Master Course Prof. M.

Manaa

Vietnam War summary

The Vietnam War is the commonly used name for the Second Indochina War, 1954–1973. Usually,
it refers to the period when the United States and other members of the SEATO (Southeast Asia
Treaty Organization) joined the forces of the Republic of South Vietnam in contesting communist
forces comprised of South Vietnamese guerrillas and regular-force units, generally known as Viet
Cong (VC), and the North Vietnamese Army (NVA). The U.S. had the largest foreign military
presence and basically directed the war from 1965 to 1968. For this reason, in Vietnam today it is
known as the American War. It was a direct result of the First Indochina War (1946–1954) between
France, which claimed Vietnam as a colony, and the communist forces then known as Viet Minh. In
1973 a "third" Vietnam war began—a continuation, actually—between North and South Vietnam
but without significant U.S. involvement. It ended with communist victory in April 1975.

The Vietnam War was the longest in U.S. history, until the war in Afghanistan that began in 2002
and continues at this writing (2013). It was extremely divisive in the U.S., Europe, Australia and
elsewhere. Because the U.S. failed to achieve a military victory and the Republic of South Vietnam
was ultimately taken over by North Vietnam, the Vietnam experience became known as "the only
war America ever lost." It remains a very controversial topic that continues to affect political and
military decisions today.

Casualties in the Vietnam War

The U.S. suffered over 47,000 killed in action plus another 11,000 noncombat deaths; over 150,000
were wounded and 10,000 missing.

Casualties for the Republic of South Vietnam will never be adequately resolved. Low estimates
calculate 110,000 combat KIA and a half-million wounded. Civilian loss of life was also very
heavy, with the lowest estimates around 415,000.

Similarly, casualty totals among the VC and NVA and the number of dead and wounded civilians in
North Vietnam cannot be determined exactly. In April 1995, Vietnam’s communist government
said 1.1 million combatants had died between 1954 and 1975, and another 600,000 wounded.
Civilian deaths during that time period were estimated at 2 million, but the U.S. estimate of
civilians killed in the north at 30,000.

Among South Vietnam’s other allies, Australia had over 400 killed and 2,400 wounded; New
Zealand, over 80 KIA ; Republic of Korea, 4,400 KIA; and Thailand 350 killed.

North Vietnam, South Vietnam

Vietnam has a long history of being ruled by foreign powers, and this led many Vietnamese to see
the United States’ involvement in their country as neo-colonialism. China conquered the northern
part of modern Vietnam in 111 BC and retained control until 938 AD; it continued to exert some
control over the Vietnamese until 1885. Originally, Vietnam ended at the 17th parallel, but it
gradually conquered all the area southward along the coastline of the South China Sea and west to
Cambodia. Population in the south was mostly clustered in a few areas along the coast; the north
always enjoyed a larger population. The two sections were not unlike North and South in the United
States prior to the Civil War; their people did not fully trust each other.
France’s military involvement in Vietnam began when it sent warships in 1847, ostensibly to
protect Christians from the ruling emperor Gia Long. Before the 1880s, the French controlled
Vietnam. In the early 20th century, Vietnamese nationalism began to rise, clashing with the French
colonial rulers. By the time of World War II, a number of groups sought Vietnamese independence
but as Vo Nguyen Giap—who would build Vietnam’s post–WWII army—expressed it, the
communists were the best organized and most action-oriented of these groups.

During the Second World War, Vichy France could do little to protect its colony from Japanese
occupation. Post-war, the French tried to re-establish control but faced organized opposition from
the Viet Minh (short for Viet Nam Doc Lap Dong Minh Hoi, or League for the Independence of
Vietnam), led by Ho Chi Minh and Giap. The French suffered a major defeat at Dien Bien Phu in
1954, leading to negotiations that ended with the Geneva Agreements, July 21, 1954. Under those
agreements, Cambodia and Laos—which had been part of the French colony—received their
independence. Vietnam, however, was divided at the 17th parallel. Ho Chi Minh led a communist
government in the north (Democratic Republic of Vietnam) with its capital at Hanoi, and a new
Republic of South Vietnam was established under President Ngo Dinh Diem, with its capital at
Saigon.

The division was supposed to be temporary: elections were to be held in both sections in 1956 to
determine the country’s future. When the time came, however, Diem resisted the elections; the
more populous north would certainly win. Hanoi re-activated the Viet Minh to conduct guerilla
operations in the south, with the intent of destabilizing President Diem’s government. In July 1959,
North Vietnam’s leaders passed an ordinance called for continued socialist revolution in the north
and a simultaneous revolution in South Vietnam.

