Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy, 1945-1975 ― A NYT Bestselling Historian's Military History Told Through Firsthand Testimony

British scholar Max Hastings, author of many books on military history, has produced one of the most important general accounts of the Vietnam War. Do not expect this book to vindicate either side. Hastings writes, “Only simpletons of the political Right and Left dare to suggest that in Vietnam either side possessed a monopoly of virtue.” Both North and South had “cruel and incompetent governments;” “however ugly the ruling regime in North Vietnam was, the one in the South was almost equally oppressive;” “neither side deserved to win.” Both the Communists and the Americans “share responsibility for the horrors that befell Vietnam . . . because both preferred to unleash increasingly indiscriminate violence rather than yield to the will of their foes.”Hastings argues that US policy was based on diplomatic and domestic political objectives, not the interests of the Vietnamese. Although some US leaders saw that military intervention alone would be futile without solving social and economic problems, most American officials “deluded themselves that all these complex challenges could be met by an overwhelming application of military power.” The presence of wealthy Americans “could not fail to exercise a polluting influence on a predominantly rural and impoverished Asian society.” Unlike Communist guerrillas, American soldiers seemed like figures from “some sci-fi movie giant lumbering across the landscape, expunging tranquility, and smashing fragile structures in its path.” American “dominance crippled the war effort,” Government leaders in Saigon were puppets of America. “Communist victory was attributable less to the military prowess of the NVA and Vietcong than to the fact that they were Vietnamese.” A South Vietnamese officer said, “The Communists seemed to know why they were fighting, and we did not.” For its part, North Vietnam, dominated by hard liners under Le Duan (who had displaced more moderate leaders like Ho Chi Minh and Vo Nguyen Giap), undertook futile military operations that cost tens of thousands of lives.But, Hastings concludes, in the end, “All the dollars, all the war, had failed to confer upon the rulers of South Vietnam and their supporters three vital elements: dignity, self-respect, and sufficient human sympathy to achieve an accord with their own people.” “Absent these things, battlefield success counted for little.” Hastings believes that Kennedy, facing the same pressures as Johnson, would probably not have withdrawn from Vietnam. But Hastings is especially critical of Nixon and Kissinger for perpetuating the conflict when it was obviously futile: “they presided over gratuitous years of carnage, merely to conceal from the American electorate, for their own partisan purposes, the inevitability of humiliation in Indochina.”The book begins with a description of France’s oppressive colonial rule of Indochina. French policies generated Vietnamese resistance, and there were many rebellions. Oddly, America’s initial involvement in Vietnam took the form of OSS cooperation with Ho Chi Minh. Following World War II, the French and the Vietminh fought for control of Indochina, in a war in which both sides were ruthless. The battle of Dien Bien Phu showed French commanders to be incompetent and indecisive. Eisenhower and Dulles wanted to intervene in support of the French; but others (including John Kennedy and Matthew Ridgway) were opposed. Some US leaders even considered using nuclear weapons against the Vietminh. In any case, Hastings thinks the French position at that time was hopeless. At the Geneva Conference, the USSR and China, both fearing a new war with the US, apparently pressured Vietnamese Communists to accept partition.The resumption of conflict in the South in the 1950s was a local response to Diem’s efforts to suppress the Communists. It was not originally authorized by Hanoi, nor by the USSR or China. Ho and Giap evidently did not want war in mid-1950s, hoping to unify the country through continued insurgency, whereas Le Duan thought unification could come only through massive struggle. Hanoi eventually approved defense measures, sabotage, and assassinations of “reactionary traitors.” Some local officials, appointed by Saigon, abused their authority and took bribes; most officials were “incompetent, brutal, or corrupt, sometimes all three.” Villagers often approved the assassination of such officials. After returning north, Le Duan gained political power, possibly at Giap’s expense. In Hastings words, Ho was “a towering victor in the contest for legitimacy as the voice of the Vietnamese people.” But, by the mid-1960s, he lost power to Le Duan and the hard liners.Hastings believes that Ngo Dinh Diem was the only major non-Communist figure in the South. “But he became the architect of countless follies.” The average Vietnamese was put off by the Ngo family’s “cruelty, incompetence, and militant Catholicism.” Diem would not make the reforms requested by Washington. The 1963 coup led to the assassination of Diem, which “dealt a crippling and probably irretrievable blow to America’s moral standing in Southeast Asia.”Hastings describes how North Vietnamese vessels in the Tonkin Gulf frequently pursued South Vietnamese boats engaged in commando raids in the north. In the exchange