What do you think?
Rate this book
Ho Chi Minh: A biographical Introduction
Book by Fenn, Charles
144 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1973
About the author
Charles Fenn
33 booksCharles Fenn was born in England and emigrated to the U.S.A. as a young man, eventually becoming a naturalized U.S. citizen at the time of his marriage. He began working as a freelance photographer, and in 1941 was assigned by a magazine called Friday to cover the long-running war in China, which had been invaded by Japan several years previously. Friday folded while Fenn was in China; he then began working for the Associated Press, filing photographs from China and subsequently also from Burma as the war widened in scope.
On his return to the US in 1943, Fenn became an officer in the U.S. Marine Corps, and was immediately assigned to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). Back in China, he was assigned to the Air Ground Aid Services (AGAS), where he engaged in the rescue of downed pilots and liaison with prisoners of war in Indo-China and adjacent areas of China. His primary task, however, was to gather intelligence regarding, among other things, the political orientation of the inhabitants of what was then French Indo-China.
Following the end of the war, his marriage had ended, so he went to Hong Kong where he engaged in several different business ventures. After two years he moved back to London, his childhood home, where he attempted to become a successful writer.
After marrying his second wife, Fenn left London once again during the mid-1970s, moving to Schull, West Cork in the Republic of Ireland where he spent the rest of his life.
On his return to the US in 1943, Fenn became an officer in the U.S. Marine Corps, and was immediately assigned to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). Back in China, he was assigned to the Air Ground Aid Services (AGAS), where he engaged in the rescue of downed pilots and liaison with prisoners of war in Indo-China and adjacent areas of China. His primary task, however, was to gather intelligence regarding, among other things, the political orientation of the inhabitants of what was then French Indo-China.
Following the end of the war, his marriage had ended, so he went to Hong Kong where he engaged in several different business ventures. After two years he moved back to London, his childhood home, where he attempted to become a successful writer.
After marrying his second wife, Fenn left London once again during the mid-1970s, moving to Schull, West Cork in the Republic of Ireland where he spent the rest of his life.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
March 21, 2023
Despite its brevity, this is in my view one of the best books ever written about Hồ Chí Minh (alias Lin, Vuong, Ly Thuy, Nguyễn Ái Quốc, Văn Ba, etc., a.k.a. Nguyễn Tất Thành, born Nguyễn Sinh Cung; 19 May 1890 – 2 September 1969). Most importantly, and unlike most of the others who have written about him, however competent they may have been as biographers and/or historians, Charles Fenn actually knew Hồ Chí Minh. For that reason alone this book would be indispensable, regardless of its length or quality. Happily, Mr. Fenn was an extremely talented writer- succinct yet erudite (though he was certainly no academic, he was exceptionally intelligent and well-read), scrupulous in his scholarship but still simple enough for nearly anyone to read and understand, and last but not least deploying his sly, witty sense of humour in more-or-less subtle fashion throughout the text.
One of the most fascinating, and indeed one of the very best aspects of this book was the way in which the author made use of selected quotes from the poetry of Hồ Chí Minh. "Uncle" Hồ was not in any way merely some sort of jailhouse dilettante, passing the time by scribbling bits of doggerel; he was actually a damned fine poet in the classical Chinese style, and a worthy successor to the likes of Yü Hsüan-chi (Yu Xuanji) and Li Po (Li Bai). Each chapter of this book begins with a quote from one of his poems, and there is a short appendix containing further examples of his poetry. Practically all of the extant poetry known to have come from the pen (or perhaps more aptly, the brush) of Hồ Chí Minh was first published in English by the Foreign Languages Publishing House in Hanoi in 1962 (translated from the French by Aileen Palmer), as Prison Diary. Although there have been other translations since that time (including at least one directly from Chinese and/or Vietnamese into English by the poet and translator Huỳnh Sanh Thông; see Reflections From Captivity: Phan Boi Chau's Prison Notes/Ho Chi Minh's Prison Diary), this one was still the primary English-language version when Mr. Fenn's book was published in 1973, and as far as I know it still is; it is certainly the most common and easy to get hold of.
Due to the pressure of outside events (described to some extent in another appendix to the present book), Charles Fenn was obliged to split his reminiscences of Hồ Chí Minh between this "biographical introduction" and his own memoir of his wartime service, At The Dragon's Gate: With The OSS In The Far East, which was published more than three decades after this book, and roughly sixty years after the events described. Because of this, it is really quite pointless to only read one of these books, and I highly recommend reading both of them. In addition, it is absolutely worthwhile to read the memoirs of both Archimedes L.A. Patti (Why Viet Nam? Prelude To America's Albatross) and René J. Défourneaux (The Winking Fox: Twenty-Two Years in Military Intelligence); both of these men also knew and worked with Hồ Chí Minh (as well as many of his close associates) during the last years of the Second World War and immediately afterwards.
