Vietminh Control Through Modesty

A detailed Summary of Vietminh Control Through Modesty

Vietnam, a nation with a history ravaged by war. This is a nation where unity and nationalism are forgotten in a long past of blood and tears. From this desolated country there was a need for a man to rise from the ashes and unite this fragment into the whole that it once was. This man needed to be from the people. He had to respect and practice the ideals of the average man. He had to LIVE as the average person and paint a picture, for the people, of the true way of life that a Vietnamese person should have (Fitzgerald 1972, 35). In doing this, the man captured the hearts and souls of a nation and with their sweat and blood he formed a great army, not an army backed with technology and numbers, but an army that uses the strongest weapon it can to achieve victory. That weapon is belief. The Viet Minh was formed.

The man spoken about above is Ho Chi Minh. He was the leader of the communist party in Northern Vietnam during the Vietnam War. He was different from any other leader of this century. This was because he didn't place himself above the people, as a man giving orders that must be followed; instead he became the living embodiment of the people guiding them like a father and holding their hands whenever the

Ho now saw Communism as the aid that would help him achieve his goal of a free Vietnam. He saw Lenin as a true revolutionary and was infatuated by his writings. He then went to Russia where he continued to study communism and become a true revolutionary. During this period Ho went through two decades of travel. He was in and out of Russia several times. He went into western Europe. Back to Asia where he was jailed in a Chinese jail and a British Hong Kong jail. During his jail time Ho started his ideas of forming the Vietminh. His task was not to find the recruits, but to avoid a civil war in his own group after its establishment.

Ho Chi Minh was born under the rule of the French in the province of Nghe Thinh in Central Vietnam (Halberstam 1987, 17). Ho had a lot of time on his hands when he was a child, but he did not let that time go to waste. He used it to study and become a scholar. During his studies he became angry and frustrated because what he read opened his eyes to the evils that were bestowed upon his country. His father, being a nationalist, probably added more fuel to this hatred of the French, but this was not blind hatred. It was hatred of passion and love for his country. Ho's childhood was not a very easy one, but whatever you survive only makes you stronger, and by the time he was an adult this man was as solid as granite. This pillar of a man deciphered why the minor rebellions against the French were ineffective. Betrayal, lack of organization, and a failure to carry through were all the symptoms for the inevitable brevity of each of these rebellions (Halberstam 1987, 21).

Halberstam, David. HO. New York: Random House, 1987

Ho continued to live his life as a peasant. He worked as a dishwasher on French liner. This is a strong man indeed. He was willing to do anything, including living with and serving the enemy, to attain the knowledge to defeat he long time foe. He then traveled to England where he worked as a pastry chef in the Carlton Hotel. It was here that he met other exiled Asians and joined a group called the Lao Dang Hoi Nagai or Overseas Workers.

Finally getting back to Vietnam, Ho formed his Vietminh party and established a base of operations in a cave near the village of Pac Bo (Halberstam 1987, 63). The official announcement of his faction and its intentions took place at a Communist party meeting in May of 1941. During these few months Ho continued to recruit for his newly found party and establish a military and political presence. In Western Europ

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Category: History