Short History Of... - The Vietnam War

Episode Date: October 6, 2024

The battle for Vietnam waged between the communist-ruled North of the country, and the US-backed south, lasted almost 20 years, from 1955. It spilled over into neighbouring countries, and resulted in the deaths of an estimated 3.8 million people - half of them civilians. It was a brutal, un-winnable conflict, which reshaped global geopolitics. But how did what might have been a little local trouble in Southeast Asia evolve into an international conflict? Why did the rise of an anti-colonial, national movement prompt such a ferocious playing out of the Cold War? And what were its consequences? This is a Short History Of The Vietnam War. A Noiser Production, written by Dan Smith. With thanks to Max Hastings, a historian of the Vietnam War, and a former foreign correspondent in the country. Get every episode of Short History Of a week early with Noiser+. You’ll also get ad-free listening, bonus material, and early access to shows across the Noiser network. Click the Noiser+ banner to get started. Or, if you’re on Spotify or Android, go to noiser.com/subscriptions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's the 18th of May 1969, in the central region of Vietnam, not far from the border with Laos. In a large valley, a young American GI in jungle green fatigues and a steel pot helmet struggles up Hill 937, named for its elevation in meters above sea level. His ears buzz with the sound of artillery fire, his vision blurry from the torrential rain and sweat pouring down his face. Alongside the 1,800 or so soldiers from the US Army are men from the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, the military that rules the southern part of the country. The aim is to wrestle control of the hill from the enemy fighters from the Communist Democratic Republic of Vietnam, which rules the North. For eight days, the GI and his comrades have tried and failed to take the hill. And as he fights through the dense jungle, past thick bamboo and razor-sharp waist-high

elephant grass, there's little confidence that today will be much different. His muscles burn as he swings his machete through the vegetation. Up above, the whir of helicopter blades adds to the bewildering cacophony. Yard by yard, he battles up the hill until he comes to a clearing, the summit in sight. He turns to speak to a comrade, but just as he opens his mouth, to a comrade, but just as he opens his mouth, the ground gives way beneath him. Launched by the explosion, he is suspended in nothingness, flying upwards and backwards, then landing heavily on his side. He checks himself.

Two arms, two legs. Relief. But as his hearing returns, he registers the barking of orders to take cover, and the screams from nearby. A guy even younger than him, a teenager, lies feet away, writhing in agony, blood pooling in the mud around him. More grenades rain down, underlaid by a staccato of automatic gunfire. The GI fires a few rounds in return.

He and another of his company haul the injured soldier up from the ground, propping him on their shoulders and retreating back along the path they carved on their way up. The cries of the wounded boy suggest that, one way or another, his war is likely over now. In a couple of days, the GIs will at last succeed in taking the hill, their sheer weight of numbers winning out. But by then, many hundreds of enemy bodies will be strewn across the hillside. The Americans and their South Vietnamese allies count upwards of a hundred lives lost. To those involved, the assault has been like going

through a meat grinder. So much so that the GIs come to call this place Hamburger Hill. Even so, almost as soon as the hill is captured, it is abandoned. It has no intrinsic territorial value. Indeed, this conflict is no mere matter of territory. It's a war of competing ideologies, with victory falling to whichever side can last the longest and endure the most. The battle for Vietnam, waged between the communist-ruled north of the country and the US-backed south, lasted almost 20 years from 1955. Spilling over into neighboring countries, it resulted in the deaths of an estimated 3.8 million people, half of them civilians. The US sent millions of its young men to fight in the far-off conflict, of whom more than

50,000 lost their lives, and many more bore terrible scars. A brutal, unwinnable conflict, the Vietnam War has informed US foreign policy ever since, reshaping global geopolitics. But how did what might have been a little local trouble in Southeast Asia evolve into a war with such immense international implications? Why did the rise of an anti-colonial nationalist movement prompt such a ferocious playing out of the Cold War? And what were the consequences, both in the theater of war and the corridors of power back in the U.S.?

I'm John Hopkins from the Noiser Network. This is a short history of the Vietnam War. Vietnam has been a hotbed of dynastic and imperial rivalries since antiquity, frequently falling under the power of its Chinese neighbors in between periods of independence. From the 16th century, European colonial powers also enter the mix. Eventually, French Indochina is established in 1887, made up of the various territories of Vietnam along with Cambodia and Laos. By the 1920s there are the beginnings of a concerted Vietnamese independence movement that consolidates around communist ideology. A little later various groups are brought together

as the Indo-Chinese Communist Party. With his support concentrated in the north of the country, its leader is Nguyen Ai Quoc, who comes to be known as Ho Chi Minh, or he who has been enlightened. Max Hastings is a historian of the Vietnam War and a former foreign correspondent in the country. Ho Chi Minh was one of the great charismatic nationalist leaders of the 20th century.

