Ho Chi Minh (redirected from Ho Chih-minh)

Ho Chi Minh (hô chē mĭn), 1890–1969, Vietnamese nationalist leader, president of North Vietnam (1954–69), and one of the most influential political leaders of the 20th cent. His given name was Nguyen That Thanh. In 1911 he left Vietnam, working aboard a French liner. He later lived in London and in the United States during World War I before going to France near the end of the war. There he became involved in the French socialist movement and was (1920) a founding member of the French Communist party. He studied revolutionary tactics in Moscow, and, as a Comintern member, was sent (1925–27) to Guangzhou, China. While in East Asia, he organized Vietnamese revolutionaries and founded the Communist party of Indochina (later the Vietnamese Communist party). He also established a training institute that attracted many Vietnamese students, where he taught a unique blend of Marxism-Leninism and Confucian-inspired virtues. In the 1930s, Ho lived mainly in Moscow and China. He finally returned to Vietnam after the outbreak of World War II, organized a Vietnamese independence movement (the Viet Minh), and raised a guerrilla army to fight the Japanese.

Ho proclaimed the republic of Vietnam in Sept., 1945, and later agreed that it would remain an autonomous state within the French Union. Differences with the French, however, soon led (1946) to an open break. Warfare lasted until 1954, culminating in the French defeat at Dienbienphu. After the Geneva Conference (1954), which divided Vietnam at the 17th parallel, Ho became the first president of the independent republic of North Vietnam. The accord also provided for elections to be held in 1956, aimed at reuniting North and South Vietnam; however, South Vietnam, backed by the United States, refused to hold the elections. The reason was generally held to be that Ho's popularity would have led to reunification under Communist rule. In succeeding years, Ho consolidated his government in the North. He organized a guerrilla movement in the South, the National Liberation Front, or Viet Cong, which was technically independent of North Vietnam, to win South Vietnam from the successive U.S.-supported governments there (see Vietnam War).

Bibliography

See biographies by J. Lacouture (1968), D. Halberstam (1971), J. Sainteny (1972), C. Fenn (1974), D. O. Lloyd (1986), and W. J. Duiker (2000).

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Ho Chi Minh

 orig. Nguyen Sinh Cung

Ho Chi Minh, 1968.

(credit: Marc Riboud/Magnum)

(born May 19, 1890, Hoang Tru, Viet.—died Sept. 2, 1969, Hanoi) President (1945–69) of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam). Son of a poor scholar, he was brought up in a rural village. In 1911 he found work on a French steamer and traveled the world, then spent six years in France, where he became a socialist. In 1923 he went to the Soviet Union; the next year he went to China, where he started organizing exiled Vietnamese. He founded the Indochina Communist Party in 1930 and its successor, the Viet Minh, in 1941. In 1945 Japan overran Indochina, overthrowing its French colonial rulers; when the Japanese surrendered to the Allies six months later, Ho and his Viet Minh forces seized the opportunity, occupied Hanoi, and proclaimed Vietnamese independence. France refused to relinquish its former colony, and the First Indochina War broke out in 1946. Ho's forces defeated the French in 1954 at Dien Bien Phu, after which the country was partitioned into North and South Vietnam. Ho, who ruled in the north, was soon embroiled with the U.S.-backed regime of Ngo Dinh Diem in the south in what became known as the Vietnam War; North Vietnamese forces prevailed over the south six years after Ho's death.

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Ho Chi Minh

original name Nguyen That Tan. 1890--1969, Vietnamese statesman; president of North Vietnam (1954--69). He headed the Vietminh (1941), which won independence for Vietnam from the French (1954)