Editing Võ Nguyên Giáp (section)

=== Early life ===
Võ Nguyên Giáp was born on 25 August 1911 (or 1912 according to some sources<ref name=nytobit>{{Cite news|last=Gregory|first=Joseph|title=Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap, Who Ousted U.S. From Vietnam, Is Dead|date=4 October 2013|work=New York Times|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/05/world/asia/gen-vo-nguyen-giap-dies.html?smid=pl-share}}</ref>) in [[Quảng Bình province]], [[Annam (French protectorate)|Annam]], [[French Indochina]].<ref>{{cite magazine |url=http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1555023,00.html |title=Asian Heroes: General Vo Nguyen Giap |first=Kay |last=Johnson |date=13 November 2006 |magazine=[[Time (magazine)|Time]]}}</ref> Giáp's father and mother, Võ Quang Nghiêm and Nguyễn Thị Kiên,<ref name="RFI">{{cite news|url=http://www.english.rfi.fr/americas/20131004-vietnam-war-leader-general-giap-dies-aged-102|title=Vietnam war leader General dies, aged 102 |date=4 October 2013|work=Radio France Internationale|access-date=4 October 2013}}</ref> worked the land, rented some to neighbours, and lived a relatively comfortable life.

Giáp's father was both a minor official and a committed [[Vietnamese nationalist]], having participated in the [[Cần Vương movement]] in the 1880s. He was arrested for subversive activities by the French colonial authorities in 1919 and died in prison a few weeks later. Giáp had two sisters and one brother, and soon after his father's incarceration, one of his sisters was also arrested. Although she was not held for long, the privations of prison life made her ill and she too died a few weeks after being released.<ref>Macdonald 1993, p. 19.</ref>

Giáp was taught at home by his father before going to the village school. His precocious intelligence meant that he was soon transferred to the district school and in 1924, at the age of thirteen, he left home to attend the Quốc Học (also known in English as the "National Academy"), a French-run ''[[lycée]]'' in [[Huế]],<ref name="RFI"/> where he studied [[arithmetic]], history, geography, literature, and [[natural science]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Currey |first=Cecil B. |url= |title=Victory at Any Cost: The Genius of Viet Nam's Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap |date=2022-03-04 |publisher=U of Nebraska Press |isbn=978-1-64012-082-2 |pages=12 |language=en}}</ref> This school had been founded by a Catholic official named Ngo Dinh Kha, and his son, [[Ngô Đình Diệm]] also attended it. Diem later became President of South Vietnam (1955–63). Years earlier the same school had educated another boy, Nguyễn Sinh Cung, also the son of an official. In 1943 Cung adopted the name [[Ho Chi Minh]].<ref>Macdonald 1993, pp. 19–20.</ref>

At age 14, Giáp became a messenger for the [[Haiphong]] Power Company. He was expelled from the school after two years for taking part in protests, and went home to his village for a while. While there, he joined the ''[[Tân Việt Revolutionary Party]]'', an underground group founded in 1924, which introduced him to [[communism]].<ref>Macdonald 1993, p. 20.</ref> He returned to Hue and continued his political activities. He was arrested in 1930 for taking part in student protests and served 13 months of a two-year sentence at [[Lao Bảo Prison]].<ref name="RFI"/> By Giáp's own account the reason for his release was lack of evidence against him.<ref>Macdonald 1993, p. 21.</ref> He joined the [[Communist Party of Vietnam]] in 1931<ref name="RFI"/> and took part in several demonstrations against French rule in [[Indochina]] as well as assisting in founding the Democratic Front in 1933.

Although he denied it, Giáp was said by the historian Cecil B. Currey<ref>Currey 2005, pp. 28–31.</ref> to have also spent some time in the prestigious Hanoi [[Lycée Albert Sarraut]], where the local elite was educated to serve the colonial regime. He was said to have been in the same class as [[Phạm Văn Đồng]], a future Prime Minister, who also denied studying at Albert Sarraut, and [[Bảo Đại]], the last [[Emperor of Annam]]. From 1933 to 1938, Giáp studied at [[Vietnam National University, Hanoi|the Indochinese University in Hanoi]]<ref name="RFI"/><ref>Currey 2005, p. 36.</ref> where he earned a bachelor's degree in law with a major in political economy.