THE DEATH OF A HERO AND THE BIRTH OF A REVOLUTION
Sam Noumoff
In the early days of October news was released of the death of General Vo Nguyen Giap, at the age of 102. Second in reverence only to Ho Chi Min, General Giap came to symbolize the success of what has come to be more recently defined as asymmetrical warfare. At the outset of the modern Viet Nam independence struggle the Viet Minh numbered in the hundreds and increased from small scale guerilla units to more conventional large scale battle formations defeating in turn the French colonial occupation forces and the mighty United States and its neo-colonial puppets.
Giap as many other revolutionary leaders came from a comfortable land owning family, with his father, functioning as a low level bureaucrat under French colonial administration, imprisoned in 1919 for nationalist agitation where he died as did his sister. He attended the same Lycée as Ho Chih Min, and Ngo Dinh Diem, the latter going on to become President of South Viet Nam until he lost US support and was assassinated in 1963.Giap was expelled from the Lycée for nationalist agitation, followed by his arrest in 1930 spending a bit more than a year in prison. He took a BA in Law at the University of Hanoi, but failed the certificate exam due to his time consuming political activity. His inability to practice law led him to a position as a history teacher, where he became familiar with Napoleon and T.E. Lawrence. He later came to be known by his adversaries as the Red Napoleon.
Prior to leaving for China in 1940 he, founded a Socialist youth newspaper, returning to the Viet Bac, the northern 6 Provinces of Viet Nam inhabited mostly by minority people, in 1942. Visiting that area in 1973 the commanding Generals all expressed pride in being the secure area whenever the Viet Minh needed an impenetrable refuge. On the lighter side one of them leaned over at dinner and asked if I wanted the address in Hanoi of Ho Chi Minh’s girl friend, who was still alive. He was kicked under the table by one of his comrades. While Giap no doubt gained from his experience in observing the development of the Chinese revolution on the ground, the adversarial challenges he was to face no doubt on any scale were significantly greater than that faced by Mao. This is no diminution of the latter.
On Christmas day of 1944 Giap was charged with the first military assault on a Vichy French outpost, which he captured. Four months later the Viet Minh force numbered 5,000, 200 who were selected for training and arming by US Special Forces in the attempt to drive out Japanese forces who controlled the country with the cooperation of Vichy France. In August of 1945 Giap led his forces into Hanoi, tactically retreating back to the Viet Bac the following year when French forces re-occupied the country. It took another eight years of guerilla level fighting before the decisive battle of Dien Bien Phu took place. The French fortified the outpost hoping to sever Viet Minh supply lines, believing in their technological superiority. Giap developed what I would call the noose strategy, of digging tunnels around the French forces and surrounding them with units fortified by Soviet tanks and artillery. Ironically the first artillery salvo fired by Giap’s forces was a 105 mm gun which had been captured by North Korean forces during the Korean war, sent by rail across China and installed in the perimeter of Dien Bien Phu. This gun in 1971 sat in the basement of the War Museum in Hanoi. French forces surrendered and after the US refused to provide critical support, the French announced their withdrawal. Richard Nixon, who was then Vice President of the US urged the use of tactical nuclear weapons in support of the French, a proposal which President Eisenhower rejected.
The US incrementally came to replace the French employing the domino principle, that is if Viet Nam “falls” to the Communists it would be followed by similar liberation wars in South East Asia and ultimately threatening Australia and New Zealand. In 1968 the Communist Party concluded that a major military offensive would spark a nationwide rebellion. The date was set for the Tet holiday period. There has been some suggestion that Giap was less than enthusiastic, as he left for medical treatment in Hungary, returning to Viet Nam after the offensive began. As Minister of Defense, Giap nonetheless coordinated the attack with horrendous casualties on both sides. Tet did for the US what Dien Bien Phu did for the French; it precipitated the decision to withdraw. Giap had achieved the political goal, while the anticipated nationwide rebellion failed to materialize. Morale in the south Vietnamese military began to crumble. Five years later, in 1973, I visited the Thac An river which was the front dividing southern and northern armies, and one officer commented that the commander of the southern forces had informally communicated to the National Liberation Front command that if he received an order to open fire across the river he would fire to miss, as none of his men wanted to be the last soldier to die in the war. The South Viet Namese government survived for another 7 years after Tet before Giap’s tanks broke into the Presidential Palace in Saigon, capturing the then President, “Big” Minh. Viet Nam was again reunited as one country. During this period the USSR provided material military support and the Chinese sent in 320,000 troops.
In 1980, Giap retired as Minister of Defense, followed two years later by resigning from the Politburo, but stayed on as Deputy Prime Minister and Central Committee member until 1991. Many western commentators have suggested that he was marginalized in the post 1975 period, but have failed to consider that age and health may have been the basis of his withdrawal.
At the age of 99 Giap expressed support for an expert committee report which expressed severe reserve on a major bauxite extraction proposal as damaging to the ecology in the Central Highlands as well as concern over national security; that is who would invest the $1 billion required for infrastructure modification. A few years earlier I was asked to explore with the Aluminium Company of Canada(ALCAN) if they would be willing to pick up the tab, but was informed that Australia was top of their list followed by India and maybe in fifty years Viet Nam.
Vo Nguyen Giap was a complex man in complex times, but as we can see from the thousands who rushed to his home on the announcement of his death, he remained a leader to be cherished and revered. Having visited with his father-in-law on two visits to Hanoi, I can testify to how he was respected by both the general population but as well within his family.
(Professor Sam Noumoff of McGill University was one of the most ardent supporters of Vietnamese people’s struggle against the US and is held in great esteem by the Vietnamese community in Montreal)
Top - Home