Description & Facts: My daily taxi ride to the office with millions of motorbikes in the streets of HCMC. Ho Chi Minh (May 19, 1890 September 2, 1969) was a Vietnamese Communist revolutionary and statesman who was Prime Minister (1946-1955) and President (1946-1969) of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam). Ho led the Viet Minh independence movement from 1941 onward, establishing the communist-governed Democratic Republic of Vietnam in 1945 and defeating the French Union in 1954 at Dien Bien Phu. He lost political power inside North Vietnam in the late 1950s, but remained as the highly visible figurehead president until his death. He was named by Time Magazine as one of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century, while the former capital of South Vietnam, Saigon, was renamed Ho Chi Minh City in his honor.