(; 19 May 1890 – 2 September 1969), commonly known as Uncle Ho (Bác Hồ), President Hồ (Hồ Chủ tịch) and by other aliases and sobriquets, was a Vietnamese communist revolutionary, nationalist, and politician. He served as Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam from 1945 to 1955, and as President from 1945 until his death in 1969. Ideologically a Marxist–Leninist, he was the Chairman and First Secretary of the Workers' Party of Vietnam, the predecessor of the current Communist Party of Vietnam.
was born in Nghệ An province in the French protectorate of Annam. From 1911, he left French Indochina to continue his revolutionary activities. He was also one of the founding members of the French Communist Party. In 1930, he founded the Communist Party of Vietnam and in 1941, he returned to Vietnam and founded the independence movement, an umbrella group. Then, led the August Revolution against the Japanese in August 1945, which resulted in the independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. After the French returned to power the following month, Hồ's government retreated to the Việt Bắc region and began guerrilla warfare. The Việt Minh defeated the French Union in 1954 at the Battle of , ending the First Indochina War, and resulting in the division of Vietnam, with the Việt Minh in control of North Vietnam, and anti-communists in control of South Vietnam. He was a key figure in the People's Army of Vietnam and the during the Vietnam War, which lasted from 1955 to 1975. Hồ officially stepped down from power in 1965 due to health problems and died in 1969. North Vietnam was ultimately victorious against South Vietnam and its allies. Vietnam was officially unified in 1976. Saigon, the former capital of South Vietnam, was renamed Ho Chi Minh City in his honor.
The details of 's life before he came to power in Vietnam are uncertain. He is known to have used between 50 and 200 pseudonyms. Information on his birth and early life is ambiguous and subject to academic debate. At least four existing official biographies vary on names, dates, places, and other hard facts while unofficial biographies vary even more widely.
Aside from being a politician, Hồ was a writer, poet, and journalist. He wrote several books, articles, and poems in Chinese, Vietnamese, and French.
Early life
Hồ Chí Minh (胡志明) was born as Nguyễn Sinh Cung (阮生恭) in 1890 in the village of Làng Chùa or Hoàng Trù in Kim Liên commune, Nam Đàn district, Nghệ An province, in Central Vietnam which was then a French protectorate. Although 1890 is generally accepted as his birth year, at various times he used four other birth years: 1891, 1892, 1894 and 1895. He lived in his father Nguyễn Sinh Sắc's village of Làng Sen in Kim Liên until 1895 when his father sent him to Huế for study. He had three siblings: his sister Bạch Liên (Nguyễn Thị Thanh), a clerk in the French Army; his brother Nguyễn Sinh Khiêm (Nguyễn Tất Đạt), a geomancer and traditional herbalist; and another brother (Nguyễn Sinh Nhuận), who died in infancy. As a young child, Cung (Hồ) studied with his father before more formal classes with a scholar named Vuong Thuc Do. He quickly mastered Chữ Hán, a prerequisite for any serious study of Confucianism while honing his colloquial Vietnamese writing. In addition to his studies, he was fond of adventure and loved to fly kites and go fishing. Following Confucian tradition, his father gave him a new name at the age of 10: Nguyễn Tất Thành.
His father was a Confucian scholar and teacher and later an imperial magistrate in the small remote district of Binh Khe (Qui Nhơn). He was demoted for abuse of power after an influential local figure died several days after having received 102 strokes of the cane as punishment for an infraction. His father was eligible to serve in the imperial bureaucracy, but he refused because it meant serving the French. This exposed Thành (Hồ) to rebellion at a young age and seemed to be the norm for the province. Nevertheless, he received a French education, attending Collège Quốc học (lycée or secondary education) in Huế in Central Vietnam. His disciples, Phạm Văn Đồng and Võ Nguyên Giáp, also attended the school, as did Ngô Đình Diệm, the future President of South Vietnam and political rival.