The Rest Is History - 72. The Vietnam War

Episode Date: July 8, 2021

No war has divided public opinion more than the conflict in Vietnam. Andrew Preston, Cambridge University Professor of American History, joins Dominic Sandbrook and Tom Holland to discuss the international politics surrounding the conflict. A Goalhanger Films & Left Peg Media production Produced by Jack Davenport Exec Producer Tony Pastor *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is the Vietnam War in the morning. It sounds like the rest is history. It is indeed the rest is history, and our theme today is the Vietnam War. Dominic. Hello, Tom. A field of particular interest to you, I think.

Yes, I'm sure listeners will be thrilled to hear that this is the sort of the subject of my PhD. So my PhD was on a very little known American politician called Eugene McCarthy, who ran for president in 1968 against the Vietnam War. He thought it was a bad idea. And he basically toppled Lyndon Johnson, who was the sort of democratic incumbent over the issue of the war. And so, you know, I spent, I wasted three years reading about the anti-war movement and writing this sort of unread PhD. But not wasted, because now you can entertain and inform our listeners. Exactly. The depth of your scholarship. Exactly. I knew it would be worth it. I knew one day, after having spent a year in an archive in Minneapolis, or rather in

St. Paul, the twin city of Minneapolis, I knew that one day I would get a 45-minute podcast out of this. Oh, listeners, how lucky you are. But Dominic, it would be fair to say that, of course, the Vietnam War is not just about the reactions to the Vietnam War in America. There is actually fighting going on there is in Indochina yes do we have a world beating expert we well I thought we needed somebody at the absolute top of the game um I thought of an old friend of mine who um is absolutely steeped in the Vietnam War and has devoted much of his career to it he sadly can't

make it so um we've we've So we've got Professor Andrew Preston from Cambridge, who's another ex-acquaintance of mine, soon to be former friend once he's done this podcast. Andrew, welcome to the show. Thanks, Dom. It's great to be here. I remember our PhD days together really well. I don't remember you spending a year in the archive. I do remember you going off to Minnesota and spending a year there. I remember you spending a year playing PlayStation and drinking a lot of beer and watching a lot of football. So those are my memories. This is precisely the manly sort of activities that our listeners will expect to be hearing about.

Andrew, if Dominic had to go to Minnesota, did you go to Vietnam at all? I didn't go to Vietnam. No, I went to Boston, where the JFK Library is, and Austin, Texas, where the LBJ Library is, and Washington, D.C. But I did go to Vietnam, but not as part of that research. whose knowledge of the Vietnam War is basically, as you could tell from the introduction, where I even misquoted Apocalypse Now, whose knowledge of the war is basically refracted through Hollywood. Could you just give us a kind of sense of how the war began, how it evolved and how it ended? Sure. Yeah. And how many days do we have? This is a challenge for you. In about three minutes? Right. Huge question. I think I can do that. So the French had colonized Indochina, Indochina being Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. They did that over a 30 or 40 year period in

the 19th century. And then World War II, the French empire was basically shattered. And during that period between the late 19th century and World War II, there was an anti-colonial movement fighting for Vietnamese independence. So World War II sort of shatters French power. But because of the Cold War, the US supports the French reimposing their colonial rule. So there's what we call the first Indochina War happened from 1946 to 1954 between the French and trying to impose some kind of colonial rule, some kind of new rule. And the Viet Minh, communists who were also nationalists. And that war ended in 1954 with a famous battle, Dien Bien Phu, which is this incredible story. And a lot of books have been written about it. And instead of just sort of cutting their losses, the US decides because

of the Cold War, because of a misreading of what was going on in Vietnam and also the Cold War, they decide in their infinite wisdom to basically take over from where the French left off, to split the country in half and like Korea was divided, like Germany was divided, and create an independent non-communist country, a new country in South Vietnam. And that would be where the free world was. And then the commies could have the North. And of course, the Viet Minh and the Vietnamese nationalists and communists, they don't stand for that. And so they start undermining and fighting the South Vietnamese government the US has set up. And that leads to the big American war in the 1960s. And that ends

in the 1970s. In 1973, u.s um withdraws they made those same mistakes that the french had made they made the same mistakes the japanese had made in world war ii in not being able to hold this country uh against its people's will and so that's the famous scene of uh embassy staff being evacuated on helicopters that's two years later isn't it yeah that's in april 75 so you see the U.S. withdraws in 73. And then like a lot of things about Vietnam, things that we assume are true, that photo, that really famous photo. I always ask my students, what photographs, what are the five most famous photographs or images you think of of the war? That's one they always mention. That was actually on the top on the roof of the CIA station in Saigon, not of the embassy. It's a small detail, but it sort

of is very indicative of how just so much of what we think about the war just actually is slightly not true. Well, I reckon that thing of the five most famous photos, I mean, that might be quite a good way of exploring what's going on in the war. What do you think, Dominic? Yeah, I mean, well, tell us about some of these, what about all these misconceptions? I find that interesting as well. So what are the big misconceptions of the war that you're, I mean, what do people, if there's one thing people think

about the Vietnam War that's not right, what would you say it was? Well, I like how you dodged that question. What are the images that come to mind? Well, the images seems a weird thing to me on a podcast, Tom. But everyone will know them. That's the point. They're iconic. I mean, I would immediately say the photo of the girl.

Exactly. With the napalm bomb. Let's talk about that because that is fascinating. That's the one that immediately comes to my mind. Absolutely. That's that. And then I'll give one away. Sorry, Don, this is probably the one you were going to say.

