Verified answer

1) Ho Chi Minh NEVER took over "North Vietnam". Technically and legally under both international law and the "1954 Geneva Agreements on Indochina", Vietnam was one country after the defeat of the French. It was TEMPORALLY divided into two separate DEMILITARIZED zones with the Viet Minh (nationalist political movement) and the "Peoples Army of Vietnam" (PAVN) to move north and the French to move to the south and nationwide elections to take place in June 1956 for the reunification of the country.

The US violated those agreements and illegally created the "Republic of South Vietnam" from the southern zone and installed the right-wing Roman Catholic anti-communist military dictator, Ngo Dihn Diem, as President.

Most Southeast Asian historians use May 1954 as the start date for the Second Indochina (Vietnam) War while the US military uses November 1955 as the start date when the first US military advisers were sent to Vietnam by President Eisenhower and Secretary of State, John Foster Dallas.