Vietnam War
(Chiến tranh Việt Nam) |
|---|
| Part of the Indochina Wars and the Cold War |
A Bell UH-1D helicopter piloted by Major Bruce P. Crandall climbs skyward after discharging a load of U.S. infantrymen on a search and destroy mission |
|
|
| Belligerents |
|---|
Anti-Communist forces:
| Communist forces:
|
| Commanders and leaders |
|---|
 Ngô Đình Diệm 
Nguyễn Văn Thiệu
Nguyễn Cao Kỳ
Cao Văn Viên
Ngô Quang Trưởng
 John F. Kennedy
Lyndon B. Johnson
Richard Nixon
William Westmoreland
Creighton Abrams
Robert McNamara
 Park Chung-hee
Chae Myung Shin
 Robert Menzies
Harold Holt
 Keith Holyoake
...and others |  Hồ Chí Minh
Lê Duẩn
Võ Nguyên Giáp
Văn Tiến Dũng
Lê Trọng Tấn
Phạm Văn Đồng
 Hoàng Văn Thái
Trần Văn Trà
Nguyễn Văn Linh
Nguyễn Hữu Thọ
...and others |
| Strength |
|---|
~1,830,000 (1968)
| 461,000+
North Vietnam: 287,465 (January 1968) [9]
China: 170,000 (1969)
Soviet Union: 3,000
North Korea: 300–600 |
| Casualties and losses |
|---|
South Vietnam
195,000–430,000 civilian dead[10][11]
171,331[12]–220,357 military dead[10]
1,170,000 wounded[citation needed]
United States
58,220 dead; [A 2] 303,644 wounded [A 2]
South Korea
5,099 dead; 10,962 wounded; 4 missing
Australia
500 dead; 3,129 wounded
[13]
New Zealand
37 dead; 187 wounded
[14]
 Thailand
351 dead;1,358 wounded [15]
| North Vietnam & Viet Cong
50,000[16]-65,000[10]civilian dead
400,000[10]–1,100,000 military dead or missing[17]
600,000+ wounded[18]
 China
1,446 dead; 4,200 wounded
 Soviet Union
16 dead [19]
Total dead: 451,462–1,166,462
Total wounded: ~604,200
|
Vietnamese civilian dead: 245,000–2,000,000 [20]
Cambodian Civil War dead: 200,000–300,000* [21][22][23]
Laotian Civil War dead: 20,000–200,000*
Total civilian dead: 465,000–2,500,000**
Total dead: 1,102,000–3,886,026
* indicates approximations, see Casualties below
For more information see Vietnam War casualties
** This figure includes all of the dead from the Laotian and Cambodian civil wars. |
The
Vietnam War (
Vietnamese:
Chiến tranh Việt Nam) was a
Cold War-era
military conflict that occurred in
Vietnam,
Laos, and
Cambodia from 1 November 1955
[A 1] to the
fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the
First Indochina War and was fought between
North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of
South Vietnam, supported by the United States and other
anti-communist countries.
[28] The
Viet Cong (also known as the National Liberation Front, or NLF), a lightly armed South Vietnamese communist
common front directed by the North, largely fought a
guerrilla waragainst anti-communist forces in the region. The
Vietnam People's Army (North Vietnamese Army) engaged in a more
conventional war, at times committing large units into battle. U.S. and South Vietnamese forces relied on
air superiority and overwhelming firepower to conduct
search and destroy operations, involving
ground forces,
artillery, and
airstrikes.
The U.S. government viewed involvement in the war as a way to prevent a communist takeover of South Vietnam as part of their wider strategy of
containment. The North Vietnamese government and Viet Cong were fighting to reunify Vietnam under communist rule. They viewed the conflict as a
colonial war, fought initially against France, backed by the U.S., and later against South Vietnam, which it regarded as a U.S.
puppet state.
[29] American
military advisors arrived in what was then
French Indochina beginning in 1950. U.S. involvement escalated in the early 1960s, with troop levels tripling in 1961 and tripling again in 1962.
[30] U.S.
combat units were deployed beginning in 1965. Operations spanned international borders, with Laos and Cambodia heavily bombed. American involvement in the war peaked in 1968, at the time of the
Tet Offensive. After this, U.S. ground forces were gradually withdrawn as part of a policy known as
Vietnamization. Despite the
Paris Peace Accords, signed by all parties in January 1973, fighting continued.
U.S. military involvement ended on 15 August 1973 as a result of the
Case–Church Amendment passed by the U.S. Congress.The
capture of Saigon by the Vietnam People's Army in April 1975 marked the end of the war, and North and South Vietnam were reunified the following year. The war exacted a huge human cost in terms of fatalities (see
Vietnam War casualties). Estimates of the number of Vietnamese soldiers and civilians killed vary from 800,000 to 3.1 million. Some 200,000–300,000
Cambodians,20,000–200,000
Laotians, and 58,220 U.S. service members also died in the conflict.
Various names have been applied to the conflict. Vietnam War is the most commonly used name in English. It has also been called the Second Indochina War, and the Vietnam Conflict.
As there have been so many conflicts in Indochina, this conflict is known by the name of their chief opponent to distinguish it from the others.
[44] In
Vietnamese, the war is generally known as
Chiến tranh Việt Nam (The Vietnam War). It is also called
Kháng chiến chống Mỹ (Resistance War Against America), loosely translated as
the American War.
[45]
Background to 1949
France began its conquest of
Indochina in the late 1850s, and completed pacification by 1893.
[46][47][48]The
Treaty of Huế, concluded in 1884, formed the basis for French colonial rule in Vietnam for the next seven decades. In spite of military resistance, most notably by the
Can Vuong of
Phan Dinh Phung, by 1888 the area of the current-day nations of Cambodia and Vietnam was made into the colony of
French Indochina (Laos was added later).
[49] Various Vietnamese opposition movements to French rule existed during this period, such as the
Viet Nam Quoc Dan Dang who staged the failed
Yen Bai mutiny in 1930, but none were ultimately as successful as the
Viet Minh common front, which was founded in 1941, controlled by the
Indochinese Communist Party, and funded by the U.S. and the
Chinese Nationalist Partyin its fight against Japanese occupation.
[50][A 3]
The Viet Minh was founded as a league for independence from France, but also opposed Japanese occupation in 1945 for the same reason. The U.S. and Chinese Nationalist Party supported them in the fight against the Japanese.
[52] However, they did not have enough power to fight actual battles at first. Viet Minh leader
Ho Chi Minh was suspected of being a communist and jailed for a year by the Chinese Nationalist Party.
[53]
Double occupation by France and Japan continued until the German forces were expelled from France and the French Indochina colonial authorities started holding secret talks with the
Free French. Fearing that they could no longer trust the French authorities, the Japanese army interned them all on 9 March 1945
[54]and created a
puppet state instead, the
Empire of Vietnam, under
Bảo Đại.
During 1944–1945, a
deep famine struck northern Vietnam due to a combination of bad weather and French/Japanese exploitation (French Indochina had to supply grains to Japan).
[55] Between 400,000 and 2 million
[32] people died of starvation (out of a population of 10 million in the affected area).
[56] Exploiting the administrative gap
[57] that the internment of the French had created, the Viet Minh in March 1945 urged the population to ransack rice warehouses and refuse to pay their taxes.
[58] Between 75 and 100 warehouses were consequently raided.
[59] This rebellion against the effects of the famine and the authorities that were partially responsible for it bolstered the Viet Minh's popularity and they recruited many members during this period.
[57]
During August the Japanese forces allowed the Việt Minh and other nationalist groups to take over public buildings and weapons without resistance, which began the
August Revolution. OSS officers met repeatedly with
Ho Chi Minh and other
Viet Minh officers during this period
[62] and on 2 September 1945 Ho Chi Minh declared the
independent Democratic Republic of Vietnam before a crowd of 500,000 in
Hanoi.
[59] In an overture to the Americans, he began his speech by paraphrasing the
United States Declaration of Independence:
All men are created equal. The Creator has given us certain inviolable Rights: the right to Life, the right to be Free, and the right to achieve Happiness.[59]
The Viet Minh grasped power across Vietnam in the
August Revolution,
[59] largely supported by the Vietnamese population according to
New Left historian
Gabriel Kolko.
[63] After their defeat in the war, the
Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) gave weapons to the Vietnamese, and kept Vichy French officials and military officers imprisoned for a month after the surrender. The Việt Minh had recruited more than 600 Japanese soldiers and given them roles to train or command Vietnamese soldiers.
[64][65]
However, the major
allied victors of World War II, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the Soviet Union, all agreed the area belonged to the French.
[59]As the French did not have the ships, weapons, or soldiers to immediately retake Vietnam, the major powers came to an agreement that British troops would occupy the south while
Nationalist Chinese forces would move in from the north.
[59] Nationalist Chinese troops entered the country to disarm Japanese troops north of the 16th parallel on 14 September 1945.
[66] When the British landed in the south, they rearmed the interned French forces as well as parts of the surrendered Japanese forces to aid them in retaking southern Vietnam, as they did not have enough troops to do this themselves.
[59]
On the urging of the Soviet Union, Ho Chi Minh initially attempted to negotiate with the French, who were slowly re-establishing their control across the area.
[67] In January 1946, the Viet Minh won elections across central and northern Vietnam.
[68] On 6 March 1946, Ho signed an agreement allowing French forces to replace Nationalist Chinese forces, in exchange for French recognition of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam as a "free" republic within the
French Union, with the specifics of such recognition to be determined by future negotiation.
[69][70][71] The French landed in Hanoi by March 1946 and in November of that year they ousted the Viet Minh from the city.
[72] British forces departed on 26 March 1946, leaving Vietnam in the hands of the French.
[73] Soon thereafter, the Viet Minh began a
guerrilla war against the French Union forces, beginning the
First Indochina War.
The war spread to Laos and Cambodia, where Communists organized the
Pathet Lao and the
Khmer Serei, both of which were modeled on the Viet Minh.
[74]Globally, the Cold War began in earnest, which meant that the
rapprochement that existed between the
Western powers and the Soviet Union during World War II disintegrated. The Viet Minh fight was hampered by a lack of weapons; this situation changed by 1949 when the
Chinese Communists had largely won the
Chinese Civil War and were free to provide arms to their Vietnamese allies.
[74]
Exit of the French, 1950–1954
French soldiers fight off a Viet Minh ambush in 1952.
PRC military advisors began assisting the Viet Minh in July 1950. PRC weapons, expertise, and laborers transformed the Viet Minh from a guerrilla force into a regular army. In September 1950, the United States created a
Military Assistance and Advisory Group (MAAG) to screen French requests for aid, advise on strategy, and train Vietnamese soldiers. By 1954, the United States had supplied 300,000 small arms and spent US$1 billion in support of the French military effort, shouldering 80 percent of the cost of the war.
There were also talks between the French and Americans in which the possible use of three
tactical nuclear weapons was considered, though reports of how seriously this was considered and by whom are even now vague and contradictory. One version of the plan for the proposed
Operation Vulture envisioned sending 60 B-29s from U.S. bases in the region, supported by as many as 150 fighters launched from U.S. Seventh Fleet carriers, to bomb Viet Minh commander
Vo Nguyen Giap's positions. The plan included an option to use up to three atomic weapons on the Viet Minh positions. Admiral
Arthur W. Radford,
Chairman of the U.S.
