Ho Chi Minh's Role In The Vietnam War

The Vietnam War was to stop the spread of communism throughout Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh took over half of Vietnam and began the spread of communism in Vietnam. Ho Chi was looked up to as a leader or president to the Vietcong and most of Vietnam. America had to at least try and stop Ho Chi because they promised that any spread of communism will

Throughout reading multiple different sources, it was very difficult to fully assess Ho Chi Minh’s role in the Geneva Accords negotiation. The Geneva Accords allowed for a national election to determine the destiny of Vietnam in 1956. This was an election that Ho was heavily favored to win because he had a large following, and northern Vietnam was more densely populated than southern Vietnam. South Vietnam recognized this and refused to allow the election to happen, so Ho Chi Minh created the National Liberation Front for southern Vietnam. This began the second war in an attempt to unify Vietnam once again (Kirkpatrick). To his people Ho Chi Minh was known as “Uncle Ho”. He remained as a strong symbol for Vietnam’s unification (History.com Staff). While in the midst of a second war, the Vietcong, know as Guerrillas, were conducting strong revolt against the U.S. aided regime in South Vietnam. Later, Ho Chi Minh conceded his position as the party’s secretary-general; however, he remained chief of state. Since this point on, the majority of his undertakings were behind-the-scenes. Ho still continued to have an immense amount of influence in the government. His old followers dominated this. He focused on becoming more and more of a symbol to the people of Vietnam. His public personality is best symbolized by his popularly known name; Uncle Ho. Uncle Ho symbolized the idea of unification in a divided Vietnamese nation (Ho Chi

The Vietnam War was fought between North Vietnam communists led by their leader Ho Chi Minh and South Vietnam anti-communists led by their president Ngo Dinh Diem. North Vietnam was trying to taking over South Vietnam to make it a communist country. That is when the U.S. came knocking on South Vietnam’s door and gave them much needed help in 1950. In Eric Foner’s and John A Garraty’s essay, “Vietnam War,” they explain, “from Washington’s perspective, . . . [a]ny communist anywhere, at home or abroad, was, by definition, an enemy of the United States” because of President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s “domino theory” (Foner). Eisenhower’s “domino theory,” was a theory that if communists took over Vietnam, they would gradually control all of Southeast Asia. The first aid given by the U.S. was to France. Willbanks explains in his essay that the U.S. provided France, a South Vietnamese ally, $2.6

Two very different leaders, one liked by many and one despised by many, are Ho Chi Minh and Adolf Hitler. Hitler’s hatred of communists completely opposes Ho Chi Minh’s ideas. However, both Minh and Hitler wanted liberation and independence for their countries to be able to function independently. They both spent their lives attempting to gain their wishes of attaining the government they viewed as best for the countries. Minh’s goal was to get Vietnamese independence from the French and to blend Communism with Nationalism. When Minh was forced to leave China because the nationalists wanted to get rid of left wing radicals, he decided to go to Russia, joined the Comintern, but continued travelling back and forth. He became the leader of the Vietnamese communist party and started a revolution with the end goal of the independence of Indochina. Like Hitler, he was placed in prison for his wishes that went against the governmental ideas that he hoped would result in freedom. After his time in prison, he founded the Viet Minh in order to finally gain independence for Vietnam. The Japanese gave up Northern Vietnam, and Ho Chi Minh established himself as president of the Democratic state of Vietnam. Hitler also established himself as a leader and decided to take matters into his own hands. Ho Chi Minh and the Vietcong were then able to defeat the anti communist French controlled South Vietnam in the battle Dien Bien Phu. Minh fought for the freedom of others, did not let his power get to his head, and was able to get the people what they wanted, and was not fighting on behalf of himself, rather for others.

