“Fighting” the VC was never the problem. Anybody could do that. The big problem was organizing the South Vietnamese to create a credible and effective government, rally the public’s support, and destroy North Vietnam’s military capabilities at the strategic level (which we never even attempted).
I would re-phrase your question to ask, “Was the US the only country with the resources to fight the North Vietnamese insurgency at the strategic level?” I think that question is more relevant and better captures your intent.
I’ve heard of this as a theory as well, apparently believed by some captured/defected VC officers among others. I don’t buy that it was a deliberate plan, the PAVN was heavily committed to the Tet Offensive as well, notably at Hue and Khe Sanh amongst other places. The leadership believed the offensive would ignite a popular uprising amongst South Vietnamese and hopefully topple the government of the South. I’ve no doubt the leadership in the North didn’t shed too many tears over the losses of the VC leadership in the South, but I don’t buy that it was a deliberate part of the plan for Tet to fail and gut the VC, more a happy coincidence of the failure of Tet. Given its history, and the history of communist movements worldwide, there’s no reason to doubt that there would be purges. I have trouble seeing Tet as a deliberate plan to purge the VC when they could just as easily have done it after winning the war.
Calling the VC ‘wiped out’ after Tet is also a considerable exaggeration. After the failure of the attacks during Tet they did the same thing they had always done after losing battles against American and ARVN forces: disappear back into the general population and the countryside. Tet hurt them but didn’t come anywhere close to wiping them out, they remained a factor until the end of the war.
You are correct; I blame early onset Alzheimer’s or something. I think I was misremembering the NLF encompassing VC main force, regional force, local force, and the shadow government as the NLF encompassing the VC and NVA.
French citizens fulfilling their compulsory national service obligation could not deployed outside of Europe. This was due to the US’s insistance that the French contibute to the anti-Soviet bulwark, and also the French Communist party’s oppositon against colonial wars; especially against the Vietnamese Communists.
The French did send regulars to Korea, while the FFL, as well as Algerian and Morroccan troops (who acutally outnumbered the FFL at Dien Bien Phu) were in Vietnam, in return for US military equipment.
Traditionally, Indochina duty was for second-rate FFL - their best were needed for North Africa where there was always more trouble. The Indochina FFL was defeated by the Thais in 1941, and by the Japanese after Vichy collapsed.
You’re correct that the FFL in the First Indochina War were inexperienced: the myth of veteran Wermacht troops is inaccurate: most of them would be in their 30’s in 1954. That’s too damn old for jungle warfare.
But as you noted the VC were skilled at avoiding detection when they needed to be. The Saigon government had been unsuccessful in its attempts to eliminate the VC. There’s no reason to think the Hanoi government would be more successful. So Hanoi would have found it easier if they could convince the VC to come out in the open and get themselves killed fighting the Americans.
I’m not suggesting this was the main goal of the Tet Offensive. I’m sure Hanoi regarded weakening the South Vietnamese government and the Americans as their primary goals. But my point was that the loss of so many Viet Cong can’t be regarded as having turned the Tet Offensive into a defeat for the North when it was really an added bonus for them.
As a historical precedent, I’ll point to the Warsaw Uprising in 1944. The Soviets encouraged the Warsaw resistance movement to rise up against the Germans. Then they stood by and waited while the Germans eliminated the resistance. The Soviets didn’t interfere while their current enemies and their potential future enemies were killing each other.
I could see the North Vietnamese maximizing their resources and investment by sacrificing the Viet Cong. That may not have been the primary reason for doing it, but I doubt they would have seen it as a drawback.
There’s a difference between being able to hide from the Americans and the ARVN on the battlefield and hiding from purges once they had taken power and were out in the open as part of the new government. It wasn’t just the VC that came out in the open in Tet, the NVA did as well. Hue was occupied by a division of the NVA, two or three NVA divisions laid siege to Khe Sanh, a divison assaulted Dong Ha, a division attack Da Nang, two regiments successfully forced the abandonment of Kham Duc, etc.