Joint Chiefs of Staff, gave this nuclear option his backing. U.S. B-29s, B-36s, and B-47s could have executed a nuclear strike, as could carrier aircraft from the Seventh Fleet.
U.S. carriers sailed to the
Gulf of Tonkin, and reconnaissance flights over Dien Bien Phu were conducted during the negotiations. According to U.S. Vice-President
Richard Nixon, the plan involved the Joint Chiefs of Staff drawing up plans to use three small tactical nuclear weapons in support of the French.
Nixon, a so-called "
hawk" on Vietnam, suggested that the United States might have to "put American boys in". U.S. President
Dwight D. Eisenhower made American participation contingent on British support, but London was opposed to such a venture.
In the end, convinced that the political risks outweighed the possible benefits, Eisenhower decided against the intervention. As an experienced
five-star general, Eisenhower was wary of getting the United States involved in a
land war in Asia.
The Viet Minh received crucial support from the Soviet Union and PRC. PRC support in the
Border Campaign of 1950 allowed supplies to come from the PRC into Vietnam. Throughout the conflict, U.S. intelligence estimates remained skeptical of French chances of success.
The
Battle of Dien Bien Phu marked the end of French involvement in Indochina. Giap's Viet Minh forces handed the French a stunning military defeat, and on 7 May 1954, the
French Union garrison surrendered. Of the 12,000 French prisoners taken by the Viet Minh, only 3,000 survived. At the
Geneva Conference, the French negotiated a ceasefire agreement with the Viet Minh, and independence was granted to Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam.
Transition period
Vietnam was
temporarily partitioned at the
17th parallel, and under the terms of the Geneva Accords, civilians were to be given the opportunity to move freely between the two provisional states for a 300-day period. Elections throughout the country were to be held in 1956 to establish a unified government.
Around one million northerners, mainly minority Catholics, fled south, fearing persecution by the communists following an American propaganda campaign using slogans such as "The
Virgin Mary is heading south", and aided by a U.S. funded $93 million relocation program, which included ferrying refugees with the Seventh Fleet. It is estimated that as many as two million more would have left had they not been stopped by the Viet Minh. The northern, mainly Catholic refugees were meant to give the later
Ngô Đình Diệm regime a strong anti-communist constituency. Diem later went on to staff his administration's key posts mostly with northern and central Catholics.
In addition to the Catholics flowing south, up to 130,000 "Revolutionary Regroupees" went to the north for "regroupment," expecting to return to the south within two years. The Viet Minh left roughly 5,000 to 10,000
cadres in the south as a "politico-military substructure within the object of its
irredentism." The last French soldiers were to leave Vietnam in April 1956. The PRC completed its withdrawal from North Vietnam at around the same time. Around 52,000 Vietnamese civilians moved from south to north.
Between 1953 and 1956, the North Vietnamese government instituted various agrarian reforms, including "rent reduction" and "land reform". Declassified Politburo documents confirm that 1 in 1,000 North Vietnamese (i.e., about 14,000 people) were the minimum quota targeted for execution during the earlier "rent reduction" campaign; the number killed during the multiple stages of the considerably more radical "land reform" was probably many times greater. Landlords were arbitrarily classified as 5.68% of the population, but the majority were subject to less severe punishment than execution. Official records from the time suggest that 172,008 "landlords" were executed during the "land reform", of whom 123,266 (71.66%) were later found to be wrongly classified. A wide range of estimates were previously suggested by independent sources. In 1956, leaders in Hanoi admitted to "excesses" in implementing this program and restored a large amount of the land to the original owners.
The south, meanwhile, constituted the State of Vietnam, with Bảo Đại as Emperor and
Ngô Đình Diệm (appointed in July 1954) as his prime minister. Neither the United States government nor Ngo Dinh Diem's State of Vietnam signed anything at the 1954 Geneva Conference. With respect to the question of reunification, the non-communist Vietnamese delegation objected strenuously to any division of Vietnam, but lost out when the French accepted the proposal of Viet Minh delegate
Pham Van Dong, who proposed that Vietnam eventually be united by elections under the supervision of "local commissions". The United States countered with what became known as the "American Plan," with the support of South Vietnam and the United Kingdom. It provided for unification elections under the supervision of the United Nations, but was rejected by the Soviet delegation. The United States was willing to accept a reunifed, communist-led Vietnam if it resulted from free and fair elections: "With respect to the statement made by the representative of the State of Vietnam, the United States reiterates its traditional position that peoples are entitled to determine their own future and that it will not join in any arrangement which would hinder this".
President Eisenhower wrote in 1954 that "I have never talked or corresponded with a person knowledgeable in Indochinese affairs who did not agree that had elections been held as of the time of the fighting, possibly eighty percent of the population would have voted for the Communist Ho Chi Minh as their leader rather than Chief of State Bao Dai. Indeed, the lack of leadership and drive on the part of Bao Dai was a factor in the feeling prevalent among Vietnamese that they had nothing to fight for." According to the
Pentagon Papers, however, from 1954 to 1956 "Ngo Dinh Diem really did accomplish miracles" in South Vietnam:"It is almost certain that by 1956 the proportion which might have voted for Ho—in a free election against
Diem—would have been much smaller than eighty percent." In 1957, independent observers from India, Poland, and Canada representing the
International Control Commission (ICC) stated that fair, unbiased elections were not possible in the northern part of Vietnam due to Communist influence.
From April to June 1955, Diem (against U.S. advice) eliminated any political opposition in the south by launching military operations against the
Cao Dai religious sect, the
Hoa Hao sect of
Ba Cut, and the
Binh Xuyen organized crime group (which was allied with members of the secret police and some military elements). As broad-based opposition to his harsh tactics mounted, Diem increasingly sought to blame the communists
In a referendum on the future of the State of Vietnam on 23 October 1955, Diem
rigged the poll supervised by his brother
Ngo Dinh Nhu and was credited with 98.2 percent of the vote, including 133% in Saigon. His American advisers had recommended a more modest winning margin of "60 to 70 percent." Diem, however, viewed the election as a test of authority. Three days later, he declared South Vietnam to be an independent state known as the Republic of Vietnam (ROV), with himself as president. Likewise, Ho Chi Minh and other communist officials always won at least 99% of the vote in North Vietnamese "elections".
The
domino theory, which argued that if one country fell to communism, then all of the surrounding countries would follow, was first proposed as policy by the Eisenhower administration.
It was, and is still, commonly hypothesized that it applied to Vietnam.
John F. Kennedy, then a
U.S. Senator, said in a speech to the American Friends of Vietnam: "Burma, Thailand, India, Japan, the Philippines and obviously Laos and Cambodia are among those whose security would be threatened if the Red Tide of Communism overflowed into Vietnam."
Diem era, 1955–1963
Rule
A devout Roman Catholic, Diem was fervently anti-communist, nationalist, and socially conservative. Historian Luu Doan Huynh notes that "Diem represented narrow and extremist nationalism coupled with autocracy and
nepotism." The majority of Vietnamese people were
Buddhist, and were alarmed by actions such as Diem's dedication of the country to the Virgin Mary.
Beginning in the summer of 1955, Diem launched the "Denounce the Communists" campaign, during which communists and other anti-government elements were arrested, imprisoned, tortured, or executed. He instituted the death penalty against any activity deemed communist in August 1956. As a measure of the level of
political repression, according to
Gabriel Kolko about 12,000 suspected opponents of Diem were killed between 1955 and 1957 and by the end of 1958 an estimated 40,000
political prisoners had been jailed. However,
Guenter Lewy argues that such figures were exaggerated and that there were never more than 35,000 prisoners of all kinds in the whole country.
In May 1957, Diem undertook a
ten-day state visit to the United States. President Eisenhower pledged his continued support, and a parade was held in Diem's honor in New York City. Although Diem was publicly praised, in private Secretary of State
John Foster Dulles conceded that Diem had been selected because there were no better alternatives.
Former
Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara wrote in
Argument Without End (1999) that the new American patrons of the ROV were almost completely ignorant of Vietnamese culture. They knew little of the language or long history of the country. There was a tendency to assign American motives to Vietnamese actions, and Diem warned that it was an illusion to believe that blindly copying Western methods would solve Vietnamese problems.
Insurgency in the South, 1954–1960
Between 1954 and 1957 there was large scale random dissidence in the countryside which the Diem government managed to successfully quell. In early 1957 South Vietnam had its first peace in over a decade. However, by mid-1957 through 1959 incidents of violence increased but the government "did not construe it as a campaign, considering the disorders too diffuse to warrant committing major GVN resources." By Early 1959 however, Diem had considered it a campaign and implemented Law 10/59, which made political violence punishable by death and property confiscation. There had been some division among former Viet Minh whose main goal was to hold the elections promised in the Geneva Accords, leading to "
wildcat" activities separate from the other communists and anti-GVN activists.
In December 1960, the
National Liberation Front (NLF) was formally created consisting of all anti-GVN activists and included non-communists. According to the
Pentagon Papers, the NLF "placed heavy emphasis on the withdrawal of American advisors and influence, on land reform and liberalization of the GVN, on
coalition government and the neutralization of Vietnam." Often the leaders of the organization were kept secret.
North Vietnamese involvement
Sources dispute whether North Vietnam played a direct role in aiding and organizing South Vietnamese rebels prior to 1960. Kahin and Lewis assert:
Contrary to United States policy assumptions, all available evidence shows that the revival of the civil war in the South in 1958 was undertaken by Southerners at their own—not Hanoi's—initiative...Insurgency activity against the Saigon government began in the South under Southern leadership not as a consequence of any dictate from Hanoi, but contrary to Hanoi's injunctions.
Similarly, historian
Arthur Schlesinger Jr. states that "it was not until September, 1960 that the Communist Party of North Vietnam bestowed its formal blessing and called for the liberation of the south from American imperialism".
By contrast, Jeffery Race interviewed communist defectors who found such denials "very amusing," and who "commented humorously that the Party had apparently been more successful than was expected in concealing its role." James Olson and Randy Roberts assert that North Vietnam authorized a low-level insurgency in December 1956.
To counter the accusation that North Vietnam was violating the Geneva Accord, the independence of the Viet Cong was stressed in communist propaganda.
In March 1956, southern communist leader
Lê Duẩn presented a plan to revive the insurgency entitled "The Road to the South" to the other members of the Politburo in Hanoi, but as China and the Soviets both opposed confrontation at this time, Lê Duẩn's plan was rejected. However the North Vietnamese leadership approved tentative measures to revive the southern insurgency in December 1956.
Communist forces were under a single command structure set up in 1958.
[124] The North Vietnamese Communist Party approved a "people's war" on the South at a session in January 1959
[125] and in May,
Group 559 was established to maintain and upgrade the
Ho Chi Minh Trail, at this time a six-month mountain trek through Laos. About 500 of the "regroupees" of 1954 were sent south on the trail during its first year of operation.
[126] The first arms delivery via the trail was completed in August 1959.
[127]
North Vietnam
invaded Laos in 1959, and used 30,000 men to build invasion routes through Laos and Cambodia by 1961.
[128] About 40,000 communist soldiers infiltrated into the south from 1961–63.
[122] North Vietnam sent 10,000 troops of the
NVA to attack the south in 1964, and this figure increased to 100,000 in 1965.
