Communist Party, and he
formally joined forces
with Ho. During this
same period his wife was
arrested by the French
and tortured to death in
prison. His sister-in-law
was also guillotined for
alleged terrorist activi-
ties. Such losses embit-
tered Giap toward France,
and he redoubled his ef-
forts to free Vietnam of
French influence. By then
he had also acquired a
reputation as a quiet but
mercurial man whose
glaring, icy exterior
masked a tendency to-
ward sudden outbursts.
Ho Chi Minh, who came
to depend on Giap en-
tirely, nicknamed him
“Nui Lua,” the “volcano
under snow.”
When France was defeated by Germany in
1940, its colonial possessions in Southeast
Asia were turned over to Japan. With the
help of Chinese communists, Giap and Ho
founded the League for the Independence of
Vietnam, or Viet Minh, to fight these latest in-
vaders. This ragtag band of desperate men
formed the nucleus of a successful, conquer-
ing army. They were skillfully trained as
guerrillas; instilled with Giap’s personal
brand of ruthlessness, they slaughtered any-
one perceived as an adversary. Commencing
in 1944, Vietnamese guerrillas staged sur-
prise attacks on Japanese outposts and
helped rescue and retrieve downed Ameri-
can airmen. Following the Japanese surren-
der in August 1945, Viet Minh forces under
Giap occupied Hanoi, and Ho declared Viet-
nam’s independence. France, however, re-
fused to recognize such claims or relinquish
its grip. In a display of force, French war-
ships shelled Hanoi indiscriminately, killing
an estimated 6,000 people, and rushed men
and materiel into its for-
mer colony. The commu-
nists declared a national
war of resistance, with
Giap as commander in
chief of the army and
minister of defense. A
costly eight-year struggle
ensued.
Knowing that his
forces were outgunned
and outequipped by the
French, who also enjoyed
complete air superiority,
Giap invoked a classic
campaign of guerrilla
warfare to harass, am-
bush, and disperse his
enemy. To accomplish
this he drew upon the
precepts of Mao Tse-tung
but also added elements
of conventional warfare
to seek a decisive victory.
Up through 1950 the Viet
Minh were roundly successful in thwarting
French military objectives in the field, and the
following year Giap decided to go over to the
offensive. During 1951 he launched series of
conventional attacks against French strong
points in the Red River Delta near Hanoi, but
he was severely pummeled by superior fire-
power. Communist losses totaled nearly
100,000 men before he called off his attacks
and admitted his strategy was a mistake. The
Viet Minh then reverted back to its time-hon-
ored guerrilla tactics, which the French,
rigidly bound to conventional modes of war-
fare, could not neutralize.
At length a new commander, Gen. Henri
Navarre, sought to lure Giap’s forces out into
the open where they could be destroyed. In
the spring of 1954 he air-dropped 15,000 sol-
diers and Legionnaires at a plateau named
Dien Bien Phu, near the Laotian border—and
Giap’s lines of supply—challenging him to dig
them out. The Viet Minh, now bolstered by
Russian and Chinese arms, did just that. GiapGIAP, VONGUYEN
Vo Nguyen Giap
Agence France Presse/Archive Photos