Some 80,000 Vietnamese from the south had moved to the north after the Geneva Agreements were
signed. (Ten times as many Vietnamese had fled the north, where the Communist Party was killing
off its rivals, seizing property, and oppressing the large Catholic population.) A cadre was drawn
from those who went north; they were trained, equipped and sent back to the south to aid in
organizing and guiding the insurgency. (Some in the North Vietnamese government thought the
course of war in the south was unwise, but they were overruled.) Although publicly the war in the
south was described as a civil war within South Vietnam, it was guided, equipped and reinforced by
the communist leadership in Hanoi. The insurgency was called the National Liberation Front (PLF);
however, its soldiers and operatives became more commonly known by their opponents as the Viet
Cong (VC), short for Vietnamese Communists. The VC were often supplemented by units of the
People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN), more often called simply the North Vietnamese Army (NVA)
by those fighting against it. Following the Tet Offensive of 1968, the NVA had to assume the major
combat role because the VC was decimated during the offensive.

United States Military Advisors in Vietnam

The U.S., which had been gradually exerting influence after the departure of the French
government, backed Diem in order to limit the area under communist control. Mao Zedong’s
Communist Party had won the Chinese Civil War in 1949, and western governments—particularly
that of the U.S—feared communist expansion throughout Southeast Asia. This fear evolved into the
"Domino Theory"; if one country fell to communist control, its neighbors would also soon fall like
a row of dominos. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) advised that was not the case—America
had a strong military presence in the Pacific that would serve as a deterrent. Earlier, "Wild Bill"
Donovan, head of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the World War II forerunner of the CIA,
had also advised that the U.S. had nothing to gain and much to lose by becoming involved in what
was then French Indochina.
A different feeling prevailed among many within the U.S. government. The communist takeover of
China and subsequent war in Korea (1950-53) against North Korean and Chinese troops had
focused a great deal of attention on Southeast Asia as a place to take a strong stand against the
spread of communism. During President Dwight Eisenhower’s administration (1953–1961),
financial aid was given to pay South Vietnam’s military forces and American advisors were sent to
help train them. The first American fatality was Air Force Technical Sergeant Richard B.
Fitzgibbon, Jr., killed June 8, 1956. (His son, Marine Corps lance corporal Richard Fitzgibbon III
would be killed in action in Vietnam September 7, 1965. They were the only father-son pair to die
in Vietnam.) In July 1959 Major Dale Buis and Master Sergeant Chester Ovnand were off duty
when they were killed during an attack at Bien Hoa.

Ho Chi Minh had been educated in Paris. There is considerable debate over whether he was
primarily nationalist or communist, but he was not especially anti-Western. (An American medic
treated him during World War II, probably saving his life.) Ho attempted to contact Eisenhower to
discuss Vietnam but received no answer. "Ike" may not have seen the message, but at any rate he
was focused on establishing NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) as a wall against
additional communist advances in Europe and was intent on securing France’s participation in
NATO. That would have made any negotiation with Ho politically ticklish. A lingering question of
the war is what might have happened if Eisenhower and Ho had arranged a meeting; possibly, an
accord could have been reached, or possibly Ho was simply seeking to limit American involvement,
in order to more easily depose the Diem government.

American Military Involvement Escalates

American involvement began to escalate under President John F. Kennedy’s administration

(January 1961–November 1963). North Vietnam, had by then established a presence in Laos and
developed the Ho Chi Minh Trail through that country in order to resupply and reinforce its forces
in South Vietnam. Kennedy saw American efforts in Southeast Asia almost as a crusade and
believed increasing the military advisor program, coupled with political reform in South Vietnam,
would strengthen the south and bring peace. Two U.S. helicopter units arrived in Saigon in 1961.
The following February a "strategic hamlet" program began; it forcibly relocated South Vietnamese
peasants to fortified strategic hamlets. Based on a program the British had employed successfully
against insurgents in Malaya, it didn’t work in Vietnam. The peasants resented being forced from
their ancestral lands, and consolidating them gave the VC better targets. The program, which had
been poorly managed, was abandoned after about two years, following the coup that deposed Diem.

Diem fell from favor with his American patrons, partly over disagreements in how to handle the
war against the VC and partly because of his unpopular suppression of religious sects and anyone
he feared threatened his regime. Buddhists, who comprised South Vietnam’s majority, claimed
Diem, a Catholic, favored citizens of his religion in distributing aid. He, in turn, called the
Buddhists VC sympathizers. On June 11, 1963, an elderly Buddhist monk named Thich Quang Duc
sat down in the street in front of a pagoda in Saigon to protest Diem’s policies. Two younger monks
poured a mix of gasoline and jet fuel over him and, as the three had planned, set fire to him.
Associated Press correspondent Malcolm "Mal" Browne photographed him sitting quietly in the
lotus position as the flames consumed him. The photo was published worldwide under the title "The
Ultimate Protest," raising (or in some cases reinforcing) doubts about the government that the
democratic United States was supporting. Seven more such immolations occurred that year. To
make matters worse, Diem responded by sending troops to raid pagodas.

