I disagree. The music is the same 30 seconds of an annoying fusion of military brass and drums combined with something that sounds vaguely "Eastern". It reminds me of the stuff I hear on my son's video war games that fills the spaces between all the killing. It's only marginally better than 16 bit Mario Bros and not as interesting. I think "composer" David Galbraith was phoning it in on this one. Hope he keeps his day job, unless this is it. The documentary however is really interesting. This war was the defining issue of my generation - I was drafted in 1970. The details and history bring a lot of background that I've not generally found in the reading I've done about the war. I just don't think the music brings anything to the telling of this story.
@@markk164 well that depends was you even in Vietnam or were you just drafted and then you went elsewhere?? then of course based on footage know you're probably not actually going to see every area that they were in furthermore it more unlikely depends upon where you were stationed!!
I also find it interesting that they had the age dick wag about how young the commandos they left there but then the young commandos were confident because they had the tunnels!! I mean if some son-of-a-bitch is about to blow your fucking head off you certainly don't stop and ask how fucking old they are.... furthermore everybody has the potential to pick up a gun and well-appointed itat whom they deem to be there in Ami and kill them it doesn't really matter why is there all this extra special aged dick wagging emphasis placed upon ya their age is a bunch of nonsensical BULLSHIT!
One of my favorite documentary series...excellent production! I have studied the Vietnam War extensively and this is a very good overall wrap up of the strategies employed,one of the best indeed.
Methadone for life??? Your name isn t funny. Methadone is strictly for weak losers who live off the proceeds of govt coffers. How can u say that u studied anything & use methadone (even as a name) ?Wise up, bitch!!!! Eddie in NYC
Fast Eddie well aren't you dumb as fuck. You know medical doctors and nurses give addicts methadone to ween them off crap and save their lives. Hence methadone4life makes sense.
@@fasteddie9055 you know, you are so quick to judge. If you recovered from heroin, as I did, you know the battle. Never, should one judge someone by the way they battle, they are fighting a war that you ain't part of. You're the bitch for being so arrogant. Don't relapse eddie in New York. You'll fucking lose everytime.
@@fasteddie9055 there is always some soft ass junkie worrying about other people and their lives/recovery, guess that's you. "Eddie in NYC" yeah nobody gives a single fk.
From what I have dealt with, my father and his buds, surviving seemed to be worse. Yes, some transitioned well but others, my father, remained connected to the events. Living with him was a challenge, being careful about making sudden noises. There was a gap in our relationship: seemed he was afraid of being too close. *sorry for rambling *
Those are insightful words.War is hell no doubt about it and once people can empathize with the experience they're compelled to tell us how lucky we were to survive but we don't call it luck for we are the ones who must live with the memories and images of horror that never go away. We killed to keep from being killed but every life I had to take took something irreplaceable from me that I'll never get back We lost 58,000 KIA but 150,000 Nam vets have taken their own lives. God saved me from it
When you study any well written text written in East Asia about Warfare you will note that it is important that you allow the enemy to believe he is winning. This allows you to prepare for the Tactics that will be repeated over and over and over, because the enemy thinks he is "winning" and won't change his tactics. We grossly underestimated the VC/NVA because they were SO low tech and poorly fed and clothed. Actually they just "traveled light" and were amazingly durable in face of hardship.
They used Mao 's tactics of mas infantry and mass artillery which actually originated from Stalin 's and beyond. Brainwashing, intimidating and coerce the population, sacrificing everyone to the last until victory regardless of the cost. Unlike the powerful yet transient US military intervention, they had the full support of the Communist bloc as long as they could hold out.
If you take a look at this video it clearly illustrates that America didn't win all the battles of Vietnam. Just the battles that Americans wanted to fight, those so called set piece battles. The VC were clearly achieving their objectives on their missions while the Americans were not. That would be considered a defeat. The biggest error in Academies and the Pentagon today is that they write the US won all the battles in Vietnam but lost the war. If they look at it more objectively they will see that it wasn't just lost on the strategic and political level but also on tactical level as well. You fight on the battlefields of your choosing if you want victory.
+Maldus Alver so the VC and NVA achieved their objectives in the 1968 Tet offensive huh? As a matter of fact not one North Vietnamese operation was successful beyond their initial attacks. May I assume that according to you the 1968 Tet offensive turned out the way the NVA & VC wanted?
