Quick questions on Ho Chi Minh and the DRV: HSC Modern History Indochina

Ho Chi Minh (1890 to 1969, born Nguyen Sinh Cung, also Nguyen Ai Quoc) was the founding figure of Vietnamese communism. He was a founding member of the French Communist Party in 1920, a Comintern agent through the 1920s and 1930s, founder of the Indochinese Communist Party in 1930 and of the Viet Minh in 1941, and proclaimer of the DRV on 2 September 1945. By the late 1950s he was an elder statesman; Le Duan became the operational leader.

The DRV moved from a wartime united front to a socialist state. The state took over French industrial assets in Hanoi and Haiphong. Trade unions and mass organisations (the Fatherland Front from September 1955) channelled social life.

At the Fifteenth Plenum (January 1959), the Politburo formally endorsed the renewal of armed struggle in the south. Group 559 was established in May 1959 to build the southern infiltration route through Laos. Group 759 (October 1959) ran the maritime version.

The Truong Son Strategic Supply Route, known in the west as the Ho Chi Minh Trail, ran through eastern Laos and Cambodia. From a string of jungle paths it grew into a network of around 20,000 kilometres of roads, pipelines, and base camps by 1973. Group 559 employed around 100,000 troops and porters at peak.

After the Sino-Soviet split of 1960 to 1963, the DRV navigated between Moscow and Beijing. Chinese aid (1965 to 1973): around 320,000 engineering and anti-aircraft troops, 14,000 artillery pieces, around 90,000 tonnes of munitions a year at peak. Soviet aid (1965 to 1973): MiG-17, MiG-19 and MiG-21 fighters, SAM-2 missiles, T-54 tanks for the 1972 Easter Offensive and the 1975 final offensive, and the higher-technology equipment.

Ho Chi Minh died on 2 September 1969, the 24th anniversary of the DRV. His mausoleum opened in Hanoi in 1975. Le Duan, party First Secretary since 1960, had already been the operational leader for years.

The north absorbed the heaviest aerial bombardment in history. Operation Rolling Thunder (March 1965 to October 1968) dropped around 864,000 tonnes; Linebacker I (May to October 1972) and Linebacker II (18 to 29 December 1972) added more. Around two million tonnes of bombs fell on the north and the Trail through the war. The regime mobilised its population, dispersed industry, and dug a tunnel network.

William Duiker (Ho Chi Minh: A Life, 2000) is the standard biography.

From 1960 onwards Le Duan was the dominant decision-maker; Ho was the symbolic figurehead.

It was founded on 20 December 1960, six years after partition.

Hanoi balanced; it took aid from both communist powers.