Ho Chi Minh

Ho Chi Minh was born on 19 May 1890 in Nghệ An Province in northern Vietnam as Nguyễn Sinh Cung. Ho Chi Minh used many alias names during his early life. Contrary to what many have been led to believe, Ho Chi Minh was NOT a freedom fighter. Ho Chi Minh was a brutal dictator and mass murderer.

Ho Chi Minh became a supporter of Vladimir Lenin and communism in 1919. In December 1920, he was a representative to the Congress of Tours of the Socialist Party of France. He voted for the Third International, a group that advocated world wide communism and was a founding member of the French Communist Party in 1921.

Ho studied revolutionary tactics in the Soviet Union and attended the Fifth Communist International Congress (Comintern) in June 1924. When Vladimir Lenin, the Soviet Union’s first communist dictator died in 1924, Ho declared: “. . . he is the bright star showing us the way to the socialist revolution.”(1) 

In November, 1924 Ho Chi Minh went to China to organize a Communist movement in Southeast Asia. Ho Chi Minh’s goals were: 1) Drive the French colonial rulers out of IndoChina. 2) Eliminate all Vietnamese who opposed Communism, even though they were also fighting against the French and 3) Eliminate all Communists who challenged his authority.

In order to eliminate rivals, Ho secretly collaborated with the French and sold them out for money. The most famous fighter against French colonial rule in Indochina (France took control in the 1860s) was Phan Boi Chau. In 1925, Ho Chi Minh set him up so the French could arrest him and he received a life sentence. Other foes of Ho were vanquished this same way.(2) 

Ho Chí Minh led the Viet Minh independence movement against French colonial rule from 1941 onward. After the Japanese conquered Indochina in 1940-41, the US gave Ho Chi Minh a considerable amount of weapons but got little in return. Ho Chi Minh saved them for future use against the French and his Vietnamese political opponents. Ho Chi Minh’s forces only made one attack on Japanese troops - on 17 July 1945, killing 8 enemy troops.(3) On 14 August 1945, Ho launched an offensive against French troops and his political opponents. In the Hanoi area alone between 5,000 and 10,000 political opponents were killed.(4) The number of executions in the rest of Vietnam is unknown. After Ho killed a personal friend, he proclaimed: "Anyone who does not follow the line determined by me will be smashed.”(5) 

On September 2, 1945, Ho Chi Minh declared Vietnamese Independence in Hanoi, borrowing language from the U.S. declaration of independence in an effort to manipulate Western powers. Ho Chi Minh became undisputed leader of Vietnam.

Ho Chi Minh announced that elections would be held on 23 December 1945 so he could claim he was the “duly elected” leader of Vietnam. After Chinese troops moved in to disarm Japanese troops, Ho Chi Minh postponed the elections until 6 Jan 1946. This election was fraudulent. The anti communist nationalists complained they had little time to find candidates, because so many of their people had been killed by Ho Chi Minh’s forces. The candidates they did put up were not allowed on the ballot because Ho Chi Minh charged them with anti government activities. As a result, most of Ho Chi Minh’s candidates ran unopposed. Most importantly, the vote was not secret. Voters had to tell Ho’s henchmen who they were voting for and election officials would mark the ballot accordingly. Saying you were not voting for Ho Chi Minh was a death sentence. Voting totals were also inflated. The population of Hanoi in 1946 was about 119,000 but Ho received 169,222 votes. Not surprisingly, Ho Chi Minh’s Viet Minh party won a landslide victory.(6)  

After World War Two ended, some Japanese troops refused to return to Japan and deserted. They feared being put on trial for war crimes. Ho Chi Minh recruited these men to train Ho’s forces in modern warfare. The French, in a 1947 meeting, demanded Ho Chi Minh turn these Japanese over to the French. Ho chi Minh refused.(7)

During the war against France from 1946 to 1954, Ho Chi Minh’s Viet Minh Army assassinated between 100,000 and 150,000 opponents of communism.(8) Although 98% of farmers in North Vietnam owned their own land, Ho Chi Minh undertook “land reform” in the mid 1950s. Anyone who was not sufficiently supportive of Communism was classified a “landlord” and executed or imprisoned and their property confiscated. About 50,000 farmers were killed. In addition, about 300,000 wives, children and sometimes parents of those executed were now homeless and perished from starvation or sickness. Communist authorities forbid anyone from helping them.(9)

Ho Chi Minh wrote numerous letters to President Truman and other officials from late 1945 to 1948, asking the US to support Ho Chi Minh against French colonial rule. Critics believe that Ho Chi Minh wanted to be an ally of the US and had we cooperated with him, the Vietnam War might have been avoided. Not true. Ho Chi Minh was a dedicated communist who wanted the US to force France out of Indochina so he could establish his own communist dictatorship.