1138thz no the Tet Offensive was a disaster but again that is another misconception of the Vietnam War. But all the search and destroy operations were not successful. So I guess the question is when do engagements and operations count as battles? If they don't then which is more important, the battles or the operations?
Wun Hung Lo nope, your just a miserable little troll. So if all you do is just talk shit about others, then don't come crying like a little bitch when you get you commie ass bleeding all over the place. You probably deserved it.
They were of course! Money and power is always the name if the game. Especially for the French, who did not want to loose their colony and free rubber/ psuedo - economic slaves. Bear in mind the French had a much deeper history in Indochina as colonizers than the USA. Esienhower warned the USA about this kind of conflict before his retirement as President.
Gotta love the U.S. airpower, i had an uncle who was p.o.w. during korean war that said if it wasnt for u.s. bombing near where he was held the n koreans would have beat him to death one night but insted they had to leave that camp and move him, he said he owed his life to them pilots.... Over the decades they have saved many many troops💪😎
At West Point (US Army's Military Academy) our young men and women study the American Revolution as part of their curriculum. Ho Chi Minh and General Giap both studied the American Revolution extensively. Ironic that Ho and Giap admired Washington's tactics AND strategy to defeat a superior military (if given "home field" advantage). The Irony is that we were The Redcoats and the VC were the wily and independent Farmers and they kicked our ass, the same way we had beat the British...
I must have missed the Victory Parades for the returning American Troops. Everybody loves a winner, but if you lose, lose gracefully. A "sore loser" is not respected in America, but rather despised. Didn't you ever play any team sports or was Vietnam it for you? America Loves a Winner! Loser's are not remembered in our culture...
I lived with a South Vietnamese exchange student for a few years in the '60s and '70s. He had to go back to his home in '72, just when the South really started taking a beating from the North. We Americans were withdrawing and it was just a terrible situation. Bai Qui Do had a kind of resignation about his lot in all this, and tried to think about the good side of it--seeing his family again. I don't know what became of him. I wonder what it is like now living under the fanatical North. I heard there was massive brainwashing and the use of "re-education camps" for those who favored democracy over a totalitarian regime. If anybody is watching this in Vietnam, have Bai get in touch with me. Thanks.
Very interesting video I never seen this before as a young draftee I was there arriving August 1968 was a member of the 25th infantry division bravo company 2/14th inf my mos was 11bravo infantry I was in almost all the areas in this video…cu chi was our base camp I knew about the tunnels underneath our camp…also was in the hobo woods the iron triangle…the Saigon river we were at a bridge called the phu cong the vc were always trying to blow up the bridge which they did..was up near tay ninth where the black virgin mountain was…was dropped off by Huey chopper on the Cambodian border many times..also was in those rubber tree plantations they were talking about…to me the scary place of all was the hobo woods..anyway interesting video brings back memories really feel fortunate to make it back home…Vietnam veterans our my brothers for life….
À french general said during the WW 1: " the soldier must model his attitude on the morpion, this marvelous animal which holds on to the death, rather to let go". (sic). A kind of Westmorland with blunders in fact.
What a crock of horseshit! We, the Americans, were outfought and out thought constantly and as a helicopter pilot I constantly saw it. The enemy was motivated and had a reason to be there and we did not! It was pitiful! Every life we lost was wasted! Completely wasted!
Altogether a massive clusterfuck that we could have actually learned from but instead decide to try it ALL OVER AGAIN four decades later. I love my country to death but goddaaaaaamn, do we pick the wrong battles.
Actually, we did learn, that's what the Powell Doctrine was. But then the guys on top got so intoxicated with their own power, that they decided to try and knock over seven countries in seven years. And I think it's rather obvious that we've been fighting much longer than seven years.
Yeah, we won all the Battles, yet in 1975 when I watched the NVA's Tanks rolling into Saigon, oops I mean Ho Chi Minh City, I KNEW who had won the War. Well at least we "won" all those battles... I was "young and dumb" in the early 70's and I would have volunteered (rather than be drafted) had I been just a couple of years older. I was probably 30 years old before I absorbed enough information to realize what a foolish move that would have been. Our Vets must feel like they were lied to...
