From Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam, by Fredrik Logevall (Random House, 2012), Kindle pp. 135-137:
When Ho entered the city on August 26, it was for the first time. He had risen from his provincial Nghe An upbringing to travel to the far reaches of the globe—to Paris, to London, to New York City—and to become a nationalist leader, yet only now, at age fifty-five, did he set foot in his country’s cultural and political center. Almost four decades the journey had taken. In the immediate sense, the trip had started four days earlier, when Ho left Tan Trao by foot and by boat, bound for the capital. Still weak from his illness, he had to be carried part of the way on a stretcher, and after crossing the Red River on the twenty-fifth, the entourage halted in the northern suburbs of Hanoi. The next day, accompanied by Party Secretary Truong Chinh in a commandeered car, Ho crossed the Doumer Bridge and made for a three-story row house on Hang Nhang Street, in the Chinese section of town.
It was a heady time for Ho Chi Minh and his comrades, the critical stage of what would become known as the August Revolution. Things had moved rapidly since news reached Tonkin of the atomic bombings and Japan’s collapse. Already on August 11, as rumors circulated that Tokyo was about to surrender, members of the Indochinese Communist Party regional committee began to prepare for an insurrection to seize Hanoi from the Japanese. Two days later Viet Minh leaders from many parts of the country met in Tan Trao to the north for a previously scheduled party conference (to be known in history as the Ninth Plenum) and reached a resolution that a nationwide insurrection should occur immediately to bring about an independent republic under the leadership of the Viet Minh. Using the name Nguyen Ai Quoc for the last time, Ho issued an “appeal to the people.” “Dear fellow countrymen!” he declared. “The decisive hour has struck for the destiny of our people. Let all of us stand up and rely on our own strength to free ourselves. Many oppressed peoples the world over are vying with each other in wresting back independence. We should not lag behind. Forward! Forward! Under the banner of the Viet Minh, let us valiantly march forward!”
Much more than they would later acknowledge, Viet Minh leaders rode to power on the wave of suffering in the north, caused by the famine that had hit earlier in the year and further strengthened by the overthrow of the French and the defeat of the Japanese. In official Vietnamese historiography, this dimension is largely absent; Ho and his colleagues are depicted as the masters of events, directing developments from the top. Their decisions and actions were important, but there is no question that they were beneficiaries of an upswell of protest from below.
Throughout the third week of August, Viet Minh forces took control in towns and villages in various parts of Annam and Tonkin. Resistance was usually minimal, as local authorities simply handed over power to the insurgents and as Japanese forces, now part of a defeated empire, stayed neutral. In Hanoi on August 19, Viet Minh forces seized control of all important public buildings except the Japanese-guarded Bank of Indochina, and announced their seizure of power from a balcony of what was then and remains today the Hanoi Opera House. For the first time since Francis Garnier seized it for France in 1873, the city was in Vietnamese hands. In Hue, Emperor Bao Dai announced he would support a government led by Ho Chi Minh, but a mass rally in Hanoi demanded that he abdicate his throne. He did so on August 25, declaring his support for the Viet Minh regime and handing over the imperial sword to the new national government, with all the legitimacy that that symbolic act conferred.