The leader of this communist introduction and development in Vietnam was Ho Chi Minh. Ho Chi Minh, born Nguyen Tat Thanh, grew up with a passion for freeing his country of the French. Ho Chi Minh worked hard on his French when his tutor told him, “If you want to defeat the French, you must understand them. To understand the French you must study the French language.” Ho Chi Minh’s patriotism developed mainly from his Chinese-language instructor, Hoang Thong, who was anti- French himself. Thong believed that losing one’s family was worse than losing one’s country. Ho Chi Minh’s first involvement against political action came on May 9, 1908 when he joined a peasant uprising as a translator. Attempting to translate in the front of the crowd, he was beaten and forced to hide at his friend’s house at night to prevent being arrested. In the following years, Ho Chi Minh yearned to go overseas; he said to journalist Anna Louise Strong, “The people of Vietnam, including my own father, often wondered who would help them to remove them the yoke of French control…I saw that I must go abroad to see for myself. After I had found out how they lived, I

2...Ho Chi Minh was a vietnamese communist who main goal was to to gain independence: French colonization the United Sovereign and communist Vietnam wanted otherwise. he had led the North Vietnamese in an

Ho was determined to achieve independence for the region. The French wanted to regain power and took badly to Ho's proclaiming the former Indochina as 'The Democratic Republic of Vietnam' in September, as the British had persuaded the allies to return power to the French in October (Palmer, 1984). At this time bi-polarity was not yet fully entrenched and Ho appealed to the U.S. in his September speech to the masses, drawing on The American Declaration of Independence (ibid.). America influenced the celebrations and professed its friendship to the new state.

Vietnamese people wanted freedom and communist Ho Chi Minh wanted freedom for Vietnam therefore people supported him. But they all know that Vietnam belong to the French. Ho fought with French his army was in the north and he tried to get US to help him but US didn’t because he was communist and were afraid that communism would spread throughout South

To begin the tensions Ho Chi Minh pledged to the communist North that he would liberate the South. Upon France entering Vietnam President Truman sent almost

All Ho Chi Minh was trying to gain from all this was aid and recognition from the United States, but Truman was afraid to give due to the fact he thought of ho as another puppet of the USSR.

Eisenhower promised support with the south Vietnam government as long as certain needs were met including, land reform and less government corruption. This was the first involvement the US had with Vietnam and gradually increased over time. Kennedy was providing more and more support to the failing south Vietnam and eventually Ngo Dinh Diem was assassinated in 1963. A little after the death of Diem president Kennedy was also assassinated. This left South Vietnam with no governmental leader and they were already losing the

The United States began to support South Vietnam, but Diem proved to be a horrible leader and in 1963 was killed during a coup issued by John F. Kennedy. The National Liberation

Ho Chi Minh’s time in France introduced him to the teachings of communism; this exposure to new ideas gave him a renewed sense of nationalism and ideas as to how to change Vietnam to better represent Vietnamese people in a postcolonial world. His teachings and radical ideas deeply contrasted with the United States government’s desire to contain communism, eventually leading to American involvement in the Vietnam Conflict. This conflict had lasting consequences that are still present today, namely due to the United States using Agent Orange to weaken the Vietnam

Diem helped rule the South of Vietnam with the Emperor Bao Dai, until he removed the Emperor and replaced him with himself. He then further abused his position and appointed his family and friends with the most beneficial positions. He then introduced new laws and taxes which greatly upset the peasants, especially with the new farming policies. It was these laws that led to protests such as the Monks which burnt themselves to death as they were unable to practise freely. Unfortunately for America the harm Diem was creating and led to an increase in their involvement.

Ho Chi Minh Ho Chi Minh was a Communist, who had announced Vietnam independent. He was a Marxist and believed in “national Communism ". Throughout the war with the French, Ho Chi Minh took refuge in northern Vietnam and settled there with his followers. He founded the Indochina Communist Party and the Viet Minh. North Vietnam was a deprived area and was cut off from the agricultural profit of South Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh was forced to ask assistance from main Communist allies, the Soviet Union and China. Both aided North Vietnam before and during the war. (Dong Si Nguyen, Duong xuyen Truong son: hoi uc.  Hanoi: Nha Xuat Ban Quan Doi Nhan Dan, 1999). Ho Chi Minh declared the independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. This had been a tremendously significant event in world history perhaps the most important event since the 1917 October Revolution in Russia. It marked the first occasion in human history in which a radical national movement under Communist leadership had succeeded in overthrowing the influence of a colonial state and establishing and maintaining its own new, independent form of social and political system. However, Ho’s type of communism was markedly different than that of Marxist ideology that had been the metaphorical icon of the October Revolution. alike to Jose Antonio’s fascist movement, the hierarchical communist party (later renamed the Vietminh) conformed intimately to the ideas of the person at its head, but unlike Antonio’s movement, did not