U.S.troops fought an unjust war against overwhelming odds in their environment and we fought hard never losing a major engagement.On 11/24/68 my unit surrounded in a desperate struggle out of ammo using our rifles as baseball bats knocking grenades back at them were rescued at the last minute by chopper gunships that were committed in other fights but got to us in time. The Military Channel want to present that fight and next year it will be aired then you'll see why we hate to be called losers.
I humbly recommend that anyone genuinely interested in gaining a better understanding of the 'War in Vietnam' takes the time to watch this Doc (Uncle Ho & Uncle Sam, a Timewatch doc aired in the UK in the late 90s) Google it (it's already been uploaded here on You-Tube) and constitutes an informative and revealing document as well as a provocative glimpse into the story behind America's involvement in the affairs of South-East Asia during the 'Cold-War' (Vietnam specifically) divulging insight upon Hồ Chí Minh's tenure as an operative of the OSS during WWII.
Yes, I believe the famous French Corea battalian was defeated at Mang yang pass in Vietnam as part of Mobile Groupe 100. They served well in Korea and were noted for their courage under fire. There were a number of mini wars going on at that time involving the communists. Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Greece, and a few others. Interesting book about that time is "Street without Joy" by Bernard Fall' Details the French struggle in Vietnam.
Yes that sounds about right. And yes, I am ancient history, but it was my war. I was there as well as many of my friends that I grew up with. Its interesting but understandable that it is ancient history for you. For us it was yesterday. It was a bitter war and fought in Vietnam as well as in the streets of the US. The myths and facts that were spread during that time were most often based on agenda and inuendo. All the more reason to learn what actually did happen. I love history:)
The more I learn about Vietnam the more respect I have for those soldiers who fought in that war. I don't agree with the war, but these men were mostly boys prior to becoming soldiers & many were drafted for the sake of fighting for their country. It's is simply sad that they had to realize they were fighting for a dismal cause.
I don’t know about that The SS were so fanatical they often times didn’t know when to withdrawal suffering many times more casualties then needed. My Grandfather fought them all through Europe and won , sometimes wading through dead women children and babies executed by the “proficient”SS. As for the NVA they were great light infantry but they took 10 to 1 losses against the Americans. And they only conquered the south after the US pulled out. If the US had invaded North Vietnam the North would have been able to stop it . The US had planned to kill until they could no longer raise an effective fighting force. (Which was a unclear goal) The North has since admitted that they were very close to the breaking point. A whole generation devastated by subpar American and UN troops .
@@Mosey410 You make some good points. The SS on the western front towards the end of the war were not comparable to those sent to the eastern front from the beginning. Your grandfather fought on the western front I take it?
@@canadadelendaest8687You didn't kill 2 million, stop believing official numbers, at best 800 000 both NVA and VC combined were killed, some giving even smaller number but 2 million South Vietnamese civilians were murdered by the US and ARVN troops.
It certainly was! That was why the French colonized Vietnam (and the rest of Indochina) in the first place. Then they refused to give up their colonies after World War 2 and painted their cause as “anti communist” vs the “communist” Vietminh. Then the US got involved when the Cold War heated up against China. So yip!
We should have landed all our troops in North Vietnam and finished it. If you don't think our boys were good. Listen closely. "Sometimes the Vietnamese attacked in forces as large as 2,000 men", yet they never overran a single platoon size element. The narrarator keeps saying artillery and air saved the day. HELLO the guys on the ground call it. It's called war and we are just good at bringing it all together.
***** Absolute smashing of the enemy. If the objective was to save South Vietnam then the prudent thing to do would have been destroyed North Vietnam's ability to wage war. The problems in Iraq are there not because we went in to Iraq, it is because we just gave them a date and walked out. I fear we will do the same thing in Afghanistan.
***** I am well aware of a insurgency and how it operates. Fought them myself. That is why you don't fight them. You remove the people supplying them. In this case, you call China and Russia's bluff and you smash North Vietnam, hang Min and Giap from the same tree. Don't make us come back. Or we could stay, but it would be our call. Not the beck and call of a bunch of dumbasses running around in the Jungle with no weapons.
***** Having fought an insurgency. Everyone knows who the bad guys are, Just kill them. Then your done. Your examples are people that tried the thing. It is too easy. We should never and I mean never use armed force, but when we do then we leave nothing. Plow salt 12 feet in the ground. Never have to come back ever. You would have to do it twice maybe.
