The Vietnam War Period

By Rob James

January 5, 2026

Based on The Vietnam War (Geoffrey Ward & Ken Burns, 2017)

In memory of my cousin, SP/4 William Augustus McIntyre III

Preliminaries

“Viet” is Chinese for “those from beyond” [the Red River]. Despite centuries of fighting the northerners, Vietnam was a deeply Chinese, Confucian culture, with mandarins, examinations, emperors with forbidden cities, etc. The Mekong River Delta, south of Saigon, has long been fiercely independent.

French missionaries establish Catholic faith. French mercenaries aid Nguyen dynasty by 1802. Killing of two missionaries leads French to take Danang 1858, the entire state by 1900. Colony in south (Cochinchina), puppet emperors in central (Annam) and north (Tonkin). With Laos and Cambodia, these three form French Indochina (purple on maps of my youth). Guerilla uprisings quashed.

Ho Chi Minh (pseudonym, “Ho Most Enlightened”) appeals unsuccessfully to 1919 Paris Conference (so much for Woodrow Wilson’s self-determination point), discovers Lenin and communism, goes to Moscow.

Japanese take Vietnam in 1940 but leave puppet emperor Bao Dai and Vichy French, making the Vietnamese “slaves of slaves.” Ho bets on Allies to eventually win and force French to yield Vietnam. Ho forms “Viet Minh” as a broad-based independence party including Communists and others.

1945

Ho, General Giap welcome American OSS team. Sept. 2 is Vietnamese Independence Day. But July Potsdam conference had already divided country into northern (Nationalist Chinese) and southern (British) spheres prior to negotiations on the future. Truman succeeds FDR, and DeGaulle warns him that if US doesn’t support French control of its colonies, French have no choice but to fall into Russian orbit. (?) French took over for British in south and Chinese in north.

1946

Ho, Giap reassert themselves in north. French shell civilian population including with napalm (London Times: “meeting terrorism with terrorism”; “la Salle Guerre,” the dirty war; French unions in Marseilles stoned returning veterans; all to be repeated by the Americans). French have the cities but the Viet Minh have the country and make guerilla raids and reprisals. But George Kennan’s long telegram urges containment of Communism everywhere (later, he regrets application of that approach to Vietnam).

1949

Soviets get atomic bomb; Mao takes China; US debate over who lost China. Mao recognizes Viet Minh, Russians supply trucks. Washington recognizes the puppet Emperor Bao Dai and the French.

1950

Korean war commences; the domino theory in full flower. Truman sends first $23MM, advisers; by 1954, US is paying 80% of French bill.

1953

French General Navarre: I see “light at the end of the tunnel,” stages 11,000 men at jungle fort of Dien Bien Phu. Giap besieges with 50,000 combat, 50,000 support and 250,000 men and women porters. Dwight Eisenhower refuses to provide military support.

1954

French surrender the fort. Geneva Accord: China and Russia push Viet Minh to accept partition with a DMZ, with plebiscite in two years. Bao Dai’s Catholic prime minister Ngo Dinh Diem president of South Vietnam. Defeats criminal syndicate that runs Saigon, refuses to hold plebiscite. Senator John F. Kennedy endorses domino theory (“finger in the dike”).

1955

Bao Dai out of power, South Vietnam now Republic of Vietnam. US supplies $2 billion from 1955-1960; urges land reforms, democracy, anti-corruption, but Diem shrugs off.

1959

North Vietnam “sanctions” armed force in South by Viet Minh and peasants. Le Duan joins Ho in power. Supplies and men slip into south via what becomes the “Ho Chi Minh Trail” in North and in Laos. South retaliates.

1960

Coup attempt against Diem fails. North sanctions new movement in South called the National Liberation Front (NLF) with a military wing called by the South “Communist Traitors”—the “Viet Cong.”

