Trần Đăng Ninh

Trần Đăng Ninh (1910 – 6 October 1955) was a Vietnamese revolutionary and general in the North Vietnamese army. He was a former Secretary of the Northern Party Committee (Tonkin Party Committee, Xứ uỷ Bắc Kỳ). Trần Đăng Ninh was the first Chairman of the Central Inspection Commission of the Communist Party of Vietnam, and the first chairman of the General Department of Supply (now General Department of Logistics) of the People's Army of Vietnam from 1950 until his death in 1955. In 2003 he was awarded Vietnam's Gold Star Medal.

Trần Đăng Ninh suffered from malaria and intestinal problems brought on by his time in prison. In September 1953 he fell ill and was originally treated at the Trần Quốc Toản Clinic (now Military Hospital 354) in Mỹ Yên, Đại Từ District. By December he was unable to attend the Politburo Conference in Tỉn Keo. In September 1954 he was taken to China, and then on to the Soviet Union for medical treatment. In June 1955 he returned home and he died in Hanoi on 6 October 1955.

In 1950, he was appointed a member of the Party's Military Commission and specifically made head of the military's General Department of Supply (now General Department of Logistics, Cục Hậu cần). He was also charged with heading the Party's Campaign Supply Committee. During 1952–1953 he developed the supply policy of "mobilize logistics in place", in other words to develop local labor and food resources from areas near the front. This reduced both food consumption and transport labor.

In 1947 he was appointed as the Party's Chairman of the Central Inspection Commission, and served as a deputy inspector in the Government Inspectorate from December 1949 to February 1951.

In August 1945, Hồ Chí Minh sent Trần Đăng Ninh to the Việt Minh General Committee, to join National Uprising Committee, in which capacity he attended the National Assembly at Tân Trào, Sơn Dương. He was then assigned to General Giáp. Trần Đăng Ninh liberated the town of Thái Nguyên, and provided the protection detail that accompanied Hồ Chí Minh's triumphal entrance into Hanoi in September 1945.

Later in 1941, Trần Đăng Ninh was arrested by the Vichy French and sentenced to twenty years in prison. He was first sent to Hỏa Lò Prison in Hanoi, but as a problem prisoner he was transferred to Son La Prison at the end of 1942. There, he was active in the Party's secret organization in the prison, participating in political and military training for political prisoners. In March 1943, he escaped from Son La Prison along with Nguyễn Lương Bằng, Nguyễn Văn Trân and Lưu Đức Hiểu. He returned to work for the Standing Committee of the Northern Party Committee. But in September 1943, he was rearrested and again sent to Hỏa Lò Prison. In March 1945, he escaped a second time in a large prison-break of over a hundred political prisoners. After that, Trần Đăng Ninh was appointed as a member of the Tonkin Revolutionary Military Committee, and put in charge of the Hoàng Hoa Thám battlefield (i.e., Bắc Sơn – Võ Nhai base area).

Trần Đăng Ninh was attracted by the ideals of a Marxist revolution and joined the Indochinese Communist Party in 1936. In 1939 he became a member of the Party's Hanoi Committee, and in 1940 became a member of the Northern Party Committee (Tonkin Party Committee, Xứ uỷ Bắc Kỳ). In November 1940, he participated in the 7th Conference of the Central Committee of the Party. In May 1941, at the 8th Conference of the Central Committee held in the forest near Pác Bó, he was elected an alternate member of the Central Committee of the Party. In July 1941, he became Secretary of the Northern Party Committee.

Trần Đăng Ninh was born in 1910 as Nguyễn Tuấn Đáng in the hamlet of Quảng Nguyên, Quảng Phú Cầu commune, Ứng Hòa District of Hà Tây Province (now part of Hanoi), where he completed primary school. Rather than remaining a serf tied to the land, he moved to Hanoi where he worked in the Lê Văn Tân Printworks.