1894 k and 1895 13 He lived in his father Nguyễn Sinh Sắc s village of Lang Sen in Kim Lien until 1895 when his father sent him to Huế for study He had three siblings his sister Bạch Lien Nguyễn Thị Thanh a clerk in the French Army his brother Nguyễn Sinh Khiem Nguyễn Tất Đạt a geomancer and traditional herbalist and another brother Nguyễn Sinh Nhuận who died in infancy As a young child Cung Hồ studied with his father before more formal classes with a scholar named Vuong Thuc Do He quickly mastered Chữ Han a prerequisite for any serious study of Confucianism while honing his colloquial Vietnamese writing 8 21 In addition to his studies he was fond of adventure and loved to fly kites and go fishing 8 21 Following Confucian tradition his father gave him a new name at the age of 10 Nguyễn Tất Thanh His father was a Confucian scholar and teacher and later an imperial magistrate in the small remote district of Binh Khe Qui Nhơn He was demoted for abuse of power after an influential local figure died several days after having received 102 strokes of the cane as punishment for an infraction 8 21 His father was eligible to serve in the imperial bureaucracy but he refused because it meant serving the French 14 This exposed Thanh Hồ to rebellion at a young age and seemed to be the norm for the province Nevertheless he received a French education attending College Quốc học lycee or secondary education in Huế in Central Vietnam His disciples Phạm Văn Đồng and Vo Nguyen Giap also attended the school as did Ngo Đinh Diệm the future President of South Vietnam and political rival 15 His early life is uncertain but there are some documents indicating activities regarding an early revolutionary spirit during French occupied Vietnam but conflicting sources remain Previously it was believed that Thanh Hồ was involved in an anti slavery anti corvee demonstration of poor peasants in Huế in May 1908 which endangered his student status at College Quốc học However a document from the Centre des archives d Outre mer in France shows that he was admitted to College Quốc học on 8 August 1908 which was several months after the anti corvee demonstration 9 13 April 1908 c Later in life he claimed the 1908 revolt had been the moment when his revolutionary outlook emerged citation needed but his application to the French Colonial Administrative School in 1911 undermines this version of events in which he stated that he left school to go abroad Because his father had been dismissed he no longer had any hope for a governmental scholarship and went southward taking a position at Dục Thanh school in Phan Thiết for about six months then traveled to Saigon citation needed Overseas sojourn EditIn France Edit Commemorative plaque in Haymarket in London In Saigon he applied to work as a kitchen helper on a French merchant steamer the Amiral de Latouche Treville using the alias Văn Ba The ship departed on 5 June 1911 and arrived in Marseille France on 5 July 1911 The ship then left for Le Havre and Dunkirk returning to Marseille in mid September There he applied for the French Colonial Administrative School but his application was rejected He instead decided to begin traveling the world by working on ships and visiting many countries from 1911 to 1917 16 page needed In the United States Edit While working as the cook s helper on a ship in 1912 Thanh Hồ traveled to the United States From 1912 to 1913 he may have lived in New York City Harlem and Boston where he claimed to have worked as a baker at the Parker House Hotel The only evidence that he was in the United States is a letter to French colonial administrators dated 15 December 1912 and postmarked New York City he gave his address as the poste restante in Le Havre and his occupation as a sailor 17 and a postcard to Phan Chu Trinh in Paris where he mentioned working at the Parker House Hotel Inquiries to the Parker House management revealed no records of his ever having worked there 8 51 It is believed that while in the US he made contact with Korean nationalists an experience that developed his political outlook Sophie Quinn Judge states that this is in the realm of conjecture 17 He was also influenced by Pan Africanist and black nationalist Marcus Garvey during his stay and said he attended meetings of the Universal Negro Improvement Association 18 19 page needed In Britain Edit At various points between 1913 and 1919 Thanh Hồ claimed to have lived in West Ealing and later in Crouch End Hornsey He reportedly worked as either a chef or dishwasher reports vary at the Drayton Court Hotel in West Ealing 20 Claims that he was trained as a pastry chef under Auguste Escoffier at the Carlton Hotel in Haymarket Westminster are not supported by documentary evidence 21 22 However the wall of New Zealand House home of the New Zealand High Commission which now stands on the site of the Carlton Hotel displays a blue plaque During 1913 Thanh was also employed as a pastry chef on the Newhaven Dieppe ferry route 23 Political education in France Edit Hồ Chi Minh 1921 going by the pseudonym Nguyễn Ai Quốc attending a Communist congress in Marseille France From 1919 to 1923 Thanh Hồ began to show an interest in politics while living in France being influenced by his friend and Socialist Party of France comrade Marcel Cachin Thanh claimed to have arrived in Paris from London in 1917 but the French police had only documents recording his arrival in June 1919 17 In Paris he joined the Groupe des Patriotes Annamites The Group of Vietnamese Patriots that included Phan Chu Trinh Phan Văn Trường Nguyễn Thế Truyền and Nguyễn An Ninh 24 They had been publishing newspaper articles advocating for Vietnamese independence under the pseudonym Nguyễn Ai Quốc Nguyễn the Patriot prior to Thanh s arrival in Paris 25 The group petitioned for recognition of the civil rights of the Vietnamese people in French Indochina to the Western powers at the Versailles peace talks but they were ignored Citing the principle of self determination outlined before the peace accords they requested the allied powers to end French colonial rule of Vietnam and ensure the formation of an independent government Before the conference the group sent their letter to allied leaders including French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau and United States President Woodrow Wilson They were unable to obtain consideration at Versailles but the episode would later help establish the future Hồ Chi Minh as the symbolic leader of the anti colonial movement at home in Vietnam 26 Since Thanh was the public face behind the publication of the document although it was written by Phan Văn Trường 27 he soon became known as Nguyễn Ai Quốc and first used the name in September during an interview with a Chinese newspaper correspondent 8 Many authors have stated that 1919 was a lost Wilsonian moment where the future Hồ Chi Minh could have adopted a pro American and less radical position if only President Wilson had received him However at the time of the Versailles Conference Hồ Chi Minh was committed to a socialist program While the conference was ongoing Nguyễn Ai Quốc was already delivering speeches on the prospects of Bolshevism in Asia and was attempting to persuade French socialists to join Lenin s Communist International 28 A 1920 security report by the French Indochinese government on Nguyễn Tất Thanh listing his aliases places of residence his father s occupation as well as other information In December 1920 Quốc Hồ became a representative to the Congress of Tours of the Socialist Party of France voted for the Third International and was a founding member of the French Communist Party Taking a position in the Colonial Committee of the party he tried to draw his comrades attention towards people in French colonies including Indochina but his efforts were often unsuccessful While living in Paris he reportedly had a relationship with a dressmaker named Marie Briere As discovered in 2018 Quốc also had relations with the members of Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea like Kim Kyu sik Jo So ang while in Paris 29 During this period he began to write journal articles and short stories as well as run his Vietnamese nationalist group In May 1922 he wrote an article for a French magazine criticizing the use of English words by French sportswriters 30 The article implored Prime Minister Raymond Poincare to outlaw such Franglais as le manager le round and le knock out His articles and speeches caught the attention of Dmitry Manuilsky who would soon sponsor his trip to the Soviet Union and under whose tutelage he would become a high ranking member of the Soviet Comintern 31 In the Soviet Union and China EditExternal video Booknotes interview with William Duiker on Hồ Chi Minh A Life 12 November 2000 C SPAN A plaque in Compoint Lane fr District 17 Paris indicates where Hồ Chi Minh lived from 1921 to 1923 In 1923 Quốc Hồ left Paris for Moscow carrying a passport with the name Chen Vang a Chinese merchant 8 86 where he was employed by the Comintern studied at the Communist University of the Toilers of the East 8 92 32 and participated in the Fifth Comintern Congress in June 1924 before arriving in Canton present day Guangzhou China in November 1924 using the name Ly Thuy In 1925 1926 he organized Youth Education Classes and occasionally gave socialist lectures to Vietnamese revolutionary young people living in Canton at the Whampoa Military Academy These young people would become the seeds of a new revolutionary pro communist movement in Vietnam several years later According to William Duiker he lived with a Chinese woman Zeng Xueming Tăng Tuyết Minh whom he married on 18 October 1926 33 When his comrades objected to the match he told them I will get married despite your disapproval because I need a woman to teach me