Vietnam’s best known general of the 20th century and the victor of the battle of Dien Bien Phu over the French Expeditionary Corps in 1954. Born in the province of Quang Binh, he first studied at the Lycée Quoc Hoc in Hue, where he became involved in nationalist politics. In 1929, he joined the New Vietnamese Revolutionary Party (Tan Viet Nam Cach Mang Dang). The French arrested him in 1930 for trying to garner money for the victims of the communist-backed uprising in central Vietnam in 1930. Although sentenced to two years of prison, he was released shortly thereafter and moved to Hanoi to finish his secondary studies at the Lycée Albert Sarraut. According to one of his former teachers, Marcel Ner, Vo Nguyen Giap was extremely hard-working, studious, and sensitive. He pursued higher studies in law at the Faculté de droit at the Indochinese University, from which he graduated in 1937. He was also awarded a certificate in political economics. During this time, Dang Thai Mai took him under his wing, and provided him with a job teaching history in a private high school in Hanoi, Thang Long. During the Popular Front period, Vo Nguyen Giap became involved in nationalist politics, writing for left-wing newspapers in Hanoi such as Notre voix, and participated in the Indochinese Congress. He co-wrote with Truong Chinh a treatise on the “Peasant Question”. He married Nguyen Thi Quang Thai, the younger sister of a prominent member of the Indochinese Communist Party (ICP), Nguyen Thi Minh Khai.
Vo Nguyen Giap left the Thang Long high school in May 1940, when he was warned that an arrest warrant had been issued against him. Thanks to the assistance of Hoang Van Thu, another ranking ICP leader, Giap escaped to southern China and made his way with Pham Van Dong to Kunming where they met Ho Chi Minh. The latter recognized the potential of Vo Nguyen Giap and brought him formally into the ICP. With the fall of France and the Japanese move into Indochina in 1940, the ICP sent Vo Nguyen Giap to build up bases along the Sino-Vietnamese border. In May 1941, during the Party’s 8th Plenum, he ran the Military Committee for the Viet Minh’s General Directorate (Uy Ban Quan Su Tong Bo Viet Minh), in charge of creating and training the movement’s armed forces. On 12 December 1944, Vo Nguyen Giap presided over the creation of the Armed Propaganda Brigade for the Liberation of Vietnam (Doi Viet Nam Tuyen Truyen Giai Phong Quan), the origin of the People’s Army of Vietnam of today. He attended the Conference in Tan Trao in mid-August 1945, which created the National Committee for the Liberation of Vietnam (Uy Ban Dan Toc Giai Phong Viet Nam). He ran its Military Committee and signed the order to begin the general uprising.
From September 1945 to March 1946, with the advent of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV), Vo Nguyen Giap served as minister of the Interior. He served as the deputy leader of the Vietnamese delegation to the Dalat Conference of April 1946, led officially by the minister of Foreign Affairs, Nguyen Tuong Tam. During Ho Chi Minh’s long absence in France in mid-1946, Vo Nguyen Giap proceeded to eliminate the anti-communist and anti-colonial opposition parties, with the support of the French.
In November 1946, he became minister of Defense. In that same year, he headed the ICP’s newly created Military Committee (Quan Uy) overseeing the entire armed forces. He held both posts until 1977. In 1946 or 1947, he married again, this time to Dang Bich Ha, the daughter of Dang Thai Mai. In 1948, Vo Nguyen Giap became a four-star general and the supreme commander of all the DRV’s armed forces. During the Second Party Congress held in early 1951, he was re-elected to the Central Committee of the new Vietnamese Workers’ Party and its Politburo. In 1954, he oversaw the historic battle of Dien Bien Phu, making him modern Vietnam’s greatest general. See also COURT MARTIAL; DISEASE; EXPERIENCE OF WAR, DIEN BIEN PHU; MYTH OF WAR.