For many years, both during and after U.S. military involvement in the nations of former French Indo-China (Viet Nam, Laos and Cambodia), quite a number of U.S. officials have cited ignorance as the primary reason (or, at least, one of them) for the various diplomatic and military reverses suffered by the United States Government in that region. These individuals have claimed, ad nauseum, that the U.S. Government had no access to anyone with first-hand knowledge or experience of Indo-China, and often would go so far as to claim there was not even any relevant scholarship available in the English language prior to the commitment of U.S. combat forces in 1965. This is, and always was, mendacious and self-serving nonsense. First of all, there were several serving or retired U.S. military personnel who, like the three mentioned above, had actually worked closely with the Viet Minh leadership during WWII (René Défourneaux, for example, did not retire from the U.S. Army until 1965!). There were many others with relevant experience as well- those who had been attached to the disastrous British military mission in Saigon, for instance. Any number of U.S. (or U.S. based) academics had relevant expertise on not only Indo-China, but the rest of South-East Asia as well. So did a roughly equal number of journalists who had covered the area before, during, and after WWII. Some of those journalists became respected academic scholars in later years, like Professor Harold R. Isaacs. Immediately after the war, while still a working journalist, he wrote an excellent overview (split into two books for publication) of the politico-military situation throughout Asia (No Peace For Asia & New Cycle In Asia: Selected Documents on Major International Developments in the Far East, 1943-47), published in 1947. I personally own well over 100 books on Indo-China alone which were published before 1960, and I damned sure don't have a copy of every single English-language book on the subject published during that time. There were excellent academic studies written by, among many others, Ellen J. Hammer and Bernard B. Fall during those years. Not only that, don't forget this was a time when many U.S. citizens were fluent in more than one language- there was a much greater body of relevant scholarship, journalism and official reports of various types in languages other than English; these were primarily, but by no means solely, in French. In 1955 or 1956, the U.S. Government was given a courtesy copy, by the government of France, of their army's final report on the Indo-China war. The U.S. Government did not even bother to have any part of it translated into English until 1967, when Colonel Victor J. Croizat, a U.S.M.C. officer who was a native French-speaker, translated the second volume (A Translation From The French: Lessons Of The War In Indochina, Volume 2) under the auspices of the RAND Corporation. If you are interested in reading it, you may still be able to download that report from the RAND website; I had placed a link in the description when I originally added it to Goodreads several years ago, but someone subsequently removed it.
There has been a long-standing debate both within the Indo-China Studies & South-East Asian Studies communities and beyond, since at least the 1950s, about whether Hồ Chí Minh was a communist or a nationalist or both, and if both, then to what degree was one or the other dominant (?). I am one of those who believe that, to a large extent, this is simply a pointless exercise. In the first place, it never really mattered all that much, and secondly, the interior thought processes of individuals are by definition not knowable with any degree of certainty. As far as I am concerned, if the many things he said and wrote during his long and active career (not to mention the first-hand testimony of many who knew him in various contexts) don't elucidate that question for you, you are either not paying attention or being willfully obtuse. If you would like to read some of what he wrote, the aforementioned Professor Fall edited an English-language collection of Hồ Chí Minh's writings, On Revolution: Selected Writings, 1920-66, which is quite good and makes interesting reading. If you are just starting to read about Hồ Chí Minh and his place in history, Charles Fenn's "biographical introduction" is an exceptionally good place to start. Even for those of us who are already fairly well-read on this history, it is still well worth reading for many reasons, not least of which is Mr. Fenn's explanation of the concept he calls "Hochiminity"...
One of the most fascinating, and indeed one of the very best aspects of this book was the way in which the author made use of selected quotes from the poetry of Hồ Chí Minh. "Uncle" Hồ was not in any way merely some sort of jailhouse dilettante, passing the time by scribbling bits of doggerel; he was actually a damned fine poet in the classical Chinese style, and a worthy successor to the likes of Yü Hsüan-chi (Yu Xuanji) and Li Po (Li Bai). Each chapter of this book begins with a quote from one of his poems, and there is a short appendix containing further examples of his poetry. Practically all of the extant poetry known to have come from the pen (or perhaps more aptly, the brush) of Hồ Chí Minh was first published in English by the Foreign Languages Publishing House in Hanoi in 1962 (translated from the French by Aileen Palmer), as Prison Diary. Although there have been other translations since that time (including at least one directly from Chinese and/or Vietnamese into English by the poet and translator Huỳnh Sanh Thông; see Reflections From Captivity: Phan Boi Chau's Prison Notes/Ho Chi Minh's Prison Diary), this one was still the primary English-language version when Mr. Fenn's book was published in 1973, and as far as I know it still is; it is certainly the most common and easy to get hold of.
