Võ Nguyên Giáp

Võ Nguyên Giáp (Lộc Thủy, Quảng Bình, August 25, 1911 - Hanoi, October 4, 2013) was a politician and general of the People's Army of Vietnam. Giáp served as head of the armed forces in two wars: the First Indochina War (1946–1954) and the Vietnam War (1955–1975). He participated in the following battles, all of them of historical importance: Lạng Sơn (1950); Hòa Bình (1951–1952); Điện Biên Phủ (1954); the Tet Offensive (1968); the Easter Offensive (1972) and the final Hồ Chí Minh Campaign (1975).

Giáp was also a journalist, Minister of the Interior during the presidency of Hồ Chí Minh in the Viet Minh, military chief of the Việt Minh, head of the People's Army of Vietnam and Minister of Defense. He was also a politburo member of the Vietnam Workers' Party, which became the Vietnam Communist Party in 1976.

Biography

Revolutionary

He was the son of a peasant who, although he was landless, knew how to read and write and fought all his life against the colonialist regime imposed on his country.

He began his political life in the student movement in 1926 and joined clandestine organizations for the independence of Vietnam. While studying at the University of Hanoi in 1933, he met Dang Xuan Khu, who would later adopt the pseudonym Trường Chinh, who convinced him to join the Indochina Communist Party, which would later split into three communist parties (one Cambodian, another Laotian and the Vietnamese). In 1938 he married the Thai Dang Thi Quang. In 1939 he published his first book, jointly with Trường Chinh, titled The Peasant Question.

In September 1939, after the ban on the Communist Party, Giáp moved to China, where he met Hồ Chí Minh with whom he worked for the independence of his country and to whom he always remained very faithful and loyal. French police detained his wife and sister-in-law, using them as hostages to pressure Giáp into turning himself in. The repression was fierce: his sister-in-law was guillotined and his wife sentenced to life imprisonment, dying in prison after three years due to brutal torture. The French executioners also murdered his newborn son, his father, two sisters and other relatives.

He participated in the Chingsi conference in May 1941 in which the Vietnam Liberation Front was formed, whose abbreviated name is pronounced, in Vietnamese, Viet Minh.

At the end of that year, Giáp moved to the mountains of Vietnam to create the first guerrilla groups. There he established an alliance with Chu Van Tan, leader of the Tho, a national minority guerrilla group from Northeast Vietnam. At Christmas 1944 he captured a French military post, having raised the first battalions of his armed forces. By the middle of 1945 he already had some 10,000 men under his command and was able to go on the offensive against the Japanese who had invaded the country.

The fight against the French

Giáp and Ho.

After the triumph of the general insurrection of August 1945, and the proclamation in September of the independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, Giáp remained as commander-in-chief of the people's army.

The war started again in December 1946 after the bombardment of Haiphon by the French squadron, it withdrew to China until in October 1950 it occupied the border mountainous area, thanks to the possession of a safe rearguard after the triumph of Mao Zedong. From then on, the guerrillas spread throughout Vietnam and Laos, although he always considered that only the formation of a true army could defeat the colonial forces.

Giáp took several steps in that direction and on July 25, 1948, launched an attack on the posts of Phu Tong Hoa south of Colonial Route 4. The Vietnamese took the French by surprise and charged them with superior numbers., arresting several French soldiers, including his superior officer. Despite these advantages, the Viet Minh artillery was destroyed by the French men. The attacks were then first contained, although that same night the Vietnamese had lost strength and Ensign Belarot, commanding officer of the French forces, ordered a counterattack that ended up dismantling the Vietnamese offensive. A withdrawal was ordered and more than 200 Viet Minhs were left dead.

After a defeat like that, where he had many tricks to win, Giáp was dismayed by the defeat and began to plan the next actions.

