Everything about Ho Chi Minh totally explained
» For the city named after him, see Ho Chi Minh City.
Hồ Chí Minh (name ) (
May 19,
1890 –
September 2,
1969) was a
Vietnamese
revolutionary and statesman, who later became prime minister (1946–1955) and president (1946–1969) of the
Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam).
Ho led the
Viet Minh independence movement from 1941 onward, establishing the communist-governed Democratic Republic of Vietnam in 1945 and defeating the
French Union in 1954 at
Dien Bien Phu. He led the North Vietnamese in the
Vietnam War until his death; six years later, the war ended with a North Vietnamese victory, and Vietnamese unification followed. He was named by
Time Magazine as one of the people of the
20th century, while the former capital of
South Vietnam,
Saigon, was renamed
Ho Chi Minh City in his honor.
Early life
Hồ Chí Minh was born, as Nguyễn Sinh Cung, in 1890 in Hoàng Trù Village, his mother's hometown. From 1895, he grew up in his paternal hometown of Kim Liên Village, Nam Đàn District,
Nghệ An Province, Vietnam. He had three siblings, his sister Bạch Liên (or Nguyễn Thị Thanh), a clerk in the
French Army, his brother
Nguyễn Sinh Khiêm (or Nguyễn Tất Đạt), a
geomancer and traditional herbalist, and another brother (Nguyễn Sinh Nhuận) who died in his infancy. Following
Confucian traditions, at the age of 10 his father named him Nguyễn Tất Thành (Nguyễn the Accomplished).
Ho's father, Nguyễn Sinh Sắc, was a Confucian scholar, small time teacher and later an imperial magistrate in a small remote district Binh Khe (Qui Nhon). He was later sacked for torturing a peasant to death during his drunkenness. Different to his father, Ho were with french education, attended lycée in Huế, the alma mater of his later disciples, Phạm Văn Ðồng and Võ Nguyên Giáp. He later left his studies and chose to teach at Dục Thanh school in Phan Thiết.
First sojourn in France
On
5 June 1911, Hồ Chí Minh left Vietnam on a French steamer,
Amiral Latouche-Tréville, working as a kitchen helper. Arriving in
Marseille,
France, he applied for the
French Colonial Administrative School but his application was rejected. During his stay, he worked as a cleaner, waiter, and film retoucher. Hồ spent most of his free time in public libraries reading history books and newspapers to familiarize himself with
Western society and politics.
In the USA
In 1912, again working as the cook's helper on a ship, Hồ Chí Minh traveled to the
United States. From 1912 to 1913, he lived in
New York (
Harlem) and
Boston, where he worked as a baker at the
Parker House Hotel. He worked in menial jobs and later claimed to have worked for a wealthy family in
Brooklyn between 1917 and 1918, and during this time he may have heard
Marcus Garvey speak in
Harlem. It is believed that while in the United States he made contact with
Korean nationalists, an experience that developed his political outlook.
In England
At various points between 1913 and 1919, Hồ lived in
West Ealing, west
London, and later in
Crouch End,
Hornsey, north London. He is reported to have worked as a chef at the Drayton Court Hotel, on The Avenue, West Ealing. It is claimed that Ho trained as a pastry chef under the legendary French master,
Escoffier, at the
Carlton Hotel in the Haymarket,
Westminster, but there's no evidence to support this.
Political education in France
From 1919-1923, while living in
France, Hồ Chí Minh embraced
communism, through his friend Marcel Cachin (
SFIO). Ho claimed to have arrived in Paris from London in 1917 but French police only have documents of his arrival in June 1919. Though he convinced Emperor
Bảo Đại to abdicate, his government wasn't recognized by any country. He repeatedly petitioned American President
Harry Truman for support for Vietnamese independence, citing the
Atlantic Charter, but Truman never responded.