[129]
The Kennedy years, 1961–1963
In the
1960 U.S. presidential election, Senator
John F. Kennedy defeated vice-president
Richard Nixon. Although Eisenhower warned Kennedy about Laos and Vietnam, Europe and Latin America "loomed larger than Asia on his sights." In his inaugural address, Kennedy made the ambitious pledge to "pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and success of liberty."
[131] In June 1961, he bitterly disagreed with Soviet premier
Nikita Khrushchev when they
met in Vienna to discuss key U.S.-Soviet issues.
The Kennedy administration remained essentially committed to the Cold War foreign policy inherited from the Truman and Eisenhower administrations. In 1961, the U.S. had 50,000 troops based in Korea, and Kennedy faced a three-part crisis – the failure of the
Bay of Pigs Invasion, the construction of the
Berlin Wall, and a negotiated settlement between the pro-Western government of Laos and the
Pathet Lao communist movement.
[132] These made Kennedy believe that another failure on the part of the United States to gain control and stop communist expansion would fatally damage U.S. credibility with its allies and his own reputation. Kennedy was thus determined to "draw a line in the sand" and prevent a communist victory in Vietnam. He told James Reston of
The New York Timesimmediately after his Vienna meeting with Khrushchev, "Now we have a problem making our power credible and Vietnam looks like the place."
[133][134]
In May 1961, Vice president
Lyndon B. Johnson visited Saigon and enthusiastically declared Diem the "
Winston Churchill of Asia."
[135] Asked why he had made the comment, Johnson replied, "Diem's the only boy we got out there."
[119] Johnson assured Diem of more aid in molding a fighting force that could resist the communists.
Kennedy's policy toward South Vietnam rested on the assumption that Diem and his forces must ultimately defeat the guerrillas on their own. He was against the deployment of American combat troops and observed that "to introduce U.S. forces in large numbers there today, while it might have an initially favorable military impact, would almost certainly lead to adverse political and, in the long run, adverse military consequences."
[136] The quality of the South Vietnamese military, however, remained poor. Bad leadership, corruption, and political promotions all played a part in emasculating the ARVN. The frequency of guerrilla attacks rose as the insurgency gathered steam. While Hanoi's support for the NLF played a role, South Vietnamese governmental incompetence was at the core of the crisis.
[137]
One major issue Kennedy raised was whether the Soviet space and missile programs had surpassed those of the United States. Although Kennedy stressed long-range missile parity with the Soviets, he was also interested in using special forces for counterinsurgency warfare in Third World countries threatened by communist insurgencies. Although they were originally intended for use behind front lines after a conventional invasion of Europe, Kennedy believed that the guerrilla tactics employed by special forces such as the
Green Berets would be effective in a "brush fire" war in Vietnam.
Kennedy advisers
Maxwell Taylor and
Walt Rostow recommended that U.S. troops be sent to South Vietnam disguised as flood relief workers. Kennedy rejected the idea but increased military assistance yet again. In April 1962,
John Kenneth Galbraith warned Kennedy of the "danger we shall replace the French as a colonial force in the area and bleed as the French did."
[138] By 1963, there were 16,000 American military personnel in South Vietnam, up from Eisenhower's 900 advisors.
[139]
The
Strategic Hamlet Program had been initiated in 1961. This joint U.S.-South Vietnamese program attempted to resettle the rural population into fortified camps. The aim was to isolate the population from the insurgents, provide education and health care, and strengthen the government's hold over the countryside.
[citation needed] The Strategic Hamlets, however, were quickly infiltrated by the guerrillas.
[citation needed] The peasants resented being uprooted from their ancestral villages.
[citation needed] In part, this was because Colonel
Pham Ngoc Thao, a Diem favourite who was instrumental in running the program, was in fact a communist agent who used his Catholicism to gain influential posts and damage the ROV from the inside.
[citation needed]
On 23 July 1962, fourteen nations, including the People's Republic of China, South Vietnam, the Soviet Union, North Vietnam and the United States, signed an agreement promising the neutrality of Laos.
[140]
Ouster and Assassination of Ngo Dinh Diem
- See also: Kennedy's role, 1960 South Vietnamese coup attempt, 1962 South Vietnamese Independence Palace bombing, Huế Phật Đản shootingsand Xa Loi Pagoda raids
A US tank convoy during the Vietnam war.
The inept performance of the South Vietnamese army was exemplified by failed actions such as the
Battle of Ap Bac on 2 January 1963, in which a small band of Viet Cong beat off a much larger and better equipped South Vietnamese force, many of whose officers seemed reluctant even to engage in combat.
[141] The ARVN were led in that battle by Diem's most trusted general,
Huynh Van Cao, commander of the
IV Corps. Cao was a Catholic who had been promoted due to religion and fidelity rather than skill, and his main job was to preserve his forces to stave off coups; he had earlier vomited during a communist attack. Some policymakers in Washington began to conclude that Diem was incapable of defeating the communists and might even make a deal with Ho Chi Minh. He seemed concerned only with fending off coups, and had become more paranoid after attempts in 1960 and 1962, which he partly attributed to U.S. encouragement. As
Robert F. Kennedy noted, "Diem wouldn't make even the slightest concessions. He was difficult to reason with..."
[142]
Discontent with Diem's policies exploded following the
Huế Phật Đản shootings of majority Buddhists who were protesting against the ban on the
Buddhist flag on
Vesak, the Buddha's birthday. This resulted in mass protests against discriminatory policies that gave privileges to the Catholic Church and its adherents. Diem's elder brother
Ngo Dinh Thuc was the Archbishop of Huế and aggressively blurred the separation between church and state. Thuc's anniversary celebrations shortly before Vesak had been bankrolled by the government and Vatican flags were displayed prominently. There had also been reports of Buddhist pagodas being demolished by Catholic paramilitaries throughout Diem's rule. Diem refused to make concessions to the Buddhist majority or take responsibility for the deaths. On 21 August 1963, the
ARVN Special Forces of Colonel
Le Quang Tung, loyal to Diem's younger brother
Ngo Dinh Nhu,
raided pagodas across Vietnam, causing widespread damage and destruction and leaving a death toll estimated to range into the hundreds.
U.S. officials began discussing the possibility of a regime change during the middle of 1963. The
United States Department of State was generally in favor of encouraging a coup, while the Defense Department favored Diem. Chief among the proposed changes was the removal of Diem's younger brother Nhu, who controlled the secret police and special forces was seen as the man behind the Buddhist repression and more generally the architect of the Ngo family's rule. This proposal was conveyed to the U.S. embassy in Saigon in
Cable 243.
The
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was in contact with generals planning to remove Diem. They were told that the United States would not oppose such a move nor punish the generals by cutting off aid. President Diem was overthrown and executed, along with his brother, on 2 November 1963. When he was informed, Maxwell Taylor remembered that Kennedy "rushed from the room with a look of shock and dismay on his face."
[143] He had not approved Diem's murder. The U.S. ambassador to South Vietnam,
Henry Cabot Lodge, invited the coup leaders to the embassy and congratulated them. Ambassador Lodge informed Kennedy that "the prospects now are for a shorter war".
[144]
Following the coup, chaos ensued. Hanoi took advantage of the situation and increased its support for the guerrillas. South Vietnam entered a period of extreme political instability, as one military government toppled another in quick succession. Increasingly, each new regime was viewed as a puppet of the Americans; whatever the failings of Diem, his credentials as a nationalist (as Robert McNamara later reflected) had been impeccable.
[145]
U.S military advisers were embedded at every level of the South Vietnamese armed forces. They were, however, almost completely ignorant of the political nature of the
insurgency. The insurgency was a political power struggle, in which military engagements were not the main goal.
[146] The Kennedy administration sought to refocus U.S. efforts on pacification and "winning over the hearts and minds" of the population. The military leadership in Washington, however, was hostile to any role for U.S. advisers other than conventional troop training.
[147] General
Paul Harkins, the commander of U.S. forces in South Vietnam, confidently predicted victory by Christmas 1963.
[148] The CIA was less optimistic, however, warning that "the Viet Cong by and large retain de facto control of much of the countryside and have steadily increased the overall intensity of the effort".
[149]
Lyndon B. Johnson's escalation, 1963–1969
Lyndon B. Johnson (LBJ), as he took over the presidency after the
death of Kennedy, initially did not consider Vietnam a priority and was more concerned with his "
Great Society" and progressive social programs. Presidential aide
Jack Valenti recalls, "Vietnam at the time was no bigger than a man's fist on the horizon. We hardly discussed it because it was not worth discussing."
[152][153]
On 24 November 1963, Johnson said, "the battle against communism... must be joined... with strength and determination."
[154]The pledge came at a time when Vietnam was deteriorating, especially in places like the Mekong Delta, because of the recent coup against Diem.
[155] Johnson had reversed Kennedy's disengagement policy from Vietnam in withdrawing 1,000 troops by the end of 1963 (
NSAM 263 on 11 October),
[156] with his own NSAM 273 (26 November)
[157][158] to expand the war.
The military revolutionary council, meeting in lieu of a strong South Vietnamese leader, was made up of 12 members headed by General
Duong Van Minh—whom
Stanley Karnow, a journalist on the ground, later recalled as "a model of lethargy."
[159] Lodge, frustrated by the end of the year, cabled home about Minh: "Will he be strong enough to get on top of things?" His regime was overthrown in January 1964 by General
Nguyen Khanh.
[160]However, there was persistent instability in the military as several coups—not all successful—occurred in a short space of time.
An alleged NLF activist, captured during an attack on an American outpost near the Cambodian border, is interrogated.
On 2 August 1964, the
USS Maddox, on an intelligence mission along North Vietnam's coast, allegedly fired upon and damaged several torpedo boats that had been stalking it in the
Gulf of Tonkin.
[161] A second attack was reported two days later on the
USS Turner Joy and
Maddox in the same area. The circumstances of the attack were murky. Lyndon Johnson commented to Undersecretary of State George Ball that "those sailors out there may have been shooting at flying fish."
[162]
The second attack led to retaliatory air strikes, prompted Congress to approve the
Gulf of Tonkin Resolution on 7 August 1964,
[163] signed by Johnson, and gave the president power to conduct military operations in Southeast Asia without declaring war.
[164] Although Congressmen at the time denied that this was a full scale war declaration, the Tonkin Resolution allowed the president unilateral power to launch a full scale war if the president deemed necessary.
[164] In the same month, Johnson pledged that he was not "... committing American boys to fighting a war that I think ought to be fought by the boys of Asia to help protect their own land."
[165]
An undated
NSA publication declassified in 2005, however, revealed that there was no attack on 4 August.
[166] It had already been called into question long before this. "
Gulf of Tonkin incident", writes Louise Gerdes, "is an oft-cited example of the way in which Johnson misled the American people to gain support for his foreign policy in Vietnam."
[167] George C. Herring argues, however, that McNamara and the Pentagon "did not knowingly lie about the alleged attacks, but they were obviously in a mood to retaliate and they seem to have selected from the evidence available to them those parts that confirmed what they wanted to believe."
[168]
"From a strength of approximately 5,000 at the start of 1959 the Viet Cong's ranks grew to about 100,000 at the end of 1964...Between 1961 and 1964 the Army's strength rose from about 850,000 to nearly a million men."
[146] The numbers for U.S. troops deployed to Vietnam during the same period were quite different; 2,000 in 1961, rising rapidly to 16,500 in 1964.