the language and keep house 33 She was 21 and he was 36 They married in the same place where Zhou Enlai had married earlier and then lived in the residence of a Comintern agent Mikhail Borodin 33 Hoang Văn Chi argued that in June 1925 he betrayed Phan Bội Chau the famous leader of a rival revolutionary faction and his father s old friend to French Secret Service agents in Shanghai for 100 000 piastres 34 A source states that he later claimed he did it because he expected Chau s trial to stir up anti French sentiment and because he needed the money to establish a communist organization 34 In Ho Chi Minh A Life William Duiker considered this hypothesis but ultimately rejected it 8 126 128 Other sources claim that Nguyễn Thượng Huyện was responsible for Chau s capture Chau sentenced to lifetime house arrest never denounced Quốc citation needed After Chiang Kai shek s 1927 anti communist coup Quốc Hồ left Canton again in April 1927 and returned to Moscow spending part of the summer of 1927 recuperating from tuberculosis in Crimea before returning to Paris once more in November He then returned to Asia by way of Brussels Berlin Switzerland and Italy where he sailed to Bangkok Thailand arriving in July 1928 Although we have been separated for almost a year our feelings for each other do not have to be said to be felt he reassured Minh in an intercepted letter 33 In this period he served as a senior agent undertaking Comintern activities in Southeast Asia citation needed Ho Chi Minh worked as a cook all over the world from 1911 to 1928 also in Milano This plaque in Via Pasubio on the left next to Antica Trattoria Della Pesa remembers one of his workplaces House on Memorium for Hồ Chi Minh in Ban Nachok Nakhon Phanom Thailand Quốc Hồ remained in Thailand staying in the Thai village of Nachok 35 until late 1929 when he moved on to India and then Shanghai In Hong Kong in early 1930 he chaired a meeting with representatives from two Vietnamese communist parties to merge them into a unified organization the Communist Party of Vietnam 36 He also founded the Indochinese Communist Party 37 In June 1931 Hồ was arrested in Hong Kong as part of a collaboration between the French colonial authorities in Indochina and the Hong Kong Police Force scheduled to be deported back to French Indochina Hồ was successfully defended by British solicitor Frank Loseby 36 Eventually after appeals to the Privy Council in London Hồ was reported as dead in 1932 to avoid a French extradition agreement 38 it was ruled that though he would be deported from Hong Kong as an undesirable it would not be to a destination controlled by France 36 Hồ was eventually released and disguised as a Chinese scholar boarded a ship to Shanghai He subsequently returned to the Soviet Union and in Moscow studied and taught at the Lenin Institute 39 In this period Hồ reportedly lost his positions in the Comintern because of a concern that he had betrayed the organization However according to Ton That Thien s research he was a member of the inner circle of the Comintern a protege of Dmitry Manuilsky and a member in good standing of the Comintern throughout the Great Purge 40 page needed 41 Hồ was removed from control of the Party he had founded Those who replaced him charged him with nationalist tendencies 37 In 1938 Quốc Hồ returned to China and served as an advisor to the Chinese Communist armed forces 17 He was also the senior Comintern agent in charge of Asian affairs 42 He worked extensively in Chungking and traveled to Guiyang Kunming and Guilin He was using the name Hồ Quang during this period citation needed Independence movement EditIn 1941 Hồ Chi Minh returned to Vietnam to lead the Việt Minh independence movement The Japanese occupation of Indochina that year the first step toward an invasion of the rest of Southeast Asia created an opportunity for patriotic Vietnamese 14 The so called men in black were a 10 000 member guerrilla force that operated with the Việt Minh 43 He oversaw many successful military actions against the Vichy France and the Japanese occupation of Vietnam during World War II supported closely yet clandestinely by the United States Office of Strategic Services and later against the French bid to reoccupy the country 1946 1954 He was jailed in China by Chiang Kai shek s local authorities before being rescued by Chinese Communists 44 Following his release in 1943 he returned to Vietnam It was during this time that he began regularly using the name Hồ Chi Minh a Vietnamese name combining a common Vietnamese surname Hồ 胡 with a given name meaning Bright spirit or Clear will from Sino Vietnamese 志 明 Chi meaning will or spirit and Minh meaning bright 8 248 49 His new name was a tribute to General Hou Zhiming 侯志明 Chief Commissar of the 4th Military Region of the National Revolutionary Army who helped release him from a KMT prison in 1943 citation needed Hồ Chi Minh third from left standing with the OSS in 1945 In April 1945 he met with the OSS agent Archimedes Patti and offered to provide intelligence asking only for a line of communication between his Viet Minh and the Allies 45 The OSS agreed to this and later sent a military team of OSS members to train his men and Hồ Chi Minh himself was treated for malaria and dysentery by an OSS doctor 46 Following the August Revolution organized by the Việt Minh Hồ Chi Minh became Chairman of the Provisional Government Premier of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and issued a Proclamation of Independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam 47 Although he convinced Emperor Bảo Đại to abdicate his government was not recognized by any country He repeatedly petitioned President Harry S Truman for support for Vietnamese independence 48 citing the Atlantic Charter but Truman never responded 49 In 1946 future Israeli Prime Minister David Ben Gurion and Hồ Chi Minh became acquainted when they stayed at the same hotel in Paris 50 51 He offered Ben Gurion a Jewish home in exile in Vietnam 50 51 Ben Gurion declined telling him I am certain we shall be able to establish a Jewish Government in Palestine 50 51 In 1946 when he traveled outside of the country his subordinates imprisoned 2 500 non Communist nationalists and forced 6 000 others to flee 52 Hundreds of political opponents were jailed or exiled in July 1946 notably members of the Nationalist Party of Vietnam and the Dai Viet National Party after a failed attempt to raise a coup against the Viet Minh government 53 All rival political parties were hereafter banned and local governments were purged 54 to minimize opposition later on However it was noted that the Democratic Republic of Vietnam s first Congress had over two thirds of its members come from non Việt Minh political factions some without an election Nationalist Party of Vietnam leader Nguyễn Hải Thần was named vice president They also held four out of ten ministerial positions Government of the Union of Resistance of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam vi Birth of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam Edit Following Emperor Bảo Đại s abdication in August Hồ Chi Minh read the Declaration of Independence of Vietnam on 2 September 1945 55 under the name of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam In Saigon with violence between rival Vietnamese factions and French forces increasing the British commander General Sir Douglas Gracey declared martial law On 24 September the Việt Minh leaders responded with a call for a general strike 56 page needed In the same month a force of 200 000 National Revolutionary Army troops arrived in Hanoi to accept the surrender of the Japanese occupiers in northern Indochina Hồ Chi Minh made a compromise with their general Lu Han to dissolve the Communist Party and to hold an election that would yield a coalition government When Chiang forced the French to give the French concessions in Shanghai back to China in exchange for withdrawing from northern Indochina he had no choice but to sign an agreement with France on 6 March 1946 in which Vietnam would be recognized as an autonomous state in the Indochinese Federation and the French Union The agreement soon broke down The purpose of the agreement for both the French and Vietminh was for Chiang s army to leave North Vietnam Fighting broke out in the North soon after the Chinese left Historian Professor Liam Kelley of the University of Hawaii at Manoa on his Le Minh Khai s Asian History Blog challenged the authenticity of the alleged quote where Hồ Chi Minh said he would rather smell French shit for five years than eat Chinese shit for a thousand noting that Stanley Karnow provided no source for the extended quote attributed to him in his 1983 Vietnam A History and that the original quote was most likely forged by the Frenchman Paul Mus in his 1952 book Vietnam Sociologie d une Guerre Mus was a supporter of French colonialism in Vietnam and Hồ Chi Minh believed there was no danger of Chinese troops staying in Vietnam The Vietnamese at the time were busy spreading anti French propaganda as evidence of French atrocities in Vietnam emerged while Hồ Chi Minh showed no qualms about accepting Chinese aid after 1949 57 58 Vo Nguyen Giap left with Hồ Chi Minh right in Hanoi in 1945 The Việt Minh then collaborated with French colonial forces to massacre supporters of the Vietnamese nationalist movements in 1945 1946 59 60 61 and of the Trotskyists Trotskyism in Vietnam did not rival the Party outside of the major cities but particularly in the South in Saigon Cochinchina they had been a challenge From the outset they had called for armed resistance to a French restoration and an immediate transfer of industry to workers and land to peasants 62 63 The French Socialist leader Daniel Guerin recalls that when in Paris in 1946 