HONOURS MODERN
HISTORY
The War in Vietnam
*The
French began to expand in Southeast Asia in the 1800s, although they
had sent merchants and missionaries there since the 1600s. In
1858 French troops landed in what is now Vietnam, and by 1885 they had
conquered the whole country, although they retained the imperial family
as figureheads. In 1863, the King of Cambodia agreed to let his
country be a French protectorate. In 1887 the entire region was
named French Indochina, and what is now Laos was added to it in
1893. Its kings also remained as figureheads.
*During WWII, the Vichy French government allowed the Japanese to move
through parts of Indo-China to attack Chiang Kai-shek in China, and in
1945 the Japanese took over the whole colony.
*During this time, the USA’s OSI trained a number of native guerrillas
to fight the Japanese. Among these was a young nationalist named
Ho Chi Minh. He had long hoped for independence for Viet-Nam,
even seeking a meeting with Woodrow Wilson at Versailles to discuss
self-determination. Ho admired the Declaration of Independence
and George Washington (and saw himself as his own country’s
Washington). Wilson ignored him, and Ho soon turned to Moscow for
help.
*The Japanese in Indo-China surrendered when the Emperor ended WWII in
August 1945, and the French tried to regain control. Ho and many
of his supporters, called Viet Minh, the League for the Independence of
Viet-Nam, opposed this, as they had declared Viet-Nam independent from
France in 1941.
*In 1946, Ho declared himself president of the Democratic Republic of
Viet-Nam, but he was not recognised by anyone but his own followers, in
part because most of Europe supported the French out of principle, and
especially because Ho was a communist.
*To combat Ho, the French created a Republic of Viet-Nam, to be led by
the Emperor of Viet-Nam, Bao Dai. The French and the RVN fought
against the Viet Minh for almost a decade.
*Initial French preparations went well, but it soon turned out there
were far more Viet Minh than the French thought. They were also
armed with the latest Soviet weapons. The Viet Minh laid siege to
Dien Bien Phu, and in April 1954 the French gave up control of Viet Nam
in the Geneva Accords, which divided Viet-Nam just south of the 17th
Parallel and made Hanoi Ho’s capital of the North and Saigon Ngo Dinh
Diem’s capital in the South.
*Elections were to be held in 1956 for a unified country and
government. Ho Chi Minh was very popular for his work in getting
the French out, and it was feared that he would win a popular election,
so the South did not hold elections and the US supported them in
that. When an election between Ngo Dinh Diem and Bao Dai was
held, it was heavily rigged.
*The USA pledged to support the RVN, and sent money to Ngo Dinh Diem as well as military advisors to help train the ARVN.
*The US followed the policy of containment. They wanted to keep
communism from spreading and would fight it when it tried. The
great fear of the US was called the Domino Theory: if one country
in South-east Asia fell to communism, so would the rest, one after
another.
*Ngo Dinh Diem was not popular with many South Viet-Namese. He
was Catholic and most Viet-Namese were Buddhist. He had supported
the French and he imprisoned those who disagreed with him.
*Many people wanted him to initiate land reform—that is, take land from
the rich and give it to the poor—but he would not. Instead, he
created ‘strategic hamlets,’ essentially large, government-run farms,
where they could work, but where they would also be under close guard
so they could not help the communists.
*In June 1963 a Buddhist monk protested Ngo’s regime by pouring
gasoline on himself and immolating himself on a street in Saigon.
Soon other monks followed his example, and newspapers the world over
reported it. In Viet-Nam, news reporters and cameramen would have
almost total access to major events and unprecedented means of
transmitting news, pictures, and video back home.
*Opposition to Ngo Dinh Diem in Viet-Nam and now America led Kennedy to
permit a coup d’etat by several ARVN officers. Ngo Dinh Diem and
a younger brother were all murdered on 1 November 1963 (although
Kennedy had expected that he Diem would just be exiled).
*Things got worse early in 1964. The ARVN generals who took over
from Nho Dinh Diem governed the country poorly, did not run the ARVN
well, and 1964 saw a rise in Viet Cong activity in RVN. These
guerrillas sabotaged the RVN at night and looked like peaceful peasants
during the day.
*On 3 August 1964, some US Navy destroyers patrolling the Gulf of
Tonkin were attacked by NVN torpedo boats. The damage was minimal
(only one bullet struck, hitting the USS Maddox), but the next day
radar reports showed many more boats approaching and launching
torpedoes, and the Navy fired upon them. It has since been
discovered that the second wave of attacks detected by radar were
actually thunder clouds.
*This attack allowed Johnson to ask Congress for the power to send
troops to Viet-Nam. On 7 August 1964, Congress responded with the
Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which allowed the President to do whatever
he felt was necessary as long as he said there was an emergency.
