The Vietnam War
Vietnam was the longest war in American history and the most unpopular American war of
the 20th century. It resulted in nearly 60,000 American deaths and in an estimated 2 million
Vietnamese deaths. Even today, many Americans still ask whether the American effort in
Vietnam was a sin, a blunder, a necessary war, or whether it was a noble cause, or an
idealistic, if failed, effort to protect the South Vietnamese from totalitarian government.
Summary:
Between 1945 and 1954, the Vietnamese waged an anti-colonial war against France, which
received $2.6 billion in financial support from the United States. The French defeat at the
Dien Bien Phu was followed by a peace conference in Geneva. As a result of the conference,
Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam received their independence, and Vietnam was temporarily
divided between an anti-Communist South and a Communist North. In 1956, South Vietnam,
with American backing, refused to hold unification elections. By 1958, Communist-led
guerrillas, known as the Viet Cong, had begun to battle the South Vietnamese government.
To support the South's government, the United States sent in 2,000 military advisors--a
number that grew to 16,300 in 1963. The military condition deteriorated, and by 1963,
South Vietnam had lost the fertile Mekong Delta to the Viet Cong. In 1965, President
Lyndon Johnson escalated the war, commencing air strikes on North Vietnam and
committing ground forces--which numbered 536,000 in 1968. The 1968 Tet Offensive by
the North Vietnamese turned many Americans against the war.
The next president, Richard Nixon, advocated Vietnamization, withdrawing American troops
and giving South Vietnam greater responsibility for fighting the war. In 1970, Nixon
attempted to slow the flow of North Vietnamese soldiers and supplies into South Vietnam by
sending American forces to destroy Communist supply bases in Cambodia. This act violated
Cambodian neutrality and provoked antiwar protests on the nation's college campuses.
From 1968 to 1973, efforts were made to end the conflict through diplomacy. In January
1973, an agreement was reached; U.S. forces were withdrawn from Vietnam, and U.S.
prisoners of war were released. In April 1975, South Vietnam surrendered to the North, and
Vietnam was reunited.
The Meaning of the Vietnam War
For today's students, the Vietnam War is almost as remote as World War I was for the
soldiers who fought it. Now that the United States and Vietnam have normalized relations, it
is especially difficult for many young people to understand why the war continues to evoke
deeply felt emotions. Thus, it is especially important for students to learn about a war
whose consequences strongly influence attitudes and policies even today.
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The Vietnam War was the longest war in American history and the most unpopular American
war of the 20th century. It resulted in nearly 60,000 American deaths and an estimated 2
million Vietnamese deaths. It was the first war to come into American living rooms nightly,
and the only conflict that ended in defeat for American arms. The war caused turmoil on the
home front, as anti-war protests became a feature of American life. Americans divided into
two camps--pro-war hawks and anti-war doves.
The questions raised by the Vietnam War have not faded with time. Even today, many
Americans still ask:
Whether the American effort in Vietnam was a sin, a blunder, or a necessary war; or
whether it was a noble cause, or an idealistic, if failed, effort to protect the South
Vietnamese from totalitarian government;
Whether the military was derelict in its duty when it promised to win the war; or whether
arrogant civilians ordered the military into battle with one hand tied and no clear goals;
Whether the American experience in Vietnam should stand as a warning against state
building projects in violent settings; or whether it taught Americans to perform
peacemaking operations and carry out state building correctly;
Whether the United States’ involvement in Vietnam meant it was obligated to continue to
protect the South Vietnamese.
Images of a Tragic War
The prize-winning photographs are among the most searing and painful images of the
Vietnam War era. These images helped define the meaning of the war. They also illustrate
the immense power of photography to reveal war's brutality.
One photograph shows a Buddhist monk calmly burning himself to death to protest the
U.S.-backed South Vietnamese government. Photographs of this horrific event raised a
public outcry against the corruption and religious discrimination of the government of Ngo
Dinh Diem, the Catholic president of South Vietnam. Eight more monks and nuns immolated
themselves in the following months.
Another photograph shows a 9-year-old girl, running naked and screaming in pain after a
fiery napalm attack on her village. The napalm (jellied gasoline) has burned through her
skin and muscle down to her bone. The photograph of her anguished, contorted face helped
to end American involvement in the Vietnam War.
A third image shows a stiff-armed South Vietnamese police chief about to shoot a bound
Viet Cong prisoner in the head. The victim, a Viet Cong lieutenant, was alleged to have
wounded a police officer during North Vietnam's Tet offensive of 1968. The photograph
became a symbol of the war's casual brutality.
A fourth photograph, taken by a 21-year-old college journalist, shows the body of a 20year-old student protestor at Ohio's Kent State University lying limp on the ground, shot to
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death by National Guardsmen. In the center of the picture, a young woman kneels over the
fallen student, screaming and throwing up her arms in agony.
A fifth picture captured the fall of Saigon during the last chaotic days of the Vietnam War.
The photo shows desperate Vietnamese crowding on the roof of the U.S. Agency for
International Development building trying to board a silver Huey helicopter. Taken on April
30, 1975, the photograph captured the moment when the last U.S. officials abandoned
South Vietnam, and South Vietnamese military and political leaders fled their own country,
while hundreds of Vietnamese left behind raise their arms helplessly.
Photographs have the power to capture an event and burn it into our collective memory.
Photographs can trap history in amber, preserving a fleeting moment for future generations
to re-experience. Photographs can evoke powerful emotions and shape the way the public
understands the world and interprets events. Each of these pictures played a role in turning
American public opinion against the Vietnam War. But pictures never tell the full story. By
focusing on a single image, they omit the larger context essential for true understanding.