he asked Hồ Chi Minh about the fate of the Trotskyist leader Tạ Thu Thau Hồ Chi Minh had replied with unfeigned emotion that Thau was a great patriot and we mourn him but then a moment later added in a steady voice All those who do not follow the line which I have laid down will be broken 64 The Communists eventually suppressed all non Communist parties but they failed to secure a peace deal with France In the final days of 1946 after a year of diplomatic failure and many concessions in agreements such as the Dalat and Fontainebleau conferences the Democratic Republic of Vietnam government found that war was inevitable The bombardment of Haiphong by French forces at Hanoi only strengthened the belief that France had no intention of allowing an autonomous independent state in Vietnam The bombardment of Haiphong reportedly killed more than 6000 Vietnamese civilians French forces marched into Hanoi now the capital city of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam On 19 December 1946 after the Haiphong incident Hồ Chi Minh declared war against the French Union marking the beginning of the Indochina War 65 The Vietnam National Army mostly armed with machetes and muskets immediately attacked They assaulted the French positions smoking them out with straw bundled with chili pepper destroying armored vehicles with lunge mines a hollow charge warhead on the end of a pole detonated by thrusting the charge against the side of a tank typically a suicide weapon 66 and Molotov cocktails holding off attackers by using roadblocks landmines and gravel After two months of fighting the exhausted Việt Minh forces withdrew after systematically destroying any valuable infrastructure Hồ was reported to be captured by a group of French soldiers led by Jean Etienne Valluy at Việt Bắc in Operation Lea The person in question turned out to be a Việt Minh advisor who was killed trying to escape According to journalist Bernard Fall Hồ decided to negotiate a truce after fighting the French for several years When the French negotiators arrived at the meeting site they found a mud hut with a thatched roof Inside they found a long table with chairs In one corner of the room a silver ice bucket contained ice and a bottle of good champagne indicating that Hồ expected the negotiations to succeed One demand by the French was the return to French custody of several Japanese military officers who had been helping the Vietnamese armed forces by training them in the use of weapons of Japanese origin for them to stand trial for war crimes committed during World War II Hồ Chi Minh replied that the Japanese officers were allies and friends whom he could not betray therefore he walked out to seven more years of war 67 In February 1950 after the successful removal of the French border blockade Battle of Route Coloniale 4 he met with Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong in Moscow after the Soviet Union recognized his government They all agreed that China would be responsible for backing the Việt Minh 68 Mao Zedong s emissary to Moscow stated in August that China planned to train 60 000 70 000 Viet Minh shortly 69 The road to the outside world was open for Việt Minh forces to receive additional supplies which would allow them to escalate the fight against the French regime throughout Indochina At the outset of the conflict Hồ reportedly told a French visitor You can kill ten of my men for every one I kill of yours But even at those odds you will lose and I will win 70 In 1954 the First Indochina War came to an end after the decisive Battle of Dien Bien Phu where more than 10 000 French soldiers surrendered to the Viet Minh The subsequent Geneva Accords peace process partitioned North Vietnam at the 17th parallel Arthur Dommen estimates that the Việt Minh assassinated between 100 000 and 150 000 civilians during the war 71 By comparison to Dommen s calculation Benjamin Valentino estimates that the French were responsible for 60 000 250 000 civilian deaths 72 Becoming president EditThe 1954 Geneva Accords concluded between France and the Việt Minh allowing the latter s forces to regroup in the North whilst anti Communist groups settled in the South His Democratic Republic of Vietnam relocated to Hanoi and became the government of North Vietnam a Communist led one party state Following the Geneva Accords there was to be a 300 day period in which people could freely move between the two regions of Vietnam later known as South Vietnam and North Vietnam During the 300 days Diệm and CIA adviser Colonel Edward Lansdale staged a campaign to convince people to move to South Vietnam The campaign was particularly focused on Vietnam s Catholics who were to provide Diệm s power base in his later years with the use of the slogan God has gone south Between 800 000 and 1 000 000 people migrated to the South mostly Catholics At the start of 1955 French Indochina was dissolved leaving Diệm in temporary control of the South 73 74 All the parties at Geneva called for reunification elections but they could not agree on the details Recently appointed Việt Minh acting foreign minister Pham Van Dong proposed elections under the supervision of local commissions The United States with the support of Britain and the Associated States of Vietnam Laos and Cambodia suggested United Nations supervision This plan was rejected by Soviet representative Vyacheslav Molotov who argued for a commission composed of an equal number of communist and non communist members which could determine important issues only by unanimous agreement 75 The negotiators were unable to agree on a date for the elections for reunification North Vietnam argued that the elections should be held within six months of the ceasefire while the Western allies sought to have no deadline Molotov proposed June 1955 then later softened this to any time in 1955 and finally July 1956 76 The Diem government supported reunification elections but only with effective international supervision arguing that genuinely free elections were otherwise impossible in the totalitarian North 77 By the afternoon of 20 July 1954 the remaining outstanding issues were resolved as the parties agreed that the partition line should be at the 17th parallel and the elections for a reunified government should be held in July 1956 two years after the ceasefire 78 The Agreement on the Cessation of Hostilities in Vietnam was only signed by the French and Việt Minh military commands with no participation or consultation of the State of Vietnam 79 Based on a proposal by Chinese delegation head Zhou Enlai an International Control Commission ICC chaired by India with Canada and Poland as members was placed in charge of supervising the ceasefire 80 81 Because issues were to be decided unanimously Poland s presence in the ICC provided the Communists with effective veto power over supervision of the treaty 82 The unsigned Final Declaration of the Geneva Conference called for reunification elections which the majority of delegates expected to be supervised by the ICC The Việt Minh never accepted ICC authority over such elections insisting that the ICC s competence was to be limited to the supervision and control of the implementation of the Agreement on the Cessation of Hostilities by both parties 83 Of the nine nations represented only the United States and the State of Vietnam refused to accept the declaration Undersecretary of state Walter Bedell Smith delivered a unilateral declaration of the United States position reiterating We shall seek to achieve unity through free elections supervised by the United Nations to ensure that they are conducted fairly 84 Hồ Chi Minh with East German sailors in Stralsund harbor during his 1957 visit to East Germany Hồ Chi Minh with members of the East German Young Pioneers near Berlin 1957 Between 1953 and 1956 the North Vietnamese government instituted various agrarian reforms including rent reduction and land reform which were accompanied by political repression During the land reform testimonies by North Vietnamese witnesses suggested a ratio of one execution per 160 village residents which if extrapolated would indicate a nationwide total of nearly 100 000 executions Because the campaign was concentrated mainly in the Red River Delta area a lower estimate of 50 000 executions was widely accepted by scholars at the time 85 86 l However declassified documents from the Vietnamese and Hungarian archives indicate that the number of executions was much lower than reported at the time although it was likely greater than 13 500 87 88 89 Vietnam War EditAs early as June 1956 the idea of overthrowing the South Vietnamese government was presented at a politburo meeting In 1959 Hồ Chi Minh began urging the Politburo to send aid to the Việt Cộng in South Vietnam a people s war on the South was approved at a session in January 1959 and this decision was confirmed by the Politburo in March 90 91 North Vietnam invaded Laos in July 1959 aided by the Pathet Lao and used 30 000 men to build a network of supply and reinforcement routes running through Laos and Cambodia that became known as the Hồ Chi Minh trail 92 It allowed the North to send manpower and material to the Việt Cộng with much less exposure to South Vietnamese forces achieving a considerable advantage 93 To counter the accusation that North Vietnam was violating the Geneva Accord the independence of the Việt Cộng was stressed in communist propaganda North Vietnam created the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam in December 1960 as a united front or political branch of the Viet Cong intended to encourage the participation of non Communists 90 91 At the end of 1959 conscious that the national election would never be held and that Diem intended to purge opposing forces mostly ex Việt Minh from the