Ho Chi Minh
Hồ Chí Minh (Chữ Hán: 胡志明; born Nguyễn Sinh Cung; 19 May 1890 – 2 September 1969), commonly known as Bác Hồ ('Uncle Hồ'), also known as Hồ Chủ tịch ('President Hồ'), Người cha già của dân tộc ('Old father of the people') and by other aliases, was a Vietnamese revolutionary and statesman. He served as Prime Minister of Vietnam from 1945 to 1955 and as President from 1945 until his death in 1969. Ideologically a Marxist–Leninist, he served as Chairman and First Secretary of the Workers' Party of Vietnam.
Youth
As a young man, Nguyen Tat Thanh was a Vietnamese patriot from a patriotic family agitating for independence for their country. His father refused positions with the government because he disagreed with their policies. His brother and sister were both imprisoned by the French for supporting Phan Boi Chau’s revolutionary movement.
Thanh seems to have been a follower of the non-violent Phan Chau Trinh. In 1911 he left Vietnam searching for a way to help his countrymen gain their independence. For a while he lived and worked in France with Phan Chau Trinh. Eventually they parted, as Ho became an increasingly more militant communist.
Return to Viet Nam
When he returned to Vietnam as Ho Chi Minh 30 years later, the patriot was no more. In his place was a brutal murderer dedicated to spreading communism throughout Asia. Before he and his followers were done, millions of people were dead in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.
As the man responsible for the spread of communism in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, Ho Chi Minh is directly and indirectly responsible for the lives of 1.7 million Cambodians, 2 million Vietnamese and possibly 230,000 in Laos. These are not war dead, but people murdered, starved to death and “reeducated” to death. In 1995 Vietnam revealed that they lost 1.1 million military dead during the war. As a percentage of their populations, Ho is responsible for as many deaths in Indochina as Mao Tse-tung was in China.