Ho Chi Minh Read online

  BOOKS BY WILLIAM J. DUIKER

  The Comintern and Vietnamese Communism

  The Rise of Nationalism in Vietnam, 1900–1941

  Ts’ai Yuan-p’ei: Educator of Modern China

  Cultures in Collision: The Boxer Rebellion

  China and Vietnam: The Roots of Conflict

  Vietnam Since the Fall of Saigon

  U.S. Containment Policy and the Conflict in Indochina

  Sacred War: Nationalism and Revolution in a Divided Vietnam

  Vietnam: Revolution in Transition

  The Communist Road to Power in Vietnam

  A Historical Dictionary of Vietnam

  World History (with Jackson Spielvogel)

  Twentieth-Century World History

  Contemporary World History

  The Essential World History

  DEDICATION

  For the Vietnamese People

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Books by William J. Duiker

  Dedication

  Preface

  List of Organizations Mentioned in the Text

  INTRODUCTION

  I IN A LOST LAND

  II THE FIERY STALLION

  III APPRENTICE REVOLUTIONARY

  IV SONS OF THE DRAGON

  V THE MAGIC SWORD

  VI RED NGHE TINH

  VII INTO THE WILDERNESS

  VIII THE CAVE AT PAC BO

  IX THE RISING TIDE

  PHOTO SECTION

  X THE DAYS OF AUGUST

  XI RECONSTRUCTION AND RESISTANCE

  XII THE TIGER AND THE ELEPHANT

  XIII A PLACE CALLED DIEN BIEN PHU

  XIV BETWEEN TWO WARS

  XV ALL FOR THE FRONT LINES

  EPILOGUE: FROM MAN TO MYTH

  A Note on Sources

  Notes

  Maps

  Index

  Photographic Credits

  About the Author

  Copyright

  PREFACE

  I have been fascinated with Ho Chi Minh since the mid-1960s, when, as a young foreign service officer stationed at the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, I was puzzled by the fact that the Viet Cong guerrillas fighting in the jungles appeared to be better disciplined and more motivated than the armed forces of our ally, the government of South Vietnam. As I attempted to understand the problem, I became convinced that one explanation was the role played by that master motivator and strategist, the veteran Vietnamese revolutionary Ho Chi Minh. After I resigned from the U.S. government to pursue an academic career, I turned my thoughts to writing a biography of that extraordinarily complex figure, but soon realized that there were insufficient source materials available for me to produce a convincing portrayal of his life and career. I therefore put off the project until recently, when an outpouring of information from various countries around the world persuaded me that it was now possible to undertake the task.

  In the course of completing this book, which has now been underway for over two decades, I have received assistance from a number of sources. The College Fund for Research in the College of Liberal Arts, as well as the Institute for the Arts and Humanistic Studies at The Pennsylvania State University, provided me with financial support on a number of occasions to undertake research on the subject in France and Vietnam. Through the assistance of Mark Sidel of the Ford Foundation, I was pleased to accompany Marilyn Young and A. Tom Grunfeld on a 1993 trip to Hanoi to explore Ho Chi Minh’s relationship with the United States. I would also like to thank the Social Science Research Council and its Indochina Scholarly Exchange Program for awarding me with a grant in 1990 to conduct research on Ho Chi Minh in Hanoi. While I was there, the Institute of History, the University of Hanoi, and the Institute of Marxism-Leninism kindly made arrangements for me to discuss topics of mutual interest with scholars and researchers interested in Ho Chi Minh and the history of the Vietnamese revolution. The Institute of International Relations sponsored an earlier visit in 1985, which included a fascinating visit to Ho Chi Minh’s birthplace in Kim Lien village. Among those individuals who have assisted me in my research in Hanoi, I would like to thank Nguyen Huy Hoan of the Ho Chi Minh Museum, Nguyen Thanh of the Revolutionary Museum, and Tran Thanh of the Institute of Marxism-Leninism, all of whom agreed to lengthy interviews. At the University of Hanoi, historians Phung Huu Phu, Le Mau Han, Pham Xanh, and Pham Cong Tung graciously provided me with their time and research materials relating to Ho Chi Minh’s life and thought. The late Ha Huy Giap of the Ho Chi Minh Museum and Dang Xuan Ky, then director of the Social Sciences Institute, kindly answered my questions regarding their personal recollections of President Ho. Do Quang Hung, Ngo Phuong Ba, Van Tao, and Tran Huu Dinh at the Institute of History and Luu Doan Huynh of the Institute of International Relations were generous with their time in helping to explore key issues in my research. I would particularly like to thank Vu Huy Phuc, who with patience and good humor served as both escort and fellow researcher during my visit to Vietnam in 1990. More recently, Mr. Hoang Cong Thuy of the Vietnam-American Friendship Society helped to put me in touch with other individuals and sources as I followed the trail of Ho Chi Minh. Duong Trung Quoc of Xua Nay magazine provided me with several useful issues of his magazine. Nguyen Quoc Uy of the Vietnam News Agency has kindly authorized me to reproduce in this book a number of photographs under VNA copyright.

