Vietnam War
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| Vietnam War | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of the Cold War | |||||||||
| Vietnamese village after an attack Vietnamese village after an attack | |||||||||
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| Belligerents | |||||||||
 Republic of Vietnam United States Republic of Korea Thailand Australia New Zealand The Philippines |
.svg?lang=en){kind=small} Democratic Republic of Vietnam National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam People’s Republic of China Democratic People's Republic of Korea | ||||||||
| Strength | |||||||||
| ~1,200,000 (1968) | ~520,000 (1968) | ||||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||||
|
RVN dead: 230,000 wounded: 300,000 U.S.A.dead: 58,209 wounded: 153,303 R.O.K.dead: 5,000 wounded: 11,000 Australiadead: 520 |
D.R.V./N.L.F. dead: 600,000* wounded: 600,000* P.R.C.dead: 1100 wounded: 4200 | ||||||||
| Civilian dead (total Vietnamese): 1,000,000* (* = approximations, see Notes below) | |||||||||
The Vietnam War was a military conflict in which communist forces of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV or North Vietnam) and the indigenous National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam, (also known as the Việt Cộng, "VC" or "Cong") fought the anti-communist forces of the Republic of Vietnam (RVN or South Vietnam) and its allies - most notably the United States (US) - in an effort to unify Vietnam into a single independent state.
It is also known as the Vietnam Conflict, the Second Indochina War and, in the US colloquially, as Vietnam, The Nam or simply Nam. Vietnamese communists often referred to it as the American War or Kháng chiến chống Mỹ (the Resistance War Against America).
The chief cause of the war was the failure of Vietnamese nationalists, in the form of the Viet Minh, to gain control of southern Vietnam both during and after their struggle for independence from France in the First Indochina War of 1946-1954.
Allies of the Vietnamese communists included the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China. South Vietnam's main anti-communist allies were the United States, the Republic of Korea, Australia, Thailand, the Philippines, and New Zealand. The US in particular, deployed large numbers of military personnel to South Vietnam. US military advisors firsdt became involved in Vietnam as early as 1950, when they began to assist French colonial forces. In 1956, these advisors assumed full responsibility for training the Army of the Republic of Vietnam or ARVN. Large numbers of American combat troops began to arrive in 1965 and the last left the country in 1973.[2]
At various stages the conflict involved clashes between small units patrolling the mountains and jungles, guerrilla attacks in the villages and cities, and finally, large-scale conventional battles. US aircraft also conducted substantial aerial bombing campaigns, targeting both the VPA/NLF's logistical network and the cities and transportation arteries of North Vietnam. Large quantities of chemical defoliants were also sprayed from the air in an effort to reduce the cover available to VPA/NLF troops.
To some degree the Vietnam War was a "proxy war," one of several that erupted during the Cold War period that followed the conclusion of the Second World War and decolonization. These wars usually grew from localized conflicts that expanded to include the US and its Western allies on one side and the Soviet Union and/or the People's Republic of China on the other. The Korean Conflict, for example, was another such war. Proxy wars occurred because the major players - especially the US and the Soviet Union - were unwilling to fight each other directly because of the unacceptable costs a possible escalation into a nuclear exchange.
The Vietnam War was finally concluded on 30 April 1975, with the fall of the South Vietnamese capital of Saigon to North Vietnamese forces. The war had claimed millions of Vietnamese lives, a large number of whom were civilians. The casualties suffered by the US and the other allies of South Vietnam were also deeply significant.
Background
History to 1949
From 110 BC to 938 AD, (with the exception of brief periods) much of present-day Vietnam, especially the northern half, was part of China. After gaining independence, Vietnam went through a long history of resisting outside aggression. France had gained control of Indochina in a series of colonial wars beginning in the 1840s and lasting through the 1880s. At the post-World War I negotiations that led to the signing of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, Hồ Chí Minh requested Vietnamese participation in order to work to obtain independence for the Indochinese colonies. His request was rejected, and Indochina's status as a colony of France remained unchanged.
During World War II, The government of Vichy France cooperated with the occupying Imperial Japanese forces. Vietnam was under effective Japanese control, as well as de facto Japanese administrative control -- although the French continued to serve as official administrators until 1944. Hồ returned to Vietnam and formed a resistance group in the north. He was aided by teams sent in by the USOffice of Strategic Services (the precursor of today's Central Intelligence Agency). These teams worked behind enemy lines in Indochina giving support to indigenous resistance groups. In 1944, the Japanese overthrew the French administration and humiliated its colonial officials in front of the Vietnamese population. The Japanese then began to encourage nationalist activity among the Vietnamese and, late in the war, granted Vietnam nominal independence.
After the war and following the Japanese surrender, Vietnamese nationalists, communists, and other groups hoped to finally take control of the country. The Japanese army in Indochina assisted the Viet Minh -- Hồ's resistance army -- and other Vietnamese independence groups by imprisoning French officials and soldiers and handing over public buildings to the Vietnamese. On 2 September 1945, Hồ Chí Minh declared independence from France and proclaimed the formation of a new Vietnamese government under his leadership. In his exultant speech before a hugh audience, he cited the US Declaration of Independence and a band played "The Star Spangled Banner." Hồ, who had been a member of the Third Communist International since the early 1920s, hoped that the Americans would ally themselves with a Vietnamese nationalist movement, communist or otherwise. He based this hope on speeches by US President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who opposed a revival of European colonialism after World War II. Roosevelt, however, had moderated his position after the British - who wanted to keep their own colonies - objected.
The new Vietnamese government only lasted a few days, however, since it had bbeen decided at the Potsdam Conference that Vietnam would be jointly occupied by Chinese and British forces who would supervise the Japanese surrender and repatriation.[3] The Chinese army arrived in Vietnam from north only a few days after Hồ Chí Minh's declaration of independence and took over areas north of the 16th parallel. The British arrived in the south in October and supervised both the surrender and departure of the Japanese army from Indochina south of the 16th parallel. With these actions, the government of Hồ Chí Minh effectively ceased to exist. In the South, the French prevailed upon the British to turn control of the region back over to them.
French officials, when released from Japanese prisons at the end of September 1945, took matters into their own hands in some areas. In the north, France negotiated with both the nationalist government of China and the Viet Minh. By agreeing to give up Shanghai and its other concessions in China, the French persuaded the Chinese to allow them to return to northern Vietnam and negotiate with the Viet Minh. Hồ agreed to allow French forces to land outside Hanoi, while France agreed to recognize an independent Vietnam within the new French Union. In the meantime, Hồ took advantage of the period of negotiation to liquidate competing nationalist groups in the north. After failed negotiations with Hồ over the possibility of forming a government within the Union, the French entered Hanoi and the Việt Minh fled into the hills to begin an insurgency, marking the beginning of the First Indochina War. After the defeat of the Nationalists by the Communists in the Chinese Civil War, Premier Mao Zedong was able to supply direct military assistance to the Viet Minh. The Viet Minh gained the weapons, supplies, and the expertise necessary to transform themselves from a guerrilla force into a conventional army.
Harry S. Truman and Vietnam (1945-1953)
Milestones of US involvement under President Truman
- 9 March 1945 — Japan overthrows nominal French authority in Indochina and declares an independent Vietnamese puppet state. The French administration is disarmed.
- 15 August 1945 — Japan surrenders to the Allies. In Indochina, the Japanese administration allows Hồ Chí Minh to take over control of the country. This is called the August Revolution. Hồ Chí Minh borrows a phrase from the US Declaration of Independence for his own declaration. Hồ Chí Minh fights with a variety of other political factions for control of the major cities.
- August 1945 — A few days after the Vietnamese "revolution", Nationalist Chinese forces enter from the north and, as previously planned by the allies, establish an administration in the country as far south as the 16th parallel.
- 26 September 1945: OSS officer Ltieutenant Colonel A. Peter Dewey — working with the Viet Minh to repatriate Americans captured by the Japanese — is shot and killed by the Viet Minh, becoming the first American casualty in Vietnam.
- October 1945 — British troops land in southern Vietnam and establish a provisional administration. The British free French soldiers and officials imprisoned by the Japanese. The French begin taking control of cities within the British zone of occupation.
- February 1946 — The French sign an agreement with China. France gives up its concessions in Shanghai and other Chinese ports. In exchange, China agrees to assist the French in returning to Vietnam north of the 16th parallel.
- 6 March 1946 — After negotiations with the Chinese and the Viet Minh, the French sign an agreement recognizing Vietnam within the French Union. Shortly after, the French land at Haiphong and occupy the rest of northern Vietnam. The Viet Minh use the negotiating process with France and China to buy time to use their armed forces to destroy all competing nationalist groups in the north.
- December 1946 — Negotiations between the Viet Minh and the French break down. The Viet Minh are driven out of Hanoi into the countryside.
- 1947–1949 — The Viet Minh fight a limited insurgency in remote rural areas of northern Vietnam.
- 1949 — Chinese communists reach the northern border of Indochina. The Viet Minh drive the French from the border region and begin to receive large amounts of weapons from the Soviet Union and China. The weapons transform the Viet Minh from an irregular small-scale insurgency into a conventional army.
- 1 May 1950 — After the capture of Hainan Island from Chinese Nationalist forces by the Chinese Red Army, President Truman approves $10 million in military assistance for anti-communist efforts in Indochina.
- Following the outbreak of the Korean War, Truman announces "acceleration in the furnishing of military assistance to the forces of France and the Associated States in Indochina…" and sends 123 non-combat troops to help with supplies to fight against the communist Viet Minh.
- 1951 - Truman authorizes $150 million in French support.
Exit the French, 1950-1955
In the meantime, the US was also supplying its the French allies with military aid. In 1950, the US Military Assistance and Advisory Group (MAAG) arrived to screen French requests for aid, advise on strategy, and train Vietnamese soldiers.[4] In 1956, MAAG assumed from the French full responsibility for training the Vietnamese army.[5] By 1954, the US had given 300,000 small arms and machine guns, and one billion dollars to support the French military effort[6] and was shouldering at least 80% of the cost.