Phan Thi Kim Phuc, the 9-year-old girl running naked down the road in the photograph, was
born in 1963 in a small village in South Vietnam's Central Highlands. Kim Phuc was the
daughter of a rice farmer and a cook. In June 1972, she and her family took refuge in a
Buddhist temple when South Vietnamese bombers flew over her village. Four bombs fell
toward her. The strike was a case of friendly fire, the result of a mistake by the South
Vietnamese air force.
There was an orange fireball, and Kim Phuc was hit by napalm. Her clothes were vaporized;
her ponytail was sheared off by the napalm. Her arms, shoulders, and back were so badly
burned that she needed 17 major operations. She started screaming, "Nong qua! Nong qua!”
(too hot!) as she ran down the road. Her scarring is so severe that she will not wear shortsleeve shirts to this day. She still suffers from severe pain from the burns, which left her
without sweat or oil glands over half of her body.
Two infant cousins died in the attack, but Kim Phuc, her parents, and seven siblings
survived. The man who took her photograph, 21-year-old Huynh Cong "Nick" Ut, was also
Vietnamese; his brother was killed while covering combat in Vietnam's Mekong Delta for the
Associate Press. After the napalm attack, Ut put her into a van and rushed her to a South
Vietnamese hospital, where she spent 14 months recovering from her burns.
In 1986, Kim Phuc (whose name means "Golden Happiness") persuaded the Vietnamese
government to allow her to go to Cuba to study pharmacology. In 1992, while in Cuba, she
met and married a fellow Vietnamese student. Later that year, she and her husband
defected to Canada while on a flight from Cuba to Moscow. Today, she serves as an unpaid
goodwill ambassador for UNESCO and runs a non-profit organization that provides aid to
child war victims. Her husband cares for mentally disabled adults.
Gen. Nguyen Ngoc Loan, the South Vietnamese police chief who executed the Viet Cong
prisoner in 1968, had a reputation for ruthlessness. While serving as a colonel in 1966, he
led tanks and armored vehicles into the South Vietnamese city of Danang to suppress rebel
insurgents. Hundreds of civilians as well as Viet Cong were killed. In early 1968, at the
height of the Tet offensive, Loan was working around the clock to defend the South
Vietnamese capital of Saigon. He had asked a regimental commander to execute the
prisoner, but when the commander hesitated, Loan said, "'I must do it.' If you hesitate, if
you didn't do your duty, the men won't follow you."
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The photograph taken at Kent State in Ohio shows a terrified young woman, Mary Ann
Vecchio, a 14-year-old runaway from Florida, kneeling over the body of Jeffrey Miller. Miller,
a Kent State University student, had been protesting American involvement in Vietnam even
before attending college. At the age of 15, he had composed a poem titled "Where Does It
End," expressing his horror about "the war without a purpose."
Miller was shot and killed during an anti-war protest that followed the announcement that
U.S. troops had moved into Cambodia. An ROTC building on the university's campus was
burned, and in response, the mayor of Kent called in the National Guard.
On May 4, 1970, the guardsmen threw tear gas canisters at the crowd of student protesters.
Students threw the canisters back along with rocks, the guardsman later claimed. The 28
guardsmen fired more than 60 shots, killing four students (two of them protesters) and
injuring nine (one was left permanently paralyzed).
A Justice Department report determined that the shootings were "unnecessary, unwarranted
and inexcusable," but an Ohio grand jury found that the Guard had acted in self-defense
and indicted students and faculty for triggering the disturbance.
Ho Chi Minh
Ho Chi Minh was a tiny man, frail in appearance and extremely deferential. He wore simple
shorts and sandals. To his followers, he was known simply as “Uncle Ho.”
Ho Chi Minh was born in 1890 in a village in central Vietnam. In 1912, he left his homeland
and signed aboard a French freighter. For a time, he lived in the United States-- visiting
Boston, New York, and San Francisco. Ho was struck by Americans’ impatience. Later,
during the Vietnam War, he told his military advisers, “Don’t worry, Americans are an
impatient people. When things begin to go wrong, they’ll leave.”
After three years of travel, Ho Chi Minh settled in London where he worked at the elegant
Carlton Hotel. He lived in squalid quarters and learned that poverty existed even in the
wealthiest, most powerful countries. In Paris, he came into contact with the French left. He
was still in Paris when World War I ended and the peace conference was held. Inspired by
Woodrow Wilson’s call for universal self-determination, Ho wrote,”all subject peoples are
filled with hope by the prospect that an era of right and justice is opening to them.”
Ho wanted to meet Wilson and plead the cause of Vietnamese independence. Wilson ignored
his request.
Ho then traveled to Moscow, where Lenin had declared war against imperialism. While in the
Soviet Union, Ho embraced socialism. By the early 1920s, he was actively organizing
Vietnamese exiles into a revolutionary force.
In 1941, Ho returned to Vietnam. The time was right, he believed, to free Vietnam from
colonial domination. Ho aligned himself with the United States. In 1945, borrowing passages
from the Declaration of Independence, Ho declared Vietnamese independence.
However, the French, who returned to Vietnam after World War II, had different plans for
Vietnam.
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The French Vietnam War
After World War II, neither France nor England wanted to see the end of their colonial
empires. England was anxious to control Burma, Malaya, and India. France wanted to rule
Indochina.
Under Franklin Roosevelt, the United States sought to bring an end to European colonialism.
As he put it, condescendingly:
“There are 1.1 billion brown people. In many Eastern countries they are ruled by a handful
of whites and they resent it. Our goal must be to help them achieve independence. 1.1
billion potential enemies are dangerous.”
