The Tenacity Of Ho Chi Minh | Secrets Of War | Timeline

hi everybody welcome to this timeline documentary my name is dan snow and here i am in a lancaster bomber cockpit one of the few remaining lancasters from the second world war to tell you about my new history channel it's called history hit it's like netflix for history hundreds of history documentaries on there and interviews with many of the world's best historians follow the information below this film or just search online for history hit and make sure you use the code timeline to get a special introductory offer now enjoy this show [Music] in july of 1969 a courier was dispatched to hanoi to deliver a secret letter to the ailing ho chi minh national hero and leader of the north vietnamese people the letter was written by u.s president richard nixon and was part peace offering part ultimatum having promised the american people a quick end of the war in southeast asia the newly elected president was now threatening that if peace negotiations between the north vietnamese and the american delegations in paris did not produce the desired results the people of annoy would be made to suffer on august 30th nixon received a letter back from ho chi minh stating that while he was deeply touched at the rising toll of death of young americans his government would not bend in the face of threats to nixon's consternation the leader of this tiny underdeveloped country was rebuffing his offer considering ho's history with the united states it was an ironic twist of fate after world war one and again after world war ii ho chi minh had personally lobbied american presidents hoping to convince the world's greatest democracy to champion vietnam's struggle for independence from france but woodrow wilson and harry truman both ignored ho's requests [Music] in many ways you could look back on the whole relationship between the united states and ho chi minh and see a lot of what you might call lost occasions opportunities when we could have made deals with him then on september 2nd 1969 at the age of 79 ho chi minh died the singular impression i have with respect to how ho's passing influenced the conduct of the war is that it was almost a blood debt that the man of the politburo felt they owed to ho chi minh to persevere in that war as hos followers prepared to dig in for the long haul president nixon began planning a secret and brutal assault on north vietnam codenamed duck hook [Music] like other american presidents before him nixon mistakenly believed that american firepower could crush his opponents and the key to understanding why the vietnam war was unwinnable from the american point of view is they're up against an enemy that's prepared to take unlimited losses and ho chi minh when he said i will lose 10 men for every one of yours and i'll win in the end that's something that the united states should have understood nor did american policymakers understand that ho chi minh successors were no less determined than their former leader to use every trick of deception they could muster to outwit and outlast the world's greatest superpower [Music] to counter overwhelming firepower hose forces relied on stealth and secrecy his agents quietly permeated all levels of society in south vietnam while preventing any intrusions into the closed culture of the north in the end hoh and his followers turned the use of intelligence into the ultimate art of war [Music] ho chi minh a pseudonym which means the bringer of light was born we in singkun in 1890 in the french colony of vietnam one of the boy's earliest memories was of the misery caused by french officials entering his town to conscript villagers to build a road many of these laborers never returned to their families ho's sensitivity to the plight of his people was sharpened in 1908 at the age of 17 when he noticed a crowd of peasants streaming into the imperial capital of way ho offered his services as interpreter to present the peasants demands in french to the colonial governor after the french squelched the rebellion security agents went to hose high school to demand that he'd be dismissed the incident put an end to his formal schooling and mark toe is a troublemaker who needed to be kept under surveillance it's at that point that he began to live what we might call a clandestine existence and learn the value of operating under a pseudonym and he was in fact under a pseudonym from that point on almost literally until the end of his life two years later in saigon ho signed on as a stoker and galley boy aboard a french freighter he spent nearly three years at sea and in france before settling in brooklyn as an itinerant laborer he was surprised that the immigrants he saw on the streets of new york enjoyed greater dignity and freedom than the vietnamese in their own homeland after his return to europe ho began to flirt with revolutionary politics near the end of world war one he moved back to paris where one hundred thousand vietnamese had arrived to serve as soldiers and laborers for the allied cause writing under the alias we in iwook he preached self-determination for vietnam in 1919 hole learned that the american president woodrow wilson was coming to versailles for the conference that would formally end world war one wilson had espoused a doctrine of liberation for colonial people around the world