He spent much of his own life in exile, part of it working on merchant ships, part of it working as an assistant pastry chef in London's Carlton Hotel. He learned a lot about the United States, he learned a lot about Britain and Europe, and he was passionately committed to his country's independence. Against the backdrop of the Second World War, France and Japan vie for dominance of Indochina. Effectively facing two colonial masters, Ho Chi Minh establishes the League for the Independence of Vietnam,

better known as the Viet Minh, with Vo Nguyen Giap as head of its military arm. With famine rife and discontented foreign rule rampant, its membership swells. In early 1945, Japan usurps the war-wearied French and rules through a proxy, Emperor Baudai. But only for a few months, until Japan's own defeat in the war. Striding into this power vacuum, Ho Chi Minh declares the new state of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. And although the French sought in 1945-46 to take back control of Vietnam, they could not make headway against the extraordinary grip

on the imagination of the Vietnamese people that Ho Chi Minh had achieved, even though most of them had never seen him or heard him. The country is divided. The French, now returned with the blessing of their Chinese and Western allies who are keen to keep the Japanese out, rule from the southern city of Saigon, while Ho dominates up north in Hanoi. of Saigon, while Ho dominates up north in Hanoi.

In late 1946, he declares war on France, beginning what will be called the First Indochina War. It is a protracted affair, but Vo Nguyen Giap picks up valuable military strategy from Mao Tse-edong's communist forces in China. Xiap evolves a fighting force that is part regular army and part guerrilla operation. 1949 sees the establishment of the State of Vietnam, ruled by France through the reinstated puppet Emperor Bao. But up in Hanoi, Ho rejects his authority. Emperor Bao. But up in Hanoi, Ho rejects his authority. Conflict continues with the French, who are supplied with weapons and military advisors by the US, along with some three billion dollars of aid. While Ho is fighting for his country, there are other agendas at play. The French fear that defeat here would be the spur for other anti-colonial movements across its empire, especially in Northern Africa.

The US, meanwhile, immersed in the nascent Cold War, fears the creep of communism in Asia. to overstate how little the United States and those running the State Department and the CIA in those days understood about the nationalist movements of Asia and elsewhere. But they convinced themselves that what was going on in Vietnam, or still Indochina it was when they first became involved, was a struggle against communism. In reality, in the early days against the French, it was explicitly a struggle for independence by nationalists against the French colonial rulers. In May 1954, the fall of the French garrison at Dien Bien Phu in the northwest of the country proves a fatal blow to France. After eight years, a ceasefire is declared.

The colonial overlord agrees to a partition of the country along what is called the 17th parallel, roughly midway across the territory, before withdrawing from the region altogether. before withdrawing from the region altogether. Though the French count around 75,000 fatalities in the First Indochina War, Vietnamese deaths are estimated at up to four times that number. Ho holds the North with the recognition of both global communist powerhouses, China and the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, Bao and his trusty Prime Minister Noh Dien Diem remain in place in Saigon, backed by Dwight Eisenhower's White House. They set themselves to support with money and weapons a regime in the South that from the first day of alleged independence was corrupt and entirely dependent on Washington's cash to be able to

sustain itself. Diem had some of the qualities that make great national leaders. He was passionately committed to his country, but unfortunately he was also a Catholic zealot in a Buddhist country, and he was determined to impose Catholicism on the country very much against the wishes of its people. He was also a supporter of the landlord class, whom those who fought for Vietnamese independence and all the people who supported Ho Chi Minh were passionately opposed to. Ho oversees a program of land redistribution on communist principles, during which thousands of landlords are violently dispossessed and killed, their land redeployed as collective farms.

