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PURPLE
HEART EMBROIDERED PATCH
VIETNAM WAR
4 1/2" DIAMETER - HIGHLY DETAILED EMBROIDERED PATCH
With VIETNAM TAB
WHITE MERROWED EDGE - WAX BACKING
Awarded
by United States Armed Forces
Type Military medal (Decoration)
Eligibility Military personnel
Awarded for "Being wounded or killed
in any action against an enemy of the United States
or as a result
of an act of any such enemy or opposing armed forces"
Status
Currently awarded
First awarded February 22, 1932
Total awarded
Approximately 1,910,162 (as of 5 June 2010)
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COMBAT VETERAN - MILITARY MERIT - PURPLE HEART
WITH IRAQ TAB
| The Purple Heart is a United
States military decoration awarded in the name of the President to those
wounded or killed, while serving, on or after April 5, 1917, with the U.S.
military. With its forerunner, the Badge of Military Merit, which took the
form of a heart made of purple cloth, the Purple Heart is the oldest
military award still given to U.S. military members; the only earlier award
being the obsolete Fidelity Medallion. The National Purple Heart Hall of
Honor is located in New Windsor, New York.
History
The original Purple Heart, designated as the
Badge of Military Merit, was established by George Washington—then the
commander-in-chief of the Continental Army – by order from his Newburgh, New
York headquarters on August 7, 1782. The Badge of Military Merit was only
awarded to three Revolutionary War soldiers. From then on as its legend
grew; so did its appearance. Although never abolished, the award of the
badge was not proposed again officially until after World War I.
On October 10, 1927,
Army Chief of Staff General Charles Pelot Summerall directed that a draft
bill be sent to Congress "to revive the Badge of Military Merit". The bill
was withdrawn and action on the case ceased January 3, 1928; but the office
of the Adjutant General was instructed to file all materials collected for
possible future use. A number of private interests sought to have the medal
re-instituted in the Army, this included the board of directors of the Fort
Ticonderoga Museum in Ticonderoga, New York.
On January 7, 1931,
Summerall’s successor, General Douglas MacArthur, confidentially reopened
work on a new design, involving the Washington Commission of Fine Arts.
Elizabeth Will, an Army heraldic specialist in the Office of the
Quartermaster General, was named to redesign the newly revived medal, which
became known as the Purple Heart. Using general specifications provided to
her, Will created the design sketch for the present medal of the Purple
Heart. The new design was issued on the bicentennial of George Washington's
birth. Her obituary, in the February 8, 1975 edition of The Washington Post
newspaper, reflects her many contributions to military heraldry.
The Commission of Fine
Arts solicited plaster models from three leading sculptors for the medal,
selecting that of John R. Sinnock of the Philadelphia Mint in May 1931. By
Executive Order of the President of the United States, the Purple Heart was
revived on the 200th Anniversary of George Washington's birth, out of
respect to his memory and military achievements, by War Department General
Orders No. 3, dated February 22, 1932.
The criteria were
announced in a War Department circular dated February 22, 1932, and
authorized award to soldiers, upon their request, who had been awarded the
Meritorious Service Citation Certificate, Army Wound Ribbon, or were
authorized to wear Wound Chevrons subsequent to April 5, 1917, the day
before the United States entered World War I. The first Purple Heart was
awarded to MacArthur. During the early period of American involvement in
World War II (December 7, 1941 – September 22, 1943), the Purple Heart was
awarded both for wounds received in action against the enemy and for
meritorious performance of duty. With the establishment of the Legion of
Merit, by an Act of Congress, the practice of awarding the Purple Heart for
meritorious service was discontinued. By Executive Order 9277, dated
December 3, 1942, the decoration was applied to all services; the order
required reasonable uniform application of the regulations for each of the
Services. This executive order also authorized the award only for wounds
received. For both military and civilian personnel during the World War II
era, to meet eligibility for the Purple Heart, AR 600-45, dated September
22, 1943, and May 3, 1944, required identification of circumstances.
Subject to approval of
the Secretary of Defense, Executive Order 10409, dated February 12, 1952,
revised authorizations to include the Service Secretaries. Dated April 25,
1962, Executive Order 11016, included provisions for posthumous award of the
Purple Heart. Dated February 23, 1984, Executive Order 12464, authorized
award of the Purple Heart as a result of terrorist attacks, or while serving
as part of a peacekeeping force, subsequent to March 28, 1973.
On June 13, 1985, the
Senate approved an amendment to the 1985 Defense Authorization Bill, which
changed the precedence of the Purple Heart award, from immediately above the
Good Conduct Medal to immediately above the Meritorious Service Medals.
Public Law 99-145 authorized the award for wounds received as a result of
friendly fire. Public Law 104-106 expanded the eligibility date, authorizing
award of the Purple Heart to a former prisoner of war who was wounded before
April 25, 1962. The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1998
(Public Law 105-85) changed the criteria to delete authorization for award
of the Purple Heart to any civilian national of the United States, while
serving under competent authority in any capacity with the Armed Forces.
This change was effective May 18, 1998.
During World War II,
nearly 500,000 Purple Heart medals were manufactured in anticipation of the
estimated casualties resulting from the planned Allied invasion of Japan. To
the present date, total combined American military casualties of the
sixty-five years following the end of World War II—including the Korean and
Vietnam Wars—have not exceeded that number. In 2003, there remained 120,000
Purple Heart medals in stock. The existing surplus allowed combat units in
Iraq and Afghanistan to keep Purple Hearts on-hand for immediate award to
soldiers wounded in the field.
The "History" section of
the November 2009 edition of National Geographic estimated the number of
purple hearts given. Above the estimates, the text reads, "Any tally of
Purple Hearts is an estimate. Awards are often given during conflict;
records aren't always exact" (page 33). The estimates are as follows:
World War I: 320,518
World War II: 1,076,245
Korean War: 118,650
Vietnam War: 351,794
Persian Gulf War: 607
Afghanistan War: 7,027 (as of 5 June 2010)
Iraq War: 35,321 (as of 5 June 2010)
Criteria
The Purple Heart is
awarded in the name of the President of the United States to any member of
the Armed Forces of the United States who, while serving under competent
authority in any capacity with one of the U.S. Armed Services after April 5,
1917, has been wounded or killed. Specific examples of services which
warrant the Purple Heart include any action against an enemy of the United
States; any action with an opposing armed force of a foreign country in
which the Armed Forces of the United States are or have been engaged; while
serving with friendly foreign forces engaged in an armed conflict against an
opposing armed force in which the United States is not a belligerent party;
as a result of an act of any such enemy of opposing armed forces; or as the
result of an act of any hostile foreign force. After 28 March 1973, as a
result of an international terrorist attack against the United States or a
foreign nation friendly to the United States, recognized as such an attack
by the Secretary of the Army, or jointly by the Secretaries of the separate
armed services concerned if persons from more than one service are wounded
in the attack. After 28 March 1973, as a result of military operations while
serving outside the territory of the United States as part of a peacekeeping
force.
The Purple Heart differs from all other
decorations in that an individual is not "recommended" for the decoration;
rather he or she is entitled to it upon meeting specific criteria. A Purple
Heart is awarded for the first wound suffered under conditions indicated
above, but for each subsequent award an oak leaf cluster is worn in lieu of
the medal. Not more than one award will be made for more than one wound or
injury received at the same instant. A "wound" is defined as an injury to
any part of the body from an outside force or agent sustained under one or
more of the conditions listed above. A physical lesion is not required;
however, the wound for which the award is made must have required treatment
by a medical officer and records of medical treatment for wounds or injuries
received in action must have been made a matter of official record. When
contemplating an award of this decoration, the key issue that commanders
must take into consideration is the degree to which the enemy caused the
injury. The fact that the proposed recipient was participating in direct or
indirect combat operations is a necessary prerequisite, but is not sole
justification for award. The Purple Heart is not awarded for non-combat
injuries.