In November, a coup deposed Diem, with the blessing of Kennedy’s administration, which had
quietly assured South Vietnam’s military leaders it was not adverse to a change in leadership and
military aid would continue. The administration was caught by surprise, however, when Diem was
murdered during the coup, which was led by General Duong Van Minh. This began a series of
destabilizing changes in government leadership.

That same month, Kennedy himself was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. His successor, Lyndon
Baines Johnson, inherited the Vietnam situation. Johnson wanted to focus on instituting "Great
Society" programs at home, but Vietnam was a snake he did not dare let go of. His political party,
the Democrats, had been blamed for China falling to communism; withdrawing from Vietnam could
hurt them in the 1964 elections. On the other hand, Congress had never declared war and so the
president was limited in what he could do in Southeast Asia.

Gulf of Tonkin Incident

That changed in August 1964. On August 2, two North Vietnamese torpedo boats in broad daylight
engaged USS Maddox, which was gathering communications intelligence in the Gulf of Tonkin.
Two nights later, Maddox and the destroyer USS Turner Joy were on patrol in the Gulf and reported
they were under attack. The pilot of an F-8E Crusader did not see any ships in the area where the
enemy was reported, and years later crew members said they never saw attacking craft. An
electrical storm was interfering with the ships’ radar and may have given the impression of
approaching attack boats.

Congress swiftly passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution that removed most restrictions from the
president in regards to Vietnam. By year’s end, 23,000 American military personnel would be in
South Vietnam. Though a congressional investigative committee the previous year had warned that
America could find itself slipping into in a morass that would require more and more military
participation in Vietnam, Johnson began a steady escalation of the war, hoping to bring it to a quick
conclusion. Ironically, the leadership of North Vietnam came to a similar conclusion: they had to
inflict enough casualties on Americans to end support for the war on the U.S. homefront and force a
withdrawal before the U.S. could build up sufficient numbers of men and material to defeat them.

On September 30, 1964, the first large-scale antiwar demonstration took place in America, on the
campus of the University of California at Berkeley. The war became the central rallying point of a
burgeoning youth counterculture, and the coming years would see many such demonstrations,
dividing generations and families..

On Christmas Eve, in Saigon, a VC set off an explosive at the American officers’ billet in the old
Brink Hotel, killing two Americans and 51 South Vietnamese. This would be a war without a front
or a rear; it would involve full-scale combat units and individuals carrying out terrorist activities
such as the Brink Hotel bombing. Both the Army of the Republic of South Vietnam (ARVN) and
the VC used torture, to extract information or to cowl opposition.

General William C. Westmoreland

In previous war, progress and setbacks could be shown on maps; large enemy units could be
engaged and destroyed. Guerrilla warfare (asymmetrical warfare) does not permit such clear-cut
data. This presented the new MACV commander (Military Assistance Command, Vietnam),
General William C. Westmoreland with a thorny challenge: how to show the American people
progress was being made.

Westmoreland adopted a search-and-destroy policy to find and engage the enemy and use superior
firepower to destroy him. Success was measured in "body count." It was to be a war of attrition and
statistics, a policy that suited Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, who distrusted the military
and often bypassed the Joint Chiefs of Staff in issuing directives. Every major engagement between
U.S. forces and VC or NVA was an American victory, and the casualty (body count) ratio always
showed significantly larger casualties for the communist forces than for the Americans. The body
count policy fell into disfavor and was not employed in future American wars; in Vietnam it led
officers to inflate enemy casualties. The VC and NVA dragged off as many of their dead and
wounded as possible, sometimes impressing villagers into performing this task during battles, so
determining their casualties was guesswork based on such things as the number of blood trails.

On the other side, the same thing was occurring, with even more inflated numbers—vastly more.
Both sides were fighting a war of attrition, so communist commanders sent Hanoi battle reports that
often were pure fantasy. One example, cited in Grab Their Belts to Fight Them: The Viet Cong’s
Big-Unit War Against the U.S., 1965–1966, by Warren Wilkins (Naval Institute Press, 2011), is a
description of the first major battle between the VC and American Forces—U.S. Marines—near
Van Truong, from the VC point of view. It claimed,"In one day of ferocious fighting we had
eliminated from the field of battle a total of 919 American troops, had knocked out 22 enemy
vehicles and 13 helicopters, and had captured one M-14 rifle." Marine losses actually were 45 dead,
203 wounded, and a few vehicles damaged.

On February 7, 1965, the U.S. Air Force began bombing selected sites in North Vietnam. This grew
into the operation known as Rolling Thunder that began on March 2, 1965, and continued to
November 2, 1968. Its primary goal was to demoralize the North Vietnamese and diminish their
manufacturing and transportation abilities. An air war was the most that could be done north of the
17th parallel, because the use of ground troops had been ruled out. North Vietnam was a prodigy of
both the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and Red China. On July 9, 1964, China had announced
it would step in if the U.S. attacked North Vietnam, as China had done in the Korean War. North
Vietnamese officers, after the war, said the only thing they feared was an American-led invasion of
the north, but the U.S. was not going to risk starting World War III, and at the time that seemed to
loom as a distinct possibility.

