Vo Nguyen Giap (redirected from General Giap)

Vo Nguyen Giap: see Giap, Vo Nguyen.

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Vo Nguyen Giap

(born 1912, An Xa, Viet.) Vietnamese military leader. He began to work for Vietnamese autonomy as a youth and attended the same high school as Ho Chi Minh. As a professor of history in Hanoi, he converted many colleagues and students to his political views. He fled to China in 1939 when the French banned the Indochinese Communist Party, but returned in 1941. In 1945 he led the Viet Minh forces that defeated the Japanese, who occupied Vietnam during World War II. He brought French colonial rule to an end by winning the Battle of Dien Bien Phu (1954) in the First Indochina War, and he led the North Vietnamese forces that defeated the U.S. and South Vietnam in the Vietnam War (1955–75). He served in various roles in the postwar government of Vietnam until the early 1990s.

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Vo Nguyen Giap 

Born Jan. 3, 1911, in the province of Quang Binh, North Vietnam. Political and military figure in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.

Giap was trained as a history teacher. From his youth he participated in the national liberation movement. Beginning in 1930, he was a member of the Vietnamese Workers’ Party (until 1951, the Communist Party of Indochina). He was one of the creators of the People’s Army of Vietnam in 1944. He had an active part in the August Revolution of 1945 in Vietnam, was a member of the National Committee for the Liberation of Vietnam, and was minister of internal affairs in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. In 1946 he became minister of national defense, and in 1947 he became commander in chief of the People’s Army of Vietnam. From 1955 on he has simultaneously served as deputy premier. He has been a member of the Central Committee (since 1945) and of the Politburo (since 1951) of the Central Committee of the Vietnamese Workers’ Party.