Prior to the First Indochina War
During his Comintern missions, he went to Laos/Thailand, uniting and informing Vietnamese migrants there.
“He used the same methods of penetration and propaganda everywhere... After speaking, he would solicit questions from his audience. Those who knew him remember his easy manner and his talent as a teacher, which helped spread his ideas. He used a simple vocabulary and very imaginistic language, incorporating popular proverbs and anecdotes... delighted his audience. He also wrote short plays and historical sketches, as well as songs about the national hero Tran Hung Dao.”
-Pierre Brocheux on the persuasive strategies Ho applied on the Vietnamese communities. Ho Chi Minh: A Biography. |
He wrote numerous works glorifying Vietnam's past, as the Comintern advised.
“... to explain to the laboring masses in a historically objective way their nation’s past, to link their current struggles with the traditions of their people, to acclimatize proletarian internationalism within each country so that it can ‘sink roots deeply within their homeland’”
-Georgi Dimitrov, president of the Seventh Congress of the Comintern, 1935. marxists.org.
Ho secretly settled at the cave Pac Bo, endured harsh conditions and trained the Viet Minh, a Vietnam Communist front. Their purpose:
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Vietnamese people held high esteem for Ho, which maintained their hopes for independence.
“We had always been strong fighters for the Viet Minh, and we always admired Ho Chi Minh... Our training in North Vietnam was also difficult. Sometimes the food was not good. Sometimes we were very lonely and wanted to go home and see our family and friends. But we learned after a while not to be lonely, and learned to find strength in our revolutionary struggle. We learned not to think much about our families any more. We learned not to miss our families any more - like Ho Chi Minh.”
-Testimony of a trainee from the South. Village At War. |
"Ho Chi Minh was always our leader. He always was in our minds, and always was the most important person in all the Liberation propaganda... we were told that we could be as good and as strong as Ho Chi Minh by dedication, sacrifice, and by hard study...
-A Vietnamese student's discussion on Ho. Village At War.
During WWII, Ho acquired information concerning the Japanese for America's Office of Strategic Services. He took advantage of this situation:
"I asked him what he had wanted of them. He said-only recognition of his group. I had vaguely heard of this as being communist, and asked him about it. Ho said that the French call all Annamites communists who want independence... I asked him what he'd want in return for helping us. Arms and medicines, he said. I was impressed by his clear-cut talk, Buddha-like composure, except movements with wrinkled brown fingers." -A report from Lieutenant Fenn, an Air Ground Aid Service representative for the United States. Britain in Vietnam: Prelude in Disaster 1945-46. |
Ho sought diplomatic relations, especially with America. He requested support from Truman, but Truman declined.
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