[169] By early 1965, 7,559 South Vietnamese hamlets had been destroyed by the Viet Cong.
[170]
A Marine from 1st Battalion, 3rd Marines, moves an alleged NLF activist to the rear during a search and clear operation held by the battalion 15 miles (24 km) west of
Da Nang Air Base.
Bombing was not restricted to North Vietnam. Other aerial campaigns, such as
Operation Commando Hunt, targeted different parts of the NLF and VPA infrastructure. These included the
Ho Chi Minh trail, which ran through Laos and Cambodia. The objective of stopping North Vietnam and the NLF was never reached. As one officer noted "this is a political war and it calls for discriminate killing. The best weapon... would be a knife... The worst is an airplane."
[175] The
Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force Curtis LeMay, however, had long advocated saturation bombing in Vietnam and wrote of the communists that "we're going to bomb them back into the Stone Age".
[176]
Escalation and ground war
Peasants suspected of being Vietcong under detention of U.S. army, 1966
After several attacks upon them, it was decided that
U.S. Air Force bases needed more protection. The South Vietnamese military seemed incapable of providing security. On 8 March 1965, 3,500
U.S. Marines were dispatched to South Vietnam. This marked the beginning of the American ground war. U.S. public opinion overwhelmingly supported the deployment.
[177]
In a statement similar to that made to the French almost two decades earlier, Ho Chi Minh warned that if the Americans "want to make war for twenty years then we shall make war for twenty years. If they want to make peace, we shall make peace and invite them to afternoon tea."
[178] As former First Deputy Foreign Minister Tran Quang Co has noted, the primary goal of the war was to reunify Vietnam and secure its independence.
[citation needed] Some have argued that the policy of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) was not to topple other non-communist governments in South East Asia.
[179] However, the
Pentagon Papers warned of "a dangerous period of Vietnamese expansionism....Laos and Cambodia would have been easy pickings for such a Vietnam....Thailand, Malaya, Singapore, and even Indonesia, could have been next."
[180]
The Marines' assignment was defensive. The initial deployment of 3,500 in March was increased to nearly 200,000 by December.
[181] The U.S. military had long been schooled in offensive warfare. Regardless of political policies, U.S. commanders were institutionally and psychologically unsuited to a defensive mission.
[181] In December, ARVN forces suffered heavy losses at the
Battle of Bình Giã,
[182] in a battle that both sides viewed as a watershed. Previously communist forces had utilized hit-and-run guerrilla tactics, however at Binh Gia they had defeated a strong ARVN force in conventional warfare.
[183] Tellingly, South Vietnamese forces were again defeated in June, at the
Battle of Đồng Xoài.
[184]
U.S. soldiers searching a village for
NLF
Desertion rates were increasing, and
morale plummeted. General
William Westmoreland informed Admiral
U.S. Grant Sharp, Jr., commander of U.S. Pacific forces, that the situation was critical.
[181] He said, "I am convinced that U.S. troops with their energy, mobility, and firepower can successfully take the fight to the NLF [National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam]."
[185]With this recommendation, Westmoreland was advocating an aggressive departure from America's defensive posture and the sidelining of the South Vietnamese. By ignoring ARVN units, the U.S. commitment became open-ended.
[186] Westmoreland outlined a three-point plan to win the war:
- Phase 1. Commitment of U.S. (and other free world) forces necessary to halt the losing trend by the end of 1965.
- Phase 2. U.S. and allied forces mount major offensive actions to seize the initiative to destroy guerrilla and organized enemy forces. This phase would end when the enemy had been worn down, thrown on the defensive, and driven back from major populated areas.
- Phase 3. If the enemy persisted, a period of twelve to eighteen months following Phase 2 would be required for the final destruction of enemy forces remaining in remote base areas.[187]
The plan was approved by Johnson and marked a profound departure from the previous administration's insistence that the government of South Vietnam was responsible for defeating the guerrillas. Westmoreland predicted victory by the end of 1967.
[188] Johnson did not, however, communicate this change in strategy to the media. Instead he emphasized continuity.
[189] The change in U.S. policy depended on matching the North Vietnamese and the NLF in a contest of
attrition and
morale. The opponents were locked in a cycle of
escalation.
[190] The idea that the government of South Vietnam could manage its own affairs was shelved.
[190]
The one-year
tour of duty deprived units of experienced leadership. As one observer noted "we were not in Vietnam for 10 years, but for one year 10 times."
[175] As a result, training programs were shortened.
South Vietnam was inundated with manufactured goods. As Stanley Karnow writes, "the main PX [Post Exchange], located in the Saigon suburb of
Cholon, was only slightly smaller than the New York
Bloomingdale's..."
[191] The American buildup transformed the economy and had a profound effect on South Vietnamese society. A huge surge in corruption was witnessed.
The Ho Chi Minh Trail running through Laos, 1967
Washington encouraged its
SEATO allies to contribute troops. Australia, New Zealand, the
Republic of Korea, Thailand, and the
Philippines[192] all agreed to send troops. Major allies, however, notably
NATO nations Canada and the United Kingdom, declined Washington's troop requests.
[193] The U.S. and its allies mounted complex operations, such as operations
Masher,
Attleboro,
Cedar Falls, and
Junction City. However, the communist insurgents remained elusive and demonstrated great
tactical flexibility.
Meanwhile, the political situation in South Vietnam began to stabilize with the coming to power of prime minister Air Marshal
Nguyễn Cao Kỳ and figurehead Chief of State, General
Nguyễn Văn Thiệu, in mid 1965 at the head of a military junta. This ended a series of coups that had happened more than once a year. In 1967, Thieu became president with Ky as his deputy, after rigged elections. Although they were nominally a civilian government, Ky was supposed to maintain real power through a behind-the-scenes military body. However, Thieu outmanoevred and sidelined Ky by filling the ranks with generals from his faction. Thieu was also accused of murdering Ky loyalists through contrived military accidents. Thieu, mistrustful and indecisive, remained president until 1975, having won a one-man election in 1971.
[194]
The Johnson administration employed a "policy of minimum candor"
[195] in its dealings with the media. Military information officers sought to manage media coverage by emphasizing stories that portrayed progress in the war. Over time, this policy damaged the public trust in official pronouncements. As the media's coverage of the war and that of the Pentagon diverged, a so-called
credibility gap developed.
[195]
The Tet Offensive
Main article:
Tet Offensive
A US Marine prepares to enter a Vietcong tunnel.
In late 1967 the Communists lured American forces into the hinterlands at
Dak To and at the
Marine Khe Sanh combat base in
Quảng Trị Province where the United States was more than willing to fight because it could unleash its massive firepower unimpeded by civilians. However, on January 31, 1968, the NVA and NLF broke the truce that traditionally accompanied the
Tết (Lunar New Year) holiday by launching the largest battle of the war, the Tet Offensive, in the hope of sparking a national uprising.
[196] Over 100 cities were attacked by over 85,000 enemy troops including assaults on General Westmoreland's headquarters and the
U.S. Embassy, Saigon.
[197]
U.S. Marines in Operation Allen Brook in 1968.
Although the U.S. and South Vietnamese forces were initially shocked by the scale of the urban offensive, they responded quickly and effectively, decimating the ranks of the NLF. In the former capital city of
Huế, the combined NVA and NLF troops captured the Imperial Citadel and much of the city, which led to the
Battle of Huế. Throughout the offensive, American forces employed massive firepower; in Huế where the battle was the fiercest, that firepower left 80 percent of the city in ruins.
[198] Further north, at Quang Tri City, members of the
1st Air Cavalry Division and 1st ARVN Infantry Division killed more than 900 NVA and Vietcong troops in and around the city (for
a photographic history see). However, back at Hue Communist occupying forces
massacred over 3,000 unarmed Huế civilians.
[199]
But the offensive had another, unintended consequence. General Westmoreland had become the public face of the war. He was featured on the cover of
Time magazine three times and was named 1965's Man of the Year.
[200] Time described him as "the sinewy personification of the American fighting man... (who) directed the historic buildup, drew up the battle plans, and infused the... men under him with his own idealistic view of U.S. aims and responsibilities."
[200]
U.S. Marines fighting in
Huế
In November 1967 Westmoreland spearheaded a public relations drive for the Johnson administration to bolster flagging public support.
[201] In a speech before the
National Press Club he said a point in the war had been reached "where the end comes into view."
[202] Thus, the public was shocked and confused when Westmoreland's predictions were trumped by Tet.
[201] The American media, which had been largely supportive of U.S. efforts, turned on the Johnson administration for what had become an increasing credibility gap. Despite its military failure, the Tet Offensive became a political victory for the NLF and ended the career of president Lyndon B. Johnson, who declined to run for re-election. Johnson's approval rating slumped from 48 to 36 percent.
[201]
As James Witz noted, Tet "contradicted the claims of progress... made by the Johnson administration and the military."
[201] The Tet Offensive was the turning point in America's involvement in the Vietnam War. It had a profound impact on domestic support for the conflict. The offensive constituted an
intelligence failure on the scale of
Pearl Harbor.
[192][203] Journalist
Peter Arnett quoted an unnamed officer, saying of
Bến Tre (laid to rubble by U.S. firepower)
[204] that "it became necessary to destroy the village in order to save it" (though the authenticity of this quote is disputed).
[205] According to one source, this quote was attributed to Major Booris of 9th Infantry Division.
[206]
NLF/NVA killed by U.S. Air Force personnel during a perimeter attack of Tan Son Nhut Air Base during the Tet Offensive
Walter Cronkite said in an editorial, "To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past. To suggest we are on the edge of defeat is to yield to unreasonable pessimism. To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory, conclusion."
[207][208]Following Cronkite's editorial report, President
Lyndon Johnson is reported to have said, "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost
Middle America."
[209][210]
Westmoreland became Chief of Staff of the Army in March 1968, just as all resistance was finally subdued. The move was technically a promotion. However, his position had become untenable because of the offensive and because his request for 200,000 additional troops had been leaked to the media. Westmoreland was succeeded by his deputy
Creighton Abrams, a commander less inclined to public media pronouncements.
[211]
On 10 May 1968, despite low expectations,
peace talks began between the United States and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. Negotiations stagnated for five months, until Johnson gave orders to halt the bombing of North Vietnam. The
Democratic candidate, Vice president
Hubert Humphrey, was running against
Republican former vice president
Richard Nixon.
As historian
Robert Dallek writes, "Lyndon Johnson's escalation of the war in Vietnam divided Americans into warring camps... cost 30,000 American lives by the time he left office, (and) destroyed Johnson's presidency..."
[212] His refusal to send more U.S. troops to Vietnam was seen as Johnson's admission that the war was lost.
[213] It can be seen that the refusal was a tacit admission that the war could not be won by escalation, at least not at a cost acceptable to the American people.
[213] As Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara noted, "the dangerous illusion of victory by the United States was therefore dead."
[214]
Vietnamization, 1969–1972
Nixon Doctrine / Vietnamization
Propaganda leaflet urging the defection of NLF and North Vietnamese to the side of the Republic of Vietnam
Severe communist losses during the Tet Offensive allowed U.S. President
Richard Nixon to begin troop withdrawals. His plan, called the
Nixon Doctrine, was to build up the ARVN, so that they could take over the defense of South Vietnam. The policy became known as "
Vietnamization". Vietnamization had much in common with the policies of the Kennedy administration. One important difference, however, remained. While Kennedy insisted that the South Vietnamese fight the war themselves, he attempted to limit the scope of the conflict.
