Megan Woodward
American History
12/20/2007
Ho Chi Minh: Leader of the Vietminh
After world ward two, America adopted a policy of confinement. The goal was to prevent the further spread of communism. When communism started flourishing in French Indochina, America rose to face the threat of communism once again.
The main leader of the communist regime in French Indochina was Ho Chi Minh. Minh came from a family of nationalists, and his father had even lost his job for refusing to speak French. Ho Chi Minh received his education from a French school and even lived in Paris for a length of time. While living in Franc Minh read books by Karl Marx and other left-wing writers, this was the influence that turned him to communism. He went on to be a co founder of the French Communist Party. Minh was also inspired by the Soviet Union.
After visiting the Moscow, Minh decided that he needed to fight for freedom and independence. Ho Chi Minh new that if he returned to Vietnam he would be arrested by the French authorities, so he moved to china along the Vietnam border. It was here that he started to organize other exiled nationalists into the Vietnam Revolutionary League, or better known as the Vietminh. When world war two was over, France tried to regain control of Vietnam. Fighting soon broke out between French troops and the Vietminh.
The United States realized that if Vietnam fell to communism, then many of the surrounding countries already on the brink would fall as well. So the U.S. intervened by supplying military and financial aid to the French. After the Vietminh took the French capitol Diem Bien Phu, France surrendered. Then France, America, Britain, the Vietminh, and the Soviet Union gathered in Geneva to come to an agreement. The result left Ho Chi Minh as the leader of North Vietnam, vs. Ngo Dinh Diem who was the leader of the south. A nation wide vote was scheduled, but was later called off by the U.S. for fear that Minh would win and begin a reign of...