vietnam - a history

7/27/2019 Vietnam - A History

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A ryTheFrrstCompleteAccount

of VietnamatWar


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I The War Nobody Won

The town of Langson, near the border of China, was partly destroyed when Chineseforces invaded Vietnam in early 1979. The Vietnamese preserve the ruins as testimonyto what they call Chinese aggression.

"he Vietnam memorial ill Washil1gtoll, D.C., a wall of polished black granite bearing

the names of 57,939 Americmls who died or are missillg ill actioll ill the Vietnam war,was dedicated ill November 1982.


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Wounded veterans watch asoccer match in Vietnamafter the war. ThoughVietnamese authoritiesnever published thefigures, estimates are thatthe Communists lost some600,000 men in thestruggle.

Thousands of Vietnamveterans and their familiesappeared in Washington inNovember 1982 tocommemorate theAmerican soldiers whodied in the war. Theyparticipated irl a paradearId other ceremorlies,ineluding a vigil at theNarional arhedral.


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A few of theone m'II' more than

I Ion V'who fled V' letnameseI etnam aifte

war. These "b r thelanguish b oat people"

M

' a oard a shl'p ,an/Ia B I n

auth ' ~ y ,awaiting, ~ Y l z a t l o nby the

PhILIppineland Th government to, ousands of

rejUgees are still con /;to camps th ':J,ned

Sroughout

outheast A ' la.

A Texan with hor V' t e family'J letnamese ,t;,has adopt d reJ ..gees she

h' e , Nearlaif-million V. y a, letname

Immigrated to the ~ eStates fioII . UnitedoWIng V'conquest b h letnam'sCo y t e

mmunlsts ill A '/1975. pYl

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Peasants in Tayninh, a province in the southern part of Vietnam, work in an areadefoliated by American herbicides during the war. Many of the 250,000 acres of forestin the area, ruined in 1966 alone, remained barren for years after the war .

...

The mausolelwl in Hanoi cOlltaillillg the embalmed body of Ho Chi Minh is one ojthe few Ilew stYl/eture bllilt il l the city. The mal/solel/m, desigrled by Soviet architects,IVa modeled 011 Lellil/' tomb il l Mo (OIV. Ho died il l eptelllber 1969.


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A "re-education" camp in southern Vietnam for former Saigon government officersarrested after the war. More than 50,000 political prisoners remain in such camps,many of them suffering from mistreatment and hunger.

Peasants at a "cooperative," the government euphemism for a collective farm, insouthern Vietnam. The Communist authorities were compelled to reverse thecollectivizatioll programs ill the years after the war, when peasant opposition reduced

food prod wiol1.


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Young Vietnamese in Ho Chi Minh City continue to defy "socialist transformation."nre T-shirt is either a remnant from the American period or a new copy, and themotor scooters are fueled by black-market gasoline.

'rile mall/urs alld mores of the old regime corltilll/e i l l Ho Chi Minh City, formerlySaigol/, despite the omllll4llist takeover. 7 1 ~ l oyor"'g prostitutes ply their trade nearYOlltils peddlil/,(I black-markef Allleri all cr;l/arette .


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Ne of tile saddest legaciesof tile war are Amerasiancllildren like this girl, the

offsprirlg of a GI and aVietnamese woman.Ostracized by the

ommunists, they surviveby beggillg or hawkingblack-market wares.

The skulls piled up inPhnompenh, capital ofCambodia, are those ofvictims of genocide carriedout by the Khmer Rouge,the Cambodian Commu-nist movement. As manyas two million people mayhave beer! slaughtered inthe purge.


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Piety and Power

I / I I / l t i s Cart/ier, a heroic French officer, led an attack against the Citadel irl Hanoi.J If' 11'(1.1 killed, as seen here, by lIIercetwries fighth/JZ Jor the Vietrlamese in DecemberI l f / i . A(('oll/w oj his (O/lrage spfirmlllll' ,.."t'III'h irnperialist drille to I 'M/qUe/ ' Vietnam.