Enemy-related injuries which justify the award of
the Purple Heart include: injury caused by enemy bullet, shrapnel, or other
projectile created by enemy action; injury caused by enemy placed land mine,
naval mine, or trap; injury caused by enemy released chemical, biological,
or nuclear agent; injury caused by vehicle or aircraft accident resulting
from enemy fire; and, concussion injuries caused as a result of enemy
generated explosions.
Injuries or wounds which
do not qualify for award of the Purple Heart include frostbite or trench
foot injuries; heat stroke; food poisoning not caused by enemy agents;
chemical, biological, or nuclear agents not released by the enemy; battle
fatigue; disease not directly caused by enemy agents; accidents, to include
explosive, aircraft, vehicular, and other accidental wounding not related to
or caused by enemy action; self-inflicted wounds (e.g., a soldier
accidentally fires their own gun and the bullet strikes his or her leg),
except when in the heat of battle, and not involving gross negligence;
post-traumatic stress disorders; and jump injuries not caused by enemy
action.
It is not intended that such a strict
interpretation of the requirement for the wound or injury to be caused by
direct result of hostile action be taken that it would preclude the award
being made to deserving personnel. Commanders must also take into
consideration the circumstances surrounding an injury, even if it appears to
meet the criteria. In the case of an individual injured while making a
parachute landing from an aircraft that had been brought down by enemy fire;
or, an individual injured as a result of a vehicle accident caused by enemy
fire, the decision will be made in favor of the individual and the award
will be made. As well, individuals wounded or killed as a result of
"friendly fire" in the "heat of battle" will be awarded the Purple Heart as
long as the "friendly" projectile or agent was released with the full intent
of inflicting damage or destroying enemy troops or equipment. Individuals
injured as a result of their own negligence, such as by driving or walking
through an unauthorized area known to have been mined or placed off limits
or searching for or picking up unexploded munitions as war souvenirs, will
not be awarded the Purple Heart as they clearly were not injured as a result
of enemy action, but rather by their own negligence.
From 1942 to 1997,
civilians serving or closely affiliated with, the armed forces—as government
employees, Red Cross workers, war correspondents, and the like—were eligible
to receive the Purple Heart. Among the earliest civilians to receive the
award were nine firefighters of the Honolulu Fire Department, killed or
wounded, while fighting fires at Hickam Field during the attack on Pearl
Harbor. About 100 men and women received the award, the most famous being
newspaperman Ernie Pyle, who was awarded a Purple Heart posthumously, by the
Army, after being killed by Japanese machine gun fire in the Pacific
Theater, near the end of World War II. Before his death, Pyle had seen and
experienced combat in the European Theater, while accompanying, and writing
about, infantrymen, for the folks back home.
The most recent Purple
Hearts presented to civilians occurred after the terrorist attacks at Khobar
Towers, Saudi Arabia, in 1996—for their injuries, about 40 U.S. civil
service employees received the award.
However, in 1997, at the
urging of the Military Order of the Purple Heart, Congress passed
legislation prohibiting future awards of the Purple Heart to civilians.
Today, the Purple Heart is reserved for men and women in uniform. Civilian
employees of the U.S. Department of Defense who are killed or wounded as a
result of hostile action may receive the new Defense of Freedom Medal. This
award was created shortly after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
Appearance
The Purple Heart award is a heart-shaped medal
within a gold border, 1 3/8 inches (35 mm) wide, containing a profile of
General George Washington. Above the heart appears a shield of the coat of
arms of George Washington (a white shield with two red bars and three red
stars in chief) between sprays of green leaves. The reverse consists of a
raised bronze heart with the words FOR MILITARY MERIT below the coat of arms
and leaves. The ribbon is 1 and 3/8 inches (35 mm) wide and consists of the
following stripes: 1/8 inch (3 mm) white 67101; 1 1/8 inches (29 mm) purple
67115; and 1/8 inch (3 mm) white 67101.
Devices
Additional awards of the Purple Heart are denoted
by oak leaf clusters in the Army and Air Force, and additional awards of the
Purple Heart Medal are denoted by 5/16 inch stars in the Navy, Marine Corps,
and Coast Guard.
Presentation
Current active duty personnel are awarded the
Purple Heart upon recommendation from their chain of command, stating the
injury that was received and the action in which the service member was
wounded. The award authority for the Purple Heart is normally at the level
of an Army Brigade, Marine Corps Division, Air Force Wing, or Navy Task
Force. While the award of the Purple Heart is considered automatic for all
wounds received in combat, each award presentation must still be reviewed to
ensure that the wounds received were as a result of enemy action. Modern day
Purple Heart presentations are recorded in both hardcopy and electronic
service records. The annotation of the Purple Heart is denoted both with the
service member's parent command and at the headquarters of the military
service department. An original citation and award certificate are presented
to the service member and filed in the field service record.
During the Vietnam War,
Korean War, and World War II, the Purple Heart was often awarded on the
spot, with occasional entries made into service records. In addition, during
mass demobilization following each of America's major wars of the 20th
century, it was common occurrence to omit mention from service records of a
Purple Heart award. This occurred due to clerical errors, and became
problematic once a service record was closed upon discharge. In terms of
keeping accurate records, it was commonplace for some field commanders to
engage in bedside presentations of the Purple Heart. This typically entailed
a general entering a hospital with a box of Purple Hearts, pinning them on
the pillows of wounded service members, then departing with no official
records kept of the visit, or the award of the Purple Heart. Service
members, themselves, complicated matters by unofficially leaving hospitals,
hastily returning to their units to rejoin battle so as to not appear a
malingerer. In such cases, even if a service member had received actual
wounds in combat, both the award of the Purple Heart, as well as the entire
visit to the hospital, was unrecorded in official records.
Service members
requesting retroactive awards of the Purple Heart must normally apply
through the National Personnel Records Center. Following a review of service
records, qualified Army members are awarded the Purple Heart by the U.S.
Army Human Resources Command in Alexandria, Virginia. Air Force veterans are
awarded the Purple Heart by the Awards Office of Randolph Air Force Base,
while Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard, present Purple Hearts to veterans
through the Navy Liaison Officer at the National Personnel Records Center.
Simple clerical errors, where a Purple Heart is denoted in military records,
but was simply omitted from a (WD AGO Form 53-55 (predecessor to the) DD
Form 214 (Report of Separation), are corrected on site at the National
Personnel Records Center through issuance of a DD-215 document.
Requests
Because the Purple Heart did not exist prior to
1932, decoration records are not annotated in the service histories of
veterans wounded, or killed, by enemy action, prior to establishment of the
medal. The Purple Heart is, however, retroactive to 1917 meaning it may be
presented to veterans as far back as First World War. Prior to 2006, service
departments would review all available records, including older service
records, and service histories, to determine if a veteran warranted a
retroactive Purple Heart. As of 2008, such records are listed as "Archival",
by the National Archives and Records Administration, meaning they have been
transferred from the custody of the military, and can no longer be loaned
and transferred for retroactive medals determination. In such cases,
requests asking for a Purple Heart (especially from records of the First
World War) are provided with a complete copy of all available records (or
reconstructed records in the case of the 1973 fire) and advised the Purple
Heart may be privately purchased if the requester feels it is warranted.
A clause to the archival procedures was revised
in mid-2008, where if a veteran, themselves or (if deceased), an immediate
member of the family, requested the Purple Heart, on an Army or Air Force
record, the medal could still be granted by the National Archives. In such
cases, where a determination was required made by the military service
department, photocopies of the archival record, (but not the record itself),
would be forwarded to the headquarters of the military branch in question.
