Lê Đức Thọ
Lê Đức Thọ (Vietnamese: [lē ɗɨ̌k tʰɔ̂ˀ] ; English: Lay-Duhk-Toh; 14 October 1911 – 13 October 1990), born Phan Đình Khải in Nam Dinh Province, was a Vietnamese revolutionary general, diplomat, and politician.[2] He was the first Asian to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, jointly with United States Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in 1973, but refused the award.[3]
In this Vietnamese name, the surname is Lê. In accordance with Vietnamese custom, this person should be referred to by the given name, Thọ.
Lê Đức Thọ
Lê Văn Lương
13 October 1990 (aged 78)
Hanoi, Vietnam
Communist Party of Vietnam (1945–1990)
Indochinese Communist Party (1930–1945)
Nobel Peace Prize (1973)[1]
Communist revolutionary[edit]
Lê Đức Thọ became active in Vietnamese nationalism as a teenager and spent much of his adolescence in French colonial prisons, an experience that hardened him. Thọ's nickname was "the Hammer" on account of his severity.[4] In 1930, Lê Đức Thọ helped found the Indochinese Communist Party. French colonial authorities imprisoned him from 1930 to 1936 and again from 1939 to 1944. The French imprisoned him in one of the "tiger cage" cells on the prison located on the island of Poulo Condore (modern Côn Sơn Island) in the South China Sea. Poulo Condore with its "tiger cage" cells was regarded as the harshest prison in all of French Indochina.[5] During his time in the "tiger cage", Thọ suffered from hunger, heat, and humiliation. Together with other Vietnamese Communist prisoners, Thọ studied literature, science, and foreign languages and acted in Molière plays.[6] Despite being imprisoned by the French, France was still regarded as the "land of culture", and the prisoners paid a "peculiar tribute" to French culture by putting on Molière plays.[7]
After his release in 1945, he helped lead the Viet Minh, the Vietnamese independence movement, against the French, until the Geneva Accords were signed in 1954. In 1948, he was in South Vietnam as Deputy Secretary, Head of the Organization Department of Cochinchina Committee Party. He then joined the Lao Dong Politburo of the Vietnam Workers' Party in 1955, now the Communist Party of Vietnam. Thọ oversaw the Communist insurgency that began in 1956 against the South Vietnamese government. In 1963 Thọ supported the purges of the Party surrounding Resolution 9.[8]
Winning the war[edit]
In January 1974, Thọ told General Hoàng Văn Thái he could not leave to take up a command in South Vietnam as he had expected, saying that the Politburo had assigned Thọ another, more important task. General Thai begged Thọ to let him go win glory on the battlefield, but he was unyielding, saying that turning the Ho Chi Minh Trail into a highway was more important. Using bulldozers from the Soviet Union and China, over the course of 1974, General Thai transformed the Ho Chi Minh Trail into a paved, four lane highway that ran 1,200 kilometres (750 mi) from North Vietnam through Laos and Cambodia into South Vietnam. He also laid down a 3,000-mile (4,800 km) pipeline to carry oil.[49] The paving of the Ho Chi Minh Trail allowed North Vietnam to not only send more troops to South Vietnam, but to keep them well supplied.
In December 1974, the North Vietnamese launched an offensive in the Central Highlands of South Vietnam that proved more successful than expected and on 6 January 1975 took the provincial capital of Phước Long. Le Duan, the secretary-general of the Vietnamese Workers' Party, decided to follow up this victory with an offensive to seize all of the Central Highlands and sent Thọ down to monitor operations.[50] Following the Communist victory at the Battle of Ban Me Thuot which ended on 11 March 1975, Thọ approved the plans of the North Vietnamese commander, General Van Tien Dung, to take Pleiku and push further south. Thọ also reported to Hanoi that the South Vietnamese Army were suffering from low morale and fighting poorly, which led him to suggest that all of South Vietnam might be taken that year, instead of 1976 as originally planned. The name of the campaign to take Saigon would be the Ho Chi Minh campaign.[51] The principal problem for the North Vietnamese was that operations had to be completed before the monsoons arrived in June, giving them a very short period of two months to win the war in 1975.[52] Thọ sent Le Duan a poem that began "You warned: Go out and come back in victory...The time of opportunity has arrived". By April 1975, the North Vietnamese had advanced within striking distance of Saigon with what would prove to be the last major battle of the Vietnam war taking place at Phan Rang between 13 and 16 April 1975.[53]
On 22 April 1975, General Dung showed Thọ his plan to take Saigon, which he approved, saying as he signed off on Dung's plan that this was the death sentence for the regime of "reactionary traitors" in Saigon.[54] On 30 April 1975, the North Vietnamese took Saigon and Thọ entered the city in triumph. He immediately set about giving orders to ensure that the water works and electricity grid of Saigon was still functioning; that food would continue to arrive from the countryside; to make arrangements to deal with the one million soldiers of the South Vietnamese Army that he ordered dissolved; and appointing administrators to replace the South Vietnamese officials. On behalf of the Politburo he gave General Dung a telegram from Hanoi that simply read: "Political Bureau is most happy". On 1 May 1975, a parade was held in Saigon to celebrate both May Day and the victory with Thọ watching the victorious soldiers march down the streets of Saigon, which was soon renamed Ho Chi Minh City.[55]
Later life[edit]
From 1978 to 1982 Lê Đức Thọ was named by Hanoi to act as chief advisor to the Kampuchean United Front for National Salvation (FUNSK) and later to the nascent People's Republic of Kampuchea. Lê Đức Thọ's mission was to ensure that Khmer nationalism would not override Vietnam's interests in Cambodia after the Khmer Rouge was overthrown.[56]
Lê Đức Thọ served as Permanent Member of the Party Central Committee's Secretariat from 1982 to 1986 and later as an Advisor to the Party's Central Committee from 1986 until he died in 1990.