Ho Chi Minh is the last name of war, from 1940, by Nguyen Sinh Cung, who took at twenty-five the nickname of Nguyen Ai Quoc ("the Patriot"), under which he enters the history of the Vietnamese revolution.
Born in Kim Lien, about 400 km south of Hanoi, he is the son of a penniless little scholar. The young man, after studying at Hue High School, has to go abroad to earn a living. Engaged at twenty on a French liner, he sailed until 1917, making long stops in Alexandria, New York and London in particular. In 1917, he moved to Paris and very quickly inspires and animates groups of Vietnamese workers. In 1919, he tried to get the Versailles peace conference to accept a text in favor of the emancipation of his compatriots. The following year, a member of the Socialist Party, he took part in the Congress of Tours and took part in the pro-Soviet faction, which became the French Communist Party. In 1922, he founded and directed Le Paria, organ of "the inter-colonial union", which collaborate including Algerians, Malagasy and West Indians. At the end of 1923 he left for Moscow, where he arrived the day after Lenin's death. He takes part in the work of the Comintern, where he represents Southeast Asia.
In 1925, he founded Canton Thanh Nien, organ of the revolutionary youth of Vietnam. In February 1930, the creation of the Indochinese Communist Party gave rise to very harsh debates that he arbitrated, imposing himself as the leader and strategist of the Vietnamese revolution. He is sentenced to death by a French court and, residing in Hong Kong, he has little to be delivered by the English to the French colonial authorities. He managed to regain the U.R.S.S.
In 1941, he moved near the Sino-Vietnamese border at Pac Bô. It is there that he creates, with his lieutenants of the Indochinese Communist Party and several nationalist leaders, the Viet Minh or Front for the Independence of Vietnam. He is preparing the uprising against France. On August 25, 1945, Ho Chi Minh and his people made themselves masters of Hanoi. On September 2, the leader proclaimed independence and founded the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. The government of General De Gaulle sends an expeditionary force commanded by General Leclerc, under the political authority of High Commissioner Georges Thierry d'Argenlieu. Leclerc tries to make prevail a political compromise with the revolution: Ho Chi Minh signs agreements of March 6, 1946 which recognize Vietnam as a "free state in the French Union"; but the Fontainebleau conference, which must transform these agreements into a definitive treaty, fails. Serious incidents are increasing, especially in Haiphong. Then began seven years of war, during which Ho Chi Minh is an incomparable host of popular resistance: his faithful disciple Vo Nguyen Giap forms and directs the units, equipped with artillery delivered by the Soviets and the Chinese, who crush the French garrison of Dien Bien Phu (May 7, 1954). Paris is forced to deal with them: the Geneva conference culminated on 20 July 1954 in agreements ending the Indochina war.
If his compatriots call him "uncle"; if he himself speaks of them as his "nephews", it is not by folk badinage. In Vietnamese society, nothing is more important than the family bond, and the man called bac, a word reserved for the elder brother of the father, is par excellence the one whose advice is expected and whose moral authority is respected.
In 1959, the Hanoi regime must take a stand in the open conflict in South Vietnam between the anti-communist government of Ngô Dinh Diem, backed by Washington, and the rebel, semi-nationalist, half-communist maquis. While Washington increases its intervention with Diem month by month, before letting the army leaders take the place of the dictator, Hanoi's aid to the southern guerrillas increases. In 1965, the United States Air Force intervened directly on the North, unleashing more bombs than the US Air Force on Germany during the Second World War. In the ordeal, the popularity of "uncle Ho" only increases. The war continues when, in 1969, Ho Chi Minh died in his eightieth year.