The West nicknamed him the “Red Napoleon,” a misguided comparison, because, unlike Napoleon, Giap never lost a war nor invaded any country for imperialist interests.
He was the son of a peasant who, although he owned no land, could read and write and thus taught other poor people in the village to do the same, and fought his entire life against the colonialist regime imposed on his country.
While studying at the University of Hanoi in 1933, he joined the Communist Party of Indochina, which would later become the Communist Party of Vietnam.
In September 1939, after the French colonial authorities banned the Communist Party in Vietnam, Giap moved to China, where he met Ho Chi Minh; the two would never part ways again, becoming mentor and protégé in the anti-colonial struggle.
After taking refuge in China, the French colonialists kidnapped his wife and mother-in-law as hostages to force Giap to surrender to the French.
After refusing to surrender to the French Empire, the French response against him was fierce and cruel: his sister-in-law was guillotined, his wife was sentenced to life imprisonment and died in prison after three years as a result of brutal torture; they also murdered his newborn son, his father, two sisters, and other relatives.
At that moment, after the French colonialists had killed his entire family, he swore eternal hatred against them and vowed not to rest until he had liberated his country from those murderous scourges.
But he would also have to fight the Japanese Empire, which invaded Vietnam in 1940 and divided the country among itself and the French imperialists.
In 1941, Giap stepped forward to liberate his country and participated in the Chingsi Conference in May 1941, at which the Vietnam Liberation Front was formed.
After that, he moved to the mountains of Vietnam to form the first guerrilla groups to fight the French.
After forming his first guerrilla battalions, during Christmas 1944 he captured a French military outpost and defeated an entire colonialist battalion.
By mid-1945, Giap already had some 10,000 men under his command in the guerrilla forces and was able to go on the offensive against the Japanese imperialists who had invaded the country, proving himself one of the finest commanders of any guerrilla force.
After driving out the Japanese, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam was proclaimed as part of the August Revolution, and Giap was declared commander-in-chief of the People’s Army to fight against the French colonialists.
After seven long years of anti-colonial struggle against the French—guided by the tactical motto “a slower but surer attack and advance; attack to win; attack only when victory is certain”—he succeeded in defeating and expelling the French at great cost in 1954.
A year after the anti-colonial struggle against the French, in 1955, it was the United States’ turn—yet another empire fighting to prevent Vietnam’s freedom and independence; but Giap and his protégé, General Văn Tiến Dũng, managed to defeat the American imperialists, leading, among other offensives, the 55-day Spring Offensive and the capture of Saigon on April 30, 1975.
Literally, Giap had brought down three empires in just 30 years; the “Red Napoleon,” as he was called in the West, taught painful lessons to the finest French generals with experience in colonial wars and World War II, as well as to the finest American generals and the finest Japanese imperialist generals.
Giap did not attend courses at a military academy nor receive any direct military training before World War II. World War II: He was a natural talent for waging anti-imperialist warfare.
The Communist Party of Vietnam named Giap "the master of modern revolutionary guerrilla warfare in the 20th century."
Video link -> https://video.twimg.com/amplify_video/2106772429439717376/vid/avc1/714x1126/MzQLjQnltIR2uc9E.mp4
Source -> https://shitter.thepixora.com/DaniMayakovski/status/2106772468845228269#m