+akgeronimo501 WELL SAID. From some of the clueless comments I have heard on this forum it appears that it is beyond the capacity of some to understand that the Tactical Air Command is in truth an integral part of the Army's force matrix.
No, I mean I was an airman, Ssgt at the time who often flew to different places to do my work. Those who I knew who were soldiers or marines often had little idea of where they were, other than 'in the bush'. Not the same as being a resident, living in town or a village.
You've ot to hand it to NLF/PLAF guerrillas. They were only armed with infantry weapons and completely outgunned, without artillery, armor, or tactical air support, and still kept the initiative in fighting the fighting arms of the U.S. armed forces and kept the Americans guessing. _In war, the moral is to the physical as three to one._ --Napoleon
@@gh87716Bullshit. The revolutionary-nationalist guerrillas in the interior of South Vietnam were armed only with infantry weapons. Their heaviest weapon was the 82mm mortar and hand-held rocket-propelled grenade launchers. The North Vietnamese had artillery emplaced only in the borderlands of Laos and on the northern side of the Demilitarized Zone where they could shell across the border into the border areas of South Vietnam. It was not until the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the U.S. withdrawal that the North Vietnamese brought in 120mm mortars and Katyusha rocket artillery.
@@gh87716Wrong. The NLF/PLAF revolutionary-nationalist guerrillas in the interior of South Vietnam were armed only with infantry weapons. Their heaviest weapon was the 82mm mortar and hand-held B-40 rocket-propelled grenade launchers. The North Vietnamese could only deploy and emplace artillery in the borderlands of Laos and on the northern side of the Demilitarized Zone from where the could only strike the northern border areas of South Vietnam. It was not until the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the U.S. withdrawal that the North Vietnamese began to deploy 120mm mortars and rocket artillery within South Vietnam's borders.
@@asmodeus0454 Those guerrillas were always supported by the North, which was actually supplied and equipped much better than the south and American forces were. If nothing else, the commies had an endless supply of men, which counted for more than artillery, especially considering the Americans couldn't use it everywhere. Also, you seem to forget that the Vietcong failed and lost to the anti-communist forces during the Tet offensive, after which the NVA had to go down to the South themselves.
@@asmodeus0454 Yes and they failed. You worship them and say they "kept the Americans guessing". Well, no sh1t, Sherlock...they're in a fckin JUNGLE. It's easy to be a tough warrior when you've got endless supplies of guns and men with the backing of China and the Soviet Union. And even with all that, the Vietcong still FAILED and were taken over by the NVA in the south. Lol you commie worshipping m0r0ns love to portray the Vietcong as some kind of grassroots native uprising, when it was nothing but a communist front created and supported by the NVA.
i hear all the comments about this war but you do realize its more to war than just fighting . You must also have a diplomatic side to end a war otherwise all wars would continue forever which is not the case. In the end must come to an agreement to end all hostilities.
+Tajidin Abd diplomatic side between vietnam and america? how could the war be going for ever? vietnamese soldiers swimming to america? the war was over as the americans went home. this was their kind of diplomacy. my ass. think ... then talk.
No war was ever won through complete or mere military matter, nor was one ever ended a single time through pure military conflict, as much as they'd like to it is not the General's who decide when war is over, it is the Politicians and this is something as a military analyst you must understand again, and again... but it is difficult to continually recall when connecting things lol
We left, licking our wounds, but you are right on one point. We (USA) did win every major engagement. Ask a Vet who walked "point" just we could get ambushed (bait) so we could call in our overwhelming Airpower and Artillery Fire. A LOT of poor bastards had to walk into booby traps, punji sticks or well executed ambushes so we could use our technology. I watched the evening news aand saw the NVA drive tanks down Highway 1 and into Saigon in 1975. I know a lot of vets who KNOW we lost.
That's sort of how I remember it. You can visit Ho Chi Minh City and see the Flags flying, even today. A lot of old vets are doing it to sort of half apologize and half put that ugly war behind them. You ought to go sometime. It was an ugly time to be an American and now it's just embarrassing to watch all the "Rambo" type movies made in the 80's to soothe the vets on the losing side.
The policy of not invading NV doomed the US to failure . Had the US troops invaded and captured Honoie the NV would have been forced to fight the US and not send aid to the south which would have allowed the US to defeat the VC in the south .
