My report is on a book by Michael H. Hunt called Lyndon Johnson’s War written in 1996. Michael Hunt is a historian who works for the University of North Colorado and was also there during the Vietnam War. Hunt’s book was written to talk about former President Lyndon Johnson during the Vietnam war. The book’s purpose is to show us some of the causes and consequences of the Vietnam war on America and the Vietnamese people. It also shows us how resilient the natives were against the U.S. and their reasons for wanting to be a communist nation. The book is arranged chronologically from the 1945-1968, telling us how events like the Cold War brought to existence the Vietnam War. My book revolves mainly around Vietnam and their movement toward …show more content…
With the help of his Communist colleagues, Ho founded the Viet Minh, which is short for the Vietnamese Independence League.
Ho Chi Minh had 3 different solutions to bringing Vietnam out from French rule which he called brocade bags. Ho drew the term “from a well-known Chinese tale widely read in Vietnam in which not one but three such bags figured as repositories of ingenious solutions to daunting problems confronting their owner.” (page 23) His three brocade bags were: the ideas of Lenin, patriotism, and a populist program. With them, Ho drew a mass base of support from the general population. One of the struggles Ho face with was that he did not have enough proletariats to help make a good spearhead towards change. With the use of brocade bags Ho Chi Minh began making headway. After an Allied victory in 1945, Japan disarmed themselves in March 1945 and arrested their French collaborators giving Ho the perfect chance to move
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One of the Cold War’s most prominent is The Ugly American. Written in 1958, this book was a best seller, filled with different stories about why communism was winning and what must be done about it. The authors of the book The Ugly American used one main argument for its readers: “communism is a monolithic enemy whose fundamental values challenged those of the United States and whose ultimate goal was world domination.” (page 4) There stories were one of main forces driving people like Kennedy and Johnson to go and “save” Vietnam from
Ho Chi Minh was soon known by many people from Indochina as their main spokesman. They were amazed by a person who was not afraid to laugh at the French, yet stood up for the people of Indochina. Many people thought that Ho Chi Minh was no more then a legend. When Sun Yat-sen, leader of China's nationalist army, died in 1925, Chiang Kai-shek of Moscow was put in charge with military strategist Mikhail Borodin. Chiang chose Ho to be Borodin's advisor and interpreter. Ho took this position, but began to secretly plan Indochina's first communist organization, set in Canton(Dudley 45). Most of Ho's followers were young Annamese rebels who were sick of being in the Vietnamese Nationalist party and their leader, Pham Boi Chau. The group set up Chau by hurling a bomb at the governor of Indochina's car. Chau disappeared after this. Ho was soon accused of taking a bribe from the French, in exchange for revealing Chau's whereabouts. Chau was said to be executed, but really died naturally while in jail. Pointing this out got Ho out of trouble for a while. Once Ho's Communist party got going, he set up a training camp for guerrilla techniques. It was called the Whampoa Military Academy. At the academy, the followers were trained
Since the late 1800s, Vietnam has struggled with maintaining independence. Vietnam was under the French control but the Vietnamese wanted to break free of the harsh rules put in place by the French, so Ho Chi Minh created the Indochinese Communist Party in 1940. After the Japanese conquered Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh created the Vietminh in order to gain independence from all foreign rule. Although the Vietnamese defeated the Japanese in 1945, the French had no thoughts of pulling out of Vietnam. By the end of 1945 the French had already reentered into Vietnam and conquered the southern cities.
The Vietnam War was to stop the spread of communism throughout Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh took over half of Vietnam and began the spread of communism in Vietnam. Ho Chi was looked up to as a leader or president to the Vietcong and most of Vietnam. America had to at least try and stop Ho Chi because they promised that any spread of communism will
2...Ho Chi Minh was a vietnamese communist who main goal was to to gain independence: French colonization the United Sovereign and communist Vietnam wanted otherwise. he had led the North Vietnamese in an
Ho Chi Minh’s September 2, 1945 speech was given in front of hundreds of thousands of people with strong patriotic tone and diction recognized by any American inclined to listen. Ho pointed to the enslavement of the Vietnamese that had been enforced by the French Imperialists and how the continuous bartering of the Vietnamese territory by the French to the Japanese plundered the Vietnamese people into a state of extreme poverty. Time and time again, the Viet-Minh had worked to help the French stay afloat from Japanese Axis Powers and even offered to let the French join in the fight against the Japanese throughout WWII; however, the Viet-Minh was still met with bitter destruction of Vietnamese freedom and equality. Ho used his speech to
Assess the importance of nationalism to the Vietnamese up to 1965. A clear desire for nationalism and self-nationalism in Vietnam was evident as early as the 15th century, when historian Nguyen Trai stated “although we have been at times strong, and at times weak, we have always been Vietnamese and this will never change.” The importance and significance of nationalism and establishing a sense of self-determination was of vital concernment to the Vietnamese, in both the North and South of the country. The Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North) and the Republic of Vietnam (South) were both driving forces in the ambition of self-determination and their established sense of nationalism regardless of the