Tet—the Turning Point

By the end of 1967, there were 540,000 American troops in Vietnam, and the military draft was set
to call up 302,000 young men in the coming year, an increase of 72,000 over 1967. Financial costs
had risen to $30 billion a year. But the war news was hopeful. The South Vietnamese Army was
showing improvement, winning 37 of their last 45 major engagements. American troops had won
every major battle they fought, and General Nguyen Van Thieu had come to power in South
Vietnam in September; he would remain in office until 1975, bringing a new measure of stability to
the government, though he could not end its endemic corruption. Antiwar protests continued across
America and in many other countries, but on April 28, 1967, Gen. Westmoreland became the first
battlefield commander ever to address a joint session of Congress in wartime, and Time magazine
named him Man of the Year. In an interview he was asked if there was light at the end of the tunnel,
and he responded that the U.S. and its allies had turned a corner in Vietnam.

On January 30, 1968, during Vietnam’s celebration of Tet, the lunar new year, VC and NVA units
launched a massive attack in every province of South Vietnam. They struck at least 30 provincial
capitals and the major cities of Saigon and Hue. American intelligence knew an attack was coming,
though the Army had downplayed a New York Times report of large communist troop movements
heading south. The timing and scale of the offensive caught ARVN, the U.S. and other SEATO
troops by surprise, however. They responded quickly, recapturing lost ground and decimating an
enemy who had "finally come out to fight in the open." Communist losses were extremely heavy.
The VC was effectively finished; it would not field more than 25,000–40,000 troops at any time for
the remainder of the war. The NVA had to take over. It was one of the most resounding defeats in
all of military history—until it became a victory.
News footage showed the fighting in Saigon and Hue. The Tet Offensive shocked Americans at
home, who thought the war was nearing victory. Initially, however, homefront support for the war
effort grew, but by March Americans, perceiving no change in strategy that would bring the war to
a conclusion, became increasingly disillusioned. CBS evening news anchor Walter Cronkite
returned to Vietnam to see for himself what was happening. He had been a war correspondent
during World War II and had reported from Vietnam during America’s early involvement. In 1972
a poll determined he was "the most trusted man in America."

In a February 27, 1968, broadcast he summed up what he had found during his return trip to the war
zone. He closed by saying:

To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of the evidence, the
optimists who have been wrong in the past. To suggest we are on the edge of defeat is to
yield to unreasonable pessimism. To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only
realistic, yet unsatisfactory, conclusion. On the off chance that military and political analysts
are right, in the next few months we must test the enemy’s intentions, in case this is indeed
his last big gasp before negotiations. But it is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only
rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who
lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could.

President Johnson, watching the broadcast, said, "If we’ve lost Walter Cronkite, we’ve lost the
country." In May, Johnson announced he would not run for reelection. He also said there would be
a pause in the air attacks on North Vietnam as "the first step to de-escalate" and promised America
would substantially reduce "the present level of hostilities."

Adding to Americans’ disillusionment was the race issue. Tensions between blacks and whites had
been intensifying for years as African Americans sought to change centuries-old racial policies. The
Civil Rights Movement had produced significant victories, but many blacks had come to describe
Vietnam as "a white man’s war, a black man’s fight." Between 1961 and 1966, black males
accounted for about 13 percent of the U.S. population and less than 10 percent of military personnel
but almost 20 percent of all combat-related deaths. That disparity would decline before the war
ended, but the racial tensions at home began to insert themselves into the military in Vietnam,
damaging unit morale.

Even white troops were beginning to protest. One day in October 1969, fifteen members of the
American Division wore black armbands while they were on patrol, the symbol antiwar protestors
wore in the states. Earlier, in March 1968, the American Division had been involved in what
became known as the My Lai Massacre, in which over 100 men, women and children were killed.
Similar, even larger, atrocities were conducted by VC and NVA units—such as an NVA attack on a
Buddhist orphanage at An Hoa in September 1970 or the execution of 5,000 people at Hue during
the Tet Offensive—but the concept of American soldiers killing civilians in cold blood was more
than many Americans could bear. Support for the war eroded further. Some antiwar protestors
blamed the men and women who served in Vietnam, taunting them and spitting on them when they
came home. Military personnel, including nurses, were warned not to wear their uniforms in the
States. However, polls consistently showed the majority of Americans supported the war.

Richard Nixon’s War

Republican Richard Nixon won the presidency in the fall elections. Emphasis switched to
"Vietnamization," preparing South Vietnam’s military to take over responsibility for continuing the
war. General Westmoreland had been promoted to Army Chief of Staff and replaced in Vietnam by
Gen. Creighton Abrams. For the first time, MACV worked with South Vietnam’s government to
create annual plans. Security was improving even as American forces were in the process of
withdrawing.

