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Ho Che Minh
1890–1969
President of (Communist) North Vietnam 1954–1969 |
His given name was Nguyen That Thanh. In 1911 he left Vietnam ending up in France near the end of World War I. There he became involved in the French socialist movement and in 1920 was a founding member of the French Communist Party.
He studied revolutionary tactics in Moscow, and was sent in 1925 to Guangzhou, China.
While in East Asia, he organized Vietnamese revolutionaries and founded the Communist Party of Indochina (later the Vietnamese Communist party).
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.
He proclaimed the Republic Of Vietnam in September 1945, and later agreed that it would remain an autonomous state within the French Union.
Differences with the French in 1946 led to an open break. Warfare lasted until 1954, culminating in the French defeat at Dienbienphu. After the 1954 Geneva Conference, which divided Vietnam at the 17th parallel, Ho became the first president of the Independent Republic of (Communist) North Vietnam.
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. One of the few world communist dictators that actually lived a plain and simplistic lifestyle while the head of a country, Ho died of a heart attack on 2 September 1969 in Hanoi.