With Ho's territory expanding, Diem realizes something needs to change. He deposes his once-ally Emperor Bao, a playboy figure who inspires little devotion, and proclaims the Republic of Vietnam with himself as president. By 1959, Ho begins construction on a network of trails for the transportation of men, arms and supplies. arms and supplies. It runs from north to south via neighboring Laos, which, like Vietnam, has until recently been under French rule, and which boasts a nationalist-communist movement sympathetic to Hanoi. One of the great feats of military engineering, the network becomes known as the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

Ho's advance rings alarm bells in distant Washington. In November 1960, John F. Kennedy is elected president, but his administration is soon dogged by the unpredictabilities of international politics. Within a year, East Germany erects the Berlin Wall, and there is the disastrous failed Bay of Pigs invasion, aimed at removing Cuba's communist leader Fidel Castro. Then, in 1962, the world stands on the brink of nuclear war, as Kennedy and his Soviet counterpart Nikita Khrushchev face off during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

With the Cold War heating up, Kennedy is determined to keep Vietnam from falling entirely to the forces of communism. He is an adherent of the so-called domino theory, the idea that changing circumstances in one country are likely to spread to its neighbors in a domino effect. While he has no desire to embroil America in a foreign war, he vows to support the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, or ARVN, sending military advisers, money, weapons, and helicopters. But the early signs are not promising. The dual communist forces are potent fighting machines, both the North Viet Minh, or People's Army of Vietnam, and the National Liberation Front for South Vietnam, or Viet Cong, as it will be better known. In January 1963, at Ap Bac, southwest of Saigon, a Viet Cong battalion defeats an ARVN force

about ten times bigger. In November 1963, a group of ARVN officers announced they are seizing power from the president. Diem, holed up in his palace, is offered exile if he surrenders. Instead, he escapes via an underground passage to a local church. But he is found the next morning and bundled into an armored car where he is shot and killed. And every single Vietnamese took it for granted that the Americans were responsible for his murder. So Diem was killed, and I met many people

when I was researching my book on Vietnam, in Vietnam and in America in exile, who said, whatever we thought of Diem, and even though we knew he was corrupt, he was Vietnamese, he was Vietnamese, he'd been elected by some sort of legitimacy, and the Americans killed him. And many, many people, both American and Vietnamese, told me that the American cause in Vietnam never recovered from the 1963 murder of Diem.

Then, on the 22nd of November, not yet three weeks after Diem's death, Kennedy is traveling in a motorcade through Dallas when he is shot in the head. The leader of the free world is dead. As the nation reels from Kennedy's assassination, his vice president, Lyndon Johnson, takes charge of the White House. He plans a broad continuation of Kennedy's policy in fighting the North Vietnamese, allegedly

dismissing the place as that raggedy-ass little fourth-rate country. The South's new military leadership in Saigon is to be given its chance, despite it comprising a rotating cast of more or less corrupt generals. South Vietnam was perceived rightly as an American puppet, and there was no credible political structure to batten onto. But after a year, Ho Chi Minh's regime in Hanoi is making significant territorial gains. Johnson sends one of his leading military men, General William C. Westmoreland, to head up the U.S. military presence in the country. It heralds a change in strategy, the focus of fighting moving away from the Viet Minh to Hanoi itself, ahead of the snake. itself, the head of the snake. But covert operations in the North have little impact, and there is a growing sense in Washington

that air power is much more likely to be effective. But for that, there must be real provocation. That comes in early 1964, with reports that torpedo boats have targeted a destroyer, the USS Maddox, in the Gulf of Tonkin, off the North Vietnamese coast. Johnson broadcasts to the American people, Renewed hostile actions against United States ships, he says, have today required me to order the military forces of the United States to take action in reply. Three days later, Congress passes the Southeast Asia

Resolution, providing the legal justification for all future American actions in the conflict. Washington, though, is split. On the one hand are the so-called Doves, who warn that escalation will not stem the Viet Cong in the South and will only serve to provoke China and the USSR. On the other hand, the Hawks, including Johnson, are convinced a surge in aggression is the only answer.

The Hawks win out. On the 2nd of March 1965, Operation Rolling Thunder begins with a sustained bombardment of North Vietnamese targets. Thunder begins with a sustained bombardment of North Vietnamese targets. Less than a week later, the first US combat troops land too. 3,500 marines on the beach of Da Nang in South Vietnam. More than 180,000 will join them in the coming year. Many have been compulsorily conscripted.

