Who was the communist leader of North Vietnam during the war?

The communist leader of North Vietnam during the war was Ho Chi Minh. He was the president of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and a central figure in the Vietnamese struggle first against French colonial rule and later against South Vietnam and its US allies.

Ho Chi Minh helped found and lead the Viet Minh independence movement. In 1945, after Japan's defeat in World War II, he proclaimed the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. France attempted to reassert control, leading to the First Indochina War and the Vietnamese victory at Dien Bien Phu in 1954.

The Geneva settlement that followed divided Vietnam into communist North Vietnam and anti-communist South Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh remained president and party leader in the North, supporting the Viet Cong insurgency in the South and the movement of troops and supplies along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. He died in 1969, before North Vietnam's victory and reunification in 1975–1976.

Ho Chi Minh was the country's best-known political symbol, but he was not its only important communist leader. Figures such as Le Duan, Pham Van Dong, and General Vo Nguyen Giap also held major political or military roles. Ho Chi Minh, however, is the standard answer to this broad question about North Vietnam's communist leader.