This stipulation was granted only for the Air Force and Army; Marine Corps,
Navy, and Coast Guard archival medals requests are still typically only
offered a copy of the file and told to purchase the medal privately. For
requests directly received from veterans, these are routed through a Navy
Liaison Office, on site at 9700 Page Avenue, St. Louis, MO 63132-5100 (the
location of the Military Personnel Records Center).
Due to the 1973 National
Archives Fire, a large number of retroactive Purple Heart requests are
difficult to verify because all records to substantiate the award may have
been destroyed. As a solution to deal with Purple Heart requests, where
service records were destroyed in the 1973 fire, the National Personnel
Records Center maintains a separate office. In such cases, NPRC searches
through unit records, military pay records, and records of the Department of
Veterans Affairs. If a Purple Heart is warranted, all available alternate
records sources are forwarded to the military service department for final
determination of issuance.
The loaning of fire related records to the
military has declined since 2006, because a large number of such records now
fall into the "archival records" category of military service records. This
means the records were transferred from the military to the National
Archives, and in such cases, the Purple Heart may be privately purchased by
the requester (see above section of retroactive requests for further
details) but is no longer provided by the military service department.
Notable recipients
James Arness, actor
Manny Babbitt, convicted murderer
Peter Badcoe, Victoria Cross recipient
Rocky Bleier, football player
Charles Bronson, actor
J. Herbert Burke, U.S. Representative from
Florida
Llewellyn
Chilson, U.S. Army
Wesley Clark, former SACEUR
Cordelia E Cook, first woman to receive both the
Bronze Star Medal and the Purple Heart
Steponas Darius, aviator
Charles Durning, actor
Dale Dye, actor
Samuel Fuller, director
James Garner, actor
Salvatore Giunta, Medal of Honor, Afghanistan
War.
Joe Haldeman,
writer
Carlos
Hathcock, United States Marine Corps
Charles Franklin Hildebrand, journalist and
publisher
James
Jones, writer
John
F. Kennedy, 35th President of the United States
John Kerry, United States Secretary of State
Ron Kovic, writer
Chris Kyle, U.S Navy
Robert Leckie U.S. Marine
Victor Maghakian, also known as Captain Victor
"Transport" Maghakian
Lee Marvin, actor
John McCain, U.S. Senator from Arizona
Audie Murphy, actor
Robert M. Polich, Sr., pilot, featured in
Minnesotas Greatest Generation (2008) short Film Festival
Colin Powell, General, former United States
Secretary of State.
Charles P. Roland, American historian
Norman Schwarzkopf, Jr., Commanding General of
allied forces during Desert Storm
Rod Serling, American screenwriter
Eric Shinseki, former Army Chief of Staff and
Secretary of the Veterans Administration
W. E. "Pete" Snelson, American politician
Warren Spahn, baseball player
Oliver Stone, director
Sergeant Stubby, war dog
Bruce Sundlun, former Governor of Rhode Island.
Pat Tillman, football player
Gilbert R. Tredway, American historian
Matt Urban, infantry officer
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., writer
Richard Winters, Major
Chuck Yeager, Brigadier General
Most Purple Heart awards
The most Purple Hearts
awarded to a single individual is nine. Marine Sgt. Albert L. Ireland holds
that distinction, being awarded five Purple Heart Medals in World War II and
four more in the Korean War. Seven soldiers, including two Medal of Honor
recipients, were awarded eight Purple Hearts:
Richard J. Buck: Four
awards, Korean War / Four awards, Vietnam War
Robert T. Frederick: Eight awards, World War II
David H. Hackworth: Three awards, Korean War /
Five awards in the Vietnam War
Joe Hooper: Eight awards, Vietnam War
Robert L. Howard: Eight awards, Vietnam War
William Waugh: Eight awards, Vietnam War
In May 2006, a soldier
made national headlines after giving his Purple Heart to a girl who had
written many letters to troops.
In May 2007, Vietnam
veteran Jerrell Hudman announced that he planned to give one of his three
Purple Hearts to George, a Jack Russell terrier. George died from injuries
sustained when he saved a group of five children from being mauled by two
pit bull terriers in New Zealand.
VIETNAM
The Vietnam War (Vietnamese: Chi?n tranh Vi?t
Nam), also known as the Second Indochina War, and known in Vietnam as the
Resistance War Against America or simply the American War, was a Cold
War-era proxy war that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1
November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the
First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam—supported by the
Soviet Union, China and other communist allies—and the government of South
Vietnam—supported by the United States and other anti-communist allies. The
Viet Cong (also known as the National Liberation Front, or NLF), a lightly
armed South Vietnamese communist common front aided by the North, fought a
guerrilla war against anti-communist forces in the region. The People's Army
of Vietnam (aka the North Vietnamese Army) engaged in a more conventional
war, at times committing large units into battle.
As the war wore on, the
part of the Viet Cong in the fighting decreased as the role of the NVA grew.
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. In the course of the war, the U.S. conducted a
large-scale strategic bombing campaign against North Vietnam, and over time
the North Vietnamese airspace became the most heavily defended airspace of
any in the world.
The U.S. government viewed American involvement in
the war as a way to prevent a Communist takeover of South Vietnam. This was
part of a wider containment strategy, with the stated aim of stopping the
spread of communism. According to the U.S. domino theory, if one state went
Communist, other states in the region would follow, and U.S. policy thus
held that accommodation to the spread of Communist rule across all of
Vietnam was unacceptable. The North Vietnamese government and the Viet Cong
were fighting to reunify Vietnam under communist rule. They viewed the
conflict as a colonial war, fought initially against forces from France and
then America, as France was backed by the U.S., and later against South
Vietnam, which it regarded as a U.S. puppet state.
Beginning in 1950,
American military advisers arrived in what was then French Indochina. U.S.
involvement escalated in the early 1960s, with troop levels tripling in 1961
and again in 1962. U.S. involvement escalated further following the 1964
Gulf of Tonkin incident, in which a U.S. destroyer clashed with North
Vietnamese fast attack craft, which was followed by the Gulf of Tonkin
Resolution, which gave the U.S. president authorization to increase U.S.
military presence. Regular U.S. combat units were deployed beginning in
1965. Operations crossed international borders: bordering areas of Laos and
Cambodia were heavily bombed by U.S. forces as American involvement in the
war peaked in 1968, the same year that the Communist side launched the Tet
Offensive. The Tet Offensive failed in its goal of overthrowing the South
Vietnamese government but became the turning point in the war, as it
persuaded a large segment of the United States population that its
government's claims of progress toward winning the war were illusory despite
many years of massive U.S. military aid to South Vietnam.
Disillusionment with the
war by the U.S. led to the gradual withdrawal of U.S. ground forces as part
of a policy known as Vietnamization, which aimed to end American involvement
in the war while transferring the task of fighting the Communists to the
South Vietnamese themselves. Despite the Paris Peace Accord, which was
signed by all parties in January 1973, the fighting continued.
In the U.S. and the
Western world, a large anti-Vietnam War movement developed. This movement
was part of a larger Counterculture of the 1960s which fed into it.
Direct 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 at the hands of the North
Vietnamese 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 service members 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.
Names for the war
Further information: Terminology of the Vietnam
War
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 several conflicts in Indochina,
this particular conflict is known by the names of its primary protagonists
to distinguish it from others. In Vietnamese, the war is generally known as
Kháng chi?n ch?ng M? (Resistance War Against America). It is also called
Chi?n tranh Vi?t Nam (The Vietnam War).
The primary military
organizations involved in the war were, on one side, the Army of the
Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) and the U.S. military, and, on the other side,
the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) (more commonly called the North
Vietnamese Army, or NVA, in English language sources), and the National
Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam (NLF, more commonly known as the
Viet Cong in English language sources), a South Vietnamese communist
guerrilla force.
