CSV Siegmar 48 EV Chemnitz - The 2nd Team Men

The Vietnam War, Part 2 / 2

By Stefan Sasse

Part 1, found here.

soldiers search a house after Vietcong

The deployment of more than two hundred thousand U.S. Marines under the command of General Westmoreland was followed, as already demonstrated its own inherent dynamics of the military. The threat to the bases of the Air Force by the Viet Cong should be provided initially by a few Marines, but the American commanders was a purely defensive role is not, and the inability the South Vietnamese ARVN for independent victorious end to the conflict was obvious. It was decided to adjust the guerrilla war in the country use the American doctrine, "Americanize" the war that is to be prepared the better job. Westmoreland turned on to commence a three-stage plan of operations: the downward trend in South Vietnam through the deployment from Marines in late 1965 and reside in the reliance points to start in Phase II, a major offensive with allies and relegate the Vietcong from the densely populated areas in the periphery and destroy him there in Phase III final. In theory, should drop the end of Phase III to the end of 1967th

tacitly With this new doctrine beerdingte President Johnson the idea that the ARVN itself lead to war and was supported by the United States only. This massive change in your intentions but was withheld from the press - instead, they spoke of continuity with the existing rules of engagement so for a while and turned off by the events. As military fatal should soon emerge from this massive deception caused training gap: since you brought officially a war and still conscripts moved in, the time in Vietnam was one year limited ( "tour of duty" ). On the one hand, depriving this one-year period, the units of experienced leadership and made it effective use of the soldiers necessary to shorten this time into projected training period, which as in higher losses necessary and many failures in battle resulted, which could have been avoided with better training can. On the other hand, the soldiers were always the end of this period in mind and tried it as pleasant as possible by bringing - the effect on morale was devastating.

river patrol boats sprayed napalm

The results were correspondingly modest. The major offensives in which at times was also attended by U.S. allies in the SEATO area - such as Australia and New Zealand, but never NATO allies such as Canada or United Kingdom - achieved no success because the communist guerrillas a much greater strategic flexibility demonstrated when the American Generals and quickly adapted the new tactics. The American tactics were to have extremely ineffective. They were based on the political need to keep the losses under the GI's as low as possible. To this end, they occupied their own bases and kept the larger cities (such as Saigon and Hue) and left it for their operations, in most cases to protect the soldiers in helicopters ("flying cavalry"). The pattern that the Americans came during the day, depending on the mood somewhat destroyed or helped to build again in the evening went, and then the Viet Cong came and destroyed some whim or constructions commute on. Effectively gave the Americans so up control over large parts of the country to the Viet Cong as they could only move during the day.

The Viet Cong used to hide by day a very extensive, underground tunnel system through which one sometimes many miles could travel unseen altogether. Even massive American bombing of known Tunnel routes could not paralyze them. The Viet Cong has been held down only temporarily, but never taken seriously. Simultaneously, the population suffered from the constant attacks and operations and tended with continuous duration of the war to the Vietcong. Although the strategy Westmoreland's obviously not opened up, this was always before the press and declared success. Also, the Pentagon published only positive reports. A growing credibility gap arose in this way, but this was not discussed by the media - the American public was still clearly positive attitude towards the war. Only the end of 1967 announced Westmoreland, that the end was in sight and the war would soon be won.

General Westmoreland

believed President Johnson saw then dawn. His entire second term of office - which had started in 1965 - had been under the shadow of the ever-escalating Vietnam War. His ambitious domestic reform program of the inferior in Germany in 1969 the ruling Social Democrats in nothing, was completely sidelined, reduced financial flexibility by the exploding costs of the Vietnam War to zero. The U.S. debt is exploding, because you did not want to burden the public with the admission of the continuance of the war effort and that would have brought a shift to a war economy. This production of "guns and butter" (instead of the famous saying from World War II "guns before butter") exceeded the economic performance of the U.S.. To gloss over the consequences, the Fed printed and mass-dollar scourge took the western allies in detention, their central banks to buy up the always worth more informal, completely overvalued dollar were forced. The Bretton Woods system, since the economic base of the bound on the Gold Standard Dollars in 1944 Stability in the Western world had been guaranteed, in fact at the end and only preserved as a living corpse through the pretense of non-existent facts of life.

Until 1969, most European currency appreciated massively against the dollar. Through this appreciation was the decline of the system are again stopped just before the U.S. was forced in 1971 to announce the official separation of the dollar from the gold standard and thus release all exchange rates. The system of Bretton Woods was at the end, and since then determine currency speculation and non-political setting for better or for worse exchange rates. The United States in any case, this step pause to bring before it by the end of the engagement in Vietnam in the long stagflation slipped in the 1970s, in which low economic growth with high inflation went hand in hand, which should open the space for the radical experiments of a Ronald Reagan - but that is another story that starts out only at this time.