The Viet Minh eventually handed the French a major military defeat at Ðiện Biên Phủ. At the 1954 Geneva Conference the French government negotiated a peace agreement with the Viet Minh which allowed the French to leave Indochina and all three nations of the colony (Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam) were granted independence. However, Vietnam was temporarily partitioned at the 17th parallel, above which the Viet Minh established a socialist state, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and below which a non-communist state was established under the Emperor Bảo Đại. Bao Dai's Prime Minister, Ngo Dinh Diem, shortly thereafter removed him from power, and established himself as President of the Republic of Vietnam.
As dictated by the Geneva Accords of 1954, the partition of Vietnam was meant to be only temporary, pending free elections for a national leadership. The agreement stipulated that the two military zones, which were separated by the temporary demarcation line, "should not in any way be interpreted as constituting a political or territorial boundary," and specifically stated that "general elections shall be held in July 1956." However, the Diem government refused to enter into negotiations to hold the stipulated elections, encouraged by US unwillingness to allow a communist victory in an all-Vietnam election. Questions were also raised about the legitimacy of any poll held in the communist-run North. The US-supported government of South Vietnam justfied its refusal to comply with the Geneva Accords by virtue of the fact it had not signed them.
Beginning in the summer of 1955, Diem launched a 'Denounce the Communists' campaign, during which communists and other anti-government elements were arrested, imprisoned or executed. Also at this time, as stipulated at Geneva, refugees and regroupees moved across the demarcation line in both directions. It was estimated that around 52,000 Vietnamese civilians moved from south to north, while 450,000 (mainly Roman Catholics and supporters of the French)were air- or boat-lifted from north to south.[7]
Dwight D. Eisenhower and Vietnam (1953–1961)
Milestones of the escalation under President Eisenhower.
- 1954 — The Viet Minh defeat the French at the battle of Dien Bien Phu. The defeat, along with the end of the Korean war the previous year, causes the French to seek a negotiated settlement to the war.
- 1954 — The Geneva Conference (1954), called to determine the post-French future of Indochina, proposes a temporary division of Vietnam, to be followed by nationwide elections to unify the country in 1956.
- 1954 — Two months after the Geneva conference, North Vietnam forms Group 100 with headquarters at Ban Namèo. Its purpose is to direct, organize, train and supply the Pathet Lao to gain control of Laos, which along with Cambodia and Vietnam formed French Indochina.
- 1955 — North Vietnam launches an 'anti-landlord' campaign, during which counter-revolutionaries are imprisoned or killed. The numbers killed or imprisoned are disputed, with historian Stanley Karnow estimating about 6,000 while others (see the book "Fire in the Lake") estimate only 800. R.J. Rummel puts the figure as high as 200,000.[8]
- 1 November 1955 — Eisenhower deploys the Military Assistance Advisory Group to train the South Vietnamese Army. This marks the official beginning of American involvement in the war as recognized by the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.[9]
- April 1956 — The last French troops leave Vietnam.
- 1954–1956 — 450,000 Vietnamese civilians flee the Viet Minh administration in North Vietnam and relocate in South Vietnam. 52,000 move in the opposite direction.
- 1956 — National unification elections do not occur.
- December 1958 — North Vietnam invades Laos and occupies parts of the country
- 8 July 1959 — Charles Ovnand and Dale R. Buis become the first two American Advisors to die in Vietnam.[10]
- September 1959 — North Vietnam forms Group 959 which assumes command of the Pathet Lao forces in Laos
The Diem Era
As opposition to Diem's rule in South Vietnam grew, a low-level insurgency began to take shape there in 1957, conducted mainly by Viet Minh cadres who had remained in the south and had hidden caches of weapons in case unification failed to take place through elections. In late 1956 one of the leading communists in the south, Lê Duẩn, returned to Hanoi to urge that the Vietnam Workers' Party take a firmer stand on national reunification, but Hanoi hesitated in launching a full-scale military struggle. Finally, in January 1959, under pressure from southern cadres who were being successfully targeted by Diem's secret police, the Central Committee of the Party issued a secret resolution authorizing the use of armed struggle in the South.
In December 1960, under instruction from Hanoi, southern communists established the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam in order to overthrow the government of the south. The NLF was made up of two distinct groups: South Vietnamese intellectuals who opposed the government and were nationalists and communists who had remained in the south after the partition and regroupment of 1954 as well as those who had since come from the north. While there were many non-communist members of the NLF, they were subject to the control of the party cadres and increasingly side-lined as the conflict continued; they did, however, enable the NLF to portray itself as a primarily nationalist, rather than communist, movement.
Diem was already deeply unpopular with many of his countrymen because of his administration's nepotism, corruption, and its apparent bias in favor of the Catholic minority - of which Diem was a part - at the expense of the Buddhist majority. Promised land reforms were not carried out and Diem's strategic hamlet program for village self-defense (and government control) was a disaster. The Kennedy administration was growing increasingly frustrated with Diệm. In 1963 a crackdown by Diệm's forces was launched against Buddhist monks protesting against discriminatory practices and demanding a political voice. Diem's repression of the protests sparked the so-called Bhuddist Revolt, during which self-immolations by several monks took place and which were covered in the world press. The communists took full advantage of the situation and fueled anti-Diem sentiment to create further instability.
Some policy-makers in Washington began to believe that Diem was incapable of defeating the communists, and some even feared that he might make a deal with Ho Chi Minh. During the summer of 1963 administration officials began discussing the possibility of a regime change in Saigon. The State Department was generally in favor of encouraging a coup while the Pentagon and CIA were more alert to the destabilizing consequences of such a coup and wanted to continue applying pressure to Diem to make political changes. Chief among the proposed changes was the removal of his younger brother Ngo Dinh Nhu from all of his positions of power. Nhu was in charge of South Vietnam's secret police and was seen as the man behind the Bhuddist repression. As Diem's most powerful advisor, Nhu (along with his wife) had become a hated figure in South Vietnam, and one whose continued influence was unacceptable to all members of the Kennedy administration. Eventually the administration determined that Diem was unwilling to further modify his policies and the decision was made to remove US support from the regime. This choice was was made jointly by the State Department, Pentagon, National Security Agency, and the CIA. President Kennedy agreed with the consensus.
In November, the US embassy in Saigon communicated to the military officers that made up the conspiracy that the US would not oppose the removal of Diem. The president was overthrown by the military and later executed along with his brother. After the coup, Kennedy appeared to be genuinely shocked and dismayed by the murders. Top CIA officials were baffled that Kennedy didn't understand that this was a possible outcome. Chaos ensued in the security and defense systems of South Vietnam and, once again, Hanoi took advantage of the situation to increase its support for the insurgents in the south. South Vietnam now entered a period of extreme political instability, as one military junta replaced another in quick succession. Ironically, Kennedy was himself assassinated just three weeks after Diệm. Kennedy was automatically succeeded by Vice-President Lyndon B. Johnson, who declared on 24 November that the US would continue its support of the South Vietnamese government. During this period, the US military involvement in South Vietnam dramatically increased and the 'Americanization' of the war began.
The Saigon governments, and their new-found Western allies, portrayed their military actions as simply a defense against the use of armed violence to effect political change. At a geo-political level, the conflict was conducted in order to deter what was then perceived as expansive, Moscow-dominated communism, which had been the keystone of Western policy since the late 1940s. The Cold War paradigms of containment and the domino theory were in their heyday, and they were endlessly referred to when the issue of Vietnam came up. As far as the North Vietnamese the NLF were concerned, the conflict was a struggle to reunite the nation under a socialist government and to repel foreign aggressors and neo-colonialists - battlecries that were a virtual repeat of those of the war against the French.
John F. Kennedy and Vietnam (1961–1963)
- 20 December 1960 - The National Liberation Front of South Vietnam (NLF) is created
- January 1961 — Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev pledges support for "wars of national liberation" throughout the world. The idea of creating a neutral Laos is suggested to Kennedy.
- May 1961 — Kennedy sends 400 American United States Army Special Forces to South Vietnam to train South Vietnamese soldiers following a visit to the country by Vice-President Lyndon B. Johnson.
- June 1961 — Kennedy meets with Khrushchev in Vienna. He protests North Vietnam's attacks on Laos and points out that the US was supporting the neutrality of Laos. Both leaders agree to pursue a policy of creating a neutral Laos.
- October 1961 — Following successful NLF attacks, Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara recommends sending six divisions (200,000 men) to Vietnam. Kennedy sends just
16,000 before the end of his Presidency in 1963.
- 1 August, 1962 — Kennedy signs the Foreign Assistance Act of 1962 which provides "…military assistance to countries which are on the rim of the Communist world and under direct attack."
- 3 January 1963 — NLF victory in the Battle of Ap Bac.
- May 1963 — Buddhists riot in South Vietnam after a conflict over the display of religious flags during the celebration of Buddha's birthday. Some urge Kennedy to end US support for Ngo Dinh Diem, who is Catholic. Photographs of protesting Buddhist monks burning themselves alive appear in US newspapers.
- May 1963 — Republican Barry Goldwater declares that the US should fight to win or withdraw from Vietnam. Later on, during his presidential campaign against Lyndon Johnson, his Democratic opponents accuse him of wanting to use nuclear weapons in the conflict.
- 1 November 1963 — Military officers launch a coup d'état against Diem, with the tacit approval of the Kennedy administration. Diem leaves the presidential residence.
- 2 November, 1963 — Diem is discovered and killed by rebel leaders, along with his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu.
- 22 November, 1963 — Kennedy is assassinated.