that resulted when North Vietnamese patrol boats in the Tonkin Gulf approached it, the US destroyer Maddox fired the first shot. Ho and Giap opposed hostile action against US vessels, fearing it would escalate American military involvement. But Le Duan wanted a major showdown. For their part, US officials ignored evidence that the second attack did not happen--in the midst of the1964 presidential campaign, Johnson did not want to appear weak. Hastings writes that it “reflects poorly upon his advisors, and above all on McNamara, that they failed to correct the earlier misinformation, or to calm the commander in chief. They allowed him to elevate into a major drama a brush at sea that could easily and should rightfully have been dismissed as trivial.”The USSR and China opposed the 1968 TET offensive. The USSR wanted North Vietnamese diplomacy to be more flexible, but felt that it could not desert a socialist country without losing face to China. In 1968, Le Duan intended to provoke a general uprising that would bring down the Saigon regime. Giap opposed this, anticipating correctly that the US would have the advantage in such an offensive. Ho and Giap favored continued insurgency. Some of Giap’s supporters were purged at this time. Although some North Vietnamese officials warned that US air power could defeat the 1972 Easter Offensive, Le Duan initiated the attack to demonstrate that Vietnamization was not working, and perhaps bring down the Thieu government.National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger wanted to end the war before the 1972 election, but with a “decent interval” between American withdrawal and the fall of South Vietnam. By late 1972, the US had accepted the terms most important to Hanoi (that North Vietnamese Army (NVA) troops would remain in the South; and that US troops would leave). Hastings argues that Nixon did not have much choice in this matter. The North Vietnamese, suspecting that Nixon, once re-elected, might become more belligerent, were inclined to reach an agreement. Notwithstanding the peace accords, White House tapes reveal that Nixon and Kissinger expected that the war would continue, and that South Vietnam would lose. Thieu did not want to accept the terms negotiated between the US and North Vietnam; among other things, he demanded that the NVA withdraw from the South. Hanoi would not accept Thieu’s counter demands. Distrusting the US, the North Vietnamese broke off negotiations. Nixon had planned to bomb the North after the election (Kissinger had told the North Vietnamese that no such bombing would occur, and assured the South Vietnamese that the US would not desert them). The Christmas bombing most likely was intended to convince Saigon and the American public of US resolve. Hastings notes that the bombing had almost no effect on the final agreement, and contends that it was “unjustified politically or militarily except to serve the partisan purposes of the president.”In the 1975 Offensive, South Vietnam had superior fire power, mobility, and air support, but lacked information about NVA plans. According to Hastings, the NVA was weak in command and control, but knew the details about South Vietnamese Army (ARVN) plans, and could choose where to concentrate its forces. According to Hastings, the NVA’s 1975 strategy was their “most imaginative” plan of the war. In response, Thieu made “a succession of disastrous decisions.” At this time, US air power might have had an impact, but this was not politically feasible. Hastings contends that withdrawal of US military support “was both inevitable and right,” but thinks that US should not have cut all aid to South Vietnam while the USSR and China continued to aid the North. Although some accounts claim that the ARVN lacked ammunition, Hastings concludes, “there is little reason to believe that the events of early spring would have unfolded differently even if more arms had been available.” In fact, huge amounts of military supplies were eventually captured by the NVA. Saigon’s armed forces were too feeble to stay the distance.” In Vietnam, “Many judged that any outcome without bombs, bullets, and napalm would be better than more of the same. And who can dismiss such a view as ignoble?”Returning home after the war, NVA soldiers, like American soldiers, were not greeted by victory parades and adulation. In the South, Northern Communists took over the best things. Long accustomed to privation, they could not resist southern luxuries. There were many local revenge killings of southerners by Communists, and equipment was confiscated and sent north. Hastings estimates that some 300,000 were arrested, about two-thirds of whom were sent to re-education camps for periods ranging from 3 to 17 years. At least 10,000 must have died. Those who were released were usually sent to build communities in unimproved jungle areas.Hastings discusses the “boat people” who fled from Vietnam. Thousands were eventually admitted to the US. But many of them were disappointed by their reception. As one refugee said, “They supposed the Americans had gone to Vietnam to help them. Instead they went only to use the country as a platform to challenge international communism.”Despite their apparent unity during the war, within the governments of North Vietnam and the US, there were a few cautionary voices. On the US side, the dissenters included George Ball and, later, Robert