  I have visited a number of libraries and archives around the world in pursuit of elusive information on Ho Chi Minh’s many travels. In the United States, I would like to thank the staff at the Orientalia Section in the Library of Congress, and Allan Riedy, director of the Echols Collection at the Kroch Library in Cornell University. At the U.S. National Archives in College Park, Maryland, John Taylor and Larry McDonald gave me valuable assistance in locating OSS and State Department records dealing with U.S.-Vietnam relations during and immediately following World War II. In France, I am grateful for the help I received at the Bibliothèque Nationale and the Archives Nationales in Paris, and especially at the Centre des Archives, Section Outre-Mer, in Aix-en-Provence. During my visit to Moscow in 1990, Gennadi Maslov, Yevgeny Kobelev, and Oxana Novakova were quite helpful in discussing issues relating to Ho Chi Minh’s years in the USSR, while Sophie Quinn-Judge and Steve Morris provided me with important documents that they had managed to locate in the Comintern archives. Li Xianheng at the Revolutionary Museum in Guangzhou provided me with the fruits of his own research on Ho Chi Minh’s years of residence in that city and took me for a fascinating visit to the training institute where Ho Chi Minh had taught over seventy years ago. Thanks are also due to Tao Bingwei and Ye Xin at the Institute of International Studies in Beijing for a lengthy interview in 1987 on Sino-Vietnamese relations. Bob O’Hara helped me to obtain relevant documents from the Public Record Office in London. While the search turned up little of interest, I feel comfortable that he explored every possible avenue on my behalf. I would also like to thank Professor Laura Tabili of the University of Arizona for providing useful guidance in seeking out other possible sources of information on Ho’s elusive years of residence in Great Britain, as well as the staff at the Hong Kong branch of the PRO for enabling me to make use of its archival materials dealing with Ho Chi Minh’s period of imprisonment there in the early 1930s. Ambassador T.N. Kaul was useful in discussing his recollection of the meeting between Jawaharlal Nehru and Zhou Enlai in the summer of 1954.

  I have become indebted to a number of fellow scholars and researchers who share my interest in Ho Chi Minh and the history of the Vietnamese revolution. In some cases, a mere listing of their names appears to be an all too insufficient mark of gratitude, since many of them have provided me with crucial documents, or with access to their own research on related topics. Nevertheless, I would like to cite their
names here. In the United States, Douglas Pike and Steve Denny of the Indochina Archives, now located at Texas Tech University, gave me useful assistance during an earlier visit to their archives when it was located in Berkeley. Others who have been of help are the late King C. Chen, Stanley Karnow, Bill Turley, Gary Tarpinian, and Mai Elliott. John McAuliff of the U.S.-Indochina Reconciliation Project was kind enough to invite me to attend the conference of Vietminh and OSS veterans held at Hampton Bays, New York, in 1998. A number of those who attended that conference, including Frank White, Henry Prunier, Carlton Swift, Mac Shinn, Frank Tan, George Wicks, Ray Grelecki, and Charles Fenn, as well as a delegation of Vietminh veterans and scholars who were also in attendance, shared their own fascinating experiences of that period with me. On an earlier occasion, I had the good fortune to discuss Ho Chi Minh with Archimedes (Al) Patti, whose own recollections, contained in his book Why Vietnam? Prelude to America’s Albatross (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), are an irreplaceable source of information on the subject. Bob Bledsoe, chairman of the Department of Political Science at the University of Central Florida, graciously permitted me to examine the Patti archives, which are now held at his University. I would like to thank Al’s widow, Margaret, for her permission to reproduce photos from that archive in this book.