Then, on March 30, 1972, the North Vietnamese attacked across the 17th parallel with 14 divisions
and additional individual regiments. Better armed than ever before, thanks to increased aid from the
Soviet Union, they employed tanks for the first time.

The ARVN bent but did not break. By June they had stalled the invasion, with the help of American
airpower. The NVA suffered some 120,000 casualties. American drawdown continued, with only
43,000 personnel left in-country by mid-August.

In retaliation for the invasion, and in hopes of forcing Hanoi to negotiate in good faith, Nixon
ordered Haiphong harbor in North Vietnam to be mined and he intensified bombing of North
Vietnam. Hanoi offered to restart peace talks, yet remained intransigent in its demands. Frustrated,
Nixon ordered the big bombers—B-52s—to strike Hanoi, beginning December 16 (Operation
LINEBACKER). In less than two weeks, these strategic bombers had shattered the north’s defenses.
On January 27, 1973, peace accords were signed between North Vietnam and the U.S.

The ceasefire allowed Nixon to declare "peace with honor," but no provisions existed for enforcing
the terms of the accords. North Vietnam spent two years rebuilding its military; South Vietnam was
hamstrung in its responses by a fear the U.S. Congress would cut off all aid if it took military action
against communist buildup. Its army lacked reserves, while the NVA was growing.

On March 5, 1975, the NVA invaded again. ARVN divisions in the north were surrounded and
routed. No American air strikes came to aid the overstretched South Vietnamese, despite Nixon’s
earlier assurances to Thieu. To its own surprise, Hanoi found its forces advancing rapidly toward
Saigon, realized victory was at hand, and renamed the operation the Ho Chi Minh Offensive. On
April 30, their tanks entered Saigon. American helicopters rescued members of its embassy and
flew some South Vietnamese to safety, but most were left behind. North and South Vietnam were
combined into the Socialist Republic of Vietnam in 1976.

The domino fell but did not take down any of those around it. Although America’s war in Vietnam
failed to salvage the Republic of South Vietnam, it bought time in which neighboring countries
improved their economies and defensive capabilities, and it may have discouraged greater
communist activism in places like the Philippines.

The Media and Vietnam

One of the lingering legacies of the Vietnam War is the widespread belief in America that "the
media cost us the war in Vietnam." Images such as the burning monk; South Vietnamese Police
Chief Lt. Col. Nguyen Ngoc Loan about to pull the trigger of a pistol pointed at the head of a bound
VC prisoner; of a naked young girl running crying down a road after an American napalm strike
that left her badly burned—these images and others became seared into the minds of Americans on
the homefront, and in those of civilians in allied nations such as Australia.

Never before or since have journalists been given such complete access to cover a war. Unlike
previous wars, where only still images or short movie newsreels were available for conveying
images, this was America’s first television war. Images of fighting, of dead and wounded soldiers,
of POWs held in North Vietnam were beamed into America’s living rooms night after night, as was
footage of hundreds, sometimes thousands of antiwar protestors marching through the streets. Such
images pack tremendous emotional punch but often lack context. The photo of the South
Vietnamese police chief, for example, cannot by itself explain he had just seen the dead body of a
close friend minutes before; even Eddie Adams, the photojournalist who snapped the photo felt it
unfairly maligned Lt. Col. Loan.

Undoubtedly, news media played an important role in Americans saying, "Enough." Indeed, Vo
Nyugen Giap had always envisioned using media as one of his spear points for victory. He has
written that he was prepared for a 25-year war; he realized he did not have to achieve military
victory; he only had to avoid losing.

Yet, to say the media cost America victory in Vietnam is vastly oversimplifying a very complex
situation. As noted above, a number of sources warned U.S. leaders against becoming embroiled in
Southeast Asia. Corruption and instability in South Vietnam’s government did not instill confidence
in its people, or in the Americans working with it. Ruling out an invasion of North Vietnam assured
that a purely military victory would not be possible, a fact that was at odds with many Americans’
expectations for the war.

The Vietnam War remains a very controversial subject. It is unlikely historians will ever agree on
whether it was necessary or what benefits derived from it.
 The Vietnam War Summary and Analysis

As World War I came to a close, a young Vietnamese patriot named Nguyen That Thanh arrived in
Paris to speak with the powerful men negotiating the terms for peace. On behalf of his people living
within the French empire in Indochina, Thanh sought to lobby the Western leaders for greater
rights. He hoped to take American President Woodrow Wilson up on his promise of "self-
determination," the principle of national sovereignty, and free Vietnam from colonial rule. But
Thanh, like many other advocates of colonial independence who descended upon the Paris peace
talks, discovered that the pledge was too good to be true. The British and the French refused to
enforce self-rule for their colonies, and despite Thanh's direct appeal to President Wilson, the three
powers ultimately ignored the young Vietnamese nationalist.