But under Harry Truman, the United States was concerned about its naval and air bases in
Asia. The U.S. decided to permit France into Indochina to re-assert its authority in
Southeast Asia. The result: the French Indochina War began.
From the beginning, American intelligence officers knew that France would find it difficult to
re-assert its authority in Indochina. The French refused to listen to American intelligence. To
them, the idea of Asian rebels standing up to a powerful Western nation was preposterous.
Although Truman allowed the French to return to Indochina, he was not yet prepared to
give the French arms, transportation, and economic assistance. It was not until anticommunism became a major issue that the United States would take an active role
supporting the French. The fall of China, the Korean War, and the coming of Joe McCarthy
would lead policymakers to see the French War in Vietnam, not as a colonial war, but as a
war against international communism.
Beginning in 1950, the United States started to underwrite the French war effort. For four
years, the United States provided $2 billion; however, this had little effect on the war. The
French command, frustrated by a hit-and-run guerrilla war, devised a trap. The idea was to
use a French garrison as bait, have the enemy surround it, and mass their forces. Then, the
French would strike and crush the enemy and gain a major political and psychological
victory.
The French built their positions in a valley and left the high ground to their adversaries. An
American asked what would happen if the enemy had artillery. A French officer assured him
that they had no artillery, and even if they did, they would not know how to use it. Yet, as
the journalist David Halberstam noted, “They did have artillery and they did know how to
use it.”
Into the Quagmire
On May 7, 1954, a ragtag army of 50,000 Vietnamese Communists defeated the remnants
of an elite French force at a network of bases at Dien Bien Phu in northwestern Vietnam.
The French, fighting to restore their Indochinese empire, planned to strike at their
adversaries from a network of eight bases (surrounded by barbed wire and minefields) that
they had built at Dien Bien Phu. The Viet Minh, Vietnamese Nationalists led by Ho Chi Minh,
bombarded these bases with artillery from the surrounding hillsides. Heavy rains made it
impossible to bomb the Vietnamese installations or to supply the garrisons. The French,
trapped, were reduced to eating rats and pleaded for American air support. Despite support
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from Vice President Richard M. Nixon and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, President
Eisenhower was not willing to commit American air support without support from Britain,
Congress, and the chiefs of staff. Following the advice of Winston Churchill, Gen. Matthew
Ridgway, and Senator Lyndon Johnson, President Eisenhower decided to stay out.
Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia had been a French colony since the late 19th century. During
World War II, however, Japan occupied French Indochina. After Japan's defeat, France tried
to re-establish control, but met opposition from the Viet Minh.
Despite American financial supports, amounting to about three-quarters of France’s war
costs, 250,000 veteran French troops were unable to crush the Viet Minh. Altogether,
France had 100,000 men dead, wounded, or missing trying to re-establish its colonial
empire. In 1954, after French forces were defeated at the battle of Dien Bien Phu, a peace
conference was held in Geneva Switzerland. At the conference, the French and the
Vietnamese agreed to divide Vietnam temporarily into a non-Communist South and a
Communist North, pending re-unification following elections scheduled for 1956.
Those elections never took place. South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem, with U.S.
backing, refused to participate in the elections for fear of an overwhelming victory by Ho Chi
Minh. The failure of the South to fulfill the terms of the Geneva Accord led the North
Vietnamese to distrust diplomacy as a way to achieve a settlement.
In 1955, the first U.S. military advisers arrived in Vietnam. President Dwight D. Eisenhower
justified this decision on the basis of the domino theory--that the loss of a strategic ally in
Southeast Asia would result in the loss of others. "You have a row of dominoes set up," he
said, "you knock the first one, and others will fall.” President Eisenhower felt that with U.S.
help, South Vietnam could maintain its independence.
In 1957, South Vietnamese rebels known as the Viet Cong began attacks on the South
Vietnamese government of Ngo Dinh Diem. In 1959, Hanoi approved armed struggle
against Ngo Dinh Diem's regime in Saigon.
John F. Kennedy and Vietnam
John F. Kennedy arrived in the White House with a far slimmer margin of victory than he
had hoped, a mere 100,000 votes. It was an election that seemed to strengthen his
enemies more than his friends.
Kennedy came into office committed to increasing defense spending and upgrading and
modernizing America’s military. Dwight Eisenhower was committed to a cheap defense.
“More bang for the buck,” was Eisenhower’s slogan. He relied on nuclear deterrence and
covert operations.
Kennedy was committed to finding an alternative to nuclear weapons. His answer was
counterinsurgency. He wanted to use air power and special forces, such as the Green Berets,
to fight guerrilla wars.
Kennedy’s foreign policy was based on two major premises. The first was a belief in
“monolithic communism”--the idea that all communist movements were orchestrated from
Moscow. The second was the domino theory--that should a single strategic country turn
communist, surrounding countries were sure to follow.
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We must remember that, in the early 1960s, one third of the world was communist and
another third was non-aligned.
In Cuba, Kennedy faced a test run for Vietnam. Kennedy completely misread the Cuban
people. He was convinced that there was serious anti-Castro sentiment on the island and
that an invasion sponsored by the United States would rally the average Cuban to revolt.
Kennedy assumed that Cuba was a small island; however, Cuba is 800 miles long (and
would stretch from New York to Chicago). During World War II, it had taken three days and
18,000 Marines to capture the tiny Pacific island from the Japanese. Clearly, an invasion of
Cuba would require many more than the 1,500 poorly trained Cuban exiles.
It was during Kennedy’s presidency that the United States made a fateful new commitment
to Vietnam. The administration sent in 18,000 advisors. It authorized the use of napalm
(jellied gasoline), defoliants, free fire zones, and jet planes.