Due to the pressure of outside events (described to some extent in another appendix to the present book), Charles Fenn was obliged to split his reminiscences of Hồ Chí Minh between this "biographical introduction" and his own memoir of his wartime service, At The Dragon's Gate: With The OSS In The Far East, which was published more than three decades after this book, and roughly sixty years after the events described. Because of this, it is really quite pointless to only read one of these books, and I highly recommend reading both of them. In addition, it is absolutely worthwhile to read the memoirs of both Archimedes L.A. Patti (Why Viet Nam? Prelude To America's Albatross) and René J. Défourneaux (The Winking Fox: Twenty-Two Years in Military Intelligence); both of these men also knew and worked with Hồ Chí Minh (as well as many of his close associates) during the last years of the Second World War and immediately afterwards.
For many years, both during and after U.S. military involvement in the nations of former French Indo-China (Viet Nam, Laos and Cambodia), quite a number of U.S. officials have cited ignorance as the primary reason (or, at least, one of them) for the various diplomatic and military reverses suffered by the United States Government in that region. These individuals have claimed, ad nauseum, that the U.S. Government had no access to anyone with first-hand knowledge or experience of Indo-China, and often would go so far as to claim there was not even any relevant scholarship available in the English language prior to the commitment of U.S. combat forces in 1965. This is, and always was, mendacious and self-serving nonsense. First of all, there were several serving or retired U.S. military personnel who, like the three mentioned above, had actually worked closely with the Viet Minh leadership during WWII (René Défourneaux, for example, did not retire from the U.S. Army until 1965!). There were many others with relevant experience as well- those who had been attached to the disastrous British military mission in Saigon, for instance. Any number of U.S. (or U.S. based) academics had relevant expertise on not only Indo-China, but the rest of South-East Asia as well. So did a roughly equal number of journalists who had covered the area before, during, and after WWII. Some of those journalists became respected academic scholars in later years, like Professor Harold R. Isaacs. Immediately after the war, while still a working journalist, he wrote an excellent overview (split into two books for publication) of the politico-military situation throughout Asia (No Peace For Asia & New Cycle In Asia: Selected Documents on Major International Developments in the Far East, 1943-47), published in 1947. I personally own well over 100 books on Indo-China alone which were published before 1960, and I damned sure don't have a copy of every single English-language book on the subject published during that time. There were excellent academic studies written by, among many others, Ellen J. Hammer and Bernard B. Fall during those years. Not only that, don't forget this was a time when many U.S. citizens were fluent in more than one language- there was a much greater body of relevant scholarship, journalism and official reports of various types in languages other than English; these were primarily, but by no means solely, in French. In 1955 or 1956, the U.S. Government was given a courtesy copy, by the government of France, of their army's final report on the Indo-China war. The U.S. Government did not even bother to have any part of it translated into English until 1967, when Colonel Victor J. Croizat, a U.S.M.C. officer who was a native French-speaker, translated the second volume (A Translation From The French: Lessons Of The War In Indochina, Volume 2) under the auspices of the RAND Corporation. If you are interested in reading it, you may still be able to download that report from the RAND website; I had placed a link in the description when I originally added it to Goodreads several years ago, but someone subsequently removed it.
There has been a long-standing debate both within the Indo-China Studies & South-East Asian Studies communities and beyond, since at least the 1950s, about whether Hồ Chí Minh was a communist or a nationalist or both, and if both, then to what degree was one or the other dominant (?). I am one of those who believe that, to a large extent, this is simply a pointless exercise. In the first place, it never really mattered all that much, and secondly, the interior thought processes of individuals are by definition not knowable with any degree of certainty. As far as I am concerned, if the many things he said and wrote during his long and active career (not to mention the first-hand testimony of many who knew him in various contexts) don't elucidate that question for you, you are either not paying attention or being willfully obtuse. If you would like to read some of what he wrote, the aforementioned Professor Fall edited an English-language collection of Hồ Chí Minh's writings, On Revolution: Selected Writings, 1920-66, which is quite good and makes interesting reading. If you are just starting to read about Hồ Chí Minh and his place in history, Charles Fenn's "biographical introduction" is an exceptionally good place to start. Even for those of us who are already fairly well-read on this history, it is still well worth reading for many reasons, not least of which is Mr. Fenn's explanation of the concept he calls "Hochiminity"...
Displaying 1 of 1 review