The US could now send all the troops they wanted to Viet-Nam without a
declaration of war, and sent lots.
*The war in Viet-Nam was not like any war Americans had fought.
Used to living in the jungle, the VC were undetectable in most cases,
but they killed and wounded many soldiers and terrified more, and it
was almost impossible to hit them back. Civilians might throw a
bomb or try to poison soldiers. Soldiers faced booby traps such
as pits with punji sticks, land mines on paths, grenades hooked to
tripwires, and an enemy working out of vast underground tunnel systems
that were dangerous to clear out.
*The NVA and the VC had other advantages besides their invisibility and
relative popularity. The US Army had a number of rules of
engagement it followed to keep from offending the Vietnamese people or
neighbouring countries. The US would not bomb cemeteries, so the
VC hid in them. The US would not invade or bomb Laos or Cambodia,
so the NVA and VC built roads and carried supplies through those
countries. These were called the Ho Chi Minh trail. The US
conducted bombing raids on North Viet-Nam and on suspected VC outposts,
but not nearly as many as they could have, because Johnson was afraid
of accidentally hitting a Soviet advisor and sparking WWIII.
*The army could call in the Air Force to help them fight enemy
positions. In these attacks the USAF used fragmentation bombs,
which exploded into many little pieces, sending shrapnel everywhere to
kill the enemy. They also used napalm, jellied gasoline that set
the jungle on fire and stuck to anyone it hit.
*The US also used Agent Orange, a defoliant that killed the jungle
vegetation so soldiers could find hiding VC, but it also caused health
problems in many Vietnamese people and livestock and, it was later
discovered, in many US soldiers as well.
*Despite US escalation, the war was largely a stalemate. In
ambushes, the V-C had the advantage, although special US
search-and-destroy missions killed some V-C. In open battles the
US killed the V-C and NVA, but more just moved in.
*All this changed in 1968. The US expected some kind of attack,
because they knew there was a major build-up of NVA and V-C.
However, the Vietnamese New Year was coming up, and there was supposed
to be a cease-fire in honour of this occasion, called Tet, and
beginning on the night of 30/31 January in 1968.
*On the night of 30/31 January, almost every major town in RVN was
attacked by V-C forces. In most places the V-C were beaten
immediately. Only in Hue and Saigon itself did they have any
success, where fighting continued for several weeks.
*During Tet, the V-C killed anyone they considered an enemy, especially
the educated classes. Doctors, teachers, minor government
officials, military personnel, and many others were rounded up and
executed—thousands in total.
*Tet destroyed the V-C. Over 100,000 were killed, wounded, or
captured, compared to 1,100 dead US and 2,800 dead ARVN soldiers.
However, when images of Tet got home, people were horrified. On
the news it looked like the US was losing.
*The Tet Offensive was a turning point in the war
psychologically. Although a tactical victory for the US and ARVN,
it convinced Americans watching at home that the V-C could attack
anywhere at any time they wanted in massive numbers, and do well even
against the US Army (even though after Tet that was largely
untrue). More and more people began to ask just what the Unites
States were doing in Viet-Nam.
*Although the US would continue to send troops to Vietnam and fight the
war for four more years, it would do so with decreasing popular
support, until Richard Nixon proposed a plan of Vietnamization:
turning the war over to the Vietnamese.
*In 1973 the US withdrew from Viet-Nam but the NVA and ARVN fought
until 1975 when the NVA took over South Viet-Nam and American
helicopters lifted the last remaining Americans out of the
embassy. Saigon’s name was changed to Ho Chi Minh City after the
dead leader, gone since 1969.
*In the new Socialist Republic of Vietnam, hundreds of thousands of
Vietnamese were sent to re-education camps where they were taught to
follow the party line, or else. Property was seized, opponents of
the Communists were murdered, and over 1.5 million Vietnamese boat
people fled to the US.
*Remember the Domino Theory? After Viet-Nam, two more dominoes
fell: Laos, and Cambodia, where Pol Pot of the Khmer Rouge killed
1.7 million Cambodians who he thought were too Western—that is over 25%
of the entire Cambodian population—between 1975 and 1979.
Cambodians and Laotians also fled to the US. Furthermore,
in 1962, Burma's democratically elected government-independent from
Britain since 1948--was overthrown by the military, which implemented
the 'Burmese way to Socialism' and which continues to rule as a
military junta today (but no longer claims to do so in the name of
socialism). However, no other countries in the region fell,
perhaps because they never would have, and perhaps because the long
struggle in Viet-Nam had limited the power of Communism.
*Today Laos is still a communist country and Burma (or Myanmar) is a military dictatorship, but Cambodia, after five
years of rule by Pol Pot and a decade under rule by Vietnam (after the
Khmer Rouge crossed the border too often), held free elections in 1993
and created a constitutional monarchy.