Nixon said in an announcement, "I am tonight announcing plans for the withdrawal of an additional 150,000 American troops to be completed during the spring of next year. This will bring a total reduction of 265,500 men in our armed forces in Vietnam below the level that existed when we took office 15 months ago."
[215]
Nixon also pursued negotiations. Theater commander
Creighton Abrams shifted to smaller operations, aimed at communist logistics, with better use of firepower and more cooperation with the ARVN. Nixon also began to pursue
détente with the Soviet Union and
rapprochement with the People's Republic of China. This policy helped to decrease global tensions. Détente led to nuclear arms reduction on the part of both superpowers. But Nixon was disappointed that the PRC and the Soviet Union continued to supply the North Vietnamese with aid. In September 1969, Ho Chi Minh died at age seventy-nine.
[216]
The anti-war movement was gaining strength in the United States. Nixon appealed to the "
silent majority" of Americans to support the war. But revelations of the
My Lai Massacre, in which a U.S. Army
platoon raped and killed civilians, and the 1969 "
Green Beret Affair" where eight Special Forces soldiers, including the 5th Special Forces Group Commander were arrested for the murder
[217] of a suspected double agent
[218] provoked national and international outrage.
Beginning in 1970, American troops were being taken away from border areas where much more killing took place, and instead put along the coast and interior, which is one reason why casualties in 1970 were less than half of 1969's totals.
[215]
Involvement of Cambodia and Laos
Prince
Norodom Sihanouk had proclaimed Cambodia neutral since 1955,
[219] but the communists used Cambodian soil as a base and Sihanouk tolerated their presence, because he wished to avoid being drawn into a wider regional conflict. Under pressure from Washington, however, he changed this policy in 1969. The Vietnamese communists were no longer welcome. President Nixon took the opportunity to launch a massive bombing campaign, called Operation Menu, against their sanctuaries along the Cambodia/Vietnam border. Only five high-ranking Congressional officials were informed of the operation.
In 1971 the
Pentagon Papers were leaked to
The New York Times. The top-secret history of U.S. involvement in Vietnam, commissioned by the Department of Defense, detailed a long series of public deceptions. The
Supreme Court ruled that its publication was legal.
[222]
The ARVN launched
Operation Lam Son 719 in February 1971, aimed at cutting the Ho Chi Minh trail in Laos.
[140] The ostensibly neutral Laos had long been the scene of a civil war, pitting the
Laotian government backed by the US against the
Pathet Lao and its North Vietnamese allies. After meeting resistance, ARVN forces retreated in a confused rout. They fled along roads littered with their own dead. When they exhausted fuel supplies, soldiers abandoned their vehicles and attempted to barge their way on to American helicopters sent to evacuate the wounded. Many ARVN soldiers clung to helicopter skids in a desperate attempt to save themselves. U.S. aircraft had to destroy abandoned equipment, including tanks, to prevent them from falling into enemy hands. Half of the ARVN troops involved in the operation were either captured or killed. The operation was a fiasco and represented a clear failure of Vietnamization. As Karnow noted "the blunders were monumental... The (South Vietnamese) government's top officers had been tutored by the Americans for ten or fifteen years, many at training schools in the United States, yet they had learned little."
[223]
In 1971 Australia and New Zealand withdrew their soldiers. The U.S. troop count was further reduced to 196,700, with a deadline to remove another 45,000 troops by February 1972. As
peace protests spread across the United States, disillusionment and ill-discipline grew in the ranks.
[224]
Vietnamization was again tested by the
Easter Offensive of 1972, a massive conventional invasion of South Vietnam. The VPA and NLF quickly overran the northern provinces and in coordination with other forces attacked from Cambodia, threatening to cut the country in half. U.S. troop withdrawals continued. But American airpower came to the rescue with
Operation Linebacker, and the offensive was halted. However, it became clear that without American airpower South Vietnam could not survive. The last remaining American ground troops were withdrawn in August.
1972 election and Paris Peace Accords
However, South Vietnamese president Thieu demanded massive changes to the peace accord. When North Vietnam went public with the agreement's details, the Nixon administration claimed that the North was attempting to embarrass the president. The negotiations became deadlocked. Hanoi demanded new changes.
To show his support for South Vietnam and force Hanoi back to the negotiating table, Nixon ordered
Operation Linebacker II, a massive bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong 18–29 December 1972. The offensive destroyed much of the remaining economic and industrial capacity of North Vietnam. Simultaneously Nixon pressured Thieu to accept the terms of the agreement, threatening to conclude a bilateral peace deal and cut off American aid.
On 15 January 1973, Nixon announced the suspension of offensive action against North Vietnam. The
Paris Peace Accords on "Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam" were signed on 27 January 1973, officially ending direct U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. A cease-fire was declared across North and South Vietnam. U.S.
POWs were released. The agreement guaranteed the territorial integrity of Vietnam and, like the
Geneva Conference of 1954, called for national elections in the North and South. The Paris Peace Accords stipulated a sixty-day period for the total withdrawal of U.S. forces. "This article", noted Peter Church, "proved... to be the only one of the Paris Agreements which was fully carried out."
[225]
Opposition to U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War: 1962–1973
Anti-Vietnam War demonstration, 1967.
During the course of the Vietnam War a large segment of the American population opposed U.S. involvement in South Vietnam. Public opinion steadily turned against the war following 1967 and by 1970 only a third of Americans believed that the U.S. had not made a mistake by sending troops to fight in Vietnam.
[226]
Since nearly a third of the American population were strongly against the war it is possible to specify certain groups who led the antiwar movement and the reasons why. Many young people often protested because they were the ones being
drafted while many others were against the war because the antiwar movement grew increasingly popular among the counterculture and drug culture in American society and its music.
[227]
Some advocates within the peace movement advocated a
unilateral withdrawal of U.S. forces from Vietnam. One reason given for the withdrawal is that it would contribute to a lessening of tensions in the region and thus less human bloodshed. Early opposition to U.S. involvement in Vietnam drew its inspiration from the
Geneva Conference of 1954. American support of Diem in refusing elections was thought to be thwarting the very democracy that America claimed to be supporting. John Kennedy, while Senator, opposed involvement in Vietnam.
[169]
Exit of the Americans: 1973–1975
Under the
Paris Peace Accords, between North Vietnamese Foreign Minister
Lê Ðức Thọ and U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, and reluctantly signed by South Vietnamese president
Thiệu, U.S. military forces withdrew from South Vietnam and prisoners were exchanged. North Vietnam was allowed to continue supplying communist troops in the South, but only to the extent of replacing materials that were consumed. Later that year the
Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Kissinger and Thọ, but the Vietnamese negotiator declined it saying that a true peace did not yet exist.
The communist leaders had expected that the ceasefire terms would favor their side. But Saigon, bolstered by a surge of U.S. aid received just before the ceasefire went into effect, began to roll back the Vietcong. The communists responded with a new strategy hammered out in a series of meetings in Hanoi in March 1973, according to the memoirs of
Trần Văn Trà.
[235]
As the Vietcong's top commander, Trà participated in several of these meetings. With U.S. bombings suspended, work on the Ho Chi Minh Trail and other logistical structures could proceed unimpeded. Logistics would be upgraded until the North was in a position to launch a massive invasion of the South, projected for the 1975–76 dry season. Trà calculated that this date would be Hanoi's last opportunity to strike before Saigon's army could be fully trained.
[235]
Calling for immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces from Vietnam, George McGovern's 1972 Presidential Campaign lost 49 of 50 states to Richard Nixon.
In the November 1972 Election, Democrat nominee
George McGovern lost 49 of 50 states to the incumbent president
Richard Nixon. On 15 March 1973, President Nixon implied that the United States would intervene militarily if the communist side violated the ceasefire. Public and congressional reaction to Nixon's trial balloon was unfavorable and in April Nixon appointed
Graham Martin as U.S. ambassador to Vietnam. Martin was a second stringer compared to previous U.S. ambassadors and his appointment was an early signal that Washington had given up on Vietnam. During his confirmation hearings in June 1973,
Secretary of Defense James R. Schlesinger stated that he would recommend resumption of U.S. bombing in North Vietnam if North Vietnam launched a major offensive against South Vietnam. On 4 June 1973, the U.S. Senate passed the
Case-Church Amendment to prohibit such intervention.
[236]
The oil price shock of October 1973 caused significant damage to the South Vietnamese economy. The Vietcong resumed offensive operations when dry season began and by January 1974 it had recaptured the territory it lost during the previous dry season. After two clashes that left 55 South Vietnamese soldiers dead, President Thiệu announced on 4 January that the war had restarted and that the Paris Peace Accord was no longer in effect. There had been over 25,000 South Vietnamese casualties during the ceasefire period.
[237]
Gerald Ford took over as U.S. president on 9 August 1974 after president Nixon resigned due to the
Watergate scandal. At this time, Congress cut financial aid to South Vietnam from $1 billion a year to $700 million. The U.S. midterm elections in 1974 brought in a new Congress dominated by Democrats who were even more determined to confront the president on the war. Congress immediately voted in restrictions on funding and military activities to be phased in through 1975 and to culminate in a total cutoff of funding in 1976.
The success of the 1973–74 dry season offensive inspired Trà to return to Hanoi in October 1974 and plead for a larger offensive in the next dry season. This time, Trà could travel on a drivable highway with regular fueling stops, a vast change from the days when the Ho Chi Minh Trail was a dangerous mountain trek.
[238] Giáp, the North Vietnamese defense minister, was reluctant to approve Trà's plan. A larger offensive might provoke a U.S. reaction and interfere with the big push planned for 1976. Trà appealed over Giáp's head to first secretary
Lê Duẩn, who approved of the operation.
Trà's plan called for a limited offensive from Cambodia into
Phuoc Long Province. The strike was designed to solve local logistical problems, gauge the reaction of South Vietnamese forces, and determine whether U.S. would return to the fray.
Recently released American POWs from North Vietnamese prison camps, 1973
On 13 December 1974, North Vietnamese forces attacked Route 14 in Phuoc Long Province. Phuoc Binh, the provincial capital, fell on 6 January 1975. Ford desperately asked Congress for funds to assist and re-supply the South before it was overrun. Congress refused. The fall of Phuoc Binh and the lack of an American response left the South Vietnamese elite demoralized.
The speed of this success led the Politburo to reassess its strategy. It was decided that operations in the Central Highlands would be turned over to General
Văn Tiến Dũng and that Pleiku should be seized, if possible. Before he left for the South, Dũng was addressed by Lê Duẩn: "Never have we had military and political conditions so perfect or a strategic advantage as great as we have now."
[239]
At the start of 1975, the South Vietnamese had three times as much artillery and twice the number of tanks and armoured cars as the opposition. They also had 1,400 aircraft and a two-to-one numerical superiority in combat troops over their Communist enemies.
[240] However, the rising oil prices meant that much of this could not be used. They faced a well-organized, highly determined and well-funded North Vietnam. Much of the North's material and financial support came from the communist bloc. Within South Vietnam, there was increasing chaos. Their abandonment by the American military had compromised an economy dependent on U.S. financial support and the presence of a large number of U.S. troops. South Vietnam suffered from the global recession that followed the
Arab oil embargo.