leaving whole with the hope that the u.s president would support vietnam in its struggle to break free from french rule full of optimism hoe went to versailles hall of mirrors to present wilson with a petition when that petition was ignored as it was not only by the allied leaders meeting at versailles but also by the french government he concluded that all of the the promises of self-determination and human dignity and human rights that emanated from western civilization in a sense was simply hypocrisy after the rejection of his petition ho chi minh decided to turn to the bolshevik revolution in russia as a model for obtaining liberation for his people [Music] he became one of the founding members of the french communist party and quickly came to the attention of the french secret police the french have terrific security systems they have a terrific network of spies everywhere not only frenchmen they would have vietnamese spies there's a word called a dossier right which the french invented that word the french had these piles of dossiers on everybody they had information on everybody they had stuff that went back to when he was a kid they had kept records of every time he squeaked [Music] in 1923 ho received an invitation from the bolsheviks to undergo formal training as an agent so that he could be sent back to his homeland to create an indo-chinese communist party by this time the french police were close on his trail and as he departed for russia he attempted to make a cloak and dagger escape it's one of these james bond type stories he went into a movie theater changed clothes in the movie theater came out a side door got in a taxi cab fled very quickly to the railroad station put on another set of clothes got on the train and went across europe and eventually ended up in moscow ho used his time in the soviet union to attend an academy for asian insurgents where he learned the lenin's key dictum revolution must be launched under favorable conditions he would wait another 20 years before staging his revolution and even then he may have acted prematurely [Music] secrets of war will continue in a moment here on the history channel of war in 1940 a tidal wave swept over southeast asia as japanese soldiers poured down from china easily crushing the french administration in vietnam ho chi minh who had been wandering the world ever since he left his homeland in 1911 now sensed that the time was right to return to vietnam encouraged by roosevelt in churchill's atlantic charter which pledged to restore self-government to colonial people around the world oh started to build his revolutionary movement [Music] from south china ho snuck across the border into the jungle of northern vietnam and began to pull together a ragtag gorilla band he called the viet minh which stood for the vietnamese independence league [Music] not far away a group of intelligence agents with the u.s office of strategic services or oss had established their own beachhead in southeast asia ho soon realized that the close proximity of the oss might present him with an opportunity he became convinced that if he could persuade some of these local oss detachments that he could provide them with good solid intelligence information on japanese troop movements that the united states might recognize his movement as the legitimate representative of vietnamese nationalism when the war was over when some of whose operatives saw the japanese shoot down an american single-engine reconnaissance plane ho sent his men to rescue the pilot [Music] the viet minh brought the injured flyer back to headquarters lieutenant rudolph shaw was surprised by the greeting he got from their leader and the way he described it was this older man with a wispy beard came out of a hut and looked at him and said hello pilot where are you from it did not take ho long to realize that if he personally delivered shaw to the american base in kunming south china he might create an obligation on the americans part to do something for him in return but when he reached the chinese border the authorities allowed shaw to proceed and barred whole from boarding the train ho chi minh had to go on foot and didn't get to kunming until a week or two later by the time he got back to kunming shaw was already on his way back into the united states in recognition of his feet hoe was granted an audience with flying tigers ace general claire chennault who asked ho if there was some way he could repay the favor and according to the story ho chi minh says i really at this stage all i want is an autographed photograph of you chennai gives him an autographed photograph chanel being sort of egotistical guy when talk of the proficiency of hose intelligence network reached an oss team codenamed deer these american secret agents began to think that whole might be resourceful enough to undertake the dangerous task of sabotaging a japanese rail line that ran through the jungle [Music] carlton swift was one of those assigned to approach ho while he was still in kunming it took us a while to run down ho sitting in the office of war information reading time magazine and encyclopedia britannica and he said why yes we'd be glad to fight them japanese mountain operation members of the deer team parachuted into a jungle clearing near ho's camp to begin training the viet minh no sooner had they