The government’s efforts, however, weren’t working. By July 1963, Washington faced a
major crisis in Vietnam. Buddhist priests had begun to set themselves on fire to protest
corruption in the South Vietnamese government. The American response was to help
engineer the overthrow the South Vietnamese president.
In 1963, South Vietnamese generals overthrew the Diem government and murdered
President Diem. President Kennedy sanctioned Diem's overthrow, partly out of fear that
Diem might strike a deal to create a neutralist coalition government including Communists,
as had occurred in Laos in 1962. Dean Rusk, Kennedy's secretary of state, remarked, "This
kind of neutralism...is tantamount to surrender." By the spring of 1964, fewer than 150
American soldiers had died in Vietnam
Escalation under Lyndon Johnson
President Lyndon Johnson was reluctant to commit the United States to fight in South
Vietnam. "I just don't think it's worth fighting for," he told McGeorge Bundy, his national
security adviser. The president feared looking like a weakling, and he was convinced that his
dream of a Great Society would be destroyed if he backed down on the communist
challenge in Asia. Each step in deepening U.S. involvement in Vietnam made it harder to
admit failure and reverse direction.
President Johnson campaigned in the 1964 election with the promise not to escalate the war.
"We are not about to send American boys 9 or 10,000 miles away from home to do what
Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves," he said. But following reports that the North
Vietnamese had attacked an American destroyer (which was engaged in a clandestine
intelligence mission) off the Vietnamese coast, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin
resolution, giving President Lyndon Johnson power to "take all necessary measures."
In February 1965, Viet Cong units operating autonomously attacked a South Vietnamese
garrison near Pleiku, killing eight Americans. Convinced that the communists were
escalating the war, Johnson began the bombing campaign against North Vietnam that would
last for 2 ½ years. He also sent the first U.S. ground combat troops to Vietnam.
Johnson believed he had five options. One was to blast North Vietnam off the map using
bombers. Another was to pack up and go home. A third choice was to stay as we were and
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gradually lose territory and suffer more casualties. A fourth option was to go on a wartime
footing and call up the reserves. The last choice--which Johnson viewed as the middle
ground--was to expand the war without going on a wartime footing. Johnson announced
that the lessons of history dictated that the United States use its might to resist aggression.
“We did not choose to be the guardians at the gate, but there is no one else,” Johnson said.
He ordered 210,000 American ground troops to Vietnam.
Johnson justified the use of ground forces by stating that it would be brief, just six months.
But the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese were able to match our troop build-up and
neutralize the American soldiers. In North Vietnam, 200,000 young men came of draft age
each year. It was very easy for our enemy to replenish its manpower. By April 1967, we had
a force of 470,000 men in Vietnam. We were learning that there was no light at the end of
the tunnel.
The Johnson administration's strategy--which included search and destroy missions in the
South and calibrated bombings in the North--proved ineffective, though highly destructive.
Despite the presence of 549,000 American troops, the United States had failed to cut supply
lines from the North along the so-called Ho Chi Minh Trail, which ran along the border
through Laos and Cambodia. By 1967, the U.S. goal was less about saving South Vietnam
and more about avoiding a humiliating defeat.
Then, everything fell apart for the United States. We suddenly learned the patience,
durability, and resilience of our enemy. In the past, our enemy had fought in distant jungles.
During the Tet Offensive of early 1968, however, they fought in the cities.
The size and strength of the 1968 Tet Offensive undercut the optimistic claims by American
commanders that their strategy was succeeding. Communist guerrillas and North
Vietnamese army regulars blew up a Saigon radio station and attacked the American
Embassy, the presidential palace, police stations, and army barracks. Tet, in which more
than 100 cities and villages in the South were overrun, convinced many policymakers that
the cost of winning the war, if it could be won at all, was out of proportion to U.S. national
interests in Vietnam. At 3 a.m. on January 31, 1968, North Vietnamese and Viet Cong
forces launched simultaneous attacks on cities, towns, and military bases throughout South
Vietnam. The fighting coincided with the Vietnamese lunar New Year, Tet. At one point, a
handful of Viet Cong wearing South Vietnamese uniforms actually seized parts of the
American Embassy in Saigon.
The North Vietnamese expected that the Tet attacks would spark a popular uprising.
The Tet offensive had an enormous psychological impact on Americans at home, convincing
many Americans that further pursuit of the war was fruitless. A Gallup Poll reported that 50
percent of those surveyed disapproved of President Johnson's handling of the war, while
only 35 percent approved.
When the offensive ended in late February, after the last communist units were expelled
from Vietnam's ancient imperial city of Hue, an estimated 33,249 North Vietnamese and
Viet Cong had been killed, along with 3,470 South Vietnamese and Americans.
The former Secretary of State Dean Rusk, who had assured Johnson in 1965 that he was
"entirely right" on Vietnam, now stated, "I do not think we can do what we wish to do in
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Vietnam.” Two months after the Tet Offensive, Johnson halted American bombing in most of
North Vietnam and called for negotiations.
As a result of the Tet Offensive, Lyndon Johnson lost it all. Senator Eugene McCarthy, who
picked up more than 40 percent of the vote, challenged Johnson in the Democratic
presidential primary.
The next primary was in Wisconsin, and polls showed the president getting no more than 30
percent of the vote. Johnson knew he was beaten and withdrew from the race. Johnson was
not invited to attend either the 1968 or 1972 Democratic presidential conventions.
Why Vietnam?
Numerous factors contributed to the U.S. involvement in Vietnam: the Cold War fears of
communist domination of Indochina; a mistaken belief that North Vietnam was a pawn of
Moscow; overconfidence in the ability of U.S. troops to prevent the communist takeover of
an ally; and anxiety that withdrawal from Vietnam would result in domestic political criticism.
