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Lesson 25
Road to War
• 1941… Ho Chi Minh secretly returns
to Vietnam after 30 years in exile and
begins organizing Viet Minh. US
works with Ho to harass Japanese
and rescue downed US pilots
• 1945… Allies divide Vietnam to aid in
disarming Japanese (Chinese disarm
north and British disarm south).
Allies honor French request for
restoration of its pre-war Indochina
colonies (Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia)
Ho Chi Minh
Road to War
• Sept 1945… Ho
unsuccessfully seeks
US recognition
• Oct 1945… French
troops return to
Vietnam; guerrilla
fighting begins almost
immediately
• Dec 1946… First large
scale Viet Minh assault
on French French Far East Expeditionary
Corps
Road to War
• 1949… Mao
defeats Chiang
Kai-shek in China.
US begins
“containment”
policy.
• 1950… US
authorizes aid and
advisors to French
• 1954… Viet Minh
defeat French at
Dien Bien Phu. US
does not intervene.
French paratroopers run for
cover during the 55 day siege
of Dien Bien Phu
Road to War
• Commonly considered a
missed strategic
opportunity
• Suffered from being “too
little, too late”
– CORDS not activated
until 1967
• Perceived as competition
with the “big war” and
many military officers Air Force Chief of Staff Curtis
favored a “military LeMay reportedly said, “Grab
solution” ‘em by the balls and their hearts
and minds will follow.”
The “Big War”
Limited War
• When the Soviet Union and the US nuclear programs
reached the point of Mutually Assured Destruction, the
US faced the dilemma of responding to communist
challenges in peripheral areas by either risking starting a
nuclear war or doing nothing
• The alternative strategy of limited war was developed to
harness the nation’s military power and employ only that
force necessary to achieve the political aim
• The objective was not to destroy an opponent but to
persuade him to break of the conflict short of achieving
his goals and without resorting to nuclear war
Limited War
• The limited war theory
was more an
academic than a
military concept and
its application
resulted in tensions,
frustrations, and
misunderstanding
between the military
and civilian leadership Secretary of Defense Robert
McNamara is sharply criticized
for his technocratic and
statistical approach to the
Vietnam War
Strategy of Attrition
• Traditionally, the “American way of war” had been a
strategy of annihilation
– Seeks the immediate destruction of the combat power
of the enemy’s armed forces
• In Vietnam, the US would instead follow a strategy of
attrition
– The reduction of the effectiveness of a force caused
by loss of personnel and materiel
• This proved to be a poor strategy against the North
Vietnamese who used a strategy of exhaustion
– The gradual erosion of a nation’s will or means to
resist
Problems with the Strategy of
Attrition
• Led the US to fight according to the theory of
gradual escalation
– A steady increase in the level of military pressure
would coerce the enemy into compliance instead of
employing overwhelming force all at once
– US never had enough forces to control the
countryside
– US soldiers served one year tours in Vietnam
– North Vietnamese soldiers were there till the end and
recognized “Victory will come to us, not suddenly, but
in a complicated and tortuous way.”
US Troop Levels in Vietnam
• 1959 760 • 1967 485,600
• 1960 900 • 1968 536,100
• 1961 3,205 • 1969 475,200
• 1962 11,300 • 1970 334,600
• 1963 16,300 • 1971 156,800
• 1964 23,300 • 1972 24,200
• 1965 184,300 • 1973 50
• 1966 385,300
Problems with the Strategy of
Attrition
• Led to a “body count” mentality
– Many reports were exaggerated or falsified
– North Vietnamese were always able to replace their
losses while Americans became disillusioned with the
mounting death toll
• Nightly news broadcasts reported US deaths
versus North Vietnamese deaths
– If ours were less, we were winning!
• North Vietnamese showed a remarkable
capability to cope, rebuild, and repair
– The enemy will was never broken
Problems with the Strategy of
Attrition
• Low-tech nature of the enemy prevented the US from
bringing to bear the full effects of its combat power
– North Vietnamese infiltration routes were hard to
bomb
– North Vietnamese ground troops used the tactic of
“clinging to the G.I.’s belts” to minimize American
ability to use artillery and close air support
– The nature of guerrilla war allowed the North
Vietnamese to avoid contact when it was not to
their advantage to fight
Tet Offensive
• 84,000 Viet
Cong and North
Vietnamese
attack 36 of 43
provincial
capitals, 5 of 6
autonomous
cities, 34 of 242
district capitals,
and at least 50
hamlets
Reasons for North Vietnam’s Lack of
Tactical Success in Tet
• By attacking everywhere, the
North Vietnamese had superior
strength nowhere (violation of
mass)
• Inflexible Viet Cong command
and control system could not
respond to late announcements
of timings and objectives from
the North Vietnamese Army
(unity of command)
• North Vietnamese wrongly Pulitzer Prize winning photograph of
assumed South Vietnamese the director of the South
were on the verge of a general Vietnamese national police
uprising (objective) executing a VC prisoner in Saigon
during Tet
Reasons for the U.S. Tactical Success
in Tet
• Technology gave the US a
strategic mobility that
allowed it to respond to
multiple threats (maneuver)
• When the North
Vietnamese came out and
fought en masse in a
traditional war of movement, Helicopters gave the US the ability
the US could bring to bear to cover all types of terrain,
maneuver over large areas, react
its overwhelming firepower
quickly to enemy attacks, reinforce
in a strategy of annihilation embattled units, and conduct raids
(mass) into enemy territory
Back to Insurgency Phase II
• Previously complacent South Vietnamese population
was for the first time made to feel involved in the war effort
• Local insurgency movement suffered a devastating loss
when it surfaced to assume leadership of a general
uprising that never materialized
• Clandestine shadow government, years in the building,
was largely destroyed
• Tactical military defeat for North Vietnam
• By coming into the open, the enemy had exposed
itself to massive American firepower and lost 137,000
killed in the first nine months of 1968
• Allows US to practice “the American way of war”
Overall Results of Tet
• Tactical defeat for North
Vietnam
• North Vietnamese
32,000 killed and 6,000
captured
• US and South
Vietnamese 4,000 killed
• But a strategic victory
• “I thought we were Returning from Vietnam after Tet,
winning this war!” Walter Cronkite reported, “It seems
(Walter Cronkite) now more certain than ever that the
• Dramatic shift in public bloody experience of Vietnam is a
opinion in US stalemate” and then urged the
government to open negotiations with
the North Vietnamese.
Domestic Issues
Societal Changes