On the eve of the war against the South Vietnamese regime in 1964, the communist party strove to carve out a new productivist and political elite from the towns and villages of the country. According to a categorisation of patriotic exemplarity devised by Ho Chi Minh, 'avant-garde workers', 'exemplary soldiers' and 'new heroes' would fill the ranks of a 'new model society', one in which political virtue would serve as the principle to mobilized the masses. This study presents and analyses the process by which 'new heroes' were invented.