Background to 1949
See also: History of Vietnam, Cochinchina
Campaign, C?n Vuong, Vi?t Nam Qu?c Dân Ð?ng, Yên Bái mutiny, Vietnam during
World War II and War in Vietnam (1945–46)
France began its conquest of Indochina in the late
1850s, and completed pacification by 1893. The 1884 Treaty of Hu? formed the
basis for French colonial rule in Vietnam for the next seven decades. In
spite of military resistance, most notably by the C?n Vuong of Phan Ðình
Phùng, by 1888 the area of the current-day nations of Cambodia and Vietnam
was made into the colony of French Indochina (Laos was later added to the
colony). Various Vietnamese opposition movements to French rule existed
during this period, such as the Vi?t Nam Qu?c Dân Ð?ng who staged the failed
Yên Bái 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 Party in
its fight against Japanese occupation.
In 1940, during World War
II, the French were defeated by the Germans. The French State (commonly
known as Vichy France) was established as a Client state of Nazi Germany.
The French colonial authorities, in French Indochina, sided with the Vichy
regime. In September 1940, Japan invaded Indochina. Following the cessation
of fighting and the beginning of the Japanese occupation, the French
colonial authorities collaborated with the Japanese. The French continued to
run affairs in Indochina, but ultimate power resided in the hands of the
Japanese.
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. 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.
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 the French authorities and troops on
9 March 1945 and created the puppet Empire of Vietnam state, under B?o Ð?i
instead.
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). Between 400,000 and 2
million people died of starvation (out of a population of 10 million in the
affected area). Exploiting the administrative gap 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. Between 75 and 100
warehouses were consequently raided. 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.
On 22 August 1945, following the Japanese
surrender, OSS agents Archimedes Patti and Carleton B. Swift Jr. arrived in
Hanoi on a mercy mission to liberate allied POWs and were accompanied by
Jean Sainteny, a French government official. The Japanese forces informally
surrendered (the official surrender took place on 2 September 1945 in Tokyo
Bay) but being the only force capable of maintaining law and order the
Japanese Imperial Army remained in power while keeping French colonial
troops and Sainteny detained.
During August the Japanese
forces remained inactive as the Viet Minh and other nationalist groups took
over public buildings and weapons, which began the August Revolution. OSS
officers met repeatedly with Ho Chi Minh and other Viet Minh officers during
this period and on 2 September 1945 Ho Chi Minh declared the independent
Democratic Republic of Vietnam before a crowd of 500,000 in Hanoi. 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."
The Viet Minh took power
in Vietnam in the August Revolution. According to Gabriel Kolko, the Viet
Minh enjoyed large popular support, although Arthur J. Dommen cautions
against a "romanticized view" of their success: "The Viet Minh use of terror
was systematic....the party had drawn up a list of those to be liqudated
without delay." 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 Viet Minh
had recruited more than 600 Japanese soldiers and given them roles to train
or command Vietnamese soldiers.
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. As the French did not have the means 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. Nationalist Chinese troops entered the country to
disarm Japanese troops north of the 16th parallel on 14 September 1945. 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.
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. In January
1946, the Viet Minh won elections across central and northern Vietnam. 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. The French landed in Hanoi by March 1946 and in November of
that year they ousted the Viet Minh from the city. British forces departed
on 26 March 1946, leaving Vietnam in the hands of the French. 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. 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.
Exit of the French,
1950–54
Main
articles: First Indochina War, Operation Vulture and Operation Passage to
Freedom
In January
1950, the People's Republic of China and the Soviet Union recognized Viet
Minh's Democratic Republic of Vietnam, based in Hanoi, as the legitimate
government of Vietnam. The following month the United States and Great
Britain recognized the French-backed State of Vietnam in Saigon, led by
former Emperor B?o Ð?i, as the legitimate Vietnamese government. The
outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950 convinced many Washington
policymakers that the war in Indochina was an example of communist
expansionism directed by the Soviet Union.
Military
advisors from the People's Republic of China (PRC) 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 Võ Nguyên Giáp'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 they were opposed to such a
venture. In the end, convinced that the political risks outweighed the
possible benefits, Eisenhower decided against the intervention. Eisenhower
was a five-star general. He 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
Main articles: Geneva Conference (1954), Operation
Passage to Freedom, Battle of Saigon (1955), Ba C?t, State of Vietnam
referendum, 1955 and Land reform in Vietnam
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. 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 Ðình
Di?m regime a strong anti-communist constituency. Di?m 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". This was a campaign against land owners.
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 estimated 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 people were
executed as "landlords" during the "land reform", of whom 123,266 (71.66%)
were later found to have been 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 B?o Ð?i as Emperor and Ngô Ðình Di?m
(appointed in July 1954) as his prime minister. Neither the United States
government nor Ngô Ðình Di?m'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 Ph?m Van Ð?ng, 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 reunified,
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 B?o Ð?i. Indeed, the lack of leadership and drive
on the part of B?o Ð?i 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 "Ngô Ðình Di?m 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
Di?m—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, with the ICC reporting that neither South nor North Vietnam had
honored the armistice agreement
From April to June 1955,
Di?m eliminated any political opposition in the south by launching military
operations against two religious groups; the Cao Ðài and Hòa H?o of Ba C?t.
The campaign also focused on the Bình Xuyên organized crime group which was
allied with members of the communist party secret police and had some
military elements. As broad-based opposition to his harsh tactics mounted,
Di?m increasingly sought to blame the communists.
In a referendum on the
future of the State of Vietnam on 23 October 1955, Di?m rigged the poll
supervised by his brother Ngô Ðình Nhu and was credited with 98.2 percent of
the vote, including 133% in Saigon. His American advisors had recommended a
more modest winning margin of "60 to 70 percent." Di?m, however, viewed the
election as a test of authority. Three days later, he declared South Vietnam
to be an independent state under the name 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. 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."
Di?m era, 1955–63
Main articles: Ngô Ðình Di?m and War in Vietnam
(1954–59)
A devout
Roman Catholic, Di?m was fervently anti-communist, nationalist, and socially
conservative. Historian Luu Doan Huynh notes that "Di?m represented narrow
and extremist nationalism coupled with autocracy and nepotism." The majority
of Vietnamese people were Buddhist, and were alarmed by actions such as
Di?m's dedication of the country to the Virgin Mary.
Beginning in the summer of
1955, Di?m 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. According to Gabriel Kolko about 12,000
suspected opponents of Di?m 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, Di?m
undertook a ten-day state visit to the United States. President Eisenhower
pledged his continued support, and a parade was held in Di?m's honor in New
York City. Although Di?m was publicly praised, in private Secretary of State
John Foster Dulles conceded that Di?m 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
Di?m warned that it was an illusion to believe that blindly copying Western
methods would solve Vietnamese problems.
Insurgency in the South,
1954–60
Main
articles: Viet Cong and War in Vietnam (1959–63)
Between 1954 and 1957 there was large scale random
dissidence in the countryside which the Di?m 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, Di?m considered it an organized 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, a.k.a. the Viet Cong) was formally created with the intent of uniting
all anti-GVN activists, including non-communists. According to the Pentagon
Papers, the Viet Cong "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.
The reason for the
continued survival of the NLF was the class relations in the countryside.
The vast majority of the population lived in villages in the countryside
where the key issue was land reform. The Viet Minh had reduced rents and
debts; and had leased communal lands, mostly to the poorer peasants. Diem
brought the landlords back to the villages. People who were farming land
they held for years now had to return it to landlords and pay years of back
rent. This rent collection was enforced by the South Vietnamese army. The
divisions within villages reproduced those that had existed against the
French: "75 percent support for the NLF, 20 percent trying to remain neutral
and 5 percent firmly pro-government,"
North Vietnamese
involvement
Sources
disagree on 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 Le Duan
presented a plan to revive the insurgency entitled "The Road to the South"
to the other members of the Politburo in Hanoi, but as both China and the
Soviets opposed confrontation at this time, Le Duan'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. The North Vietnamese Communist
Party approved a "people's war" on the South at a session in January 1959
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. The first arms delivery via the trail was completed in
August 1959.
