General Vo Nguyen Giap at military ceremony celebrating the 10th anniversary of ending of Vietnam War, Hue city, March 1985
General Vo Nguyen Giap (Vietnamese: Võ Nguyên Giáp) (born August 25, 1911) is a retired Vietnamese officer in the Vietnam People's Army and a politician. He was a principal commander in two wars: First Indochina War (1946-1954) and Vietnam War (1960-1975). He participated in the following historically significant battles: Lang Son (1950); Hoa Binh (1951-1952); Dien Bien Phu (1954); the Tet Offensive (1968); the Nguyen Hue Offensive (known in the West as the Easter Offensive) (1972); and the final Ho Chi Minh Campaign (1975). Although successful in the long term, Giap's military strategies were enormously costly and were often victories through attrition. He was also a journalist, an interior minister in President Ho Chi Minh's Viet Minh government, the military commander of the Viet Minh, the commander of the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN), and defense minister. He also served as Politburo member of the Lao Dong was the most prominent military commander besides Ho Chi Minh during the war and was responsible for major operations and leadership until the war ended. Giap remained commander in chief of the People's Army of Vietnam throughout the war against the United States. During the conflict he oversaw the expansion of the PAVN from a small self-defense force into a large conventional army, equipped by its communist allies with considerable amounts of relatively sophisticated weaponry, although this did not in general match the weaponry of the Americans. Giap has often been assumed to have been the planner of the Tet Offensive of 1968, but this appears not to have been the case. The best evidence indicates that he disliked the plan, and when it became apparent that Lê Duẩn and Văn Tiến Dũng were going to push it through despite his doubts, he left Vietnam for medical treatment in Hungary, and did not return until after the offensive had begun. [2] Although this attempt to spark a general uprising against the southern government failed militarily, it turn
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Keywords: asia, east, famous, figure, general, giap, icon, instrumental, nguyen, personality, se, south, veteran, vietnam, vo, war