Ho Chi Minh Ho Chi Minh was a Communist, who had announced Vietnam independent. He was a Marxist and believed in “national Communism ". Throughout the war with the French, Ho Chi Minh took refuge in northern Vietnam and settled there with his followers. He founded the Indochina Communist Party and the Viet Minh. North Vietnam was a deprived area and was cut off from the agricultural profit of South Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh was forced to ask assistance from main Communist allies, the Soviet Union and China. Both aided North Vietnam before and during the war. (Dong Si Nguyen, Duong xuyen Truong son: hoi uc. Hanoi: Nha Xuat Ban Quan Doi Nhan Dan, 1999). Ho Chi Minh declared the independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. This had been a tremendously significant event in world history perhaps the most important event since the 1917 October Revolution in Russia. It marked the first occasion in human history in which a radical national movement under Communist leadership had succeeded in overthrowing the influence of a colonial state and establishing and maintaining its own new, independent form of social and political system. However, Ho’s type of communism was markedly different than that of Marxist ideology that had been the metaphorical icon of the October Revolution. alike to Jose Antonio’s fascist movement, the hierarchical communist party (later renamed the Vietminh) conformed intimately to the ideas of the person at its head, but unlike Antonio’s movement, did not
He had to hide from the French Secret police while there. Once returning to Vietnam (then split into North and South Vietnam) he united the majority of the people in Vietnam under his communist ideas. His goals were Independence for Vietnam, a worker-peasant-soldier government, government ownership of everything, shorter work days, elimination of unfair taxes, free education, and equality of sexes. Ho Chi Minh even created a declaration of Independence. Parts of this declaration included parts from the U.S. Constitution. (Gavin) This was shown as a sign of respect. This goals united his people to fight for their cause and to stop the suffering of the Vietnamese
When, on August 25, Bao Dai, the puppet emperor of the Japanese, abdicated, Ho proclaimed independence for the new “Republic of Vietnam” and looked to America for support and to recognize his government. He was inspired by America’s history – their revolutionary war – and because of the promises they had delivered after being made in World War II. An example of this was the way that Ho used phrases from the US Declaration of Independence in his speech on 2 September 1945, during the Vietnam Declaration of Independence in Hanoi, as a gesture, to seek the support of the Americans.
Ho Chi Minh, ruler of the northern communist party of Vietnam at the start of the war, declared the independence for the nation. He was also a communist revolutionary leader, prime minister, and president of the democratic republic of Vietnam (“Ho Chi Minh”). In nineteen forty-five through nineteen fifty-five he was the
This investigation will examine the question: Is it more accurate to describe Ho Chi Minh as a communist or nationalist? Focusing on the time Ho Chi Minh was president of the communist-ruled Democratic Republic of Vietnam(1945-69) will allow for a proper analysis on his actions as ruler of North Vietnam to determine what type of leader he was, as well as the US role in his portrayal.
Ho Chi Minh did not live to witness the last helicopter lift off from the U.S. Embassy roof on April 30th 1975, an event that marked the fall of Saigon and the final stage of a decades long conflict. Ho died in 1969, six years shy of realizing his lifelong dream of a unified and independent Vietnam. Ho’s leadership was central to a victory won against formidable adversaries with vast resources; first the colonial French, and later an illegitimate South Vietnamese regime propped up by U.S power. Beginning in 1946 Ho led the Vietnamese people in a guerilla war that required relentless resolve and discipline to endure the debilitating casualties and destruction. Victory would have been impossible without the backing of the Vietnamese people, and Ho’s deep understanding of his countrymen allowed him to frame the struggle in familiar terms that inspired the enormous sacrifices needed to achieve victory.
The League for Vietnamese Independence also known as the Viet Minh was formed by Ho Chi Minh in 1941. It was a communist political party. “The coalition's project was to achieve independence for Vietnam from France, which then included Vietnam as part of its empire.”(Pennybaker) When the Japanese came to Vietnam to occupy the country’s territory during World War II, the Viet Minh were resistant. However, then when the war was over, France came back and reoccupied the country. Since then, Ho Chi Minh’s communist party, the Viet Minh, returned to its primary goal of achieving independence from France.
On the 19th of December 1946, The Viet Minh under Ho Chi Minh leadership launched a rebellion against the French authority governing the colonies of French Indochina. The first few years of the war were a low-level rural insurgency against French authority. However, after the Chinese communists reached the Northern border of Vietnam in 1949 the conflict became a conventional war between two armies equipped with modern weapons. These were supplied by the Chinese communist and Russian communist.
Ho was determined to achieve independence for the region. The French wanted to regain power and took badly to Ho's proclaiming the former Indochina as 'The Democratic Republic of Vietnam' in September, as the British had persuaded the allies to return power to the French in October (Palmer, 1984). At this time bi-polarity was not yet fully entrenched and Ho appealed to the U.S. in his September speech to the masses, drawing on The American Declaration of Independence (ibid.). America influenced the celebrations and professed its friendship to the new state.