North Vietnam invaded Laos in 1959, and used
30,000 men to build invasion routes through Laos and Cambodia by 1961. About
40,000 communist soldiers infiltrated into the south from 1961–63. North
Vietnam sent 10,000 troops of the North Vietnamese Army to attack the south
in 1964, and this figure increased to 100,000 in 1965.
The Kennedy years, 1961–63
Main articles: Strategic Hamlet Program and Ph?m
Ng?c Th?o
In the
1960 U.S. presidential election, Senator John F. Kennedy defeated sitting
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." 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. These crises 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 Times immediately after his Vienna meeting with Khrushchev,
"Now we have a problem making our power credible and Vietnam looks like the
place."
In May 1961, U.S. Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson
visited Saigon and enthusiastically declared Di?m the "Winston Churchill of
Asia." Asked why he had made the comment, Johnson replied, "Di?m's the only
boy we got out there." Johnson assured Di?m of more aid in molding a
fighting force that could resist the communists.
Kennedy's policy toward
South Vietnam rested on the assumption that Di?m and his forces had to
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." The quality of the South
Vietnamese military, however, remained poor. Poor leadership, corruption,
and political promotions all played a part in weakening the South Vietnamese
Army (ARVN). The frequency of guerrilla attacks rose as the insurgency
gathered steam. While Hanoi's support for the Viet Cong played a role, South
Vietnamese governmental incompetence was at the core of the crisis.
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
Soviet 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 advisors 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." By November 1963, there were 16,000
American military personnel in South Vietnam, up from Eisenhower's 900
advisors.
The Strategic Hamlet Program was initiated in late
1961. This joint U.S.-South Vietnamese program attempted to resettle the
rural population into fortified camps. It was implemented in early 1962 and
involved some forced relocation, village internment, and segregation of
rural South Vietnamese into new communities where the peasantry would be
isolated from Communist insurgents. It was hoped these new communities would
provide security for the peasants and strengthen the tie between them and
the central government. However, by November 1963 the program waned and
officially ended in 1964.
On 23 July 1962, fourteen
nations, including China, South Vietnam, the Soviet Union, North Vietnam and
the United States, signed an agreement promising to respect the neutrality
of Laos.
Ousting and assassination of Ngô Ðình Di?m
See also: Role of the United States in the Vietnam
War § John F. Kennedy (1961–1963), 1960 South Vietnamese coup attempt, 1962
South Vietnamese Independence Palace bombing, Hu? Ph?t Ð?n shootings and Xá
L?i Pagoda raids
Main articles: Cable 243, Arrest and assassination of Ngô Ðình Di?m,
Buddhist crisis, Krulak Mendenhall mission, McNamara Taylor mission, 1963
South Vietnamese coup and Reaction to the 1963 South Vietnamese coup
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. As historian James Gibson summed up the situation:
"Strategic hamlets had failed…. The South Vietnamese regime was incapable of
winning the peasantry because of its class base among landlords. Indeed,
there was no longer a ‘regime’ in the sense of a relatively stable political
alliance and functioning bureaucracy. Instead, civil government and military
operations had virtually ceased. The National Liberation Front had made
great progress and was close to declaring provisional revolutionary
governments in large areas."
The ARVN were led in that
battle by Di?m's most trusted general, Hu?nh 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 Di?m 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, "Di?m wouldn't make even the slightest concessions. He was
difficult to reason with..."
Discontent with Di?m's
policies exploded following the Hu? Ph?t Ð?n shootings of nine 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.
Di?m's elder brother Ngô Ðình Th?c was the Archbishop of Hu? 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 Di?m's rule. Di?m refused to make concessions to the Buddhist
majority or take responsibility for the deaths. On 21 August 1963, the ARVN
Special Forces of Colonel Lê Quang Tung, loyal to Di?m's younger brother Ngô
Ðình 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 Di?m. Chief among the proposed changes was the removal of
Di?m'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 Ngô 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 Di?m. They were
told that the United States would not oppose such a move nor punish the
generals by cutting off aid. President Di?m 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." He had not approved Di?m'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".
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 by the communists as a puppet of
the Americans; whatever the failings of Di?m, his credentials as a
nationalist (as Robert McNamara later reflected) had been impeccable.
U.S military advisors 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. 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. advisors other than conventional troop
training. General Paul Harkins, the commander of U.S. forces in South
Vietnam, confidently predicted victory by Christmas 1963. 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".
Paramilitary officers from
the CIA's Special Activities Division trained and led Hmong tribesmen in
Laos and into Vietnam. The indigenous forces numbered in the tens of
thousands and they conducted direct action missions, led by paramilitary
officers, against the Communist Pathet Lao forces and their North Vietnamese
supporters. The CIA also ran the Phoenix Program and participation Military
Assistance Command, Vietnam – Studies and Observations Group (MAC-V SOG),
which was originally named the Special Operations Group, but was changed for
cover purposes.
Lyndon B. Johnson's escalation, 1963–69
A
U.S. B-66 Destroyer and four F-105 Thunderchiefs dropping bombs on North
Vietnam during Operation Rolling Thunder
Main article: Joint warfare in South Vietnam,
1963–69
Further
information: Role of United States in the Vietnam War: Americanization
See also: Opposition to the U.S. involvement in
the Vietnam War, Gulf of Tonkin incident, 1964 South Vietnamese coup,
September 1964 South Vietnamese coup attempt, December 1964 South Vietnamese
coup and 1965 South Vietnamese coup
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."
On 24 November 1963,
Johnson said, "the battle against communism... must be joined... with
strength and determination." The pledge came at a time when the situation in
South Vietnam was deteriorating, especially in places like the Mekong Delta,
because of the recent coup against Di?m. Johnson had reversed Kennedy's
disengagement policy from Vietnam in withdrawing 1,000 troops by the end of
1963 (NSAM 263 on 11 October), with his own NSAM 273 (26 November) 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." 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 Nguy?n Khánh.
However, there was persistent instability in the military as several
coups—not all successful—occurred in a short space of time.
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. 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."
The second attack led to
retaliatory air strikes, prompted Congress to approve the Gulf of Tonkin
Resolution on 7 August 1964, signed by Johnson, and gave the president power
to conduct military operations in Southeast Asia without declaring war.
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. 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."
An undated NSA publication
declassified in 2005, however, revealed that there was no attack on 4
August. 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." 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."
"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." 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. By early 1965, 7,559 South Vietnamese hamlets had been
destroyed by the Viet Cong.
The National Security Council recommended a
three-stage escalation of the bombing of North Vietnam. On 2 March 1965,
following an attack on a U.S. Marine barracks at Pleiku, Operation Flaming
Dart (initiated when Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin was on a state visit to
North Vietnam), Operation Rolling Thunder and Operation Arc Light commenced.
The bombing campaign, which ultimately lasted three years, was intended to
force North Vietnam to cease its support for the Viet Cong by threatening to
destroy North Vietnam's air defenses and industrial infrastructure. As well,
it was aimed at bolstering the morale of the South Vietnamese. Between March
1965 and November 1968, "Rolling Thunder" deluged the north with a million
tons of missiles, rockets and bombs.
Bombing was not restricted
to North Vietnam. Other aerial campaigns, such as Operation Commando Hunt,
targeted different parts of the Viet Cong and NVA infrastructure. These
included the Ho Chi Minh trail supply route, which ran through Laos and
Cambodia. The objective of stopping North Vietnam and the Viet Cong 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." 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".
After several attacks upon
them, it was decided that U.S. Air Force bases needed more protection as 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.
