Biography: Ho Chi Mnih: A Biography

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HO CHI MNIH

Ho Chi Mnih "Uncle Ho" : Carroll, Michael. "Ho Chi Minh: A Biography." Canadian Journal of History 43.2 (2008): 355-7. ProQuest. Web. 26 Feb. 2014. is mostly known as the president of northern Vietnam or Viet Mnih in 1941. Ho chi minh was born Nguyen Sinh Cung on May 19, 1890 in central Vietnam "he was a seasoned revolutionary and passionate nationalist obsessed by a single goal: independence for his country" Karnow, Stanley. "Ho Chi Minh." Time. Time Inc., 13 Apr. 1998. Web. 26 Feb. 2014. IN his younger years he had job as a cook on a French steamer ship he spent years at sea traveling to several different locations aboard this traveling ship by 1919 he was living in France . Meanwhile living in France Minh gathered a group of Vietnam immigrants and petitioned the delegates at the Versailles peace conference for the rights for subjects in Indochina that the French colony control . they protested that the subjects of Indochina be granted the same right that the government do. In 1920 he joined the new French communist party .three years later he began recruiting members of a Vietnamese national movement that would later from the Indochinese communist party which was founded in Hong Kong in 1930. He tralved the world as a representative of the communist international organization.

When Germany defeated France in 1940, during World War II, Ho saw it as an opportunity for the Vietnamese nationalist cause. Around this time, he began to use the name Ho Chi Minh (roughly translated as “Bringer of Light”). With his lieutenants Vo Nguyen Giap and Pham Van Dong, Ho returned to Vietnam in January 1941 and organized the Viet Minh, or League for the Independence of Vietnam. Forced to seek China’s aid for the new or...

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...“Uncle Ho” also remained an important symbol of Vietnam’s unification. The U.S. continued to increase its support of South Vietnam, sending economic aid and–beginning in December 1961–military troops. American air strikes against North Vietnam began in 1965, and in July 1966, Ho sent a message to the country’s people that “nothing is as dear to the heart of the Vietnamese as independence and liberation.” This became the motto of the North Vietnamese cause.
On the heels of North Vietnam’s Tet Offensive in early 1968, U.S. President Lyndon Johnson made the decision to halt escalation of the war and called for peace talks to begin. The conflict was still ongoing by September 2, 1969, when Ho Chi Minh died in Hanoi at the age of 79. The last U.S. troops left Vietnam in March 1973, and in April 1975 Communist forces seized control of Saigon, renaming it Ho Chi Minh City.

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