Marines in street fighting in Hué

The Dawn Johnson disappeared least 31 assumed in January 1968 on one stroke behind the horizon. Was one of them so far and had it announced to the public that at least phase II of the original plan - the compulsion of the Vietcong in the periphery - was succeeded, this changed radically on that day. The 31st January is Tet the Vietnamese calendar, New Year's Day, the highest holiday of the Vietnamese, and traditionally the day of ceasefire, similar to Yom Kippur in Israel. That day started the Vietcong, in the official representations of the U.S. government virtually defeated and destroyed, the largest offensive in South Vietnam since the war began. All major cities and most U.S. bases were attacked simultaneously, the U.S. Embassy in Saigon fell for several hours in the hands of the Insurgents could be recaptured and destroyed half. In other places, the fighting continued well into the spring, and the United States could with difficulty hold their position and move so slow to counterattack. The last offensive of the Viet Cong failed to Saigon until August 1968.

These were massive attacks of the Vietcong from the regular North Vietnamese People's Army supported. The goal, which followed the North Vietnamese leadership of this attack was to incite the population in the South to revolt and cause a conflagration, which would thus bring the victory. This did not succeed. On the contrary, the attacks Viet Cong and the People's Army were very inefficient and the reaction of the U.S. armed forces as the ARVN quickly and decisively. The Vietcong and the people's army suffered heavy casualties but led the attacks until August. The fighting was particularly fierce in Hue, where, during the battle, almost 80% of the city destroyed. When the attacks ceased in the summer of 1968, were dozens of villages and parts of larger cities in ruins. The reporter Peter Arnett quoted an officer as saying that the destruction of the village of Ben Tre was necessary to save it. Militarily, the Tet offensive, the North had been a failure. No city, no comment from U.S. Army or ARVN had held can be, and the losses were horrific high. The Vietcong had effectively ceased to exist. For the remainder of the war the Americans fought in South Vietnam, mainly from the north against the Ho Chi Minh Trail infiltrated People's Army. Militarily, the U.S. had won an overwhelming victory.

peace demonstration against the Vietnam war before the Pentagon

alone, the Tet Offensive is a prime example of the divergence of political and military objectives. The military success of the Americans was a political disaster. The Tet offensive had also led the last doubters just how big the credibility gap between official pronouncements and the reality was now. Now no one believed the Pentagon, and at home won the Antirkriegsbewegung momentum, which the government could not be more sir. Desertions multiplied. A symbol of the moral inconsistency of the war was committed in March 1968 and in 1969 became known massacre at My Lai, where U.S. Marines 300-500 unarmed South Vietnamese civilians killed. The outcry in the public cost President Johnson's re-election. In November 1968 the Americans elected Richard Nixon as president, gave the promise, "bring the boys home" ( to take the boys home ).

saw Nixon's strategy in Vietnam therefore before the reduction of military presence and smaller, better planned and targeted strikes than the previous major offensives in the now detached General Westmoreland. Instead of taking all the areas, the logistics of the guerrillas should be taken. Better cooperation with the ARVN was sought. To prevent the replenishment of the guerrillas, the Ho Chi Minh Trail was heavily bombed, while also used the infamous defoliant Agent Orange, which makes today for abnormalities. In this way, the hiding the guerrillas are defeated. Success had these military measures are no. At the same time Nixon ran a foreign policy line of relaxation. The massive operations against North Vietnam had recently strained relations with the Soviet Union strong. The detente that accompanied simultaneously in Europe, the Ostpolitik Brandt (albeit against the wishes of the Americans, which the Germans went too far), permitted the official start of peace talks with North Vietnam - the biggest win of Ho Chi Minh in the Tet offensive, the died 1969. At the same time, the Americans moved their troops back into the populated centers of the country and protected - which halved the losses among the GIs, though, But while large parts of the country definitely gave the Communists.