McNamara. Although even now, the extent of political disagreements in Hanoi is not fully known, at various times, Ho and Giap (and possibly Pham Van Dong) favored insurgency rather than major offensives. Hastings faults Giap for his acceptance of high casualties in fighting the French. But Giap occasionally took measures to reduce bloodshed. Most significantly, Giap was against the 1964 escalation and the 1968 TET offensive. According to Truong Nhu Tang, Giap (and possibly Pham Van Dong) opposed Hanoi’s postwar alliance with the USSR, which led to a lengthy conflict with China’s surrogate Cambodia, and eventually to invasion by China itself. Giap was not a dove, but in NVN context, he was not a hawk—he was a realist.Hastings criticizes the western news media, which often “showed itself ignorant of, or blind to, the tyranny prevailing in the North.” He covers the 1968 Hue massacre, but does not mention the VC use of flame throwers against over 200 Montagnards at Dak Son, or NVA throwing grenades into village bunkers in Phu Than. He cites the claim of an American researcher that Communists killed 36,725 Vietnamese, but also describes the Phoenix program, which reportedly killed 20,000 alleged Communist cadres. And he is dismayed by Americans’ willingness to disregard My Lai and similar events. Excesses of US troops “were sufficiently commonplace to show that many uniformed Americans considered Vietnamese inferior beings.” American POWs suffered many “barbarities.” “Yet it deserves emphasis that communist captives in the hands of both Americans and South Vietnamese were subjected to equal and worse things, often before being killed.”Hastings contrasts Communist “commitment to secrecy” with American openness, which “constitutes a claim upon a fragment of moral high ground.” But how much openness could be expected from guerillas (whose operations depended on secrecy) or regular NVA units (whose offensives often depended on surprise)? For its part, the US was not entirely transparent. The early escalation of the war, and the bombing of Cambodia were concealed. The army knew about the My Lai massacre long before it became public news,Postwar economic problems affected all of Vietnam. The whole country suffered from massive destruction, defoliation of rural areas, poor harvests, and dislocation of rural populations. Even before its final collapse, South Vietnam felt the loss of American dollars. The North felt the impact of the American economic embargo, and, later, the war with Cambodia; but the country’s greatest postwar economic problem was the collectivist measures imposed by Hanoi. Hastings paints a bleak picture of Vietnam’s economy; but he does not take his account much beyond the 1980s. With the end of collectivist economic policies and state control, shortages were reduced. There is now a growing middle class, and intellectual stimulation through the Internet, and a desire for a higher standard of living.Of Vietnam, Hastings writes, “the legitimacy of its autocratic government derives solely from its victory in 1975. Thus, no stain is permitted to besmirch that narrative: few survivors feel able to speak freely about what took place.” But the histories of revolutions are written by the winners. Think of the Soviets and the Great Patriotic War, or the US and George Washington. Hastings contrasts modern Vietnam with a general democratic tendency across Asia. But the picture is not so clear. What about Myanmar, Thailand, and Uzbekistan, to say nothing of Afghanistan. And Vietnam is much more open than China or North Korea. Some of the Vietnamese interviewed for the Ken Burns documentary speak quite frankly, for example, questioning whether the North Vietnam should have gone to war, admitting Communist responsibility for the massacre of civilians in Hue (“a stain on the revolution’s record”), attacking postwar Communist economic measures, and conceding that Vietnam was now more divided than ever. No film maker could easily acquire such commentary from China or North Korea. One of the characters in Bao Ninh’s novel (The Sorrow of War) fears that Marxism would ruin prosperous farmers in the South. Regarding the anticipated war with China, the novel’s hero alludes to “a synthetically generated frenzy of patriotism,” and asserts that only “the politicians, middle-aged men with fat bellies and short legs” wanted war. Despite expressing such views, Bao Ninh made visits to the US which would have been prevented by some other Asian countries.Hastings’ book is based on records in the US Army Military Heritage and Education Center (Carlisle, PA), the US Marine Corps Archive (Quantico, VA), the Vietnam War Study Center (Texas Tech University), and taped White House conversations. He also read numerous monographs and translations of Vietnamese publications and documents, and interviewed many participants from both sides. From these disparate sources, he prepared accounts of government policies, military strategy, biographical sketches of political and military leaders, and descriptions of weapons, and battles. Beyond these, he recounts the personal experiences of soldiers and airmen. Perhaps because of the paucity of information, he offers relatively little about the lives of VC/NVA soldiers or North Vietnamese civilians. The book includes 32 pages of black and white illustrations, 11 maps, 54 pages of notes, a 15-page select bibliography, and a 31-page index.