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An eighteenth-centttryEuropean view of Torzkin,the northern area ofVietnam. The British andDutch had designated areasin which foreign traderswere permitted to maintaincommercial posts.

Pierre Pigneau deBehaine, bishop of Adran,the Catholic missionarywho first evoked France'sinterest in Vietnam in thelate eighteenth century.He befriended a pretenderto the Viettlamese throl/e,N.ft11yen Anh (Cia LOI/J!),who foul/ded a dynasty.

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Prince Canh, the youngson oj Nguyen Anh, whoaccompanied MonsignorPigneau de Bihaine to thecourt oj Louis XVI atVersailles, where hecaused a sensation. Hisexotic cosiume, contrivedJor the visit, was moreIndian than Vietnamese.

/111',\'1/11111'1' de Rhodes, theII,III{CIII(/I'Y who traveledIIIIlIllgl1 Asia in the lil'I/IN'lIth cenlury. AnIIIll111lfJlished linguist, he" IIlmlll system, still in1I1I' lodlly, to transcribe theI'I I'll/III/leSe language in1'1111/111/

letters instead oj,''''1/1'.11' ideo.'Zraphs.


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Emperor Minh Mang,who ruled Vietnam in theearly nineteenth century.

The son of Gia Long,founder of the Nguyendynasty, Minh Mang wasa gentle scholar whomFrench propagandists ofthe time depicted as a crueltyrant.

The port of Faifo, on theVietnamese coast, was oneof the first Europeantrading stations inVietnam. It was foundedby Portuguese merchants,

but commerce withVietnam failed to makemuch headway until theearly twentieth century.

Jean-Baptiste deChaigneau, a French

soldier of fortune whoentered the service ofEmperor Gia Long.Married to a Vietnamesewoman, he was promotedby the emperor to the rankof mandarin first class.Many Europeans servedAsian rulers as mer-cenaries.


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III//liral Pierre Paul de1.11 ;ralldiere, a FrenchIll/crt/or oj Cochinchina

/11 Ille rllid-nineteenthIllIl/ry, A Ilirtual Iliceroy,

lit' j/'cqueHtly acted without1I,(I'rel/ce 10 gOllernment/111/1y made in Paris,

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A French Ilersion oj theexecution by theVietnamese oj FatherBorie, a Catholicmissionary, Relatillely jewEuropean priests wereexecuted in Vietnam, buttheir martyrdom waspublicized in France to stirup religious jerllor.

Phan Thanh Giang, a

prominent Vietnamesemandarin oj the nineteenthcentury, tralleled to Paristo negotiate a treaty withNapoleon I I I . When theFrench Iliolated the pact,Phan committed suicideafter pledging his sonsneller to cooperate withFra II ce ,


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An engraving o f the Mekong made by a French exploratory expedition. Asian folklore

held that the river represented a sacred serpent that wound its wa y down .from Tibetinto Southeast Asia.

Th e French expedition organized in 1868 to explore the Mekong pauses on the stepso f Angkor Wat, the great Cambodian temple. The group believed that the Mekongwas a waterway to China , and would thus serve as a major trade route, but it was notalways navigable and thus poor for trade.


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;ctllamese portrayal of a French battle in Vietnam in 1884. The French soldiersIIIIIlfT r(lIht) are supported by Vietnamese auxiliaries, distinguishable by their bare

I ,'t, The fleeing forces (left) are Chinese who have invaded Vietnam to profit from the

/I'II()S,


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Vietnam at the turn of thecentury was populated byFrench adventurers likethe weapons merchantJean Dupuis, dressed herein a Chinese costume. He

persuaded the French tolaunch an attack againstTonkin, the northern partof Vietnam.

