HO CHI MINH BIOGRAPHY

Ho Chi Minh, was born May 19, 1890, Kimlien, Annam, Vietnam.

Attended school in Hue. Later, Ho Chi Minh taught at a private school in Phan Thiet. In 1911 Ho Chi Minh was employed as a cook on a French steamship liner. After World War I, Ho Chi Minh engaged in radical activities, and was part of the founding group of the French Communist party.

Ho Chi Minh was summoned to Moscow where he was given training. Then in 1924, Ho Chi Minh was sent to Canton, China, to organize a revolutionary movement among Vietnamese exiles. In 1930, Ho Chi Minh founded the Indochinese Communist party (ICP). In June 1931 Ho Chi Minh was arrested in Hong Kong by British police. He was kept in prison until his release in 1933.

He returned to the Soviet Union, where he spent several years recovering from tuberculosis. Ho Chi Minh returned to China in 1938 and worked as an adviser with the Chinese Communist armed forces. When Japan occupied Vietnam in 1941, Ho Chi Minh helped to found a new Communist-dominated independence movement known as the Vietminh. In 1945, with Japan defeated, the Vietminh took power and proclaimed the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh became president.

The French were unwilling to give the Vietnamese independence, and in 1946 war broke out. For eight years Vietminh guerrillas fought the French troops, finally defeating them in 1954. However, negotiations at Geneva divided the country.

Following Ho Chi Minh: The Memoirs of a North Vietnamese Colonel

Conflict resumed in the 1960`s, when the North mounted an insurgency against the U.S. puppet regime in Saigon. Ho Chi Minh died on September 3, 1969, in Hanoi of heart failure. I In his honor, Saigon was renamed Ho Chi Minh City.

Ho Chi Minh was a Vietnamese revolutionary, who later became Prime Minister (1946-1955) and President (1946-1969) of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam). Ho is most famous for leading 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. The former capital of South Vietnam, Saigon, was renamed Ho Chi Minh City in his honor.

Ho Chi Minh was born, in 1890 in Hoàng Trù Village, his mother's hometown. From 1895, he grew up in his paternal hometown of Kim Liên Village, Nam Ðàn District, Ngh, An Province, Vietnam. He had three siblings. Ho's father, was a Confucian scholar, teacher and a civil servant in the imperial palace. He was later dismissed from his office for refusing to serve at the court. From his father, Ho received a strong Confucian upbringing. During his childhood he developed a sense that the Vietnamese were not treated well by the French colonizers and the monarchist government.

On 5 June 1911, Ho Chi 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. Ho Chi Minh spent most of his free time in public libraries reading history books and newspapers to familiarize himself with Western society and politics.

In 1912, again working as the cook's helper on a ship, Ho Chi 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.

At various points between 1913 and 1919, Ho Chi Minh 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.

Following Ho Chi Minh: The Memoirs of a North Vietnamese Colonel

Leaving French Indochina where he had a French education, Ho Chi Minh followed his studies in London and Paris during the 1910s. He came to communism in France through his friend Marcel Cachin (SFIO) who was sent to Russia in 1917 during World War I. Cachin was a pro-bolshevism politician, a fierce supporter of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and became the director of the popular communist newspaper L'Humanité ("Humanity"). From 1919-1923, while living in France, Ho Chi Minh embraced communism. Ho claimed to have arrived in Paris from London in 1917 but French police only have documents of his arrival in June 1919. Following World War I, Ho Chi Minh petitioned for recognition of the civil rights of the Vietnamese people in French Indochina to the Western powers at the Versailles peace talks, but was ignored. Citing the language and the spirit of the U.S. Declaration of Independence, Ho petitioned U.S. President Woodrow Wilson for help to remove the French from Vietnam and replace it with a new, nationalist government. His request was ignored. In 1921, during the Congress of Tours, France, Ho Chi Minh became a founding member of the Parti Communiste Français (French Communist Party) and spent much of his time in Moscow afterwards, becoming the Comintern's Asia hand and the principal theorist on colonial warfare.

In 1923, Ho Chi Minh moved to Guangzhou, China. During 1925-26 he organized 'Youth Education Classes' and occasionally gave lectures at the Whampoa Military Academy on the revolutionary movement in Indochina. He stayed there in Hong Kong as a representative of the Communist International. In June 1931, he was arrested and incarcerated by British police until his release in 1933. He then made his way back to the Soviet Union, where he spent several years recovering from tuberculosis. In 1938, he returned to China and served as an adviser with Chinese Communist armed forces.

