HO CHI MINH AND THE VIETNAMESE WAR AGAINST THE FRENCH, 1946–1954

Ho Chi Minh (1890–1969), the leader of Vietnam’s struggle for independence from France, was born in central Vietnam. Refusing to submit to the French colonial authorities that had ruled his country for half a century, Ho left Vietnam as a ship’s cabin boy in 1911. By 1918 he was living in Paris and had changed his name to Nguyen Ai Quoc (Nguyen the Patriot). In 1920 he joined the French Communist Party and by 1924 he was undertaking advanced revolutionary training in Moscow. His movements for the remainder of the 1920s are uncertain, but in 1925 he surfaced in Canton; in 1930 in Hong Kong he founded the Indochinese Communist Party.

In the spring of 1940, after more than three decades of exile, Ho finally returned to Vietnam, where in May 1941 he founded the League for the Independence of Vietnam (Viet Minh). Although small in number, the Viet Minh caught the attention of U.S. officials, who used them to conduct military operations against the Japanese in northern Vietnam. In 1945 Ho, with limited U.S. assistance, led his Viet Minh in the liberation of Vietnam from the Japanese.

Unable to block the return of the French colonial administration to Vietnam, Ho began a bitter eight-year guerrilla war against France, the First Indochina War (1946–1954). Drawing upon centuries of Vietnamese resistance to foreign invaders, Ho warned the French, “You can kill ten of my men for every one I kill of yours. But even at those odds you will lose and I will win.” True to his word, Ho and his field commander, General Vo Nguyen Giap, wore down the French and in May 1954 at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu forced the French army to surrender. The Viet Minh lost at least 200,000 soldiers in this war. France lists 34,798 names of its dead on its Vietnam War Memorial. The 1954 Geneva Agreements ending the war provided for (1) a temporary division of Vietnam into two parts at the 17th parallel; (2) general elections to be held no later than 1956; (3) creation of the states of Laos and Cambodia; and (4) the end of the French empire in Indochina. Enigmatic, slight of build, and unprepossessing in appearance, Ho was consistently undervalued and misread by his adversaries. He was both a ruthless communist and a fervent Vietnamese nationalist. Not only did he defeat the French, but he presided over the military and political system that would defeat the United States in the Second Indochina War (1957–1975).
Suggestions for Term Papers
1. In 1945 Ho Chi Minh asked the United States to assist him in preventing the French from returning to Vietnam and to make all of Indochina an American protectorate. Why did the Truman administration reject this request? Should the United States have listened more closely to Ho?
2. Although a communist, Ho was also a Vietnamese nationalist. Discuss the importance of nationalism in shaping his politics.
3. Investigate the military strategy of General Vo Nguyen Giap, the man who defeated both France and the United States. Why was General Giap so successful?
4. What factors caused the French to lose the Battle of Dien Bien Phu?
5. Although Ho spent several years in China and welcomed Chinese assistance in his struggle against France and the United States, he did not trust China. Why was this? To what extent can this be explained by the historical relationship between China and Vietnam?
6. Evaluate the results of the 1954 Geneva Conference and determine the extent to which Ho obtained what he believed Vietnam had won on the battlefield. What shaped the decisions reached on Vietnam at the conference?

Research Suggestions

In addition to the boldfaced items, look under the entries for “The 1968 Tet Offensive” (#68) and “Pol Pot and the Cambodian Incursion, 1970–1978” (#72). Search under Geneva Conference (1954).
SUGGESTED SOURCES

Primary Sources

Fall, Bernard B., ed. Ho Chi Minh on Revolution: Selected Writings, 1920–1966. New York: Praeger, 1967. The most accessible edited collection of Ho’s writings.

Ho Chi Minh. Ho Chi Minh: Selected Writings, 1920–1969. Hanoi: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1973. The authoritative Vietnamese edition of Ho’s major works.

Woddis, Jack., ed. Ho Chi Minh: Selected Articles and Speeches, 1920–1967. New York: International Publishers, 1970. Another useful edition of Ho Chi Minh’s important writings.

Secondary sources

Clayton, Anthony. The Wars of French Decolonization. New York: Longman, 1994. A reliable treatment from the French point of view.

Fall, Bernard. Hell in a Very Small Place: The Siege of Dien Bien Phu. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1966. A classic analysis of why Ho beat France.

———. Street Without Joy: Insurgency in Indochina, 1946–1963. Harrisburg, Pa.: Stackpole Books, 1961. One of the best books on the Vietnam War.

Halberstam, David. Ho. New York: Random House, 1971. A brief, sympathetic introduction.

Lacouture, Jean. Ho Chi Minh: A Political Biography. Translated by Peter Wiles. New York: Random House, 1968. Despite its age this remains the best biography of Ho in English.

Marr, David G. Vietnam 1945: The Quest for Power. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. The third volume of the most authoritative analysis of Ho’s struggle for power.

Patti, Archimedes L.A. Why Vietnam? Prelude to America’s Albatross. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980. An engaging discussion by an American officer who worked closely with Ho and the Viet Minh during the war against Japan.

Pike, Douglas Eugene. History of Vietnamese Communism, 1925–1976. Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1978. A concise introduction to Ho’s role as a party leader.

Vietnam: A Television History. Part I: “Roots of a War (1945–1953).” Originally broadcast on PBS, 4 October 1983. The first episode of a distinguished documentary series. World Wide Web

“The American Experience: Vietnam Online.” http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/vietnam. Although this Web site is largely devoted to the U.S. involvement in Vietnam, it does contain transcripts for each segment of Vietnam: A Television History.