There is an existing draft system, but it now increases from 17,000 a month to 35,000, with an average age of 22 among recruits. There are even televised lotteries to select who is to be called up first. Many more sign up voluntarily in order to have at least some influence on what service they'll join. But suddenly, America's youth and their parents are confronted by the prospect of being sent to fight and, quite possibly, to die in a country they know nothing about. An anti-war protest movement starts to gain momentum, with thousands marching on Washington before the end of the year. Johnson still hopes that the fighting will end before he has to send too many more Americans in. He wants Hanoi to agree to unconditional talks, sure that bombardment by America's ubiquitous B-52 bombers will persuade them. Instead, Hanoi asserts there'll be no talks until America leaves the country. In November 1965, the first major battle takes

place between U.S. and North Vietnamese forces in the Yadrang Valley in the Central Highlands, close to the Cambodian border. U.S US troops have been sent to search out North Vietnamese infantry massing in the area. After five days of a devastating combination of hand-to-hand combat, artillery fire, and aerial bombing, the US lose over 200 men with another 250 wounded. The North Vietnamese count somewhere between 550 and 1,750 deaths, although the figure is disputed. No one labors under the illusion that this might be an easy war, nor even one of territorial gains. Victory will likely be measured by body count. Gradually, America's strong-armed approach wreaks pockets of havoc.

Carpet bombing destroys whole villages at a time. Drops of chemical agents, their names like Napalm and Agent Orange, the staff of modern nightmares destroy the natural environment and cause horrific injuries to anyone caught in their path. Lyndon Johnson's 65-66 decisions to vastly increase the American commitment in Vietnam were catastrophic. I saw what the American footprint looked like. It was as if some space-age monster had descended on the country. All these helicopters, the camps, the watchtowers, the minefields, the bombings,

the vast weight of technology imposed on this country. And you compare and contrast this with the Viet Cong, who their footprint on the land was unbelievably light. You scarcely saw them. The Viet Cong are resilient, dissolving into the jungle by night, reappearing by daylight. The White House throws ever more money at the war, but as the weeks turn into months, any hope of quickly overwhelming the enemy evaporates. This is a war of attrition, of American muscle against local agility, knowledge, and determination.

American muscle against local agility, knowledge and determination. It's a characteristic of Western armies that they always want to fight the war that suits them and and the foot rot and the crotch rot and all the other stuff that made every American soldier in Vietnam pretty miserable. Can you imagine what it was like trying to carve your way through the jungle at maybe moving 100, at best 200 paces in an hour in dense cover, hacking with machetes to try and make a path without making too much noise so you attracted enemy fire. For hours and days, you'd plod through this almost impenetrable greenery, and then suddenly out of nowhere, there'd come a burst of fire,

which would probably kill your first two or three men before you got a chance to respond. And then you called in artillery, you called in air power, everything else, but the enemy had gone. For the authorities in the North, every day undefeated by the American behemoth is another propaganda triumph. But among America's war planners, there is heated debate as to whether to change tactics and seek instead to win hearts and minds. It is not surprising that the vast majority of the peasantry out in the countryside of Vietnam, they found the NLF, the Viet Cong, far more sympathetic, far less scary than this vast American monster.

And what is worse, American troops treated the Vietnamese people, whether they were pro- or anti-communist, as a different species from themselves. Because they didn't have 26 television channels, because they didn't have multi-lane highways, they treated the Vietnamese people every day with contempt. But the hawks dominate, and the assaults continue even as the scale of anti-war protests grows. In July 1967, Hanoi's generals lay down plans for a surprise offensive. They time it for Tet, the Vietnamese New Year, the end of January 1968, during what is meant to be a ceasefire. Instead, over 100 towns, villages and hamlets, including Saigon, are attacked, first with mortar and rocket bombardments, then an onslaught from ground forces. Their mission goal, in their own words, crack the sky, shake the earth.

In the battle for the old royal city of Hue, victims are brutalized, shot, clubbed, and buried alive. Over 3,000 die. Though the violence is half a world away for the average American, this is the first war to be significantly documented by television crews. In the US, viewers watch live coverage of their embassy in Saigon being stormed by the Viet Cong. The cameras are still rolling when a chief of police executes one guerrilla with a bullet to the head. Two months into the Tet Offensive, tens of thousands on both sides lie dead, along with

thousands of civilians. The surge from the North is stemmed, and the Viet Cong are virtually exhausted as a fighting force for now. But it doesn't feel like a victory back in the States. What they saw was that Viet Cong guerrillas had broken into the American embassy in the heart of Saigon and staged a shootout with the Americans. The psychological cost of that little thing, it didn't mean a thing really in military terms that a handful of guerrillas got into the embassy. But the psychological impact on the American people was devastating. And there's no doubt the communists achieved a

decisive victory morally in the Tetapensian, politically, because after that, the will of the American people to keep this war going was broken. The beloved US broadcast journalist Walter Cronkite starts advocating for peace talks. Johnson recognizes the significance. If he's lost Cronkite, he's lost Middle America. The White House now has a big decision. Although the Viet Cong are reeling, the North remains a formidable force. So scale back or go for broke. Unlike just a few months earlier, the mood is now for de-escalation. But not everywhere.

