Word: giap
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...Giap was an accomplished lecturer in French history who "could step to a blackboard and draw in the most minute detail every battle plan of Napoleon," one of his former students recalls. A passionate ascetic who could veer abruptly from violent emotion to icy control, he was early dubbed "The volcano and the snow" by his associates. "We were all intrigued," says one, "by his passion for Napoleon and the French Revolution. And we used to tease him when he railed against the French, by asking 'Are you sure you don't want to be Napoleon?' " Giap...
When the party was banned in 1939, Giap fled to China. His wife stayed behind, was arrested by the French, and died in prison. Under the aegis of the Chinese Communists, the Viet Minh was founded, with Giap a 1941 charter member along with Ho Chi Minh. Ho ordered the little professor to specialize in military affairs, and the career of the Red Napoleon began. His first self-education was in guerrilla operations against the Japanese who then occupied Viet Nam. The OSS supplied Giap with American weapons to that end, but Giap was looking to the future: he cached...
When the French returned, Ho ordered Giap as Commander in Chief of the North Viet Nam army to meet General Jacques LeClerc at the airport. Giap flew into a towering rage, ranting that he would never shake hands with any Frenchman. Uncle Ho listened for a while and then said: "You have two hours before his plane arrives, so why don't you go into the corner and cry your eyes out. But be at the airport." Giap went. But such emotional outbursts led Ho to leave Giap at home when he went off to Fontainebleau to negotiate with...
Myth Enhancing. He scored some successes but more signal defeats, largely because he lacked artillery to compete with the French in set-piece conventional battles. After a stinging series of losses in 1951, Giap admitted that he had tried to push into Phase 3 too soon; he retreated into the hills and paddies to reassemble his forces. The chance for annihilation came at Dienbienphu, when the French, thinking Giap still had no heavy artillery, dropped paratroops into a valley, hoping to draw Giap into combat. But Giap had obtained over 100 American 105-mm. howitzers from the Red Chinese, carted...
Afterward, Giap proudly wrote that "guerrilla warfare relies on the heroic spirit to triumph over modern weapons." It is a myth-enhancing statement, but it does not quite fit the facts of his triumph over the French. In the decisive turning point at Dienbienphu, it was not the heroic spirit of Giap's soldiers but their massive artillery in the hills that carried...