Ho Chi Minh

Ho Chi Minh was a Vietnamese revolutionary who became the leading symbol of the struggle against French colonial rule and later the president of North Vietnam. He helped found the Indochinese Communist Party and the Viet Minh, proclaimed Vietnamese independence in 1945 and led the Democratic Republic of Vietnam through the First Indochina War.

After the division of Vietnam in 1954, Ho remained the most prominent political figure in the communist North during the escalating conflict with South Vietnam and the United States. Max Hastings’s Vietnam places him within a wider history that also emphasises the experiences and suffering of Vietnamese civilians and soldiers. The book is nonfiction.