The Warsaw uprising doesn’t work as a precedent. The NLF and North Vietnam were both communists, Vietnamese, and had the same goal; reunifying Vietnam under communist rule. They were actual allies; they didn’t merely share a common enemy. Relations between the Polish Home Army and the USSR on the other hand were quite hostile. The Armia Krajowa was loyal to the Polish Government in exile in London, not the Polish communists; the Soviets set up their own Polish army in exile in the form of the People’s Army of Poland. There were hostilities between the AK and the USSR from very early on:
The Warsaw Uprising wasn’t carried out with the encouragement of the USSR, in fact the opposite was the case. The AK carried out the uprising in order to liberate Warsaw before the Soviets could. The first operations in Operation Tempest made it clear to the AK what they could expect from the Soviets:
Your’re partially correct. You can not you point to a single example of communist forces actually winning a battle against American forces. They never did.
I would disagree with the second part of your statement. The battle in the i Drang valley (1965) was a victory for American forces from a strategic sense in that a superior enemy force was defeated and sent running. Yet, there was no strategic gain (territory, etc) from the battle.
It was a war that could not have been won short of total destruction of the North, and that wasn’t on the table.
They certainly are part of the region. But the word “containment” is not the same as “eradication.” The US strategy was based on the Domino Theory, which posited that Communism, allowed to spread unchecked, would consume vast portions of the globe (“Communist International” certainly leads one to figure that as the goal). Essentially, our containment policy sent a message that we would oppose the spread of Communism - with force if necessary. It’s kind of (as such things tend to be) playground politics; “don’t make me do to you what I did to that guy!”
Think of containment in terms of fire - when your Vegamite flambe gets out of control in your kitchen, you start by slowing and then stopping the spread of the flames. Complete suppression is the next step.
The book that the movie is based on is a must read.
Dissonance responded well with many points, but I’ll add to it.
The situation was so different that the Warsaw Uprising can’t really be used in comparison. By that point in the East Front, the Soviets were winning. They were pushing the Germans back hard and although it still took a while to fight to Germany, they were well on their way. OTOH, there were seven years between the Tet Offensive and the end of the war. They still very much needed the VLF fighters
This is a mischaracterization of the US strategy; which wasn’t to hold the Central Highlands but to take the fight to the NVA there. The French and then the ARVN had been unable to penetrate the area and the NVA had had free reign there. The US had developed the helicopter based air mobility attacks to go on hunt and destroy missions.
Hal Moore who was a lieutenant colonel and the commander of the first half of the battle considered the battle a draw even though they inflicted a greater number of causalities on the enemy, it wasn’t enough. The PAVN found a way to fight an army with vastly superior weapons and supplies and still hold on.
The problem with the strategy of body counts was that the Communist forces, both the VLF and PAVN were more willing to make greater sacrifices than what the US would bear.
Back to the battle at Ia Dang, had they been considered separate battles, the ambush at LZ Albany would be a victory for the NVA. Moore doesn’t come right out and state that in his book, but it’s clear. The NVA inflicted heavy losses on the US forces.
Dien Bien Phu is a pretty good example of how being “good” wasn’t really as important as being " the side with the most artillery on the highest ground". General Giap was in this respect a great student of Napoleon.
Yes, it did. Read the official Communist party history of the conflict: Victory in Vietnam: The Official History of the People’s Army of Vietnam, 1954–1975 by the Military History Institute of Vietnam, and it makes the same point I made.
No, I’m not. You’re wanting to use a broader term than me, which is fine. But as a Southern led and operated organization the Viet Cong was essentially destroyed in Tet, that is why afterwards they were unable to recruit sufficient southerners to maintain operations. That is why the VC leadership were mostly Northern military officers after Tet whereas before it was mostly Southerners, and it is why 70% of the overall VC were Northerners after Tet.
