Ho Chi Minh’s real name is Nguyen Tat Thanh (1890-1969). He was a Vietnamese Communist leader and the principal force behind the Vietnamese struggle against French colonial rule. Ho was born on May 19, 1890, in the village of Kimlien, Annam (central Vietnam). He is the son of an official who had resigned in protest against French domination of his country. Ho went to school in Hue. He briefly taught at a private school in Phan Thiet. In 1911 he worked as a cook on a French steamship liner. Thereafter, he worked in London and Paris. After World War I, using a false name as Nguyen Ai Quoc (Nguyen the Patriot), Ho was involved in radical activities and was in the founding group of the French Communist party. He was called to Moscow for training. In late 1924, he was sent to Canton, China, where he organized a revolutionary movement among Vietnamese exiles. He was forced to leave China when local authorities cracked down on Communist activities. Somehow, he returned in 1930 to found the Indochinese Communist party (ICP). He stayed in Hong Kong as a representative of the Communist International.

In June 1931, Ho was arrested by British police. He stayed in prison and was released in 1933. He then made his way back to the Soviet Union. Here, he reportedly spent several years recovering from tuberculosis. In 1938 he returned to China and served as an adviser with Chinese Communist armed forces. When Japan occupied Vietnam in 1941, he started contact with ICP leaders. He helped found a new Communist-dominated independence movement which is known as the Vietminh. They fought the Japanese and won. The Vietminh took power and stated the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) in Hanoi. Ho Chi Minh is now known by his final and best-known alias (which means the “Enlightener”), became president. The French were unwilling to give independence to their colonial subjects and in late 1946 war broke out.

For eight years, Viet Minh guerrillas fought French troops in the mountains and rice paddies of Vietnam. In 1954, they finally defeated the French in the Battle of Dien Bien Phu. Ho was robbed of his victory. Later negotiations at Geneva divided the country, with only the North assigned to the Viet Minh. The DRV, with Ho still president, now devoted its efforts to changing a Communist society in North Vietnam. In the early 1960s, conflict resumed in the South, where Communist-led guerrillas against the U.S.-supported regime in Saigon. Now in poor health, Ho was reduced to a largely ceremonial role, while policy was changed by others. On September 3, 1969, he died in Hanoi of heart failure. In his honor, after the Communist conquest of the South in 1975, Saigon was renamed as Ho Chi Minh City.