Cao Bang

The first great victory was achieved in the Battle of Cao Bang within Operation Hong-Phong 2. On September 18, 1950, he launched some 10,000 men against Dong-Khá, defended by 2,000 French soldiers and 3,500 Moroccans who They didn't offer much resistance. The following month he destroys the column that descended from Cao Bang and the reinforcement that had ascended by Colonial Route 4 to recover Dong-Khá and allow a safe withdrawal. The French achieved neither one nor the other, they also had to abandon Lang Son and destroy 1,300 tons of material and ammunition.

But Giáp still had to reap serious defeats, the hardest of all being that suffered in Vinh Yen, where the expertise of General Jean-Marie De Lattre de Tassigny and his better command of new weapons, such as napalm, they inflicted a heavy defeat, destroying several of the Vietnamese units that took Giáp months to rebuild.

Nevertheless, Giáp has been regarded on several occasions as a patient man, and in December 1952 he demonstrated this by avoiding confrontation with the colonial troops launched in Operation Lorraine and forcing them to pursue his two divisions through jungle terrain where several ambushes set them up. The material captured by the French was not a serious loss and he was able to keep the bulk of his forces safe.

Điện Biên Phủ

At the end of 1953 Giáp accepted the French challenge of a final battle in Điện Biên Phủ, in which, after 55 days of siege and the seizure of the airport, the French garrison fell on May 7, 1954.

The French authorities considered Điện Biên Phủ a fortress of the first order capable of withstanding any assault, but the Vietnamese success lay in Giáp's plan for "a slower attack and advance, but safer... attack to win, not attack unless you are certain of victory". Instead of a major attack in a short time, the Vietnamese then carried out a long-term campaign, comprising a series of attacks supported by large numbers of artillery against fortified points, which continued until the total defeat of the French and the capture of his General Staff by the Vietnamese.

Điện Biên Phủ was one of the few episodes in which, in the period between the 19th and 20th centuries, from the French blockade of the Río de la Plata to the victory of the Afghans over the British in their withdrawal from Kabul, a people attacked and with a relatively primitive agricultural economy managed to defeat the army of one of the great powers, supported by a high-tech war industry.

Minister of Defense

Following the Geneva Conference, which would once again give independence to the four states of the former colony, Vietnam was divided and the South continued under the influence of the former colonial power and dependency on military assistance and political leadership from 30,000 advisors sent by the United States. Giáp became the defense minister of North Vietnam, where he started a socialist revolution.

From his position, he transformed the Vietminh into the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and continued contacts with China, North Korea and especially with the USSR to obtain the necessary weapons and training to carry out the annexation of the Republic from Viet Nam. Especially with the help of the USSR, he raised a small but effective Air Force, a very strong land army (specialized in guerrilla warfare) and a small Navy.

In 1959, led by the Vietcong or National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam, a simultaneous uprising broke out against the pro-American government of Ngo Dinh Diem, which is considered the Second Indochina War or Vietnam War. Giáp began sending supplies and forces south in support of the Viet Cong and between the two of them pushed the RNAV back until they controlled large rural areas, mobilized thousands of people, and seized power in many villages.

The first American advisers were killed in Vietnam when the Viet Cong attacked a military base at Bien Hoa northeast of Saigon on 8 July 1959. Advisors sent from the United States confirmed the impression that the ARVN could not win that war. no matter how many means and material they sent them and, sooner or later, they would be defeated.

For their part, Giáp and the Hanoi Politburo advocated shifting the burden of the war from North Vietnam.

Against the United States

The United States sent thousands of troops to reinforce the 60,000 advisers already serving in South Vietnam, rising to more than half a million in 1969. The Americans were deployed mainly around Saigon, at the Đà Nẵng base, in the Demilitarized Zone and the Central Highlands, while bombing North Vietnam.

Giáp organized the defense of the North while also leading operations in the South against the South Vietnamese and US armies. When the Americans succeeded in cutting off supplies sent by sea, he widened the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

As in the fight against the French, the general tried direct confrontation with the United States Army and also suffered a serious defeat during the Battle of Ia Drang Valley. However, he knew how to learn from mistakes and since then it tried to eschew direct large-formation combat against American firepower, while amassing men and weapons over two years to launch a major offensive.

