Although he had refused to learn French himself, Nguyen decided to send Ho to a French school. He was now of the opinion that it would help him prepare for the forthcoming struggle against the French.
When Ho attended French schools in Vietnam, he was expelled from one for anti-French activities. It was the start of a long career opposing the French.
After his studies. Ho was, for a short period, a schoolteacher. He then decided to become a sailor. This enabled him to travel to many different countries over the next 30 years. This included several countries that were part of the French Empire. In doing so. Ho learnt that the Vietnamese were not the only people suffering from exploitation. His main purpose in life was to promote the cause of Vietnamese nationalism and he did this by, studying history and politics, writing pamphlets and articles, also making contacts and setting up political groups.
Ho finally settled in Paris in 1917. Here he read books by and other left-wing writers and eventually he became convened to communism. When in December, 1920 the was formed. Hewas one of the founders of the French Communist Party and published writings on colonial issues in the Marxist periodical Le Paria (The Outcast), and contributed articles to the newspaper L'Humanité. He attracted a lot of attention as a fiery Vietnamese nationalist and tried to get Woodrow Wilson at the Versailles Peace Conference to support his cause. He appealed to Wilson to give the Vietnamese their freedom. The big powers in 1919 were happy to give various European nations their independence but not Asian people. In 1929 he attended a Congress of socialist Parties.
Ho, like the rest of the French Communist Party, had been inspired by the . In 1924, he visited the Soviet Union to study Marxism and revolutionary techniques. The Soviet Republic was the one nation in the world with a communist government and Moscow was the base for the Comintern organisation aiming to spread Communism world wide. It was logical that Ho make contact with top Russian Communists. While in Moscow, Ho wrote to a friend that it was the duty of all communists to return to their own country to: "make contact with the masses to awaken, organise, unite and train them, and lead them to fight for freedom and independence." However, the Russians were not impressed with Vietnamese nationalists and felt that the Vietnamese people were not prepared for overthrowing French rule. Therefore Ho was now convinced by Lenin’s idea that ‘revolution and anti-colonial resistance were inseparable’.
In 1924 he moved as an agent of the Comintern to Canton, China, where he helped to organize the revolutionary forces and lectured on politics and ideology. Ho became an asian expert to comintern’s top man in China, Michael Borodin. Borodin was advising Chian Kai-shek’s guomintang government in its bid to take over control of China. Ho was able to witness an Asian revolutionary movement in action. Also, his travel to Canton brought him to the borders of his homeland. Not surprisingly Canton was a hotbed for Vietnamese nationalist exiles and Ho was able to make useful contacts, setting up groups, thinking out strategies for overthrowing the French in Vietnam. After Chiang Kai-shek turned on his Communist allies, Ho fled to Moscow by the way of Gobi. In the late 1920 Ho's political activities took him to Europe, and in 1928 he spent some time in Siam disguised as a Buddhist monk.
In 1930 the revolutionary Ho Chi Minh formed an Indochinese Communist Party. Ho had spent the last 20 years in exile working towards bringing an end to French rule. He was convinced that a communist approach to nationalism could achieve this. He developed a tenpoint programme which set out the basic aims of the movement. His ten point programme included the aims to have a socialist economy, redistribute land, equality for women, schooling for all and to have the local people ruling themselves. Ho identified the peasants as being the key group to win over as they were the majority. Because the basic economy was wet rice farming, a form of agriculture, which requires cooperative labour, Vietnamese communities developed a strong sense of collective spirit. Villages could be quickly mobilized as a unified chain to fight foreign invaders. By the med 1930 a few soviets had been set up in Vietnam. But they did not last long. An army rebellion, and a hunger march of 6000 peasants brought about a savage reaction from the French. Thousands of people were slaughtered, the soviets were suppressed, Ho’s followers were rounded up and jailed. Ho, himself was sentenced to death in his absence. He was sent to a prison hospital but was able to escape with the help of an orderly. He was reported as being dead and the French authorities closed their file on Ho.
In September, 1940, the Japanese army invaded Indochina. With Paris already occupied by , the French troops decided it was not worth putting up a fight and they surrendered to the Japanese. The Japanese saw Indochina as a stepping stone to the rest of Southeast Asia as well as a storehouse of vital supplies. The Vietnamese were delighted to see France humiliated. However, freedom was still a long way off. For the next five years there would be two enemies. The Japanese decided to allow the French authorities to continue to administer Vietnam. Needless to say the Japanese had overall control but were more concerned with taking all the resources they needed and fighting the war elsewhere.
Ho Chi Minh and his fellow nationalists saw this as an opportunity to free their country from foreign domination and formed an organisation called the Vietminh. The Viet Minh was the main repository of Vietnamese nationalism and anti-French colonialism. There were other such groups promoting Viet independence but none were competitive on a country-wide scale. It is also true that the disciplined,. well-organized, and well-led Indochinese Communist Party was the controlling element in the Viet Minh. At this time, Ho’s philosophy was more nationalist than communist. It was clear that the Viet Minh would not take over private property or threaten the investments of the middle and upper classes. Under the military leadership of General , the Vietminh began a guerrilla campaign against the Japanese. The Vietminh received weapons and ammunition from the , and after the bombing of , they also obtained supplies from the . During this period the Vietminh leant a considerable amount about military tactics which was to prove invaluable in the years that were to follow. From 1941 to early 1945 Giap worked to build a Viet Minh military structure. He established Armed Propaganda Detachments. They worked alongside peasants, spread the nationalist message and served as military units. He also got the support of ethnic hill tribes in the north west and trained his forces in guerilla warfare. He had an army of 10000 regulars by 1945. In August 1945 World War Two ended. When the Japanese surrendered to the Allies after the dropping of atom bombs on and in August, 1945, the Vietminh was in a good position to take over the control of the country.
