Tonight, while showering, I was listening to a story on tv about SOG operations in Southeast Asia. I heard them say something about Ho Chi Minh having offered a partnership with the US, after the French left the country. They mentioned that his offer was ignored.
This was news to me. That Ho offered was no suprise, but I can’t find any details of his offer or what the US’s reaction was.
Anyone know more about this?
Peace,
mangeorge
Ho Chi Minh’s ties to the U.S. were surprisingly deep. It has even been suggested that Ho may have been the first Vietnamese to ever visit the U.S. Other ties: Ho quoted the Declaration of Independence when calling for Vietnamese independence in 1945; and during World War II Ho worked with the U.S Office of Strategic Services, who parachuted into Vietnamese jungles to train his guerillas to fight the Japanese.
However, Ho was a devout Communist by as early as 1920, so I’d be surprised if there were serious, legitimate attempts to secure a U.S. alliance (especially since it would have seriously pissed off the French if we’d allied with their Indochinese ousters after the 1954 coup de grace at Dienbienphu). I’d be curious to check out reports to the contrary.
IIRC this is in contrast to the Chinese, who took the Red road only after being rebuffed by the U.S. after WW2.
It’s amazing, My father is a Vietnam vet and he helped me form my opinon about most of the Vietnam War (Fortunately his experience was a bit less far fetched than say “Apocolypse Now” but he still tells some interesting stories), and one thing he expressed to me was that the U.S. government has never tried to say that Ho Chi Min was an “Evil Communist Dictator”. At the time they just had to oppose communism in any form, no matter how benign, or many people would later die because of it.
I’d be interested in hearing a little more about Ho’s sojourn in the U.S. I heard that at one point he worked as a dishwasher in Harlem, but I have no idea if this is true. Any details?
I dug up whence I remembered my Ho Chi Minh facts: Stanley Karnow’s memoir Paris in the Fifties devotes an entire chapter (pp.210-222) to Ho entitled “Ce Petit Annamite,” one of his sobriquets (Annam was the name of Vietnam when it was a French protectorate).
Here’s what Karnow has to say about Ho’s US travels: In 1911, Ho began working on Europe bound steamers out of Indochina. He disembarked in Marseille, worked menial jobs around France, and then headed on a steamer to Africa and finally Boston. From Boston he went to New York and settled in Brooklyn for several months as a laborer. It’s very possible one of his menial jobs was as a dishwasher. “He explored nearly every inch of the metropolis, riding the ferry to Hoboken, the subway to the Battery and the trolley to Harlem.” Later, “The Statue of Liberty and all that it symbolized electrified him, but he argued that it had been wrong for the United States to have accepted the gift from the French as long as [the French] violated its tenets in their overseas possessions.” Ho’s other exploits outside the U.S. are examined in later pages.
I haven’t read any biographies of Ho, but you’d probably find more detail elsewhere. As a caveat, Karnow reminds us that “Ho was typically secretive, and his recollections tended to be a blur of fact and fiction.”
I came across this;
http://www.time.com/time/asia/asia/magazine/1999/990823/ho_chi_minh1.html
It’s a little biased, but does mention Ho’s letter to Truman.
It appears to me that there may have been at least a slim possibility of a diplomatic solution to Viet Nam’s problems. Of course, given the mood of the time (red scare), that possibility would have been very slim.
What an interesting life he lived.
Peace,
mangeorge