In 1928-29, Ho Chi Minh stayed in the Thai village of Nachok. He spent some years as a Buddhist Monk in Northeast Thailand.

In 1941, Ho Chi Minh returned to Vietnam to lead the independence movement. He oversaw many successful military actions against the Vichy French and Japanese occupation of Vietnam during World War II, supported closely but clandestinely by the United States Office of Strategic Services, and also later against the French bid to reoccupy the country (1946-1954). He was also jailed in China for many months by Chiang Kai-shek's local authorities. After his release in 1943, he again returned to Vietnam. He was treated for malaria and dysentery by American OSS doctors. After the August Revolution (1945), Ho Chi Minh became Chairman of the Provisional Government (Premier of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam). Though he convinced the Emperor to abdicate, his government was not recognized by any country. He petitioned American President Harry Truman for support for Vietnamese independence, but was rebuffed due to French pressure on the U.S. and his known communist activities. 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. In 1946, when Ho Chi Minh traveled outside of the country.

On September 2, 1945, after Emperor Bao Dai's abdication, Ho Chi 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 declared martial law. On September 24, the Viet Minh leaders responded with a call for a general strike. On September 1945, a force of 200,000 Chinese Nationalists arrived in Hanoi. Ho Chi 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, Ho Chi 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. Ho Chi Minh was almost captured by a group of French soldiers, but was able to escape. In February 1950, Ho Chi Minh 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. Ho Chi Minh 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 Ho Chi Minh was ready to negotiate. Ho Chi Minh walked out, to seven more years of war. In 1954, after the important defeat of French paratroopers, France was forced to give up its empire in Indochina.

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.

A Vietcong Memoir: An Inside Account of the Vietnam War and Its Aftermath

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 number, mostly Budhists, went from South to North. This was partly due to propaganda claims by a CIA mission that the Virgin Mary had moved South out of distaste for life under communism. During this era, Ho Chi Minh following the communist doctrine initiated by Stalin and Mao, started land reform. In 1959, Ho Chi Minh 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. During the mid to late 1960s, Ho Chi Minh permitted 320,000 Chinese volunteers into northern North Vietnam to help build infrastructure for the country.

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. Many in North Vietnam tearfully mourned his death. His death day was initially reported to be September 3 as not to coincide with the National Day. Recently the government changed his official death day to September 2. 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 mausoleum modeled after Lenin's Tomb in Moscow.

Quotes by Ho Chi Minh
"Nothing is more valuable than independence and freedom."
"I follow only one party: the Vietnamese party."
"It is better to sacrifice everything than to live in slavery!"
"We have to win independence at any cost, even if the Truong Son mountains burn."
"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."


Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com:
Ho Chi Minh (1890-1969) fought for half a century to free Vietnam from foreign domination, and the story of his life illuminates the ongoing struggle between colonialism and nationalism that still shapes world history. William J. Duiker, who served in Saigon's U.S. embassy during the Vietnam War, spent 30 years delving into Vietnamese and European archives, as well as interviewing Minh's surviving colleagues, in order to write this definitive biography. The son of a civil servant from a traditionally rebellious province, the future president of North Vietnam was known for more than 20 years as Nguyen That Thanh. It was under this name that he founded the Vietnamese Communist Party, having concluded after reading Lenin's analysis of imperialism that revolutionary Marxism was the most effective tool to achieve Vietnam's independence. He spent 30 years in exile, cementing his communist ties in Moscow and working with Vietnamese rebels from a base in China, before assuming the name Ho Chi Minh in 1942, when the forces unleashed by World War II seemed to be clearing the way for Vietnamese liberation. French intransigence and American anti-communism would delay the emergence of an independent, united Vietnam for another 30 years, but Ho became an icon who inspired the communist North and the Southern Vietcong to keep fighting. Focusing almost exclusively on political events and ideological debates, Duiker depicts Ho as a nationalist first and foremost, but also as a convinced (though pragmatic) Marxist who believed socialism would help his country modernize and correct ancient inequities. This long, very detailed biography is not for the casual reader, but anyone with a serious interest in modern history will relish a dense narrative that fully conveys the complexities of the man and the issues with which he grappled. --Wendy Smith
Read More Here....Ho Chi Minh: A Life

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