It's the morning of the 16th of March 1968 in My Lai, a small hamlet in South Vietnam. A boy plays on the dusty ground outside his family's thatched hut. His mother is stooped over a pot, cooking breakfast over an open fire, a baby perched on her hip. It's market day to day, and she scoops food into a bowl, telling her son to fill up before the busy morning ahead. food into a bowl, telling her son to fill up before the busy morning ahead. But before he starts to eat, he hears the ominous sound of approaching helicopters. He may be little, but he already knows that helicopters mean trouble. The meal, instantly forgotten, his mother ushers him urgently back inside the hut, where his grandfather is busy with chores.

urgently back inside the hut where his grandfather is busy with chores. Now there is the heavy step of military boots tramping through the surrounding undergrowth, then the commanding voice of a man speaking unfamiliar words, the language of the Americans. The boy's mother and grandfather exchange worried glances. They guess these invaders have come in search of Viet Cong. But there are none here. Troops start herding the villagers into groups outside. No VC, the boy's mother pleads in stuttering English. But she is shoved back in line with the others.

The child clings to the back of his grandad's leg as the soldiers rifle through each hut, their weapons at the ready, but finding nothing just makes them angrier. He fights back tears as they continue to push and shout. Then the sound of crackling flames and smoke twisting into the air. One of his neighbors' homes is ablaze, then another, and another. The soldiers start moving people from a nearby yard, shoving them to who knows where. A moment later, gunfire. Round after round, not stopping. By the end of the morning, somewhere between 350 and 500 villagers are dead.

All civilians, many women and children. Some are raped, others mutilated. The My Lai massacre will eventually go down as among the most heinous war crimes in American history. However, when President Johnson broadcasts to the nation a couple of weeks later, the American public have no knowledge of the dismal act carried out in their name. With over 500,000 troops on the ground, thousands of Americans dead, and perhaps 150,000 wounded, Johnson knows there is little heart left for this war. Among those planning to leverage this discontent to make a run for the presidency himself is John F. Kennedy's brother, Bobby, a major rival to Johnson within the Democratic Party. The president looks tired and pensive as, at length, he outlines his plans for peace

talks in a televised broadcast. Then he drops a bombshell. He does not intend to seek the democratic presidential nomination. Peace talks get underway in Paris on the 10th of April, although fighting continues unabated, with Hanoi convinced that further incursions will only strengthen its bargaining position. Progress is painfully slow. There is disagreement even over the shape of the negotiating table. Nonetheless, in October, Johnson calls an end to Operation Rolling Thunder, reckoned

to be killing about a thousand Vietnamese, mostly civilians, each week. The US, figures suggest, are themselves losing about 400 men weekly. By the time America goes to the polls on the 5th of November, there is a general sense of gloom. It has been a tough year all around. Back in April, the civil rights leader Martin Luther King was assassinated, and two months after that, Bobby Kennedy was killed too. Social unrest has manifested in riots. Even the Democratic Convention in Chicago was disrupted by protests, violently broken up by the National Guard. Ever since, it has seemed inevitable that the Republican candidate Richard Nixon would win the White House. And so he does, with a promise of peace with honor.

Although nobody realizes, he has already secretly been in contact with the South Vietnamese leadership, urging them not to give anything away at the negotiating table that might have helped his Democrat rivals. Though Nixon is convinced military victory is unobtainable, he is determined not to be the first US president to lose a war. Instead, he wants to thrash out a deal that saves face. And the man he earmarks to drive it through is his national security advisor, Henry Kissinger. It is only now that U.S. intelligence realizes the aging Ho Chi Minh

no longer pulls the strings for North Vietnam. A man named Le Gioan now serves as head of state and government. Nixon's plan is to hoodwink him with a strategy based on the so-called madman theory. His plan, such as it was, was that he was going to frighten the North Vietnamese into making peace by believing that he, Nixon, was so erratic, so reckless, so ruthless, that he was prepared to use extreme methods, including nuclear weapons, against them if they didn't make a deal. The U.S. plants seeds of doubt about Nixon's supposed instability via diplomatic channels, but the North Vietnamese do not fall for it. Instead, they rally support against the enemy

whose military machine continues to rain down death and destruction upon them. So Nixon changes tack. He concludes that only further escalation will spur the North into new talks, and sets his sights on neighboring Cambodia and Laos. Their neutrality has kept them officially off-bounds to US attack so far, but by accommodating North Vietnamese and Viet Cong bases and through routes for supplies, they've long been causing headaches for the US. Laos has already been subject to several years of covert bombing, eventually equivalent to a ton of bombs for almost every citizen.