Campaign 275
On 10 March 1975, General Dung launched Campaign 275, a limited offensive into the Central Highlands, supported by tanks and heavy artillery. The target was
Buôn Ma Thuột, in
Đắk Lắk Province. If the town could be taken, the provincial capital of
Pleiku and the road to the coast would be exposed for a planned campaign in 1976. The ARVN proved incapable of resisting 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 his attention to
Kon Tum. He argued that with two months of good weather remaining until the onset of the monsoon, it would be irresponsible to not take advantage of the situation.
President
Nguyễn Văn Thiệu, a former general, was fearful that his forces would be cut off in the north by the attacking communists; Thieu ordered a retreat. The president declared this to be a "lighten the top and keep the bottom" strategy. But in what appeared to be a repeat of
Operation Lam Son 719, the withdrawal soon turned into a bloody rout. While the bulk of ARVN forces attempted to flee, isolated units fought desperately. ARVN General Phu abandoned Pleiku and Kon Tum and retreated toward the coast, in what became known as the "column of tears".
As the ARVN tried to disengage from the enemy, refugees mixed in with the line of retreat. The poor condition of roads and bridges, damaged by years of conflict and neglect, slowed Phu's column. As the North Vietnamese forces approached, panic set in. Often abandoned by the officers, the soldiers and civilians were shelled incessantly. The retreat degenerated into a desperate scramble for the coast. By 1 April the "column of tears" was all but annihilated.
On 20 March, Thieu reversed himself and ordered Huế, Vietnam's third-largest city, be held at all costs, and then changed his policy several times. Thieu's contradictory orders confused and demoralized his officer corps. As the North Vietnamese launched their attack, panic set in, and ARVN resistance withered. On 22 March, the VPA opened the siege of Huế. Civilians flooded the airport and the docks hoping for any mode of escape. Some even swam out to sea to reach boats and barges anchored offshore. In the confusion, routed ARVN soldiers fired on civilians to make way for their retreat.
On 25 March, after a three-day battle, Huế fell. As resistance in Huế collapsed, North Vietnamese rockets rained down on
Da Nang and its airport. By 28 March 35,000 VPA troops were poised to attack the suburbs. By 30 March 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 came to an end.
Final North Vietnamese offensive
With the northern half of the country under their control, the Politburo ordered General Dung to launch the final offensive against Saigon. The operational plan for the
Ho Chi Minh Campaign called for the capture of Saigon before 1 May. Hanoi wished to avoid the coming monsoon and prevent any redeployment of ARVN forces defending 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 (64 km) east of Saigon. The North Vietnamese met fierce resistance at Xuan Loc from the
ARVN 18th Division, who were outnumbered six to one. For two bloody weeks, severe fighting raged as the ARVN defenders made a
last stand to try to block the North Vietnamese advance. By 21 April, however, the exhausted garrison were ordered to withdraw towards Saigon.
An embittered and tearful president Thieu resigned on the same day, declaring that the United States had betrayed South Vietnam. In a scathing attack, he suggested U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger had tricked him into signing the Paris peace agreement two years ago, promising military aid that failed to materialise. Having transferred power to
Tran Van Huong, he left for
Taiwan on 25 April. At the same time, North Vietnamese tanks had reached
Bien Hoa and turned toward Saigon, brushing aside isolated ARVN units along the way.
By the end of April, the ARVN had collapsed on all fronts except in the
Mekong Delta. Thousand of refugees streamed southward, ahead of the main communist onslaught. On 27 April 100,000 North Vietnamese troops encircled Saigon. The city was defended by about 30,000 ARVN troops. To hasten a collapse and foment panic, the VPA shelled the airport and forced its closure. With the air exit closed, large numbers of civilians found that they had no way out.
Fall of Saigon
Chaos, unrest, and panic broke out as hysterical South Vietnamese officials and civilians scrambled to leave Saigon.
Martial law was declared. American helicopters began evacuating South Vietnamese, U.S., and foreign nationals from various parts of the city and from the U.S. embassy compound.
Operation Frequent Wind had been delayed until the last possible moment, because of U.S. Ambassador
Graham Martin's belief that Saigon could be held and that a political settlement could be reached.
Schlesinger announced early in the morning of 29 April 1975 the evacuation from
Saigon by helicopter of the last U.S. diplomatic, military, and civilian personnel. Frequent Wind was arguably the largest helicopter evacuation in history. It began on 29 April, in an atmosphere of desperation, as hysterical crowds of Vietnamese vied for limited space. Martin pleaded with Washington to dispatch $700 million in emergency aid to bolster the regime and help it mobilize fresh military reserves. But American public opinion had soured on this conflict.
In the United States, South Vietnam was perceived as doomed. President
Gerald Ford had given a televised speech on 23 April, declaring an end to the Vietnam War and all U.S. aid. Frequent Wind continued around the clock, as North Vietnamese tanks breached defenses on the outskirts of Saigon. In the early morning hours of 30 April, the last U.S. Marines evacuated the embassy by helicopter, as civilians swamped the perimeter and poured into the grounds. Many of them had been employed by the Americans and were left to their fate.
Victorious NVA troops at the Presidential Palace, Saigon.
On 30 April 1975, Vietnamese People's Army troops entered the city of Saigon and quickly overcame all resistance, capturing key buildings and installations. A tank from the 324th Division crashed through the gates of the
Independence Palace at 11:30 am local time and the Vietcong flag was raised above it. President
Duong Van Minh, who had succeeded Huong two days earlier, surrendered.
[241]
Other countries' involvement
Pro-Hanoi
People's Republic of China
China's ability to aid the Viet Minh declined when Soviet aid to China was reduced following the end of the
Korean War in 1953. Moreover, a divided Vietnam posed less of a threat to China. China provided material and technical support to the Vietnamese communists worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Chinese-supplied rice allowed North Vietnam to pull military-age men from the paddies and to impose a universal draft beginning in 1960.
In the summer of 1962,
Mao Zedong agreed to supply Hanoi with 90,000 rifles and guns free of charge. Starting in 1965, China sent
anti-aircraft units and engineering
battalions to North Vietnam to repair the damage caused by American bombing, rebuild roads and railroads, and to perform other engineering works. This freed North Vietnamese army units for combat in the South.
Sino-Soviet relations soured after the
Soviets invaded Czechoslovakia in August 1968. In October, the Chinese demanded North Vietnam cut relations with Moscow, but Hanoi refused.
[243] The Chinese began to withdraw in November 1968 in preparation for a clash with the Soviets, which occurred at
Zhenbao Islandin March 1969. The Chinese also began financing the
Khmer Rouge as a counterweight to the Vietnamese communists at this time. China's withdrawal from Vietnam was completed in July 1970.
[244]
The Khmer Rouge launched ferocious raids into Vietnam in 1975–1978. Vietnam responded with an invasion that toppled the Khmer Rouge. In response, China launched a brief, punitive
invasion of Vietnam in 1979.
Soviet Union
Soviet ships in the South China Sea gave vital early warnings to
NLF forces in South Vietnam. The Soviet intelligence ships would pick up American
B-52 bombers flying from
Okinawa and
Guam. Their airspeed and direction would be noted and then relayed to
COSVN headquarters. COSVN using airspeed and direction would calculate the bombing target and tell any assets to move "perpendicularly to the attack trajectory." These advance warning gave them time to move out of the way of the bombers and while the bombing runs caused extensive damage, because of the early warnings from 1968–1970 they did not kill a single military or civilian leader in the headquarter complexes.
[245]
The Soviet Union supplied North Vietnam with medical supplies, arms, tanks, planes, helicopters, artillery, anti-aircraft missiles and other military equipment. Soviet crews fired USSR-made
surface-to-air missiles at the
F-4 Phantom, which were shot down over Thanh Hoa in 1965. Over a dozen Soviet citizens lost their lives in this conflict. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russian officials acknowledged that the Soviet Union had stationed up to 3,000 troops in Vietnam during the war.
[246]
Some Russian sources give more specific numbers: the hardware donated by the USSR included 2,000 tanks, 7,000 artillery guns, over 5,000 anti-aircraft guns, 158 surface-to-air rocket launchers. Over the course of the war the Soviet money donated to the Vietnamese cause was equal to 1.5–2 million dollars a day
[citation needed]. From July 1965 to the end of 1974, fighting in Vietnam was attended by some 6,500 officers and generals, as well as more than 4,500 soldiers and sergeants of the Soviet Armed Forces. In addition, military schools and academies of the USSR began training Vietnamese soldiers – more than 10 thousand people.
[247]
North Korea
As a result of a decision of the
Korean Workers' Party in October 1966, in early 1967
North Korea 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.
[248]
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.
[249] Kim Il-sung is reported to have told his pilots to "fight in the war as if the Vietnamese sky were their own".
[250]
Cuba
The contributions to North Vietnam by the communist
Republic of Cuba, under
Fidel Castro, is still a matter of debate. There are numerous reports by former U.S.
prisoners of war that Cuban military personnel were present at North Vietnamese prison facilities during the war, and that they participated in torture activities, in what is known as the "Cuba Program".
[251][252][253][254][255] Witnesses to this include
Senator John McCain, 2008
U.S. Presidential candidate and former Vietnam prisoner of war, according to his 1999 book
Faith of My Fathers.
[256] That there was at least a small contingent of Cuban
military advisors present in North Vietnam during the war is without question. Some, notably
Vietnam War POW/MIA issue advocates, claim evidence that Cuba's military and non-military involvement may have run into the "thousands" of personnel.
[257] Then and since, the communist Vietnamese and Cuban governments have not divulged any information on this matter. The most well-known involvement, however, is Fidel Castro's visit to Quang Tri province, held by North Vietnam after the
Easter Offensive.
[258]
Pro-Saigon
South Korea
On the
anti-communist side,
South Korea had the second-largest contingent of foreign troops in South Vietnam after the United States. In November 1961,
Park Chung Hee proposed South Korean participation in the war to John F. Kennedy, but Kennedy disagreed.
[259] On 1 May 1964
Lyndon Johnson requested South Korean participation.
[259]The first South Korean troops began arriving in 1964 and large combat battalions began arriving a year later, with the South Koreans soon developing a reputation for effectiveness. Indeed arguably, they conducted counterinsurgency operations so well that American commanders felt that South Korean area of responsibility was the safest.
[260]
Approximately 320,000 South Korean soldiers were sent to Vietnam,
[261] each serving a one year tour of duty. Maximum troop levels peaked at 50 thousand in 1968, however all were withdrawn by 1973.
[262] About five thousand South Koreans were killed and 11 thousand were injured during the war. South Korea claimed they killed 41,000 Vietcong fighters.
[261] The United States paid South Korean soldiers 236 million dollars for their efforts in Vietnam,
[261]and South Korean
GNP increased five-fold during the war.
[261]
Australia and New Zealand
An Australian soldier in Vietnam
Australia and New Zealand, close allies of the United States and members of the
Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) and the
ANZUS military co-operation treaty, sent ground troops to Vietnam. Both nations had gained experience in counterinsurgency and jungle warfare during the
Malayan Emergency and World War II. Their governments subscribed to the
Domino theory. Australia began by sending advisors to Vietnam in 1962, and combat troops were committed in 1965.
[263] New Zealand began by sending a detachment of engineers and an artillery battery, and then started sending special forces and regular infantry which were attached to Australian formations.
