General Giap has passed.

[Are_grits_groceries]

Vo Nguyen Giap, the Vietnamese general who masterminded victories against France and the US, has died aged 102.

His defeat of French forces at Dien Bien Phu in 1953 made him the first military commander to defeat a major Western power in Asia.

He went on to oversee the Tet Offensive against American forces in 1968, often cited as one of the factors that led to the Americans' withdrawal.

Gen Giap also published a number of works on military strategy.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-24402278#TWEET910611

[Jackpine Radical]

1. No wonder we lost--

All we had was Westmoron.

[Smarmie Doofus]

2. Good god. I'm shocked he was still alive. It all seems so long ago....

.... US vs. VN; not to mention Dien Bien Phu.

[Are_grits_groceries]

3. That took me back.

He had already helped run the French out. We just stupidly next in line.

[alcibiades_mystery]

4. The artillery officer at Dien Bien Phu assured de Castries that no artillery could be

transported to the surrounding hills. Giap disassembled them, brought 'em up on bicycles and mules.

After the first day or so of the bombardment that was supposed to be impossible, the artillery officer apologized to his general, noted that he had been completely dishonored, then shot himself in the head.

Old school.

[grantcart]

5. Giap put together a strategy to take out the Viet Cong armed militas.

It is known as the "Tet Offensive"

The combined plan was for regular NVA to attack simultaneously with urban VC groups.

On the appointed time the regular NVA was ordered back to the barracks.

Giap scheduled himself to be in E Europe (Hungary?) at the same time for medical treatment so that he could deny responsibility.

It went off and appeared to be a huge win for the VC when in reality it wiped them out.

Giap was also old school, a throw back to pure Leninist strategy and you had to admire how effective he was.

[grantcart]

6. Remarkable how much misinformation about Ho Chi Minh is still common, even by experts

From the article:

By 1938 he was a member of Ho Chi Minh's Indochinese Communist party and fled to China with Ho, ahead of the Japanese invasion of Vietnam

Ho Chi Minh didn't even exist in 1938 and no one in Vietnam would have known who he was.

'Ho' Nguyễn Sinh Cung left Vietnam as a student in 1907 and worked on a French steamer. During this time he lived for extended times in the US, England and France

In 1911, working as the cook's helper on a ship, Nguyễn traveled to the United States. From 1912–13, he lived in New York (Harlem) and Boston, where he worked as a baker at the Parker House Hotel. Among a series of menial jobs, he claimed to have worked for a wealthy family in Brooklyn between 1917–18, and for General Motors as a line manager. It is believed that, while in the United States, he made contact with Korean nationalists, an experience that developed his political outlook.[5]

After WWI he walks into the Versailles peace talks as the self appointed representative of Vietnam and demands independence. It was a move of unparalleled hutzpah; no one knew who he was and he hadn't been in Vietnam for years.

In 1923 he joins comintern (the only national to survive Stalin) and is sent to Siam, India and then to China (his father was a Vietnamese Chinese scholar) where he has a Chinese name and wife and is thought to have been born in China and completely unknown to the people of Vietnam.

In 1941 he returns to Vietnam ("Ho Chi Minh" is used from 1940 on) and the Chinese revolutionary now becomes a Vietnamese revolutionary and even though he hasn't been in Vietnam for 34 years and no one there knows him, within 6 months he takes over the Vietnamese revolutionary movement, and the rest is history.

In 1938 "Ho Chi Minh" didn't exist and wasn't living in Vietnam.

Giap did flee to China in 1939 but that was because France outlawed Communism.

If I hit the lottery and money to burn I would invest in a movie about these two guys, two of the most interesting folks of the 20th century and their stories are so improbable that the movie would be seen as ficton.

[Eleanors38]

7. I was told Gen. Giap studied the Seminole Wars in Florida

with an aim to place guerilla tactics on a strategic footing; I.e., coordinating several small attacks, widely dispersed over hundreds of miles, yet at the same time. Have you read about this?

[PuraVidaDreamin]

8. So much to learn here.

From what little I know he was likely one of the greatest general to ever live.