I was watching the Nat Geo doc “Inside the Vietnam War” this past weekend, and thought I’d look up some of the players. By coincidende. Gen. Giap just turned 100 a few days ago. Coincidence??? Are there NVA moles in the Nat Geo scheduling department???
Interestingly, my brother-in-law’s grandfather (still alive) fought in the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, as part of an elite Algerian *Tirailleur *battalion. I really need to talk to him about it some day.
Giap is in many ways the greatest Miltary commander of the twentieth century.
Cue the annoyed Americans running down on me/
Fighting my ignorance, can you explain?
Hard to argue that Giap didn’t win the wars he fought in - Vietnam did become an independent country and was reunited under Communist control. And Giap did this in the face of opposition from two major powers, France and the United States. So he certainly did an excellent job as a 20th century military commander even if the title of “greatest” might be disputed.
This is one US veteran (though not of the Viet Nam conflict) that agrees with you 100%. The man was (still is) really, really great at what he does.
The greatest guerilla leader and overall-best general of the 1900s was the nattily-dressed Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck. I am surprised anyone would not realize that on the face of it.
Morally, his involvement with Germany’s first genocide is an issue. Still, heck of a fighter.
Both of them (Giap and von Lettow-Vorbeck) featured in the Greatest Military Leader elimination game but were voted out at around 34 and 47 respectively.
Oh and I’m pretty sure Giap was the highest ranked living leader.
General Giap outlive them all-WEstmoreland, Abrams, Johnson, Kennedy, Navarre.
If any of these people had bothered to study Giap, they might have ahd a different perspective.
Of course, Giap didn’t care much for his troops-he squandered lives at Dien Bien Phu…but he won.
From the Wiki:
“While he was in exile, his wife, sister, father and sister-in-law were arrested, tortured and later executed by the French colonial authorities. His daughter is also believed to have perished in prison due to neglect.”
Was there ever an empire with such a gap between its cultural magnificence and how it maintained itself at the very bottom as France?
The terrible thing is that France wasn’t the worst colonial power. Belgium, Germany, and Portugal all generally treated their colonial subjects worse than France did.
Belgium in particular. “King Leopold’s Ghost” makes for harrowing reading. If one had to be colonized, the least-bad option was probably to have the Brits do it - not that they weren’t above the odd atrocity themselves, mind.
Where do the Spanish rank in this list? What about the (pre-WWII) Germans?
But guys, that wasn’t my question “who had the most brutal empire?”
France had the Louvre, and the Ecole Cordon Bleu, Debussy, etc., etc.,
…and they cut off the head of Giap’s sister for delivering newspapers.
And you’d have a fifty percent chance of your people being so ethnically cleansed, that comes decolonization time, the country would be handed back to the descendants of the British colonists, not the original population.
It certainly wasnt the worst colonizing power, it was the worst decolonizing power though. They sure could have taken some clues from the Brits on this.
BTW, didnt Giap also fight the Japanese? That would make Giap having successfully fought three empires.
Yes, but he was not very successful until the British came in, sometime in 1945 near the fag end of the war. His brilliance was versus the French and the Americans; he out thought and out fought them all. I think Hackworth mentioned how good he was.
Re worst Colonial power, that would be the Dutch. After 1941 almost every colonial country which had been taken over decided that on balance <insert colonial power here> was better then these crazy Japanese, everyone except the Indonesians with the Dutch, who had to ask the British to retake their empire for them.
It’s interesting that so many SDMB regulars have such reverence for Giap’s alleged military genius and such utter contempt for George Washington’s.
Both men had a lot in common: both made a lot of serious blunders, both lost a lot of battles they shouldn’t have launched in the first place, but eventually prevailed, largely because the more powerful enemy had bigger fish to fry and decided to pack it in.
If Giap is a genius, just because his side ultimately got what it wanted, mustn’t Washington be a genius, too? Or, if Washington is a dunce who just got lucky, why couldn’t the same be true of Giap?
I don’t think that Washington is thought of as a “dunce”. He was a good military leader. WHat makes Giap great is that his success against two world powers without direct outside support. Washington’s success came due to the French and it is no disrespect to him, his successes created the circumstances needed for a successful French intervention.
That would be interesting. But where did it come from? Nobody had mentioned Washington until you did. Are you talking about some other thread?
I’ll note that in the above greatest military leaders elimination game that lisiate linked to, George Washington outlasted Giap, going out at #23 or thereabouts. I think I’m going to go out on a limb here and say your characterization of many regulars having utter contempt for GW is a wee bit of an exaggeration ;).
ETA: And I’ll add that I think your comparison of the two is fair. Both were extremely accomplished men who had their share of failures and fuck-ups.