No figure during the latenineteenth century didmore to promote Frenchimperialism in Vietnamthan Prime Minister JulesFerry. A liberal politician,he considered colonialismto be vital to France'sindustrial growth.

The French maintainedthe fiction of "protecting"the areas of Tonkin andAnnam through aVietnamese government.One puppet emperor wasDong Khanh, who wasselected to rule because ofhis docility. The Frenchoften sent recalcitrantVietnamese emperors intoexile.


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3 The Heritage o f

Vietnamese Nationalism

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'Ii-jeu Au, the Vietnamese equivalent ofJoan of Are, fought for Vietnam'siI/dependence against Chirla in the third centllry A. D. Defeated at the age of twenty-


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The economy o f Vietnam, like that o f all Southeast Asia, is based on the cultivation o fr ice-a technique learned .from the Chinese. Crowing rice requires two factors: manual


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1\ wealrhy Vietllamese couple phoroj!raphed il'l front o j their luxurious !Jilla ill the/'"rly twel'llierh cerl/ury. The mall is wearillg his French decoratio'l and Western shoes.Ilis wife's /ems firl


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A Vietnamese nationalist cartoon o f the early 1930s depicts peasants routing French

colonial troops. The peasants are shouting: "Wipe out the gang of imperialists,mandarins, capitalists, and big landlords!"

Vietnamese prisoners being held in stocks after an attempt to subvert a French armygarrison. This plot, uncovered in 1907, led to the execution of several Vietnamese

nationalists and the incarceration o f many others.


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No Chi Minh, then known as Nguyen A i Quoc, at a French Socialist party congressin December 1920. It was here that the Communists broke away to form their own

party, and Ho joined them. He was thirty years old.

/ /0 hi Minh (back row, third from left) with other Communist agents in Moscow intlir mid-J920s. He was then ,./si'lg the name Unh, and his identity papers testified toIi Is fluency in Vietnamese, French, Brill/ish, R,./SSian, and Chinese.


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The French exported thelife-style of Paris toSaigon-as they did to all

their colonies. The scenehere is the terrace of theContinental Palace Hotel,where the French elite metto dine. The hotel is stillstanding.

French colonial officials,known as "native affairsofficers," in a Vietnamesevillage at the turn of thecentury. These officialswere said to be participating in a local ceremony de-signed to rid the village ofan epidemic.


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A local caricature spoofs aVietnamese who has beenconverted by French

culture into a tennisplayer. In fact, manyVietnamese nationalistswho opposed colonial rulewere the products ofFrench schools.

Vietnamese art students

surround their Frenchteacher in a school inTonkin. Only a handjUlof upper-class Vietnamesebenefited from Frencheducation, whichnevertheless contributed toVietnam's modernization.


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A handsome Vietnamese

prostitute poses in ahigh-class opium den,presumably in Saigon.The French colonialadministration organizedthe opium traffic in orderto raise revenues, and theoperation was highlysuccessfttI.

Paul Doumer, the Frenchgovernor-general ojIndochina around the turnoJ the century, put thepossession on a payingbasis by exploiting itsresources. Later presidentoj France, he wasassassinated in Paris in1932


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4 The War with the French

Ho Chi Minh addresses an audience in Paris in 1946, prior to his departure from theFrench capital following the breakdown of negotiations. Behind him is AdmiralThierry d'Argenlieu, the French governor in southern Vietnam, who had maneuveredto subvert the talks with Ho


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During World War II, theu.s. Office o j StrategicServices, precursor oj theCIA, trained Ho ChiMinh's Jorces in thejungles o j northernVietnam. Th e ass team,known as the Deer

Mission, washeadquartered inKunming, in southwestChina.

Lieutenant Colonel PeterDewey oJthe ass,assigned to Saigon in

1945. He alienated Frenchand British officers bycontacting the Vietminh.Accidentally killed in aVietminh ambush, he wasthe first American to diein Vietnam.


