Vo Nguyen Giap

General Vo Nguyen Giap (Vietnamese: Giáp Võ Nguyên) (born 1912) is a Vietnamese four-star general, who was the military leader of the Viet Minh guerrilla group under Ho Chi Minh's political leadership, and of the Peoples' Army of Vietnam (PAVN) in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.

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 at 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 communism, 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 Giap helped organize resistance to the occupying Japanese Army. When the Japanese surrendered to the Allies in August, 1945, the Vietminh was in a good position to take over the control of the country and 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 seven 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 to his successes against French with the Tet Offensive, on the eve of the lunar New Year celebrations in 1968 (temporarily captureing provincial capitals, and, yielding great attention in press accounts, putting the ground floor of the the U.S. Embassy in Saigon into contention), and 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.

Giap's and the North Vietnam's eventual success lay in erosion of American commitment to the war, until the United States withdrew most of its troops. In 1972 Giap started the 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. He is cited in Vietnam as a "national treasure," and regarded internationally as a unique expert on 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.

Giap has been a prolific writer whose titles include "Big Victory, Great Task", "Dien Bien Phu" and "Once Again We Will Win."

External links

• CNN Interview (http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cold.war/episodes/11/interviews/giap/)

bg:Во Нуен Зиап de:Vo Nguyen Giap es:Vo Nguyen Giap it:Vo Nguyen Giap ja:ボー・グエン・ザップ