The new administration of President John F. Kennedy remained essentially committed to the bi-partisan, anti-Communist foreign policies inherited from the administrations of Presidents Harry S. Truman]] and Dwight D. Eisenhower. In 1961 Kennedy found himself faced with a three-part crisis: The failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba; the construction of the Berlin Wall by the Soviets; and a negotiated settlement between the pro-Western government of Laos and the Pathet Lao communist movement. Fearing that another failure on the part of the US to stop communist expansion would fatally damage US credibility with its allies, Kennedy was determined to 'draw a line in the sand' and prevent a communist victory in Vietnam. "Now we have a problem in making our power credible", he said, "and Vietnam looks like the place."[11] The long-standing commitment of the United States to defend Vietnam was reaffirmed by President Kennedy on May 11 in National Security Action Memorandum 52 which became known as "The Presidential Program for Vietnam Its opening statement reads:
"US objectives and concept of operations [are] to prevent communist domination of South Vietnam; to create in that country a viable and increasingly democratic society, and to initiate, on an accelerated basis, a series of mutually supporting actions of a military, political, economic psychological, and covert character designed to achieve this objective."
Kennedy was intrigued by the idea of ustilizing US Army Special Forces for counterinsurgency conflicts in Third World countries threatened by the new "wars of national liberation". Originally intended for use behind front lines after a conventional invasion of Europe, Kennedy believed that the guerrilla tactics employed by special forces would be effective in the "brush fire" war in Vietnam. He saw British success in using such forces during the Malayan Emergency as a strategic template. Thus in May 1961 Kennedy sent detachments of Green Berets to South Vietnam to train South Vietnamese soldiers in guerilla warfare.
The Diệm regime was initially able to cope with the insurgency with the aid of US materiel and advisers, and, by 1962, seemed to be gaining the upper hand. Senior US military leaders received positive reports from the US commander, General Paul D. Harkins of the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam or MACV. By the following year, however, a communist offensive that began with the defeat of government forces at the Battle of Ap Bac and continued at Dong Xoi, inflicted major losses on ARVN units. These communist operations were the first large-scale military actions conducted by the North Vietnamese since Dien Bien Phu, and were a major departure from the assassination and guerrilla warfare campaigns that had preceded them. They were a storm warning that the insurgency was escalating into a more conventional conflict.
Escalation and Americanization
Lyndon Johnson Goes to War (1963–1969)
Gulf of Tonkin and the Westmoreland Expansion
On 27 July 1964 5,000 additional US military advisors were ordered to South Vietnam, bringing the total US troop commitment to 21,000. The massive escalation of the war from 1964 to 1968 was justified by the administration as a response to the Gulf of Tonkin Incidents of 2-4 August 1964. It was the basis of the administrations assertion that the attacks were "unprovoked aggression" on the part of North Vietnam, that the US Congress approved the Southeast Asia Resolution (also known as the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution) on 7 August. The law gave the president broad powers to conduct military operations without an actual declaration of war. The resolution passed unanimously in the House of Representatives and was opposed in the Senate only by members. In a televised address, President Johnson argued that "the challenge that we face in Southeast Asia today is the same challenge that we have faced with courage and that we have met with strength in Greece and Turkey, in Berlin and Korea, in Lebanon and in Cuba." National Security Council members, including Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, and General Maxwell Taylor, agreed on 28 November to recommend that Johnson adopt a plan for a two-stage escalation of the bombing of North Vietnam.
Operation Rolling Thunder (1965–1968)
In February 1965, the United States air base at Pleiku, in the Central Highlands, was attacked twice by the NLF, resulting in the deaths of over a dozen US personnel. These guerilla attacks prompted the administration to order retaliatory air strikes (Operation Flaming Dart against North Vietnam. It was as though the administration had just been awaiting such an opportunity. National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy stated that "the incident at Pleiku was like a streetcar - you had to jump on board when it came along." Operation Rolling Thunder was the code name given to a sustained strategic bombing campaign targeted against North Vietnam by aircraft of the US Air Force and Navy. Its original purpose was to serve as a signaling device to the Hanoi government. US airpower would act as a method of "strategic persuasion" in that it would serve to deter the North politically by the fear of continued or increased bombardmant. Beginning in March 1965 Rolling Thunder gradually escalated in intensity in an effort to both boost morale of the South Vietnamese and to force the communists to cease their attacks. When that did not work, its goals were altered to destroying the will of the North to fight by destroying the nation's industrial base, transportation network, and its air defenses. When this was not successful in destroying Hanoi's will to continue, Rolling Thunder was ended and other aerial campaigns were directed to counter the flow of men and supplies down the Hồ Chí Minh Trail.
The Big Build-Up
President Johnson had already appointed General William C. Westmoreland to succeed Paul D. Harkins as Commander of MACV in June of 1964. Under Westmoreland, the big build-up of American troop strength in Vietnam took place. American forces rose from 16,000 during 1964 to more than 500,000 by 1968. With the US' decision to escalate its involvement, ANZUS Pact allies Australia and New Zealand agreed to contribute troops and material to the conflict. They were quickly joined by the Republic of Korea (second only to the Americans in troop strength), Thailand, and the Philippines.
Meanwhile, political affairs in Saigon were finally settling down (at least as far as the Americans were concerned}. On 14 February the most recent military junta, the National Leadership Committee, installed Air Vice-Marshal Nguyen Cao Ky as prime minister. In 1966, the junta selected General Nguyen Van Thieu to run for president with Ky on the ballot as the vice-presidental candidate in the 1967 election. The best thing that can be said about the election of 1967 was that it was held. Thieu and Ky were elected and would remain in office for the duration. In the presidential election of 1971, Thieu ran for the presidency unopposed. With the installation of Thieu and Ky regime (the Second Republic), the US finally had a "legitimate" government in Saigon with which to deal.
With the advent of Rolling Thunder, American airbases and facilities would have to be constructed and manned for the aerial effot. And the defense of those bases could not be entrusted to the South Vietnamese. So, on 8 March 1965, 3,500 United States Marines came ashore at Da Nang as the first US combat troops to land in South Vietnam, adding to the 25,000 US military advisers already in place. On 5 May the 173d Airborne Brigade became the first US Army ground unit committed to the conflict in South Vietnam. 18 August, Operation Starlite began as the first major US ground operation, destroyng a Viet Cong stronghold in Quảng Ngãi Province. The Viet Cong learned from their defeat and subsequently tried to avoid fighting an American-style ground war by reverting to small-unit guerrilla operations.
The North Vietnamese had already sent regular army units to southern Vietnam beginning in late 1964. Some North Vietnamese officials favored an immediate invasion of the south, and a plan was developed to use VPA units to split southern Vietnam in half through the Central Highlands. The two imported adversaries first faced one another during OperationSilver Bayonet, better known as the Battle of the Ia Drang. During the savage fighting that took place both sides learned lessons. The North Vietnamese, who had taken horrendus casualties, began to adapt to the overwhelming American superiority in air mobility, supporting arms, and close air support. The Americans learned that the Vietnam People's Army (which was basically a light infantry force) was not a rag-tag band of guerrillas, but was instead a highly-disciplined, proficient force and one which was extremely well motivated.
Search and Destroy, the Strategy of Attrition
On 27 November 1965 The Pentagon declared that if the major operations needed to neutralize North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces were to succeed, US troop levels in South Vietnam would have to be increased from 120,000 to 400,000. In a series of meetings between Westmoreland and the president held in Honolulu in February 1966, Westmoreland argued that the US presence had succeeded in preventing the immediate defeat of the South Vietnamese government, but that more troops would be necessary if systematic offensive operations were to be conducted. The issue then became in what manner US forces would be used. What was to be the American strategy?
The nature of the American military's strategic and tactical decisions made during this period would color the conduct and nature of the conflict for the duration of American participation. Military logic demanded that the US attack the locus of VPA/VC support in North Vietnam itself. If that country could not be invaded, then the enemy's logistical system in Laos and Cambodia should have been cut by ground forces, isolating the southern battlefield. The gloves should have come off in Rolling Thunder and the ports and harbors of the North should have be mined. But political considerations limited US military actions, mainly due to the memory of communist reactions during the Korean Conflict. Ever present in the minds of diplomats, military officers, and politicians was the possibility of a spiraling escalation of the conflict into a superpower confrontation and the possibility of a nuclear exchange. Therefore, there would be no invasion of North Vietnam, the "neutrality" of Laos and Cambodia would be respected, and Rolling Thunder would not resemble the bombing of Germany and Japan during World War II.
These limitations were not foisted upon the military as an afterthought. Before the first US combat boot stepped ashore at Da Nang, the Pentagon was cognizant of all of the parameters that were going to be imposed by their civilian masters, yet they still agreed that the mission could be accomplished within them. Westmoreland believed that he had found a strategy that would either defeat Hanoi or, at the very least, force it into serious negotiations. Attrition was the key. The general claimed that larger offensive operations would eventually lead to a "crossover point" in VPA and Việt Cộng casualties after which a decisive victory would be possible.
American forces would conduct operations against the VPA, pushing the enemy further back into the countryside away from the heavily populated coastal lowlands. In the backcountry the US could fully utilize its superiority in firepower and mobility to bleed the enemy in set-piece battles. The cleaning out of the Viet Cong and the pacification of the villages and would be the responsibility of the South Vietnamese military. The adoption of this strategy, however, brought Westmoreland into direct conflict with his Marine Corps commander, General Lewis Walt, who had already recognized the security of the villages as the key to success. Walt had immediately commenced pacification efforts in his area of responsibility, but Westmoreland was unhappy, believing that the Marines were being underutilized and fighting the wrong enemy. In the end, MACV won out and Westmoreland's "search and destroy concept, predicated on the attrition of enemy forces, won the day.
It is highly ironic that, at this point in the conflict, both sides chose similar strategies. The VPA, which had been operating a more conventional, large-unit war, switched back to small-unit operations in the face of US military might. The real struggle now began in the villages, where the "hearts and minds" of the Vietnamese peasants, whose cooperation was absolutely necessary to military success, were to be won or lost. Unfortunately for the US, it had given responsibility for this struggle to the ARVN, whose troops and commanders were notroiously unfit for the task. Only time would tell which side would feel the pain of the attritional war first and concede victory to the other side.