On September 12, 1946, George M. Abbott, from the Department of State met with Ho Chi Minh for an hour in Paris. In the letter Abbott sent to US officials, Abbott declared that Ho Chi Minh denied being connected to communists. “Ho Chi-minh pointed out that there are no Communist ministers in his government and that the Viet-Nam constitution opens with a guarantee of personal liberties and the so-called rights of man and also guarantees the right to personal property. He admits that there are Communists in Annam but claims that the Communist Party as such dissolved itself several months ago.” Ho Chi Minh also demanded the French give in to his demands for freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and the release of political prisoners.(10) 

EVERYTHING Ho Chi Minh told George Abbott was a LIE. The communist Constitution of N. Vietnam - like the Constitutions of other communist countries - wasn’t worth the paper it was written on. Ho Chi Minh gave lip service to believing in the principles of freedom but it was all a scam. Harry Truman knew Ho was a master liar and a mass murderer. Truman was not about to help a communist like Ho Chi Minh. 

In February 1950, Ho Chi Minh met with Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong in Moscow after the Soviet Union recognized his government. They all agreed that China would be responsible for backing the Việt Minh. In May, 1950, the US began to supply aid to France.

After Ho Chi Minh defeated French forces in 1954, the parties met in Geneva to work out a final solution for Indochina. Vietnam was divided in half, with the north being communist and the south being free. Contrary to popular belief, it was Ho Chi Minh’s representative to the Geneva Talks that wanted Vietnam divided in half.(11) Delegates from Free Vietnam opposed dividing Vietnam(12) as did the United States.(13) The Geneva agreement was signed on 20 July 1954 by only two countries: France and Ho Chi Minh’s North Vietnam.

Ho Chi Minh violated the agreement immediately. Under this agreement, anyone was permitted to leave North Vietnam and move to South Vietnam and vice versa. One MILLION people fled to South Vietnam and up to two million more would have left had they not been stopped by Ho Chi Minh’s army.(14) The people who did get to South Vietnam were the strongest critics of communism and communist propaganda was ineffective for several years thereafter.

Vietnam was supposed to be reunited by an election in 1956. The US, Britain and free Vietnam wanted the UN to oversee the election but the Soviet Union rejected this idea.(15) Communist Vietnam wanted the elections to be “locally supervised”(16) which meant the elections in communist controlled areas would be rigged like the last elections run by Ho Chi Minh in 1946 - which is why President Eisenhower cancelled the election. Observers sent to monitor the elections where not allowed to do their job.

In 1956, Communists in S. Vietnam were ordered to begin destabilizing society by assassinating leaders in rural villages. At least 450 people were killed - not only anti-communists but people who were apolitical. Village leaders, schoolteachers, medical personnel and social workers were all targeted in order to create a leadership vacuum - which was then filled by pro communists.(17)

Between 1961 and 1963, 40,000 Communist soldiers infiltrated into South Vietnam from the North.(18) In July 1959, North Vietnamese forces began seizing parts of eastern Laos in order to smuggle supplies to communist forces in S. Vietnam. Eastern Cambodia was seized as well. By the early 1960s, the South was losing the war to the North. The US began supplying more aid and advisors to the South. 

After World War Two, containing communism became the number one priority for US foreign policy. The Soviets controlled Eastern Europe and North Korea through communist puppet governments. China fell to communism in October 1949. The US decided not to become involved in the China war. There were other communist movements in Western Europe and freedom in many parts of the world were threatened. After the assassination of John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson got the US fully involved in Southeast Asia. By early 1965, American combat troops began arriving in South Vietnam, first to protect US airbases and later to take on most of the fighting. By the end of 1966, there were 385,000 US troops in Vietnam and over 32,000 troops from Australia, South Korea and the Philippines.(19)

By July 1967, Hồ Chí Minh and most of the Communist Party concluded the war had fallen into a stalemate. To break the stalemate, Hồ Chí Minh approved a surprise military attack across S. Vietnam by communist forces on 31 Jan 1968 - the celebration of Tet, the lunar new year and one of the most important holidays in Vietnam. In previous years, the holiday had been the occasion for an informal truce in the Vietnam War.

Communist forces temporarily took over many cities in South Vietnam but the allies retook them. Although communist forces suffered heavy casualties it proved to be a political victory for Ho Chi Minh. Before Tet, the Johnson administration had been claiming that the end of the war was in sight; now, it was clear that a long struggle still lay ahead. President Johnson announced he would not run for reelection.

With the outcome of the Vietnam War still in question, Ho Chí Minh died on 3 September 1969 at his home in Hanoi, aged 79.