a model of good government. Ho received 169,222 votes in Hanoi, a city with a population of only 119,000. That amounted to 140 percent of the vote, if every person regardless of age cast a ballot.
Hoâs distaste for uncontrolled free elections had not abated by 1956. Pham Van Dong told a reporter how Ho expected the election to be run. There would have to be a multiparty contest in South Vietnam, but the ballot in North Vietnam, where the people had been âunited,â would have only the Communist party on it. This would have made the election a sure thing for Hanoi, because North Vietnam contained 55 percent of the total Vietnamese population. An election that guaranteed victory was the only kind Ho ever would have accepted.
Many in the American antiwar movement claimed that Ho would have defeated Diem in a fair contest. They argued that even President Eisenhower conceded this point in his memoirs. The passage they always cited reads: âI have never talked or corresponded with a person knowledgeable in Indochinese affairs who did not agree that had elections been held as of the time of the fighting, possibly 80 percent of the population would have voted for the Communist Ho Chi Minh as their leader rather than Bao Dai.â Those who conclude from this quotation that Ho would have won any elections overlook two facts. The Geneva-sponsored election was to be held not at the time of the fighting , by which Eisenhower meant 1954, but rather in 1956. And Hoâs opponent would have been not ahapless French puppet, Bao Dai, but a popular anti-French nationalist, President Diem.
Ho would not have fared well in a fair election. In 1954, one out of every thirteen North Vietnamese fled the country rather than live under his rule. His so-called land-reform program had convulsed the country, produced severe food shortages, and sparked major peasant revolts that began in Hoâs home province and spread into at least two others. General Giap later admitted that in putting down the unrest, his government killed 50,000 people. By 1956, Ho was hardly the man to head up a ticket. Diem, whose popularity was then peaking, would have won decisively. There was only one reason why North Vietnamâs leaders, like those of any other Communist country, never would have dared to hold genuinely free elections: They knew that they would lose.
For the United States to have forced South Vietnam to hold elections blatantly stacked to guarantee a Communist victory would have been legally absurd, strategically senseless, and morally ludicrous.
â¢Â â¢Â â¢
Ho never wavered in his determination to unite all of Vietnam under Communist rule. It was never a question of whether he would try to conquer South Vietnam, but only of when and by what means he would try to do it.
According to captured documents and the testimony of high-ranking Communist defectors, North Vietnamâs decision to conquer South Vietnam came shortly after the Geneva Conference. Ho waited several years before launching the assault. He needed to consolidate his power in North Vietnam, and he expected Diemâs government to succumb to the chaotic conditions immediately after the partition and fall of its own accord. His Communist network in southern Vietnam, though substantial, had never been as powerful as the one in the North, and Diemâs attacks on it had severely reduced its strength.
But his preparations for the offensive against the South began before the ink of his delegateâs signature dried on the cease-fire agreements in Geneva. He had pledged to freeze thesize of his army, but within four months North Vietnamâs forces expanded from seven divisions to twenty. Meanwhile, South Vietnam demobilized 20,000 troops. In May 1959, at its Fifteenth Plenum, the North Vietnamese Communist party gave the order to begin the offensive. It resolved that âthe basic path of development of the revolution in the South is to use
Hoâs distaste for uncontrolled free elections had not abated by 1956. Pham Van Dong told a reporter how Ho expected the election to be run. There would have to be a multiparty contest in South Vietnam, but the ballot in North Vietnam, where the people had been âunited,â would have only the Communist party on it. This would have made the election a sure thing for Hanoi, because North Vietnam contained 55 percent of the total Vietnamese population. An election that guaranteed victory was the only kind Ho ever would have accepted.
Many in the American antiwar movement claimed that Ho would have defeated Diem in a fair contest. They argued that even President Eisenhower conceded this point in his memoirs. The passage they always cited reads: âI have never talked or corresponded with a person knowledgeable in Indochinese affairs who did not agree that had elections been held as of the time of the fighting, possibly 80 percent of the population would have voted for the Communist Ho Chi Minh as their leader rather than Bao Dai.â Those who conclude from this quotation that Ho would have won any elections overlook two facts. The Geneva-sponsored election was to be held not at the time of the fighting , by which Eisenhower meant 1954, but rather in 1956. And Hoâs opponent would have been not ahapless French puppet, Bao Dai, but a popular anti-French nationalist, President Diem.
Ho would not have fared well in a fair election. In 1954, one out of every thirteen North Vietnamese fled the country rather than live under his rule. His so-called land-reform program had convulsed the country, produced severe food shortages, and sparked major peasant revolts that began in Hoâs home province and spread into at least two others. General Giap later admitted that in putting down the unrest, his government killed 50,000 people. By 1956, Ho was hardly the man to head up a ticket. Diem, whose popularity was then peaking, would have won decisively. There was only one reason why North Vietnamâs leaders, like those of any other Communist country, never would have dared to hold genuinely free elections: They knew that they would lose.
For the United States to have forced South Vietnam to hold elections blatantly stacked to guarantee a Communist victory would have been legally absurd, strategically senseless, and morally ludicrous.
â¢Â â¢Â â¢
Ho never wavered in his determination to unite all of Vietnam under Communist rule. It was never a question of whether he would try to conquer South Vietnam, but only of when and by what means he would try to do it.
According to captured documents and the testimony of high-ranking Communist defectors, North Vietnamâs decision to conquer South Vietnam came shortly after the Geneva Conference. Ho waited several years before launching the assault. He needed to consolidate his power in North Vietnam, and he expected Diemâs government to succumb to the chaotic conditions immediately after the partition and fall of its own accord. His Communist network in southern Vietnam, though substantial, had never been as powerful as the one in the North, and Diemâs attacks on it had severely reduced its strength.
But his preparations for the offensive against the South began before the ink of his delegateâs signature dried on the cease-fire agreements in Geneva. He had pledged to freeze thesize of his army, but within four months North Vietnamâs forces expanded from seven divisions to twenty. Meanwhile, South Vietnam demobilized 20,000 troops. In May 1959, at its Fifteenth Plenum, the North Vietnamese Communist party gave the order to begin the offensive. It resolved that âthe basic path of development of the revolution in the South is to use
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