Vo Nguyen Giap

Vo Nguyen Giap (1911-2013) was a Vietnamese General who commanded the Viet Minh forces during the French Indochina War (1946 – 1954) and the Vietnam War (1960 – 1975). He was born in the village of An Xa, Quang Bình province, in 1911. His parents were farmers. Giap was educated at the University of Hanoi where he obtained a bachelor’s degree in political economy and a law degree. After graduation, he taught history for one year at the Thang Long School in Hanoi.

During most of 1930s, Nguyen Giap remained a schoolteacher and journalist and wrote articles for the Tien Dang while actively participating in various revolutionary movements. In 1939, he was arrested but escaped and went to China where he met Ho Chi Minh, the leader of the Vietnam Revolutionary League (Vietminh). While in exile his sister was captured and executed. His wife was also sent to prison where she died.

When Nguyen Giap returned to Vietnam in 1944, he helped organize resistance to the Japanese occupation forces. After the Japanese finally surrendered to the Allies in August 1945, the Japanese decided to allow nationalist groups to take over public buildings while keeping the French in prison as a way of causing additional trouble to the Allies in the postwar period. The Viet Minh and other groups took over various towns and formed a provisional government in which Giap was named Minister of the Interior. After World War II, France attempted to reestablish control over Vietnam, but Ho Chi Minh had already announced the formation of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, which was a clandestine communist republic not recognized by other nations except China. Thus, the Viet Minh guerrilla movement began carrying out raids and ambushes against the French troops, initiating the French Indochina War.

From 1946 to 1954, Vo Nguyen Giap commanded the Viet Minh forces during this war against the French. From 1949, he had an advantage over the French commanders, for neighboring China had become its major allied and armed supplier. He and his troops received both military training and weapons from China and the Soviet Union. When the French commanders began offensives against the Viet Minh forces, the Vietnamese troops and Giap could always run into their sanctuaries in China. On the other hand, the French were 14,000 miles away from France, making the war against the forces of the Viet Minh costly, and they had no sanctuaries into which they could escape when they were attacked. They had to hang on and fight with the available means they had in Vietnam.

Vo Nguyen Giap took part in the following historically significant battles: Lang Son (1950); Hoa Binh (1951–1952); Dien Bien Phu (1954); the Tet Offensive (1968); the Nguyen Hue Offensive (known in the West as the Easter Offensive) (1972); and the final Ho Chi Minh Campaign (1975). When the war against the American and South Vietnamese forces ended in 1975, Giap became interior minister as well as defense minister in Ho Chi Minh’s government. He also served as Politburo member of the Lao Dong Party.