Ho Chi Minh

At birth, given the name Nguyen Tat Thanhg and born in 1890 in the town of Hoang Tru, Ho Chi Minh grew up in Kim Lien, Nma Dan District, Nghe An Province, Vietnam.

His father, Nguyen Sinh Sac, was a Confucian scholar employed by the French and was described as being incredibly intelligent, but his unwillingness to obey and to learn the French language resulted in him losing his job. As a nationalist, Nguyen always taught his children to resist the French rule and undoubtedly all his children grew up to be committed nationalists willing and wanting to fight for the independence of their country.

Ho Chi Minh's sister gained employment with the French army, where she used the position to steal weapons that she envisaged being used to drive the French out of Vietnam. Eventually she was caught and imprisoned.

Despite refusing to learn French himself, Nguyen had decided to send Ho to a French school. He was under the impression that it would help his son to prepare for the forthcoming struggle against the French.

However, whilst being quite intelligent himself, Ho struggled during his school life and was eventually expelled for being caught distributing banned books and papers on Vietnamese history to other students. Even from this young age Ho used his highly patriotic views in which he had gained from his father, as a fellow classmate whilst learning about the French revolution quotes him " The first concern of the French colonisers is to make arrangements for their relatives. The next is to grab and steal as much and as quickly from the indigenous people as possible."

At the conclusion of his studies, Ho decided to become a sailor as it enabled him to travel to many different countries and left Vietnam in 1911. After several years at sea, he settled briefly in London where he embraced communism and then at the end of World War 1 he went to France, where he continued his insight into the ideas of communism.

Whilst in Paris, Ho changed his name to Nquyen Ai Quoc, which roughly translates to Nguyen the patriot. Under this name he petitioned the great powers at the Versailles peace talks for equal rights in French Indochina, however he was unsuccessful. He then asked the U.S president at the time, Woodrow Wilson for help to other throw the French in Vietnam and for his country to have a free democratic government like the one of France. Again, he was denied.

Despite these setbacks, Ho continued on his mission and in 1920, became a founding member of the French Communist Party.

The Russian Revolution had dramatically inspired Ho, as many of the other founders and so in 1923 he visited the Soviet Union. Whilst in Moscow, he wrote to a friend discussing some of the things he had learnt from the communist view and had said that it was the duty of all communists to return to their own country to "make contact with the masses to awaken, organise, unite and train them, and lead them to fight for freedom and independence" .

However, despite avidly believing in what he had preached, Ho knew that if he returned to Vietnam, he would be at risk of being arrested by the French authorities. So, in December 1924, he travelled to Canton in south China, which lied very close to the Vietnam border and whilst there he formed the first openly Marxist revolutionary organisation in Vietnam, the Ð''Vietnam Revolutionary League'. In 1930, this league was transformed under Ho's direction into the Indo-Chinese Communist Party (ICP).

Nguyen Ai Quoc (Ho Chi Minh) was arrested by British authorities in 1931 for his work in communism and after his release in 1933; he spent the next few years in the Soviet Union.

Five years later, Ho left for China and whilst there, got straight to work in restoring lost contacts to build up his support base, with 1941 marking the year in which the formation of the league for the independence of Vietnam, or the Vietminh was declared. This group formed to seek Vietnamese independence against the French rule and became one of the most significant and influential parties in regaining Vietnam's autonomy.

Finally adopting the new fictitious name, Ho Chi Minh ("he who enlightens"), Ho returned to Vietnam at the end of 1941 to lead the Vietminh, conducting successful military actions against the Japanese forces. Ho became President of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in 1954.

Soon after the establishment of his rein the Vietminh became aware of other plans for there beloved country. Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin had already decided that after the Second World War, the country would be divided into two, the northern half under the control of the Chinese and the southern half under the British.

After the Second World War, France made attempts to re-establish control over Vietnam. In January 1946, Britain agreed to remove their troops and later that year China left Vietnam with a promise from France that they would give up their rights to territory in China. However despite previously signing an agreement, which recognised Vietnam as a self-governing state in the Indo-Chinese Federation, France still refused to recognise Vietnam's democratic rights and so fighting soon broke out between the Vietminh and the French troops.

For eight years, Ho Chi Minh led the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam)