REVIEWS

...It reads: "New Biography of Ho Chi Minh reveals for the first time the whole story of his involvement with U.S...

...Joseph Buttinger Ho & the Americans Ho CHI MINH: A BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUC TION, by Charles Fenn...

...Radio contact was established with Ching-hsi and with Fenn at Kunming...

...He was also, at the time, cut off from his group by a formidable 600 miles and no chance of flying any part of it...

...unrecognized by the Americans, opposed by the French, shunned by the Chinese...

...with no weapons and no equipment...

...It was an arrangement beneficial to both sides...

...We get from Fenn's book, in less than half the space of Lacouture's biography, what I wrote about the latter a few years ago: "a vivid picture of a man with many talents, above all the talent to lead people and to arbitrate their differences...

...Phelan also called Ho "an awfully sweet guy" whose main quality he described as "his gentleness" (Shaplen, The Lost Revolution, p. 31...

...At the beginning he had been a leader of a party that was but one amongst many...

...The story of how the meeting between Ho and Chennault was arranged by Fenn BOOKS 453 on March 29, 1945, and what resulted from the encounter is told in several lengthy extracts from the diary the author kept, quoted in pages 76-84, and also in letters Ho wrote to Fenn, one of which is reproduced in Ho's handwriting...

...These American pistols were handed over to six top leaders at a Vietminh-called conference of rival resistance groups, whose skepticism about Ho's claim of having obtained American support he furthermore overcame by producing Chennault's signed photograph...

...Fenn tells us not only who Ho's father was, that his mother died when he was ten, that he had an older brother and an older sister —but also everything of importance about his education and his moving from the place of his birth to Hue, Phan Thiet, and Saigon, prior to his leaving Vietnam on a French freighter...

...Before leaving Kunming, Ho had requested from Fenn six new Colt-45 automatic pistols in their original wrappings, which were supplied to Fenn by the OSS...

...Ho not only had a long and friendly talk with Chennault in the presence of Fenn and of one of Ho's companions residing in Kunming, but upon Ho's request the general even gave him his photograph, signed "Yours Sincerely, Clair L. Chennault...

...6, p. 78...

...intelligence during WWII...

...The fact that some judgments of Ho by involved Americans were politically naive does not diminish its character as a series of pragmatic political moves, which in no way threatened American interests...

...HOWEVER, FENN'S BOOK is of value beyond its final revelation of the true extent to which the Americans in Southern China cooperated with and strengthened the position of Ho Chi Minh...

...This is indeed what makes the book, apart from its several special virtues, essential reading for anyone interested in Vietnamese history and the role played in it by the 20th century's most prominent Vietnamese...

...Robert Shaplen reports having been told by Phelan that Ho "actually seemed to know more about it than I did...

...Making use of all available sources, Fenn succeeds in presenting, in the very brief space of BOOKS 144 pages, the story of Ho's life, from his childhood to his triumph as president...

...the unquestioned leader of an overwhelmingly strong revolutionary party...

...Concerning the story of Ho Chi Minh's life, the publishers of this new biography claim that "until now there has been very little biographical material available in this country...

...Two of these books—David Halberstam's Ho and Jean Sainteny's Ho Chi Minh and His Vietnam—were published as recently as 1971 and 1972, and Jean Lacouture's Ho Chi Minh, A Political Biography— regarded by some authorities as definitive— in 1968, a fact of which our author is well aware...

...agency, concerned with the rescue of pilots downed by the Japanese in Indochina and with liaison to prisoners of war and collection of intelligence—charged Fenn with establishing contacts with Vietnamese exiles in Kunming...

...There Ho founded, in 1925, the so-called Thanh Nien (League of Vietnamese Revolutionary Youth), generally described as the organizational and political predecessor of the BOOKS Vietnamese Communist party...

...I fully agree with the publishers who say in their press release about Fenn's book that as a world leader, Ho Chi Minh "ranked with çlhandi, Mao, and Tito," to which, however, want to add that in several respects he was the equal, and in some even the superior, of such world-famous leaders as Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin, and de Gaulle...

...However, the main beneficiary of this cooperation was the leader of the Vietminh...

...Thus began the years of travel that took Ho to Marseille, to America, to England, and, after a lengthy stay in Paris and his conversion to Communism, to Moscow where he soon became an agent of the Third International, and then as such worked in China, Thailand, and Hong Kong...

...The ten pages of chapter 8, entitled "Gambler," contain what is most original in the entire book, since they tell for the first time the true story of Ho's relations with the Americans in Southern China...

...Through this radio contact Fenn learned of Ho's safe arrival at his cave base, and of Ho's arrangements for the border crossing of the two OSS agents, in the company of 20 "gardes" Ho had sent along for their safety...

...Lacouture, for instance, is quoted by Fenn no less than 20 times, and there are 31 references to the collection of reminiscences by Ho's collaborators entitled Days with Ho Chi Minh (Hanoi, 1965), and Fenn mentions eight of its authors, among them Vo Nguyen Giap, by name...

...OSS supplied Fenn with most of these, since they, not AGAS, "had the bulk of supplies" (p...

...As a typical example of what Fenn means by a "garbled" account of these relations, he quotes Robert Shaplen, undoubtedly one of the most knowledgeable authors on contemporary Vietnamese history...

...Jean Lacouture, in his biography of Ho, complains about "the paucity of information concerning Ho Chi Minh's private life"—a paucity which his own book has considerably reduced...

...Nothing came of that.' As we shall see," Fenn continues, "something very definitely did" (fn...