But the monk who self-immolates, who burns himself in protest in 1963, just sitting still and he's on fire in protest at what's going on. That's another super famous photo that's on album covers and T-shirts and whatnot. But the photo you're talking about of Kim Phuc, this girl named Kim Phuc, who's running towards the camera, a photographer named Nick Ute, who was with AP, I think, the Associated Press, is so iconic. And it really captures the pain and suffering of the war. This gets sort of links to something that Dom asked me about misconceptions. Everyone thinks that that is sort of speaks to the horror of the American war, which it does in large part, because the reason the war was on was because of American policy. But by the time that photo was taken, most of the American soldiers had gone. This is in the early 70s. And the troops that are standing behind her and she's running towards the camera, her back is

literally on fire because it's covered in napalm that's burning and she can't get off. That's the thing about napalm. Just once it sticks, it sticks and it just keeps burning. So she's running towards the camera, the poor little girl, and she's naked. And the soldiers behind her, everyone assumes they're American soldiers, but they're South Vietnamese soldiers. And the plane that had dropped that napalm was a South Vietnamese plane. And so one of the things that we forget about is this civil war dimension, this intra-Vietnamese dimension of the war, that it really was a Vietnamese civil war that the US kind of walks into and then walks away from. There's a tendency, right, with all this, with so many of these Cold War stories or

stories about American so-called imperialism, that the other people don't get agency, right? I mean, they probably would have. Am I right in thinking there would have been a war in Vietnam, whether the Americans were involved or not, that the Vietnamese would have fought one another? Yeah, for sure. Without question. Absolutely. And for a long time, the historians kind of ignored that.

I mean, they would write about the Vietnam War, but there would be nothing about the Vietnamese. That's changed in the last 20 years, thankfully. So there are a lot of historians, unlike myself, who speak and read Vietnamese, who have given a lot of attention, not just to the communist side, but to the kind of forgotten side of the war, the South Vietnamese, the South Vietnamese government, the people, the army.

And I mean, now it's kind of, you can't really write the history of the war without talking about the North and South Vietnamese and making them a big part of the story. But Dominic, you said so-called American imperialism in your best Daily Mail. Woke bashing mood. But it is. I mean, it is imperialism, isn't it? Well, I mean, they're going...

So just looking at the beginning of it, we've got a question from Mark Taylor. How much of the blame in this goes on the French? Oh, I mean, let's always blame the French. I.e. for not giving Vietnam independence post 1945 and how much blame goes to the US for not putting their foot down when they had the opportunity.

So the French are clearly imperialist. I mean, there's no question about that. No question. The Americans are kind of secretly backing the French in their war, right? I mean, they're advisors at Dien Bien Phu, I think. Let me just jump in here, Tom, before it goes to Andrew. Obviously, the French are imperialists.

The French have a sense of the glory of France, of the French Empire, and so on. But the Americans, it's slightly different because, of course, the Americans in the 1940s see themselves as anti-imperialist. So Roosevelt is talking about tearing down European colonial empires. And actually, this is a good cue for Andrew, because I have read his PhD in his book. So I know that I think the first line, isn't it, or something like this, the Vietnam War was above all an episode in the Cold War. So you think the Americans don't see themselves as imperialists, but they see themselves as fighting to, I mean, they genuinely see themselves as fighting to uphold democracy, right? Yeah, Tom just said it. It's anti-imperial

imperialism without question. Yeah, the Americans themselves didn't see themselves as imperialists. I mean, you wouldn't, right? They're just trying to do good. They're trying to spread freedom. They're trying to beat back communism. Why would anyone want communism? The French in this period, in 1945, 1946, even they don't see themselves as imperialists, even though they clearly are imperialists. But, you know, the Vietnamese aren't ready for independence yet. Why would anyone want to turn their back on the glories of France and so on and so forth? And the French also after World War II, they really need this, right? They really need to, they feel that they need to kind of recover some of this glory that they've clearly lost in a lot of the

humiliations of World War II. The really interesting thing here is that behind the scenes, the Americans in the late 40s are anti-imperialist. And they, a lot of American officials, that is. And they think that the French cause is a losing one and they don't really want to back this losing horse. And yeah, they're kind of nervous about, because Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Minh, they're nationalists, but they're also, they're communists through and through, right? They're Maoists, some of them are Stalinists, like these are not sort of warm and fuzzy, cuddly liberals. So it's a difficult choice. But a lot of US officials are thinking the French have behaved appallingly. I mean, FDR, when he trots out sort of the worst examples of European imperialism, it's always the french in indo-china that's who he singles out um that's very gratifying it is very good yeah well he also

he gave churchill a hard time sometimes but then he would what made churchill feel good is then fdr would turn to the french and be like oh they're they're even worse than you so what are the french doing that say worse than the belgians in the congo well i don't think they're worse than the belgians in the congo i'm not sure fdr gave much thought to the belgians in the Congo. Well, I don't think they're worse than the Belgians in the Congo. I'm not sure FDR gave much thought to the Belgians in the Congo. Right. What are the French doing that's so terrible? It's not, it's so,

I mean, like with any kind of colonial history, you have a lot of episodes that happen that are, that don't exactly cover the French in glory, but it's basically France has lost the Japanese in World War II, kicked the French out. That's why it's that struggle between Japan and France that brings the U.S. into World War II because Japan wants to take over French Indochina, not because it in and of itself is important, but it's a launching pad for further expansion. And then they move into French Indochina. The U.S. knows this.

They start to put an embargo on Japan. And so Japan says, well, we have to go further now into the Dutch East Indies and Malaya to get all these natural resources there, especially oil. And they knock out the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor as a preemptive strike to stop the U.S. from preventing Japanese expansion in Southeast Asia. So the French are knocked out. They come back. They try and come back in 45, 46 when clearly they didn't have the power to do so. And like I was saying, the US behind the scenes, US officials, a lot of US officials were thinking this is a really bad idea. But at the same time, the Cold War is ramping up in Europe, and the US absolutely needs

France on side in Europe. And so the French essentially make them a quid pro quo offer. They say, fine, we'll support you in Europe against the Soviets if you support us against the Viet Minh in Vietnam. And that's how the US gets involved. At that point, is American anxiety about the communism of the Vietnamese freedom fighters? I mean, does that have currency? Increasingly, absolutely. Increasingly so. Not so much in 45, 46, 47. The Viet Minh and the OSS, the Office of Strategic Services, which was the forerunner of the CIA, they cooperate. Like they run joint operations together, joint missions together from southern China against the Japanese.