[264] Australia's peak commitment was 7,672 combat troops and New Zealand's 552. More than 60,000 Australian personnel were involved during the course of the war, of which 521 were killed and more than 3,000 wounded.
[265] Approximately 3,000 New Zealanders served in Vietnam, losing 37 killed and 187 wounded.
[266] Most Australians and New Zealanders served in the
1st Australian Task Force in
Phước Tuy province.
[263]
Philippines
Some 10,450
Filipino troops were dispatched to South Vietnam. They were primarily engaged in medical and other civilian pacification projects. These forces operated under the designation PHLCAG-V or Philippine Civic Action Group-Vietnam.
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, though Thai regular formations there 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.
Republic of China (Taiwan)
Since November 1967, the
Taiwanese government secretly operated a cargo transport detachment to assist the United States and South Vietnam. Taiwan also provided military training units for the South Vietnamese diving units, later known as the Lien Doi Nguoi Nhai (LDMN) or
Frogman unit in English.
[267] In addition to the diving trainers there were several hundred military personnel.
[267] Military commandos from Taiwan were captured by communist forces three times trying to infiltrate North Vietnam.
[267]
Canada and the ICC
Canada, India and
Poland constituted the
International Control Commission, which was supposed to monitor the 1954 ceasefire agreement.
[268] Officially, Canada did not have partisan involvement in the Vietnam War and diplomatically it was "
non-belligerent". Victor Levant suggested otherwise in his book
"Quiet Complicity: Canadian Involvement in the Vietnam War" (1986).
[269][270] The
Vietnam War entry in
The Canadian Encyclopedia asserts plainly that Canada's record on the truce commissions was a pro-Saigon partisan one.
[271]
War crimes
Victims of the
My Lai Massacre, the most well known U.S. war crime during the Vietnam War
A large number of
war crimes took place during the Vietnam War. War crimes were committed by both sides during the conflict and included rape, massacres of civilians, bombings of civilian targets,
terrorism, the widespread use of torture and the murder of
prisoners of war. Additional common crimes included theft, arson, and the destruction of property.
American war crimes
The investigation compiled over 9,000 pages of investigative files, sworn statements by witnesses and status reports for top military officers, indicating that 320 alleged incidents had factual basis.
[272] The substantiated cases included 7 massacres between 1967 and 1971 in which at least 137 civilians were killed; seventy eight further attacks targeting non-combatants resulting in at least 57 deaths, 56 wounded and 15 sexually assaulted; one hundred and forty-one cases of US soldiers torturing civilian detainees or prisoners of war with fists, sticks, bats, water or electric shock.
[273] Over 800 alleged atrocities were investigated but only 23 soldiers were ever convicted on charges and most served sentences of less than a year.
[274] A Los Angeles Times report on the archived files concluded that the war crimes were not confined to a few rogue units, having been uncovered in every army division that was active in Vietnam.
[273]
Victims of the My Lai massacre
In 2003 a series of investigative reports by the Toledo Blade uncovered a large number of unreported American war crimes particularly from the
Tiger Force unit.
[275] Some of the most violent war criminals included men such as
Sam Ybarra[276]and Sergeant Roy E. "the Bummer" Bumgarner, a soldier who served with the 1st Cavalry Division and later the 173d Airborne Brigade.
[277]
"They told the stories of times that they had personally raped, cut off the ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in a fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country."
According to political scientist
R.J. Rummel, U.S. troops murdered about 6,000 Vietnamese civilians during the war.
[279]
North Vietnamese, Vietcong, and Khmer Rouge war crimes
Viet Cong insurgents reportedly sliced off the genitals of village chiefs and sewed them inside their bloody mouths, cut off the tongues of helpless victims, rammed bamboo lances through one ear and out the other, slashed open the wombs of pregnant women, machine gunned children, hacked men and women to pieces with machetes, and cut off the fingers of small children who dared to get an education.
[170][280] According to a U.S. Senate report, squads were assigned monthly assassination quotas.
[281] Peer De Silva, former head of the Saigon department of the CIA, wrote that from as early as 1963, Viet Cong units were using disembowelment and other methods of mutilation for psychological warfare.
[282]
According to Guenter Lewy, Viet Cong insurgents assassinated at least 37,000 civilians in South Vietnam and routinely employed terror on a daily basis.
[283] Ami Pedahzur has written that "the overall volume and lethality of Vietcong terrorism rivals or exceeds all but a handful of terrorist campaigns waged over the last third of the twentieth century".
[284] Notable Viet Cong atrocities include the massacre of
over 3,000 unarmed civilians at
Huế during the
Tet Offensive and the incineration of hundreds of civilians at
Dak Son with flamethrowers.
[285] Up to 155,000 refugees fleeing the final North Vietnamese
Spring Offensive were killed or abducted on the road to
Tuy Hòa in 1975.
[286] According to Rummel, North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops murdered between 106,000 and 227,000 civilians in South Vietnam.
[279] North Vietnam was also known for its inhumane and abusive treatment of American POWs, most notably in
Hoa Lo Prison (aka the
Hanoi Hilton), where severe torture was employed to extract "confessions".
[287]
Khmer Rouge insurgents also reportedly committed atrocities during the war. These include the murder of civilians and POWs by slowly sawing off their heads a little more each day,
[288] the destruction of Buddhist
wats and the killing of monks,
[289] attacks on refugee camps involving the deliberate murder of babies and bomb threats against foreign aid workers,
[290] the abduction and assassination of journalists,
[291] and the shelling of
Phnom Penh for more than a year.
[292]Journalist accounts stated that the Khmer Rouge shelling "tortured the capital almost continuously," inflicting "random death and mutilation" on 2 million trapped civilians.
[293]
The Khmer Rouge forcibly evacuated the entire city after taking it, in what has been described as a
death march: Francois Ponchaud wrote that "I shall never forget one cripple who had neither hands nor feet, writhing along the ground like a severed worm, or a weeping father carrying his ten-year old daughter wrapped in a sheet tied around his neck like a sling, or the man with his foot dangling at the end of a leg to which it was attached by nothing but skin";
[294] John Swain recalled that the Khmer Rouge were "tipping out patients from the hospitals like garbage into the streets....In five years of war, this is the greatest caravan of human misery I have seen."
[295] During the war, the Khmer Rouge caused several times more civilian casualties than the entire U.S. bombing of Cambodia.
[22]
Women in Vietnam
American nurses
Da Nang, South Vietnam, 1968
During the Vietnam War, women served on active duty doing a variety of jobs. Early in 1963, the
Army Nurse Corps(ANC) launched Operation Nightingale, an intensive effort to recruit nurses to serve in Vietnam. Most nurses who volunteered to serve in Vietnam came from predominantly working or middle-class families with histories of military service. The majority of these women were white Catholics and Protestants.
[296] Because the need for medical aid was great, many nurses underwent a concentrated four-month training program before being deployed to Vietnam in the ANC
[297] Due to the shortage of staff, nurses usually worked twelve-hour shifts, six days per week and often suffered from exhaustion.
First Lieutenant Sharon Lane was the only female military nurse to be killed by enemy gunfire during the war, on 8 June 1969.
[298]
A nurse treats a Vietnamese child, 1967
At the start of the Vietnam War, it was commonly thought that American women had no place in the military. Their traditional place had been in the domestic sphere, but with the war came opportunity for the expansion of gender roles. In Vietnam, women held a variety of jobs which included operating complex data processing equipment and serving as stenographers.
[299] Although a small number of women were assigned to combat zones, they were never allowed directly in the field of battle. The women who served in the military were solely volunteers. They faced a plethora of challenges, one of which was the relatively small number of female soldiers. Living in a male-dominated environment created tensions between the sexes. While this high male to female ratio was often uncomfortable for women, many men reported that having women in the field with them boosted their morale.
[300] Although this was not the women's purpose, it was one positive result of the their service. By 1973, approximately 7,500 women had served in Vietnam in the Southeast Asian theater.
[301] In that same year, the military lifted the prohibition on women entering the armed forces.
American women serving in Vietnam were subject to societal stereotypes. Many Americans either considered females serving in Vietnam masculine for living under the army discipline, or judged them to be women of questionable moral character who enlisted for the sole purpose of seducing men.
[302] To address this problem, the ANC released advertisements portraying women in the ANC as "proper, professional and well protected." (26) This effort to highlight the positive aspects of a nursing career reflected the ideas of second-wave feminism that occurred during the 1960s–1970s in the United States. Although female military nurses lived in a heavily male environment, very few cases of sexual harassment were ever reported.
[303] In 2008, by contrast, approximately one-third of women in the military felt that they had been sexually harassed compared with one-third of men.
Vietnamese women
Unlike the American women who went to Vietnam, North Vietnamese women were enlisted and fought in the combat zone as well as provided manual labor to keep the
Ho Chi Minh Trail open, cook for the troops, and some served as "
comfort women" for male communist fighters. They also worked in the rice fields in North Vietnam and Viet Cong-held farming areas in South Vietnam's Mekong Delta region to provide food for their families and the war effort. Women were enlisted in both the North Vietnamese Army (
NVA) and the
Viet Cong guerrilla insurgent force in South Vietnam. Some women also served for the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong intelligence services.
In South Vietnam, many women voluntarily serve in the
ARVN's Women's Armed Force Corps (WAFC) and various other Women's corps in the military. Some, like in the WAFC, fought in combat with other soldiers. Others have served as nurses and doctors in the battlefield and in military hospitals, or served in South Vietnam or America's intelligence agencies. During
Diem's presidency,
Madame Nhu was the commander of the WAFC.
Weapons
Communist forces were principally armed with Chinese
[304] and Soviet weaponry
[305] though some Viet Cong guerrilla units were equipped with Western infantry weapons either captured from French stocks during the first Indochina war or from ARVN units or requisitioned through illicit purchase.
[306] The ubiquitous Soviet
AK-47 was widely regarded as the best assault rifle of the war, due to its ability to continue to function even in adverse, muddy conditions. It was not uncommon to see U.S.
special forces fighting with captured AK-47s. Other weapons used by the Viet Cong included the
PPSh-41 submachine gun (both Soviet and Chinese versions), the
Škorpion vz. 61 submachine gun, the
DShK heavy machine gun and the
Stechkin APS machine pistol.
Bicycles carried up to 400 pounds of weight and were thus effective transport vehicles.
The American
M16, which replaced the
M14, was considered more accurate and was lighter than the AK-47 but was prone to jamming. Oftentimes the gun suffered from a jamming flaw known as "failure to extract," which meant that a spent cartridge case remained lodged in the chamber after a bullet flew out the muzzle.
[307] According to a congressional report, the jamming was caused primarily by a change in gunpowder which was done without adequate testing and reflected a decision for which the safety of soldiers was a secondary consideration.
[308]
The
M60 machine gun GPMG (General Purpose Machine Gun) was the main machine gun of the US army at the time and many of them were put on helicopters, to provide
suppressive fire when landing in hostile regions. The MAC-10
machine pistol was supplied to many special forces troops in the midpoint of the war. It also armed many CIA agents in the field.
The
Claymore M18A1, an anti-personnel mine, was widely used during the war. Unlike a conventional land mine, the Claymore is command-detonated and directional, meaning it is fired by remote-control and shoots a pattern of metal balls into the
kill zone like a
shotgun.