But now, Nixon sanctions a mission kept secret even from Congress. In March 1969, Operation Menu begins, with B-52s carpet bombing Cambodia for more than a year. The Americans, especially from the mid-60s onwards, were bombing those hapless, innocent countries in order to try and close the Ho Chi Minh Trail, in which they always failed. And Cambodia and Laos became victims of both sides. And the North Vietnamese were as cynical as were the Americans. But with talks still stalled, what Nixon really wants is to be able to withdraw U.S. troops from the arena altogether and transfer responsibility for the war effort to the South Vietnamese.

A strategy known as Vietnamization. The U.S. casualty list is increasing by the day. Domestic scrutiny, particularly of the debacle in May at Hamburger Hill, leaves Nixon under pressure to navigate a path out. The first troop withdrawals come in June. In November, Nixon outlines what comes to be called the Nixon Doctrine. He promises to keep America's treaty commitments, assisting its allies to defend themselves, but asserts that foreign nations are chiefly responsible for their own defense and security.

It's a bitter blow to the administration in Saigon, utterly reliant on US might and money to continue the war. By the end of 1969, US troop numbers in Vietnam have fallen to under half a million, with some 12,000 killed during the year. Then in March 1970, Nixon announces another 150,000 troops are to leave. On the ground in Vietnam, there are increasing strains among the remaining American troops. Of the hundreds of thousands out there, only 50,000 or so are slugging it out on the front line at any one stage. The rest are holed up in huge camps, little islands of Americana cut off from the society around them. A good many turn to drink and drugs to pass the time.

Disciplinary problems are endemic. Racial tensions permeate battalions so that troops sleep beside their weapons in fear of attack by their own comrades. There are even instances of fragging, the murder of senior officers, with some estimates putting the number well into the hundreds. It goes to fuel the rising tide of anti-war sentiment back in the States. Everyone knows someone who's lost someone, or who's come back with life-changing injuries, or stories of the hellish conditions for GIs and Vietnamese alike. Protests have been getting larger and larger. Take the 100,000 who went to the Pentagon

and stuffed flowers into the rifle barrels of the military police, or the 400,000 who demonstrated outside the UN building in New York, or the half million who made their way through the Capitol last year. I was working as a very young reporter in the United States, and I remember the incredible scene there, the alienation of the young from older people. It was all mixed up with hippies and drugs and all sorts of other things. Those kids, millions and millions of American kids, felt personally threatened by the prospect that they themselves were going to be asked to go and fight and die in Vietnam.

With peace talks still stalled, the protests continue. The protests continue. It's a little after midday on the 4th of May 1970 at Kent State University in Ohio. A young woman is among a crowd of two or three hundred students gathered on the Commons, a grassy knoll in the middle of campus, the traditional focal point of college gatherings. The college's victory bell, normally rung after sports events, chimes the beginning of today's event. It has been a tense few days of protests, with trouble intensifying between students and police, stones thrown, fires lit. The National Guard have arrived to keep order. Right now, though, the atmosphere is genial, interspersed with impromptu renditions of protest songs. Alongside the singing, a buzz of chatter. Someone taps the young woman on

the shoulder and offers her a smoke. But no one loses sight that this is a serious business. That there are innocents dying on all sides. And for what? If this is what the besuited men in Washington let happen, then the young in their t-shirts and denim must make a stand. A chant of, draft beer, not boys, goes up, and then, hell no, we won't go. On the ground lies an empty coffin someone has managed to get hold of, draped in the stars and stripes. A hundred yards away, an even bigger crowd has gathered to watch the protest in between classes. A hush descends, ready for a speaker to address them, when suddenly there is a change in the mood. A jeep approaches, containing three National Guardsmen.

Through a bullhorn, they boom out an order to disperse. Some students respond with obscene gestures. The young woman joins a new round of chanting. Then she sees a rock flying overhead towards the vehicle. It is a quick descent into chaos. The guards swell in number, some no older than the protesters, and fire off tear gas. The student drops her cigarette and takes off with the crowd towards a hill away from the commons. A student drops a cigarette and takes off with the crowd towards a hill away from the commons.