In the following years, Thanh, disillusioned by the Western democratic process, pursued new and
more radical solutions to imperial rule in his country. He had been deeply impressed by the success
of the 1917 Russian Revolution, and by the ability of the Bolsheviks to rally support among the
Soviet masses. So in the 1920s, while still in France, he joined the Communist Party. With the
adopted name Ho Chi Minh, meaning "enlightened one," he planned to take his teachings home to
Vietnam to awaken his own people, to unite and train them, and to lead them in their own
revolution.

Ho Chi Minh's Declaration of Independence

By 1941, Ho Chi Minh was preparing for the independence movement in Vietnam; but it appeared
that the struggle would not be against French rule after all. World War II was under way, and the
Japanese—allied with Germany and Italy against Britain and France—had seized French Indochina.
Minh, along with fellow Vietnamese nationalists, organized the Viet Minh, a military league
committed to the fight for Vietnamese self-rule. Aided by both the Soviet Union and the United
States during the war years, the Viet Minh waged a guerilla campaign against the Japanese
occupation. When in August 1945, Japan surrendered to the Allied powers and relinquished its
holdings in Indochina, Ho Chi Minh became confident that he and the Viet Minh would at last gain
control of the country. So sure was the nationalist leader of this fate that in early September he
announced the creation of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. Directly referencing the American
Declaration of Independence, Minh addressed his people: "All men are created equal. They are
endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights. Among these are Life, Liberty, and the
pursuit of Happiness."36

But another opportunity for decolonization had been only an illusion. Allied leaders overruled Ho
Chi Minh, agreeing that postwar Vietnam would be split in two; Minh's nationalist forces did not
gain control over either the North or the South, and no Western power recognized his Democratic
Republic. What's more, France wanted to reclaim its lost colony. But Ho Chi Minh and the Viet
Minh were well prepared to resist those efforts, and by the end of 1946, the Franco-Vietnamese War
had begun.

To Prevent the Spread of Communism

Meanwhile, with the end of World War II, the United States and its one-time ally, the Soviet Union,
clashed over the reorganization of the postwar world. Each perceived the other as a significant
threat to its national security, its institutions, and its influence over the globe. To the United States,
the USSR was a Communist menace, intent on spreading its anti-democratic ideals by any means
necessary. American foreign policy, then, became increasingly dedicated the destruction of
governments perceived as friendly to the Soviet power, and to the preservation of those regimes
willing to fight Communism.

World War II had sparked anti-colonial movements across the globe, and the United States
government had, for the most part, supported self-determination for colonized nations. But the U.S.
knowingly contributed to the expansion of imperialism by vowing to support the French against Ho
Chi Minh's struggle to establish an independent—and Communist—Vietnam. With the Soviet threat
growing, concerns over a Communist takeover in Vietnam far outweighed anti-imperialist ideals.

Sacrificing Democracy for Democracy

But the Communists succeeded in Vietnam; in 1954, with the decisive Viet Minh victory at the
battle of Dien Bien Phu, French forces surrendered and agreed to a set of treaties. In these Geneva
Accords, the French accepted the Viet Minh's demands to evacuate all troops from Vietnam.
Though northern and southern regions remained divided, the Accords stated that in two years
unification would be possible through the implementation of nationwide free elections. In July
1956, the Vietnamese people would have a chance to decide whether they preferred to unite under a
Communist regime (based in the North) or under a pro-Western (pro-French) government.

As the first President of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in the North, Ho Chi Minh hoped to
avoid further setbacks and see national elections administered in 1956 as promised. Minh,
considered by many Vietnamese—in the North as well as the South—to be the valiant hero of their
liberation, was confident that he would win the election against any opponent representing the
government in the South. But Minh's plan for the peaceful reunification of Vietnam all depended on
whether the Geneva Accords would be observed by the South Vietnamese government, its leader
Ngo Dinh Diem, and the Western power supporting both—the United States. Diem's regime and the
United States government refused to acknowledge both the Accords and the plan for national
elections. Again, Ho Chi Minh's plan for Vietnamese independence had been foiled.

In an effort to strengthen a democratic, anti-Communist state in South Vietnam in opposition to

Minh's Communist regime in the North, the United States inadvertently produced a tyrannical,
autocratic government. Premier Diem, much to the dismay of leaders in Washington, was an
extremely unpopular leader who refused to allow his people to participate in the democratic process
and instead punished his opposition. Still, for eight years, the U.S. government poured military and
economic aid into South Vietnam to bolster Diem's regime, a partnership that would set the stage
for the most disastrous war in American history.