U.S. helicopters sprayed chemicals in the Mekong Delta

1970, the U.S. supported a coup against Prince Sihanouk in Cambodia, who had pursued a policy of neutrality. Under the pro-American successor they bombed the Cambodian border region and the local caches of the guerrillas. This from the American public secret extension of the war flared up as new protests, which in the same year a new peak, the National Guard at Kent State University, four students killed and nine seriously injured part. A nationwide student strike and a march on Washington with more than 100,000 participants were the result. Nixon's Vietnam policy which had for a moment the hope of calming the situation and charge but the mistakes of the Johnson administration was able to, so also discredited and made in the public a continuity.

order to calm the population and to find a way out of the war, Nixon had begun in 1969, talking to a "Vietnamization" of the war, the word: the military operations should be conducted by the ARVN, supported only by the advisory and defensive air cover operating and giving Americans - that is ultimately a return to the plans before 1965, albeit at a higher level logistical and material. Under this strategy, the ARVN in 1971, a campaign led by the equally neutral and the People's Army serving as a staging ground Laos. During the withdrawal of troops of the Americans suddenly stopped, the ARVN failed across the board. In complete panic and confusion, a withdrawal from Laos to South Vietnam was made, past the corpses of their own men. As the fleeing soldiers left behind their heavy equipment just after the gas was all, the Air Force had to fly missions and destroy it, before it fell into enemy hands. The Vietnamization of the war was a clear disaster.

B52 bombing in "Linebacker II", 1972

1972 should offset any remaining illusion but the kiss of death be. At Easter, the South Vietnam People's Army directly from the north attacked her in the most conventional attack since 1955. The ARVN also broke out in full here, and the North Vietnamese were advancing rapidly, and threatened to divide the country, while the withdrawal of U.S. troops was in full swing. At the same time sabotaging the North Vietnamese, the Paris Peace negotiations by transmitted the secret of the concessions negotiated Kissinger to the press and demanded more concessions. To halt the collapse of the South Vietnamese and to bomb back to the negotiating table, "the North Vietnamese, authorized Nixon the most massive bombing of the war and probably the largest conventional bombardment of all time in Operation Linebacker II" were dropped almost 20,000 tons of bombs, the advance North Vietnam was brought to a halt. It was the second military defeat of the North since Tet, and again there was great turmoil at home. Nixon did win re-election, the majority in Congress, however, went to the Democrats, who then Measures blocked and turned off the money supply even more important than that in 1973 the oil price shock, the South Vietnamese economy hit hard. While the guerrillas celebrated further successes, the American took off faster and faster. In 1975 he was executed. That same year, North Vietnam launched its final offensive. The ARVN went down for the last time and finally, in April and was the capital of Saigon.

The scenes that took place during the evacuation of American embassy where the desperate South Vietnamese attached to the skids of the helicopter in order to flown out to be burned themselves into the public memory. For over a decade If you damage the credibility of the U.S. trading day, which did not even trust their own allies, because they obviously were not able to protect them. The reputation of the U.S. in the world was on the zero point after witness could live, like an army of rice farmers, the most advanced army in the world chased from the country. The country was deeply traumatized. Contrary to earlier, victorious conflicts were the veterans of the Vietnam War, participants in a morally discredited, lost battle that the government would rather forget. Large segments of the population that had supported the anti-war movement, they saw even as criminals. Many of the young soldiers - The average age of 19 is well below the previous conflicts - were traumatized and were classified poorly documented or not to civilian life, a process that about the first Rambo film (which had, in English the title of "First Blood") class .

graffiti on U.S. Embassy in Tehran

American foreign policy was discredited and was well into the 1980s draw no more self-confidence. The budget was severely cut, the interventions made at the level of intelligence and thus into the shadowy realm of a parallel world urged in the final were no moral restrictions more. The absolute nadir of their reputation had reached the United States, as the 1979 Tehran hostage rescue in embarrassing failed.

was culturally prepared for the Vietnam War German best known in Hollywood. Next to the first Rambo are three main anti-war films that the image of Vietnam as that of a dirty war in which all morality scale is lost, mostly dominated: Apocalypse Now (Coppola, 1979), Platoon (Stone, 1986) and Full Metal Jacket (Kubrick, 1987). At the same time, there are also a number of films that are pursuing a more negative nature of the treatment: movies in which the players fight in Vietnam but also in a lost war, but in the fight against faceless, malignant masses of Vietnamese people to prove themselves individually. Rambo II is just one example of this kind of trashy action-waste.

victims of the My Lai massacre

One of the key lessons learned be learned from Vietnam is that military operations require a clear policy framework and a realistic goal. The strategies applied the Americans in Vietnam were featured at the beginning of ideals and took care of particularly 1965-1968 for huge mistakes. To win the conflict was not. The population of Vietnam was opposed to the majority of Americans, and paradoxically the military successes against the guerrillas provided for the biggest defeat of the Americans. The United States came to the doctrine will no longer allow free press in war zones. The embedded journalists were born in Vietnam. Until 2001/2003, the U.S. is not committed long-term-minded in hostile states, but resulted from a short invasion, bombing and intelligence operations. Today the lessons of Vietnam are now almost forgotten and a new generation sets out to they are expensive to buy on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan.