DOCUMENT-BASED QUESTION (DBQ)
Historical Context: Ho Chi Minh (1890-1969) was the leader of the Vietnamese resistance against the French,
Japanese, and United States. He was the founder of the Vietnamese Communist Party and ultimately the
President of Communist North Vietnam. During World War II he urged the Vietnamese people to unite and
fight to the end to prevent the French from regaining control and appealed to the U.S. for assistance in obtaining
Vietnam’s independence at the close of World War II. He was an inspiration to many as he dedicated his life to
the goal of independence.
Task: This task is based on the accompanying documents 1 - __. Some of these documents have been edited
for the purposes of this task. Using information from the documents and your knowledge of global history,
analyze each document and write an essay in which you address the following:
Ho Chi Minh considered himself a Vietnamese patriot, a nationalist and a communist. Discuss all three
aspects and evaluate the extent to which Ho Chi Minh was influenced by these philosophies in his quest for
independence.
Directions:
o Write a well-organized essay that includes an introduction with a thesis statement, several body
paragraphs explaining the thesis, and a conclusion.
o Address all aspects of the task by analyzing and interpreting at least ____ documents.
o Consider the source of each document and the author’s point of view.
o Use evidence from the documents to support your position.
o Include specific related outside information.
Document 1
Ho Chi Minh
Letter to Robert Lansing in Paris
June 18, 1919
We take the liberty of setting [forth]…the claims of the Annamite
people on the occasion of the Allied victory. We count on your great
kindness to honor our appeal by your support... Since the victory of the
Allies, all subject peoples are frantic with hope at the prospect of an
era of right and justice which should begin for them... in the struggle of
civilization against barbarism.
<http://rationalrevolution.net/war/collection_of_letters_by_ho_chi_.htm>
Document 2
Ho Chi Minh
Paris, France
December 26, 1920
You all have known that French imperialism entered Indochina half a century ago. In its selfish interests, it
conquered our country with bayonets. Since then we have not only been oppressed and exploited shamelessly,
but also tortured and poisoned pitilessly. Plainly speaking, we have been poisoned with opium, alcohol, etc. I
cannot, in some minutes, reveal all the atrocities inflicted on Indochina. Prisons outnumber schools and are
always overcrowded with detainees. Natives are arrested and sometimes murdered without trial. Vietnamese are
discriminated against. We have neither freedom of press nor freedom of speech. Even freedom of assembly and
freedom of association do not exist. We have no right to live in other countries or to go abroad as tourists. We
are forced to live in utter ignorance and obscurity because we have no right to study. In Indochina the
colonialists find all ways and means to force us to smoke opium and drink alcohol to poison and beset us.
Thousands of Vietnamese have been led to a slow death or massacred to protect other people's interests. Such is
the treatment inflicted upon more that 20 million Vietnamese, that is more than half the population of France.
And they are said to be under French protection!
<http://rationalrevolution.net/war/collection_of_letters_by_ho_chi_.htm>
Document 3
“Ho Chi Minh’s Rhetoric for Revolution”
Peter A. DeCaro
Ho’s search for the secret of the strength and the cohesiveness in Vietnam’s peasant society was a quest for
power to overthrow French rule and make the country united and independent. He found this secret in the
peasant’s continuing sense of belonging to a larger community beyond the village…His purpose was to link the
villagers to a new sense of Vietnam as a nation… Instead of the extremely limited participation in politics
characteristic of Vietnam’s Confucian kingdoms, Ho wanted mass involvement…For Ho, it was a war for the
people and not for control over the land…He recognized the centrality of image in modern life and at all times
projected the correct one benevolent uncle come to put things right.
<http://www1.appstate.edu/orgs/acjournal/holdings/vol3/Iss3/spec1/decaro.html>
Document 4
Ho Chi Minh
“The Party’s Military Work among the Peasants”
1928
“The victory of the proletarian revolution is impossible in rural and semi-rural countries if the revolutionary
proletariat is not actively supported by the mass of the peasant population. Only if the revolutionary wave sets
in motion the rural masses under the leadership of the proletariat, will the revolution be able to triumph; hence,
the exceptional importance of Party agitation in the countryside.”