South Vietnamese society Hồ Chi Minh informally chose Le Duẩn to become the next party leader This was interpreted by Western analysts as a loss of influence for Hồ who was said to have preferred the more moderate Vo Nguyen Giap for the position 94 From 1959 onward the elderly Hồ became increasingly worried about the prospect of his death and that year he wrote down his will 95 Le Duẩn was officially named party leader in 1960 leaving Hồ to function in a secondary role as head of state and member of the Politburo He nevertheless maintained considerable influence in the government Le Duẩn Tố Hữu Trường Chinh and Phạm Văn Đồng often shared dinner with Hồ and all of them remained key figures throughout and after the war In the early 1960s the North Vietnamese Politburo was divided into the North first faction who favored focusing on the economic development of North Vietnam and the South first faction who favored a guerrilla war in South Vietnam to reunite Vietnam shortly 96 Between 1961 and 1963 40 000 Communist soldiers infiltrated into South Vietnam from the North 90 In 1963 Hồ purportedly corresponded with South Vietnamese President Diem in hopes of achieving a negotiated peace 97 During the so called Maneli Affair of 1963 a French diplomatic initiative was launched to achieve a federation of the two Vietnams which would be neutral in the Cold War 98 The four principal diplomats involved in the Maneli affair were Ramchundur Goburdhun the Indian Chief Commissioner of the ICC Mieczyslaw Maneli the Polish Commissioner to the ICC Roger Lalouette the French ambassador to South Vietnam and Giovanni d Orlandi the Italian ambassador to South Vietnam 98 Maneli reported that Hồ was very interested in the signs of a split between President Diem and President Kennedy and that his attitude was Our real enemies are the Americans Get rid of them and we can cope with Diem and Nhu afterward 98 Hồ also told Maneli about the Ho Minh Chi Trail which passed through officially neutral Cambodia and Laos saying Indochina is just one single entity 99 At a meeting in Hanoi held in French Hồ told Goburdhun that Diem was in his way a patriot noting that Diem had opposed French rule over Vietnam and ended the meeting saying that the next time Goburdhun met Diem shake hands with him for me 100 The North Vietnamese Premier Phạm Văn Đồng speaking on behalf of Hồ told Maneli he was interested in the peace plan saying that just as long as the American advisers left South Vietnam we can agree with any Vietnamese 101 On 2 September 1963 Maneli met with Ngo Đinh Nhu the younger brother and right hand man to Diem to discuss the French peace plan 102 It remains unclear if the Ngo brothers were serious about the French peace plan or were merely using the possibility of accepting it to blackmail the United States into supporting them at a time when the Buddhist crisis had seriously strained relations between Saigon and Washington 101 Supporting the latter theory is the fact that Nhu promptly leaked his meeting with Maneli to the American columnist Joseph Alsop who publicized it in a column entitled Very Ugly Stuff 101 The possibility that the Ngo brothers might accept the peace plan contributed to the Kennedy administration s plan to support a coup against them On 1 November 1963 a coup overthrew Diem who was killed the next day together with his brother 101 Diem had followed a policy of deconstructing the state by creating several overlapping agencies and departments who were encouraged to feud with one another to disorganize the South Vietnamese state to such an extent that he hoped that it would make a coup against him impossible 103 When Diem was overthrown and killed without any kind of arbiter between the rival arms of the South Vietnamese state South Vietnam promptly disintegrated 104 The American Defense Secretary Robert McNamara reported after visiting South Vietnam in December 1963 that there is no organized government worthy of the name in Saigon 105 At a meeting of the plenum of the Politburo in December 1963 Le Duẩn s South first faction triumphed with the Politburo passing a resolution calling for North Vietnam to complete the overthrow of the regime in Saigon as soon as possible while the members of the North first faction were dismissed 106 As South Vietnam descended into chaos whatever interest Hồ might have had in the French peace plan ended as it become clear the Viet Cong could overthrow the government in Saigon A CIA report from 1964 stated the factionalism in South Vietnam had reached almost the point of anarchy as various South Vietnamese leaders fought one another making any sort of effort against the Viet Cong impossible which was rapidly taking over much of the South Vietnamese countryside 107 As South Vietnam collapsed into factionalism and in fighting while the Viet Cong continued to win the war it became increasingly apparent to President Lyndon Johnson that only American military intervention could save South Vietnam 108 Though Johnson did not wish to commit American forces until he had won the 1964 election he decided to make his intentions clear to Hanoi In June 1964 the Seaborn Mission began as J Blair Seaborn the Canadian commissioner to the ICC arrived in Hanoi with a message from Johnson offering billions of American economic aid and diplomatic recognition in exchange for which North Vietnam would cease trying to overthrow the government of South Vietnam 109 Seaborn also warned that North Vietnam would suffer the greatest devastation from American bombing saying that Johnson was seriously considering a strategic bombing campaign against North Vietnam 110 Little came of the backchannel of the Seaborn Mission as the North Vietnamese distrusted Seaborn who pointedly was never allowed to meet Hồ 111 In late 1964 People s Army of Vietnam combat troops were sent southwest into officially neutral Laos and Cambodia 112 By March 1965 American combat troops began arriving in South Vietnam first to protect the airbases around Chu Lai and Da Nang later to take on most of the fight as m ore and more American troops were put in to replace Saigon troops who could not or would not get involved in the fighting 113 As fighting escalated widespread aerial and artillery bombardment all over North Vietnam by the United States Air Force and Navy began with Operation Rolling Thunder On 8 9 April 1965 Hồ made a secret visit to Beijing to meet Mao Zedong 114 It was agreed that no Chinese combat troops would enter North Vietnam unless the United States invaded North Vietnam but that China would send support troops to North Vietnam to help maintain the infrastructure damaged by American bombing 114 There was a deep distrust and fear of China within the North Vietnamese Politburo and the suggestion that Chinese troops even support troops be allowed into North Vietnam caused outrage in the Politburo 115 Hồ had to use all his moral authority to obtain Politburo s approval 115 According to Chen Jian during the mid to late 1960s Le Duẩn permitted 320 000 Chinese volunteers into North Vietnam to help build infrastructure for the country thereby freeing a similar number of PAVN personnel to go south 116 There are no sources from Vietnam the United States or the Soviet Union that confirm the number of Chinese troops stationed in North Vietnam However the Chinese government later admitted to sending 320 000 Chinese soldiers to Vietnam during the 1960s and spent over 20 billion to support Hanoi s regular North Vietnamese Army and Việt Cộng guerrilla units 117 To counter the American bombing the entire population of North Vietnam was mobilized for the war effort with vast teams of women being used to repair the damage done by the bombers often at a speed that astonished the Americans 118 The bombing of North Vietnam proved to be the principal obstacle to opening peace talks as Hồ repeatedly stated that no peace talks would be possible unless the United States unconditionally cease bombing North Vietnam 119 Like many of the other leaders of the newly independent states of Asia and Africa Hồ was extremely sensitive about threats whether perceived or real to his nation s independence and sovereignty 119 Hồ regarded the American bombing as a violation of North Vietnam s sovereignty and he felt that to negotiate with the Americans reserving the right to bomb North Vietnam should he not behave as they wanted him to do would diminish North Vietnam s independence 119 In March 1966 a Canadian diplomat Chester Ronning arrived in Hanoi with an offer to use his good offices to begin peace talks 120 However the Ronning mission foundered upon the bombing issue as the North Vietnamese demanded an unconditional halt to the bombing an undertaking that Johnson refused to give 120 In June 1966 Janusz Lewandowski the Polish Commissioner to the ICC was able via d Orlandi to see Henry Cabot Lodge Jr the American ambassador to South Vietnam with an offer from Hồ 120 Hồ s offer for a political compromise as transmitted by Lewandowski included allowing South Vietnam to maintain its alliance with the U S instead of becoming neutral having the Viet Cong take part in negotiations for a coalition government instead of being allowed to automatically enter a coalition government and allowing a reasonable calendar for the withdrawal of American troops instead of an immediate withdrawal 121 Operation Marigold as the Lewandowski channel came to be code named almost led to American North Vietnamese talks in Warsaw in December 1966 but collapsed over the bombing issue 122 In January 1967 General Nguyễn Chi Thanh the commander of the forces in South Vietnam returned to Hanoi to present a plan that became the genesis of the Tet Offensive a year later 123 Thanh expressed much concern about the Americans invading Laos to cut the Ho Chi Minh Trail and to