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When the French returned, Ho ordered Giap as Commander in Chief of the North Viet Nam army to meet General Jacques LeClerc at the airport. Giap flew into a towering rage, ranting that he would never shake hands with any Frenchman. Uncle Ho listened for a while and then said: "You have two hours before his plane arrives, so why don't you go into the corner and cry your eyes out. But be at the airport." Giap went. But such emotional outbursts led Ho to leave Giap at home when he went off to Fontainebleau to negotiate with the French. While Ho was away, Giap was virtual dictator, and he used the time with ruthless efficiency to execute hundreds of nationalist—but non-Communist—leaders. He had always been opposed to a negotiated peace with the French. When the Fontainebleau talks failed, Giap was delighted, and his eight-year war against Paris got under way.
He had already remodeled his guerrillas along Communist people's army lines, with political commissars seeded through the ranks and political indoctrination as much a part of a soldier's training as bayonetry. He had even recruited Japanese jungle-warfare instructors from the retreating enemy he had just fought, and had carefully collected every weapon the Japanese left behind. It took four years to get Phase 1 and Phase 2 going well enough to launch Phase 3—the first of his major offensives against the French forces.
Myth Enhancing. He scored some successes but more signal defeats, largely because he lacked artillery to compete with the French in set-piece conventional battles. After a stinging series of losses in 1951, Giap admitted that he had tried to push into Phase 3 too soon; he retreated into the hills and paddies to reassemble his forces. The chance for annihilation came at Dienbienphu, when the French, thinking Giap still had no heavy artillery, dropped paratroops into a valley, hoping to draw Giap into combat. But Giap had obtained over 100 American 105-mm. howitzers from the Red Chinese, carted them through the jungle and over the mountains, and pounded the French forces to pieces in the valley below. In fact, at Dienbienphu he annihilated only 4% of the French force in Viet Nam, but it was psychologically the end for the French. They were thoroughly fed up with the eight-year war that had cost them $10 billion and 172,000 dead or missing.
Afterward, Giap proudly wrote that "guerrilla warfare relies on the heroic spirit to triumph over modern weapons." It is a myth-enhancing statement, but it does not quite fit the facts of his triumph over the French. In the decisive turning point at Dienbienphu, it was not the heroic spirit of Giap's soldiers but their massive artillery in the hills that carried the day.