Ho Chi Minh writes letters to FDR. Ho's codename was OSS Agent 19. And Ho spoke some English. I mean, they were allies against the Japanese. And then that kind of all falls apart as we get into the Cold War. And then as you said, Tom, anxiety about US anxiety about communism sort of kicks into super high gear in 1947-48. And by that point, the sides are kind of hardening on both sides. And then if we move forward a bit, obviously it goes wrong for the French. The French basically, I'm trying to remember this from sort of our last thoughts about

about 20 years ago. The French are basically cornered, aren't they, at Dien Bien Phu. Right. And the Americans, now I might be completely misremembering this, but don't the Americans have meetings about it? Andard nixon is vice president and nixon says would it not be a good idea to drop a nuclear bomb on them is that not right yeah i forget i actually forget if uh nick if nixon himself recommended nukes but he definitely recommended going in hard as a lot but there were other i mean the joint chiefs thought maybe we should use nukes, tactical nukes, to rescue the French garrison at Dien Bien Phu. And Eisenhower eventually decides no. And one of

the reasons he decides no is because A, he thinks it's a bad idea, but B, he asks Churchill what he thinks, Churchill's prime minister, of course, at this time. And Churchill says that's a terrible idea. I mean, as much as he's pro-French, as much as he's pro-Empire, he thought that was a bad idea. You had a very good opportunity there, which you've turned down to do, a Winston Churchill impersonation. But maybe if you warm into the podcast, you can. I think I'll have to warm into it.

American characters, I can do. British characters, I find it more difficult. But if I do one, then you have to do one of your American impressions, Tom. Oh, you know how Tom did a hilarious yee-haw. Yeah, mine was brilliant. In the wild west. It was greeted with rapturous enthusiasm on the other side of the Atlantic.

The French get captured and kind of marched off to prisoner of war camps. So that's a humiliation for European self-esteem following on the humiliation of the British against the Japanese and so on. And so that presumably is playing into the idea that white people going around and telling people around the world what to do is fading out. I know that we've described the Vietnam War as a kind of anti-imperial imperialism, but do the Americans feel that they're kind of, you know, swimming against the tide of, I mean, I suppose that they're casting that tide as a Marxist tide and therefore it obscures what's happening. Would that be fair? Exactly. Exactly. That's putting it exactly right. The US, I mean, this is the thing.

In retrospect, it's easy to sort of make the argument. Max Hastings makes this argument in his recent book on the Vietnam War, which is a fantastic book, that the U.S. basically – one of the big mistakes the U.S. made was just taking over the French role in Vietnam in 1954-55 and becoming a kind of, you know, if not old school 19th century scramble for Africa imperialists, they become kind of neo-imperialists or neo-colonialists or whatever. And it's easy to see that in retrospect, but Americans at the time were worried about that. And they bent over backwards to try and prevent that, which is why they wanted to build up South Vietnam as a kind of South Korea, as a Taiwan, as a West Germany, you know, all these divided countries in the Cold War, you want to use them as test cases, as laboratories for this is why our system is superior than their system. And South Vietnam was going to be that. And it wasn't, you know,

Americans at the time said, well, there's no way we're an empire. We're not imperialists. We don't do empire. We just defeated an empire in Nazi Germany and Japan. We're fighting an empire against the Soviet Union. We're not imperialists, even if we think they are. And they would stress the, you know, economic development and political freedom and all that sort of thing. And they wanted to build up South Vietnam as this kind of example of what could happen, what could work if people turn their back against communism. Just wondering about the ongoing role of the French in this. When the French see the Americans piling in, where they've just completely screwed up.

So we've got a question from Michael Healy. Why did no one seem to ask the French, who had had something of a shocker in Vietnam a few years prior, whether this was a good idea, and even what lessons the French had learned from said shocker? I mean, is that fair? Are the Americans consulting the French? And what did the French think of it?

It's so interesting. When you read the declassified documents, the Americans consulting the French? And what do the French think of it? It's so, when you read the declassified documents, the Americans are well aware of this. And they're saying, but we're not the French. We're not the French. We'll do it right. We'll avoid the French mistakes. We're the good guys.

We're the good guys. But they have a low opinion of the French, obviously, because the French, I mean, they must have so much baggage of World War II, right? They think the French are shoddy performers. They'll always crack. They, you know, they can't be trusted. Cheese-eating surrender monkeys. They do think that though, don't they? I mean, they clearly do. They absolutely think that. They think we're not going to make the same mistakes as the French.

We're going to do it smart. We'll do it right. And we're not going to wilt. And in 1963, de Gaulle himself, I mean, this is classic de Gaulle, right? So the French leave and then they leave Algeria, you know, several years after that. And it's in 1963. So it's post Vietnam, post Algeria, if you're, if you're the French and to go then kind of has the temerity to say, um, it's a bad idea to go into these countries and to sort of impose your rule. And he tells the Americans very publicly, um, you know, you should just get out of Vietnam. We should neutralize Vietnam, meaning we should make it get, get everyone there to agree. They won't be communistists. They won't be non-communists. And we'll, all the great powers will stay out of it. And he really lectures the Americans. He really scolds them. And of

course, the Americans are like rolling their eyes and they're just like, come on, you know, give me a break. But, you know, de Gaulle was right. And you could say, okay, the French made those mistakes, but then they learned from the mistakes. But the Americans said, we're not the French. So there's another obvious dimension, which is the British, right? Don't the Americans also talk to the Brits? The Brits are obviously in Malaya at the same time. The Brits are fighting insurgents in Malaya. And don't the Brits say, this is a very bad idea and you shouldn't do this?