As a result of the Honolulu conference, President Johnson authorized an increase in troop strength to 429,000 by August 1966. The large increase in troops enabled MACV to carry out numerous operations that grew in size and complexity during the next two years. For US troops participating in these operations (Masher/White Wing, Attleboro, Ceder Falls, Junction City and dozens of others) the war boiled down to hard marching through difficult terrain and weather that was alternately murderously hot and bone-chillingly cold and wet. Hours and days passed in excruciating repitition and boredom that was punctuated by adrenaline-pumping minutes of fear when contact was made with the enemy. It was the VPA/VC, however, who actually controlled the pace of the war. Fighting only when they believed that they thought they had the upper hand and then disappearing when the Americans and/or South Vietnamese brough their superiority in numbers and firepower to bear. Hanoi, utilizing the Ho Chi Minh and Sihanouk Trails, matched the US at every point of the escalation, funneling manpower and supplies to the southern battlefields.
The Ho Chi Minh trail
North Vietnam received foreign military aid shipments through its ports and rail systems. This material (and VPA manpower) was then moved south down the logistical corridor called by the Americans the Ho Chi Minh Trail (the Truong Son Strategic Supply Route to the North Vietnamese). At the end of an arduous journey the men and supplies enterd South Vietnam's border areas. Complicating matters, the Trail system ran for most of its length through the neighboring neutral nations of Laos and Cambodia. It was impossible to block the infiltration of men and supplies from the north without bombing or invading those countries. Beginning in December 1964, however, the US began a covert aerial interdiction campaign in Laos that would continue until the end of the conflict in 1973.
Laos and Cambodia also had their own communist insurgencies to deal with. In Laos, the North Vietnamese-supported Pathet Lao carried on a see-saw struggle with the Royal Lao Army. Government forces were supported by CIA-sponsored Hmong army and by the bombs of the US Air Force. In Cambodia Prince Norodom Sihanouk maintained a delicate political balancing act between east and west. Believing that the triumph of communism in Southeast Asia was inevitable, he made a deal with the Chinese in 1965 that allowed North Vietnamese forces to establish permanent bases in the country and to use the port of Sihanoukville for delivery of military supplies. In 1970, Sihanouk was deposed by the pro-American General Lon Nol and the port was closed. In the meantime, the Hồ Chí Minh Trail was steadily expanded and became the logistical jugular vein for communist forces fighting in the south.
The Border Battles and the Tet Offensive
Late in 1967, Westmoreland had said that it was "conceivable" that in "two years or less" US forces could be phased out of the war, turning over more and more of the job to the South Vietnamese.[13] He should have known better. During the second half of the year, savage fighting had broken out in I Corps, the three northernmost provinces of South Vietnam. Beginning below the DMZ at Con Tien and then spreading west to the Laotian border near Dak To, the VPA began to stand its ground and fight. This readiness of its enemy to remain fixed in place inspired MACV to send reinforcements from other sectors of South Vietnam. The Border Battles had begun.
Most of the VPA/VC operational capability was possible only because of the unhindered movement of men along the Hồ Chí Minh Trail in Laos and Cambodia. In order to threaten this flow of supplies, a Marine Corps firebase had been established on the Vietnamese side of the Laotian border near the village of Khe Sanh. The US utilized the base as a surveillance position overlooking Route 9, the only east-west road that crossed the border in Western I Corps. General Westmoreland also hoped to use the base as a jump off point for a future incursion against the Trail system in Laos. During the spring of 1967, a series of small-unit actions near Khe Sanh prompted MACV to beef up the outposts defenses. These actions and increasing amounts of intelligence indicated that the North Vietnamese were building up significant forces just across the Laotian frontier.
Indeed, the VPA was doing just that. Three regular divisions (and later a fourth) were began to move toward Khe Sanh, eventually surrounding the base and cutting its only road access. Westmoreland, contrary to the advice of his superiors, reinforced the Marine position. If the communists were willing to mass their forces for destruction by American air power, so much the better. MACV then launched the largest concentrated aerial bombardment effort of the conflict to defend Khe Sanh (see Operation Niagara). Another massive aerial effort was undertaken to keep the beleagured Marines supplied. There were many comparisons (by the media, the Americans, and the North Vietnamese) to the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu, but the differences outweighed the similarities.
MACV used this opportunity to field its latest technology against the VPA. A sensor-driven anti-infiltration system was in the process opf being field tested in Laos as the siege of Khe Sanh began (see Operation Igloo White). Westmoreland ordered that it be employed to detect VPA troop movements near Marine base and the system worked well. By March the long-awaited ground assault against the base had failed to materialize and communist forces began to melt back toward Laos. Historian are left with only questions. What was the goal of the VPA? Was the siege a real attempt to stage another Dien Bien Phu? Or had the battles near the border (which had eventually drawn in half of MACV's manuever battalions) been a diversion, meant to pull forces away from the cities, where another VPA offensive was about to get under way?
General Westmoreland's public reassurances that the "light at the end of the tunnel" was about to be reached were barely out of his mouth when, on 30 January 1968, VPA and NLF forces broke the truce that accompanied the annual Lunar New Year (Tet) holiday and mounted their largest offensive thus far in the conflict in hopes of sparking a "General Uprising"' among the South Vietnamese. These forces, ranging in size from small groups to entire regiments, attacked nearly every city and major military installation in South Vietnam. The Americans and South Vietnamese, initially surprised by the scope and scale of the offensive, quickly responded and inflicted horrendus casualties on their enemy (the VC was essentially eliminated as a fighting force during the offensive, the palces of the dead within its ranks were increasingly filled by North Vietnamese).
VPA/VC attacks were quickly and bloodily repulsed except in Saigon, where the fighting lasted for three days, and in the old imperial capital of Hue, where it continued for a month. During the communist occupation of Hue, 2,800 South Vietnamese were murdered by the Viet Cong in what was the single worst massacre of the war (see Massacre at Hue). The hoped for uprising never took place, indeed, the offensive drove some previously apathetic South Vietnamese to fight for the South Vietnamese government. Another surprise for the communists was that the ARVN did not collapse under the onslaught, instead turning in a performance that pleased even their American patrons.
Contrary to contemporary opinion, the American media did not characterize the Tet Offensive as a military defeat for the US. What shocked and dismayed the American public was the realization that either it had basically been lied to or that the American military command had been dangerously overoptimistic in its appraisal of the situation in Vietnam. The public could not understand how such an attack was possible after having been told for several years that victory was just around the corner. The Tet Offensive came to embody the 'credibility gap' at the heart of US government statements. These realizations and changing attitudes forced the American public to face hard realities and to reexamine its position in Southeast Asia. The days of an open-ended commitment to the conflict were over.
The psychological impact of the Tet Offensive effectively ended the political career of Lyndon Johnson. On March 11 Senator Eugene McCarthy won 42 percent of the vote in the Democratic New Hampshire Primary. Although Johnson wasn't on the ballot, commentators viewed this as a defeat for the President. Shortly thereafter, Senator Robert Kennedy announced his intention to seek the Democratic nomination for the 1968 presidential election. On 31 March, in a speech that took America and the world by surprise, Johnson famously announced that "I shall not seek, and I will not accept the nomination of my party for another term as your President" and pledged himself to devoting the rest of his term in office to the search for peace in Vietnam(Text and audio of speech). Johnson announced that he was limiting bombing of the DRV to just north of the DMZ, and that US representatives were prepared to meet with North Vietnamese counterparts in any suitable place "to discuss the means to bring this ugly war to an end." Much to Johnson's surprise, a few days later Hanoi agreed to contacts between the two sides. On 13 May, what would become known as the 'Paris peace talks' began.[14]
Paris Peace Talks
12 October 1967, US Secretary of State Dean Rusk had declared that proposals in the US Congress for peace initiatives with Hanoi were futile due to North Vietnam's repeated refusal to negotiate. The position of Hanoi was simply that the US should evacuate South Vietnam and leave Vietnamese affairs to the Vietnamese. In the wake of the Tet Offensive, Lyndon finally seemed to realize the predicament that his policies had led to. Neither the strategic "carrot and stick" approach of Rolling Thunder nor the attritional stalemate in the ground war had solved the problem in Vietnam. His chief concern then became getting Hanoi participate in serious negotiations.
United States and North Vietnamese negotiators had already met in Paris on 10 May for the opening session of the peace talks. The North Vietnamese delegation was headed by Xuan Thuy, while his American counterpart was US ambassador-at-large Averell Harriman. For five months, however, the negotiations stalled as neither Hanoi nor Washington was willing to give ground that would allow full negotiations to begin; Hanoi insisted on a total cessation of the bombing of North Vietnam, while Washington demanded a reciprocal de-escalation North Vietnamese military activities in South Vietnam.
Neither gave way until late in October when Johnson issued preliminary orders to halt the bombing of North Vietnam (which ended on 11 November). Johnson's Vice-President, and the Democratic Party's nominee in the US presidential election, Hubert H. Humphrey, had managed to close a large lead held by the Republican candidate, Richard M. Nixon, partly by breaking with Johnson in September and calling for an end to the bombing of North Vietnam. Humphrey was further boosted by the apparent breakthrough in Paris. Nixon feared that this lead would be sufficient to give electoral victory to Humphrey. Using an intermediary, Nixon encouraged South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu to stay away from the talks by promising that Saigon would get a better deal under a Nixon presidency. Thieu obliged, and Nixon went on to win the election by a narrow margin. By the time Johnson left office about all that had been agreed in Paris was the shape of the negotiating table.
Vietnamization and American Withdrawal
Richard Nixon Searches for Peace with Honor, 1969–1974
Shortly after his inauguration Richard Nixon began his policy of slow disengagement from the Vietnam. The goal of the US military effort was to buy time to gradually build up the South Vietnamese armed forces so that they could defend their nation on their own. This policy became the cornerstone of the so-called "Nixon Doctrine". As applied to Vietnam, the doctrine was called "Vietnamization".
Soon after Tet, the axe fell on General Westmoreland (who was inexplicably promoted to Army Chief of Staff) and he was replaced by his deputy, General Creighton W. Abrams. Due to the sea change in American strategy posed by Vietnamization, Abrams pursued a very different approach. The US was gradually withdrawing from the conflict and Abrams favored smaller scale operations aimed at VPA/VC logistics, more openness with the media, less indiscriminate use of air strikes and heavy artillery, elimination of body count as the key indicator of battlefield success, and more meaningful cooperation with South Vietnamese forces.