begun then the operation was cut short by the atomic blast over hiroshima and the defeat of the japanese [Music] oh urged his followers to launch a general uprising disease political power before the french administration could restore itself in order to attract a broad base of support o very cleverly disguised his communist ideology emphasizing instead his patriotism and desire to initiate social reform it would not be until war's end that the craftiness of ho's request to have channeled autograph his photo would become apparent then working to persuade other nationalists to join his movement over rival factions ho was able to pretend that he had american support out comes the photograph of claire chennault to my good friend ho chi minh and that picture apparently he took all over this area along the border to prove that he had the recognition of the united states which of course it was nothing of the kind it was simply a casual gesture by shadow although the americans who dealt with hoe during the war remembered him fondly from an official u.s perspective he was expendable [Music] the question of who would be in control of vietnam's future soon took a back seat to the realities of international politics in 1945 president roosevelt died leaving his successor harry truman to contend with rebuilding the economy of post-war europe and the containment of global communism [Music] i sent three cables to truman and secretary of state from whole pleading for assistance in dealing with the french there is no evidence that president truman ever read the cables sent on ho's behalf and while truman hoped that the french would liberalize their rule over vietnam he was not about to jeopardize u.s relations with an old ally [Music] however in vietnam the movement for self-determination had taken on the proportions of a groundswell on september 2nd 1945 hoe addressed a crowd of hundreds of thousands in hanoi's baadin square [Music] borrowing phrases from america's declaration of independence he asserted vietnam's independence from france [Music] after the admin launched a general strike later that month general charles de gaulle called for french troops to be immediately dispatched to vietnam it would not be long before the vietnamese would prove that a people schooled in the techniques of secrecy could accomplish the seemingly impossible secrets of war will continue in a moment here on the history channel continued the strife only seemed to intensify in vietnam in the late 1940s ho chi minh now found himself in violent conflict with rival political parties equally determined to win independence for vietnam in establishing the communist-led viet minh as the dominant political group hoh and his followers undertook a campaign of suppression and assassination the viet minh controlled a network of secret police that operated at a village level ferreting out the opposition and forcing many to lead shadow lives breezy m a nationalist who would later become south vietnam's ambassador to the united states remembers the period as a reign of terror [Music] it is a kind of high and sickening period and for all of us you see sleeping here that one night sleeping there another night so it was a very very difficult life tensions also continued to grow between the vietnamese and the french when fighting broke out in 1946 hope put his troops under the command of owen giap a former history professor fascinated by the study of the french revolution [Music] the conflict escalated in 1950 when communist china sent advisors and equipment to vietnam and the united states began to equate the defeat of ho chi minh with the containment of communism [Music] in spite of three billion dollars in usaid the french lost ground until general already nevar came up with a secret plan to regain the initiative navarre and his subordinates believed they needed a mooring point in the northwest corner of vietnam from which they could penetrate the viet minh's rear guard he choses his base an abandoned french command post called the en bin fu he sent paratroopers into denman foo and occupied it and more or less dared ho chi minh to to try to attack it and put it back in vietnam because navarre was convinced that it couldn't be taken at first giop utilized the human wave attacks that had worked well for the chinese during the korean war but the viet minh suffered enormous losses and were forced to retreat even as navarre poured more troops into diane bien fool jayop continued to believe that this was the battleground on which to make a stand giop decided to switch to a strategy designed to deceive the french they had what was called the long-haired army which was an army composed primarily of vietnamese women who would carry artillery pieces piece by piece over mountain trails up into the mountains right around the base at yanbi and foo with great stealth the long-haired army managed to infiltrate the area surrounding the andean fool now what they're going to do is dig and as one of the veterans of that operation told me he said the shovel became more important than the gun at that stage [Music] nevar's commander was the aristocratic colonel christian de castris a man so overconfident that he had named his three artillery bases after his current mistresses dicastrius anticipated a headlong vietmen charge and foolishly disregarded intelligence