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A roundup o f Vietnamese nationalists by French troops in Saigon in late 1945. Thecity was torn by rioting as Vietnamese nationalists tried to prevent the French from re-

establishing colonial rule.


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Ullder an agreement to remove the Chinese forces, Ho Chi Minh agreed to the returnof the French army to Hanoi in 1946. Troops are seen here re-entering the city. Thewelcoming crowd was composed mostly of French residents.

/11 /946, as they moved to install their new government in northern Vietnam, Ho ChiMillil (l/'Id his followers organized various associatiorls-including this youth group,/1I1I"s(' members were trained to sirlg political songs extolling Vietnam's independence.


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Two senior Frenchofficers, General PhilippeLeclerc (left) and Admiral

Thierry d'Argenlieu,confer in Saigon in 1945as they plan to reimposeFrance's rule in Vietnam.Behind d' Argenlieu isGeneral Douglas Gracey,the British commanderwho was ,assigned todisarm the Japanese insouthern Vietnam.

Ho Chi Minh in 1946with General Leclerc (left)and Jean Sainteny, aFrench emissary. Saintenylater acted as an intermedi-ary between PresidentNixon and the VietnameseCommunists in 1969.


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General Vo NguyenGiap, Vietminh

commander, reviewingtroops in northernVietnam in 1951 as thewar with France began togather momentum. TheVietminh sustained serioussetbacks during the earlyperiod of the war becauseGiap overextended its

forces.

Ho Chi Minh seated, incasual attire, flanked byhis senior comrades (left to

right) Pham Van Dong,Truong Chinh, and VoNguyen Giap. TruongChinh borrowed hispseudonym, which meansLong March, from thefamous exploit of theChinese Communists in1934.


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Armed women warriors o fthe Hoa Hao, a reformistreligious sect founded in

the Mekong delta. Likemost religious cults inVietnam, the Hoa Haorapidly developed into aprivate army that operatedmainly for the benefit o fits leaders.

A leader o f the Cao Daireligious sect with armedtroops o f the organization.The ornate temple, locatednear the southernVietnamese town o f

Tayninh, displays statueso f the sect's saints, amongthem Jesus, Buddha, andJoan o f Arc.


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5 The Light That Failed

No Ch i Mi"h and his 1 1 l ~ f ! "(ommand plamlitlg the battle of Dienbienphu in theirjun.f!Ie headquarters. At r((!IIt is Ge"eral Vo Nguyetl Giap, commander oflheViet",;,,1, Jorces.


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Bao Dai, cJlOSefl by the rFrellc" to be the pflppetemperor oj Vietnam, seenhere as a boy i1/ Paris,

where the Frmch sent himto be educated. He livedwith a French fizmily andacquired a partiwfarafficrioll Jor Frellch girls.He also [eamed to playte1H1is.

Late ill 1949, Secretary ofState Achesoll (below, atright) persuaded PresidentTruman to earmark $15million in aid to theFrench Jorces itlbldochitla. Over the next

Jour years, American. . . .

ssistat'ICe Jor the French r ' -war mOlH/ted to more tlla1lS2 billioll.


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Baa Dai abdicated jn1945 and then fled toHong Kong, wllere hewas caricawred by AlHirschfeld, then 0 " 0world tOllr with S. J.Perelman. To Perelmm"tile ex-emperor was aHslippery-looking customer

ratlrer on tile pudgy sidea"d.freshly dipped i"Crisco. "

Ce"era/jeal' de Lottre deTassigny, tile daslli"gFrenclr commander it!

["dochi"a. A Call ieversion of Get/eralDouglas MacArthur, vai"a"d brillimH, lie raisedFretlCh morale afterarriving ill 1950.


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Ho Chi Minh gained amajor advantage when theCommunists cOflqueredChina in 1949: he was

then able to obtain modemweapons and other assis-tance directly. Here heeats with Chinese advisersunder portraits of himselfand Mao Zedong, theChinese leader.