+Jo Te My grandfather fought in Vietnam oh Lord I can only imagine wtf he went through I hate that they send our young ones to die but at least send them the right way smh Vietnam could have been avoided they wanted help,Independence
The US never supported the French in their reoccupation of Vietnam after WWII. In fact US policy was just the opposite. Starting with Roosevelt during the second WW the US was opposed to French colonization. That only changed when Mao took control of China in 1949 and started shipping large quantities of war material to the Viet Minh. The French were in the process of giving up control and establishing free democratic governments in Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam, when Ho took control.
That action alone is enough for a sensible group to realise that backing the French against the Vietnamese was associating oneself with the worst predations of French occupation. It is the mark of utter bastards to export food while people starve, but it was done by European powers and is rarely mentioned in polite company. There is a subtle racism in mainstream history that ignores such atrocities of 'Western' powers, whether in Ireland, Vietnam or Bengal.
It was Trumans policy to contain communism after the Berlin Wall, Eastern europe, Greece, Korea, Checoslovakia, insurgencies in Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines. Vietnam was viewed in that light. In Korea the US did its part to keep Sigman Rhee from trying to invade the north by not supplying heavy weapons while Russia heavily armed and trained the military of the north. Stalin though Kim would win and he'd have a nice warm water port.
I can't tell if you really mean that or you're being sarcastic. The only vet I know who didn't think the military ever lied to the public or it's own servicemen was also a USAF SSgt a guy from New Mexico. I must ask him again where and when he served during the Vietnam war. You might have known each other.
They wanted to capture the VC headquarter, and in fact they were walking on it. Irony when you take us. When you see this GI burning a patio, you can imagine how they didn't understand vietnamese culture, in two hours you build a new one, worse it was made to be abandoned.
When you research "NSA Gulf of Tonkin Incident" 1st pg , click on 'Chronology of Events". 2nd pg click on Heddricks testemony the click on Lawrence and levenson chronology (para 5). Realize in 1964 teletype was the fastest means of communication, there were several stations involved in the message traffic, and time zones differed between all. I will give you more help if you find it difficult military reading. And No, the US remained neutral after WWII on Indochina until May of 1949.
The Brit naval blockage kept Vorbeck from being supplied and his small company of regulars and 1700 Askaris tribesmen lived off food weapons and ammo they took after winning battles.Those 600K could have been used in Europe. In 1 battle 8K Brits against 1K Germans lost 800 KIA 300 WIA and had several thousand taken prisoners with only 15 German KIA.When these soldiers were told to give up do you think the Germans felt that they lost the war? Their Gov. lost the Wehrmacht followed orders.
"no saint" is quite the understatement. I'm not praising Ho, but lets drop the pretense that such things as human are a real factor in foreign policy, other than as a convenient soundbyte for public consumption. All types of dictators have been tolerated, armed and otherwise supported if their interests co-incide with those of more powerful nations.
Well actually water would have been a better solution, But the only drawback to that was to have found ALL Tunnel entrances before you started flooding the tunnels so that you could have covered them before anyone got out, either with guns or grenades or mortars. But hindsight is a good thing, at the time NO one even though of that, simply because the nearest large amount of water near to the complex to have be able to cope with the amount needed, was the Mekong River which was many miles away.
Yeah im not into a nature vs nurture debate. But I do think that although they dont take part directly in criminal life they do work like mafias, a family can be like a mafia i dont know if you understand my point. They keep close ties, follow the same rules and have one common objective like a mafia or a family.
French understood this warfare but have been betrayed by politicians and business men, American didn't understand and were betrayed by their own people. Same result: dead soldiers wasted for nothing.
Another irony was that Ho Chi Minh was confident that the USA would support Vietnam in their anti-imperialist war against the French because they'd fought an anti-imperialist war against the British.
LOL, yes, you would have thought the Japanese and French could have been a bit more charitable. Not so aware of the British/Irish history, but I understand it did bring my great grandfather to the US from Ireland. I understand there were several famines under Ho as well, not to mention after the war. People who live in glass houses should not throw stones.
Randy you got it all right but "kick our ass". Tet was Ho's last chance, it failed but he found an ally in the media who reported the facts incorrectly. By that time the VC were no longer an effective fighting force and had to join the ranks of the NVA against them my unit had an 11-1 kill ratio using small unit tactics. We won every major battle against them, we lost 58,000 KIA but they lost so many they can only estimate. We didn't lose we were ordered to leave a place we shouldn't have been.