One of Nixon's main foreign policy goals had been the achievement of a breakthrough in US relations with China and the Soviet Union. An avowed anti-communist early in his political career, Nixon could make diplomatic overtures to the Russian and Chinese communists without being accused of having communist sympathies. The result of those overtures was an era of détente that led to nuclear arms reductions in the U.S. and Soviet Union and the beginnings of a dialogue with China. In this context, Nixon viewed the Vietnam War as simply another limited conflict forming part of a bigger tapestry of superpower relations; however, he was still doggedly determined to preserve South Vietnam until such times as he could not be blamed for what he saw as its inevitable collapse (a "decent interval"). To this end he and his National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger employed Chinese and Soviet foreign policy gambits to successfully defuse some of the anti-war opposition at home and secured movement at the negotiating table in Paris.
China and the Soviet Union had been the principal backers of Hanoi's effort through large-scale military and financial aid. The two communist powers superpowers competed with one another to prove their "fraternal socialist links" with the regime in Hanoi. The North Vietnamese had beome adept at playing the two nations off against one another. Their support would increase isignificantly in the years leading up to the US departure in 1973, enabling the North Vietnamese to mount a full-scale conventional offensives against the south, complete with tanks, heavy artillery, and the most modern surface-to-air missiles (SAMS).
Nixon was roundly criticized for his heavy bombing of Hanoi in December 1972, which was partly facilitated by his diplomatic overtures to China, and which followed a breakdown in the Paris peace talks after peace appeared close at hand. Agreement had been reached in October 1972 between Kissinger and chief North Vietnamese negotiator Le Duc Tho, but the agreement was rejected by South Vietnamese President Thieu, who demanded dozens of changes to the text, including the critical demand that North Vietnamese troops had to withdraw from South Vietnam. The North Vietnamese rejected this, and then countered with many changes of their own. Nixon responded with Operation Linebacker II, which was condemned by one journalist as "war by tantrum." The bombing of Hanoi did, however, pressure North Vietnam back to the negotiating table, allowing America, and Nixon, a face-saving, or "decent interval", exit.
The My Lai massacre
The morality of US participation in the conflict was a major political issue both in the US and abroad. First, there was the question whether America should have interferred in what was generally understood to be a civil war. Second, was a proxy war like Vietnam, without a clear and decisive path to victory, worth the number of casualties sustained by both combatants and civilians. Third, there was the question how the American military, which depended on the use of massive amounts of firepower (which held down casualties) could fight a war against an elusive enemy that was often indistinguishable from the civilian population. For example, the levelling of entire villages by airstrikes or artillery because of single shots by snipers was relatively common. Last, how could inexperienced US troops (many of whom were unwilling conscripts) be reasonably expected to engage in such a guerrilla war without succumbing to stress and resorting to acts of wanton brutality. Fighting a mostly invisible enemy (who often utilized the civilian population as a shield) that did not obey the conventional rules of warfare while suffering injury and death from impersonal booby traps and snipers could only lead to the kind of fear and hatred that would compromise morals.
On 16 March 1968, three companies of Task Force Barker, part of the Americal Division, took part in a search and destroy operation near the village of My Lai, in Quang Nam Province. One of those three companies, Charlie Company, under the command of Lieutenant William Calley entered the hamlet of Son My and proceeded to round up, rape, torture, and murder as many of the inhabitants as could be found. Although not all of the members of the company participated, Lieutenant Cally did. He personally ordered the executions of hundreds of villagers in large groups ("a Nazi kind of thing" as one participant related it). One of the soldiers on the scene was Ron Haeberle, a photographer for the Army newspaper, "Stars and Stripes" who took unobtrusive official black and white photos of the operation and color shots of the massacre with his personal camera. Although the operation appeared suspicious to Cally's superiors, it was papered over and forgotten.
In 1969, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh exposed the My Lai massacre in print and the Haeberle photos splashed across the world media. The Pentagon went into overdrive and launched an investigation headed by General William Peers to look into the allegations. After a flurry of activity the Peers Commission issued its report on the massacre. It declared that "an atmosphere of atrocity" surrounded the event, and concluded that had the massacre not only taken place, but that the crime had been covered up by the commander of the Americal Division and his executive officer. Perhaps 400 Vietnamese civilians, mostly old men, women and children, had been killed by Charlie company. Several men were charged in the killings, but only Calley was convicted. He was given a given a life sentence by a court-martial in 1970 but was later pardoned by President Nixon. Cover-ups may have happened in other cases, as detailed in the Pulitzer Prize-winning article series about the Tiger Force by the Toledo Blade in 2003.
Although My Lai generated a lot of civilian recriminations and bad publicity for the military, it should not be seen as the tip of an iceberg. Although individual murders were committed by US servicemen during the conflict, allegations of other massacres turned out to be only that - allegations. My Lai was infamous because it was the only incident in which large numbers of individuals were killed. It must also be stated that all of the allegations combined only add up to a fraction of the poiltical murders carried out by the NLF and North Vietnamese Army during the conflict (see Hue Massacre.
The Pentagon Papers
The credibility of the US government again suffered in 1971 when The New York Times, The Washington Post and other newspapers, serially published The Pentagon Papers (actually US-Vietnam Realtions, 1945-1967). This top-secret historical study of the American commitment in Vietnam from the Franklin Roosevelt administration until 1967, had been contracted to the RAND corporation by Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara. The study was leaked to the press by Daniel Ellsberg, a former State Department official.
The Pentagon Papers laid out, in stark black and white, the missteps taken by four administrations in their Vietnam policies. For example; they revealed the Johnson administrations obfuscations (if not outright lying) to Congress concerning the Gulf of Tonkin incidents that had led to direct US intervention; they exposed the clandestine bombing of Laos that had begun in 1964; and they detailed the American governments complicity in the death of Ngo Dinh Diem. The study presented a continuously pessimistic view of the likelihood of victory and generated fierce criticism of US policies.
The importance of the actual content of the papers to US policy-making was disputed, but the window that they provided into the flawed decision-making process at the highest levels of the US governement gave many food for thought. Their publication was a news event and the government's legal (Nixon lost out to the Supreme Court) and extra-legal efforts (the "Plumbers" break-in at the office of Ellsberg's psychiatrist, committed in order to gain materiel with which to descredit him, was one of the first steps on the road to Watergate) carried out to prevent their publication - mainly on national security grounds - then went on to generate yet more criticism and suspicion of the government by the American public.
Operation Menu and the Cambodian Incursion, 1969-1970
By 1970 the policy of non-alignment and neutrality had worn thin for Prince Sihanouk. Due to pressures from the right in Cambodia, the prince began a shift from the pro-left position he had assumed in 1965-1966. He began to make overtures for normalized relations with the US and created a Government of National Salvation with the assistance of the pro-American General Lon Nol. Seeing a shift in the prince's position, President Nixon ordered the launching of a top-secret bombing campaign, targeted at the VPA/NLF Base Areas and sanctuaries along Cambodia's eastern border. The massive B-52 strikes (Operation Menu) deluged Cambodia for 14 months and delivered over 100,000 tons of bombs. Prince Sihanouk was quietly acquiescent about the affair.
On 18 March, Sihanouk, who was out of the country on a state visit, was deposed by a vote of the National Assembly and replaced by Lon Nol. Cambodia's ports were immediately closed to North Vietnamese military supplies and the government demanded that the VPA be removed from the border areas. Taking advantage of the situation, Nixon ordered a military incursion into Cambodia by US and South Vietnamese troops in order to both destroy VPA/NLF sanctuaries bordering South Vietnam and to buy time for the US withdrawal. During the Cambodian Incursion, US and South Vietnamese forces discoverd and removed or destroyed a hugh logistical and intelligence haul in Cambodia.
The incursion sparked large-scale demonstrations on and closures of American college campuses. During the ensuing protests, four students were killed and a score injured by Ohio National Guardsmen during a demonstrations at Kent State University. Two other students were killed at Jackson State College in Mississippi. In an effort to lessen opposition to the the US committment, Nixon announced on 12 October that the US would withdraw 40,000 more troops from Vietnam before Christmas.
There were two tragic and unintended effects of the Cambodian incursion: First, it pushed the VPA deeper into Cambodia, which destabilized the country. Second, it forced the North Vietnamese to openly support its despised allies, the Khmer Rouge and allowed them to extend their power. During the incursion, South Vietnamese troops had gone on a rampage, in sharp contrast to the exemplary behaviour that had been displayed by the communists, further increasing support for their cause. Sihanouk remained in China, where he established and headed a government in exile, throwing his personal support behind the Khmer Rouge, the North Vietnamese, and the Laotian Pathet Lao.
Lam Son 719, 1971
In 1971 the US authorized the ARVN to carry out an offensice operation aimed at cutting the Ho Chi Minh Trail in southeastern Laos. Besides attacking the VPA logistical system (which would buy time fro the US withdrawal) the incursion would be a significant test of the policy of Vietnamization. Backed by US air and artillery support, the ARVN moved across the border along Route 9, utilizing the abandoned Marine outpost of Khe Sanh as a jumping off point. At first, the incursion went well, but unlike the Cambodian operation of 1970, the North Vietnamese decided to stand and fight, finally mustering around 60,000 men on the battlefield.
The VPA first struck the flanks of the ARVN column, smashed it outposts, and then moved in on the main ARVN force. Unlike previous encounters during the conflict, the VPA fielded armoured formations, heavy artillery, and large amounts of the latest anti-aircraft artillery. The ARVN retreated back across the border, closely persued by the North Vietnamese. One half of the invasion forces was killed or captured during the operation. Worse than that, Vietnamization was an obnvious failure.
On 18 August, Australia and New Zealand decided to withdraw their troops from Vietnam. The total number of US forces in South Vietnam dropped to 196,700 on 29 October 1971, the lowest level since January 1966. On 12 November 1971, Nixon set a 1 February 1972 deadline to remove another 45,000 U.S. troops from Vietnam.
