Ho Chi Minh

Born Nguyễn Sinh Cung in 1890 in French Indochina, he left Vietnam in 1911 and spent years working abroad - in France he helped found the French Communist Party in 1920, then studied in the Soviet Union before moving to China to organize Vietnamese revolutionaries. He founded the Vietnamese Revolutionary Youth League in 1925, which became the Indochinese Communist Party in 1930. Returning to Vietnam in 1941, he founded the Việt Minh and led guerrilla resistance against Japanese occupation, then in 1945 launched the August Revolution that toppled the monarchy and declared the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. When the French returned, his government waged an eight-year guerrilla war that culminated in the 1954 victory at Điện Biên Phủ. The Geneva Conference split the country in two; he remained president of North Vietnam and party chairman through the next war against South Vietnam and the United States, overseeing the trail that bore his name until his death from heart failure in 1969. Six years later, Saigon fell and was renamed in his honor.