Ho Chi Minh Dies: Vietnam Loses Its Founding Father

Ho Chi Minh had already outlived what most people would have considered a full political life by the time American combat troops arrived in Vietnam in 1965. He'd founded the Viet Minh independence movement in 1941, fought the Japanese occupation, declared Vietnamese independence on September 2, 1945 (quoting the American Declaration of Independence in his speech), negotiated and then fought the French for nine years, and presided over the partition of Vietnam at the 1954 Geneva Accords. Born Nguyen Sinh Cung in Kim Lien, Nghe An Province on May 19, 1890, he left Vietnam as a young man and spent three decades abroad. He worked as a kitchen hand on steamships, lived in London and Paris, attended the founding congress of the French Communist Party in 1920, trained in Moscow, and organized revolutionaries across Southeast Asia before returning to Vietnam in 1941. He adopted over seventy aliases during his years underground. "Ho Chi Minh," the name he finally settled on, means "He Who Enlightens." He was a small, thin man with a wispy beard who dressed simply and spoke softly, which made it easy for foreigners to underestimate him. He was one of the most effective revolutionary organizers of the twentieth century. He led the Viet Minh to victory over France at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954, ending nearly a century of French colonial rule. The Geneva Accords divided Vietnam at the 17th parallel. He governed the north as a communist state aligned with China and the Soviet Union while supporting the insurgency in the south. He was seventy-nine and in poor health when he died on September 2, 1969. The American war was still six years from ending. His body was embalmed against his explicit wishes; he had asked to be cremated and have his ashes scattered in three urns across Vietnam. Instead, it was placed in a granite mausoleum in Hanoi modeled on Lenin's tomb. The country reunified in 1976, and Saigon was renamed Ho Chi Minh City in his honor.