1961

John F. Kennedy inaugural promises US will “pay any price.” All in American public life see nothing but a monolithic Communism—any communist anywhere is the agent of Moscow. With the Bay of Pigs, the Berlin Wall, and Laos, Kennedy cannot afford another defeat in Vietnam. But Lyndon B. Johnson (LBJ) and Theodore H. White already know Diem’s South is a weak, corrupt vessel and that public praise was “optimistic bullshit.” Guerilla warfare was unlike conventional warfare in which the US excelled—“trying to find guerillas in the population is like looking for tears in a bucket of water.” State Department’s George Ball predicts if 8000 advisers are sent now, in a few years 300,000 will be dying in paddies and jungles.

1962

Kennedy approves Laotian neutrality treaty that provides safe haven for North movements. US sends 9000 “advisers” who accompany South army (ARVN) into combat. Other aid is not publicly acknowledged (Stanley Karnow: “look at that aircraft carrier!” Army officer: “I don’t see nothing.”). But Republicans and press say it’s American war. At first, the helicopters and Diem’s strategic hamlet consolidations are effective. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara demands numerical measures of success like body counts and kill ratios (Vietnamese: “Ah, les statistiques”; subordinates will supply any numbers they think their superior wants). Senator Mike Mansfield unimpressed with Diem.

1963

ARVN lets Viet Cong slip away at Ap Bac. Buddhist monk immolates protesting Diem; Diem, his brother Nhu and Madame Nhu retaliate. Henry Cabot Lodge ambassador. Diem and Nhu overthrown in coup and killed in a US armored personnel carrier. Kennedy is assassinated. [The old question—what would Kennedy have done with Vietnam if he had lived?—is unanswerable. He was a more nuanced thinker than LBJ and would have had a longer offramp in a second term than LBJ had in a term after a stub.]

1964

LBJ loathed having to deal with foreigners in general and Vietnam in particular, thwarting his focus on the Great Society at home. With Diem out, US learns that half the people of the South are aligned with the NLF. LBJ got tough—U-2 flights over North, took out bridges in North, patrol ships in Gulf of Tonkin. Another coup installs General Khanh with seven governments (joke: state symbol should be the turnstile). Now 23,000 US advisers. Maxwell Taylor ambassador, William Westmoreland commander.

A North Vietnamese torpedo boat fired at the destroyer USS Maddox probably in international waters (not sure). Confusion over whether there was a second attack, but US launched a “retaliatory” air raid. First air POW Lt. Everett Alvarez from my home town of Salinas, California. LBJ got broad authority in Gulf of Tonkin Resolution (“like Grandma’s nightshirt, it covers everything”), his Vietnam ratings go from 42% to 78%. Khrushchev out, Chinese have atomic bomb. LBJ promises he won’t have “our boys do the fighting for Asian boys.” At Binh Gia, west of Saigon, US helicopters recklessly go back for US dead while leaving South Vietnamese bodies behind; VC thus quickly learn value of lives of American advisers.

1965

McGeorge Bundy accurately gives choices as “surrender on the installment plan” or increase military might. Rolling Thunder: US airstrikes in north, then pause to drive North to bargaining table. Marine combat troops arrive in Danang. [Big mistake—when US combat troops arrived, ARVN leaned back. T. E. Lawrence’s quote, posted on the US Embassy wall: “Better to let them do it themselves imperfectly than do it yourself perfectly. It is their country, their way, and our time is short.”]

At home, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) organizes in Michigan and elsewhere. April demonstration at Mall, draft cards and flags burned.

Smooth, slick Thieu and flamboyant, scarf-and-sunglasses-wearing Ky, the “bottom of the barrel,” overthrow Khanh. LBJ demands achievements, “coonskins on the wall,” but no one knows how to translate that. “Bombshell” cable from Westmoreland: need 175,000 troops now, more later. LBJ responds with 50,000 today and 50,000 later. It is no longer South Vietnam’s sole war. Morley Safer shows a village burned on TV. LBJ complains CBS has shat on the US flag. Westmoreland wants 200,000 more men.