preempt this possibility urged an all out offensive to win the war with a sudden blow 123 Le Duẩn supported Thanh s plans which were stoutly opposed by the Defense Minister General Vo Nguyen Giap who preferred to continue with guerrilla war arguing that the superior American firepower would ensure the failure of Thanh s proposed offensive 124 With the Politburo divided it was agreed to study and debate the issue more 125 In July 1967 Hồ Chi Minh and most of the Politburo of the Communist Party met in a high profile conference where they concluded the war had fallen into a stalemate The American military presence forced the PAVN to expend the majority of their resources on maintaining the Hồ Chi Minh trail rather than reinforcing their comrades ranks in the South Hồ seems to have agreed to Thanh s offensive because he wanted to see Vietnam reunified within his lifetime and the increasingly ailing Hồ was painfully aware that he did not have much time left 126 With Hồ s permission the Việt Cộng planned a massive Tet Offensive that would commence on 31 January 1968 to take much of the South by force and deal a heavy blow to the American military The offensive was executed at great cost and with heavy casualties on Việt Cộng s political branches and armed forces The scope of the action shocked the world which until then had been assured that the Communists were on the ropes The optimistic spin that the American military command had sustained for years was no longer credible The bombing of North Vietnam and the Hồ Chi Minh trail was halted and American and Vietnamese negotiators held discussions on how the war might be ended From then on Hồ Chi Minh and his government s strategy based on the idea of not using conventional warfare and facing the might of the United States Army which would wear them down eventually while merely prolonging the conflict would lead to the eventual acceptance of Hanoi s terms materialized In early 1969 Hồ suffered a heart attack and was in increasingly bad health for the rest of the year 127 In July 1969 Jean Sainteny a former French official in Vietnam who knew Hồ secretly relayed a letter written to him from President Richard Nixon 127 Nixon s letter proposed working together to end this tragic war but also warned that if North Vietnam made no concessions at the peace talks in Paris by 1 November Nixon would resort to measures of great consequence and force 127 Hồ s reply letter which Nixon received on 30 August 1969 welcomed peace talks with the U S to look for a way to end the war but made no concessions as Nixon s threats made no impression on him 127 Personal life Edit Hồ Chi Minh holding his god daughter baby Elizabeth Babette Aubrac with Elizabeth s mother Lucie 1946 In addition to being a politician Hồ Chi Minh was also a writer journalist poet 128 and polyglot His father was a scholar and teacher who received a high degree in the Nguyễn dynasty Imperial examination Hồ was taught to master Classical Chinese at a young age Before the August Revolution he often wrote poetry in Chữ Han the Vietnamese name for the Chinese writing system One of those is Poems from the Prison Diary written when he was imprisoned by the police of the Republic of China This poetry chronicle is Vietnam National Treasure No 10 and was translated into many languages It is used in Vietnamese high schools 129 After Vietnam gained independence from France the new government exclusively promoted Chữ Quốc Ngữ Vietnamese writing system in Latin characters to eliminate illiteracy Hồ started to create more poems in the modern Vietnamese language for dissemination to a wider range of readers From when he became president until the appearance of serious health problems a short poem of his was regularly published in the newspaper Nhan Dan Tết Lunar new year edition to encourage his people in working studying or fighting Americans in the new year Hồ Chi Minh watching a football game in his favorite fashion with his closest comrade Prime Minister Phạm Văn Đồng seated to Hồ s left photo right Because he was in exile for nearly 30 years Hồ could speak fluently as well as read and write professionally in French English Russian Cantonese and Mandarin as well as his mother tongue Vietnamese 8 In addition he was reported to speak conversational Esperanto 130 In the 1920s he was bureau chief editor of many newspapers which he established to criticize French Colonial Government of Indochina and serving communism propaganda purposes Examples are Le Paria The Pariah first published in Paris 1922 or Thanh Nien Youth first published on 21 June 1925 21 June was named by The Socialist Republic of Vietnam Government as Vietnam Revolutionary Journalism Day In many state official visits to the Soviet Union and China he often talked directly to their communist leaders without interpreters especially about top secret information While being interviewed by Western journalists he used French citation needed His Vietnamese had a strong accent from his birthplace in the central province of Nghệ An but could be widely understood throughout the country m As President he held formal receptions for foreign heads of state and ambassadors at the Presidential Palace but he did not live there He ordered the building of a stilt house at the back of the palace which is today known as the Presidential Palace Historical Site His hobbies according to his secretary Vũ Kỳ included reading gardening feeding fish many of which are still when living and visiting schools and children s homes citation needed Hồ Chi Minh remained in Hanoi during his final years demanding the unconditional withdrawal of all non Vietnamese troops in South Vietnam By 1969 with negotiations still dragging on his health began to deteriorate from multiple health problems including diabetes which prevented him from participating in further active politics However he insisted that his forces in the South continue fighting until all of Vietnam was reunited regardless of the length of time that it might take believing that time was on his side citation needed Hồ Chi Minh s marriage has long been swathed in secrecy and mystery He is believed by several scholars of Vietnamese history to have married Zeng Xueming in October 1926 132 33 although only being able to live with her for less than a year Historian Peter Neville claimed that Hồ at the time known as Ly Thuy 33 wanted to engage Zeng in the communist movements but she demonstrated a lack of ability and interest in it 132 In 1927 the mounting repression of Chiang Kai shek s KMT against the Chinese Communists compelled Hồ to leave for Hong Kong and his relationship with Zeng appeared to have ended at that time 133 In addition to the marriage with Zeng Xueming there is a number of published studies indicating that Hồ had a romantic relationship with Nguyễn Thị Minh Khai 134 As a young and high spirited female revolutionary Minh Khai was delegated to Hong Kong to serve as an assistant to Ho Chi Minh in April 1930 and quickly drew Hồ s attention owing to her physical attractiveness 135 Hồ even approached the Far Eastern Bureau and requested permission to marry Minh Khai even though the previous marriage with Zeng remained legally valid 136 137 However the marriage was unable to take place since Minh Khai had been detained by the British authorities in April 1931 138 137 Death EditWith the outcome of the Vietnam war still in question Hồ Chi Minh died of heart failure at his home in Hanoi at 9 47 on the morning of 2 September 1969 he was 79 years old 5 139 His embalmed body is currently on display in a mausoleum in Ba Đinh Square in Hanoi despite his will which stated that he wanted to be cremated 8 565 The North Vietnamese government originally announced Hồ s death on 3 September A week of mourning for his death was decreed nationwide in North Vietnam from 4 to 11 September 1969 140 His funeral was attended by about 250 000 people and 5 000 official guests which included many international mourners Representatives from 40 countries and regions were also presented During the mourning period North Vietnam received more than 22 000 condolences letters from 20 organizations and 110 countries across the world such as France Ethiopia Yugoslavia Cuba Zambia China the USSR and many others mostly Socialist countries He was not initially replaced as president instead a collective leadership composed of several ministers and military leaders took over known as the Politburo During North Vietnam s final campaign in 1975 a famous song written by composer Huy Thuc vi was often sung by PAVN soldiers Bac vẫn cung chung chau hanh quan You are still marching with us Uncle Hồ citation needed During the Fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975 several PAVN tanks displayed a poster with those same words on it The day after the battle ended on 1 May veteran Australian journalist Denis Warner reported that When the North Vietnamese marched into Saigon yesterday they were led by a man who wasn t there 141 Legacy Edit Hồ Chi Minh Mausoleum Hanoi The Socialist Republic of Vietnam still praises the legacy of Uncle Hồ Bac Hồ the Bringer of Light Chi Minh It is comparable to that of Mao Zedong in China and of Kim Il sung and Kim Jong il in North Korea Although Hồ Chi Minh wished for his body to be cremated and his ashes spread to North Central and South Vietnam the body instead is embalmed on view in a mausoleum His image is featured in many public buildings and schoolrooms and other displays of reverence 142 There is at least one temple dedicated to him built in then Việt Cộng controlled Vĩnh Long shortly after his death in 1970 143 Hồ Chi Minh statue and a yellow star as depicted in the Vietnamese flag Hồ Chi Minh statue outside Hồ Chi Minh City Hall Hồ Chi Minh City In The Communist Road to Power in Vietnam 1982 Duiker