The Easter Offensive, 1972
Vietnamization received another severe test in the spring of 1972 when the North Vietnamese launched a massive conventional offensive across the DMZ. Beginning 30 March, the Easter Offensive (known as the Nguyen Hue Offensive to the North Vietnamese) quickly overran the three northernmost provinces of South Vietnam, including Quang Tri City. VPA forces then drove to capture Hue.
Early in April the North Vietnamese opened two additional attacks. The first, a three division thrust supported by tanks and heavy artillery, came out of Cambodia on 5 April. The VPA siezed Loc Ninh and advanced toward the provencial capital of An Loc in Binh Long Province. The second, launched from the tri-border region into the Central Highlands of South Vietnam, seized a complex of ARVN outposts near Dak To and then advanced toward Kontum, threatening to split South Vietnam in two.
The US countered with a buildup of American airpower to support ARVN defensive operations and to conduct Operation Linebacker, the first bombing of North Vietnam since the bombing halt of 1968. The VPA actions at An Loc and Kontum were contained and the ARVN launched a counteroffensive in May to retake the lost northern provinces. On 10 September, the South Vietnamese flag once again flew over the Citadel of Quang Tri City, but the ARVN offensive then ran out of steam, conceding the rest of the occupied territory to the North Vietnamese. South Vietnam had countered the heaviest attack since Tet, but it was totally dependant on US airpower for its survival. Meanwhile, the withdrawal of American troops, who now numbered less than 100,000 at the beginning of the year, was continued as scheduled. By June only six infantry battalions remained. On 12 August, the last American ground combat troops left the country.
The 1972 Election and Operation Linebacker II
During the run-up to the 1972 US presidential election, the war was again a major issue. An antiwar Democrat, George McGovern, ran against President Nixon. The president ended Operation Linebacker on 22 October and National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger declared that "peace is at hand" shortly before Election day, dealing a death blow to McGovern's campaign, which was already far behind in opinion surveys. However, the peace agreement was not signed until the next year, leading to charges that Kissinger's announcement had been a political ploy. The Nixon Administration claimed that North Vietnamese negotiators had made use of Kissinger's pronouncement as an opportunity to embarrass the president and to weaken the US position at the negotiating table. White House Press Secretary Ron Ziegler on 30 November 1972 told the press that there would be no more public announcements concerning US troop withdrawals from Vietnam due to the fact that troop levels were then down to 27,000.
Due to the intrasigence of Nguyen Van Thieu (who feared that US commitments to support South Vietnam would no be observed), the negotiations in Paris became stalled. To reassure Thieu, Nixon ordered a resumption of the bombing of North Vietnam using B-52s and tactical aircraft in Operation Linebacker II, which began on 18 December with large raids against both Hanoi and Haiphong. Although this heavy bombing campaign caused protests, both domestically and internationally, and despite significant losses of B-52s over North Vietnam, Nixon continued the bombing until 29 December. Thieu was convinced that the US would continue its support of his nation. When the negotiations resumed, the North Vietnamese actually gained concessions from the US delegation.
Return to Paris, 1973
On 15 January 1973, citing progress in peace negotiations, President Nixon announced the suspension of all offensive actions against North Vietnam, to be followed by a unilateral withdrawal of all US troops. The Paris Peace Accords were signed on 27 January, officially ending direct US involvement in the Vietnam Conflict.
The agreement called for the withdrawal of all US forces and an exchange of prisoners of war. Within South Vietnam, a cease fire was declared (to be overseen by a multi-national, 1,160-man International Control Commission force) and both South Vietnamese and North Viietnamese forces would remain in control of the areas they then occupied. Both sides pledged to work toward a compromise political solution, possibly even resulting in a coalition government. Neither Thieu nor Hanoi was satisfied, and land-grabbing military operations commenced almost immediately. The signing of the Accords was the main motivation for the awarding of the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize to Henry Kissinger and to leading North Vietnamese negotiator Le Duc Tho. Five days before the signing of the peace agreement, Lyndon Johnson, under whose leadership America had entered the conflict, died.
The first US prisoners of war were released by North Vietnam on 11 February, and all US soldiers were ordered to leave South Vietnam by 29 March. The peace agreement, in the meantime, did not last. As an inducement for Thieu's government to sign the agreement, Nixon had promised that the US would provide financial and limited military support (in the form of air strikes) so that the south could continue to defend itself. But Nixon was fighting for his political life in the growing Watergate Scandal, facing an increasingly hostile Congress that held the power of the purse. The president was able to exert little influence on a hostile public long sick of the Vietnam War. Thus, Nixon broke his promises to South Vietnam. Economic aid continued (after being cut nearly in half), but most of it was siphoned off by corrupt officials in the South Vietnamese government, and little actually went to the war effort. At the same time, aid to North Vietnam from the Soviet Union increased. With the US no longer heavily involved, both the US and the Soviet Union no longer saw the war as significant to their relations. The balance of power shifted decisively in North Vietnam's favor, and the north subsequently launched a major military offensive against the south.
South Vietnam Stands Alone, 1974–1975
Total US Withdrawal
In December 1974, the Democratic majority in Congress passed the Foreign Assistance Act of 1974, which cut off all military funding to the South Vietnamese government and made unenforceable the peace terms negotiated by Nixon. Nixon, threatened with impeachment because of Watergate, had resigned his office. Gerald R. Ford, Nixon's vice-president stepped in to finish his term. The new president vetoed the Foreign Assistance Act, but his veto was overridden by Congress.
By 1975, the South Vietnamese Army stood alone against the well-organized, highly determined, and foreign-funded North Vietnamese. Within South Vietnam, there was increasing chaos. The withdrawal of the American military had compromised an economy that had thrived largely due to US financial support and the presence of large numbers of US troops. Along with the rest of the non-oil exporting world, South Vietnam suffered economically from the oil price shocks caused by the Arab oil embargo and a subsequent global economic downturn.
Between the signing of the Paris Accord and late 1974 both antagonists had been satisfied with minor land-grabbing operations. The North Vietnamese, however, were growing impatient with the Thieu regime, which remained intransigent as to the called-for national reunification. Hanoi also remained wary that the US would, once again, support its former ally if larger operations were undertaken.
By late 1974, the Politburo gave its permission for a limited offensive out of Cambodia into Phuoc Long Province that would solve a local logistical problem, determine how Saigon forces would react, and determine if the US would indeed return to the fray. In December and January the offensive took place, Phuoc Long Province fell to the VPA, and the American air power did not return. The speed of this success forced the Politburo in Hanoi to reasses the situation. It was decided that operations in the Central highlands would be turned over to General Van Tien Dung and that Pleiku should be siezed, if possible. Before he left for the south, General Van was addressed by First Party Secretary Le Duan: "Never have we had military and political conditions so perfect or a strategic advantage so great as we have now."[15]
Campaign 275
On 10 March 1975, the General Dung launched Campaign 275, a limited offensive into the Central Highlands supported by tanks and heavy artillery. The target was Ban Me Thuot, in Darlac Province. If the town could be taken, the provincial capital at Pleiku and the route to the coast would be exposed for a planned campaign in 1976. The ARVN proved no match for the onslaught and its forces collapsed on 11 March. Once again, Hanoi was surprised by the speed of their success. Dung now urged the politburo to allow him to seize Pleiku immediately and then turn hi attention to Kontum. There would be two months of good campaigning weather until the onset of the monsoon, so why not take advantage of the situation?
President Thieu, fearful that the bulk of his forces would be cut off in the northern provinces and Central Highlands, decided to redeploy those troops southward in what he declared to be a "lighten the top and keep the bottom" strategy. But the withdrawal of the northern forces soon turned into a bloody retreat as the VPA suddenly attacked from the north. While ARVN forces tried to redploy from the north, splintered ARVN elements in the Central Highlands fought desperately against the North Vietnamese. ARVN General Phu abandoned the cities of Pleiku and Kontum and retreated toward the coast in what became known as the "column of tears". As the ARVN retreated, civilian refugees mixed in with them. Due to already-destroyed roads and bridges, Phu's column slowed down as the VPA closed in. As the exodus staggered down the mountains to the coast, it was shelled incessently by the VPA and, by 1 April it ceased to exist.
On 20 March, Thieu reversed himself and ordered that Hue, Vietnam's third-largest city, be held at all costs. But as the VPA attacked, panic ensued and ARVN resistance collapsed. On 22 March, the VPA opened a siege against Hue. Civilians jammed into the airport and docks hoping for escape. Some even swam into the ocean to reach boats and barges. The ARVN were routed along with the civilians, and some South Vietnamese soldiers shot civilians just to make room for a passageway for their retreat. On 31 March, after a three-day fight, Hue fell. As resistance in Hue collapsed, VPA rockets rained down on Da Nang and its airport. By the 28 March, 35,000 North Vietnamese troops were poised to attack in the suburbs. By the 30th, 100,000 leaderless ARVN troops surrendered as the VPA marched victoriously through Da Nang. With the fall of the city, the defense of the Central Highlands and northern provinces collapsed.
Final North Vietnamese offensive
With the northern half of the country under their control, the Politburo ordered General Van to seize the opportunity for a final offensive against Saigon. The operational plan for the Ho Chi Minh Campaign called for capturing Saigon before 1 May, thereby beating the onset of the monsoon and preventing the redployment and regroupment of ARVN forces to defend the capital. Northern forces, their morale boosted by their recent victories, rolled on, taking Nha Trang, Cam Ranh, and Da Lat.
On 7 April, three North Vietnamese divisions attacked Xuan-loc, 40 miles east of Saigon, where they met fierce resistance from the ARVN 18th Infantry Division. For two bloody weeks, severe fighting raged as the ARVN defenders, in a last-ditch effort, tried desperately to save South Vietnam from conquest. By 21 April, however, the exhausted garrison had surrendered. A bitter and tearful President Thiệu resigned his office on the same day, declaring that the US had betrayed South Vietnam. He left for Taiwan on 25 April, leaving control of his doomed nation to General Duong Van Minh. By that time, North Vietnamese tanks had reached Bien Hoa and turned towards Saigon, clashing with occasional isolated ARVN units along the way.