When the Japanese occupation ended in 1945, the Viet Minh independence movement took over Hanoi. Ho proclaimed the birth of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in the declaration of independence, which was partly based on his recollections of the American Declaration of Independence. Unknown to the Vietminh , and had already decided what would happen to post-war Vietnam at a summit-meeting at . It had been agreed that the country would be divided into two, the northern half under the control of the Chinese and the southern half under the British. After the France attempted to re-establish control over Vietnam. In January 1946, Britain agreed to remove her troops and later that year, left Vietnam in exchange for a promise from that she would give up her rights to territory in China. France refused to recognise the Democratic Republic of Vietnam that had been declared by Ho Chi Minh and fighting soon broke out between the Vietminh and the French troops. At first, the Vietminh under General , had great difficulty in coping with the better trained and equipped French forces. The situation improved in 1949 after and his communist army defeated in China. The Vietminh now had a safe-base where they could take their wounded and train new soldiers. By 1953 the controlled large areas of North Vietnam. The French, however, had a firm hold on the south and had installed , the former Vietnamese Emperor, as the Chief of State. When it became clear that France was becoming involved in a long-drawn out war, the French government tried to negotiate a deal with the Vietminh. They offered to help set-up a national government and promised they would eventually grant Vietnam its independence. Ho Chi Minh and the other leaders of the Vietminh did not trust the word of the French and continued the war. General Navarre, the French commander in Vietnam, realised that time was running out and that he needed to obtain a quick victory over the Vietminh. He was convinced that if he could manoeuvre General into engaging in a large scale battle, France was bound to win.
In December, 1953, General Navarre setup a defensive complex at , which would block the route of the Vietminh forces trying to return to camps in neighbouring Laos. Navarre surmised that in an attempt to reestablish the route to Laos, General Giap would be forced to organise a mass-attack on the French forces at Dien Bien Phu. Navarre's plan worked and General Giap took up the French challenge. However, instead of making a massive frontal assault, Giap choose to surround Dien Bien Phu and ordered his men to dig a trench that encircled the French troops. From the outer trench, other trenches and tunnels were dug inwards towards the centre. The were now able to move in close on the French troops defending Dien Bien Phu. While these preparations were going on, Giap brought up members of the Vietminh from all over Vietnam. By the time the battle was ready to start, Giap had 70,000 soldiers surrounding Dien Bien Phu, five times the number of French troops enclosed within. Employing recently obtained anti-aircraft guns and howitzers from , Giap was able to restrict severely the ability of the French to supply their forces in Dien Bien Phu. When Navarre realised that he was trapped, he appealed for help. The United States was approached and some advisers suggested the use of tactical against the Vietminh. Another suggestion was that conventional air-raids would be enough to scatter Giap's troops. The United States President, , however, refused to intervene unless he could persuade Britain and his other western allies to participate. , the British Prime Minister, declined claiming that he wanted to wait for the outcome of the peace negotiations taking place in Geneva before becoming involved in escalating the war. On March 13, 1954, launched his offensive. For fifty-six days the Vietminh pushed the French forces back until they only occupied a small area of Dien Bien Phu. Colonel Piroth, the artillery commander, blamed himself for the tactics that had been employed and after telling his fellow officers that he had been "completely dishonoured" committed suicide by pulling the safety pin out of a grenade. The French surrendered on May 7th. French casualties totalled over 7,000 and a further 11,000 soldiers were taken prisoner. The following day the French government announced that it intended to withdraw from Vietnamese. The battle at Dien Bein Phu was important as it meant the end of French rule in all of Indochina. It was seen by the Americans as being a major victory for the communist world.
The following month the foreign ministers of the , the , and decided to meet in Geneva to see if they could bring about a peaceful solution to the conflicts in and . After much negotiation the following was agreed: Vietnam would be divided at the 17th parallel; North Vietnam would be ruled by Ho Chi Minh; South Vietnam would be ruled by , a strong opponent of communism; French troops would withdraw from Vietnam; the Vietminh would withdraw from South Vietnam; the Vietnamese could freely choose to live in the North or the South; and a General Election for the whole of Vietnam would be held before July, 1956, under the supervision of an international commission. After their victory at , some members of the Vietminh were reluctant to accept the cease-fire agreement. After the Geneva Accords, the French withdrew completely from the region. The South was put in the hands of a conservative nationalist Ngo Dinh Diem.
The Vietnamese had a long struggle to get rid of foreign countries’ rule. Ho Chi Minh was someone who had the determined leadership which would be needed for the independence in Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh developed nationalism and the way to resist the French rule which was the basis for his aim to promote Vietnamese independence from his early life and experiences from his traveling. The formation of the Viet Minh was a huge help for him as the Viet Minh was the main repository of Vietnamese nationalism and anti-French colonialism. Lastly the Vietnamese victory in the battle of Dien Bien phu made Ho Chi Minh and his followers’ way clear to the independence in their country.