27 million men were eligible in Vietnam War era. 2 million drafted, 1 million got into reserves or national guard. 80% of draftees were lower-income. Total of 8.6 million served in war (so draftees were 25%, compared to 66% in WWII). 2.7 million served in Vietnam, including 7500 women. 58,000 died. Peak in country: 543,000, April 1968. College deferment ended 1967 but easy to find outs. Instead of service for duration of hostilities as in WWII, the enlisted tours were one year. No experience built up; the death rate for the first six months was twice that of the last six months, as privates learned how not to get shot so easily. Officers rotated after six months, guaranteeing troops were led by amateurs. 2300 MIA, 600-700 POWs; 1300 still unaccounted for.

1966

Onetime LBJ ally Senator William Fulbright now a critic of Vietnam War policy. Kennan gives anti-intervention public testimony. LBJ ratings fall. Stories emerge of friendly fire, strategy of “generating refugees” to deprive VC of havens—“what kind of f***ing war is this?” Bertrand Russell joined North in condemning US pilots as was criminals.

No front, no objectives, so only measure is body count (I remember those weekly reports every Friday night on the nightly news—US (usually 200+), SV (usually four times higher) and a much higher NV/VC). Easily manipulated—a four and a two somehow became a 42 when reported upwards. A captain said he didn’t need a wristwatch because his commanding officer would call every fifteen minutes asking for the kill numbers. Rule became that any Vietnamese who runs away from you is a VC. Westmoreland complained that we killed ten VC for every one American, was told by reporter “Americans don’t care about the ten, they only care about the one.”

1967

Martin Luther King, Jr. opposes war. AK-47s are much better and more resilient than US M-16. In New York Times, R. W. Apple writes “stalemate” article (LBJ complaint: “get on the team.”). Election of Thieu and Ky. Antiwar demonstrations; chants “Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?” and “War is Good Business, Invest Your Son.” Benjamin Spock calls it a “quagmire.” LBJ thought Ho was instigating the US protests.

Clark Clifford now Defense Secretary. Ellsworth Bunker ambassador, sees “light at the end of the tunnel.” LBJ still approved (Harris Poll shows 63% are for escalation).

1968

One of the fateful years in history, not just for Vietnam (see Paris, Prague, USS Pueblo in Korea, space).

When Viet Cong attack Khe Sanh way up near the DMZ, Westmoreland assumed that was the main show and didn’t redistribute troops around country. The Tet Offensive started Jan. 31 in36 of 44 capitals and five major cities. Even got through US embassy grounds. Westmoreland, US military proud they won, but a big surprise in public eye when everyone had said the war was ending. Famous photo of general executing a handcuffed prisoner on the street. Hue battle with napalm poured into the citadel. “reclaimed ruins divided by a river.” Large web of VC tunnels throughout south. Ben Tre capital “it became necessary to destroy the town to save it.”

Walter Cronkite visits. Hears no talk of nation-building, just kill ratios and body counts. Reports to nation he sees a “stalemate” that can lead only to “negotiation.” The story that LBJ said “If I’ve lost Cronkite I’ve lost the country” appears to be apocryphal. Bombing favored at 78%, but LBJ’s disapproval rate rises too.

Joint Chiefs Chair Wheeler wants 205,000 more men. Clark Clifford, other wise men doubt that will do anything to end the conflict. Senators Eugene McCarthy (running for President), Frank Church and Robert F. Kennedy now on record against the war.

New Hampshire primary, where LBJ was predicted to win with 67%, sees him win with only 49%. Then Robert F. Kennedy enters the race. March 31: LBJ announces that he will pause attacks in North to encourage negotiation, and that he will not seek re-election. Humphrey enters race.

April 4: Martin Luther King, Jr. assassinated. Focus on race in military and in Vietnam. Sit-ins at Columbia University and many other colleges. Paris peace talks begin. June 4: Robert F. Kennedy assassinated. Creighton Abrams replaces Westmoreland; his mission is to “hold the fort until the Indians make peace.”

