Ho Chi Minh and the Office of Strategic Services

One of the least known operations in the Pacific Theatre in World War II was the United States Office of Strategic Services’ clandestine cooperation with Marxist Ho Chi Minh and his Communist Việt Minh in Vietnam. (The Office of Strategic Services, or OSS, was a precursor of the Central Intelligence Agency.) Ho was waging a losing guerilla war against the occupying Japanese army.

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Ho’s agent in Kunming, China, told the OSS’s senior operative that Ho need assistance and that his cadres would fight side by side with the Americans in their campaign against imperial Japan. Soon after, OSS technical advisors infiltrated into Vietnam, bringing all manner of military gear, communication equipment, and medical supplies. Now well armed with U.S. weapons, Ho’s Việt Minh cadres significantly increased their guerrilla operations: sabotage, ambush, and assassination.

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In July 1944, Ho became acutely ill and was near death. OSS medical personnel treated him for malaria, dysentery, and tuberculosis—they saved his life.

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Ho Chi Minh considered the United States to be his friend, and the Việt Minh cadres treated the American personnel as honored guests. The OSS was convinced that after the war, Ho Chi Minh would continue to be pro-American.

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President Roosevelt demanded that the French stay out of Indochina at the conclusion of the war. Unfortunately, he died shortly before war’s end. President Truman by indirection allowed the French to resume control. From the Vietnamese perspective, this fraud was just another example of the West’s imperious duplicity. Ho Chi Minh, his apparatchiks and cadres, were then convinced that the United States was perfidious and their enemy.

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Lamplight Press, 2015

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