You should learn our lessons? Or what's the story there? Well, here's the thing. Only later do they say that in the mid to late 60s when Vietnam is clearly a bad idea. The Americans in the 1950s, so the U.S. is building up South Vietnam. The U.S. is also fighting a counterinsurgency, much smaller counterinsurgency war in the Philippines against the Hucs, who were a leftist nationalist, kind of like the Viet Minh insurgency in the Philippines. So they're helping the Filipinos fight that insurgency in the Philippines. So they're helping the Filipinos fight that insurgency. They're also assisting from, but really learning from the British in Malaya, because the British

are fighting a counterinsurgency in the 50s against Chinese communists in Malaya that works, that's successful. And it's still to this day, it's held up as how to do counterinsurgency. Look at Malaya. Don't look at Vietnam. Look at Malaya in the 1950s. And so the US thinks, because it's got all this advice from Britain, because it's kind of had this experience in the Philippines, it thinks, yeah, we can do this. We're not the French. We're learning from the British. We're taking our ideas applied in the Philippines. We can do this. We've got this. Not realizing that againstietnamese communists and nationalists they are up against like the the best most hardened most committed fighters um they just one of the

things is they just picked the wrong enemy in the wrong place in the wrong time could i that we've got a question from jim condi on britain and vietnam and he asked how close did the uk come to getting involved and he cites the experiences in Malaya and how much damage to the decision not to assist affect Harold Wilson's relationship with the US. Yeah, Wilson was in a really, really tough spot because LBJ put huge, Lyndon Johnson, put huge pressure on Wilson to send troops. Wilson, very, very conveniently,

I mean, it was a real struck of luck. He had an out and LBJ wanted him to ignore this out, but Wilson could fall back on it. And it was that Britain and the Soviets. So in 1954, when the French are kicked out, there's a big conference in Geneva and the great powers decide against the V this – they're going to split Vietnam in two at the 17th parallel. And that's where you get North and South Vietnam. And the Viet Minh are in North Vietnam and the US kind of oversees South Vietnam. And that was supposed to be temporary, but it becomes permanent. And overseeing that arrangement to make sure everything was fair – this brings me back to Wilson – there was something – there was a commission created to oversee the partition of Vietnam and the fact that there would be free and fair elections to reunify the country two years later in 1956. And Britain and the Soviet Union are made the kind of co-conveners of that commission

to oversee what goes on in Vietnam. And that commission is technically still around in the 60s. Even though it has no power, nobody listens to it. And so when Johnson puts all this pressure on Wilson to send troops, Wilson says, you know, I'd love to, but I can't. Damn. I can't. I've got this commission that requires me to be objective. You know, I'd love to send troops. It's all these scenes, aren't there, where LBJ says, just send me a band.

Just send me a marching band or something so that I can tell people the British are involved. And Will always weasels out of it. Well, I'm not going to – that's up for you. But the Australians, they sign up. So you do get cricket pitches as well as baseball pitches. That's right. I get in my mention of cricket.

So this goes back to a question that Dom or something Dom raised at the beginning about misconceptions. I mean, we think that the whole world was against American involvement in Vietnam. And most of it was. And pretty much all of Europe was. And Canada was. And a good chunk of the U.S. itself was. Latin America was. Most former colonial

countries were but the countries in southeast asia in the region volunteer a lot of them most of them voluntarily sent troops um australia new zealand taiwan south korea the philippines thailand um you know they were they were kind of scared of a communist advance as well it doesn't mean that it made it right, intervention right in Vietnam, because to me, it clearly wasn't right. But it is complex. And there was an Australian journalist who was asked by an American anti-war protester. It's a great quote from the war that is probably like most of the best quotes from the Vietnam War, completely apocryphal. But it's such a good quote that I use it all the time in teaching.

And the American war protester asked the Australian journalist, why are you sending troops to this clearly unjustifiable, illegitimate war? And the Aussie is reported to have said, to you Americans, it's the Far East, but to us in Australia, it's the Near North. I mean, this is our backyard. So sometimes it's a little more complex than we think. But Andrew, that raises a really interesting question. So obviously, anybody of our generation or later came to the study of this with this baggage, with this sense, you know, it was a complete disaster and it was a legitimate war and the Americans dropped all this napalm and they

destroyed, you know, cities and killed lots of innocent people and all this it's very hard to rid yourself of that but um there is a surely a question i mean the british succeeded in malaya and they you know malaysia exists right i mean the state that they basically created exists similarly with south korea the americans intervene in south in korea they created a sort of korean south Vietnam that worked, that's still very successful. And that, you know, people don't see that now as illegitimate or even though that was an incredibly bloody and horrible war. So had it succeeded, we wouldn't think the same way about the Vietnam War, would we? I mean, if it had worked, then people wouldn't see it as imperialist and illegitimate. Would they or would they? No, it really cuts right to the core, right to the heart of one of the most difficult things about the Vietnam War.

So the U.S., I still think that the war was illegitimate and I still think that it was unnecessary. I always have. And my view on that hasn't really changed. And when you look at what actually happened, as you were saying, the U.S. dropped almost four times the bomb tonnage on Indochina, on Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Almost four times. It's like over three and a half times. Then it dropped. Then all parties dropped in all of World War II. I mean, that's incredible.

It's incredible. I mean, it just defies logic. And Laos is the most heavily bombed per capita. It's the most heavily bombed country in the world. Here's a really weird thing. Of all those bombs that the U.S. dropped, more than everyone did in World War II, in all theaters of World War II,

not just the U.S. bombs, not just U.S. bombs, but every country that fought World War II, the U.S. dropped more bombs in Vietnam and Laos and Cambodia than in all of World War II. That in itself is staggering. But then when you think about that, of the bombs that the U.S. dropped more bombs in Vietnam and Laos and Cambodia than in all of World War II. That in itself is staggering. But then when you think about that, of the bombs that the U.S. dropped in Indochina in the 1960s and 70s, it bombed its ally, South Vietnam, more than it bombed anyone else. I mean, the majority of the bombs that the U.S. dropped were on its ally, South Vietnam.