So, too, did a series of events in 1961, including the disastrous attack on Cuba at the Bay of
Pigs, the erection of the Berlin Wall, and the threat made by Soviet Premier Nikita
Khrushchev to sponsor national liberation movements around the world.
The architects of the Vietnam War overestimated the political costs of allowing South
Vietnam to fall to communism. Presidents Kennedy and Johnson feared that losing South
Vietnam would damage their chances for re-election, weaken support for domestic social
programs, and make Democrats vulnerable to the charge of being soft on communism. The
North Vietnamese strategy was to drag out the war and make it increasingly costly to the
United States.
American leaders also grossly underestimated the tenacity of their North Vietnamese and
Viet Cong foes. Misunderstanding the commitment of our adversaries, U.S. General William
C. Westmoreland said that Asians "don't think about death the way we do." In fact, the
Vietnamese Communists and Nationalists were willing to sustain extraordinarily high
casualties in order to overthrow the South Vietnamese government. The United States
intervened in Vietnam without appreciating the fact that the Vietnamese people had a
strong nationalistic spirit rooted in centuries of resisting colonial powers. In a predominantly
Buddhist country, the French-speaking Catholic leaders of South Vietnam were generally
viewed as representatives of France, the former colonial power. Communists were able to
capitalize on nationalistic, anti-Western sentiment.
Nixon and Vietnam
In the 1968 election, Republican Richard Nixon claimed to have a plan to end the war in
Vietnam, but, in fact, it took him five years to disengage the United States from Vietnam.
Indeed, Richard Nixon presided over as many years of war in Indochina as did Johnson.
About a third of the Americans who died in combat were killed during the Nixon presidency.
Insofar as he did have a plan to bring "peace with honor," it mainly entailed reducing
American casualties by having South Vietnamese soldiers bear more of the ground fighting-a process he called "Vietnamization"--and defusing anti-war protests by ending the military
draft. Nixon provided the South Vietnamese army with new training and improved weapons
and tried to frighten the North Vietnamese to the peace table by demonstrating his
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willingness to bomb urban areas and mine harbors. He also hoped to orchestrate Soviet and
Chinese pressure on North Vietnam.
The most controversial aspect of his strategy was an effort to cut the Ho Chi Minh supply
trail by secretly bombing North Vietnamese sanctuaries in Cambodia and invading that
country and Laos. The U.S. and South Vietnamese incursion into Cambodia in April 1970
helped destabilize the country, provoking a bloody civil war and bringing to power the
murderous Khmer Rouge, a Communist group that evacuated Cambodia's cities and threw
thousands into re-education camps.
Following his election, President Nixon began to withdraw American troops from Vietnam in
June 1969 and replaced the military draft with a lottery in December of that year. In
December 1972, the United States began large-scale bombing of North Vietnam after peace
talks reach an impasse. The so-called Christmas bombings led Congressional Democrats to
call for an end of U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia.
In late January 1973, the United States, South Vietnam, the Viet Cong, and North Vietnam
signed a cease-fire agreement, under which the United States agreed to withdraw from
South Vietnam without any comparable commitment from North Vietnam. Historians still do
not agree whether President Nixon believed that the accords gave South Vietnam a real
chance to survive as an independent nation, or whether he viewed the agreement as a facesaving device that gave the United States a way to withdraw from the war "with honor."
The War at Home
The United States won every battle it fought against the North Vietnamese and the Viet
Cong, inflicting terrible casualties on them. Yet, it ultimately lost the war because the public
no longer believed that the conflict was worth the costs.
The first large-scale demonstration against the war in Vietnam took place in 1965. Small by
later standards, 25,000 people marched in Washington. By 1968, strikes, sit-ins, rallies, and
occupations of college buildings had become commonplace on elite campuses, such as
Berkeley, Columbia, Harvard, and Wisconsin.
The Tet Offensive cut public approval of President Johnson's handling of the war from 40 to
26 percent. In March 1968, anti-war Democrat Eugene McCarthy came within 230 votes of
defeating Johnson in the New Hampshire primary. Anti-war demonstrations grew bigger. At
the Democratic convention in Chicago, police beat anti-war protesters in the streets while
the Democrats nominated Hubert Humphrey for president. Ironically, the anti-war
protesters probably helped to elect Richard Nixon as president in 1968 over Humphrey and
in 1972 over George McGovern. Anti-war demonstrations peaked when 250,000 protesters
marched in Washington, D.C., in November 1969.
President Nixon's decision to send American troops into Cambodia triggered a new wave of
campus protests across the nation. When National Guardsmen at Kent State University shot
four students to death in northeastern Ohio, 115 colleges went on strike, and California
Governor Ronald Reagan shut down the entire state's university system.
The Final Collapse
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On the morning of April 30, 1975, a column of seven North Vietnamese tanks rolled down
Saigon's deserted streets and crashed through the gates of South Vietnam's presidential
palace. A soldier leapt from the lead tank and raised a red, blue, and yellow flag. The
Vietnam War was over.
Tens of thousands of South Vietnamese massed at the dock of Saigon harbor, crowding into
fishing boats.
In the fall of 1974, President Nguyen Van Thieu of South Vietnam abruptly ordered his
commanders to pull out of the central highlands and northern coast. His intention was to
consolidate his forces in a more defensible territory. However, the order was given so
hastily, with so little preparation or planning, that the retreat turned into an uncontrollable
panic. Consequently, North Vietnamese forces were able to advance against little resistance.
On April 30, 1975, North Vietnamese soldiers captured Saigon, bringing the Vietnam War to
an end.
