In his personal break with family and tradition, Ho set the example for the new nation he wished to create, a Vietnamese state unencumbered by the weight of a heritage that accepted foreign rule. Ho Chi Minh himself is responsible for much of this, for he consciously distanced himself from his own past and his own origins, choosing to identify with the revolutionary ideal rather than the old mandarin traditions. Every biography differs in some fundamental detail, offering the reader no certainty about the man. Ho Chi Minh, however, was the essential man whose drive and determination focused the efforts of others and whose leadership excited the admiration and support of Vietnamese on both sides of the 17th parallel.ĭetails of Ho Chi Minh’s life are vague, curiously so for such a prominent national leader. If the Vietnamese revolution produced a real genius, then it was certainly Vo Nguyen Giap, a military leader who would have stood out in any army. That determination, rather than genius, was his hallmark as a leader. For more than 50 years, most of which he spent away from Southeast Asia, Ho worked single-mindedly to realize the end of French colonialism and the erection of a Vietnamese national state.
Indeed, he often seemed more symbol than substance - a mere face on a poster, an intangible foe unreachable by modern means of warfare, an almost mythical personification of the Communist enemy.īut Ho Chi Minh was the very real driving force without which the unified Vietnamese state would never have been achieved.
A frail and benign-looking old man in peasant garb or Mao jacket, the leader of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam seemed perfectly described as ‘Uncle Ho,’ an epithet bestowed upon him by friend and enemy alike. Ho Chi Minh Mixed Nationalism, Communism to Pursue 'New World Order' CloseĪlthough the most visible symbol of America’s chief enemy in the Vietnam War, Ho Chi Minh was still a difficult figure to hate.
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