Võ Nguyên Giáp is a Vietnam born, military genius with no formal military officer training. He led the Việt Minh to victory over the colonial forces of France and the United States between 1946 and 1975.
Giáp got his first real taste of revolution in his late teens when he enrolled in a French ran lycée (university) in Huế, Vietnam (the French had taken Veitnam as a colony to prove that they were still a colonial force in the world) where he was expelled for organizing a student strike. Two years later, at the age of 21, Giáp enrolled in a Vietnamese school where he earned his bachelor’s degree in political philosophy and he earned a law degree. After earning his degree, he began to teach high school history and wrote pro-socialist articles for various periodicals. Giáp also extensively read military history and philosophy books taking great interest in Sun Tzu and Napoleon I.
One year after he started teaching, Giáp joined the communist party in which he actively joined and led demonstrations against the overbearing French presence in Vietnam. Eight years later in 1939, France illegalized communism in Vietnam and Giáp fled to communist China for sanctuary along with fellow Vietnam communists, Phạm Văn Đồng and Hồ Chí Minh having to leave his family behind in French-Vietnam. His family was found and executed in less than a year by the French. Giáp came back to Vietnam in 1944 to help the country fend off the Japanese as they tried to invade and conquer Vietnam near the end of World War II.
After fending off the Japanese, Giáp was named general of the Việt Minh and he turned his attention to the French. Leading his “barefoot army,” Giáp held the French off in one of his most famous battles, the Battle of Ðiện Biên Phủ. The French tried to cut off supply lines from Laos by taking over the boarder town of Ðiện Biên Phủ. Underestimating the military genius of Giáp, the French got surronded at the bottom of a valley and were forced to surrender to Giáp and his army. Giap went on the fight the United States Military for the next 16 years. In the end, Giáp’s guerilla tactics beat out the United States military in the U.S.’s first military defeat.
From 1946 to 1975, Giáp defended his country from foriegn invaders with a scrappy, untrained, and technologically inferior military so he and his countrymen could practice the type of government that they wanted. Maybe in the future, major world powers will listen to Giáp’s most famous quote, “any forces that would impose their will on other nations will most certainly face defeat” and stay away from issues that are not their own.