August: Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Humphrey acceded to LBJ’s requirement that any bombing pause be conditional on North concessions; pilloried by the left. An unconditional pause, the so-called “peace plank,” failed in the more conservative convention, 1567 to 1041. Daley tried to get LBJ to enter the race. As cops clubbed protestors, they chanted “the whole world is watching.” Inside convention, “Gestapo tactics” challenged, Humphrey nominated. Polls still favor the establishment (56% ok with violence in Chicago). Nixon entered Chicago to cheers, a few days later.

George Wallace enters race on third party ticket, but his VP selection Curtis LeMay sank their electability by talking about atomic bombs. Humphrey finally says an unconditional halt should apply, and his poll numbers rise.

By October, looks like North might go back to bargaining table in return for the bombing halt. Nixon heard of this, enlisted Republican Anna Chennault to talk to South Vietnam and tell them Nixon will push for a better deal. Treason under Logan Act? In any event, Thieu does proceed to scuttle the deal. Nixon squeaks by Humphrey. Paris talks resume on LBJ’s watch with a squabble over the dimensions and shape of the table.

1969

Nixon inaugurated. Kissinger practiced realpolitik. US bombs Cambodia occasionally. Takes 11 days and 72 lives to take Hamburger Hill 937; North simply retakes the hill one month later, the feeling emerges that those lives were lost in vain. (When Life runs article that week about a week’s dead (I remember that article), many people thought the entire casualty count was from Hamburger Hill. Not so.) Nixon ordered reduction of 25,000 troops and Defense Secretary Melvin Laird announces “Vietnamization” of war. (NV called it the “puppetization.”) Ho Chi Minh dies, power in north now rests with Le Duan.

Woodstock Festival: Country Joe’s cheer and rag. (My client Blake Koc really lived the Forrest Gump plot—as a current serviceman, he attended.) Seemed like all the 1960s movements—race, environment, women, sex, drugs, rock and Vietnam—came together. Agent Orange (dioxin) used to deny VC cover; damaged by direct contact and later neural system injuries. Weathermen really did take their name from the Bob Dylan lyric; by 1970 Weather Underground; Bill Ayers “kill all the rich people, kill your parents”, bombed Chicago and later in 1982 killed during a Brinks robbery (worse than I recalled). Children of government officials (Ehrlichman, Haldeman, Laird, Agnew) protested or tried to.

By now, enlisted men are more cynical—there not to protect world against communism but instead to serve your time, minimize your patrols, protect your buddy, and save your own ass. “Short-timer fever” meant men on their last month wouldn’t do patrols. News reports that a “Company A” did not respond to commands yet was not reprimanded let alone court-martialed. Racial incidents—old grudges meet black power, but “VC don’t care if you’re from South Boston or Roxbury”. 800 investigations of fragging own officers who tried to push their troops too far (contemplated at Hamburger Hill against the colonel). Front line soldiers resent rear echelon m*f*s (REMFs) with their swimming pools, leaves, USOs, bars, and women (many half-American children left behind to face difficult lives). Military brass wanted to end war to bring troops home and “save the Army.”

November 1969 Seymour Hersh article about March 1968 My Lai massacre. Captain Medina said “kill everything,” he and Lieutenant William Calley supervised murder of over 400 men, women and children (women raped, 50 under three years old; 100 more killed a mile away by another unit?). Photos snapped away. Hero was helicopter pilot who interposed his chopper and threatened to shoot the platoon; he reported the incident up to a major general; reports were falsified to read “death by artillery.”

1970

Right wing Lon Nol overthrows Prince Sihanouk in Cambodia. Nixon orders “incursion” in Cambodia, triggering massive demonstrations at home. Guardsmen called out at Kent State after a riot; two days later, with live ammo, order noontime crowd to disperse; “troop G” fired on the crowd. Four dead in Ohio (plus 9 wounded, one permanently paralyzed). Four million students protest, 448 campuses shut. Hard-hats in New York strike back (“only segment of population government hasn’t paid attention to”; flash forward to 2016 election). Nixon convinced foreign agents spurred protests. First bill in Congress calling for pullout.

