Võ Nguyên Giáp

Võ Nguyên Giáp (Vietnamese pronunciation: [vɔ̌ˀ ŋʷīən jǎːp]; 25 August 1911 – 4 October 2013) was a militarily self-taught general of the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN), communist revolutionary and politician. Regarded as one of the greatest military strategists of the 20th century, Giáp commanded Vietnamese communist forces in various wars. He served as the military commander of the Việt Minh and later the PAVN from 1941 to 1972, as the minister of defence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) and later Socialist Republic of Vietnam in 1946–1947 and from 1948 to 1980, and as deputy prime minister from 1955 to 1991. He was also a member of the Politburo of the Communist Party of Vietnam.

Born in Quảng Bình province to an affluent peasant family, and the son of a Vietnamese nationalist, Giáp participated in anti-colonial political activity in his youth and in 1931 joined the Communist Party of Vietnam, led by Ho Chi Minh. Giáp rose to prominence during World War II as the military leader of the Việt Minh resistance against the Japanese occupation, and after the war became the military commander of the anti-colonial forces in the First Indochina War against the French. Giáp won a decisive victory in the 1954 Battle of Dien Bien Phu, that forced the surrender of the French garrison and effectively ending the war. After the partition of Vietnam and the outbreak of the Vietnam War, Giáp fought against South Vietnam and its American supporters. Giáp was commander of the army during the 1968 Tet Offensive, in which he besieged and turned an isolated Marine outpost at Khe Sanh into a diversion for the upcoming offensive. The Marines later abandoned the strategic base after the siege was lifted. Giáp was also involved in strategizing the 1972 Easter Offensive, after which he was succeeded by Văn Tiến Dũng, but remained defense minister through the U.S. military withdrawal and the final victory against South Vietnam and the reunification after the final offensive of 1975. After the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia in 1978 and the overthrow of the Chinese-allied Khmer Rouge regime, Giáp organized his final military campaign in the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese War, in which Chinese forces were pushed back across the border. Giáp resigned as defense minister in 1980 and left the Politburo in 1982. He remained on the Central Committee and as deputy prime minister until 1991, and died in 2013 at age 102.

Giáp is regarded as a mastermind military leader. During the First Indochina War, he had transformed a "rag-tag" band of rebels to a "fine light-infantry army" fielding cryptography, artillery and advanced logistics capable of challenging the larger, modernised French Far East Expeditionary Corps and Vietnamese National Army. Giáp never attended any courses at any military academy, nor had any direct military training prior to WW2, and was a history teacher at a French-speaking academy. He also read and was influenced by many historical leaders, such as Carl von Clausewitz, Sun Tzu, George Washington, and Vladimir Lenin, though he personally cited T. E. Lawrence and Napoleon as his two greatest influences. He later earned the moniker "Red Napoleon" from some Western sources. Giáp was also a highly-effective logistician, and is recognized as the principal architect of the Ho Chi Minh trail, that brought weapons and men from North Vietnam south through Laos and Cambodia, which is recognised as one of the 20th century's great feats of military engineering and impeccable quartermastering.

Giáp is often credited with North Vietnam's military victory over the United States and South Vietnam. Recent scholarship cites other leaders as more prominent, with former subordinates and later rivals Dũng and Hoàng Văn Thái later having a more direct military responsibility than Giáp. Nevertheless, he was crucial to the transformation of the PAVN into "one of the largest, most formidable" mechanised and combined-arms fighting force capable of defeating the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) in conventional warfare.