In 1945, in a power struggle, the Viet Minh killed members of rival groups, such as the leader of the Constitutional Party, the head of the Party for Independence, and
Ngo Dinh Diem's brother,
Ngo Dinh Khoi. Purges and killings of
Trotskyists, the rival anti-Stalinist communists, have also been documented. In 1946, when Hồ traveled outside of the country, his subordinates imprisoned 25,000 non-communist nationalists and forced 6,000 others to flee. Hundreds of political opponents were also killed in July that same year. All rival political parties were banned and local governments purged to minimise opposition later on.
Birth of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam
On
September 2,
1945, after Emperor
Bao Dai's abdication, Hồ Chí Minh read the Declaration of Independence of Vietnam, under the name of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. With violence between rival Vietnamese factions and French forces spiraling, the British commander,
General Sir Douglas Gracey declared martial law. On
September 24, the Viet Minh leaders responded with a call for a general strike.
In September 1945, a force of 200,000 Chinese Nationalists arrived in
Hanoi. Hồ Chí Minh made arrangement with their general, Lu Han, to dissolve the Communist Party and to hold an election which would yield a coalition government. When Chiang Kai-Shek later traded Chinese influence in Vietnam for French concessions in Shanghai, Hồ Chí Minh had no choice but to sign an agreement with France on
March 6,
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 was to drive out the Chinese army from North Vietnam. Fighting broke out with the French soon after the Chinese left. Hồ Chí Minh was almost captured by a group of French soldiers led by
Jean-Etienne Valluy at
Việt Bắc, but was able to escape.
In February 1950, Hồ met with
Stalin and
Mao in Moscow after the
Soviet Union recognized his government. They all agreed that China would be responsible for backing the
Viet Minh. Mao's emissary to Moscow stated in August that China planned to train 60-70,000 Viet Minh in the near future. China's support enabled Ho to escalate the fight against France.
According to a story told by Journalist
Bernard Fall, after fighting the French for several years, Hồ decided to negotiate a truce. The French negotiators arrived at the meeting site, a mud hut with a thatched roof. Inside they found a long table with chairs and were surprised to discover in one corner of the room a silver ice bucket containing ice and a bottle of good Champagne which should have indicated that Hồ was ready to negotiate. One demand by the French was the return to French custody of a number of Japanese military officers who had been helping the Vietnamese armed forces, in order for them to stand trial for war crimes committed during
World War II. Hồ replied that the Japanese officers were allies and friends whom he couldn't betray. Then he walked out, to seven more years of war. (From
Last Reflections on a War, Fall's last book, published posthumously.)
In 1954, after the important defeat of French paratroopers at the
Battle of Điện Biên Phủ, France was forced to give up its empire in Indochina.
Becoming president
In 1955, Ho Chi Minh became president of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (
North Vietnam), a
Communist-led
single party state.
The
1954 Geneva Accords required that a national election would be held in 1956 to reunite Vietnam under one government. However, the government of
South Vietnam, now under the leadership of
Ngo Dinh Diem, refused the proposed election and instead prepared for war. Some contemporary observers consider that if an election had been held in the 1954-55 period, around 80% of the Vietnamese population would have voted for Ho Chi Minh. Even "President Eisenhower is widely quoted to the effect that in 1954 as many as 80% of the Vietnamese people would have voted for Ho Chi Minh, as the popular hero of their liberation, in an election against Bao Dai... " However, the United States remained fearful of the prospect of losing its influence in Indochina, which would be valuable as a military base in a future conflict with Communist China.
Following the
Geneva Accords, there was to be a 300-day period in which people could freely move between the zones of the two Vietnams. Some 900,000 to 1 million Vietnamese, mostly
Roman Catholic, left for
South Vietnam, while a much smaller number, mostly communists, went from South to North. This was partly due to propaganda claims by a CIA mission led by Colonel
Edward Lansdale that the
Virgin Mary had moved South out of distaste for life under
communism. Some Canadian observers claimed that some were forced by North Vietnamese authorities to remain against their will. During this era, Hồ, following the communist doctrine initiated by Stalin and Mao, started a land reform in which hundreds of thousands of people accused of being landlords were summarily executed or tortured and starved in prison. This also caused millions of people to flee to South Vietnam.