Aftermath
Events in Southeast Asia
Vietnamese refugees fleeing Vietnam, 1984
On 2 July 1976, North and South Vietnam were merged to form the
Socialist Republic of Vietnam.
[309] Following the communist takeover, 1–2.5
[310] million South Vietnamese were sent to
reeducation camps, with an estimated 165,000 prisoners dying.
[311] Between 100,000
[310][312][313] and 200,000
[314] South Vietnamese were executed.
[315] R.J. Rummel, an analyst of political killings, estimated that about 50,000 South Vietnamese deported to "New Economic Zones" died performing hard labor,
[279] out of the 1 million that were sent.
[310] 200,000 to 400,000
Vietnamese boat people died at sea, according to the
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
[316]
Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, fell to followers of the
Communist Party of Kampuchea, commonly known as the Khmer Rouge, on 17 April 1975. Under the leadership of
Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge would eventually kill 1–3 million Cambodians in
the killing fields, out of a population of around 8 million.
[21][22][23][317] At least 1,386,734 victims of execution have been counted in mass graves, while demographic analysis suggests that the policies of the regime caused between 1.7 and 2.5 million excess deaths altogether (including disease and starvation).
[317] After repeated border clashes in 1978, Vietnam invaded Democratic Kampuchea (Cambodia) and ousted the Khmer Rouge in the
Cambodian–Vietnamese War. The Vietnamese installed a new government led by Khmer Rouge defectors, which killed tens of thousands and enslaved hundreds of thousands.
[318]
In response, China invaded Vietnam in 1979. The two countries fought a brief border war, known as the
Sino-Vietnamese War. From 1978 to 1979, some 450,000 ethnic
Chinese left Vietnam by boat as refugees or were expelled across the land border with China.
[319]
The communist
Pathet Lao overthrew the royalist government of Laos in December 1975, establishing the
Lao People's Democratic Republic.
[320] The conflict between
Hmong rebels and the Pathet Lao
continued in isolated pockets. The government of Laos has been accused of committing genocide against the Hmong in collaboration with the
Vietnamese army,
[321][322] with up to 100,000 killed out of a population of 400,000.
[323][324] From 1975 to 1996, the United States resettled some 250,000 Lao refugees from Thailand, including 130,000 Hmong.
[325]
More than 3 million people fled from Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, many as "
boat people". Most Asian countries were unwilling to accept refugees.
[326] Since 1975, an estimated 1.4 million
refugees from Vietnam and other Southeast Asian countries have been resettled to the United States,
[327] while Canada, Australia, and France resettled over 500,000.
[328] In 1988, Vietnam suffered a famine that afflicted millions.
[329] Vietnam played a role in Asia similar to Cuba's in Latin America: it supported local revolutionary groups and was a headquarters for Soviet-style communism.
[330]
Effect on the United States
Vietnam War protests at the Pentagon, October 1967
In the post-war era, Americans struggled to absorb the lessons of the military intervention.
[331] As General
Maxwell Taylor, one of the principal architects of the war, noted, "First, we didn't know ourselves. We thought that we were going into another
Korean War, but this was a different country. Secondly, we didn't know our South Vietnamese allies... And we knew less about North Vietnam. Who was
Ho Chi Minh? Nobody really knew. So, until we know the enemy and know our allies and know ourselves, we'd better keep out of this kind of dirty business. It's very dangerous."
[332][333]
Some have suggested that "the responsibility for the ultimate failure of this policy [America's withdrawal from Vietnam] lies not with the men who fought, but with those in Congress..."
[334] Alternatively, the official history of the
United States Army noted that "
tactics have often seemed to exist apart from larger issues, strategies, and objectives. Yet in Vietnam the Army experienced tactical success and strategic failure... The...Vietnam War...legacy may be the lesson that unique historical, political, cultural, and social factors always impinge on the military...Success rests not only on military progress but on correctly analyzing the nature of the particular conflict, understanding the enemy's strategy, and assessing the strengths and weaknesses of allies. A new humility and a new sophistication may form the best parts of a complex heritage left to the Army by the long, bitter war in Vietnam."
[335]
A young
Marine private waits on the beach during the Marine landing,
Da Nang, 3 August 1965
U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger wrote in a secret memo to president Gerald Ford that "in terms of military tactics, we cannot help draw the conclusion that our armed forces are not suited to this kind of war. Even the Special Forces who had been designed for it could not prevail."
[336] Even Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara concluded that "the achievement of a military victory by U.S. forces in Vietnam was indeed a dangerous illusion."
[337]
Doubts surfaced as to the effectiveness of large-scale, sustained bombing. As
Army Chief of Staff Harold Keith Johnson noted, "if anything came out of Vietnam, it was that air power couldn't do the job."
[338] Even General William Westmoreland admitted that the bombing had been ineffective. As he remarked, "I still doubt that the North Vietnamese would have relented."
[338]
The inability to bomb Hanoi to the bargaining table also illustrated another U.S. miscalculation. The North's leadership was composed of hardened communists who had been fighting for independence for thirty years. They had defeated the French, and their tenacity as both nationalists and communists was formidable. Ho Chi Minh is quoted as saying, "You can kill ten of my men for every one I kill of yours...But even at these odds you will lose and I will win."
[339]
2/5 Marine gets his wounds treated during operations in Hue City, 1968
The Vietnam War called into question the U.S. Army doctrine. Marine Corps General
Victor H. Krulak heavily criticised Westmoreland's
attrition strategy, calling it "wasteful of American lives... with small likelihood of a successful outcome."
[338] In addition, doubts surfaced about the ability of the military to train foreign forces.
Between 1965 and 1975, the United States spent $111 billion on the war ($686 billion in FY2008 dollars).
[340] This resulted in a large federal
budget deficit.
More than 3 million Americans served in the Vietnam War, some 1.5 million of whom actually saw combat in Vietnam.
[341] James E. Westheider wrote that "At the height of American involvement in 1968, for example, there were 543,000 American military personnel in Vietnam, but only 80,000 were considered combat troops."
[342] Conscription in the United States had been controlled by the president since World War II, but ended in 1973."
By war's end, 58,220 American soldiers had been killed,
[A 2] more than 150,000 had been wounded, and at least 21,000 had been permanently disabled.
[343]The average age of the U.S. troops killed in Vietnam was 23.11 years.
[344] According to Dale Kueter, "Of those killed in combat, 86.3 percent were white, 12.5 percent were black and the remainder from other races."
[345] Approximately 830,000 Vietnam veterans suffered symptoms of
posttraumatic stress disorder. An estimated 125,000 Americans left for Canada to avoid the Vietnam draft,
[346] and approximately 50,000 American servicemen deserted.
[347] In 1977, United States president
Jimmy Carter granted a full, complete and unconditional pardon to all Vietnam-era
draft dodgers.
[348] The
Vietnam War POW/MIA issue, concerning the fate of U.S. service personnel listed as
missing in action, persisted for many years after the war's conclusion.
As of 2013, the U.S. government is paying Vietnam veterans and their families or survivors more than 22 billion dollars a year in war-related claims.
[349][350]
Chemical defoliation
One of the most controversial aspects of the U.S. military effort in Southeast Asia was the widespread use of chemical
defoliants between 1961 and 1971. They were used to
defoliate large parts of the countryside to prevent the Viet Cong from being able to hide their weapons and encampments under the foliage. These chemicals continue to change the landscape, cause diseases and birth defects, and poison the food chain.
[351]
Early in the American military effort, it was decided that since the enemy were hiding their activities under triple-canopy jungle, a useful first step might be to defoliate certain areas. This was especially true of growth surrounding bases (both large and small) in what became known as
Operation Ranch Hand. Corporations like
Dow Chemical Company 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 the "
Rainbow Herbicides"—
Agent Pink,
Agent Green,
Agent Purple,
Agent Blue,
Agent White, and, most famously,
Agent Orange, which included
dioxin as a by-product of its manufacture. About 12 million gallons (45,000,000 L) of Agent Orange were sprayed over Southeast Asia during the American involvement
[citation needed]. A prime area of Ranch Hand operations was in the
Mekong Delta, where the U.S. Navy patrol boats were vulnerable to attack from the undergrowth at the water's edge.
In 1961 and 1962, the Kennedy administration authorized the use of chemicals to destroy rice crops. Between 1961 and 1967, the U.S. Air Force sprayed 20 million U.S. gallons (75,700,000 L) of concentrated herbicides over 6 million acres (24,000 km
2) of crops and trees, affecting an estimated 13% of South Vietnam's land. In 1965, 42% of all herbicide was sprayed over food crops. Another purpose of herbicide use was to drive civilian populations into RVN-controlled areas.
[352]
As of 2006, the Vietnamese government estimates that there are over 4,000,000 victims of
dioxin poisoning in Vietnam, although the United States government denies any conclusive scientific links between Agent Orange and the Vietnamese victims of dioxin poisoning. In some areas of southern Vietnam, dioxin levels remain at over 100 times the accepted international standard.
[353]
The U.S. Veterans Administration has listed
prostate cancer,
respiratory cancers,
multiple myeloma,
Diabetes mellitus type 2,
B-cell lymphomas,
soft-tissue sarcoma,
chloracne,
porphyria cutanea tarda,
peripheral neuropathy, and
spina bifida in children of veterans exposed to Agent Orange. Although there has been much discussion over whether the use of these defoliants constituted a violation of the laws of war, the defoliants were not considered weapons, since exposure to them did not lead to immediate death or incapacitation.
Casualties
195,000–430,000 South Vietnamese civilians died in the war.
[10][11] 50,000–65,000 North Vietnamese civilians died in the war.
[10][16] The Army of the Republic of Vietnam lost between 171,331 and 220,357 men during the war.
[10][12]The official US Department of Defense figure was 950,765 communist forces killed in Vietnam from 1965 to 1974. Defense Department officials believed that these body count figures need to be deflated by 30 percent. In addition, Guenter Lewy assumes that one-third of the reported "enemy" killed may have been civilians, concluding that the actual number of deaths of communist military forces was probably closer to 444,000.
[10] The most detailed demographic study calculated 791,000–1,141,000 war-related deaths for all of Vietnam.
[32] Between 200,000 and 300,000 Cambodians died in the war,
[21][22][23] along with about 60,000 Laotians
[354] and 58,220 U.S. service members.
Popular culture
The Vietnam War has been featured heavily in television, film, video games, and literature in the participant countries. One of the first major films based on the Vietnam War was
John Wayne's pro-war film,
The Green Berets (1968). Further cinematic representations were released during the 1970s and 1980s, including
Michael Cimino's
The Deer Hunter (1978),
Francis Ford Coppola's
Apocalypse Now (1979),
Oliver Stone's
Platoon (1986) — based on his service in the
U.S. Military during the Vietnam War,
Stanley Kubrick's
Full Metal Jacket (1987),
Hamburger Hill (1987) and
Casualties of War (1989). Later films would include
We Were Soldiers (2002) and
Rescue Dawn (2007). The war also influenced a generation of musicians and songwriters in Vietnam and the United States, both anti-war and pro/anti-communist. The band
Country Joe and the Fish recorded
"I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die Rag" / The "Fish" Cheer in 1965, and it became one of the most influential anti-Vietnam protest anthems.
Trinh Cong Son was a South Vietnamese songwriter famous for his anti-war songs.
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External audio
You may watch the speech, "Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam," by 
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