Over the years, without any particular goals other than learning, I've read a number of books that either directly or tangential dealt with that war. This included, "Best and Brightest" , "Dereliction of Duty" , "We Were Soldiers Once, and Young", "The Quiet American", "The Ugly American" "Foreign Correspondent, a Memoir", LBJ and McNamara Bios, "The Pentagon Papers" (segments) and others somewhat less memorable at the moment. Based on this reading and subsequent events I concluded some time ago that the US was embarking on a fools errand when it tried to use its military to shore up a foreign government that was not supported internally by its people. The Iraq and Afghanistan experience in recent years has solidified my opinion on this topic.So It was with a receptive attitude that I recently read this new history; by Sir Max Hastings, an award winning British journalist and historian. This is a long and deeply researched history told mostly in chronological fashion. It draws on many of the published personal history ("I was there") accounts and the more inciteful political/military critiques. He also accessed and quoted myriad personal letters from all sides (including many letters from North Vietnamese combatants and non-combatants that he had had translated by an old CIA hand from the Saigon station that served to illustrate his larger points. Consequently the book presents an exceptionally rich tapestry of many facets of the war, from the cockpits of burning US bombers, through the travails of Vietnamese teenagers humping artillery shells down the Ho Chi Minh trail, to the private conversations of LBJ, McNamara, Nixon, and Kissinger. A very rich and largely seamless tapestry indeed.My main take-aways that filled in many blanks and otherwise colored my understanding:1. As noted above, the signal US failure in Vietnam was the implicit assumption that the people of South Vietnam would support their newly constituted government and help fight for freedom and democracy. The facts turned out to be that the largely Buddhist peasant population never became enthused about the French Catholic elites that were set up to rule them, thereby providing fertile ground for the Viet Cong and its revolutionary zealotry in the countryside throughout the war. This lack of support to the Saigon government, that had been created only after partition, extended to the South Vietnam's conscripted and poorly paid and treated armed forces, who with, few exceptions, were unreliable and a major drag on US military activities. "Nixon"s "Vietnamization" was never a reasonable expectation for defeating the North. Indeed, Hasting's makes it clear that the concept was really a Kissingerian fig leaf for US withdrawal.The South's army officers generally treated their troops badly (feudal) and were often the first to seek a spot on evacuation helos. In some contrast, the South Vietnamese aviators were much more reliable and effective. The South's Army seems to have really become effective on its own only in 1972 and later as the US was withdrawing, when it stopped the North's southward advance for many months, but that was its last major gasp.2. The book reinforces the point that an overwhelming consideration in all US decision making during this long period was US presidential politics; at the cost of tens of thousands of US and other lives. Trump is not the first president to equate the Nation's interest with his personal interests.3. The conventional wisdom in the US seems to be that Ho Chi Minh was the architect of the North's success. In fact he became unhealthy and was kicked upstairs circa 1967. The subsequent Northern efforts were led by Le Duan. Le Duan was a true zealot for forcing Vietnamese independence and integration/solidarity, however long it took. He was a hard core believer in, but not subservient to, the oppressive philosophy of Mao's China. He ruthlessly purged all vestiges of frenchiness and intellectual learning from the ranks of the Northern Army, and, as the main source of support for the VC, forced the same ideology and purge mentality on them. He also ensured that there were essentially no outside observers in the North that could document the extent of his cruel purges and his indifference to horrendous military casualties, so the West never really had a clue. But he also kept his own children safe in schools in Europe.4. Per the foregoing, the North was strongly ideologically driven towards independence in a way that the South never was. This went a long way to explain the superhuman endurance of northern cadres on the Trail.5. The effectiveness of the truly massive US bombing was disappointing, particularly in the early years of the war, which were dominated by guerrillas operating under triple canopy jungle. In 1972 however, when the North mounted a large scale conventional attack through more open country in the Central Highlands, the 150,000 tons of bombs dropped during Operation Linebacker I was very effective in decimating the North's artillery and tracked vehicles, thereby seriously slowing the advance to Saigon.6. Because the South's people - mostly rural peasants - were not strongly committed to the Saigon government, but just wanted to be left alone to tend their rice paddys, the massive and destructive US bombing/WW II-type campaigns and forced re-locations from ancestral lands quickly soured indigenous attitudes toward the US' war efforts.7. As depicted in many movies, the helos were crucial to US troop movement and rescues throughout the war. The US helo loss rate was as high as 1000/year. I was surprised at the ability of the North, helped by China and the Soviets, to largely keep up with US advances in aircraft self protection electronic warfare gear. Their SAMs and MIGs really were more effective against US