  In France, a number of people have helped me in a variety of ways, including Georges Boudarel, Daniel Hémery, Christiane Pasquel Rageau, and Philippe Devillers, as well as Chris Goscha and Agathe Larcher. Stein Tonnesson was of great assistance in sharing the fruits of his own research at the Centre des Archives, Section Outre-Mer, in Aix-en-Provence. I would like to thank Professor Bernard Dahm of the University of Passau for inviting me to attend a conference on Ho Chi Minh at his institution in 1990. Liang-wu Yin and Chen Jian kindly provided me with Chinese-language materials that were crucial in understanding Ho Chi Minh’s relationship with China. Russian scholars Ilya Gaiduk and Anatoly So-kolov gave of their time or sent me useful materials relating to Soviet-Vietnamese relations. Professor Motoo Furuta of the University of Tokyo sent me a number of important documents that were not available to me in the United States. David Marr of the Australian National University has on several occasions provided me with documents, articles, and, in one case, a taped recording of Ho Chi Minh’s famous speech at Ba Dinh Square in early September 1945. I would like to thank Yu Pen-li and Liu Hsiang-wang, who, in addition to their many obligations as my graduate students at Penn State, took the time to provide me with useful materials related to Ho Chi Minh’s activities in south China.

  At Hyperion, I am grateful to David Lott, associate managing editor, for his care in guiding this book through production; to copyeditor Trent Duffy, for his painstaking work and help with standardizing references; to Lisa Stokes and Phil Rose, for their art direction on the handsome interior and jacket designs; and to Paul Pugliese, Dorothy Baker, and Archie Ferguson, respectively, for the elegant maps, interior design, and jacket. Mark Chait was prompt and efficient in attending to my countless queries during the publication process. I would especially like to thank my editor, Will Schwalbe, who provided me with steady encouragement in bringing this project to fruition. From the beginning, he made it clear that his greatest concern was to help me create a book of the highest quality. His patience, good humor, and sound advice were much appreciated.

  I would like to thank my daughters, Laura and Claire, for not complaining about the many hours (and years) that they spent listening to their father pontificate about Vietnam, Finally, I am everlastingly grateful to my wife, Yvonne, who was not only the first to read the manuscript, but who also showed her usual patience in putting up with Ho Chi Minh on those many occasions when he must have seemed almost like a member of the family.

  LIST OF ORGANIZATIONS MENTIONED IN THE TEXT

  ANNAM COMMUNIST PARTY (ACP). Short-lived party established in Indochina in 1929 after the dissolution of the Revolutionary Youth League. Eventually assimilated into the Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP) established in February 1930.

  ARMED PROPAGANDA BRIGADES (APBs). Armed revolutionary units created under Indochinese Communist Party (ICP) leadership in December 1944 in preparation for an uprising at the end of World War II. Succeeded by the Vietnamese Liberation Army (VLA).

  ARMY OF NATIONAL SALVATION. Armed revolutionary units created under ICP control in North Vietnam in 1944 to struggle against French and Japanese occupation of Indochina, Eventually combined with the APBs (see above) into the Vietnamese Liberation Army (VLA).

  ARMY OF THE REPUBLIC OF VIETNAM (ARVN). Formal name for the armed forces of the Republic of Vietnam (RVN) from 1956 until 1975.

  ASSOCIATED STATE OF VIETNAM (ASV). Formal government established by the Elysée Accords in 1949. The government, established under Chief of State Bao Dai, was autonomous but lacked some of the credentials for total independence from France. The ASV cooperated with France in the conflict with the Vietminh Front during the Franco-Vietminh War. It was replaced by an independent government in South Vietnam after the Geneva Conference of 1954.

  ASSOCIATION OF LIKE MINDS (also called THE SOCIETY OF LIKE MINDS, or TAM TAM XA). Radical organization established by Viet-amese émigrés and nationalists living in south China in 1924. It was eventually replaced by Ho Chi Minh’s Revolutionary Youth League.

  ASSOCIATION OF MARXIST STUDIES. Paper organization established by the ICP at the time of its apparent dissolution in November 1945. In fact, the ICP continued to exist in secret until its reappearance as the Vietnamese Workers’ Party (VWP) in 1951.

  CAO DAI. Syncretic religious organization founded in Cochin China after World War I. It opposed efforts by all political forces to bring it under outside control. It continues to exist in Vietnam today, although under strict government supervision.

