Vo Nguyen Giap, dead at 102

[MigBuster 2,884]

Vo Nguyen Giap, the Vietnamese general who masterminded victories against France and the US, has died aged 102.

His defeat of French forces at Dien Bien Phu in 1954 effectively ended French colonial rule in the region.

He went on to oversee the Tet Offensive against American forces in 1968, often cited as one of the factors that led to the Americans' withdrawal.

Gen Giap also published a number of works on military strategy.

He was born into a peasant family in the central Quang Binh province of what was then French Indochina.

At the age of 14, he joined a clandestine resistance movement.

By 1938 he was a member of Ho Chi Minh's Indochinese Communist party and fled to China with Ho, ahead of the Japanese invasion of Vietnam.

Gen Giap organised an army from his Chinese exile and returned to Indochina to wage guerrilla war against the occupying Japanese.

While he was out of Vietnam, his first wife was arrested and died in a French prison. He later remarried and had three daughters and two sons.

After his role in the war against the French, Gen Giap is also remembered for the 1968 Tet Offensive against US forces, when his troops attacked more than 40 provincial capitals and entered Saigon, then the capital of South Vietnam, briefly capturing the US embassy.

After the war, Gen Giap retained his position as defence minister and was appointed deputy prime minister in 1976.

However, he found himself sidelined by the regime and retired from government six years later.

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-24402278

Edited October 4, 2013 by MigBuster

[Capitaine Vengeur 263]

Damn, I did not think he was still alive!! His funeral ceremony and national mourning are certainly to be a major event in all of Vietnam these next days. His fiercest opponent at Dien Bien Phu, General Bigeard, just died 3 years ago at 94. He had stated about Giap's treatment of the French PoWs after DBP, 8000 of them dying within the first 4 months: "Giap was a great general, but his doctrine, Marxism, was inhuman. The former Vietminh captain said to me: "We did not kill any prisoner". It's true; they just let them die."

 

Giap's main quality as a leader, was the constant faith he was entrusted by the Viet authorities. He faced several critical setbacks during his military career, facing de Lattre's inventiveness in 1951, facing unsustainable losses during the first weeks at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, not to speak about his repeated tactical failures facing the Americans, or even his own Southern compatriots in 1972. But in circumstances when a common Communist general would have been dismissed, he was kept as the head of military, and as such was each time able to think about bad choices, completely change his mind,  and find a new and much more efficient strategy. Anyway, he was one of the greatest military minds of the last century, and of the last millenium.

[+CrazyhorseB34 937]

Old soldiers never die, they just die.

[+Gepard 11,323]

He was a teacher for history, before he became a military leader. He was a fan of Napoleon Bonapart. And he was, as the most vietnamese people, eager to learn. Learning by doing, trail and error.

So he became one of the most successfull military leaders in the last century.

[+whiteknight06604 934]

hope this scum suffered

[Murphy'S 15]

hope this scum suffered

 

 

why so much hate? wars he was involved in are over long agoo (and it's not like he was a politic...)

[+Jug 99]

^{RIP, enemy mine.}