Vo Nguyen Giap, << vo noo yehn zap >> (1911-2013), was a Vietnamese Communist leader. He was the commander and chief military strategist of what became known as the People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN) from 1944 to 1973. His forces used such tactics as guerrilla warfare to defeat the armies of larger, more powerful countries.
In 1937, after studying Marxism and military history, Giap became a member of the Indochinese Communist Party (ICP). In 1941, Giap helped Ho Chi Minh, a Vietnamese nationalist and leader of the ICP, create the Vietminh (League for the Independence of Vietnam). The Vietminh was a Communist-influenced political group that organized resistance to French colonial rule and later, Japanese occupation. During World War II (1939-1945), Japan took control of what is now Vietnam from the French. In December 1944, Giap founded a small military unit that eventually grew to become the PAVN.
After Japan’s defeat in World War II, Vietnam declared its independence on Sept. 2, 1945. However, France tried that year to reclaim its former colony, and the First Indochina War began in 1946. In May 1954, Giap and the PAVN defeated the better trained and equipped French army at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, ending the war. A major factor in France’s overall defeat was Giap’s use of a strategy called people’s war, which emphasized the total commitment of people and resources and used a combination of guerrilla and conventional warfare. After the war, agreements called the Geneva Accords divided Vietnam into the Communist Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV), commonly called North Vietnam, and the non-Communist Republic of Vietnam (RVN), commonly called South Vietnam.
In the late 1950’s, tensions began escalating between the DRV and RVN. During the Vietnam War, also called the Second Indochina War, Giap led the PAVN in a drive to overthrow the Republic of Vietnam and eventually reunite Vietnam. Giap’s forces continued to use people’s war. RVN and United States forces tried to stop them but failed. In 1973, Giap resigned as commander of the PAVN but remained active in the government. DRV forces eventually took over the Republic of Vietnam, and the war ended on April 30, 1975.
Giap was born in An Xa, a small village in north-central Vietnam, on Aug. 25, 1911. In 1937, he earned a bachelor’s degree in law and political economics from the University of Hanoi. After the Vietnam War ended, Giap held major political posts until 1982 and retired from politics in the early 1990’s. He died on Oct. 4, 2013, at the age of 102.