The Vietnam War and Popular Culture
No American conflict in the 20th century so tore this nation apart, so scarred its social
psyche, so embedded itself in its collective memory, and so altered the public view of
institutions, government, the military, and the media. More than 750 novels, 250 films, 100
short-story collections, and 1,400 personal narratives have been published about the war in
Vietnam.
A few figures in popular culture supported American involvement in Vietnam, including
novelists John Steinbeck and Jack Kerouac and actor John Wayne, who starred in
hawkish The Green Berets, the only major film made during the war itself. Barry Sadler's
1966 pro-war song "Ballad of the Green Berets" sold 8 million copies.
During the war, popular culture tended to deal with the war indirectly. Such novels as
Joseph Heller's Catch-22 and Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five and such films as Bonnie
and Clyde, M*A*S*H, and Little Big Manwere ostensibly about other subjects, but clearly
reflected the issues raised by the Vietnam War.
Movies like Apocalypse Now, Full Metal Jacket, or Platoon created a swampy, fiery hell
peopled by psychopaths. As one character in Apocalypse Now puts it, "I love the smell of
napalm in the morning." Many of these Vietnam War films featured a scene modeled on the
My Lai massacre of 1968, when American troops killed at least 347 unarmed civilians in a
South Vietnamese hamlet.
The emerging images in the media of the "Vietnam vet" were of a troubled and neglected
victim--a scraggly and deranged outcast with a rumpled boony hat, a legless victim
converted to pacifism, a returning P.O.W. scarred by unspeakable horrors.
During the 1980s, a number of influential films focused on Americans who were prisoners of
war or missing in action, such as Uncommon Valor, Missing in Action, and Rambo. In the
realm of cinematic fantasy, the United States was able to reap revenge for the frustrations
and losses it had experienced in Vietnam. Rambo's most famous line was, "Sir, do we get to
win this time?" These films provided consolation concerning the morality of American forces
in the conflict. In Uncommon Valor, a character tells a band of fellow veterans about to
rescue a group of MIAs: "No one can dispute the rightness of what you're doing."
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The Costs of the War
Le Ly Hayslip was born into a peasant family in Central Vietnam in 1949. Her small village
was caught in the crossfire of conflict between the French and Moroccan and Viet Minh
soldiers, and later between the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong and the armies of
South Vietnam and the United States. The daughter of a rice farmer, Le Ly served as a
lookout and messenger for the Viet Cong and planted booby traps for the Viet Cong when
she was 12-years-old. She was arrested and tortured by the South Vietnamese government
police, and then was sentenced to death by the Viet Cong, who accused her of being a
government informer. The men assigned to execute her raped her instead.
Like hundreds of thousands of South Vietnamese, Le Ly was displaced from her village by
the war. She fled to Danang and then to Saigon, where she became a maid, a waitress in GI
clubs, and an attendant in a hospital, before trying, out of desperation, to support herself
through black market dealing and prostitution. At the age of 20, she married an American
construction worker and moved to a San Diego suburb, where she later wrote a harrowing
account of her life,When Heaven and Earth Changed Places.
An estimated 58,132 Americans died in Vietnam. More than 150,000 were wounded, and
21,000 were permanently disabled. More than 3 million Americans, average age 19, served
in the Vietnam War. An estimated 100,000 Americans fled the United States to avoid
serving in the conflict, and approximately 50,000 American servicemen deserted. The
Veterans Administration estimates that 830,000 Vietnam vets suffered symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder; of that number, 480,000 were so deeply affected that they were
considered disabled. Several hundred thousand American troops were exposed to defoliants,
such as Agent Orange. The estimated cost of the war in Vietnam during the Kennedy,
Johnson, and Nixon administrations was $176 billion. As a whole, 60 percent of all draft-age
American men did not serve in the military between 1963 and 1974, and 98 percent did not
see combat.
The war's greatest costs and suffering were borne by the Vietnamese people, who may have
lost 2 million lives during the conflict. Hundreds of thousands of South Vietnamese were
displaced from rural villages, and their families splintered. Herbicides and bombs ravaged
the countryside. Between 1964 and 1969, the United States dropped more than nine times
the tonnage of high explosives on Vietnam as it did in the Pacific theater during World War
II.
After the war, North Vietnam detained 50,000 to 100,000 former supporters of the Saigon
regime in re-education camps. Over a million "boat people," consisting largely of Vietnam's
persecuted Chinese minority, fled the country to avoid persecution.
The Consequences of the War
The Vietnam War had far-reaching consequences for the United States. It led Congress to
replace the military draft with an all-volunteer force and the country to reduce the voting
age to 18. It also inspired Congress to attack the "imperial" presidency through the War
Powers Act, restricting a president's ability to send American forces into combat without
explicit Congressional approval. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese refugees
have helped restore blighted urban neighborhoods.
The Vietnam War severely damaged the U.S. economy. Unwilling to raise taxes to pay for
the war, President Johnson unleashed a cycle of inflation.
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The war also weakened U.S. military morale and undermined, for a time, the U.S.
commitment to internationalism. The public was convinced that the Pentagon had inflated
enemy casualty figures, disguising the fact that the country was engaged in a military
stalemate. During the 1970s and 1980s, the United States was wary of getting involved
anywhere else in the world out of fear of another Vietnam. Since then, the public's aversion
to casualties inspired strict guidelines for the commitment of forces abroad and a heavy
reliance on air power to project American military power.
The war in Vietnam deeply split the Democratic Party. As late as 1964, over 60 percent of
those surveyed identified themselves in opinion polls as Democrats. The party had won
seven of the previous nine presidential elections. But the prosecution of the war alienated
many blue-collar Democrats, many of whom became political independents or Republicans.