suggests that Hồ Chi Minh s cult of personality is indicative of a larger legacy one that drew on elements traditional to the exercise of control and authority in Vietnamese society 144 Duiker is drawn to an irresistible and persuasive comparison with China As in China leading party cadres were most likely to be intellectuals descended like Hồ Chi Minh from rural scholar gentry families in the interior the protectorates of Annam and Tonkin Conversely the pioneers of constitutional nationalism tended to be from the more Westernised coastal south Saigon and surrounding French direct rule Cochinchina and to be from commercial families without a traditional Confucian background 145 Shrine devoted to Hồ Chi Minh In Vietnam as in China Communism presented itself as a root and branch rejection of Confucianism condemned for its ritualism inherent conservatism and resistance to change Once in power the Vietnamese Communists may not have fought Confucianism as bitterly as did their Chinese counterparts but its social prestige was essentially destroyed In the political sphere the puppet son of heaven which had been weakly represented by the Bảo Đại was replaced by the people s republic Orthodox materialism accorded no place to heaven gods or other supernatural forces Socialist collectivism undermined the tradition of the Confucian family leader Gia Truong The socialist conception of social equality destroyed the Confucian views of class 146 147 Temple devoted to Nguyễn Sinh Sắc Hồ Chi Minh s father Duiker argues many were to find the new ideology congenial precisely because of its similarities with the teachings of the old Master the belief in one truth embodied in quasi sacred texts in an anointed elite trained in an all embracing doctrine and responsible for leading the broad masses and indoctrinating them in proper thought and behavior in the subordination of the individual to the community and in the perfectibility through corrective action of human nature 148 All of this Duiker suggests was in some manner present in the aura of the new Master Chi Minh the bringer of light Uncle Hồ to whom all the desirable qualities of Confucian ethics are ascribed 149 Under Hồ Chi Minh Vietnamese Marxism developed in effect as a kind of reformed Confucianism revised to meet the challenges of the modern era and not least among these of total mobilization in the struggle for national independence and state power 150 This congeniality with Confucian tradition was remarked on by Nguyen Khac Vien a leading Hanoi intellectual of the 1960s and 70s In Confucianism and Marxism in Vietnam 151 Nguyen Khac Vien saw definite parallels between Confucian and party discipline between the traditional scholar gentry and Hồ Chi Minh s party cadres 152 A completely different form of the cult of Hồ Chi Minh and one tolerated by the government with uneasiness is his identification in Vietnamese folk religion with the Jade Emperor who supposedly incarnated again on earth as Hồ Chi Minh Today Hồ Chi Minh as the Jade Emperor is supposed to speak from the spirit world through Spiritualist mediums The first such medium was one Madam Lang in the 1990s but the cult acquired a significant number of followers through another medium Madam Xoan She established on 1 January 2001 Đạo Ngọc Phật Hồ Chi Minh the Way of Hồ Chi Minh as the Jade Buddha also known as Đạo Bac Hồ the Way of Uncle Hồ at đền Hoa Binh the Peace Temple in Chi Linh Sao Đỏ district of Hải Dương province She then founded the Peace Society of Heavenly Mediums Đoan đồng thien Hoa Binh Reportedly by 2014 the movement had around 24 000 followers 153 The Vietnamese government s attempts to immortalize Hồ Chi Minh was also met with significant controversies and opposition The regime is sensitive to anything that might question the official hagiography This includes references to Hồ Chi Minh s personal life that might detract from the image of the dedicated the father of the revolution 154 the celibate married only to the cause of revolution 155 William Duiker s Ho Chi Minh A Life 2000 was candid on the matter of Hồ Chi Minh s liaisons 8 605 fn 58 The government sought cuts in the Vietnamese translation 156 and banned distribution of an issue of the Far Eastern Economic Review which carried a small item about the controversy 156 Many authors writing on Vietnam argued on the question of whether Hồ Chi Minh was fundamentally a nationalist or a Communist 157 Depictions of Hồ Chi Minh Edit This article or section possibly contains synthesis of material which does not verifiably mention or relate to the main topic Relevant discussion may be found on the talk page March 2022 Learn how and when to remove this template message Ho Chi Minh pictured with children in a photo by state media Busts statues and memorial plaques and exhibitions are displayed in destinations on his extensive world journey in exile from 1911 to 1941 including France the United Kingdom Russia China and Thailand 158 Many activists and musicians wrote songs about Hồ Chi Minh and his revolution in different languages during the Vietnam War to demonstrate against the United States Spanish songs were composed by Felix Pita Rodriguez Carlos Puebla and Ali Primera In addition the Chilean folk singer Victor Jara referenced Hồ Chi Minh in his anti war song El derecho de vivir en paz The Right to Live in Peace Pete Seeger wrote Teacher Uncle Ho Ewan MacColl produced The Ballad of Ho Chi Minh in 1954 describing a man who is the father of the Indo Chinese people And his name it is Ho Chi Minh 159 Russian songs about him were written by Vladimir Fere and German songs about him were written by Kurt Demmler citation needed Various places boulevards and squares are named after him around the world especially in Socialist states and former Communist states In Russia there is a Hồ Chi Minh square and monument in Moscow a Hồ Chi Minh boulevard in Saint Petersburg and a Hồ Chi Minh square in Ulyanovsk the birthplace of Vladimir Lenin a sister city of Vinh the birthplace of Hồ Chi Minh During the Vietnam War the then West Bengal government in the hands of CPI M renamed Harrington Street to Ho Chi Minh Sarani which is also the location of the consulate general of the United States in Kolkata 160 According to the Vietnamese Ministry of Foreign Affairs as many as 20 countries across Asia Europe America and Africa have erected monuments or statues in remembrance of Hồ Chi Minh 161 International influence Edit Hồ Chi Minh bust in Kolkata India Hồ Chi Minh is considered one of the most influential leaders in the world Time magazine listed him in the list of 100 Most Important People of the Twentieth Century Time 100 in 1998 162 163 His thought and revolution inspired many leaders and people on a global scale in Asia Africa and Latin America during the decolonization movement which occurred after World War II As a communist he was one of the few international figures who were relatively well regarded in the West and did not face the same extent of international criticism as much as other Communist factions going to even win praise for his actions 164 In 1987 UNESCO officially recommended that its member states join in the commemoration of the centenary of the birth of President Hồ Chi Minh by organizing various events as a tribute to his memory considering the important and many sided contributions of President Hồ Chi Minh to the fields of culture education and the arts who devoted his whole life to the national liberation of the Vietnamese people contributing to the common struggle of peoples for peace national independence democracy and social progress 165 One of Hồ Chi Minh s works The Black Race much of it originally written in French highlights his views on the oppression of peoples from colonialism and imperialism in 20 written articles 166 167 Other books such as Revolution which published selected works and articles of Hồ Chi Minh in English also highlighted Hồ Chi Minh s interpretation and beliefs in socialism and communism and in fighting against what he perceived to be evils stemming from capitalism colonialism and imperialism 168 See also EditCommunism in VietnamExplanatory notes Edit ˌ h oʊ tʃ iː ˈ m ɪ n HOH chee MIN 1 Vietnamese ho cǐ miŋ listen Saigon ho cǐ mɨn Chữ Han 胡志明 a b c His birth name appeared in a letter from the director of College Quốc học dated 7 August 1908 2 The North Vietnamese government initially announced his death on 3 September in order to prevent it from coinciding with National Day In 1989 the Politburo of unified Vietnam revealed the change along with changes which were made to his original will and it revised the date of death to 2 September 5 6 Or simply as Bac pronounced ɓǎːk or more formally as President Ho Chi Minh Chủ tịch Hồ Chi Minh including Nguyễn Tất Thanh Nguyễn Ai Quốc Văn Ba and over 50 200 aliases including Người cha gia của dan tộc Father of the people Predecessor of the current Communist Party of Vietnam In his application to the French Colonial School Nguyen Tat Thanh born 1892 at Vinh son of Mr Nguyen Sinh Huy sub doctor in literature He told Paris Police Surete he was born 15 January 1894 Dommen 2001 p 340 gives a lower estimate of 32 000 executions He sometimes went on air to deliver important political messages and encourage soldiers 131 page needed References Edit Ho Chi Minh Random House Webster s Unabridged Dictionary Vũ Ngự Chieu 23 October 2011 Vai vấn nạn lịch sử thế kỷ XX Hồ Chi Minh Nha ngoại giao 1945 1946 Hợp Lưu Magazine in Vietnamese Archived from the original on 7 January 2019 Retrieved 10 December 2013 Note See the document in French from Centre des archives d Outre mer CAOM Aix Gouvernement General de l Indochine GGI Fonds Residence Superieure d Annam RSA carton R1 and the note in English at the end of the cited article a b Trần Quốc Vượng Lời truyền miệng