Th e Vietminh forces weremeticulous in planningbattles. Here, using asand-table model, theyprepare an assault againsta village fortified by the

French and their Vietnam-ese auxiliaries. Thoughoutgunned by the French,the Vietminh had the ad-

vmllage of mobility.


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Th e French commmJder in IndochifJa, Gmeral He'Jri Navarre {right}, with a deputy,Major Gmeral Rene CogllY. Navarre's plan to pursue the Vietmi,lh forces in thehinterland led him to deploy French units in the remote northeastem valley o fDie'lbienphu, near the border o f Laos.


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Colonel Christian de Cas-tries J French commander atDienbienphu 1 was a ro-mantic cavalry officer whohad be'" wounded anddecorated in World WarII; he also had a pile ofgambling debts and a listof brokenhearted wom",.

With the Vietminh shelling them from the hazy hills in the distm,ce, the French forcesat Dienbienphu tried to survive itl trenches reminiscent oj World War I. But theVietminh gradually approached the French garrison by digging tu'mels.


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... ,., - ~ .,. . - ,Captain JamesMcCovem, k l l O W f l as"Earthquake MeGoon, 11was DllC oj two America115killed at Dicllbiwphu. He

(/lid his copilot, WallaceHllfard, were shot downby t l l f ~Vietmi"h whilejlyillg SlIpplies to tlie/:n:I1c1, i" IIfI1lUlrkedU.S.(nlt/sport platies .

A wOlmded ForeignLegiOfI lieutenant amid thesondbags of a d"go"t atDienbietlplw. The Fretlch

were stumted that theVietminh had managed tohaul howitzers onto theridges overlookit'g the val-ley mId were pOlmditJg itsairstrip and fortificatiolls.

Prime Minister Mendes-France poses for photogra-phers with 2ho" Enlai,the Chinese foreign minis-ter, "at Geneva in 1954.The two mm had met se-cretly beforehand and laidthe grout,dwork for a set-tlement o j the war.

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Vietmit,h troops emeritlgHmloi il l October 1954 ,followil/g the Frel/chevacuatioll. For many ofthese soldiers , this was thefirst time they hadpe"etrated an urban areasi"ce the war agaimt theFrench broke OtlC "jlleyears earlier.

Presidem Eise,thower with

Secretary of State Dulles.They regarded the Frel/chstand ill IlIdocJriua as vitalto the U.S. policy of(fcontaillingJ) CommlmismthrougllOtll the world) mIdthey fillal/eed the war.


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6 America's Mandarin

Ngo Dinh Diem in a characteristic meditative pose in his palace irl Saigon. Aloof and

austere, he mingled poorly with people, preferring instead to isolate himself with hisfamily and close aides.


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Not long after his return to Vietnam as prime minister, Ngo Dinh Diem organized a

referendum to oust Emperor Bao Dai. Diem received almost all the votes, the result ofelectoral devices contrived by his American advisers.

Ngo Dinh Diem consolidated his power by defeating the Binh Xuyen, a private gangsupported by the French. Diem's forces clashed with the Binh Xuyen in the streets ofSaigon, devastating the city.


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A meeting of the LaoDong in 1961, as theNorth Vietnamese

Workers party called itself.By the 1960s, the NorthVietnamese had decided tostep up the insurgencyagainst the Diem regimein Saigon.

A peasant woman mournsher husband, murdered byVietcong terrorists in theMekong delta. He wasselected for assassinationbecause he had informedon the Vietcong, whoseterrorists tended to beselective in eliminatingSaigon governmentofficials and sympathizers.


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Nguyen Huu Tho (be-low), head of the NationalLiberation Front, as theVietcong was officiallycalled. The movement wasformed in 1960 on direc-tives from Hanoi.

Ngo Dinh Diem on oneorhis early trips into theSouth VietnamesecOl/ntryside. Despite hischeerful expression, Diemdisliked such expeditions,/I,hich were urged on him"yhis American advisers,/I,ho thought he lacked the"common touch."

