Mao and Giap on Partisan Warfare

Abstract

According to Liddell Hart: "He [Mao] progressively developed his guerrillas into regular forces, while exploiting a combination of the two forms of warfare." [1:363] Mao Tse-tung is considered to be one of the most determinative of all guerrilla warfare2 theoreticians, whose works and ideas in the field of military science had a great impact on irregular warfare during the Cold War and they still continue to do so nowadays. One of the most famous followers of the Chinese revolutionary was Vo Nguyen Giap, under whose military leadership the Vietnamese defeated both the French and the Americans. Based on primary resources, this essay summarises the most significant ideas on guerrilla/partisan warfare by the two military theoreticians. This essay was supported by the Janos Bolyai Research Scholarship of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]