I mean, that speaks to the difficulty of war. Can I ask a really dumb question? Why are they doing that? Well, that's where the war is. That's where the insurgency is. Right. Okay. No, to the difficulty really dumb question why are they doing that well that's where the that's where the war is that's where the insurgency is right okay um no it's not it's not a dumb question it again it gets right to the this this bizarre war this sort of illogical war but going back to to dom's question um the korean war was just as bloody i mean proportionally it was bloodier than if you sort of it was only three years long the actual fighting so if you adjust it for the for the amount of time they spot fighting,

there was more destruction, more death in Korea than there was in Vietnam. It was a brutal, awful war and it was unpopular at home. And that's why Harry Truman didn't run again for president was because Korea was so unpopular. And yet it turned out to be a success story. And so it raises this question that I love to discuss with my students. Is the result what determines morality? I mean, sometimes it doesn't clearly. Sometimes things are just wrong. I still think the Vietnam War was wrong, but when you look at Korea, where the reasons for intervention were the same as they were in Vietnam, the scale of the brutality, the use of napalm, the indiscriminate bombing of civilian targets, civilian populations, all that kind of stuff. It's the same as in Vietnam. I mean, it's basically the same war with key differences, of course, but in essence, it's the same war.

And yet nobody would want to sort of go back and undo the Korean War now, right, when you look at South Korea and North Korea. I mean, it's the scale of the mismatch. It's the David and Goliath that I guess is kind of a key part of the fascination of it and um maybe we could look at the kind of you know the the way that american public opinion responded to it and the politics of it in the second half um and we should have a break but just just to end with um a question from vriendman who asks is vietcong the most badass army of the Yes. Okay.

Well, on that note, the most badass army of the second half of the 20th century. We'll go to a break. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip. And on our Q&A we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just

launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com. Hello, Dominic Sandbrook here. I've loved history since I was a boy. I grew up reading swashbuckling stories about adventures and battles, from the courage of the few as they soared above the Channel to the terror of Anne Boleyn on her way to the scaffold. A couple of years ago, I tried to find something similar for my own son,

a rollicking narrative history of the Second World War, but none of the bookshops had quite what I wanted. So in the end, I decided to write it myself. And not just one book, but a series. Adventures in Time, published by Penguin. The first two books, about the Second World War and the six wives of Henry VIII, are out now. They've got exciting stories and great characters, just as you'd expect from a children's book. As my son puts it, it's fun, but it's history. Adventures in Time are available now for children from 8 to 80. So that's Adventures in Time by me, Dominic Sandbro. And if they don't satisfy, you know where to go for a refund. His name is Tom Holland.

Welcome back to The Rest Is History. We are in Vietnam with Professor Andrew Preston from Cambridge University, and he's talking us through the war. Andrew, so this is a question that has always puzzled me. I mean, you probably remember a book that came out when we were PhD students together, Michael Lynn's book, Vietnam, The Necessary War. Oh, yeah. And this was a sort of revisionist account of the war that said it was the right war to fight and America bought time for its allies and all this kind of thing. So thinking about difficult questions about the war and sort of revisionist questions, here's one.

Could the US have won it?ist questions, here's one. Could the US have won it? I mean, couldn't they? They had so much military hardware. Is there a case that a sort of right wing revisionist American historians say that they were stabbed in the back by public opinion? And that basically, this was always the general's case, right? The general said, if you just give us more time, if you let us use more firepower, we will bomb them back to the Stone Age. I mean, that was their expression. Could that have happened or was that just a fantasy? So I think it's I think it's a fantasy. I don't think they I don't think they could have won the war. The generals were saying that, but not at first in 63, 64, 65, when LBJ is because the big war, the big American war begins in the spring and summer of 1965. And Johnson is then asking everyone, the CIA, Joint Chiefs of Staff, State Department, everyone, what should we do? And they have these, I mean, you know this, Dom, you've looked at this stuff too.

They have these endless series of meetings. And the people who are least keen on going to war, on having a big war in 1965, there are some people in the state department, you'd suspect that, um, or you'd expect that. Um, but the joint chiefs are really, I don't think you could call them anti-war because then you're picturing these sort of four-star generals burning bras and wearing long hair and sort of marching with pickets. It's not that, but they told LBJ, this is this war. If so, they say, if we're going to win this war, if we're going to win this war, it's going to take more than half a million men. It's going to take many, many years. It's going to take a really long commitment. You have to know what you're getting into. And even then, our chances of winning aren't great. I mean, so they were super realistic. It's not like- So they absolutely know what they're getting into. cautious about Iraq in 2003, but it's not like Iraq 2003, where you have people like Bush and Rumsfeld thinking, this is going to be a cakewalk. This is going to be easy. Nobody thought that about Vietnam. Once they're in, then the generals are like, okay, if we're in, we're going to win.

It's hard to believe, at least for me, it's hard to believe to think that the US, which helped defeat Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, the US is the U.S. is the only party in World War II that fought a truly global war. Britain did as well, but the U.S. to a much greater extent. That took a lot of doing, right? And so it's hard to believe that they couldn't then defeat not just Vietnam, but just North Vietnam, half of the part of Vietnam that didn't really ever industrialize and was very, very poor. But what it would have taken, it would have taken bombing them back to the Stone Age. It would have taken making, to use another expression from the time, making North Vietnam a parking lot.

And, you know, you have to ask, is that worth it? Is it feasible? What do you do with the country afterwards? So winning in absolute terms, yeah, the US probably could have done that. But winning on any kind of acceptable terms, even by the US's own standards of why they were fighting the war, no, I don't think it was possible. So a question for both of you, because I know that you both have very informed opinions on this, from Jack Hennison about LBJ. Is Lyndon Johnson's legacy unfairly tarnished due to his escalation of the Vietnam War as his

domestic policies were largely successful in his lifetime and I see I don't know if you saw last week there was a report on the narcissism of US presidents saying that the more narcissistic they were the likely they were to go to war and LBJ was the most narcissistic of them all so what do you think that's pretty much i think i well i think he was the most he i think he was the most narcissistic i think he was the most insecure but i did read that story as well tom i think it was in the times at least i read it in the times and i haven't read the full article but i was immediately skeptical because lbj did not want to go to war and if he could have made vietnam disappear as a problem he would have he and he didn't want to go to war. And if he could have made Vietnam disappear as a problem, he would have. And he didn't want to go to war. And this gets to your question or the question that was

just asked. He didn't want to go to war because he worried that the war would then overshadow his great society. It would overshadow civil rights reforms. It would overshadow and undermine and maybe eventually ruin this incredible domestic reform program that he had. Andrew, let me jump in there. Your mate, or our mate, Fred Logevill has a book called Choosing War, where he argues that it was, you know, the common, he says it's a common misconception that it was Kennedy's fault, that Kennedy, that it was Lyndon Johnson deliberately chose war,