The guards trail close behind, their weapons locked and loaded and fixed with bayonets. The young woman is among those who gather at the crest of the hill. With the official protest now broken up, the guards will probably be on their way. But the atmosphere remains hostile, and as they march through the students, one of them raises his pistol into the air and fires off a shot. She watches as perhaps two dozen of the uniformed men drop to their knees and aim their weapons at the students. The man next to her laughs, as if they're going to fire. For maybe 15 seconds, her ears fill with a terrifying noise. She falls to the ground, arms up around her head.

All goes quiet, the firing stops. She is unhurt. They must have been blanks. Then screaming. And through the pandemonium, a shout. They killed somebody. And not just one somebody. By the time the violence is over, two women and two men, aged 19 and 20, are dead. Nine others lie wounded. In spite of the protests, the war carries on. 1970 rolls into 71. In February, the ARVN launch a major offensive against the North, but without direct U.S. troop assistance, a test of the Vietnamization strategy. The mission stutters badly, cementing fears that the policy isn't working. In June, the New York Times publishes a series of incendiary articles

based on secret government memoranda from between 1945 and 1967, leaked by a think tank employee. They show how successive US governments have known the war to be unwinnable, and also prove American involvement in the overthrow and murder of Diem way back in 1963. The White House is shown to have systematically lied to the American people in a war whose combatants it has perhaps never really understood. It wasn't in the name of freedom, really. It was in the name of this huge American illusion that they were up against a great communist monolith.

And they were actually up against people who cared passionately about local issues, about landlordism, about corruption, about all these other things, and had no interest in Marxism or Leninism or Trotskyite convictions or anything else. I've always argued that one can never hope to win any of these wars, whether in Vietnam,

whether in Iraq, whether in Afghanistan, unless one can really convince the people on the ground that you are doing it for them and not for yourselves. Although it all predates him, Nixon is incandescent, aware the political fallout taints him too. He is determined to take revenge on Daniel Ellsberg, the whistleblower. As part of the campaign to discredit him, Nixon's team give the go-ahead for a break-in at Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office, one thread of a tangled web that also includes the bugging of Nixon's opponents inside Washington's Watergate complex. Meanwhile, far away in Paris, finally some headway is being made. The North is no longer calling for the immediate removal of the Saigon government. It provides an opening.

The USSR wants out of Vietnam just as the US does, while Beijing and Washington have recently been playing nice with each other too. Both the Soviets and the Chinese, therefore, have reason to pressure Hanoi back to negotiations. There is a twist, though. Hanoi calculates that its best chance of a good deal is to have as strong a military hand as possible. The more territory it holds at the time of any agreement, the better. On the 30th of March 1972,

the North Vietnamese begin what's known in the West as the Easter Offensive. North Vietnamese begin what's known in the West as the Easter Offensive. Some 120,000 troops, augmented by thousands more Viet Cong, launch waves of attacks on ARVN bases and Saigon-held towns and cities. The South Vietnamese and the U.S., whose presence in the country can now be counted in tens of thousands, are caught on the hop. Furious fighting persists for months. So we all knew that the South Vietnamese government was on borrowed time. And although I was one of those, I always thought that the other side, the communists,

were unspeakably cruel and did not deserve to win. And I always remember when one visited villages where Viet Cong or North Vietnamese had come in during the night and they'd kill the village headmen and they'd beheaded the children of the headmen and they'd buried those who were believed to be supporters of the Saigon government up to their necks in the sand before killing them. But on the other hand, you never felt it was a catch chance

that the South Vietnamese and their American sponsors were going to win because they weren't the good guys either. A raging Nixon, eyeing his re-election campaign later in the year, responds by launching Operation Linebacker. The first continuous bombing initiative since late 1968, it targets Hanoi and Haiphong, a major port where the Soviets land supplies. The ARVN are able to win back some of the North's early gains, but there is no hiding

that the South, now under the leadership of President Thieu, will likely struggle alone in future face-offs. With US troop numbers in the country scheduled to fall to under 25,000 by the end of the year, Nixon sets a deadline for a peace deal, the 7th of November, the day America goes to the Poles. In late October, Kissinger announces that peace is close at hand. After secret talks with the North, he outlines how each side is to maintain its current position, a ceasefire to be declared, the US to leave, and the North and South to then sort out any remaining differences. I certainly believe that Henry Kissinger was a boundlessly ruthless and even brutal man.