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." 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. Some have argued that the policy of North Vietnam was not
to topple other non-communist governments in South East Asia. 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."
The Marines' initial assignment was defensive. The
first deployment of 3,500 in March 1965 was increased to nearly 200,000 by
December. 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. In December 1964, ARVN
forces had suffered heavy losses at the Battle of Bình Giã, 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 a conventional battle. Tellingly, South Vietnamese
forces were again defeated in June 1965, at the Battle of Ð?ng Xoài.
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. 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 a.k.a. the Viet Cong]." 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. 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.
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. Johnson did not, however,
communicate this change in strategy to the media. Instead he emphasized
continuity. The change in U.S. policy depended on matching the North
Vietnamese and the Viet Cong in a contest of attrition and morale. The
opponents were locked in a cycle of escalation. The idea that the government
of South Vietnam could manage its own affairs was shelved.
The one-year tour of duty of American soldiers
deprived units of experienced leadership. As one observer noted "we were not
in Vietnam for 10 years, but for one year 10 times." 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..." The American buildup
transformed the economy and had a profound effect on South Vietnamese
society. A huge surge in corruption was witnessed.
Washington encouraged its SEATO allies to
contribute troops. Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Thailand, and the
Philippines all agreed to send troops. Major allies, however, notably NATO
nations Canada and the United Kingdom, declined Washington's troop requests.
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 Nguyen Cao Ky and figurehead Chief of State,
General Nguy?n Van Thi?u, 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 outmaneuvered 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-candidate election in 1971.
The Johnson administration
employed a "policy of minimum candor" 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.
The Tet Offensive
In late 1967 the
Communists lured American forces into the hinterlands at Ð?k Tô and at the
Marine Khe Sanh combat base in Qu?ng Tr? Province where the United States
was more than willing to fight because it could unleash its massive
firepower unimpeded by civilians. However, on 31 January 1968, the NVA and
the Viet Cong broke the truce that traditionally accompanied the T?t (Lunar
New Year) holiday by launching the largest battle of the war, the Tet
Offensive, in the hope of sparking a national uprising. Over 100 cities were
attacked by over 85,000 enemy troops including assaults on General
Westmoreland's headquarters and the U.S. Embassy in Saigon.
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 Viet Cong. In the
former capital city of Hu?, the combined NVA and Viet Cong troops captured
the Imperial Citadel and much of the city and massacred over 3,000 unarmed
Hu? civilians. In the following Battle of Hu? American forces employed
massive firepower that left 80 percent of the city in ruins. Further north,
at Qu?ng Tr? City, members of the 1st Cavalry Division and 1st ARVN Infantry
Division killed more than 600 NVA and Viet Cong troops in and around the
city (for photographic history see). In Saigon, 1,000 NLF fighters fought
off 11,000 U.S. and ARVN troops for three weeks.
Across South Vietnam,
4,100 Americans and it's allied, 4,900 ARVN, 14,000 civilians, and 20,000
NVA and Viet Cong lay dead.
But the Tet 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. 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." Six weeks after the
Tet Offensive began "public approval of his overall performance dropped from
48 percent to 36 percent–and, more dramatically, endorsement for his
handling of the war fell from 40 percent to 26 percent.
In November 1967 Westmoreland spearheaded a public
relations drive for the Johnson administration to bolster flagging public
support. In a speech before the National Press Club he said a point in the
war had been reached "where the end comes into view." Thus, the public was
shocked and confused when Westmoreland's predictions were trumped by Tet.
The American media, which had until then been largely supportive of U.S.
efforts, turned on the Johnson administration for what had become an
increasing credibility gap.
Although the Tet Offensive
was a significant victory for allied forces, in terms of casualties and
control of territory, it was a sound defeat when evaluated from the point of
view of strategic consequences: it became a turning point in America's
involvement in the Vietnam War because it had a profound impact on domestic
support for the conflict. Despite the military failure for the Communist
forces, the Tet Offensive became a political victory for them and ended the
career of president Lyndon B. Johnson, who declined to run for re-election
as his approval rating slumped from 48 to 36 percent. As James Witz noted,
Tet "contradicted the claims of progress... made by the Johnson
administration and the military." The offensive constituted an intelligence
failure on the scale of Pearl Harbor. Journalist Peter Arnett, in a disputed
article, quoted an officer he refused to identify, saying of B?n Tre (laid
to rubble by U.S. attacks) that "it became necessary to destroy the village
in order to save it".
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."
Following Cronkite's editorial report, President Lyndon Johnson is reported
to have said, "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost Middle America."
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.
On 10 May 1968, despite
low expectations, peace talks began between the United States and North
Vietnam in Paris. Negotiations stagnated for five months, until Johnson gave
orders to halt the bombing of North Vietnam.
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..." His refusal to send more U.S.
troops to Vietnam was seen as Johnson's admission that the war was lost. 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.
As Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara noted, "the dangerous illusion of
victory by the United States was therefore dead."
Vietnam was a major
political issue during the United States presidential election in 1968. The
election was won by Republican party candidate Richard Nixon.
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."
On 10 October 1969, Nixon
ordered a squadron of 18 B-52s loaded with nuclear weapons to race to the
border of Soviet airspace to convince the Soviet Union, in accord with the
madman theory, that he was capable of anything to end the Vietnam War.
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 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 China and the Soviet Union
continued to supply the North Vietnamese with aid. In September 1969, Ho Chi
Minh died at age seventy-nine.
The anti-war movement was
gaining strength in the United States. Nixon appealed to the "silent
majority" of Americans who he said supported the war without showing it in
public. 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 of a suspected double agentprovoked national
and international outrage.
Beginning in 1970,
American troops were being taken away from border areas where most of the
fighting 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.
Cambodia and Laos
Main articles: Operation Menu, Operation Freedom
Deal, Operation Commando Hunt, Laotian Civil War, Cambodian Civil War and
Operation Lam Son 719
Prince Norodom Sihanouk had proclaimed Cambodia
neutral since 1955, 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 communist sanctuaries along the
Cambodia/Vietnam border. Only five high-ranking Congressional officials were
informed of the operation.
In 1970, Prince Sihanouk
was deposed by his pro-American prime minister Lon Nol. North Vietnam
invaded Cambodia in 1970 at the request of Khmer Rouge deputy leader Nuon
Chea. U.S. and ARVN forces launched an incursion into Cambodia to attack NVA
and Viet Cong bases and end the communist encirclement of Phnom Penh.
This incursion sparked
nationwide U.S. protests as Nixon had promised to deescalate the American
involvement. Four students were killed by National Guardsmen at Kent State
University during a protest in Ohio, which provoked further public outrage
in the United States. The reaction to the incident by the Nixon
administration was seen as callous and indifferent, providing additional
impetus for the anti-war movement. The U.S. Air Force continued to heavily
bomb Cambodia in support of the Cambodian government as part of Operation
Freedom Deal.
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 on the part of the U.S. government. The Supreme Court ruled that
its publication was legal.
The ARVN launched
Operation Lam Son 719 in February 1971, aimed at cutting the Ho Chi Minh
trail in Laos. 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."
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 including increased drug use, "fragging"
and desertions.
Vietnamization was again tested by the Easter
Offensive of 1972, a massive conventional NVA invasion of South Vietnam. The
NVA and Viet Cong 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
The
war was the central issue of the 1972 U.S. presidential election. Nixon's
opponent, George McGovern, campaigned on a platform of withdrawal from
Vietnam. Nixon's National Security Advisor, Henry Kissinger, continued
secret negotiations with North Vietnam's Le Duc Tho. In October 1972, they
reached an agreement.
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.
prisoners of war 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."
Main article: Opposition to the U.S. involvement
in the Vietnam War
During the course of the Vietnam War a large segment of the American
population came to be opposed to 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.