1971

Congress prohibits troops in Laos or Cambodia. Only Calley was tried, found guilty, but 79% of polls disagree; life sentence commuted and he serves 3.5 years house arrest when pardoned by Gerald Ford. Vietnam Veterans Against the War, with Swift Boat lieutenant John Kerry testimony wearing his fatigues (“how do you ask a man to be the last to die for a mistake?”). NY Times publishes from Pentagon Papers, internal history of war showing doubts throughout Kennedy and Johnson years, leaked by Daniel Ellsberg; Supreme Court holds papers could legally disclose them. Trying to discredit Ellsberg, Nixon orders plumbers to break into his LA psychiatrist’s office; then suspecting Brookings Institute had papers about Chennault overture, ordered a break-in there that didn’t happen; Nixon now hooked on breakins. Announced plans to go to China in 1972 (“Nixon has a new mistress”).

1972

Easter Offensive by North deadly but not dispositive. US resumes bombings in north, mines Haiphong Harbor (Soviet supply ships stop, Moscow doesn’t raise a ruckus). Polls still in favor of war during wartime (hard to fault respondents when American boys were still overseas). USSR and US sign Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty.

Jane Fonda laughs and claps in anti-aircraft gun emplacement, calls US pilots war criminals who should be executed (again, worse than I recall). Famous photo of Kim Phuc running naked from napalm strike (from a South Vietnamese plane by mistake); she now lives in Montreal (haunting photograph in the Ward/Burns book with her scars and her child).

Watergate burglars arrested. McGovern nominated in wild convention (at 2:48 am ET when no one is watching). He himself reached out to North Vietnam but denied it. Labor, Daley refused to support him; botched VP nomination with Thomas Eagleton, then six turned down the slot before he got Sargent Shriver.

Kissinger The Vietnam War Period

By Rob James

January 5, 2026

[intro to come]

The Vietnam War (Geoffrey Ward & Ken Burns, 2017)

Notes by Rob James, in memory of SP/4 William Augustus McIntyre III

Preliminaries

1945

1946

1949

Soviets get atomic bomb; Mao takes China; US debate over who lost China. Mao recognizes Viet Minh, Russians supply trucks. Washington recognizes the puppet Emperor Bao Dai and the French.

1950

Korean war commences; the domino theory in full flower. Truman sends first $23MM, advisers; by 1954, US is paying 80% of French bill.

1953

1954

1955

Bao Dai out of power, South Vietnam now Republic of Vietnam. US supplies $2 billion from 1955-1960; urges land reforms, democracy, anti-corruption, but Diem shrugs off.

1959

1960

1961

1962

1963

1964

1965

At home, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) organizes in Michigan and elsewhere. April demonstration at Mall, draft cards and flags burned.

1966

1967

Clark Clifford now Defense Secretary. Ellsworth Bunker ambassador, sees “light at the end of the tunnel.” LBJ still approved (Harris Poll shows 63% are for escalation).

1968

One of the fateful years in history, not just for Vietnam (see Paris, Prague, USS Pueblo in Korea, space).

1969

1970

1971

1972

Kissinger right before election: “Ve believe peace is at hand.” I remember that speech. Nixon wins by huge margin. To seal peace deal, Nixon privately assures Thieu that US would resume airstrikes if North reneged on the cease-fire, but he does not tell Gerald Ford. US shipped huge amount of supplies to South, leading North to balk; Nixon ordered “Christmas bombing” in early December. Many B-52s shot down, more POWs. “War by tantrum.”

1973

Paris Peace Accords finally signed. “We bombed the North into accepting our compromises” (John Negroponte). LBJ dies. POWs released in batches, tearful embraces on tarmac. Reports of prisoner abuse but no actions taken. Watergate scandal unfolds before Senator Sam Ervin’s committee; world learns of tapes from Alexander Butterfield (I remember hearing that testimony live while driving on family vacation). Congress passes War Powers Act (requiring 48 hours’ notice of any military action and forbidding further pursuit without Congressional action in 60 days).