He cared only about the interests of the United States and, dare we say it, also the interests of Henry Kissinger. And he was walking into the White House, and he was sitting down with Nixon, and he said, I forget the exact words he used, but Kissinger didn't say to Nixon, we're about to make a deal that is going to bring peace, that is going to save countless lives. He said, we're on the brink of a deal that is going to absolutely screw the Democrats

and the upcoming election. But Nixon worries the deal looks like they're backing down to the communists and abandoning the South, who rage at its terms. Though it goes unsigned for now, once Nixon wins another four years as president, he pushes for a final agreement before his inauguration in January. With few chips left to gamble, he is frustrated by the intransigence of both North and South. Shortly before Christmas, he gives Hanoi a 72-hour ultimatum. Strike a deal agreeable to all, or suffer the consequences. When no deal emerges, massive airstrikes begin.

Over 11 days, B-52s drop 40,000 tons of bombs on a 60-mile stretch between Hanoi and Haiphong, the most intense bombing of the war, and an act that stirs significant international disquiet. Talks resume on the 8th of January 1973, and a deal is struck within a day. In truth, it is basically the same as Kissinger's October offer, but the North, fearing more bombing, are happy to take it, while the South sees little choice, knowing their American sponsors will soon be gone regardless. The Paris Peace Accords are signed on the 27th of January. Washington withdraws its remaining troops in staged intervals and repatriates its prisoners

of war, a key component of the peace deal. By April there are just 209 troops left at the embassy in Saigon. Then, in June, Congress blocks any future money for Indochina. Thieu is on his own. It was a very spooky business being in South Vietnam from 1973 when nearly all the Americans had gone and the South Vietnamese regime was being bled to death, that they had ever fewer shells, they had ever fewer bombs, they had ever less fuel for their helicopters and all the expensive equipment the Americans

had given them. And one couldn't see any end of this other than the communists winning. But on the other hand, everybody knew who'd been involved with the South Vietnamese regime what the communists were going to do to those on the South side if they won. And indeed they did do to a lot of those who were on the South side. So there were a lot of people in South Vietnam who felt they had to keep sort of fighting in order to save their own necks and to save their own families and to prevent the communists from winning. Back in the US, life doesn't get any easier for Nixon post-Vietnam. The Watergate break-in turns into an unprecedented scandal,

with questions about Nixon's role in it. By August, he can no longer outrun it and becomes the first US president to resign his office. The end of a turbulent era. In March 1975, the North launches what they believe will be their final major push. Soon it controls much of the South, with 100,000 troops marching on Saigon. Tu resigns on the 21st of April, openly bitter at what he considers the US's abandonment. A week later, the American radio station in Saigon plays White Christmas on a loop, a

signal to its personnel to prepare for evacuation. Images of embassy staff being helicoptered off roofs amid violent storms are beamed around the world. The next day, People's Army tanks crash through the gates of the presidential palace. The North claims the win at last. North and South are officially merged into the Socialist Republic of Vietnam in 1976. Vietnam remains under sanctions and reliant on Soviet aid until 1994. But diplomatic relations with the U.S. are re-established a year later, and the nation, still a one-party state, embarks on an upward economic trajectory.

But the process of recovery is ongoing, the land still pockmarked by bomb craters, scarred by deforestation, and laden with undiscovered landmines. The scars linger too in the US, socially and politically. From Nixon on, Washington has displayed extreme caution in putting troops on the ground in foreign wars. Instead, the preference has been for quick victories using overwhelming airstrikes. Moreover, Vietnam remains at the heart of debates about when such intervention is unavoidable. at the heart of debates about when such intervention is unavoidable. But for many observers, the American view of the Vietnam War is itself symptomatic of a wider problem around America's search for its role on the world stage.

I think all Vietnamese, both South and North, had a profound grievance against the United States because from beginning to end of the war, Washington governments acted solely in accordance with what they thought were the requirements of the United States, not the requirements of the Vietnamese people. And the best part of 2 million people died in Vietnam. It was a Vietnamese tragedy on which the American tragedy was overlaid. Quite a few people on the American right have attempted to rehabilitate the Vietnam War.

Some people from John Wayne onwards have gone on trying to make it look like a noble cause, but actually it was a ghastly conflict that cost devastating human suffering and loss, and all based on a vast misunderstanding of what was going on out there in Southeast Asia. Next time on Short History, I will bring you a short history of Walter Raleigh. will bring you a short history of Walter Raleigh. This is a man who divided opinion in his own lifetime, can and should divide opinion now. He writes again and again that truth is up for grabs.

He's a remarkable man who, as I write, lived more lives than most. And to live with that intensity on so many fronts, as soldier, as sailor, as writer, as lover, as courtier, as politician, as philosopher, as traveler, he is remarkable. Definitely shouldn't set him up as some kind of simplistic hero of English nationalism, because he was very far from that. That's next time. from that.