To be sure, other issues--such as urban riots, affirmative action, and inflation--also
weakened the Democratic Party. Many former party supporters viewed the party as
dominated by its anti-war faction, weak in the area of foreign policy, and uncertain about
America's proper role in the world.
Equally important, the war undermined liberal reform and made many Americans deeply
suspicious of government. President Johnson's Great Society programs competed with the
war for scarce resources, and constituencies who might have supported liberal social
programs turned against the president as a result of the war. The war also made Americans,
especially the baby boomer generation, more cynical and less trusting of government and of
authority.
Today, decades after the war ended, the American people remain deeply divided over the
conflict's meaning. A Gallup Poll found that 53 percent of those surveyed believe that the
war was "a well-intentioned mistake," while 43 percent believe it was "fundamentally wrong
and immoral."
Chronology and Key Figures
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1941: Ho Chi Minh forms the Viet Minh.
1946: Viet Minh forces attack a French garrison in Hanoi beginning the first Vietnam
War.
1950: President Truman's National Security Council decides to provide military aid
for the French war in Indochina.
1954: Following the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu, an agreement is reached
splitting Vietnam at the 17th parallel into a Communist North and a non-Communist
South, pending nationwide elections in 1956.
1955: Ngo Dinh Diem proclaims the Republic of South Vietnam and becomes its
president.
April 1959: President Dwight D. Eisenhower commits the United States to
maintaining South Vietnam's independence.
July 1959: Two U.S. advisors are the first Americans killed in a guerrilla attack 20
miles north of Saigon.
April 1960: North Vietnam begins mandatory military service as its troops infiltrate
South Vietnam.
By year's end, about 900 U.S. military personnel are in Vietnam.
Nov. 1960: Democrat John F. Kennedy defeats Republican Richard M. Nixon for
president.
Dec. 1960: The National Liberation Front (the Viet Cong) is proclaimed.
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May 1961: Kennedy sends 100 Special Forces troops, trained for guerrilla warfare, to
Vietnam.
Dec. 1961: Secretary of State Dean Rusk says South Vietnam is in "clear and
present danger" of communist conquest.
Feb. 1962: More American advisors and support personnel arrive. Kennedy warns
that American advisors will return fire if attacked.
May 1962: In response to communists moving into Laos, U.S. sends 5,000 Marines
and 50 fighter jets to Thailand.
Oct. 1962: U.S. discovers Soviet missile sites under construction in Cuba. Soviets
agree to remove missiles, but crisis heightens fears of superpower conflict.
Jan. 1963: In battle of Ap Bac, South Vietnamese and Americans suffer worst defeat
to date: five U.S. helicopters downed and three Americans killed.
Aug. 1963: Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivers his "I Have a Dream" speech during
civil rights march in Washington.
Nov. 1963: South Vietnamese generals kill President Ngo Dinh Diem in a plot
condoned by key American officials who felt Saigon could not win under his
leadership. Three weeks later, Kennedy is assassinated. Vice President Lyndon B.
Johnson succeeds him.
1964: North Vietnam begins infiltrating its regular army units into the South.
Aug. 1964: The Maddox, a U.S. destroyer, is slightly damaged by enemy boats in
Tonkin Gulf. After a reported second attack--which many later concluded did not
occur--Congress passes Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, giving Johnson authority to
intensify the war.
Oct. 1964: China explodes its first atomic bomb.
Nov. 1964: Johnson elected in landslide over Republican Barry Goldwater, who had
pushed for an even tougher approach to Vietnam.
Dec. 1964: Bob Hope begins frequent visits to entertain the troops.
Jan. 1965: Johnson sends Congress a budget containing the biggest expansion of
domestic welfare programs since the New Deal, reflecting his goal of providing funds
for both the war and what was called the Great Society.
Feb. 1965: Viet Cong attack an American airfield at Pleiku. U.S. bombers attacked
targets in North for the first time, in a reprisal for attacks on U.S. bases.
March 1965: First U.S. combat troops in South Vietnam land in Da Nang.
April 1965: As Johnson formally authorizes combat troops to be used for offensive
operations, antiwar movements become more active.
Aug. 1965: Large scale race rioting, resulting from the arrest of a black motorist by a
white officer, leaves 34 dead in Watts section of Los Angeles.
Oct. 1965: Antiwar sentiment continues to build; protests held in 40 U.S. cities.
Dec. 1965: American troop strength reaches 184,300; to date there are 636 U.S.
deaths.
Jan. 1966: Congress is asked for $ 12.8 billion to help finance the war; merits of war
debated in Congress, but the money eventually is approved.
June 1966: Johnson expands bombing to oil installations in Hanoi and Haiphong.
Summer 1966: Race riots break out in Chicago and several other northern cities.
Riots escalate a year later.
Sept. 1966: U.S. announces that it is using chemicals to destroy enemy's jungle
cover, thus introducing the herbicide Agent Orange into the conflict; thousands of
American soldiers later say they developed cancer and other afflictions as a result of
exposure.
April 1967: Boxing champion Muhammad Ali refuses induction into the armed forces,
citing religious reasons. He tells reporters, "I ain't got no quarrel with them Viet
Cong."
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Oct. 1967: At least 50,000 protesters march on Pentagon. For first time, opinion
polls find more Americans are against the war than support it.
Nov. 1967: Democrat Eugene McCarthy announces that he will run as a presidential
candidate dedicated to ending the war.
Dec. 1967: U.S. military personnel in Vietnam reach 485,600; 16,021 killed to date.
Jan. 1968: North Vietnam launches massive Tet offensive, reaching all the way to
U.S. Embassy in Saigon; despite heavy communist casualties, public relations victory
goes to Hanoi, fueling antiwar movement.