reports that indicated the viet minh had honeycombed the area around the nbn full with tunnels geops troops ringed the garrison with artillery pieces so effectively that soon the french were unable to drop in equipment or supplies on may 7th 1954 the vietnamese rose up and rushed the garrison on the eve of an international peace conference to resolve the issue general g ops troops raised the red vietnam flag over the command bunker at the indian fool but in spite of their victory on the battlefield hoe soon realized that the viet minh's bargaining position had been undercut his two allies russia and china were pushing hard for him to concede to french demands and end the war [Music] however ho's colleagues in the politburo were opposed to compromise lei yuan pham van dong and lei dok toe had all suffered for years in french prison cells and refused to budge [Music] china's representative choen lai flew back to china and held a secret meeting with ho chi minh and we don't know exactly went on in the in the conversation but certainly he said look if we don't have a peace agreement now the americans are going to come in you know it as well as i do hope finally accepted a compromise that cut vietnam into two zones pending nationwide elections scheduled to be held in two years the partition caused a mass exodus of refugees while many supporters of the viet minh fled north some like lei yuan one of whose closest associates joined the one million refugees moving south there he remained to covertly work for the revolution the politburo watched as the south was put into the hands of a fiercely ambitious u.s backed catholic politician named niwo dinzien [Music] it was not long before zm made it clear that he had no intention of allowing the residents of the south to go to the ballot box [Music] he was also quick to institute a massive program to root out and destroy former members of the viet minh and communist party members lei yuan sent secret reports back to ho now president of north vietnam informing him that viet min loyalists in the south would be completely wiped out unless they resorted to violence but whole did not believe the climate was right for insurrection and was only willing to authorize covert operations that would intensify the political struggle ho chi minh's hope was that the non-communist government in south vietnam could be destabilized and forced into disintegration before the united states could get mobilized to do anything about it in may of 1959 the communists created a secret military unit codenamed group 559 after the date on which it was established to begin cutting a secret supply line from northern vietnam along the borders of laos and cambodia down to the south in the years to come these primitive jungle outposts would become known the world over as the ho chi minh trail [Music] as the battle for the south continued both sides would discover that victory depended more on stealth than military might [Music] secrets of war will continue in a moment here on this prime minister niwor dinziem had antagonized many prominent residents of south vietnam equally offensive to this generation of vietnamese yearning to be free of foreign domination was the increased intervention of the united states in the affairs of their country among the first of the southerners to join the revolution was a young man who was a student in paris had been inspired by a chance meeting with ho chi minh his name was tourong newton there was no such thing as an opposition political party that you could join and express your feelings about the need for change if you were going to do that kind of thing it had to be underground and so he was forced into that kind of covert organization with other people who felt the same as he did and they began to organize a resistance tong became one of a handful of southerners to found a resistance group called the national liberation front or nlf while tong's motivation to start the front stemmed from a desire to overthrow zm other members of the organization had secret ties to the communist political party and were following a very different agenda [Applause] those who were in the leadership positions were carrying out communist policy and the communist policy was to develop a front and a front by its nature is inclusive so it does everything it can to attract people of various political philosophies and so in order to do that the communist element in it has to be hidden and so it was so even within this covert organization there was a secret group that was in fact controlling it involvement in the nlf which included a military arm called the vietcong was so dangerous that members hid their allegiance even from their own families when tong encountered his closest friend from childhood a wealthy catholic named famil tao or albert to his friends tong was careful not to reveal his true political leanings although albert had spent his youth serving as a vietman operative he returned to saigon like the prodigal son reformed and ready to conform to the values of the catholic community that flourished under the gm regime and so once back into the fold he was then in the good graces of the government and he managed really to insert himself into the new government at an increasingly uh more important level because albert had once been a guerrilla leader during the french