Ngo Dinh Diem waves to" New York City lunch-lilll(' crowd as a parade in"is IUlllor proceeds up/lroadway in May 1957.I 'rry few Americans could

1,"11'(' then found Vietllatr/"11 a lIIap.


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Soon after consolidating its power in Saigon, the Diem regime embarked on a massive

campaign to liquidate the remaining Vietminh elements in South Vietnam. Many wereimprisoned in re-education camps, as seen here. By 1958, almost all the residual insur-gents had been wiped out.

Not long after establishing their government in North Vietnam, the Vietnamese Com-mlmists launched a brutal land reform program in which thousands of landlords wereexecuted. Ho Chi Minh later apologized for the excesses of the episode. Here"Nguyen Van Dinh, poor peasant," as his sign identifies him, attends a land reformmeeting with his family


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7 Vietnam Is the Place

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An. American adviser, Lieutenant Colonel William Dickerson, supervises theabandonment o j an untenable outpost in the jungle. American helicopters flown byAmerican pilots helped evacuate the South Vietnamese troops.


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President Kennedy and two o f his principal advisers on Vietnam-Secretary of Defense

McNamara (left) and Secretary o f State R us k. R us k' s experience in Asian affairsdated back to his mili tary service during World War II .

Vice-President Johnson chatting with Ng o Dinh Diem in Saigon in May 1961.Johnson, whom Kennedy had sent on an ambassadorial world tour, exuberantly praisedDiem as the "Wil1sto/'/ Churchill o f Asia," which reassured Diem o f Americanmpport.


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Captain Gerald Kilburn(left), an Americanadviser, leads SouthVietnamese troops intoaction in the Mekong delta

in1963.

Americanadvisers then in Vietnamwere supposed to avoidcombat, but manyparticipated in battlenevertheless.

Frederick Nolting (left),American ambassador toSouth Vietnam, chatswith General PaulHarkins, commander ofthe U. S. military advisorymission. Nolting'sprevious diplomaticexperience had been inEurope. Harkins had once

played minor roles in themovies.


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In February 1962, two insurgent South Vietnameseair force pilots bombed

Diem's palace. Diem andhis family miraculously escaped injury, but MadameNhu was slightly hurt.Here, sometime later, Madame Nhu inspects thebombed palace.

Madame Ngo Dinh Nhu,President Diem's beautifUland impetuous sister-inlaw, who consideredherself South Vietnam'sFirst Lady. She was anactive feminist who

organized her own corpsof women warriors, towhom she here gives alesson in target practice.

Diem's younger brother,

Ngo Dinh Nhu. Ant'l"ratic figure withscholarly pretensions, Nhufllolved an arcane doctrinecal/ed Personalism'- whichrejected both capitalism(/lid socialism. It wasIIl1derstood by very fewVietrlllmese.


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A South Vietnamesepeasant helps a Vietcongguerrilla make traps to be

used against Saigongovernment troops. Thesedevices, made oj barbednails capable oj penetrat-ing the sole oj a boot,were concealed in floodedrice fields or on jungletrails.

Beginning in the late1950s, North Vietnamsent supplies to Vietconginsurgents in the south.Porters carried theequipment along the Ho

Chi Minh Trail, whichthreaded through themountains and jungles ojadjacent Laos.


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An American advisertrains a South Vietnamese

soldier in the use of abayonet. Despite trainingand equipment, the SouthVietnamese troops were

.frequently no match for thehighly organized andmotivated Vietcongguerrillas.

u. S, advisers also tried toteach the benefits ofAmerican civilization tolocal youths. The effortwas known as "nation-building"; it made only asuperficial dent inVietnamese culture.


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To isolate peasants from

the Vietcong guerrillas,the South Vietnamesegovernment built fortifiedenclosures called


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