he argues, partly because he was insecure, because he wanted to show his Cold War kind of cojones, because he felt the kind of Kennedy legacy hanging over him. And Johnson deliberately did it. And you say that you don't buy that. This is a family podcast. You can say cojones on here. Tom Holland talks about eunuchs and the genital mutilation we've had on this. And I didn't think we'd be getting it into this podcast, but yet again. But we have. That's what editors are for. As it were, pulled it off. No, Fred's absolutely right. This is a book called Choosing War. It's one of my favorite books on the war. It changed my whole, it came out when I was doing

my PhD, as Dom said, it changed my whole thinking on the war and the course of my PhD. So I think it's a great book. And I agree with Fred that LBJ chose war, that there were alternatives. That's the basic. Because one of the longstanding arguments about the war is that it's unfair to criticize Kennedy and especially Johnson for getting the US into Vietnam because they inherited this long commitment. It was the Cold War. And criticizing them for getting involved is sort of using hindsight. Hindsight's 20-20. We realize it's a mistake now, but going back to the early and mid-60s, it's unfair to criticize them of not knowing that it would become a disaster. But they knew, like I was saying about the Joint Chiefs. I mean, they knew. LBJ knew that it was going to be, at the very, very least, it was going to be extremely difficult. And he ultimately chose war. And maybe it's because he was insecure. Maybe it's even because he was narcissistic. But my point is that he, there was no rush to war. He deliberated for almost two years as to whether to go to war. And he kept looking for an out. And eventually he went to war because he felt backed into a corner, painted into a corner. And maybe that was because of domestic politics. Maybe that was because he was insecure about his

manhood or whatever. So he did choose war. But I don't know, a narcissist like Trump or somebody else to me seems pretty keen and pretty eager to sort of pull the trigger if he wants to pull the trigger. And Johnson was absolutely reluctant. I do think, I mean, it has tarnished his legacy, hasn't it? Absolutely. It's totally tarnished turned and it in some ways it's a great legacy civil rights immigration reform um not quite universal health care but universal health care for old people and poor people and so so the context for um lbj's presidency and then everything that follows is um escalating anti-war protests and we've got a number of questions on that so we've got one from um two listeners who regularly contribute great questions we've got

diego morgado who asks was the anti-war movement in the us driven by university educated middle class kids who just didn't want to go to war or was it more politically deep and widespread than that and we've got one from chet Archbold, who also Canadian, I think. How broad was the anti-war sentiment by the late 60s and early 70s? Was it a majority view or just a vocal minority? And to what degree was it a product

or a cause of the great sea change in American culture during that decade? And I know that both of you will have so much to say on that that we could be here for hours. So just very short answers from both of you. I think in answer to the first question, it was both.

It was both a principled stand and it was both people didn't want to go fight this very difficult to explain war, a war that was being fought in very tough circumstances, under very tough conditions, for reasons that a lot of people just thought were immoral and illegitimate. And of course, the people who were protesting were the ones who would have had to go fight that war. And so they had a stake in it, right? They definitely weren't. They had an interest in it. There was a conflict there. Because we should explain to listeners that the US had a draft. Had a draft, that's right.

Your number was drawn and then you had to go, right? Unless you like Donald Trump, didn't he have a dodgy foot or something? Well, yeah, he had bone spurs. Or at least he got a doctor to say he had bone spurs. Yeah, a lot of powerfully connected people got out of the draft that way. And there were other ways you could get out of it. What's that? Bill Clinton.

Well, Bill Clinton, he didn't come up with a kind of dodgy medical reason and then go party at Studio 54 and avoiding STDs, which Donald Trump says was his Vietnam. Bill Clinton actually wrote – it says a lot about American politics. Bill Clinton wrote a sort of anguished letter saying why he didn't want to fight. He was in Oxford at the time, I think, when he wrote this letter saying why he didn't want to fight. And he was in Oxford at the time, I think, when he wrote this letter saying why he didn't want to fight. So, you know, there are a lot of bad things we could say about Bill Clinton, but, you know, he kind of took a principled stand. Just to go back to the first question that you asked, Tom, about, you know, what was the, is this really just middle-class protest or is there something deeper to it? One of my favorite stories that I tell my students

is from a Time Magazine reporter covering the riots in Chicago, the anti-war riots in Chicago in 1968. A riot that wasn't caused by the students, but was caused by the police, the Chicago PD. There was a wonderful movie last year called the one with Sacha Baron Cohen. Yeah.

The Trial of the Chicago 7, isn't it? That's it, The Trial of the Chicago 7. Fantastic movie, really, really good movie. And it and it's historically i mean it plays fast and loose sometimes to tell a good story but it's a really it's a really good movie i've seen it seen it several times there was a time magazine reporter who was covering the riots this basically where the chicago pd declared war on these protesters and again it's it's it's almost too good this quote is almost too good it must be apocryphal but it was reported so i'm going to go with it um and it's where too good. This quote is almost too good. It must be apocryphal, but it was reported.

So I'm going to go with it. And it's where a policeman was beating a protester, this kid, this university kid, and beating him with his nightstick, his billy club. And as the cop raises his club to sort of land the final blow, the student raises his fist and yells, long live the proletariat. And the cop says, I am the proletariat and the cop says i am the proletariat and then proceeds to beat him senseless now it gets at this another one of these fundamental contradictions in in the war and the protest movement that um it's been called a working class war because most of the draftees who went off to fight it were working class who supported the war the protesters were mostly university age mostly middle class there is that social dynamic and that social dynamic

i don't think i'm sort of drawing too neat a line from the 60s to the present that's the same that's the exact same dynamic we see through american politics right up to today with donald trump and conservative populace i completely buy that i mean the phrase the silent majority yeah comes from this period. Richard Nixon gives this speech talking about, I'm appealing to you, the great silent majority. And this is the period in which Nixon is posed wearing a hard hat. I mean, very George Osborne-ish now, but at the time, because men, building workers in hard hats had attacked in New York City, I think 1970. 1970, that's right. A demonstration of precisely that kind of, you know, middle class affluent kids with long hair. But the kids with long hair were right, though. That's what I would like to add to that,

about the war. Another question, further complicating the dynamics of this from Adrian RP, can you comment on the racial makeup of US soldiers in relation to Muhammad Ali's comments that America was sending black boys to kill their brothers? Yeah. So African-American troops were drafted at twice out of proportion to their makeup of the US military personnel. And then they made up around a quarter of casualties. So they're about 10 percent, 12 percent of the population. They end up making about 25 percent of the casualties in Vietnam.

