Who was Ho Chi Minh ?
Ho Chi Minh led the
Vietnamese nationalist movement for more than three decades, fighting first
against the Japanese, then the French .colonial power and then the US-backed
South Vietnamese.in 1930 founded the Indo-Chinese Communist Party (ICP).
After the Japanese
invasion of Indo-China in 1941, Ho returned home and founded the Viet Minh, a
communist-dominated independence movement, to fight the Japanese. .
He adopted the name Ho Chi
Minh, meaning 'Bringer of Light '.
- At the end of
World War Two the Viet Minh announced Vietnamese independence. The French
refused to relinquish their colony and in 1946, war broke out.
- After
eight years of war, the French were forced to agree to peace talks in
Geneva. The country was
split into a communist north and non-communist south and Ho became
president of North Vietnam.
- He was
determined to reunite Vietnam under communist rule
Ho Chi
Minh was in poor health from the mid-1960s and died on 2 September 1969.
When the Communists took the South Vietnamese capital Saigon in 1975 they renamed it Ho Chi Minh City in his
honour.
. He was President of North Vietnam from 1954
until his death
**************************************************************
What is referred as the Ho Chi
Minh Trail ?
Ho Chi Minh trail symbolises how the Vietnamese used their
limited resources to great advantage.
- 1. The trail, an immense network of footpaths and roads, was used to transport men and materials from the north to the south. From 1967 about 20,000 North Vietnamese troops came south each month on this trail
- 2. The trail had support bases and hospitals along the way. In some parts supplies were transported in trucks, but mostly they were carried by porters, who were mainly women. These porters carried about 25 kilos on their backs, or about 70 kilos on their bicycles
- 3. Most of the trail was outside Vietnam in neighbouring Laos and Cambodia with branch lines extending into South Vietnam
- 4. US regularly bombed this trail trying to disrupt supplies, but efforts to destroy this important supply line by intensive bombing failed because they were rebuilt very quickly.