Yes, there were NVA operations in South Vietnam prior to Tet, I never said there weren’t.
That’s like saying the Union didn’t win the Civil War but the “United States” did, it’s ludicrous. The North’s military is what actually captured all the land in South Vietnam and the North’s political leaders are the ones who ran the unified country after the war.
Also, I do not believe you are very familiar with Saigon. I’ve been there within the past ten years and many people still call it Saigon. You may not be aware of this, but often times politicians call something one thing or give something a name and many of the locals don’t actually use those terms. Many streets in New York City for example are still referred to by locals as their original, historical street name even though they have been changed in recent years to other things. Hardly anyone stopped calling the Hoover Dam the Hoover Dam while it was the Boulder Dam.
From my experiences in Vietnam as a traveler locals seemed to refer to a core part of the city (Ho Chi Minh city is vast, with its jurisdiction encompassing many former towns and such) as “Saigon” but the whole area itself as Ho Chi Minh city. So someone who technically lives in Ho Chi Minh city but not in the central part of the city might say they live in Ho Chi Minh city but if they were going into the center of town they’d say they were going “to Saigon.” (I do not have even a working mastery of Vietnamese language or intricacies of locals, so I may have this “quirk” a bit wrong, but basically yes the locals in Vietnam still refer to a certain geographical area as Saigon and use the term in addition to Ho Chi Minh City, even though I may have the specifics of how they use it incorrect.)
Even businesses in the city still use Saigon, I stayed at the Hyatt there and it literally says “Park Hyatt Saigon” all over the place.
This is a good analysis (also good to point out that PAVN/VC were not synonymous, as Dissonance seemed to think), I don’t know that the North was quite so sinister in their planning though. I think they believed there was a true chance that Tet could end the war decisively by being a large military disaster that would force the U.S. out. Instead it was a large military disaster for the VC and a large public relations disaster for the U.S., but not enough to end the war at that time. I think the North probably was thinking along your lines though, sort of “well, if it works it’ll be mostly the VC that did the fighting and they’ll be less effective a fighting force afterward, and if it doesn’t work they won’t be a serious power afterward so it’s kind of a win-win.”
With all seriousness as someone familiar with how the Army talks about things, most of the true defeats in Vietnam a historian working for the Army or someone teaching at West Point would characterize most of those as “minor actions” “skirmishes” etc. But yeah, it’s asinine to say the U.S. never lost a battle, but a lot of people in the Army who talk about things of this nature you need to know what working definition of “battle” they are using before you can really know if their point is valid or not.
Politics would come into play too, the word “skirmish” can encompass very large actions that most anyone wouldn’t call a skirmish if the political parts of the Pentagon feel it needs to be called a skirmish.
The Battle of Ia Drang is a good talking point though and shows how differently the two sides thought. The U.S. military was primarily lead by guys who graduated from West Point and studied Napoleon, Grant/Lee, and WWII battles. Primarily in all of those wars victory was defined by either holding the field of battle or forcing the enemy off of it, with no real regard to the greater strategic implications or body count. A traditional analysis of Bunker Hill would never call it anything but a decisive British victory. Because of the differing natures of warfare you’d call Bunker Hill a Pyrrhic victory and Ia Drang inconclusive since the battles were functionally different, but the U.S. military leadership was correct to call Ia Drang a victory under how they had always defined victory. The problem is traditional victories didn’t really mean anything in the greater strategic context of the war, the Vietnamese leader in the battle understood that being able to push an American force out of a specific territory or holding some plot of land wasn’t how the war was going to be won.
Well, if those goddamn hippies didn’t make us fight with one arm tied behind our back and let use nuke Hanoi, then we would have won the war. grumble grumble Jane Fonda.
Interesting. My BiL’s grandfather - who passed away earlier this year - fought in the battle as part of an Algerian Tirailleur(colonial infantry) unit. It wasn’t just the FFL who were there because they weren’t French.