In 1968, he carried out two of his most controversial actions and, according to his enemies, harmful to his forces. The Siege of Khe Sanh and the Tet Offensive, both alleged failures. Nevertheless, Giáp managed to turn the military defeat of the Offensive into a political success, by showing the Americans that all his victories and his two years of participation in the conflict had not weakened the communists, while showing them that he was They faced an endless war. So much so, that a few months later Giáp launched the so-called Mini Tet Offensive.

In 1972 Giáp organized the so-called Easter Offensive in the hope that the ERNV would fall apart. Although in some cases this was the case, in others the troops of the South resisted tenaciously. The Saigon presidency traded some of the corrupt military leadership for competent officers, and US planes and ships halted the advance at the pinnacle of moments. On the other hand, Giáp did not know how to use the numerous tanks to achieve a systematic advance and ended up losing them to enemy fire. He also did not think to concentrate his forces on one point to split South Vietnam in two, which would have given him a great advantage or even early victory.

After the apparent military defeat, despite achieving a clear improvement in the strategic position, the person of the defense minister seemed to lose authority. Little is known about the reactions within the North Vietnamese Politburo or whether the Easter defeat was a cause or not; but after 1972 Giáp's figure began to be eclipsed by that of his protégé, General Van Tien Dung, who commanded the 55-day Spring Offensive and the capture of Saigon on April 30, 1975.

The invasion of Cambodia

The invasion of Democratic Kampuchea brought Giáp back to the top of the Vietnamese political scene and, ultimately, his fall from grace.

In 1978, less than three years after the Khmer Rouge took power, Giáp led the invasion of Cambodia. In less than 20 days the entire country was controlled by Hanoi's forces. The invasion was made for several reasons: certainly Angkar's Kampuchea might be a small threat, but a threat nonetheless, to the newly unified Vietnam; The desire of the Asian country to control the entire Indochina peninsula has also been postulated.

Chinese Raid

On January 17, 1979, 86,000 Chinese soldiers attacked on three different fronts in northern Vietnam. They headed towards the provinces of Cao Bang, Loa Cai and Lang, reinforced by tanks and more soldiers to total 200,000. The Chinese succeeded in occupying Lang Son on 5 March, but Vietnamese resistance was much stronger than expected and Chinese troops withdrew after suffering more than 20,000 casualties, 6,954 missing, and 14,800 wounded.

Last years

In any case, Giáp bet heavily on the prolonged political struggle. This fight ultimately led to his fall from grace. Võ Nguyên Giáp was expelled from the Ministry of Defense in 1980 and from the Politburo in 1981.

Giáp also excelled as a writer, especially on military issues and guerrilla warfare.

In July 1992, he was awarded the Order of the Gold Star, the highest honor in socialist Vietnam.

In 2009 he participated in the protests against large mining projects for the exploitation of bauxite in Vietnam and their social and environmental effects.

He passed away on October 4, 2013. He had a state funeral and was buried in his hometown cemetery.

Assessment

While Hồ Chí Minh is credited with ideological credit for his victories against the Japanese, French and Americans, Giáp is credited with military credit with examples such as:

• The strategy Protracted war deployed in front of a very powerful enemy (like Mao).
• The conception and practice of combining the deployment of the mass political forces with the military forces and the transformation of one into another; as well as the combination of local and regional armed forces with the army; of the local guerrillas and militias with the regular troops; of the guerrilla war with the urban insurrections; of the war of movements and of positions with general insurrections (as of August 1945 against the Japanese and those of the Spring 1975).
• The transformation of the Viet Minh of a guerrilla force into an army capable of measuring itself with the famous Foreign Legion and taking any position despite strong casualties.
• The return to the guerrillas when necessary, turning the EVN into an almost irregular force of which it has been said that trying to immobilize the North Vietnam Army was like trying to get blood out of a stone.
• The great motivation he managed to print his soldiers; he worth the example of tattoos in the chest of many of them with the phrase I was born in the North to die in the South.
• The adaptation of the guerrilla cells to three men who supported and encouraged each other.
• His relatively simple way of life, which he transmitted to his officers and made the soldiers better hold the penalties of the Ho Chi Minh Route or the life in the tunnels, far from the ostentatious and corrupt ways of many South Vietnamese officers.
• His method of struggle became a source of inspiration for many or all the guerrilla movements of the 1970s and 80s as the Frente Polisario en el Sahara Occidental against Morocco, although very few of them succeeded by the Vietnamese general.