By the end of April, the weakened South Vietnamese military had collapsed on all fronts. On the 27th, 100,000 North Vietnamese troops encircled Saigon, which was defended by only about 30,000 ARVN troops. In order to increase panic and disorder in the city, the VPA began shelling the airport and eventaully forced its closure. With the air exit closed, large numbers of civilians who might otherwise have fled the city found that they had no way out. On 29 April, the US launched Operation Frequent Wind, arguably the largest helicopter evacuation in history.
Fall of Saigon
Chaos, unrest, and panic ensued as hysterical South Vietnamese officials and civilians scrambled to leave Saigon before it was too late. American helicopters began evacuating both US and South Vietnamese citizens from the US embassy. The evacuations had been delayed until the last possible moment due to US Ambassador Graham Martin's belif that Saigon could be held and that a political settlement was still possible. The evacuations began in an atmosphere of desperation as hysterical crowds of Vietnamese vied for the limited number of seats available on the departing helicopters. Martin pleaded with the US government to send $700 million in emergency aid to South Vietnam in order to bolster the Saigon regime's ability to fight and mobilize fresh military units, but it was to no avail.
In the US, South Vietnam was now perceived as doomed. President Ford had given a televised speech on 23 April declaring the end of both the Vietnam War and of all US aid to the Saigon regime. The helicopter evacuations continued day and night as VPA tanks breached the defenses on the outskirts of the city. In the early morning hours of 30 April, the last US Marines evacuated the embassy roof by helicopter as civilians poured over the embassy perimeter and swarmed onto its grounds.
On that day, VPA troops overcame all resistance, quickly capturing the US embassy, the South Vietnamese government army garrison, the police headquarters, radio station, presidential palace, and other vital facilities. The presidential palace was captured and the NLF flag waved victoriously over it. Thieu's successor, President Dương Văn Minh attempted to surrender Saigon, but VPA Colonel Búi Tín informed him that he did not have anything to surrender. Minh then issued his last command, ordering all South Vietnamese troops to lay down their arms.
Aftermath
The last official American military action in Southeast Asia occurred on 15 May 1975, when 18 Marine and airmen were killed during a rescue operation known as the Mayagüez incident involving a skirmish with the Khmer Rouge on an island off the Cambodian coast. The names of those men are listed on the last panel of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
By 12 April, the Khmer Rouge had entered the Cambodian capital ao Phnom Penh. Only hours before their arrival, the US had launched Operation Eagle Pull, an evacuation similar to Frequent Wind. US Ambassador John G. Dean boarded a Marine helicopter and left the city. The communist victory plunged the nation into darkness as the cities and towns were forceably evacuated, their inhabitants herded into the countryside to begin the construction of a Maoist paradise in Democratic Kampuchea.
Both of the Vietnams were united 2 July 1976 to form the new Socialist Republic of Vietnam and Saigon was renamed Ho Chi Minh City in honor of the former president of North Vietnam. Thousands of supporters of the South Vietnamese government were rounded up and sent to "re-education" camps. The new regime considered these supporters to be American collaborators and traitors.
North Vietnam followed up its southern victory by first making Laos a virtual puppet state. Socialist fraternalism did not last long. The Khmer Rouge, who had historical territorial ambitions in Vietnam, began a series of border incursions that finally led to a Vietnamese invasion. The VPA onslaught overthrew Pol Pot's murderous regime and a pro-Vietnamese government was installed (see Third Indochina War. Ironically, the US did not recognise the new government of Cambodia, and, along with the United Nations, continued to consider the Khmer Rouge (perpetrators of the greatest genocide since the Second world War) as their ally. And the ironies just kept on coming. In 1979 the Chinese, furious with the Vietnamese for eliminating their Khmer Rouge allies, launched an invasion of Vietnam's northern provinces. After fighting to a stalemate, the Chinese withdrew. So much for expansive, Moscow-dominated communism. The domino principle, the original pretext for US involvement in Southeast Asia, had been stood upon its head.
Notes
Casualties
Even today the number of those killed, military and civilian, in the period covered (1959-1975) is open to debate and uncertainity. To illustrate the problem, below are three reference works by three or more authors listing casualty figures. What is remarkable about them is that the only ones that seem to match are the ones that must be, at best, approximations. None of the figures include the members of South Vietnamese forces killed in the final campaign. Nor do they include the Royal Lao Armed Forces, thousands of Laotian and Thai irregulars, or Laotian civilians who all perished in that peculiar conflict. They do not include the tens of thousands of Cambodians killed during the civil war or the estimated one and one-half to two million that perished in the genocide that followed Khmer Rouge victory
1. Harry G. Summers, The Vietnam War Almanac. Novato CA: Presidio Press, 1985.
US killed in action, died of wounds, died of other causes, missing and declared dead - 57,690. South Vietnamese military killed - 243,748. Republic of Korea killed - 4,407. Australia and New Zealand (combined) - 469. Thailand - 351. The Vietnam People's Army and NLF (combined) - 666,000. North Vietnamese civilian fatalities - 65,000. South Vietnamese civilian dead - 300,000.
2. Marc Leepson, ed, Webster's New World Dictionary of the Vietnam War. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1999.
US killed in action, etc. - 58,159. South Vietnamese military - 224,000. Republic of Korea, Australia, New Zealand, and Thailand - not listed. DRV military - not listed. DRV civilians - 65,000. South Vietnamese civilians - 300,000.
3. Edward Doyle, Samuel Lipsman, et al, Setting the Stage. Boston: Boston Publishing Company, 1981.
US - 57,605. South Vietnamese military - 220,357. Republic of Korea, Australia, New Zealand, and Thailand - not listed. DRV and NLF deaths - 444,000. Combined DRV and RVN civilian deaths -587,000.
A fourth Source, John Rowe's Vietnam: The Australian Experience. Sydney: Time-Life Books Australia, 1987, gives a figure of 496 Australians killed in action or died of wounds.
Names for the Conflict
Various names have been applied to the conflict and these have shifted over time, although Vietnam War is the most commonly used title in English. It has been variously called the Second Indochina War, the Vietnam Conflict, the Vietnam War, and, in Vietnamese, Chiến tranh Việt Nam (The Vietnam War) or Kháng chiến chống Mỹ (Resistance War Against America).
- Second Indochina War: places the conflict into context with other distinctive, but related, and contiguous conflicts in Southeast Asia. Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia are seen as the battlegrounds of a larger Indochinese conflict that began at the end of World War II and lasted until communist victory in 1975. This conflict can be viewed in terms of the demise of colonialism and its after-effects during the Cold War.
- Vietnam Conflict: largely a US designation, it acknowledges that the US Congress never declared war on North Vietnam. Legally, the President used his constitutional discretion - supplemented by supportive resolutions in Congress - to conduct what was said to be a "police action".
- Vietnam War: the most commonly-used designation in English, it suggests that the location of the war was exclusively within the borders of North and South Vietnam, failing to recognize its wider context. The name "Vietnam War" also fails to acknowledge the lack of an official US declaration of war.
- Resistance War Against the Americans to Save the Nation: the term favored by North Vietnam (and after North Vietnam's victory over South Vietnam, by Vietnam as a whole); it is more of a slogan than a name, and its meaning is self-evident. Its usage has been abolished in recent years as the communist government of Vietnam seeks better relations with the US. Official Vietnamese publications now refer to the conflict generically as "Chiến tranh Việt Nam" (Vietnam War).
Other Countries' Involvement
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union supplied North Vietnam with medical supplies, arms, tanks, planes, helicopters, artillery, ground-air missiles and other military equipment. 80% of all weaponry used by the North Vietnamese side came from the Soviet Union. Hundreds of military advisors were sent to train the Vietnamese army. Soviet pilots acted as training cadre and many have flown combat missions as "volunteers". Fewer than a dozen Soviet citizens lost their lives in this conflict.
People's Republic of China
The People's Republic of China's involvement in the Vietnam War began in the summer of 1962, when Mao Zedong agreed to supply Hanoi with 90,000 rifles and guns free of charge. After the launch of Operation Rolling Thunder, China sent engineering battalions and supporting anti-aircraft units to North Vietnam to repair the damage caused by American bombing, build roads, railroads and to perform other engineering works. This freed North Vietnamese army units to go to the South. Between 1965 and 1970 over 320,000 Chinese soldiers served in North Vietnam; the peak year was 1967 when 170,000 were serving there. In April 2006, an event was held in Vietnam to honor the almost 1100 Chinese soldiers who were killed in the Vietnam War; a further 4200 were injured.
Republic of Korea
South Korea's military represented the second largest contingent of foreign troops in South Vietnam. South Korea dispatched its first troops beginning in 1964. Large combat battalions began arriving a year later. A total of approximately 300,000 South Korean soldiers were sent to Vietnam. As with the United States, soldiers served one year, and then were replaced with new soldiers, from 1964 until 1973. The maximum number of South Korean troops in Vietnam at any one time was 50,000. More than 5,000 South Koreans were killed and 11,000 were injured in the war.
