Ho chi minh when was he born

Armed conflict between the two states continued until a decisive battle at Dien Bien Phu ended in French defeat by Viet Minh forces. The subsequent treaty negotiations at Geneva at which Ho was represented by his associate Pham Van Dong partitioned Indochina and called for elections for reunification in Backed by the United States, the strongly anti-Communist South Vietnamese government of Ngo Dinh Diem refused to support the Geneva accords, and put off elections indefinitely.

In , armed conflict broke out again, as Communist guerrillas known as the Viet Cong began launching attacks on targets including U. At its height, several tons of supplies, weapons and ammunition were sent each day. During the s, it was a common target for American bombs. At this same meeting, Ho ceded his position as party secretary-general to Le Duan. The U. 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, , when Ho Chi Minh died in Hanoi at the age of The last U.

Seven thousand people, mainly Americans and South Vietnamese, were evacuated from the city. Photos of the chaos in the streets as men, women and children jostled for space on the last helicopters was broadcast across the world. On April 30, , the last few Americans still in South Vietnam were airlifted out of the country as Saigon fell to communist forces.

Only the Americans have been defeated. The Vietnam War was the longest and most unpopular foreign war in U. He eventually resigned in protest against French involvement in Vietnamese affairs. When Ho was ten years old, his mother died while giving birth. Ho had two older siblings, a sister named Thanh and a brother named Khiem. Ho's opposition to colonialism the rule of an area and its people by another country began at the age of nine, when he worked as a messenger for an anticolonial organization.

His father also introduced him to several revolutionaries. Dismissed from the academy after taking part in protests against the French in , he traveled to southern Vietnam in and worked briefly as a schoolteacher. Ho signed on as a cook with a French steamship company in At sea for two years, he visited ports in Europe, Africa, and the United States and began to develop his language skills, eventually learning Chinese, French, Russian, English, and Thai in addition to his native Vietnamese.

This is when his lifelong commitment to communism and Vietnamese independence began. Communism refers to a system in which the means of production such as land, factories, and mines are owned by the people as a whole rather than by individuals. Communists believe that such a system can be achieved only by revolution and government by a single party. Ho became a founding member of the French Communist Party in From to , he was an outspoken leader of the Vietnamese community in Paris, participating in the Intercolonial Union formed under Communist sponsorship and publishing two anticolonial journals.

In he was sent to China to organize a communist movement. Reproduced by permission of Getty Images. The league called for independence, redistribution of land, fair taxation, and equal rights for men and women. In Ho was forced to leave Canton after a Chinese government crackdown on local communists.

During his absence, the league began to split into different factions, or groups. Ho returned to South China in early to unite the factions as a formal Communist Party, drawing its members from Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos.

He continued his organizing in Hong Kong and Shanghai but was arrested by the British in and imprisoned for two years. Released in , he spent the next several years in the Soviet Union. The following May, with most of Vietnam under Japanese occupation, he chaired a meeting of the party's Central Committee inside the Vietnamese border, marking his first return to Vietnam in thirty years.

Ho and the ICP then announced the formation of the Viet Minh League for Vietnamese Independence , an organization demanding independence from French rule and Japanese military occupation.

In President Lyndon Johnson escalated the U. Ho Chi Minh became the face of the revolution to the people of Vietnam. Ho himself would make public appearances for speeches and rallies, but for the most part was not directly involved in the war effort. He made few public appearances but his legacy was kept alive in North Vietnamese for propaganda purposes.

His political struggles with the West were nearly over. He was moving toward the image of national hero. He was It would be almost six years before the South Vietnamese government would collapse and U. We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us! Subscribe to the Biography newsletter to receive stories about the people who shaped our world and the stories that shaped their lives. Cambodian head of state Pol Pot was the leader of the Khmer Rouge regime, which was responsible for the deaths of more than one million people between and Mao Tse-tung also spelled Zedong was the principal Chinese Marxist theorist, soldier and statesman who led his nation's Cultural Revolution.

Vladimir Lenin was founder of the Russian Communist Party, leader of the Bolshevik Revolution and architect and first head of the Soviet state. Irving Berlin was one of the most prolific and popular songwriters of the 20th century, counting among his many hits "White Christmas" and "Cheek to Cheek.

He served as president from to Diplomat Henry Kissinger was U. Robert S. McNamara was an American business executive and the eighth U. Secretary of Defense. He is best known for helping lead the United States into the Vietnam War.