Answer to Question #231798 in History for Brandon M Garrett

Question

1. How did Ho Chi Minh gain his support?

Answer 1

Ho Chi Minh gained his support when he emerged as an outspoken voice for Vietnamese independence while living as a young man in France during World War I. he joined the Communist Party and traveled to the Soviet Union. He helped found the Indochinese Communist Party in 1930 and the League for the Independence of Vietnam, or Viet Minh, in 1941. At World War II’s end, Viet Minh forces seized the northern Vietnamese city of Hanoi and declared a Democratic State of Vietnam (or North Vietnam) with Ho as president. Known as “Uncle Ho,” he would serve in that position for the next 25 years, becoming a symbol of Vietnam’s struggle for unification during a long and costly conflict with the strongly anti-Communist regime in South Vietnam and its powerful ally, the United States.

In 1919, he was living in France, where he organized a group of Vietnamese immigrants and petitioned delegates at the Versailles Peace Conference to demand that the French colonial government in Indochina grant the same rights to its subjects as it did to its rulers.

In February 1967, Ho Chi Minh responded to a personal message from U.S. President Lyndon Johnson by announcing that the North Vietnamese would never negotiate under the threat of bombing. These factors made him so popular and people gave him the necessary support to lead them.