Democratic Republic of Korea
As a result of a decision of the Korean Workers' Party in October 1966, in early 1967, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) sent a fighter squadron to North Vietnam to back up the North Vietnamese 921st and 923rd fighter squadrons defending Hanoi. They stayed through 1968, and 200 pilots were reported to have served.[16] In addition, at least two anti-aircraft artillery regiments were sent as well. North Korea also sent weapons, ammunition and two million sets of uniforms to their comrades in North Vietnam.[17] Kim Il Sung is reported to have told his pilots to "fight in the war as if the Vietnamese sky were their own".[18][19][20]
Australia and New Zealand
As US allies under the ANZUS pact, Australia and New Zealand sent ground troops to Vietnam. Both nations had gained valuable experience in counterinsurgency and jungle warfare during the Malayan Emergency. Geographically close to Asia, they subscribed to the Domino Theory of communist expansion and felt that their national security would be threatened if communism spread further in Southeast Asia. Australia's peak commitment was 7,672 combat troops, New Zealand's 552. Australia re-introduced conscription to bolster an extra nine infantry battalions in the face of significant public opposition to the war. Like the US, Australia began by sending advisers to Vietnam, the number of which rose steadily until 1965, when combat troops were committed. New Zealand began by sending a detachment of engineers and an artillery battery, then started sending special forces. The Australian Units & The New Zealanders in 161 Artillery Battery were awarded the Presidential Unit Citation 1st Class for their actions in support of the 173d Airborne Brigade at Bein Hoa in 1965/6.[21] Overall, the US was pleased by the effectiveness of the Australian and New Zealand special forces - the Australian Special Air Service Regiment (SASR) and the Special Air Service of New Zealand (NZ SAS).
Thailand
Thai Army formations, including the "Queen's Cobra" battalion saw action in South Vietnam between 1965 and 1971. Thai forces saw much more action in the covert war in Laos between 1964 and 1972. There, Thai regular formations were heavily outnumbered by the irregular "volunteers" of the CIA-sponsored Police Aerial Reconnaissance Units or PARU, who carried out reconnaissance activities on the western side of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The activities of these personnel remain one of the great unknown stories of the Southeast Asian conflict.
Use of Chemical Defoliants
One of the most crontroversial aspects (and certainly the longest lasting in its effects) of the US military effort in Southeast Asia was the wide-spread use of herbicides, which were utilized to remove plant cover from large areas. These chemical continue to change the landscape, cause diseases, and poison the food-chain in the areas where they were sprayed.
Early in the American effort, the US military decided that, since VPA/NLF activities were being hidden by triple-canopy jungle and undergrowth, a useful first step might be to "defoliate" areas, especially those surrounding base camps (both large and small) in what became known as Operation Ranch Hand. Corporations like Dow and Monsanto were given the task of developing herbicides for this purpose. The defoliants (which were distributed in drums marked with color-coded bands) included Agents Pink, Green, Purple, Blue, White, and, most famously, the dioxin-based Agent Orange. About 12 million gallons of Agent Orange were sprayed over Southeast Asia during the American committment. A prime area of Ranch Hand operations was in the Mekong Delta, where the US Navy patrol boats were vulnerable to attack from the undergrowth at the water's edge.
In 1961-1962, the Kennedy administration authorized the use of chemical weapons to destroy rice crops. Between 1961 and 1967, the US Air Force sprayed 20 million US gallons (76,000 m³) of concentrated herbicides over 6 million acres (24,000 km²) of crops and trees, affecting an estimated 13 percent of South Vietnam's land. In 1997, an article published by the Wall Street Journal reported that up to half a million children were born with dioxin-related deformities, and that the birth defects in southern Vietnam were fourfold those in the north. The use of chemical defoliants may have been contrary to international rules of war at the time. A 1967 study by the Agronomy Section of the Japanese Science Council concluded that 3.8 million acres (15,000 km²) of foliage had been destroyed, possibly also leading to the deaths of 1,000 peasants and 13,000 pieces of livestock.
The US Veterans Administration has listed prostate cancer, respiratory cancers, multiple myeloma, type II diabetes, Hodgkin’s disease, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, soft tissue sarcoma, chloracne, porphyria cutanea tarda, peripheral neuropathy, and spina bifida in children of veterans exposed to Agent Orange as possible side effects of their parent's exposure to the herbicides. [citation needed] Although their has been much discussion over whether the use of these defoliants constituted a violation of the laws of war, it must be noted that the defoliants were not considered weapons, since exposure to them did not lead to immediate death or even incapacitation.
See also
- History of Vietnam
- History of Laos
- History of Cambodia
- Democratic Kampuchea
- Socialist Republic of Vietnam
- Vietnam People's Army
- Vietnam War casualties
- Phoenix Program
- Tiger Force
- Opposition to the Vietnam War
- Canada and the Vietnam War
- Military history of the United States
- Weapons of the Vietnam War
- Aircraft losses of the Vietnam War
- Cu Chi tunnels
- Prisoner-of-war camp
- Military Assistance Command, Vietnam Studies and Observations Group
Lists
- Major Operations during the Vietnam War
- Major Battles during the Vietnam War
- Major bombing campaigns
- Common Military Medals
- Anti-War publications
Footnotes
- ^ There was a slow build-up to this war from 1954 onwards, with different parties joining combat at various stages; however, the Hanoi Politburo did not make the decision to go to war in the South until 1959
- ^ Herring, America's Longest War
- ^ Karnow, Stanley. Vietnam: A History (1983, revised 1991). Viking Press. p.163
- ^ Herring, George C.:"America's Longest War", p.18
- ^ Herring, George C.:"America's Longest War", p.56
- ^ (Zinn, "A People's History of the United States", p. 471)
- ^ John Prados, 'The Numbers Game: How Many Vietnamese Fled South In 1954?', The VVA Veteran, January/February 2005; accessed 2006-11-02[1]
- ^ http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/SOD.TAB6.1A.GIF
- ^ http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/history/johnson/65vn-2.htm
- ^ http://www.touchthewall.org/facts.html#se
- ^ [2]
- ^ Gibbons, William Conrad: "The U.S. Government and the Vietnam War; Executive and Legislative Roles and Relationships", Vol.2, p. 40
- ^ The New York Times, "The 'Wobble on the War on Capitol Hill," 17 Dec 1967
- ^ R.K. Brigham, Guerrilla Diplomacy: the NLF's foreign relations and the Vietnam War, pp.. 76-7
- ^ Clark Dougan, David Fulgham, et al, The Fall of the South. Boston: Boston Publishing Company, 1985, p. 22.
- ^ http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Korea/HH18Dg02.html
- ^ Merle Pribbenow, 'The 'Ology War: technology and ideology in the defense of Hanoi, 1967' Journal of Military History 67:1 (2003) p. 183
- ^ Gluck, Caroline (7 July, 2001). "N Korea admits Vietnam war role". BBC News. Retrieved 2006-10-19.
{{cite news}}: Check date values in:|date=(help) - ^ "North Korea fought in Vietnam War". BBC News. 31 March, 2000. Retrieved 2006-10-19.
{{cite news}}: Check date values in:|date=(help) - ^ "North Korea honours Vietnam war dead". BBC News. 12 July, 2001. Retrieved 2006-10-19.
{{cite news}}: Check date values in:|date=(help) - ^ http://www.riv.co.nz/rnza/rf/postww2/vn.htm
Bibliography
- Anderson, David L. Columbia Guide to the Vietnam War (2004)
- Duiker, William J. The Communist Road to Power in Vietnam (1996)
- Hammond, William. Public Affairs: The Military and the Media, 1962-1968 (1987); Public Affairs: The Military and the Media, 1968-1973 (1995). full-scale history of the war by U.S. Army; much broader than title suggests.
- Herring, George C. America's Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950-1975 (4th ed 2001), most widely used short history.
- Hitchens, Christopher. The Vietnam Syndrome
- Karnow, Stanley. Vietnam: A History (1983), popular history; strong on Saigon's plans.
- Kutler, Stanley ed. Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War (1996)
- Lewy, Guenter. America in Vietnam (1978), defends US actions
- McMahon, Robert J. Major Problems in the History of the Vietnam War: Documents and Essays (1995) textbook
- Moise, Edwin E. Historical Dictionary of the Vietnam War (2002)
- Moss, George D. Vietnam (4th ed 2002) textbook
- Moyar, Mark. Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954-1965, (Cambridge University Press; 412 pages; 2006). A revisionist history that challenges the notion that U.S. involvement in Vietnam was misguided; defends the validity of the domino theory and disputes the notion that Ho Chi Minh was, at heart, a nationalist who would eventually turn against his Communist Chinese allies.
- Palmer, Bruce. The Twenty-Five Year War (1984), narrative military history by a senior US general
- Schulzinger, Robert D. A Time for War: The United States and Vietnam, 1941-1975 (1997).
- Spector, Ronald. After Tet: The Bloodiest Year in Vietnam (1992), very broad coverage of 1968
- Tucker, Spencer. ed. Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War (1998) 3 vol. reference set; also one-volume abridgement (2001)
Primary Sources
- McMahon, Robert J. Major Problems in the History of the Vietnam War: Documents and Essays (1995) textbook
- Kim A. O'Connell, ed. Primary Source Accounts of the Vietnam War (2006)
- McCain, John. Faith of My Fathers: A Family Memoir (1999) the Senator was a POW
- Marshall, Kathryn. In the Combat Zone: An Oral History of American Women in Vietnam, 1966-1975 (1987)
- Myers, Thomas. Walking Point: American Narratives of Vietnam (1988)
- Major General Spurgeon Neel. Medical Support of the U.S. Army in Vietnam 1965-1970 (Department of the Army 1991) official medical history; online complete text
- Tang, Truong Nhu. A Vietcong Memoir (1985), revealing account by senior NLF official
- Terry, Wallace, ed. Bloods: An Oral History of the Vietnam War by Black Veterans (1984)
- The Pentagon Papers (Gravel ed. 5 vol 1971); combination of narrative and secret documents compiled by Pentagon. excerpts
- US Department of State. Foreign Relations of the United States (multivolume collection of official secret documents) vol 1: 1964; vol 2: 1965; vol 3: 1965; vol 4: 1966;
External links
Definitions from Wiktionary
Media from Commons
News from Wikinews
Quotations from Wikiquote
Texts from Wikisource
Textbooks from Wikibooks
Resources from Wikiversity
- Vietnam war timelinevery comprehensive timeline of the Vietnam War
- Vietnam War Bibliography covers online and published resources
- China Vietnam War Chronology
- Russia Vietnam War Chronology
- USA Vietnam War Chronology
- Vietnam Vietnam War Chronology
- US Casualty Statistics
- The Effects of Vietnamization on the Republic of Vietnam's Armed Forces, 1969-1972
- The American War: the U.S. in Vietnam - a Pinky Show online video