1912- , Vietnamese Military Leader
Vo Nguyen Giap was born in Quangbinh Province, in Central Vietnam, of an impoverished Mandarin family. Educated in a French lycée in Hue and at Hanoi University, he joined the Indochina Communist Party in the 1930s. On the outbreak of
World War II, he fled to China to join Vietnamese Communist leader Ho Chi Minh at Chingsi, where, in May 1941, the Vietnamese Independence League, abbreviated to the name Viet Minh, was formed. In autumn 1944, Ho gave his blessing to the formation of armed propaganda teams under Giap's command, which, in April 1945, became the People's Liberation Army.
Giap served as interior minister in the revolutionary government that Ho Chi Minh created on the surrender of the Japanese in 1945; he is alleged to have directed brutal purges against non-Communist elements. In 1946, as tension mounted between the Viet Minh and the French (see
Indochina War), Giap became defense minister. An avid student of military history, he emerged as a major Communist strategist and military organizer of the
Vietnam wars. He was influenced by
Mao Tse-tung's theories of a three-stage escalation of revolutionary war from guerrilla warfare, to parity with the incumbent forces, and finally to the third phase, in which the insurgents would overwhelm the occupiers. Giap's strengths as a military commander lay in his meticulous attention to organization, particularly logistics. His weakness was his impatience to reach the Maoist "third phase," which caused him to undertake campaigns, or persist in costly actions, beyond the capabilities of his forces.
The Communist victory in China (see
Chinese Civil War) and Mao's decision to aid the Viet Minh caused Giap to conclude in February 1950 that the time had come to move to the third phase of revolution. The spectacular collapse under Viet Minh pressure of a series of French posts along the Chinese frontier in October 1950 appeared to give credibility to Giap's analysis. However, when Viet Minh forces assaulted the Tonkin Delta in 1951, they were driven back with significant losses. Although the French defeat at
Dien Bien Phu in 1954 enhanced Giap's military reputation, it appears that most of the major strategic decisions of the Indochina War were taken by the Chinese, often over the objections of Giap.
Following the Geneva Conference, which partitioned Vietnam at the seventeenth parallel, Giap remained a voice for reunification by military means, even in the face of escalating U.S. involvement in South Vietnam in the early 1960s. Given the collective nature of Communist decision making, it is impossible to know exactly how far Giap was responsible for the decision to attack Khe Sanh in 1967, for the
Tet offensive of 1968, or for the 1972 Easter offensive, for which he was a primary advocate. By the time South Vietnamese resistance collapsed in 1975, much of the direction of the war had passed to General Van Tien Dung. After the war, Giap was given short-term assignments until he retired as defense minister in 1980, and from the politburo in 1982. Critics feel that Giap's military reputation has been inflated by his self-promotion, which contrasts markedly with the usual anonymity of Communist commanders, and by the adulation of his adversaries, particularly the French.
Douglas Porch
