V o L u m e I : a d

their hold on Vietnam, led to fighting and the beginning of the Indochina

War in December 1946.

During the eight-year conflict against the French, Ho played an active

part in policy formulation, while Viet Minh General Vo Nguyen Giap was

chief military strategist. Following the defeat of the French at the Battle of

Dien Bien Phu in 1954, Vietnam was divided along the 17th Parallel, with

elections in North Vietnam and the Republic of Vietnam (RVN, South Viet-

nam) scheduled for 1956. When South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh

Diem refused to accede to the elections, with the blessing of U.S. President

Dwight D. Eisenhower’s administration, fighting resumed in the south and

in 1960 Ho and the North Vietnamese leadership decided to support it.

Although Ho was certainly a staunch communist, he was first and foremost

a Vietnamese nationalist, determined to see his nation unified no matter

the cost.

During the subsequent long war with the United States, Ho remained an

important symbol of nationalist resistance and played an active part in for-

mulating North Vietnamese policy. He was primarily responsible for North

Vietnamese dealings with both the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic

of China (PRC). Ho did not live to see his dream of a united Vietnam real-

ized. He died in Hanoi on 3 September 1969. In 1975, when North Viet-

namese troops were victorious, the South Vietnamese capital of Saigon was

renamed Ho Chi Minh City in his honor. Today, Ho’s body is on public dis-

play in a mausoleum in Hanoi.

James H. Willbanks

See also

Anticolonialism; Dien Bien Phu, Battle of; France; Geneva Conference (1954);

Indochina War; Ngo Dinh Diem; Southeast Asia; United States; Vietnam; Viet-

nam War; Vo Nguyen Giap

References

Duiker, William J. Ho Chi Minh: A Life. New York: Hyperion, 2000.

———. The Rise of Nationalism in Vietnam, 1900–1941. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University

Press, 1976.

Herring, George C. America’s Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950–1975.

4th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2001.

Ho Chi Minh. Ho Chi Minh on Revolution: Selected Writings, 1920–1966. New York:

Signet, 1967.

Tucker, Spencer C. Vietnam. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1999.

Head of the Economic Cooperation Administration (ECA) during 1948–1950

and first president of the Ford Foundation during 1950–1953. Born on 26 April

1891 in Chicago, Illinois, Paul Hoffman studied one year at the University of

914

Hoffman, Paul Gray

Hoffman, Paul Gray

(1891–1974)

By the early 1940s

Nguyen had taken

the name Ho Chi

Minh (Bearer of

Light).

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Chicago but left to work in a car dealership, where he prospered. After eight-

een months in the U.S. Army during World War I, he bought a Studebaker

dealership in southern California, eventually serving as president of that

company from 1935 until 1948. A socially conscious businessman, he worked

well with labor representatives and instituted social welfare and consumer

safety policies.

During World War II, as the first chairman of the Committee for Eco-

nomic Development (CED), a progressive business organization founded in

1942, Hoffman came to believe that continued postwar economic prosperity

depended on the expansion of international trade. Although a Republican,

he supported President Harry S. Truman’s policies of foreign aid to war-

devastated countries. With the passage of the Marshall Plan in 1948, Hoffman

somewhat reluctantly agreed to become the first head of its administering

body, the ECA. As administrator, Hoffman ran an honest and efficient organ-

ization, proved highly effective in providing public justifications of the pro-

gram, and persuaded European aid recipients to coordinate their recovery

efforts.

After leaving the ECA in 1950, Hoffman became the first president of

the Ford Foundation, the wealthiest philanthropic organization in America.

By now a strong internationalist, he was among those instrumental in per-

suading General Dwight D. Eisenhower to seek the Republican presidential

nomination in 1952. Attacked by political conservatives as unduly liberal, in

1953 Hoffman resigned his Ford position and returned to Studebaker.

Over conservative opposition, in 1956 Eisenhower appointed Hoffman

a delegate to the United Nations (UN) General Assembly, and from then on

Hoffman focused on facilitating economic progress in developing nations.

In December 1958 UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld appointed

Hoffman to head a new UN Special Fund for this purpose, later renamed the

UN Development Program, which he led until 1971. The program eventu-

ally raised and distributed about $3.4 billion in seed money. Hoffman died

in New York City on 8 October 1974, leaving an outstanding humanitarian

record.

Priscilla Roberts

See also

Eisenhower, Dwight David; Hammarskjöld, Dag; Marshall Plan; Organization for

European Economic Cooperation; United Nations

References

Berman, H. The Ideology of Philanthropy: The Influence of the Carnegie, Ford, and Rocke-

feller Foundations on American Foreign Policy. Albany: State University of New

York Press, 1983.

Hogan, Michael J. The Marshall Plan: America, Britain, and the Reconstruction of Western

Europe, 1948–1952. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987.

Neal, Alfred C. Business Power and Public Policy. New York: Praeger, 1981.

Raucher, Alan R. Paul G. Hoffman: Architect of Foreign Aid. Lexington: University Press

of Kentucky, 1985.

Hoffman, Paul Gray

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