William Duiker, Ho Chi Minh: A Life, 2000: 181
Document 5
Ho Chi Minh
“The Communists Must Organize Themselves into a Single Party”
1929
“The revolutionary movement in Vietnam has now begun the stage of proletarian leadership. Vietnam,
therefore, must have a communist party. The Communist Party is the avant-garde of the proletariat, and the
peasantry is the leader of the proletariat, so the peasantry will overthrow the French Imperialists, seize political
power, and set up the dictatorship of peasants and workers in order to achieve a communist society.”
Andrew Mason, Ed. Vietnam War: A Primary Source History, 2005: 9.
Document 6
Ho Chi Minh
Delivered at Hong Kong
February 18, 1930
Appeal Made on the Occasion of the Founding of the Indochinese Communist Party
Workers, peasants, soldiers, youth, school students!
Oppressed and exploited fellow-countrymen!
The Indochinese Communist Party has been founded. It is the Party of the working class. It will help the
proletariat lead the revolution waged for the sake of all oppressed and exploited people. From now on we must
join the Party, help it and follow it in order to implement the following slogans:
1. To overthrow French imperialism and Vietnamese feudalism and reactionary bourgeoisie;
2. To make Indochina completely independent;
3. To establish a worker-peasant-soldier government;
4. To confiscate the banks and other enterprises belonging to the imperialists and put them
under the control of the worker-peasant-soldier government;
5. To confiscate all the plantations and property belonging to the imperialists and the
Vietnamese reactionary bourgeoisie and distribute them to the poor peasants;
6. To implement the 8-hour working day;
7. To abolish the forced buying of government bonds, the poll-tax and all unjust taxes hitting
the poor;
8. To bring democratic freedoms to the masses;
9. To dispense education to all the people;
10. To realize equality between man and woman.
<http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/ho-chi-minh/works/1930/02/18.htm>
Document 7
FO 975/70 British Foreign Office
“Ho Chi Minh and the Communist Movement in Indo China”
6 January 1930 [Published August 1953]
<http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/coldwar/archive/G6/g60104.htm>
Document 8
c1945
Note: OSS [Office of Strategic Services]]
<https://facultystaff.richmond.edu/~ebolt/history398/advisingthevietminh.html>
Document 9
Ho Chi Minh to U.S. Intelligence Officer Charles Fenn
1945
“First, you must understand that to gain independence from a great power like France is a formidable task that
cannot be achieved without some outside help, not necessarily in things like arms, but in the nature of advice
and contracts. One doesn’t in fact gain independence by throwing bombs and such. One must gain it through
organization, propaganda, training and discipline. One also needs a set of beliefs, a gospel, a practical analysis;
you might even say a bible. Marxism-Leninism gave me that framework.”
Pierre Brocheux, Ho Chi Minh: A Biography, 2007: 184.
Document 10
“Nationalist or Communist”
There is ample evidence that, whether or not he was an orthodox Marxist, under his patriotic exterior beat the
heart of a dedicated revolutionary. In Ho’s brave new world, patriotism would be replaced by the Leninist
concept of a future global federation of Communist societies…There seems little doubt that for Ho Chi Minh
the survival of his country was first and always his primary concern…The issue is thus not whether he was a
nationalist or a Communist…in his own way, he was both. It is more a question of his tactics. Ho Chi Minh
was a believer in the art of the possible, of adjusting his ideals to the conditions of the moment.
William Duiker, Ho Chi Minh: A Life, 2000: 570-71.
Document 11
President Ho Chi Minh (noted by red arrow) receives American secret servicemen in a special unit nicknamed
"The Deer". Presented by VietNamNet Bridge.
