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General Vo Nguyen Giap (Vietnamese: Võ Nguyên Giáp) (born
1912) is a Vietnamese guerrilla, the military leader of the Viet Minh group of
Ho Chi Minh and the Peoples' Army of Vietnam (PAVN) in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.
A brilliant military tactician, Vo commanded the Viet Minh forces that liberated Vietnam from French colonial rule and as commander of the PAVN of North Vietnam fought the United States and the South Vietnamese, and reunified
Vietnam. After the reunification, Giap served as Vietnam's Minister of Defense and later as Deputy Prime Minister.
Four-star General Vo Nguyen Giap led Vietnam's armies from their inception, in the 1940s, up to the moment of their triumphant
entrance into Saigon in 1975.
Possessing one of the finest military minds of this century, his strategy for vanquishing superior opponents was not to simply
outmaneuver them in the field but to undermine their resolve by inflicting demoralizing political defeats with his bold tactics.
This was evidenced as early as 1944, when Giap sent his minuscule force against French outpost in Indochina. The moment he chose
to attack was Christmas Eve.
Nearly a quarter of a century later, in 1968 the General launched a major surprise offensive against American and South
Vietnamese forces on the eve of the lunar New Year celebrations. Province capitals throughout the country were seized, garrisons
simultaneously attacked and, perhaps most shockingly, in Saigon the U.S. Embassy was invaded.
Vo Nguyen Giap was born in the village of An Xa, Quang Binh province. His father worked the land, rented out land to neighbors, and was not
poor.At 14, Giap became a messenger for the Haiphong Power Company and shortly thereafter joined the Tan Viet Cach Mang Dang, a
romantically-styled revolutionary youth group. Two years later he entered Quoc Hoc, a French-run lycee in Hue, from which two
years later, according to his account, he was expelled for continued Tan Viet movement activities. In 1933, at the age of
twenty-one, Giap enrolled in Hanoi University. He studied for three years and was awarded a degree falling between a bachelor and
master of arts.Had he completed a fourth year he automatically would have been named a district governor upon graduation, but he
failed his fourth year entrance examination.
While in Hanoi University, Giap met one Dang Xuan Khu, later known as Trung Chinh,
destined to become Vietnamese communism's chief ideologue, who converted him to communism. During this same period Giap came to
know another young Vietnamese who would be touched by destiny, Ngo Dinh Diem.
While studying law at the University, Giap supported himself by teaching
history at the Thanh Long High School, operated by Huynh Thuc Khang, another major figure in Vietnamese affairs. Former students
say Giap loved to diagram on the blackboard the many military campaigns of Napoleon, and that he portrayed Napoleon in highly revolutionary terms.
In 1939, he published his first book, co-authored with Trung Chinh titled "The Peasant Question",
which argued not very originally that a communist revolution could be peasant-based as well as proletarian-based.
In September 1939, with the French crackdown on communist, Giap fled to China where he
met Ho Chi Minh for the first time; he was with Ho at the Chingsi (China)
Conference in May 1941, when the Viet Minh was formed. At the end of 1941 Giap found himself back in Vietnam, in the mountains,
with orders to begin organizational and intelligence work among the Montagnards. Working with a local bandit named Chu Van Tan,
Giap spent World War II running a network of agents throughout northern
Vietnam.
Between 1942 to 1945 Vo Nguyen Giap helped organize resistance to the occupying Japanese Army. When the Japanese surrendered
to the Allies after the dropping of atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August, 1945, the Vietminh was in a good position to take over the control of
the country and Vo Nguyen Giap served under Ho Chi Minh in the provisional
government.
In September, 1945, Ho Chi Minh announced the formation of the Democratic
Republic of Vietnam. France refused to recognise the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and fighting soon broke out between the
Vietminh and the French troops. At first, the Vietminh under General Vo Nguyen Giap, had great difficulty in coping with the
better trained and equipped French forces. The situation improved in 1949 after Mao
Zedong and his communist army defeated Chiang Kai-Shek in China.
The Vietminh now had a safe-base where they could take their wounded and train new soldiers.
General Navarre, the French commander in Vietnam, realised that time was running out
and that he needed to obtain a quick victory over the Vietminh. He was convinced that if he could manoeuvre Vo Nguyen Giap into
engaging in a large scale battle, France was bound to win. In December, 1953, General Navarre setup a defensive complex at
Dien Bien Phu, which would block the route of the Vietminh forces trying
to return to camps in neighbouring Laos. Navarre surmised that in an attempt to reestablish the route to Laos, General Giap would
be forced to organise a mass-attack on the French forces at Dien Bien
Phu.
Giap proved his brilliance as a logistician when he had his troops disassemble artillery pieces and antiair weapons, mostly
supplied by China and the Soviet Union, and packed them over the mountains onto the high ground overlooking the French garrison.
Thousands of men with no more than bicycles for transportation delivered the tons of supplies and munitions necessary for a long
siege.
Giap concentrated seventy thousand to eight thousand soldiers, along with two hundred heavy guns, against the French garrison,
which totaled fifteen thousand men. Since weather and Vietminh gunners prevented all but a few deliveries of resupplies, the
French retreated to the interior posts, while the Vietminh advanced through tunnels and trenches and under support of superior
artillery. On May 7, 1954, the French surrendered. Of the original force, five thousand were dead. Of the ten thousand who
surrendered, half were wounded. Estimates of Communist casualties exceeded twenty-five thousand, but Giap had won his Phase III
battle. In leaving Indochina, the French negotiated a partition that separated the Communist North from the American-dominated
South.
In 1959 Giap and the North Vietnamese began supporting Communist guerrillas in the south known as Vietcong. Giap continued his three phases of warfare, remaining reasonable successful with I and II in
fighting the superior arms and numbers of the South Vietnamese and their American allies. As long as he remained patient, Giap
fared well. In 1965, however, he challenged the first American combat divisions with North Vietnamese divisions across the border
into neighboring sanctuaries.
Giap attempted a repeat of what he had earlier did to the French in the Tet Offensive of 1968 and in the Dien Bien Phu-like
siege of Khe Sanh. But in less than six weeks the Americans and the South
Vietnamese virtually annihilated the Vietcong and seriously depleted the North Vietnamese. Then Giap and the North Vietnamese
eroded American support for involvement in the war until the United States withdrew most of its troops. In 1972 Giap stared
Eastertide Offensive. South Vietnamese troops, supported by
American air power, once again shredded the Communist offensive. The Losses were so great that the Communists removed Giap from
command and returned him to Hanoi as minister of defense. When the Communists finally defeated South Vietnam and reunited the
country into the Socialist Republic of Vietnam in 1975, the tactics were Giap's, but he was not in actual command.
Giap, who never trained as a military leader other than reading some articles in an old encyclopedia, nonetheless proved himself as a master at accomplishing victory against tremendous odds. His
tactics were simple, and he allowed his subordinate commanders much latitude. In the end, his willingness to fight as long as
necessary and sustain as many casualties as required gained him victory and unification of his country. Within Vietnam today he is a "national treasure," while around the world he is the master of
guerrilla warfare.
His metaphoric appellation is Nui Lua, roughly "volcano beneath the snow" meaning a cold exterior but boiling within, an apt
description of his personality according to those who know him. Associates also have described him as forceful, arrogant,
impatient and dogmatic.
General Giap has been a prolific writer and has authored among others, "Big Victory, Great Task", "Dien Bien Phu" and "Once
Again We Will Win."
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