I mean, just that basic figure kind of should give you pause. Paul Hardcastle's, I think, 1984, 85 hit, which basically consisted of him talking about the average age of new combat soldiers in Vietnam. He says in World War II, the average age of the combat soldier was 26. In Vietnam, he was 19. No, no, no, no, 19. Is that true?

Pass. Pass. You don't know. Paul Hardcastle got it right. I don't know. Who knows? What about fragging? Who knows?

Andrew is fragging, Andrew? Is fragging a myth that particularly black soldiers would, you know, would they rig a grenade to kill their officers? Is that right? It's not a myth. It happened. I don't know about the ratio. I don't know if it was predominantly blacks on whites or anything like that.

But it was, yeah, if you're in the last years of the war, Nixon ended the draft. And all of a sudden, not coincidentally, you see protests start to decline. He also began to withdraw U.S. troops. You know, it's like John Kerry said to Congress when he was a student. This is in 1973 or something, or 72. And he was testifying to Congress and he said, how do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake? So in the last few years of the war, drug use goes up.

There are incidents of fragging against officers. And you would, I mean, come on, if you're sitting there and you're in your base and you can hear a firefight and then a sergeant or a lieutenant jumps up and says, right, let's go fight those commies. And you're like, you know, and the US is clearly on the way out of the war. Yeah.

I mean, you're not going to be up for it. Here's a quick question for you before we go. We need to talk about popular culture. I imagine Tom wants to talk about films. I do. But just before you do that, you mentioned Nixon. I did. So Nixon at the time and afterwards has got an incredibly bad press

for continuing the war from January 69 when he becomes president to 1973. I've always wondered about that because I've always thought it was almost, it was impossible for Nixon to just cut, you know, he couldn't, as it were, cut and run. I mean, the US has made this massive commitment to South Vietnam and he was kind of stuck at that stage. Am I being too kind to Nixon, do you think? It's a leading question because Dom, I know you're a fan of Richard Nixon and you used to teach a very popular course when you were a university lecturer on Nixon. I think there's something, so I know the answer you want me to give. Yeah, give my answer, please. I don't think I can. I don't think I can give the Dom Sandberg answer. But I think there's

something, I think there is something to it. It's a poison chalice withdrawing from Vietnam. Do you just, as the expression was, do you just turn tail and run? I mean, Nixon thought you shouldn't because it would damage American credibility. And I'm sure that's true, although I think that Nixon and Henry Kissinger exaggerated the extent to which people you're leaving behind? And when the US eventually did leave in 73, and then when the whole thing was then all over in 75, you know, there was a bloodbath of the people who were anti-communist and a lot of them were Roman Catholic and they didn't want communism. These are South Vietnamese. And, you know, they were treated really, really, really harshly.

And you could, you know, if you're South Vietnamese in 1975, 76, you're thinking, hold on a second. The Americans can go home, but what do we do? And a lot of people in Afghanistan are thinking that now. I still think it was right for the US to leave Vietnam. I think it's right, actually, that it's right for the US to leave Afghanistan as well. But it comes at a huge, huge, huge cost. Dominic allowed me to do a podcast on Nero. So I think I've got to allow him to do a podcast on Nixon at some point. So just moving away from Nixon, because two further, which I think are interconnected. So we've got a question from Sneaks McCoy. Why did the US military allow

journalists such unrestricted and unprecedented access to military actions during the vietnam war what were they hoping to gain so this is this is a war that is massively people know about it it's it's a huge deal it's in people's television sets around the world um and then we had a lot of questions about um why has vietnam been such such a focus for popular culture i mentioned mentioned Paul Harcastle's song, but obviously films particularly. And then as a finishing question for this episode, I think Blocky McBlock faces, which film is the most accurate portrayal of it?

But Sneaks' question first about, why did the US allow journalists the access that they did? I mean, it's going back to the, I guess the discussion about photos that we began with. Yeah. And also that, yeah, we didn't really finish that. We only came up, I think, with three photos. And there are a couple, I think, that are missing of sort of iconic images that we might get to. It's a great question because, of course, a lot of press coverage was critical to the war or critical about the war. Most of it wasn't though. That's another

misconception that we have. Dom mentioned stab in the back before, but there was no stab in the back because the press until very, very, very late, the American press was on side with the war. And if it was critical, it was only simply because they were reporting what was actually going on. And they were reporting what was actually going on, which contradicted the official line, because to go back to your questioner, US troops had almost unfettered access to the war. They could hop on a helicopter or on a truck or a Jeep or whatever and go cover the fighting right where it was and then send a dispatch to Hong Kong to a bureau in Hong Kong. And it would get to The New York Times or L.A. Times right away. And that would contradict the official line. So the question is, why did the US government allow these journalists to do that? Which they've since learned from, right? In the Iraq War, in the Gulf War, reporters are embedded with the

military control very tightly. One reason is because there was no declaration of war. So officially at the time, the thinking was, we can't really impose a lot of restrictions on the press because there isn't a declaration of war legally. How can we do this? How can we start clamping down on the press if we're not officially technically at war? After Vietnam, the Pentagon and the White House aren't so squeamish about legalities like that. But at the time, that was one reason. And then officially, the U.S. is there at the invitation of the South Vietnamese government. And the South Vietnamese never imposed

censorship. And so the reporters can go off and just cover the war. And you get your David Halberstams and your Neil Sheehan and your Malcolm Browns, these really famous reporters who were initially very pro-war in the early 60s. They wanted to see

South Vietnam not go communist. And then they start covering the war. And they see that, A, there are all these lies that are being told about the war, but also just that it's not going well and that it's probably unwinnable at any acceptable cost. And that's what they start reporting. So what are the two photos? So we've mentioned, what have we had? We've had the embassy.