aircraft than I knew.8. The deterioration of morale in the US military in the later stages of the war - after TET in 68, but even more when Nixon began the long slow withdrawal of US forces while Kissinger was negotiating with a losing hand in Paris, was worse than I knew. Much of it reflected the growing domestic US disenchantment with the war which trickled down to the draftees, but also reflected growing racial disharmony in the US, some of which was fanned by the perception that US black soldiers were dying at a disproportionately high rate. Incidents of US brutality against civilians increased. Calley wan't alone.The author quotes some authority as asserting something like "the US went to war in Korea with a lousy army and came out of Korea with a superb army; but that we went to war in Vietnam with a superb army, but came out with a lousy army". It took 15 years of turmoil after '75 for the US to rebuild an effective, integrated army. Fragging was highly demoralizing of the officer corps.Kissinger and Nixon both knew the losing score but continued scheming for a "decent interval" between US withdrawal and a takeover of the the South by the North. Nixon's tapes were telling.Nixon's punitive "Christmas Bombing" in 72 was billed as a reaction to the North's breakouts from the enclaves that had been agreed to in the Paris Accords, but in fact no one in the White House expected the enclaves to persist. The deadly Christmas Bombing was reportedly really mostly Nixon striking out irrationally to try to deflect attention from his cascading Watergate problems. Buried in the spasm of renewed killing via carpet bombing the Hanoi area was the highly successful aerial mining of Haiphong harbor, which completely dried up Soviet shipment of war material until the end of the war in 75. Some believe that such mining much earlier could have been highly effective in reducing the North's fighting abilities, but LBJ and McNamara were leery of damaging the Hanoi area for fear of bringing in the Chinese, much as MacArthur's overreach in Korea two decades earlier had done.The Paris Accords assured the South that the US would come back to their aid if the North broke the rules. But, as expected, the North did breakout from its enclaves, and the South geared up to fight better but needed supplies from the US that the Congress was increasing loath to provide. Hasting's sees the Congressional failure to support the South with material as promised to be very shameful but consistent with the cascading US public disenchantment with the war.9. The conventional US view is that TET in 68 was a communist victory that led to the end of the war. In fact TET was a major defeat to the southern Viet Cong, which resulted in the North taking over the fighting in the south, going from 25/75 NVA/VC in '67 to the reverse in '69 and later10. Despite the rapprochement symbolized in recent years by US celebrity visits to Vietnam, it remains a Stalinist dictatorship unblemished by fair elections and human rights.11. This is by far the most insightful and fair history of the defining war of my professional life that I expect to ever read. If you read only one book on the history of the US in Vietnam, make it this one.

"Only those who never fought in a war discuss who lost or won" , once said a vietnamese veteran; in this book we can see the roots, the ways and consequences of the most significative conflict in American history, the end of the Lore of the "Manifest Destiny" , a crude portrait of America's loss of innocence; Must Read !

Hasting’s Vietnam is surely the only book you’d ever need to fully understand the conflict. It’s meticulously detailed and offers an insight on every possible event, perspective and context that you’d ever need. Its detail at times can be overwhelming - especially to newcomers such as myself - but this doesn’t usually take away from such an incredible work. Having previously read 4 other books from the author, I knew what I was getting into in terms of detail and scale - especially considering the book is 650 pages long! I do think the book could be more focused and I definitely felt fatigued from around half way through and it was quite a struggle to get the end - however - I don’t think that takes away from the impressive scope Hastings was clearly trying to achieve. I think it’s important to remember that this is primarily a military history and so focusses on each battle in great detail. It became hard to remember the chronological order of events as each major section is often interspersed with a couple of chapters of more focused details (i.e Australian/New Zealand forces etc) which can harm the flow of the book. However, I do think it’s worth persevering! It’s a great book but you do need to be really interested in all the details to get to the end.

Pages it has

Un vasto e potente affresco di una guerra lunga e controversa.I giudizi sono sbilanciati dalla parte americana e i Nord Vietnamiti dipinti di una crudeltà senza limiti.Nonostante questo ne do un giudizio positivo.

This book covers a very complex armed struggle whose effects and ramifications even today, are generally poorly understood. The period is covered in great detail but this history as presented, remains easy to read and follow. Much of the conflict arose from very different world views and perceived outcomes/goals between France, USA, Russia, China and the Vietnamese people, including the different dreams and appeals between North and South. Only the North Vietnamese had the clear goal and the fierce determination to see it done, whatever the terrible cost through evolving military and political circumstances. It is very informative and insightful as to what was achieved and lost, at a cost of millions of lives. It makes one wonder as to the sanity of mankind.