The exploitation visited on the Vietnamese by their French masters created fertile conditions for the resistance movements that sprang up over the years. Most of the resistance efforts were successfully put down, but in 1925 a new movement was established by a man calling himself Nguyen Ai Quoc, who in later years would take the name Ho Chi Minh the bringer of light. Ho's VietNam Revolutionary Youth League became the nucleus of the Vietnamese Communist Party. In World War II, Ho formed the League for the Independence of VietNam, or Viet Minh, which during its resistance to the Japanese occupation of VietNam, received money and arms from the United States through the O.S.S.
The American support of the Viet Minh led Ho to believe that the United States would back his bid for an independent VietNam. But after the war, the Allies allowed France to reoccupy Indochina, setting the stage for the protracted guerrilla campaign that resulted in France's ouster in 1954 and the subsequent partitioning of VietNam into North and South. The recognition and support of South VietNam by the United States would lead to the bloody conflict that ended in 1975 when the Communists overran Saigon, proclaiming an independent Socialist Republic of VietNam.