phase of the war ziem soon viewed him as an expert on anti-gorilla warfare as tong's involvement with the nlf secretly grew he watched with alarm as his old friend albert was made the head of zm's brain the strategic hamlet program [Music] as the director of this program albert attempted to relocate south vietnamese peasants into protected villages free from communist interference elbe was so successful that it was not long before he was promoted to be the chief of military security for the repressive zm government in his position of power albert was perfectly placed to pass useful information along to american journalists stationed in vietnam he was someone with inside knowledge he was high up in the in the military and uh understood the political dimension he was a real player and he made himself available to american journalists so yes he was a source what neither tong nor the american journalists who relied on albert for their stories realized was that albert the chief of military security for the zm regime was really a secret communist agent for north vietnam journalist stanley carno working for time magazine was one of those who was fooled i didn't know at a time but i found out later he would sometimes yield up some people just to prove that he wasn't a communist he'd he'd have some people tortured and i saw him do it one time in 1960 in order to mask his real agenda albert actually helped suppress a coup to overthrow prime minister zm in recognition of el bear's loyalty zm drew him even closer into his inner circle so this is a communist agent who had penetrated the south vietnamese government at really the the highest levels and his main job was destabilization by 1963 the work of destabilization was nearly complete while ho chi minh and the leadership in hanoi were anxious to oust zian they also realized that ziam's unpopularity was driving many residents of the south to join the national liberation front ziam was inadvertently helping ho and the communist cause in the end however ziam's demise was brought on by his own intolerance in may of 1963 zm ordered his soldiers to fire on a group of buddhist activists and blame their deaths on the vietcong this action was answered by widespread protests and the shocking spectacle of the self-immolation of a buddhist monk gm's brutality finally eroded the american support he had relied on for so long within months u.s officials in the kennedy administration gave their tacit approval to another cool welbear's help insurgents swept into the presidential palace killing zm through one coup after another he was instrumental and he performed that job beautifully so he was perhaps the the the most successful intelligence agent of during the entire war on either side so successful was albert that there was no one working for the american or south vietnamese side who could be considered his counterpart virtually every agent sent north was either killed or compromised the murder of ziam was followed three weeks later by the assassination of u.s president john f kennedy events had created a power vacuum in saigon in the pollock politburo in hanoi was left wondering whether or not to escalate their military incursions into the south secrets of war in december of 1963 ho chi minh and the communist pollock bureau held a council of war unlike some of his more hardline colleagues ho weighed in on the side of caution he was extremely wary of provoking further u.s intervention the pollock bureau finally agreed to escalate the military effort in the south without directly involving north vietnamese troops this necessitated expanding their secret project which would soon become known as the ho chi minh trail renewed hostile actions by the time that u.s president lyndon johnson escalated the war by sending conventional forces to vietnam the north had created not just a network by which they could move troops and supplies to the south but also a rear guard complete with hospitals command headquarters and lines of communication [Music] ho chi minh loyalist bui tin was one of a dozen military specialists to make an early foray down the trail like his compatriots tin recognized that the north's success would depend largely on intelligence knowing about our enemy this was essential for us for the reason that we a small country with limited resources were fighting against a superpower with advanced weapons and numerous resources it was our firm belief that we had to know our enemy in order to defeat him but by the time that u.s marines splashed ashore at da nang in 1965 ho chi minh's insistence on pursuing a cautious policy toward the americans had taken its toll there was a growing consensus within the leadership of the communist party in north vietnam that ho chi minh was naive about the americans and that he was naive about what had to be done to win victory nevertheless ho's doctrine of deception remained the modus operandi of hanoi's leaders vietnam intelligence agents were successful at penetrating the ranks of the south vietnamese government and army this gave them a window into u.s military planning and operations and the ability to pick and choose the time and place to engage in battle the essence of guerrilla war is that the gorilla does not have to fight he fights when he wants to fight and therefore he can he the gorilla can regulate the casualties he's