Nearly a third of the
American population were strongly against the war. It is possible to specify
certain groups who led the anti-war movement and the reasons why. Many young
people protested because they were the ones being drafted while others were
against the war because the anti-war movement grew increasingly popular
among the counterculture and drug culture in American society and its music.
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 Di?m in refusing elections
was seen as thwarting the very democracy that America claimed to be
supporting. John F. Kennedy, while Senator, opposed involvement in Vietnam.
Opposition to the Vietnam
War tended to unite groups opposed to U.S. anti-communism and imperialism
and, for those involved with the New Left such as the Catholic Worker
Movement. Others, such as Stephen Spiro opposed the war based on the theory
of Just War. Some wanted to show solidarity with the people of Vietnam, such
as Norman Morrison emulating the actions of Thích Qu?ng Ð?c. In a key
televised debate from 15 May 1965, Eric Severeid reporting for CBS conducted
a debate between McGeorge Bundy and Hans Morgenthau dealing with an acute
summary of the main war concerns of the U.S. as seen at that time stating
them as: "(1) What are the justifications for the American presence in
Vietnam -- why are we there? (2) What is the fundamental nature of this war?
Is it aggression from North Vietnam or is it basically, a civil war between
the peoples of South Vietnam? (3) What are the implications of this Vietnam
struggle in terms of Communist China's power and aims and future actions?
And (4) What are the alternatives to our present policy in Vietnam?"
High-profile opposition to
the Vietnam War turned to street protests in an effort to turn U.S.
political opinion. On 15 October 1969, the Vietnam Moratorium attracted
millions of Americans. Riots broke out at the 1968 Democratic National
Convention during protests against the war. After explosive news reports of
American military abuses, such as the 1968 My Lai Massacre, brought new
attention and support to the anti-war movement, some veterans joined Vietnam
Veterans Against the War. The fatal shooting of four students at Kent State
University in 1970 led to nation-wide university protests. Anti-war protests
ended with the final withdrawal of troops after the Paris Peace Accords were
signed in 1973. South Vietnam was left to defend itself alone when the
fighting resumed. Many South Vietnamese subsequently fled to the United
States.
Exit of the Americans: 1973–75
The United States began drastically reducing their troop support in South
Vietnam during the final years of Vietnamization. Many U.S. troops were
removed from the region, and on 5 March 1971, the United States returned the
5th Special Forces Group, which was the first American unit deployed to
South Vietnam, to its former base in Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
Under the Paris Peace
Accords, between North Vietnamese Foreign Minister Lê Ð?c Th? and U.S.
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, and reluctantly signed by South
Vietnamese president Thi?u, 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
expended materiel. Later that year the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to
Kissinger and Th?, 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 Viet Cong. The communists responded with
a new strategy hammered out in a series of meetings in Hanoi in March 1973,
according to the memoirs of Tr?n Van Trà.
As the Viet Cong's top
commander, Tra 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. Tra calculated that this date would be Hanoi's last
opportunity to strike before Saigon's army could be fully trained.
In the November 1972 Election, Democratic 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.
The oil price shock of
October 1973 following the Yom Kippur War in Egypt caused significant damage
to the South Vietnamese economy. The Viet Cong resumed offensive operations
when the 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 Thieu 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.
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. 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 Le
Duan, who approved of the operation.
Trà's plan called for a
limited offensive from Cambodia into Phu?c 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.
On 13 December 1974, North
Vietnamese forces attacked Route 14 in Phu?c 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 Van Ti?n Dung and
that Pleiku should be seized, if possible. Before he left for the South,
Dung was addressed by Lê Du?n: "Never have we had military and political
conditions so perfect or a strategic advantage as great as we have now."
At the start of 1975, the
South Vietnamese had three times as much artillery and twice the number of
tanks and armored cars as the opposition. They also had 1,400 aircraft and a
two-to-one numerical superiority in combat troops over their Communist
enemies. 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.
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 Thu?t, in Ð?k L?k 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 Nguy?n Van Thi?u, 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 Hu?, 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 NVA opened the siege of Hu?. 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, Hu? fell. As resistance in Hu? 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 NVA 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
For more details on the final North Vietnamese
offensive, see Ho Chi Minh Campaign.
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 Xuân L?c, 40 miles (64 km) east of Saigon. The
North Vietnamese met fierce resistance at Xuân L?c 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
materialize. Having transferred power to Tr?n Van Huong, he left for Taiwan
on 25 April. At the same time, North Vietnamese tanks had reached Biên Hòa
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 NVA 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
Main articles: Fall of Saigon and Operation
Frequent Wind
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.
On 30 April
1975, NVA 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 Viet Cong flag was raised above it. President Duong Van
Minh, who had succeeded Huong two days earlier, surrendered.
Other countries'
involvement
Pro-Hanoi
People's
Republic of China
In
1950, the People's Republic of China extended diplomatic recognition to the
Viet Minh's Democratic Republic of Vietnam and sent weapons, as well as
military advisors led by Luo Guibo to assist the Viet Minh in its war with
the French. The first draft of the 1954 Geneva Accords was negotiated by
French prime minister Pierre Mendès France and Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai
who, fearing U.S. intervention, urged the Viet Minh to accept a partition at
the 17th parallel.
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. China sent 320,000 troops and annual arms
shipments worth $180 million.
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. The Chinese began to withdraw in November 1968 in preparation for a
clash with the Soviets, which occurred at Zhenbao Island in March 1969. The
Chinese also began financing the Khmer Rouge as a counterweight to the
Vietnamese communists at this time.
China "armed and trained"
the Khmer Rouge during the civil war and continued to aid them for years
afterward. The Khmer Rouge launched ferocious raids into Vietnam in
1975–1978. When Vietnam responded with an invasion that toppled the Khmer
Rouge, China launched a brief, punitive invasion of Vietnam in 1979.
Soviet Union
Leonid Brezhnev was the
leader of the Soviet Union during the second half of the Vietnam War
Soviet ships in the South China Sea gave vital
early warnings to Viet Cong 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 to 1970 they did not kill a single military or
civilian leader in the headquarters complexes.
The Soviet Union supplied
North Vietnam with medical supplies, arms, tanks, planes, helicopters,
artillery, anti-aircraft missiles and other military equipment. Soviet crews
fired Soviet-made surface-to-air missiles at U.S. F-4 Phantoms, which were
shot down over Thanh Hóa 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.
Some Russian sources give
more specific numbers: Between 1953 and 1991, the hardware donated by the
Soviet Union included 2,000 tanks, 1,700 APCs, 7,000 artillery guns, over
5,000 anti-aircraft guns, 158 surface-to-air missile launchers, 120
helicopters. During the war, the Soviets sent North Vietnam annual arms
shipments worth $450 million. From July 1965 to the end of 1974, fighting in
Vietnam was observed by some 6,500 officers and generals, as well as more
than 4,500 soldiers and sergeants of the Soviet Armed Forces. In addition,
Soviet military schools and academies began training Vietnamese soldiers –
in all more than 10,000 military personnel.
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.
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. Kim Il-sung is reported to have told his pilots to "fight in
the war as if the Vietnamese sky were their own".
Cuba
The contributions to North Vietnam by the
communist Republic of Cuba, under Fidel Castro, is still a matter of debate.
There are numerous allegations 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". 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. 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. 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
Qu?ng Tr? province, held by North Vietnam after the Easter Offensive.
