Status Updates From Ho Chi Minh: A Life

Mostly just skimming through bibliography and notes b/c am interested in how the book was put together — have been done w/ the actual book for about a week or so now.

nice

- Last then back to reading (late 1944-1945 in Vietnam near the Chinese border) — HCM wins American military support and uses it to procure equipment for the Viet Minh, takes advantage of the alliance between the US + USSR vs. Germany/Japan (who kicked out the French), consolidates the Viet Minh + army in the countryside, declare a national insurrection against the Japanese and seizes government power in the cities

- *another note: interesting that HCM isn't too active (at least relative for revolutionary standards of the time) in military affairs — that's left mostly to Giap, Pham Van Dong, etc. — he's more of a diplomatic emissary type
- Around 1944 at the border — he's basically lobbying for American military support for the Viet Minh, playing politics and brokering tactical alliances with US military intelligence...

- *additional note to his time in Guangzhou with the KMT and the Vietnam Nationalist Revolutionary League (Dong Minh Hui) — learns to sort of fight and do military stuff also a la the Hobbits being trained by Boromir in basic combat prior to the journey to Mt Doom...
- spent the latter half of 1943-44 on the Chinese-Vietnamese border, observing and preparing the VCP to seize power from the French as WW2 dragged on...

- gets himself in the good graces of high ranking KMT generals to get released, does and spends some time hanging around pro-nationalist but not Communist Chinese-KMT sponsored revolutionary groups
- makes himself useful, is given more free reign over org (and if not makes it pro-Communist, at least makes it not anti-Communist) to clean it up, then finally dips back into Vietnam as the war is about to end...