willing to suffer and fight primarily to inflict casualties on your side in the south a succession of violent coups brought instability to saigon then in 1965 under the leadership of general wien van tao government forces cracked down on the nlf and leader tourong nutang was imprisoned during his incarceration tong learned of albert's true political identity and discovered that the tau government had tortured and killed his old friend [Music] tong was still in prison in 1968 when the north called for a nationwide uprising known as the tet offensive in which the viet cong launched an all-out assault against cities throughout the south after a prison exchange program secured his release tong fled with other viet cong members to the iron triangle a jungle hideaway along the border of cambodia for the next four years he was constantly subjected to b-52 attacks [Music] however thanks to the use of sophisticated radar located on board soviet trawlers anchored off the coast of guam many of these strikes failed to have the desired effect the north vietnamese would seem to always know when the aircraft were inbound they seem to know the routes of ingress the entry penetration routes the altitudes and approximately the expected time of the attack the u.s suspected that radio operators on board the trawlers were sending encrypted signals via the russian embassy in hanoi to the north vietnamese but they did not want to fire in the soviets and risk direct involvement with the communist superpower by the late 1960s ho chi minh was ill and no longer making policy decisions he had ceded authority to lei yuan senior member of the politburo fan vandong who took over his prime minister of north vietnam and laid okto henry kissinger's formidable adversary at the bargaining table [Music] ho's death from heart failure in 1969 inspired his successors to redouble their efforts nothing could possibly diminish their determination to prevail by 1970 nearly every hamlet in south vietnam had been penetrated by one or two communist sympathizers as a newly arrived intelligence officer stuart harrington soon realized just how far ho's revolution had spread it really only takes a few people in a hamlet of 450 to control the hamlet the south vietnamese government may feel it controls the hamlet in the sense that it has an outpost at the gates to the hamlet with 30 soldiers in it but the reality is if those 450 people all know that there are three secret vietcong in the hamlet they don't know who they are but they know they're there then all of their behavior is conditioned by that knowledge as an illegal organization outlawed by the southern government the viet cong were forced to use a clandestine means to communicate the intelligence they were gathering often this involved writing extremely detailed reports which would be forwarded by couriers it was during a walk through a rice paddy that harrington learned how the mechanics of the ho chi minh revolution worked at grassroots level the vietnamese sergeant who was escorting harrington spotted a girl carrying a basket of fruit when the sergeant's initial search did not reveal any incriminating evidence he reacted in anger he took his m16 rifle and swatted her real hard across the butt and her wailing that she was innocent and she didn't do anything and finally in frustration he looked at her and he said let your hair down because her hair was pinned up and she let her hair down and when she did a thing the size of a cigarette fell out on the ground and it was a letter from the vietcong village chief of that village to his neighboring viet cong village chief started in 1968 the cia's phoenix program a four-year effort to root out viet cong from southern villages revealed that the entire south vietnamese countryside was permeated by the followers of ho chi minh i would say that the intelligence war for a significant part of the vietnam war the intelligence war in the countryside was won by the vietcong ho chi minh tapped into a collective yearning for liberation from foreign influence and was able to channel it into an effective fighting force he dedicated his life to the revolution as did untold numbers of other communist and non-communist vietnamese in 1973 members of the politburo signed a cease-fire agreement with the united states that led to the withdrawal of all foreign troops from vietnamese soil [Music] two and a half years later the north vietnamese marched into saigon as the last americans escaped by helicopter from the embassy rooftop [Music] ho chi minh did not live to see his dream realized but his followers did winning the revolution and creating the united and independent vietnam ho had envisioned more than 50 years earlier

Channel: Timeline - World History Documentaries

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Keywords: History, Full Documentary, Documentaries, Full length Documentaries, Documentary, TV Shows - Topic, Documentary Movies - Topic, 2017 documentary, BBC documentary, Channel 4 documentary, history documentary, documentary history, ho chi minh, vitenam war, north vietnam, communist vietnam, viet cong, ho chi minh city, war remnants museum, timeline, timeline world history, timeline channel, timeline world history documentaries

Id: iJ6x6_nFD4c

Length: 44min 36sec (2676 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 17 2021