Feb. 1968: Viet Cong and North Vietnamese kill 2,800 civilians in Hue. U.S. casualty
rate reaches weekly high: 543 killed.
March 1968: Johnson announces he will not seek reelection. My Lai massacre of
South Vietnamese civilians by American troops leaves hundreds of unarmed civilians
dead.
April 1968: Rev. King, who had called for total withdrawal from Vietnam, is
assassinated.
May 1968: Moves toward peace bring first substantive meeting between U.S. and
North Vietnam in Paris. Bloodiest month of the war for U.S. casualties, 2,371
Americans killed.
June 1968: Robert F. Kennedy, a Democratic presidential candidate opposed to the
escalation of the war in Vietnam, is assassinated.
Aug. 1968: Violence erupts between police and antiwar demonstrators at Democratic
convention in Chicago.
Nov. 1968: Richard Nixon, who vowed to achieve peace with honor in Vietnam,
defeats Democrat Hubert H. Humphrey in presidential election.
May 1969: U.S. proposes peace plan calling for troop withdrawal by both sides.
June 1969: Nixon announces that U.S. troops will begin unilateral withdrawal.
July 1969: Apollo 11 astronauts land on the moon.
Aug. 1969: Woodstock festival, a social and musical milestone, draws an estimated
500,000 to upstate New York.
Sep. 1969: North Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh dies in Hanoi; successor pledges to
continue war.
Nov. 1969: Details of the My Lai massacre become public.
Dec. 1969: First Vietnam War draft lottery, tying mandatory military service to date
of birth, is held in U.S.
Feb. 1970: National Security Advisor Henry A. Kissinger begins secret peace talks in
Paris; Nixon later appoints him secretary of State.
Mar. 1970: The United States begins bombing North Vietnamese sanctuaries and
supply routes in Cambodia.
April 1970: U.S. and South Vietnamese troops invade Cambodia in effort to cripple
enemy supply lines; it is last big operation of the war for the United States.
May 1970: Four students killed by National Guardsmen during antiwar protest at
Kent State University in Ohio.
Dec. 1970: Congress prohibits using troops or advisors in Cambodia and Laos.
March 1971: Lt. William L. Calley Jr. convicted of premeditated murder in My Lai
massacre.
June 1971: New York Times begins publishing top-secret Pentagon Papers, which
explored the U.S. decision-making process regarding South Vietnam.
July 1971: The 26th Amendment lowers the voting age to 18.
Nov. 1971: Nixon announces that U.S. ground forces have taken a defensive role,
leaving offensive attacks to the South Vietnamese.
Dec. 1971: U.S. military strength declines to 156,800. U.S. death toll, 45,626.
March 1972: North Vietnam begins a full-scale invasion of the South.
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April 1972: In effort to pressure Hanoi on lagging peace talks, bombing of Hanoi and
Haiphong resumes after four-year lull.
June 1972: Five men seized while breaking into the Democratic National Committee
headquarters at the Watergate building in Washington.
July 1972: Actress Jane Fonda, an anti-war activist, goes to Hanoi on a fact-finding
mission, poses for pictures with North Vietnamese soldiers, becomes target of
criticism in U.S.
Oct. 1972: National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger announces, "Peace is at hand."
His announcement of a tentative accord turns out to be premature.
Nov. 1972: Nixon wins second term, defeating Democrat George S. McGovern.
Dec. 1972: The North Vietnamese walk out of the Paris peace talks; American
bombers strike at Hanoi and Haiphong.
Jan. 1973: U.S., South Vietnam, Viet Cong and North Vietnam sign a cease-fire
agreement.
March 1973: Last U.S. ground troops leave Vietnam.
Nov. 1973: Congress overrides presidential veto of War Powers Act, which limits
president's ability to wage war without congressional approval.
Jan. 1974: North Vietnam orders major offensive to "liberate" South Vietnam.
April 1974: Cambodia falls to Communist Khmer Rouge rebels, who begin program of
genocide that kills more than a million Cambodians.
Aug. 1974: Nixon resigns in Watergate scandal and is succeeded by Vice President
Gerald R. Ford.
Sep. 1974: Ford offers clemency to Vietnam draft evaders and military deserters.
Apr. 29, 1975: Last U.S. military personnel killed, in rocket attack.
Apr. 30, 1975: North Vietnamese capture Saigon, ending the Vietnam War.
July 1975: North Vietnam annexes South Vietnam and disbands the National
Liberation Front.
Dec. 1978: Vietnam invades Cambodia and occupies the country for a decade.
Nov. 1982: The Vietnam Memorial in Washington is dedicated.
Feb. 1994: The United States ends its 19-year trade embargo against Vietnam.
July 1995: The United States extends full diplomatic recognition to Vietnam.
NORTH VIETNAM KEY FIGURES
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Vo Nguyen Giap: Architect of North Vietnam's military victory
Ho Chi Minh: Revered in North as father of the country
Ngo Dinh Diem: South Vietnamese President assassinated by his generals
Nguyen Cao Ky: Air force officer helped lead South in post-Diem era
Nguyen Van Thieu: Resigned South Vietnamese presidency shortly before war's end
Lyndon Johnson: Inherited presidency and unpopular war
Richard Nixon: Took office after nation had turned against war
William C. Westmoreland: Controversial U.S. commander
William Calley: Platoon leader found guilty in My Lai massacre. He was sentenced
first to life, then to ten years in prison. He was freed by order of a civil court in 1974.
Robert McNamara: As defense chief, guided U.S. policy
Henry C. Lodge: Pushed air war in role as envoy and presidential advisor
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