The US recognized the Viet Minh to be popular with the Vietnamese people, and turned to the Viet Minh for intelligence about
the region. The OSS inserted American commando teams to fight the Japanese along with the Viet Minh. American Army and
Navy teams cooperated with them to retrieve American Prisoners of War (POWs). One special unit used by the OSS was known
as "The Deer." These men parachuted into Tan Trao, the northern-most military base, to establish a Vietnamese-American
company to fight the Japanese alongside the Viet Minh.
<http://www.talkingproud.us/Military/BreakerPatrol/BreakerPatrolDivide/BreakerPatrolDivide.htm>
Document 12
Ho Chi Minh
Letter to President Harry S. Truman (declassified 1972)
16 February 1945
The French aggression on a peace-loving people is a direct menace to world security. It implies the complicity,
or at least the connivance of the Great Democracies. The United Nations ought to keep their words. They ought
to interfere to stop this unjust war, and to show that they mean to carry out in peacetime the principles for which
they fought in wartime.
Our Vietnamese people, after so many years of spoliation and devastation, are just beginning its building-up
work. It needs security and freedom, first to achieve internal prosperity and welfare, and later to bring its small
contribution to world-reconstruction.
[Our]…security and freedom can only be guaranteed by our independence from any colonial power, and our
free cooperation with all other powers. It is with this firm conviction that we request of the United Sates as
guardians and champions of World Justice to take a decisive step in support of our independence.
What we ask has been graciously granted to the Philippines. Like the Philippines our goal is full independence
and full cooperation with the UNITED STATES. We will do our best to make this independence and
cooperation profitable to the whole world.
I am Dear Mr. PRESIDENT,
Respectfully Yours,
(Signed) Ho Chi Minh
<http://rationalrevolution.net/war/american_involvement_in_vietnam.htm>
<http://rationalrevolution.net/war/collection_of_letters_by_ho_chi_.htm>
Document 13
Ho Chi Minh
“Declaration of Independence”
2 September 1945
"All men are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights; among these are
Liberty, Life and the pursuit of Happiness." This immortal statement appeared in the Declaration of
Independence of the United States of America in 1776. In a broader sense, it means: all the peoples on the earth
are equal from birth; all the peoples have a right to live and to be happy and free. The Declaration of the Rights
of Man and the Citizen, made at the time of the French Revolution, in 1791, also states: "All men are born free
and with equal rights, and must always remain free and have equal rights." Those are undeniable truths.
Nevertheless, for more than eighty years, the French imperialists, abusing the standard of liberty, Equality and
Fraternity, have violated our Fatherland and oppressed our fellow-citizens. They have acted contrary to the
ideals of humanity and justice. Politically: they have deprived our people of every democratic liberty…
The French have fled, the Japanese have capitulated, Emperor Bao Dai has abdicated. Our people have broken
the chains which for nearly a century have fettered them and have won independence for the Fatherland. Our
people at the same time have overthrown the monarchic regime that has reigned supreme for dozens of
centuries. In its place has been established the present Democratic Republic…
The whole Vietnamese people, animated by a common purpose, are determined to fight to the bitter end against
any attempt by the French colonialists to reconquer their country…A people who have courageously opposed
French domination for more than eighty years, a people who have fought side by side with the Allies against the
Fascists during these last years, such a people must be free and independent…
For these reasons, we, members of the Provisional Government of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam,
solemnly declare to the world that Vietnam has the right to be a free and independent country.
<http://www.vietnamembassy-usa.org/learn_about_vietnam/politics/dec_of_independence/>
< http://rationalrevolution.net/war/american_involvement_in_vietnam.htm>
Document 14
Arthur Hale
U.S. Information Agency (declassified 1972)
1945
Viet-Minh, as its first move after seizure of the government, sought a united front against French imperialism...