dan gian về Hồ Chi Minh BBC Vietnamese Retrieved 10 December 2013 a b Nguyễn Vĩnh Chau Phỏng vấn sử gia Vũ Ngự Chieu về những nghien cứu lịch sử lien quan đến Hồ Chi Minh Hợp Lưu Magazine Archived from the original on 3 December 2013 Retrieved 10 December 2013 a b Nguyễn Xuan Tung 18 September 2014 Giới thiệu những tư liệu về Di chuc của Chủ tịch Hồ Chi Minh Introduction to documents related to President Ho Chi Minh s will in Vietnamese Ministry of Justice Vietnam Retrieved 1 October 2021 Ngo Tam T T 2018 The Uncle Hồ religion in Vietnam In Dean Kenneth van der Veer Peter eds The Secular in South East and Southeast Asia Springer p 219 ISBN 978 3 319 89369 3 Uncle Ho s legacy lives on in Vietnam BBC News 6 June 2012 Retrieved 25 April 2022 a b c d e f g h i j k l m Duiker William J Ho Chi Minh A Life New York Hyperion 2000 Duncanson 1957 p 85 Pike 1976 Trần Dan Tien 1994 Yen Son Nguyen Ai Quoc the Brilliant Champion of the Revolution Thuong Tin Hanoi 30 August 1945 Ton That Thien 18 1890 is the most likely year of his birth There is troubling conflicting evidence however When he was arrested in Hong Kong in 1931 he attested in court documents that he was 36 The passport he used to enter Russia in 1921 also gave the year 1895 as his birth date His application to the Colonial School in Paris gave his birth year as 1892 a b Hunt 2016 p 125 Ngo Dinh Diem and ho Chi Minh nguoiviet com 3 November 2018 Tucker 1999 a b c d Quinn Judge 2002 p 20 Debolt Abbe A Baugess James S 12 December 2011 Encyclopedia of the Sixties A Decade of Culture and Counterculture 2 volumes A Decade of Culture and Counterculture ISBN 9781440801020 Duiker 2012 The Drayton Court Hotel Government of the United Kingdom Retrieved 30 January 2013 Quinn Judge 2002 p 25 Forbes Andrew Henley David 2012 Vietnam Past and Present The North Chiang Mai Thailand Cognoscenti Books Harries David Maritime Sussex Sussex Express Archived from the original on 24 September 2015 Retrieved 12 June 2015 Gisele Bousquet Behind the Bamboo Hedge The Impact of Homeland Politics in Parisian Vietnamese Community University of Michigan Press pp 47 48 Phong Huy Anh Yen 1989 Unmasking Ho Chi Minh Viet Quoc Archived from the original on 10 May 2015 Retrieved 11 June 2015 Huynh Kim Khahn Vietnamese Communism 1925 1945 Ithaca NY Cornell University Press 1982 pg 60 Tran Dan Tien Ho Chi Minh Life and Work Communist Party of Vietnam Online Newspaper Gioi Publishers Archived from the original on 17 June 2015 Retrieved 17 June 2015 Brett Reilly review of Embers of War The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America s Vietnam by Fredrik Logevall Journal of Vietnamese Studies 11 1 2016 147 r 호찌민 감시 佛 경찰문건 대거발굴 한국 임시정부 활약상 생생 15 December 2018 Archived from the original on 15 December 2018 Brocheux 2007 p 21 Ton Thất Thiện 1990 p 23 24 The Learning Network The New York Times a b c d e f Brocheux 2007 p 39 a b Davidson Phillip B Vietnam at War The History 1946 1975 1991 p 4 Hoang Văn Chi From Colonialism to Communism 1964 p 18 Brocheux 2007 p 44 and xiii a b c Then amp now In the name of the law 30 June 2013 a b Moise 1988 p 11 Brocheux 2007 p 57 58 Ho Chi Minh u s history com Archived from the original on 13 February 2018 Retrieved 25 July 2014 Ton Thất Thiện 1990 Hong Ha 2010 Bac Hồ Tren Đất Nước Le Nin Nha Xuất Bản Thanh Nien page needed Ton Thất Thiện 1990 p 39 Ho Chi Minh Was Noted for Success in Blending Nationalism and Communism The New York Times Brocheux 2007 p 198 Interview with Archimedes L A Patti 1981 Interview with OSS officer Carleton Swift 1981 Zinn 1995 p 460 Collection of Letters by Ho Chi Minh Rationalrevolution net Retrieved 26 September 2009 Zinn 1995 p 461 a b c Ben gurion Reveals Suggestion of North Vietnam s Communist Leader Jewish Telegraphic Agency 8 November 1966 Retrieved 5 September 2015 a b c ISRAEL WAS EVERYTHING The New York Times 21 June 1987 Retrieved 5 September 2015 Currey Cecil B Victory At Any Cost Washington Brassey s 1997 p 126 Tucker Spencer Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War a political social and military history vol 2 1998 page needed Colvin John Giap the Volcano under the Snow New York Soho Press 1996 p 51 Vietnam Declaration of Independence Coombs anu edu au 2 September 1945 Archived from the original on 6 October 2009 Retrieved 26 September 2009 Karnow 1983 Liam Kelley Department of History 14 October 2014 Archived from the original on 14 October 2014 Chiang Kai shek and Vietnam in 1945 25 April 2013 Archived from the original on 13 March 2016 Retrieved 2 February 2016 Turner 1975 p 57 9 67 9 74 Myths of the Vietnam War Southeast Asian Perspectives September 1972 pp 14 8 Dommen 2001 p 153 4 Daniel Hemery 1975 Revolutionnaires Vietnamiens et pouvoir colonial en Indochine Francois Maspero Paris 1975 page needed Ngo Van 2000 Viet nam 1920 1945 Revolution et Contre revolution sous la domination coloniale Paris Nautilus Editions page needed Daniel Guerin 1954 Aux services des colonises 1930 1953 Editions Minuit Paris p 22 A nationwide call for resistance vi Lone Sentry New Weapons for Jap Tank Hunters U S WWII Intelligence Bulletin March 1945 lonesentry com Retrieved 27 May 2016 Fall 1967 p 88 Luo Guibo pp 233 36 Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Chronology p 45 McMaster H R 1997 Dereliction of Duty Lyndon Johnson Robert McNamara The Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Lies that Led to Vietnam pg 35 Dommen 2001 p 252 Valentino 2005 p 83 Maclear pp 65 68 Jacobs 2006 pp 43 53 Turner 1975 pp 89 91 97 Logevall 2012 p 610 Turner 1975 p 107 Logevall 2012 p 604 Turner 1975 p 97 Logevall 2012 p 603 Turner 1975 pp 90 97 Turner 1975 pp 97 98 Turner 1975 p 99 Turner 1975 pp 95 99 100 Turner 1975 p 143 Gittinger J Price 1959 Communist Land Policy in North Viet Nam Far Eastern Survey 28 8 113 126 doi 10 2307 3024603 JSTOR 3024603 Vu Tuong 25 May 2007 Newly released documents on the land reform Mailing list Vietnam Studies Group Retrieved 30 November 2017 Thus the number of 13 500 executed people seems to be a low end estimate of the real number This is corroborated by Edwin Moise in his recent paper Land Reform in North Vietnam 1953 1956 presented at the 18th Annual Conference on SE Asian Studies Center for SE Asian Studies University of California Berkeley February 2001 In this paper Moise 7 9 modified his earlier estimate in his 1983 book which was 5 000 and accepted an estimate of close to 15 000 executions Moise made the case based on Hungarian reports provided by Balazs but the document I cited above offers more direct evidence for his revised estimate This document also suggests that the total number should be adjusted up some more taking into consideration the later radical phase of the campaign the unauthorized killings at the local level and the suicides following arrest and torture the central government bore less direct responsibility for these cases however Szalontai Balazs November 2005 Political and Economic Crisis in North Vietnam 1955 56 PDF Cold War History 5 4 395 426 doi 10 1080 14682740500284630 S2CID 153956945 Retrieved 30 November 2017 Vu 2010 p 103 Clearly Vietnamese socialism followed a moderate path relative to China Yet the Vietnamese land reform campaign testified that Vietnamese communists could be as radical and murderous as their comrades elsewhere a b c Ang 2002 p 55 58 76 a b The History Place Vietnam War 1945 1960 Retrieved 21 December 2017 The Economist 26 February 1983 Lind 1999 Ang 2002 p 21 Langguth 2000 p 550 Nguyen 2012 p 62 Brocheux 2007 p 174 a b c Karnow 1983 p 291 Brocheux 2007 p 237 Jacobs 2006 p 165 a b c d Karnow 1983 p 292 Langguth 2000 p 233 234 Shafer 1988 p 255 Shafer 1988 p 271 273 Shafer 1988 p 271 Gaiduk 2003 p 203 Shafer 1988 p 272 Karnow 1983 p 340 342 Karnow 1983 p 348 Hunt 1993 p 15 Langguth 2000 p 290 Davidson Vietnam at War the history 1946 1975 1988 page needed Vietnam Veterans Against the War History of the U S War in Vietnam vvaw org a b Langguth 2000 p 355 a b Langguth 2000 p 356 Chen Jian China s Involvement in the Vietnam Conflict 1964 69 China Quarterly No 142 June 1995 pp 366 69 CHINA ADMITS COMBAT IN VIETNAM WAR The Washington Post Archived from the original on 6 November 2017 Retrieved 21 April 2018 Karnow 1983 p 456 a b c Langguth 2000 p 413 a b c Karnow 1983 p 492 Karnow 1983 p 492 493 Karnow 1983 p 493 a b Langguth 2000 p 439 Langguth 2000 p 439 440 Langguth 2000 p 440 Karnow 1983 p 535 a b c d Karnow 1983 p 597 Minh Ho Chi 7 May 1968 Ho Chi Minh From Prison Diary The Nation Translated version French Người tinh nguyện vao ngục Bastille dịch Nhật ky trong tu Czech by Ivo Vasiljev cs Korean Prison Diary published in Korean Archived 16 October 2015 at the Wayback Machine by Ahn Kyong Hwan English by Steve Bradbury Tinfish Press Older version by Aileen Palmer Spanish 1 by Felix Pita Rodriguez Romanian by ro Constantin Lupeanu Russian by Pavel Antokolsky Brown Simon Leo 6 June 2014 Esperanto the language of love ABC Retrieved 29 May 2019 Marr 2013 a b Neville 2018 p 33 Duiker 2000 pp 143 145 198 Brocheux 2007 p 40 Neville 2018 p 33 Duiker 2000 pp 198 189 Brocheux 2007 pp 62 63 Neville 2018 p 34 Lanzona amp Rettig 2020 p 34 Quote In fact Minh Khai managed to gain the attention of Nguyen Ai Quoc whom she married in late 1930 or early 1931 Duiker 2000 pp 185 198 Brocheux 2007 p 63 a b Duiker 2000 p 199 Marr 1984 p 244 Duiker 2000 p 561 Ho Chi Minh dies of heart attack The Globe and Mail 4 September 1969 p 1 The Sun News Pictorial 1 May 1975 p 1 Marsh Viv 7 June 2012 Uncle Ho s legacy lives on in Vietnam BBC BBC Archived from the original on 11 April 2015 Retrieved 2 December 2012 Đền Thờ Bac Hồ Temple of Uncle Hồ SkyDoor in Vietnamese Vietnam National Administration of Tourism Archived from the original on 3 September 2011 Retrieved 14 December 2011 Manfred McDowell Sky without Light a