America's Fatal Illusions

By the end of 1964, the American War in Vietnam was in full swing. But against whom, exactly,
were the Americans fighting? It wasn't entirely clear to U.S. political and military leaders. By the
early 1960s, the communist-led National Liberation Front (NLF) and its military arm, the Viet
Cong, had launched a full-scale guerrilla revolution against Ngo Dinh Diem and the American-
supported Republic of Vietnam in the South. The NLF and the Viet Cong were founded in the
South and largely independent of the North. Yet, in order to crush the resistance in South Vietnam,
the United States launched an aggressive campaign against Ho Chi Minh and the government in
North Vietnam. Why?

It may seem illogical, but in fact it made perfect sense to leaders in Washington who assumed that
revolting factions in South Vietnam were controlled by Communist powers in the North, who were,
in turn, supported by the Communist regimes in China and the Soviet Union. To destroy the
resistance in the South—and to defend against the spread of Communism throughout the globe—it
seemed vital to crush the regime in North Vietnam.

American leaders made grave errors in escalating the war in Vietnam. Several presidents, and their
political and military advisors, presumed that aerial bombardment in the North would ease the
ground war in the South by cutting off supply lines to the Viet Cong and ultimately forcing
Communist leaders to surrender. During the ten most brutal years of the Vietnam War, the United
States clung to two fatal illusions: it assumed that military might and superior firepower would win
the war, and it underestimated—and, frankly, misunderstood—the fierce nationalism that drove the
Vietnamese resistance and justified inconceivable sacrifices. Cluster bombs, napalm air strikes,
search and destroy missions, water torture, deadly chemical sprays, and huge numbers of casualties
(by 1967, some 3,000 Vietnamese casualties were reported each month) did little to break the will
of the American enemy, and never ensured a U.S. victory.

The Unwinnable War

The reality was that the war in Vietnam was not about two separate countries; for the Vietnamese,
this was a war about one country with two warring factions, and the weaker of those two had
essentially been created and certainly bolstered by the U.S. The aim of the American war campaign
—to grind down the enemy until the Communists in the North agreed to abandon their bid for
control of the South—was impossible.

By the time the United States realized that the war was utterly unwinnable, it was already too late.
In 1973, when President Nixon withdrew the last U.S. ground troops, nearly 60,000 Americans
were dead, thousands more suffered from the physical and psychological repercussions of the brutal
warfare in the jungles of Vietnam, and the American people had learned to distrust their leaders and
to question their nation's essential values.

In 1975, South Vietnamese government forces surrendered to the NLF and the North Vietnamese
Army. Vietnam was, at last, united—and united under a Communist government. The U.S. had
officially failed to achieve its original objectives.A nation accustomed to grand victories suffered its
first major defeat; the "longest war" was a military, political, and social disaster, one that would
haunt Americans for decades.
 The Sixties in the United States

What do you imagine when you think of "The Sixties"? Music festivals, sit-in demonstrations,
marches, and picket signs with bold messages? Definitely tie-dye. We tend to remember this
notorious decade in terms of cultural changes at home: innovative music, new perspectives on life,
glorious causes, and, of course, colorful—very colorful—fashion.

This period in American history is certainly characterized by all of these things, and more often
than not it is with these images that Americans today prefer to remember it. But the event, more
than any other, that dominated this decade is the same event that many would prefer to forget—the
Vietnam War.

"Nam." In the United States, this one-syllable word has come to mean many things for many
different people with various class, racial, political, and national backgrounds. This tiny word
carries tremendous weight; it can incite a slough of feelings, including sorrow, regret, anger,
revulsion, embarrassment, betrayal, and confusion. Many would rather forget it altogether,
particularly those who think of this war as one of—if not the—most disastrous periods in American
history.

And Vietnam was, in fact, a monumental catastrophe. But not simply because it was the first major
loss for the U.S., and not simply because the U.S. failed to defeat Communism—its most despised
enemy during the Cold War. The Vietnam War, a conflict that lasted approximately fifteen years
(far longer than any other war fought by the U.S.), was a political, economic, and military
nightmare all along the way. And the mistakes made, lies told, and lives lost continue to haunt
Americans today, in obvious and not-so-obvious ways.

But why? What makes this war so uniquely awful for the United States?

Was it the loss of life? Certainly it was for those personally affected by a warfront death, but in
terms of total casualties the Vietnam War was relatively benign. Seven times more Americans
perished in World War II; in the U.S. Civil War, America's most bloody war, more than 600,000
Americans died—over ten times the number of Americans killed in the Vietnam War. Vietnam lost
far more of its people in the war; reports estimate that some 2 million South Vietnamese and 2
million North Vietnamese men and women died—70 times more than the number of U.S.
casualties.

Was it the fact that five American presidents failed to end the fighting abroad? Yes, in part.
Disastrous errors in foreign policy-making in Southeast Asia marred each presidential
administration from Truman to Nixon, and all along the way, political leaders strained to hide these
mistakes or, at least, to dismiss them. As a result, the vast majority of Americans lost a great deal of
confidence in their government—a deeply significant transformation that would spark the kind of
political cynicism familiar to us today.