  CAMBODIAN PEOPLE’S REVOLUTIONARY PARTY (CPRP). Revolutionary organization established in Cambodia under Vietnamese tutelage in the early 1950s. It was one of three organizations that succeeded the ICP after the latter’s dissolution in 1951. The CPRP’s armed forces were popularly known as the Khmer Rouge (Red Khmer). The organization was replaced by a Khmer Communist Party in the mid-1960s.

  CENTRAL OFFICE FOR SOUTH VIETNAM (COSVN). Headquarters unit for Communist operations in South Vietnam during the Franco-Vietminh conflict and later the Vietnam War. First created in 1951, it was disbanded after the fall of Saigon in 1975.

  CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY (CCP). Formal name for the branch of the Communist Party established in Shanghai, China, in 1921.

  COMMUNIST INTERNATIONAL (COMINTERN, or CMT). Revolutionary organization established in Soviet Russia in 1919. With its headquarters in Moscow, the CMT directed revolutionary activities by its member parties throughout the world until its dissolution in 1943. The ICP was formally admitted to membership in 1935.

  COMMUNIST PARTY OF INDOCHINA (DONG DUONG CONG SAN DANG, or CPI). Short-lived revolutionary organization established by break-away members of the Revolutionary Youth League in 1929. It was eventually merged with the ACP and the Tan Viet Party into the Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP), which was founded by Ho Chi Minh in February 1930.

  COMMUNIST PARTY OF THE SOVIET UNION (CPSU). Formal name for the revolutionary party established under the guidance of Vladimir I. Lenin in the 1920s.

  CONSTITUTIONALIST PARTY. Politically moderate party set up by reformist elements in Cochin China in the early 1920s. Its goal was to achieve autonomy for Vietnam under a benign French tutelage. Its leader, Bui Quang Chieu, became a vocal critic of the ICP and was assassinated by Vietminh elements during the August Revolution of 1945.

  DAI VIET PARTY. Nationalist organization established during World War II. At first pro-Japanese, it eventually recruited supporters among non-Communist elements in Vietnam to struggle against the French colonial regime, and continued to exist as a formal political organization in the RVN until the fall of Saigon in 1975.

  DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF VIETNAM (DRV). Independent government established by Ho Chi Minh and his Vietm
inh Front in northern Vietnam in September 1945. Driven out of Hanoi by the French in December 1946, it was granted legal authority in North Vietnam by the Geneva Conference of 1954. It was renamed the Socialist Republic of Vietnam in July of 1976.

  DONG KINH NGHIA THUC (HANOI FREE SCHOOL). School established by patriotic intellectuals to promote reform during the first decade of the twentieth century. It was eventually disbanded by the French. Members of the school sponsored the establishment of the Duc Thanh school in Phan Thiet, where Ho Chi Minh taught briefly in 1910.

  DONG MINH HOI (full name: VIET NAM CACH MENH DONG MINH HOI; in English, VIETNAMESE REVOLUTIONARY LEAGUE). Vietnamese nationalist organization founded under Chinese Nationalist sponsorship in August 1942. It included several Vietnamese nationalist parties and was the brainchild of Chinese general Zhang Fakui, who hoped to use it against Japanese forces in Indochina. Although Ho Chi Minh sought to use it for his own purposes, it eventually competed with the ICP for political control in Vietnam after World War II. By the time of the outbreak of war in December 1946, it had become moribund.

  FATHERLAND FRONT (MAT TRAN TO QUOC). Broad-based front organization created by the DRV in 1955. It supplanted the Lien Viet Front and the latter’s famous predecessor, the Vietminh Front, as a means of mobilizing support for party policies in Vietnam.

  FRENCH EXPEDITIONARY FORCES (FEF). Military forces employed by France in Indochina during the Franco-Viet minh war.

  HOA HAO. Syncretic religious movement founded by the Buddhist mystic Huynh Phu So in 1939. Strongly anti-Ftench, it also opposed Communist efforts to conrrol it after World War II. It continues to exist in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV) under the watchful eyes of authorities.

  HOPES OF YOUTH PARTY (THANH NIEN CAO VONG). Short-lived nationalist party set up by Nguyen An Ninh in Saigon in the mid-1920s. Eventually dissolved.

  IMPERIAL ACADEMY (QUOC TE GIAM). Training school for Confucian bureaucrats run by the imperial court in Vietnam. Originally founded in the eleventh century in Hanoi, it was transferred to Hué by the Nguyen Dynasty in the nineteenth century. Ho Chi Minh’s father served at the school briefly as an instructor.