7 The 100 Most Influential World Leaders of All Time 7as a gardener, sweeper, waiter, photo retoucher, and oven
stoker. While in Paris he became a socialist, working under
the name Nguyen Ai Quoc (“Nguyen the Patriot”), and
organized a group of Vietnamese living there in a protest
against French colonial policy.
Inspired by the successful Communist revolution in
Russia, he went to Moscow in 1924 and took part in the
fifth Congress of the Communist International. His
anticolonial views kept him from returning to Vietnam
until the end of World War II. Much of his time was spent
in China, where he organized the Indochina Communist
Party on Feb. 3, 1930. It was in about 1940 that he began
to use the name Ho Chi Minh, meaning “he who
enlightens.”
World War II and the Founding of
the Vietnamese State
After crossing over the border from China into Vietnam in
January 1941, Ho Chi Minh and some of his comrades orga-
nized the Viet Nam Doc Lap Dong Minh Hoi (League for
the Independence of Vietnam), or Viet Minh; this gave
renewed emphasis to a peculiarly Vietnamese nationalism.
In 1945 two events occurred that paved the way to
power for the Vietnamese revolutionaries. First, the
Japanese completely overran Indochina and imprisoned
or executed all French officials. Six months later the
United States dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima,
and the Japanese were totally defeated. Thus, the two
strongest adversaries of the Viet Minh and Ho Chi Minh
were eliminated.
Ho Chi Minh seized his opportunity. Within a few
months, he contacted U.S. forces and began to collaborate
with the Office of Strategic Services (a U.S. undercover