Who was Ho Chi Minh and the Vietcong and why were they important?

Answer 1

Ho Chi Minh was prime minister of North Vietnam. He was important because he was the leader of the primary country we were fighting.

Understanding the VC is going to take some explaining. In Vietnam there were four main armies. First were the Army of the Republic of Vietnam and the People's Army of Vietnam. The US referred to the PAVN as the NVA - North Vietnamese Army. Next were the various foreign armies in the conflict on both sides. And finally was the National Liberation Front - which were South Vietnamese citizens attempting to overthrow the South Vietnamese government. "Cong" is Vietnamese for communist, so the US called the NLF the Viet Cong. The Hanoi government controlled the NLF through an agency the US called the Central Office for South Vietnam, or COSVN. (The official Vietnamese name is long and grandiose.) Now here's where it gets fun: COSVN, although it ran the war in South Vietnam, was not in Vietnam - it was in Mimot Province, Cambodia.

The importance of the VC was that it was providing the lion's share of Communist combat troops in South Vietnam.