Vo Nguyen Giap dies

[Captain Seafort]

Beeb

His surname Vo translates as "force" and his first name Giap means "strong armour", fitting perhaps for a man who helped bring about the defeat of major military powers.

A dedicated communist, Vo Nguyen Giap never received formal military training but made his reputation as a talented strategist who engineered victories against forces which were, technically, far better equipped.

Born in 1911 in Quang Binh Province in central Vietnam, then part of French Indochina, he was the son of a rice grower and attended local schools before, at the age of 14, joining a clandestine nationalist movement.

While studying at Hanoi University, from where he graduated with a doctorate, he taught history at a private school in the city.

He had a special interest in the military tactics of Napoleon, with one student recalling that he could draw the French Emperor's various battle plans from memory.

By 1938 he was a member of Ho Chi Minh's Indochinese Communist party, eventually helping him found a new coalition, the Vietnam Doc Lap Dong Minh Hoa, commonly known as Viet Minh, dedicated to ending French colonial rule.

Giap organised armed groups and in 1944, returned to Indochina to wage guerrilla war against the occupying Japanese.

Defeating France

Hanoi fell to Viet Minh forces on August 19th 1945 and Ho proclaimed the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, appointing Giap as his new interior minister.

The French recognised the new republic but, were reluctant to give up a rich source of rice and rubber in the south of the country, imposing tariffs to control international trade.

Giap assembled tens of thousands of guerrillas in the Tonkinese Mountains and began a hit-and-run campaign against French military and commercial interests.

Giap emphasised the need to attack in several locations at once, forcing the French to disperse their numerically superior forces.

His tactics, subsequently published in his 1962 book, People's War, People's Army, would be used to devastating effect against the Americans 20 years later.

The climax came in the valley of Dien Bien Phu in 1954 after the French parachuted in 12,000 troops, planning to take on Giap's forces in a pitched battle.

Unknown to the French, Giap had acquired US-made heavy guns which he had set up in the hills surrounding the drop zone.

The French forces, trapped in the valley, suffered a bombardment that lasted more than two months and lost 4,000 men before they surrendered in May, a victory which signalled the end of French colonial rule in the region.

Tet Offensive

A cease fire was signed in 1954 which divided Vietnam into two with promises of a referendum among all Vietnamese to determine the country's future.

After the regime in the south reneged on the promise of a vote, a group of nationalists formed the National Liberation Front - or the Viet Cong as they were termed by American soldiers.

Fearful of the growth of communist influence in Vietnam the US committed aid and advisers to the south.

In 1965 the US landed troops in Vietnam and Giap committed divisions of North Vietnamese soldiers to back up the Viet Cong forces in the South.

He believed that the Americans had no stomach for a prolonged conflict in Vietnam. "To fight a protracted war is a big defeat for them,” he argued. "Their morale is lower than the grass."

Giap has long been credited with launching the hugely significant Tet offensive across the rest of the country but recent research suggests that he may indeed have been against this push.

Coinciding with Tet, or the Lunar New Year in 1968, Viet Cong and North Vietnamese forces attacked more than 40 provincial capitals and went into Saigon itself even entering the US embassy.

They were eventually thrown back having lost more than 15,000 men but it was a massive psychological blow for the US, hardening opposition to the war back in America and contributing to the decision to withdraw.

Military legacy

In 1975, two years after the final American combat troops had left Vietnam, communist forces took Saigon and proclaimed the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.

Giap retained his position as Minister of Defence and was appointed Deputy Prime Minister in 1976, retiring from government 6 years later.
General Giap at 25th anniversary ceremony for end of the Vietnam War He published several works of military strategy

He published a number of works on military strategy with at least one historian comparing him with leaders such as Wellington, Rommel and MacArthur.

The man known by his troops as "The Volcano" because of his ability to explode with rage did not receive universal approval.

The US commander in Vietnam, General Westmoreland deplored Giap's seeming cavalier attitude to large numbers of casualties among his own troops.

"Such a disregard for human life," said Westmoreland, "may make a formidable adversary but it does not make a military genius."

But well into his 90s he remained alert and engaged in Vietnam's current affairs and politics, meeting world leaders and speaking out about issues close to his heart.

[TimothyC]

A good general who fought to free his nation from what he saw as foreign influences (Japanese, French, & America), who was by all accounts magnanimous in victory. May he rest in peace.

[K. A. Pital]

A good general who fought to free his nation from what he saw as foreign influences (Japanese, French, & America), who was by all accounts magnanimous in victory. May he rest in peace.

I can only concur (even though this attitude from TimothyC surprises me).

[cosmicalstorm]

An impressive resume. These people often seem to age very well, I wonder if that kind of life makes you old unless you die of lead poisoning.

[energiewende]

So the victors really do write history.

[madd0ct0r]

he was a history teacher before a general, or do you mean something else?

[madd0ct0r]

There's been genuinely spontaneous displays of mourning across Vietnam. Giap was thrown out of power very quickly after the war, and has spent much of the last decades as a political outsider, and one of the few who could criticise the goverment.

He's remembered as the last of the old communists. Competent, dignified and honourable.

[K. A. Pital]

I heard Giap was against boxite mining in Vietnam, responsible position and often all too hard to find among a communist elite which pushes for industrialization at all costs.

[Thanas]

He presided over a very dirty war in which the rules of war were regularly broken by both sides. Historically ver important nonetheless.

[K. A. Pital]

He presided over a very dirty war in which the rules of war were regularly broken by both sides.

Vietnam, however, did not spill chemical weapons in a biocide campaign all over American heartland leading to literally hundreds of thousands or millions of injured and deformed people long after the war was over.

[Thanas]

Sure, but urban guerilla operations were not exactly clean either. There were no white knights in that war.