Blackwell Reference Online

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Vo Nguyen Giap is considered among the greatest generals of the twentieth century for his involvement in the Vietnamese communist planning of the war against the French , the defeat of the United States , and the invasion of Cambodia that overthrew the Khmer Rouge regime of Pol Pot . Vo Nguyen Giap was born into a peasant family on August 25, 1911 in the central Vietnamese village of An Xa in Quang Binh province. He had sufficient scholarly connections to attend the Quoc Hoc (National Academy) in Hue, the imperial capital in central Vietnam, where he came into contact with leading opponents of the reimposition of French colonial rule. As a teenager he joined the Tan Viet (New Vietnamese Revolutionary Party) and took part in demonstrations against the French after the death in 1926 of Phan Chu Trinh, a Vietnamese patriot jailed and then exiled to France before being allowed to return to Saigon in 1925. Giap was expelled from the school for participating in the protests. In 1930 Giap joined the newly created Indochina Communist Party. He was arrested later that year and held in captivity for two years. On his release Giap went to study law at the University of Hanoi. He taught history at the Thang Long School, where he met and married Nguyen Thi Minh Giang, the daughter of Dang Thai Mai, a progressive intellectual, and the sister of Nguyen Thi Minh Khai, the wife of Hô Chi Minh. ... log in or subscribe to read full text