Frenchmen think that by labeling Viet-Minh "Communist," they have summed up the situation to the
disadvantage of the Vietnam government. There is considerable communist influence in Viet-Minh... The
national salute is very nearly the raised right arm salute of the communists. Posters, banners, have been adapted
from Western leftist art...
But at the same time there is ample evidence of an equally strong influence from the United States... Policy
statements and declarations by the government are obvious imitations of American techniques of democratic
government. In short, the Viet-Minh leadership seems to have used communist methods of appeal to arouse the
masses behind a program for an independent democracy...
<http://rationalrevolution.net/war/american_involvement_in_vietnam.htm>
Document 15
Ho Chi Minh
Letter to Secretary of State James Byrnes
November 1, 1945
[Could I Send] to the United States of America a delegation of about 50 Vietnam youths with a view to
establish friendly cultural relations with American youth on the one hand, and carrying on further studies in
Engineering, Agriculture, as well as other lines of specialization on the other. They have been all these years
keenly interested in things American and earnestly desirous to get in touch with American people whose fine
stand for the noble ideals of international Justice and Humanity, and whose modern technical achievements
have so strongly appealed to them.
<http://rationalrevolution.net/war/collection_of_letters_by_ho_chi_.htm>
Document 16
Accord between France and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam
Signatories: Ho Chi Minh and Vu Hong Khanh [Deputy Chairman of Hanoi City People’s Deputy Committee]
6 March 1946 Hanoi
1. The French Government recognizes the Vietnamese Republic as a Free State having its own Government, its
own Parliament, its own Army and its own Finances, forming part of the Indochinese Federation and of the
French Union. In that which concerns the reuniting of the three "Annamite Regions" [Cochinchina, Annam,
Tonkin] the French Government pledges itself to ratify the decisions taken by the populations consulted by
referendum.
2. The Vietnamese Government declares itself ready to welcome amicably the French Army when, conforming
to international agreements, it relieves the Chinese Troops. A Supplementary Accord, attached to the present
Preliminary Agreement, will establish the means by which the relief operations will be carried out.
3. The stipulations formulated above will immediately enter into force. Immediately after the exchange of
signatures, each of the High Contracting Parties will take all measures necessary to stop hostilities in the field,
to maintain the troops in their respective positions, and to create the favorable atmosphere necessary to the
immediate opening of friendly and sincere negotiations. These negotiations will deal particularly with:
a. diplomatic relations of Vietnam with Foreign States
b. the future law of Indochina
c. French interests, economic and cultural, in Viet-nam.
The Pentagon Papers, Gravel Edition, Volume 1, Chapter 1 (Boston: Beacon Press, 1971), pp. 18-19
Document 17
Ho Chi Minh in Paris, France
1946
The leader of the Vietnamese delegation Ho Chi Minh (sixth from the left) poses with French president of the
provisional government Georges Bidault (fourth from the left) after talks, in June 1946 in Paris, France.
<http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/02/07/revolutionary_road?page=full>
Document 18
Ho Chi Minh
Speech opening the 3rd National Congress of the Vietnam Workers’ Party
September 5, 1960
Long live great Marxism-Leninism
Long live the heroic working class and people of Vietnam!
Long live the Vietnam Workers Party!
Long live the solidarity and unity of the fraternal Parties and of the big socialist family headed by the great
Soviet Union!
Long live a peaceful, unified, independent, democratic, prosperous, and strong Vietnam!
Long live world peace!
Document 19
Ho Chi Minh
Quoted by Rene J. Defourneaux
August 9, 1966
I have always been impressed with your country's treatment of the Philippines. You kicked the Spanish out and
let the Filipinos develop their own country. You were not looking for real estate, and I admire you for that. I
have a government that is organized and ready to go. Your statesmen make eloquent speeches about helping
those with self-determination. We are self-determined. Why not help us? Am I any different from Nehru,
Quezon- even your own George Washington? I, too, want to set my people free.
<http://rationalrevolution.net/war/collection_of_letters_by_ho_chi_.htm>