We had the embassy. And we've got the monk burning himself. So what are the other two? Well, I mean, you could mention a number, but probably the one that my students often mention first, it would either be Kim Phuc, the girl, or the Buddhist monk, but is the South Vietnamese colonel shooting a young Viet Cong in the head. That's a shocking image, right?

It's an incredibly shocking image. And actually nowadays where we have to be more careful about what we teach because of student reactions and a lot of those images are, I generally don't believe in things like trigger warnings and whatnot, but I do give a kind of trigger warning. I give a trigger warning for a lot of these photos because they are really, really upsetting and that's a really upsetting one. But at the time, that photo, so you see Nguyen Ngoc Loan, the colonel, putting the gun to the young – because he's a kid in a flannel shirt, shorts.

He's wearing flip-flops. He's probably like 16 or 17. And he's just – maybe he's 20. And he's just shot. And the photo is really shocking. And the photographer who took it, a guy named Eddie Adams, who won a Pulitzer Prize for it,

was traumatized by what he saw. And he felt complicit, right? Because your photo, he didn't do anything to stop it, even though he didn't do the shooting. The shooting happened because they knew a photographer was there. So they wanted to make a point,

the South Vietnamese troops during the Tet Offensive. And so they call Eddie Adams over and the camera crew. And it happens. And so it's incredibly traumatising it's an incredibly powerful photo it was also televised and shown on the news, on a lot of news broadcasts

and you see the guy I don't even think you can watch it on YouTube now you see the guy flinch as the bullet you see him flinch, you see him fall to the ground, you see blood, it's really really awful. Okay. And the fifth,

the fifth photo, would there be one? There's kind of iconic images of, of GIs and helmets, aren't there? Kind of looking, there's iconic ones of GIs with the helmets. And yeah,

exactly. Iconic one was GIs with a thousand yard stare. Yeah. Larry Burrows, Don McCullen, photographers like that took a lot of those. Just to go back to that last photo, am I not right in thinking the kid, though? There's a twist, which is the kid had killed somebody just before it was taken or something like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That this was revenge rather than the kid wasn't being, you know, randomly. The kid had just killed somebody or something. Yeah, yeah. This isn't a war. This is in the midst of a war. War is hell. War is hell. War is hell.

To go back to helmets. So back to Blockface's question, which I think should be our last question. Which film is the most accurate portrayal of it? Actually, let's diversify that. Which is the best? Which is the most accurate because i'm guessing they're not the same different questions right yeah i don't know if there is an

accurate i don't know if there is an accurate film um about but how do you make an accurate film about something that's complicated and confusing as as any war actually absolutely and also how do you make it how can how can i judge it how can i judge its accuracy not that i wasn't alive in the 60s and didn't see the fighting, but I've never been in combat. I've never, I don't know what accurate is or isn't. Okay, the best, the best. I do know that a lot of the films, a lot of the American films aren't accurate. And we know that, I don't know what's accurate, but we know what's inaccurate.

But a lot of those films are great films. And even if they travel in kind of stereotypes and this and that. So Apocalypse Now, I still think as problematic as it is, it's an extremely problematic film. But Apocalypse Now is still, it's just an incredible film. Do you know, that's how I prepared for this podcast. I watched the director's cut. Oh, but do you think?

Yeah, the director's cut's too long. It's much too long. No, because we fell asleep. We woke up and everyone was talking French. Oh, yeah. There was that French plantation scene, isn't there? Which he threw in. Andrew, what about The Deer Hunter?

See, I think The Deer Hunter is a much, it's a slightly forgotten film now. It's not as fashionable as Apocalypse Now, but I love, I don't know if you've seen The Deer Hunter, Tom. Robert De Niro, isn't it? You know, they have the amazing stuff in, I think, is it Pennsylvania? And the Russian roulette.

Pennsylvania, yeah. So you get this sense of the working class community. Robert De Niro isn't it you know they have the amazing stuff in I think is it Pennsylvania and the Russian roulette Pennsylvania yeah so you get this sense of the working class community I think the Ukrainians in Pennsylvania and they go off and then they come

back at the end so you get it's not just you know Vietnam it's also a film about America and about blue collar America

that first hour and a bit hour and a half of the deer hunter is the best far and away the best part of the movie that takes place in Pennsylvania. It's amazing.

The second half, I loved it when I was a boy because it's a war film and it's got the Russian roulette scene and it's intense and everything. But it's just, you know, it's filmed in, I think it's filmed in Thailand. They're speaking Thai. The whole thing is ludicrous. Obviously, nothing like that happened during the war. Some of the things, though, now we realize, like, so one of the one of the famous scenes from apocalypse now maybe i hope you hadn't fallen asleep by this point tom because it's a pretty loud scene but the charlie don't surf yeah of course the rise of the valkyries but the thing yeah but right before that when he when they when um

colonel kilgore gets them to start surfing and there's a battle going on that might be a little over the top but gi's love to surf in v Vietnam when they weren't on duty and that's how they got their relaxation they set up the China Beach Surf Club in Danang and the Aussies I guess were the Aussies the Aussies the Aussies had they were based further south but they all had their own surf clubs and here's the thing Charlie meaning the Viet Cong Charlie Charlie may have surfed because there is some evidence where the Viet Cong would steal surfboards and use them to get around in the waterlands of the Mekong Delta and stuff like that.

That's a great film. That's a great film. It is a great idea for a film and the perfect note on which to end this podcast. Charlie does surf. You heard it here. Andrew, can't thank you enough. Thanks, guys. Thanks. I had such a great time.

It's been more than a tour of duty. Thanks so much. Goodbye. Bye-bye. Thanks for listening to The Rest Is History. For bonus episodes, early access, ad-free listening, and access to our chat community, please sign up at restishistorypod.com. That's restishistorypod.com.