1929 by Ho Chi-minh. In the social and political
conditions of the 1930s its potential following
was large, and it adopted the tactics of the
popular front, softening its own revolutionary
aims in the interests of unity to win the support
of the revolutionary but non-Marxist Nationalist
Party, which had been suppressed by the French.
Vietnamese intellectuals were both attracted
and alienated by French culture. Proud of their
own civilisation, they discovered the hollowness
of French revolutionary egalitarianism, which
seemed to apply only to the French and not to
colonial natives. Nonetheless, the overwhelming
military strength of the French gave their colonial
rule an appearance of stability and permanence. It
was to prove illusory.
France’s claim to superiority in Indo-China was
shattered by her defeat in Europe in June 1940. To
the north, the Japanese were waging their relent-
less war against China and espousing a Japanese-
dominated ‘Greater East Asia co-prosperity
sphere’. French weakness in September of that year
brought the Japanese into Indo-China, pathway
to the Dutch East Indies. The Vichy French
authorities collaborated with the Japanese and sup-
pressed nationalist guerrillas with French troops. A
serious uprising in southern Vietnam was bloodily
defeated and, in the process, the southern Vietna-
mese communist organisation was decimated. This
was to be of crucial importance for the future, since
the communists now remained strong only in the
north. The anti-Japanese resistance, organised in
the north by the Vietnamese nationalist League for
the Independence of Vietnam, or Vietminh, was
led by the charismatic Ho Chi-minh.
Ho Chi-minh became a cult figure in his own
lifetime. Before his death in 1969 his photo-
graphic image was as widely reproduced as
Castro’s, Che Guevara’s and Mao Zedong’s. He
lies buried in a glass cage within a mausoleum in
Hanoi and hundreds daily pay their respects. Yet
before 1945 no one in the outside world had
heard of him. As a nationalist and communist
conspirator he had used several pseudonyms in his
lifetime and had travelled widely, working on
boats, though between 1913 and 1917 he had
been employed in the kitchen of the London
Carlton Hotel. As a Vietnamese nationalist he
became well known in socialist circles of Paris,
and travelled to China and to Hong Kong, where
he founded the Indo-Chinese Communist Party
with a number of fellow conspirators in 1929. He
visited Moscow in the 1920s and served as a del-
egate to various conferences, before disappearing
from view from 1933 to 1941, when he reap-
peared in Moscow. He had probably spent the
intervening years in Stalin’s Russia. There can be
no doubt that Ho Chi-minh had become a ded-
icated communist, but he was also a dedicated
nationalist.
Tactically Ho Chi-minh was a chameleon,
appearing to espouse many causes and roles. But
the core of his beliefs was nationalism – Vietnam as
one unified, independent nation – and Marxism.
He was a man of intellectual brilliance and a com-
plete personal incorruptibility, modest in his needs,
able to relate to the common people, yet utterly
ruthless and inflexible in the pursuit of ultimate
aims. No price was ultimately too high to create a
united communist Vietnam, free from all outside
interference.
When Vichy French power began to be
destroyed in metropolitan France following the
Allied invasion in the summer of 1944, Ho Chi-
minh knew that the time for the power struggle
in his country was drawing closer. The Japanese
occupiers continued to tolerate the Vichy admin-
istration in Vietnam, which had collaborated with
them under duress. But on 9 March 1945 the
Japanese attempted to strengthen their position
by making a bid for popular Vietnamese support.
The French administrators were unceremoniously
imprisoned and a Vietnamese state independent
from France was brought into existence by
decree.
The Japanese needed a leader to give inde-
pendence some credibility in the eyes of the
people. They turned to Bao Dai, who had been
crowned emperor in 1925 at the age of twelve.
Although he had been groomed by the French
for this role and educated in Paris, Bao Dai was
no cypher and in the 1930s had attempted to win
genuine independence for Vietnam, but without
success. He could serve as a rallying point for
unity and independence, so he was a leader of
some importance in 1945. Realising this, the