Was it that the United States, a nation that had emerged from World War II as the greatest military
power on the globe, lost to a small, relatively poor revolutionary militia? Definitely not from the
perspective of the Vietnamese, who sought to gain independence, expel the foreign occupation, and
reunify their country. For them, the Americans—or any imperial force, no matter how big or strong
—stood no chance against their passionate crusade for a free Vietnam.

Perhaps the greatest tragedy for the U.S. was not that it made mistakes or that it lost, but that it
failed to accept the possibility that it might actually lose. For this reason, five presidents were
doomed to grapple with the conflict, and Americans from all walks of life were destined to deal
with a new uncertainty about the future.

There's no doubt that the Vietnam War was an extremely confusing conflict, one in which nothing
much was clear; in the United States, political and military leaders, G.I.s, anti-war protesters, and
pro-war patriots all struggled to wrap their heads around all that was at stake. Some forty years
later, historians have helped us gain some perspective on it all, but it still remains a complex topic.
 Overview of the Vietnam War

Vietnam was the longest war in American history and the most unpopular American war of the 20th
century. It resulted in nearly 60,000 American deaths and in an estimated 2 million Vietnamese
deaths. Even today, many Americans still ask whether the American effort in Vietnam was a sin, a
blunder, a necessary war, or whether it was a noble cause, or an idealistic, if failed, effort to protect
the South Vietnamese from totalitarian government.

Summary:

Between 1945 and 1954, the Vietnamese waged an anti-colonial war against France, which received
$2.6 billion in financial support from the United States. The French defeat at the Dien Bien Phu was
followed by a peace conference in Geneva. As a result of the conference, Laos, Cambodia, and
Vietnam received their independence, and Vietnam was temporarily divided between an anti-
Communist South and a Communist North. In 1956, South Vietnam, with American backing,
refused to hold unification elections. By 1958, Communist-led guerrillas, known as the Viet Cong,
had begun to battle the South Vietnamese government.

In 1961, South Vietnam signed a military and economic aid treaty with the United States leading to
the arrival (1961) of U.S. support troops and the formation (1962) of the U.S. Military Assistance
Command. Mounting dissatisfaction with the ineffectiveness and corruption of Diem's government
culminated (Nov., 1963) in a military coup engineered by Duong Van Minh; Diem was executed.
No one was able to establish control in South Vietnam until June, 1965, when Nguyen Cao Ky
became premier, but U.S. military aid to South Vietnam increased, especially after the U.S. Senate
passed the Tonkin Gulf resolution (Aug. 7, 1964) at the request of President Lyndon B. Johnson.

In early 1965, the United States began air raids on North Vietnam and on Communist-controlled
areas in the South; by 1966 there were 190,000 U.S. troops in South Vietnam. North Vietnam,
meanwhile, was receiving armaments and technical assistance from the Soviet Union and other
Communist countries. Despite massive U.S. military aid, heavy bombing, the growing U.S. troop
commitment (which reached nearly 550,000 in 1969), and some political stability in South Vietnam
after the election (1967) of Nguyen Van Thieu as president, the United States and South Vietnam
were unable to defeat the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese forces. Optimistic U.S. military reports
were discredited in Feb., 1968, by the costly and devastating Tet offensive of the North Vietnamese
army and the Viet Cong, involving attacks on more than 100 towns and cities and a month-long
battle for Hue in South Vietnam.

To support the South's government, the United States sent in 2,000 military advisors--a number that
grew to 16,300 in 1963. The military condition deteriorated, and by 1963, South Vietnam had lost
the fertile Mekong Delta to the Viet Cong. In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson escalated the war,
commencing air strikes on North Vietnam and committing ground forces--which numbered 536,000
in 1968. The 1968 Tet Offensive by the North Vietnamese turned many Americans against the war.

The next president, Richard Nixon, advocated Vietnamization, withdrawing American troops and
giving South Vietnam greater responsibility for fighting the war. In 1970, Nixon attempted to slow
the flow of North Vietnamese soldiers and supplies into South Vietnam by sending American forces
to destroy Communist supply bases in Cambodia. This act violated Cambodian neutrality and
provoked antiwar protests on the nation's college campuses.
From 1968 to 1973, efforts were made to end the conflict through diplomacy. In January 1973, an
agreement was reached; U.S. forces were withdrawn from Vietnam, and U.S. prisoners of war were
released. In April 1975, South Vietnam surrendered to the North, and Vietnam was reunited.

Consequences

1. The Vietnam War cost the United States 58,000 lives and 350,000 casualties. It also resulted in
between one and two million Vietnamese deaths.

2. Congress enacted the War Powers Act in 1973, requiring the president to receive explicit
Congressional approval before committing American forces overseas.