Võ Nguyên Giáp

Võ Nguyên Giáp commanded the Vietnamese forces that defeated France and then the United States, and was a history teacher by training. Born in Quang Binh province in 1911 to a family of educated peasants, he was expelled from school for political activity, joined the Indochinese Communist Party, and took a law degree while teaching history at a private school in Hanoi. He fled to China in 1940. His wife was arrested and died in a French prison, and his sister-in-law was guillotined, which he referred to rarely and never forgave. He built the Viet Minh's armed forces from a first unit of thirty-four people in 1944, developing a doctrine of protracted war in three stages — guerrilla resistance, then equilibrium, then general offensive — and treating politics and logistics as inseparable from fighting. His decisive victory was at Dien Bien Phu in 1954. The French occupied a valley intending to draw the Viet Minh into a set-piece battle they could win with artillery and air support. Giap had tens of thousands of porters carry disassembled howitzers and anti-aircraft guns up through the jungle onto the surrounding hills, dug them into casemates, and closed the airstrip. The garrison surrendered after fifty-six days, and France left Indochina. He then directed the war against the American-backed south, including the Tet Offensive of 1968, which was a military failure and a political turning point in the United States. He was willing to accept enormous casualties and said so. He was sidelined politically in the 1970s, lived to a hundred and two, and in old age campaigned against a bauxite mining project. He died in 2013.

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