Vietnamese Tragedy New Politics Vol XIII No 3 2011 pp 131 136 p 133 Duiker 1982 p 25 Pham Duy Nghia 2005 Confucianism and the conception of the law in Vietnam Asian Socialism and Legal Change The dynamics of Vietnamese and Chinese Reform John Gillespie Pip Nicholson eds Australian National University Press pp 76 90 pp 83 84 Pham Duy Nghia 2005 4 Confucianism and the conception of the law in Vietnam In Gillespie John Nicholson Pip eds Asian Socialism and Legal Change The dynamics of Vietnamese and Chinese Reform PDF ANU Press pp 76 90 ISBN 978 1 920942 27 4 JSTOR j ctt2jbjds 12 Archived from the original PDF on 27 February 2022 Retrieved 3 November 2019 See also R Peerenboom 2001 Globalization path dependency and the limits of the law administrative law reform and the rule of law in the PRC Berkeley Journal of International Law 19 2 161 264 Duiker 1982 p 26 28 McDowell p 133 Nguyen Khac Vien Confucianism and Marxism in Vietnam in Nguyen Khac Vien Tradition and Revolution in Vietnam Berkeley the Indochina Resource Center 1974 Stein Tonnesson From Confucianism to Communism and Back Vietnam 1925 1995 Archived 1 August 2020 at the Wayback Machine paper presented to the Norwegian Association of Development Studies State and Society in East Asia 29 April 2 May 1993 Chung Van Hoang New Religions and State s Response to Religious Diversification in Contemporary Vietnam Tensions from the Reinvention of the Sacred Cham Switzerland Springer 2017 87 107 Dinh Thuy The Writer s Life Stephen B Young and Hoa Pham Young Painting in Lacquer The Zenith by Duong Thu Huong Da Mau magazine Retrieved 25 December 2013 Baker Mark 15 August 2002 Uncle Ho a legend on the battlefield and in the boudoir The Sydney Morning Herald Retrieved 25 December 2013 a b Great Uncle Ho may have been a mere mortal The Age 15 August 2002 Retrieved 2 August 2009 Moise 1988 p 6 The places where President Ho Chi Minh lived and worked in Thailand Archived 6 July 2017 at the Wayback Machine Vietnam Breaking News 19 May 2017 Archived at Ghostarchive and the Wayback Machine The Ballad of Ho Chi Minh Ewan MacColl with the London Critics Group Youtube Retrieved 21 June 2021 LAYERS OF HISTORY Most Indian street names honor little men for the wrong reasons www telegraphindia com Remembering Vietnam s late President Ho Chi Minh in foreign countries Tuoi Tre News 4 December 2014 Time Magazine U S Edition April 13 1998 Vol 151 No 14 content time com Karnow Stanley 13 April 1998 Ho Chi Minh Time via content time com Ho Chi Minh A Life C SPAN org www c span org UNESCO General Conference 24th Records of the General Conference 24th session Paris 20 October to 20 November 1987 v 1 Resolutions 1988 PDF Retrieved 26 September 2009 VietnamPlus 20 February 2022 Foreign scholars highlights values of President Ho Chi Minh s writings on anti racism Society Vietnam VietnamPlus VietnamPlus Retrieved 20 February 2022 The Black Race by Ho Chi Minh by New Vietnam Publishing Issuu issuu com Retrieved 20 February 2022 HoChiMinhOnRevolution SelectedWritings pdf Bibliography Edit Ang Cheng Guan 2002 The Vietnam War from the Other Side RoutledgeCurzon pp 55 58 76 ISBN 978 0 7007 1615 9 Brocheux Pierre 2007 Ho Chi Minh A Biography Cambridge University Press ISBN 978 0 521 85062 9 Dommen Arthur J 2001 The Indochinese Experience of the French and the Americans Indiana University Press ISBN 9780253338549 Duncanson Dennis J 1957 Ho Chi Minh in Hong Kong 1931 1932 The China Quarterly 57 Jan Mar 1957 85 Duiker William J 1982 The Communist Road to Power in Vietnam Boulder Colorado Westview Press OCLC 864836133 2000 Ho Chi Minh A Life Hyperion Books ISBN 9780786887019 Archived from the original on 13 May 2021 Retrieved 13 May 2021 2012 Ho Chi Minh A Life Hachette Books ISBN 9781401305611 Fall Bernard B 1967 Last Reflections on a War Doubleday ISBN 9780805203295 Gaiduk Ilya 2003 Confronting Vietnam Soviet Policy Toward the Indochina Conflict 1954 1963 Stanford Stanford University Press ISBN 0804747121 Forbes Andrew Henley David 2012 Vietnam Past and Present The North Chiang Mai Thailand Cognoscenti Books Hunt David 1993 The American War in Vietnam SEAP Publications ISBN 0877271313 Hunt Michael H 2016 The World Transformed 1945 To the Present New York City Oxford University Press p 125 ISBN 978 0 19 937102 0 Jacobs Seth 2006 Cold War Mandarin Ngo Dinh Diem and the Origins of America s War in Vietnam 1950 1963 Rowman amp Littlefield ISBN 9780742573956 Karnow Stanley 1983 Vietnam A History New York Penguin Books ISBN 9780712600101 Langguth A J 2000 Our Vietnam The War 1954 1975 New York Simon and Schuster ISBN 9780743212441 Lanzona V A Rettig F 2020 Women Warriors in Southeast Asia Routledge Studies in the Modern History of Asia Taylor amp Francis ISBN 978 1 317 57184 1 Retrieved 19 November 2021 Logevall Fredrik 2012 Embers of War The fall of an Empire and the making of America s Vietnam Random House ISBN 978 0 679 64519 1 Marr David G 2013 Vietnam State War and Revolution 1945 1946 University of California Press ISBN 9780520954977 1984 Vietnamese Tradition on Trial 1920 1945 University of California Press ISBN 978 0 520 90744 7 Retrieved 17 November 2021 Moise Edwin E 1988 Nationalism and Communism in Vietnam Journal of Third World Studies University Press of Florida 5 2 6 22 JSTOR 45193059 Neville Peter 2018 Chapter 3 Survival Ho Chi Minh Routledge Historical Biographies Taylor amp Francis ISBN 978 0 429 82822 5 Retrieved 17 November 2021 Nguyen Lien Hang T 2012 Hanoi s War An International History of the War for Peace in Vietnam Chapel Hill University of North Carolina Press ISBN 978 0807882696 Pike Douglas 1976 Ho Chi Minh A Post War Re evaluation 30th Annual Congress of Orientalists Mexico City Retrieved 21 December 2017 via Vietnam Center and Sam Johnson Vietnam Archive Quinn Judge Sophie 2002 Ho Chi Minh The Missing Years 1919 1941 University of California Press ISBN 978 0520235335 Shafer D Michael 1988 Deadly Paradigms The Failure of U S Counterinsurgency Policy Princeton University Press ISBN 9781400860586 JSTOR j ctt7zvtwm Trần Dan Tien 1994 Những mẩu chuyện về đời hoạt động của Hồ Chủ tịch The tales of the life of President Ho Nha xuất bản Chinh trị quốc gia National Political Publishing House Ton Thất Thiện 1990 Ho Chi Minh and the Comintern Singapore Information and Resource Center ISBN 978 9810021399 Tucker Spencer C 1999 Vietnam UCL Press ISBN 9781857289220 Turner Robert F 1975 Vietnamese Communism Its Origin and Development Hoover Institution Press Valentino Benjamin 2005 Final Solutions Mass Killing and Genocide in the 20th Century Cornell University Press ISBN 9780801472732 Vu Tuong 2010 Paths to Development in Asia South Korea Vietnam China and Indonesia Cambridge University Press ISBN 9781139489010 Zinn Howard 1995 A People s History of the United States 1492 present New York Harper Perennial pp 460 461 ISBN 978 0 06 092643 4 Further reading EditEssays Edit Bernard B Fall ed 1967 Ho Chi Minh on Revolution and War Selected Writings 1920 1966 New American Library Biography Edit Osborne Milton Ho Chi Minh History Today Nov 1980 Vol 30 Issue 11 p40 46 popular history online Morris Virginia and Hills Clive 2018 Ho Chi Minh s Blueprint for Revolution In the Words of Vietnamese Strategists and Operatives McFarland amp Co Inc Jean Lacouture 1968 Ho Chi Minh A Political Biography Random House Khắc Huyen 1971 Vision Accomplished The Enigma of Ho Chi Minh The Macmillan Company David Halberstam 1971 Ho Rowman amp Littlefield Hồ chi Minh toan tập NXB chinh trị quốc gia Ton Thất Thiện Was Ho Chi Minh a Nationalist Ho Chi Minh and the Comintern Information and Resource Centre Singapore 1990 William J Duiker Ho Chi Minh A Life New York Hyperion 2001Việt Minh NLF and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam Edit Hoang Van Chi 1964 From colonialism to communism Praeger Trương Như Tảng 1986 A Viet Cong Memoir Vintage War in Vietnam Edit Frances FitzGerald 1972 Fire in the Lake The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam Little Brown and Company David Hunt 1993 The American War in Vietnam SEAP Publications Ilya Gaiduck 2003 Confronting Vietnam Soviet Policy Toward the Indochina Conflict 1954 1963 Stanford University Press Nguyen Lien Hang T 2012 Hanoi s War An International History of the War for Peace in Vietnam University of North Carolina PressAmerican foreign policy Edit Henry A Kissinger 1979 White House Years Little Brown Richard Nixon 1987 No More Vietnams Arbor House Pub Co External links Edit Wikisource has original works by or about Ho Chi Minh Wikiquote has quotations related to Ho Chi Minh Wikimedia Commons has media related to Hồ Chi Minh category Chi Minh Ho 1890 1969 at IMDb Works by or about Ho Chi Minh at Internet Archive The Drayton Court Hotel Hồ Chi Minh obituary The New York Times 4 September 1969 TIME 100 Hồ Chi Minh Ho Chi Minh Selected Writings in PDF format Hồ Chi Minh s biography Satellite photo of the mausoleum on Google Maps Final Tribute to Hồ from the Central Committee of the Vietnam Workers Party permanent dead link Bibliography Writings by and about Hồ Chi MinhPolitical officesPreceded byBảo Đạias Emperor President of North Vietnam2 September 1945 2 September 1969 Succeeded byTon Đức ThắngPreceded byTrần Trọng Kimas Prime Minister of the Empire of Vietnam Prime Minister of North Vietnam2 September 1945 20 September 1955 Succeeded byPhạm Văn ĐồngParty political officesPreceded byNew title Chairman of the Workers Party of Vietnam1951 1969 Succeeded byNonePreceded byTrường Chinh First Secretary of the Workers Party of Vietnam1956 1960 Succeeded byLe Duẩn Portals Communism Socialism Politics Literature Asia Vietnam Biography Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Ho Chi Minh amp oldid 1150288039, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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