Logistics

Without a doubt, it is the general's merit that he was able to move dismounted through the jungle, arm and supply ammunition to hundreds of heavy artillery pieces, to turn an advanced base of the French army (Điện Biên Phủ) into a mousetrap, to surprise and amazement of all.

In addition to managing to place all their pieces in such a way that they could not be found, making the use of napalm useless, keeping them operational despite the monsoon rains and shooting down many fighters when they went out to destroy them. And all that on hills, in the jungle and thousands of kilometers from their sources of supply.

Strategy

As a strategist Giáp was not as outstanding as he was in the field of logistics:

• In the Battle of the delta of the Red River it did not take into account the superiority of means, especially air, with which the French counted; in contemporary war it is commonly argued that who controls the sky, controls the earthand in this case the comment was correct.
• At the Easter Offensive he did not know how to move and use the combat cars he had to break the enemy front and allow to advance the infantry, a mission for which the tanks were devised. In Lon Son they had managed to take all the positions of the Green Berets, but years later they could not use them and lost with them the possibility of a great victory, a lot of those weapons and many men. In addition, it was limited to launching human waves one by another until it was without men, not realizing that this strategy only led to the loss of human lives in the face of the firepower of American ships and aircraft.
• The Spring Offensive victory in 1975 is explanatory, however, because of the fundamentals of the strategy of the Minister of Defense Giáp: the regional armed forces, linked to solid mass organizations, had been constantly strengthened in camps and cities and were ready to join the regular forces for the military offensive and the insurrection, which definitively liquidated Thieu's troops and caused the flight of all U.S. advisers and support.

Tactics

On the battlefield is where Giáp had the fewest skills.

Many times he would simply order charge after charge, with little regard for the number of men he might lose with such a simple tactic. This was one of the reasons that caused him to be defeated at the Battle of Phu Tong Hog.

The lack of interest in the lives of his men was most clearly seen in the Battle of Điện Biên Phủ, where he had to ask the French for a truce of several hours to remove the corpses that covered the hills of Beatriz. He was about to lose control over his men, who revolted before certain death or surrendered to the French despite being winning and knowing what would happen to them if they were discovered by their own. Although Giáp would admit years later to feel relieved for not having to send massive charges, as his Chinese allies wanted, the truth is that, until he was aware of the danger in which his men were operating, he did not begin to dig ditches with which they could advance without being swept away by French machine guns.

This point, the use of "merciless" of his men to defeat his enemies, is also the subject of controversy. His patient and conscientious preparation of almost all the great performances he made is recognized. However, in the Tet Offensive he lost many men against a clearly superior army, an inferiority of which he was aware. What's more, even knowing that the Americans would counterattack with men and helicopters, he ordered the Vietcong to resist in the positions they had taken, condemning them to their practical annihilation. This point raises the question of whether it was an imprudence or mistake by Giáp, or a stratagem followed to get rid of an independent force under his command and based in the South.

His enemies also attribute crimes against humanity to him or to the leadership of Hanoi, to which he belonged, such as the Hue massacres, which took place during the Tet Offensive, which were clearly planned and patiently carried out against the representatives of the South Vietnamese authority who had murdered thousands of sympathizers of the Vietcong.

Despite these characteristics, General Võ Nguyên Giáp is considered a hero in his country and in many countries, because he managed to defeat the most powerful army in the world along the entire line, a model that many training guerrilla leaders later tried to imitate communist all over the world.