1974

Graham Martin now ambassador. House Judiciary Committee (Peter Rodino) recommends House impeach Nixon, whereupon he resigns in favor of Ford. Le Duan brings General Giap back. Thieu foolishly attacks in central highlands, leading to a stream of retreating troops and refugees choking the roads to and from Saigon.

1975

North orders final push. Danang simply dissolves, people drowning in harbor climbing onto ships like rats; provinces along coast “fell like porcelain vases off a shelf.” Martin delusional that Saigon wouldn’t be affected, took no action to plan orderly evacuation. Ford appealed to Congress for $750 million of military aid and $250 million of evacuation aid. Senators say they will fund $372 million for US evacuation but not a penny for military support. Phnom Penh falls to the Khmer Rouge, which proceeds to annihilate two million people by 1979 in the “killing fields.” Thieu resigns—a GI escort remembers he was dressed like a GQ model, the limo smelling of bourbon, and his mentioning that his wife was then shopping at Harrods; he is evacuated to Taiwan but told he is not welcome in the US (“it is difficult to be an enemy of the US but impossible to be its friend”; wish we had sent the Shah of Iran to another country’s hospital…). Embassy shreds documents but copters scatter the unburnt papers, easy to reassemble. Racing around hallways of defense office toward evacuation, reporters and officers morbidly joke that “we have turned the corner in Vietnam” and “I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel.” The mighty Seventh Fleet, with enough firepower to lay the country flat, simply steams offshore while copters and lighters evacuate those retreating from a “fourth-rate peasant army.” Marines and embassy officers tell Vietnamese supporters they will evacuate them but can’t do so for all; rifle-butting and slugging people to keep them away from precarious copter baordings, photos of long lines of people desperately trying to get into copters and vessels. Saigon falls April 30, 1975 with tank bursting into yard of Presidential Palace.

Aftermath and Reflections

Not a massive bloodbath of retribution, but many serve decades-long re-education camp sentences in South; the communist collectivization program is an economic disaster. 400,000 Vietnamese somehow came to US (about two million Vietnamese-Americans today, three million in the wider diaspora). Vietnam-Cambodia war 1978 (Kampuchea renamed Cambodia), China-Vietnam war 1979 (I had forgotten these), desperate travels of “boat people.”

Returning soldiers got few parades, sometimes spat upon as “baby killers.” Understanding emerges of post-traumatic stress disorder, Agent Orange impacts. Maya Lin’s Vietnam War Memorial design announced 1981 to widespread controversy but the actual memorial deeply affects many.

US trade embargo with Vietnam ends 1994, normalization of relations 1995; Clinton 2000 and Obama 2016 presidential visits.

Critiques of Ken Burns

Ward and Burns have been attacked from all sides.

The Ward/Burns book opens by saying the war began by people of “good faith” for good intentions; that has been hotly disputed in the reviews. It is clear that by the early 1960s Washington knew that South Vietnam under Diem could not stand on its own but kept pushing the problem forward.

Why didn’t we see the draft dodgers in Canada, the deserter and the antiwar protestors who insulted the returning soldiers contemplate the consequences of their acts? Someone took their place or went again on orders. False equivalence of antiwar and veterans on screen time. High percentage of veterans are very patriotic and would serve again, resented the John Kerrys.

Not much from everyday civilian population of South. You had to get in the bunker fast to not get shelled, but get out fast afterwards or infantry would toss a grenade into the bunker.

Nixon is portrayed as duplicitous and LBJ as Foghorn Leghorn; all politicians of the time had flaws. Goes way too easy on John F. Kennedy; others say should have come down harder on Truman who started it all.

What about the North Vietnamese and VC atrocities, and the torture of POWs? VC land mines are a danger to this very day.

What about the broader Communism picture? Why didn’t we have a quagmire in South Korea, Taiwan or the rest of southeast Asia?

Why no use of the taped testimony of the recanting McNamara, or Jane Fonda for that matter?

Not a civil war, and Vietnam was not a pre-existing state—it was the construct of the cold war.

No, say others, Vietnam was the last of the anti-colonial struggles.

And so on ad infinitum.”

1973

1974

1975

Aftermath and Reflections