Pro-Saigon
South Korea
Main article: Military history of South Korea
during the Vietnam War
On the anti-communist side, South Korea (a.k.a.
the Republic of Korea, ROK) 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. On 1 May 1964 Lyndon Johnson requested South Korean
participation. The first South Korean troops began arriving in 1964 and
large combat formations began arriving a year later. The Republic of Korea
Marine Corps dispatched their 2nd Marine Brigade while the ROK Army sent the
Capital Division and later the 9th Infantry Division. In August 1966 after
the arrival of the 9th Division the Koreans established a corps command, the
Republic of Korea Forces Vietnam Field Command, near I Field Force, Vietnam
at Nha Trang. The South Koreans soon developed a reputation for
effectiveness, reportedly conducting counterinsurgency operations so well
that American commanders felt that the South Korean area of responsibility
was the safest.
Approximately 320,000 South Korean soldiers were
sent to Vietnam, each serving a one year tour of duty. Maximum troop levels
peaked at 50,000 in 1968, however all were withdrawn by 1973. About 5,099
South Koreans were killed and 10,962 wounded during the war. South Korea
claimed to have killed 41,000 Viet Cong fighters. The United States paid
South Korean soldiers 236 million dollars for their efforts in Vietnam, and
South Korean GNP increased five-fold during the war.
Australia and New Zealand
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. 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. 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. Approximately 3,500 New Zealanders served in
Vietnam, losing 37 killed and 187 wounded. Most Australians and New
Zealanders served in the 1st Australian Task Force in Phu?c Tuy Province.
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. More noteworthy was the fact that
the naval base in Subic bay was used for the U.S seventh fleet from 1964
till the end of the war in 1975.
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)
Main article: Republic of China in the Vietnam War
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. In addition to the diving trainers there were
several hundred military personnel. Military commandos from Taiwan were
captured by communist forces three times trying to infiltrate North Vietnam.
Canada and the ICC
Main article: Canada and the Vietnam War
Canada, India and Poland constituted the
International Control Commission, which was supposed to monitor the 1954
ceasefire agreement. 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). The Vietnam War entry in The Canadian Encyclopedia
asserts plainly that Canada's record on the truce commissions was a
pro-Saigon partisan one.
Women in the Vietnam War
American nurses
Da Nang, South Vietnam,
1968
During the
Vietnam War, American 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. 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. 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.
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. 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.
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. 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. 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. 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.
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 Di?m's presidency, Madame Nhu was
the commander of the WAFC.
The war saw more than one
million rural people migrate or flee the fighting in the South Vietnamese
countryside to the cities, especially Saigon. Among the internal refugees
were many young women who became the ubiquitous "bargirls" of wartime South
Vietnam "hawking her wares -- be that cigarettes, liquor, or herself" to
American and allied soldiers. American bases were ringed by bars and
brothels.
A few bargirls married American and other allied
soldiers, but many Amerasian children were left behind when the Americans
departed. Facing a life as outcasts in Vietnam, 26,000 Amerasians were
permitted to immigrate to the United States in the 1980s and 1990s.
Aftermath
Events in Southeast Asia
Following the communist takeover, 1–2.5 million South Vietnamese were sent to reeducation camps, with an estimated 165,000 prisoners dying. Between 100,000 and 200,000 South Vietnamese were executed. R. J. Rummel, an analyst of political killings, estimated that about 50,000 South Vietnamese deported to "New Ec
Following the communist takeover, 1–2.5 million
South Vietnamese were sent to reeducation camps, with an estimated 165,000
prisoners dying. Between 100,000 and 200,000 South Vietnamese were executed.
R. J. Rummel, an analyst of political killings, estimated that about 50,000
South Vietnamese deported to "New Economic Zones" died performing hard
labor, out of the 1 million that were sent. 200,000 to 400,000 Vietnamese
boat people died at sea, according to the United Nations High Commissioner
for Refugees.
Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, fell to the
communist 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. 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). 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.
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.
The communist Pathet Lao overthrew the royalist
government of Laos in December 1975, establishing the Lao People's
Democratic Republic. 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 People's
Army of Vietnam, with up to 100,000 killed out of a population of 400,000.
From 1975 to 1996, the United States resettled some 250,000 Lao refugees
from Thailand, including 130,000 Hmong.
More than 3 million people
fled from Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, many as "boat people" in the
Indochina refugee crisis. Most Asian countries were unwilling to accept
refugees. Since 1975, an estimated 1.4 million refugees from Vietnam and
other Southeast Asian countries have been resettled to the United States,
while Canada, Australia, and France resettled over 500,000. In 1988, Vietnam
suffered a famine that afflicted millions. 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.
Explosive remnants of war
(ERW) continue to detonate and kill people today. The Vietnamese government
claims that ordnance has killed some 42,000 people since the war officially
ended. In 2012 alone, unexploded bombs and other ordnance claimed 500
casualties in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, according to activists and
government databases.
Agent Orange and similar chemical substances, have
also caused a considerable number of deaths and injuries over the years,
including the US Air Force crew that handled them. On the 9th of August
2012, the United States and Vietnam began a cooperative cleaning up of the
toxic chemical on part of Danang International Airport, marking the first
time Washington has been involved in cleaning up Agent Orange in Vietnam.
Effect on the United
States
In the post-war era, Americans struggled to absorb
the lessons of the military intervention. 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." President Ronald Reagan coined the term "Vietnam Syndrome" to
describe the reluctance of the American public and politicians to support
further international interventions after Vietnam.
Some have suggested that
"the responsibility for the ultimate failure of this policy lies not with
the men who fought, but with those in Congress..." 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."
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." 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."
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." Even General William Westmoreland admitted
that the bombing had been ineffective. As he remarked, "I still doubt that
the North Vietnamese would have relented."
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 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."
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." 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). 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. 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."
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, more than 150,000 had been wounded, and
at least 21,000 had been permanently disabled. The average age of the U.S.
troops killed in Vietnam was 23.11 years. 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." Approximately 830,000 Vietnam veterans
suffered symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder. An estimated 125,000
Americans left for Canada to avoid the Vietnam draft, and approximately
50,000 American servicemen deserted. In 1977, United States president Jimmy
Carter granted a full and unconditional pardon to all Vietnam-era draft
dodgers. 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.
Effects of U.S. 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.
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. American officials also pointed out that the British had
previously used 2,4,5-T and 2,4-D (virtually identical to America's use in
Vietnam) on a large scale throughout the Malayan Emergency in the 1950s in
order to destroy bushes, crops, and trees in effort to deny communist
insurgents the cover they needed to ambush passing convoys. Indeed,
Secretary of State Dean Rusk told President John F. Kennedy on November 24,
1961, that " the use of defoliant does not violate any rule of international
law concerning the conduct of chemical warfare and is an accepted tactic of
war. Precedent has been established by the British during the emergency in
Malaya in their use of aircraft for destroying crops by chemical spraying."
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. 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 km2) 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.
Vietnamese victims
affected by Agent Orange attempted a class action lawsuit against Dow
Chemical and other US chemical manufacturers, but District Court Judge Jack
B. Weinstein dismissed their case. They appealed, but the dismissal was
cemented in February 2008 by the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. 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.
US Vietnam War deaths.png
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
Main articles: Vietnam War casualties and Outline
of the Vietnam War
Estimates of the number of casualties vary, with one source suggesting up to
3.8 million violent war deaths. 195,000–430,000 South Vietnamese civilians
died in the war. 50,000–65,000 North Vietnamese civilians died in the war.
The Army of the Republic of Vietnam lost between 171,331 and 220,357 men
during the war. 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. A
detailed demographic study calculated 791,000–1,141,000 war-related deaths
for all of Vietnam. Between 200,000 and 300,000 Cambodians died during the
war. About 60,000 Laotians also died, and 58,220 U.S. service members were
killed.
Popular culture
See also: Vietnam War in film, Vietnam War in
games and War in popular culture
The Vietnam War has been featured extensively in
television, film, video games, and literature in the participant countries.
In American popular culture, the "Crazy Vietnam Veteran", driven mad or
otherwise disturbed by his experiences in Vietnam, became a common stock
character after the war.
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).
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