...Fenn thinks that the three months after the Japanese coup in March 1945 were perhaps the most significant in Ho's career...

...According to Fenn's convincing description, this cooperation was, in spite of political reservations, infinitely broader and characterized by much closer personal relationships between Ho and his American supporters than all earlier descriptions of this crucial episode in Ho's life led one to believe...

...from there Ho went to his base at Bac Bo, inside Vietnam...

...It was arranged for Ho to fly, together with a Chinese radio operator and another OSS agent, over 300 miles of mountains and jungles to an airstrip at Ching-hsi...

...of a man with many attractive qualities that rarely fail to charm even those of his visitors who know him capable of great ruthlessness in the pursuit of his aims...

...He fills in many a gap in earlier accounts, and he carefully avoids taking a rigid position on episodes about which reliable sources are missing, or on matters over which serious authors disagree...

...New York: Charles Scribner's Sons...

...Fenn, who leans heavily on Lacouture, is equally cautious in regard to any episode in Ho's life for which convincing evidence is lacking, as for instance the question whether Ho was ever married, as some authors believe, or what the precise circumstances were under which he was able to end his term as a prisoner in Hong Kong...

...most of his more than 250 footnotes deal with quotations from 16 books on Ho Chi BOOKS Minh published prior to his own...

...General Headquarters was to continue the operation despite these warnings...

...Through this American cooperation with Ho Chi Minh a total of 17 downed airmen were eventually rescued, with some local help, by the Vietminh...

...Small wonder that the French, the Chinese and the OSS were now anxious to utilize this contact [p...

...Lacouture's statement that "everything known about Ho's life prior to 1941 is fragmentary, controversial and approximate," is no longer true...

...This is quite incorrect...

...q...

...As an agent of the OSS, for which he had been working in China since 1943, Fenn was charged in 1944 to work with a group operating inside Indochina with Free-French civilian intelligence agents whose work, however, came to an end after the Japanese coup against the French administration on March 9, 1945...

...From another book, only in part dealing with Ho Chi Minh, Marvin E. Gettleman's Vietnam: History, Documents and Opinions (New York, 1965), Fenn quotes 19 references to Ho's life and work...

...Fenn puts itthus: "Robert Shaplen writes (The Lost Revolution, p. 33) that when Ho had tried to contact Chennault, the general 'was warned by his KMT [Kuomintang) friends to steer clear of him.' On one occasion he `unwittingly had Ho introduced to him as an old Vietnamese guide...

...Phelan, incidentally, was the American whom Ho, according to an often told story, asked about the opening words of the American Declaration of Independence, which he wanted to use in his own Declaration...

...These letters to the author, written during a crucial phase of Ho's strategy to gain power after World War II and during the events with which they are dealing, justify a claim made by the publishers in their news release announcing the appearance of Fenn's book...

...In looking for contacts to rebuild a net of informants inside Indochina, not only the OSS but AGS (Air Ground Aid Service) as well— another U.S...

...As he says of his often quoted Days with Ho Chi Minh, on which he believes any biographer of Ho largely depends: "I have endeavored to restrict my quotations to useful and non-controversial material" (p...

...Ho himself, apart from several letters addressed to the author, is quoted only ninetimes...

...Of the several hundred books that have appeared in English on Vietnam during the last 20 years, I could list no less than two dozen dealing either exclusively or primarily with the personality, life, thoughts and writings, the role as political leader of this extraordinary man...

...Other authors on Ho Chi Minh, to list only a few quoted by Fenn, are Robert Shaplen, Bernard B. Fall, Wilfred Burchett, Hoang Van Chi, Truong Chin, P. J. Honey—a comprehensive list comprising friends and admirers as well as enemies and critics...

...Here we have a story, well-documented and convincing in every detail, which makes largely obsolete most of what has so far been written about Ho's relation to the Americans in Southern China during the months from February through August 1945, or, to use Fenn's own words: "Previous accounts of this particular period in Ho's life, largely coming from OSS sources, have been garbled" (p...

...Nevertheless, anyone who wants to know the essential facts of Ho's personal and political life—or, as the subtitle of the book too modestly puts it, read a biographical introduction to it— will find everything of significance about the personality of this man and the role he played on the Vietnamese national as well as on the international scene during the more than 50 years of his political activity, of which he spent 30 outside of Vietnam...

...Both the Chinese nationalists and the French kept warning the Americans, and especially Fenn, against working with Ho, pointing out that the Vietminh was Communist-dominated, but the reply to a report sent by Fenn to the U.S...

...Before leaving Kunming, it was arranged that Ho would sendsome of his men to be trained as radio operators, and only a few days after contact had been established between Ho's cave base and Kunming (via Ching-hsi), a plane load of supplies was dropped at Ho's headquarters, consisting of "radio sets, medicines, gadgets, weapons...

...By the end of June, he was...

...Fenn himself wanted to join Ho, whose position among the Vietnamese resistance groups had been enormously strengthened after receiving American supplies, but AGAS opposed this and sent, instead of Fenn, a young officer named Phelan, who in one of his reports called the Vietminh "merely patriots deserving full trust and support...

...What we aretold by Fenn about Ho is furthermore supported by a clear exposition of the international political scene, in as much as it affected the thinking and actions of this most enduring leader of international Communism...

...It matters little that in some instances the exact date of his movement from one place to another cannot be accurately determined...

...With few exceptions—one in German and three in French—all these books are available in English to any American truly concerned with the subject...