Ho Chi Minh: The One Who Led Vietnam toward Independence - Essay Example

(Wiest 5) Ho Chi Minh was born on May 19, 1890, in Central Vietnam. Ho’s father, Nguyen Sinh Huy was a worker for the government who eventually left in remonstration against French powers. When Ho was only ten years old, his mother passed away. Ho had two elder siblings. He had a brother named Khiem and a sister named Thanh. As a zealous nationalist, their father taught them to fight and stand up against the ruling of the French in their country. They consequently all turned out to be dedicated and stalwart nationalists, eager and ready to fight against those who were hindering and obstructing the independence of their nation.

Ho’s father then made a decision for Ho to study and be educated in a French school because he knew that it would be able to aid him in preparing for the imminent struggle of Vietnam against French domination ad control in their country that would occur several years later. After Ho successfully finished his education, he became a teacher in school for a short period of time. Later on, he then decided to become a seaman, which allowed to him to go around to several different nations. This comprised several countries that were a portion of the great French Empire at the time.

By doing this, he was able to discover that Vietnam was not the only nation that was going through great suffering from mistreatment and exploitation from the French. Throughout the span of World War I, which lasted a total of four years, from 1914 until 1918, Ho worked in Europe. This was when his lifelong devotedness to Vietnamese communism and independence arose. By 1919, Woodrow Wilson, the president of the United States at the time, was in France to what would bringing World War I to a close.

Ho attempted to present President Wilson with a drawn-out list of abuses and complaints of the French authorities in Vietnam. Rejected, Ho was eve more determined and joined the newly formed French Communist Party. "It was patriotism, not communism, that inspired me," he later explained. (Duiker 58) For almost sixty long years, the Vietnamese citizens had been undergoing suffering from the French colonial ruling and Ho Chi Minh did not become a participant in Vietnamese affairs and politics until the later part of the twenties when a group of Vietnamese assumed control of a strengthening pro-independence faction.

Roughly about ten years later in 1930, Ho Chi Minh established the Indochinese Communist Party, better known as the ICP. Several Vietnamese resistance movements against French rule endured during this time but none of the were ever as successful and triumphant as the Viet Minh common front controlled by the ICP, founded in 1941, and financially backed up by the Chinese Nationalist Party and the America. It was at this time when Vietnam had two outside powers that were overpowering and dominating the Vietnamese.

It was also at this time that communist Vietnamese avant-garde leader Ho Chi Minh returned. For many years, Ho Chi Minh had kept on trying to ingratiate the United States to back him up against French control. He tried to win America’s favor by supplying military information about Japanese efforts and plans during the Second World War. Notwithstanding, the United States was still devoted to their Cold War external policy. It stated that the country would do everything they could to prevent the