III.

President of Vietnam

When Japan surrendered in August 1945, Viet Minh units seized power in northern Vietnam and proclaimed the formation of an independent Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV), with Ho as president. At this time Ho formally adopted the pseudonym Ho Chi Minh, which means “he who enlightens.” But Ho’s hope that his new government would be recognized by the victorious Allied powers was soon dashed. In October, French troops returned to southern Vietnam and drove Viet Minh and other anticolonialist elements out of Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) and into the countryside. With some reluctance, the United States recognized the restoration of French sovereignty in Indochina, but urged the French government to grant more autonomy to local political forces inside the country. During the next year Ho Chi Minh engaged in delicate negotiations with French representatives to reach a compromise agreement and avoid war. When those talks failed, in December 1946 Viet Minh troops attacked French units stationed in the DRV and the First Indochina War broke out.

For the next eight years, Viet Minh guerrillas fought French troops in the mountains and in the rice paddies of Vietnam. The French occupied the coastal regions and the major cities, while Ho and the Viet Minh sought refuge in the mountains north of the Red River Delta. Assisted by Ho’s rising popularity as a resistance leader, the Viet Minh won wide popular support from the Vietnamese people for their struggle to end French colonial rule. After an exhausting and inconclusive conflict, the French tired of the war, and negotiations at Geneva, Switzerland, in the spring and summer of 1954 resulted in a compromise peace. A cease-fire was signed and French troops were withdrawn from Vietnam, which was provisionally divided into a Communist North (retaining the name Democratic Republic of Vietnam) and a non-Communist South (called the Republic of Vietnam). National elections were to be held in 1956 to reunify the North and South under a single government. In October, Ho Chi Minh and his fellow party leaders returned to their capital at Hanoi.