In 1959, Hồ's government began to provide active support for the
National Liberation Front in
South Vietnam via the Ho Chi Minh Trail, which escalated the fighting that had begun in 1957. In late 1964, North Vietnamese combat troops were sent southwest into neutral
Laos.
During the mid to late 1960s, Hồ permitted 320,000 Chinese volunteers into northern
North Vietnam to help build infrastructure for the country, thereby freeing a similar number of North Vietnamese forces to go south.
Death
With the outcome of the
Vietnam War still in question, Ho Chi Minh died on the morning of
September 2,
1969, at his home in
Hanoi at age 79 from heart failure.
The former capital of
South Vietnam, Saigon, was renamed
Ho Chi Minh City on
1 May,
1975 shortly after its capture which officially ended the war.
His embalmed body is on display in a granite
Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum modeled after
Lenin's Tomb in Moscow. This is similar to other Communist leaders who have been similarly displayed before and since, including
Mao Zedong,
Kim Il-Sung, and for a time,
Joseph Stalin, but the "honor" violated Hồ's last wishes. He wished to be cremated and his ashes buried in urns on hilltops of Vietnam (North, Central and South). He wrote, "Not only is cremation good from the point of view of hygiene but also it saves farmland."
The
Ho Chi Minh Museum in Hanoi is dedicated to his life and work.
In Vietnam today, he's regarded by the Communist government with almost god-like status in a nationwide
personality cult, even though the government has abandoned most of his economic policies since the mid-1980s. He is still referred to as "Uncle Hồ" in Vietnam. Hồ's image appears on the front of every
Vietnamese currency note, and Hồ is featured prominently in many of Vietnam's public buildings. In 1987,
UNESCO officially recommended to Member States that they "join in the commemoration of the centenary of the birth of President Ho Chi Minh by organizing various events as a tribute to his memory", considering "the important and many-sided contribution of President Ho Chi Minh in the fields of culture, education and the arts" and that Ho Chi Minh "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."
Criticism
In contrast, some Vietnamese who lived through the war hated Ho Chi Minh for bringing chaos to the country. Vietnamese people living outside of Vietnam, commonly known as
Overseas Vietnamese have more hostile opinions of Ho Chi Minh. In particular to the Vietnamese in the U.S.,who fled communist rule after 1975, for them Hồ is considered a murderer and traitor who ruined Vietnam by starting a war.
Quotes
- "Nothing is more valuable than independence and freedom."
- "I follow only one party: the Vietnamese party."
- "You can kill ten of our men for every one we kill of yours. But even at those odds, you'll lose and we'll win." - referring to France and America in their wars in Vietnam.
- "It is better to sacrifice everything than to live in slavery!"
- "The Vietnamese people deeply love independence, freedom and peace. But in the face of United States aggression they've risen up, united as one man."
- "We have to win independence at any cost, even if the Truong Son mountains burn."
- "In (Lenin's Theses on the National and Colonial Questions) there were political terms that were difficult to understand. But by reading them again and again finally I was able to grasp the essential part. What emotion, enthusiasm, enlightenment and confidence they communicated to me! I wept for joy. Sitting by myself in my room, I'd shout as if I were addressing large crowds: "Dear martyr compatriots! This is what we need, this is our path to liberation!" Since then (the 1920s) I'd entire confidence in Lenin, in the Third International!"
- "When the prison doors are opened, the real dragon will fly out."
- "It was patriotism, not communism, that inspired me."
- "Remember, the storm is a good opportunity for the pine and the cypress to show their strength and their stability."
- "My only desire is that all of our Party and people, closely united in struggle, construct a peaceful, unified, independent, democratic and prosperous, and make a valiant contribution to the world Revolution." (Hanoi, May 10 1969.)
- “Better to eat the French dung for 100 years than the Chinese dung for 1,000.”
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