Korea had been colonised by the Japanese, not the French, (who failed in their attempt in 1866), so in terms of strategic interest, the US had no need to placate the previous occupiers of Korea, but after WW2, they were willing to give concessions to France, so I wouldn't agree that they viewed them the same.
This may take a few replies but please follow for our disagreement is a matter values.If you'd been there as an enemy you wouldn't argue the for they know victory was given to them. In WWI the Germans lost the war right,the army on the western front did't feel as though they lost the war because their enemy didn't advance any further or retake the sectors they assaulted.The war in East Africa was fought with a few hundred Askari tribesmen trained by German Col.Vorbeck.600K Brits were reverted.
The Japanese impressed the western powers by having their own strong empire and winning a war against the Russians, and they were occupied after the war. I'm referring to allowing a country to become independent from a european colonizer. It's generally not allowed to happen, because the resources are valued too much, look at East Timor... Portugese colony, then briefly free, before being invaded by Indonesia with Kissinger's and Gerald Ford quickly exiting the country the US had armed.
Brilliant deduction Mr. Balls I'm living proof of marine close air support and navy/marine pilots are the best at it.My unit ran 3 man patrols and could roam the bush as silent cats and when we saw them the more the merrier with our radio we had access to death from the sky, fire base artillery and the USS New Jersey in Danang harbor, we hurt them.If Charlie hit a whole marine regiment they knew they were outnumbered but F4's, Chopper gunships bought Charlie hot things that sent him to hell.
One would imagine that carpet bombing and defoliation agents also have an effect on the ability to grow and distribute food. War impacts every aspect of life, and it is ironic that the US, got drawn into this one as administrations changed and policies shifted from preferring not to support the French occupation, to replacing them. And all those Vietnamese and US servicemen got to pay the price.
We Lost fair and squre. Body counts mean nothing or else you could say the Confederates beat the Union in our Civil War or the Germans beat the Soviets in WW2. Both cases the "body count" of the winning side was massively larger than the losing side. We won every battle yet lost the War. Don't blame it on the politicians either because had we gone North of the DMZ about 35 Divisions of Chinese would have jumped in and YOUR name would be on the Wall with a LOT MORE than 58,000 names on it..
Again, the US was for Vietnams independence. That was not the issue. The issue was the people of the south not wanting communism. The communists had used brutality and murder in gaining their power and wanted to take over the south. During the partition almost a million North Vietnamese fled to the south. The people of the south wanted there freedom and to be left alone to farm their land. They didn't want it taken from them and be murdered by the communists.
The war should’ve never been fought in South Vietnam. Invade North Vietnam and sever it from China and its supplies and the war would’ve ended in a year.
Still better than Ho who murdered all those who held the land. Certainly no charity on Ho's part. Many from Ireland made it to the US in the 18 hundreds and suffered much descrimination when they arrived. However they rose to the ocassion and made a name for themselves. We salute the Irish Americans every St Patricks day. My wife who is Korean always wears her green on St Paddies. I suspect the food problems in Vietnam were directly connected to Pol Pots, with many forced labor camps.
I sometimes am so gobsmacked at the lack of awareness of decision makers from the powerful western countries. (I count my country as one of the non-powerful western countries). If something didn't happen to your country, then your leaders can't comprehend the meaning and depth of it. Exporting food while people starve is not quickly forgotten or forgiven. Both the French and Japanese hoarded rice during the Vietnamese Famine. Brits did the same during the Irish famine mid 19th Century.
You can't accept that it was the French and Americans who were in the wrong? Ah, patriotism, how it narrows the mind. Vietnamese were fiercely nationalist, and did ask for US help for their independence from French colonialism. They turned to Chinese and Russians for support when it became obvious the Americans would support the French occupiers. Who else could they turn to?
The US position on Vietnam and the return of the French (which the US did not want) was that of neutrality. The US would not allow any weapons sales to France if they were to be used in Vietnam. In part because Ho had fought against the japanese withn the US. While the French capitulated to the Japanese. The support from Mao and the Chinese entering into the war in Korea changed all that. Do you feel the US should have supplied money and arms to fight the French?
People often post that the U.S. "lost" the war. Obviously, a country of rice farmers didn't militarily defeat America. But the U.S. never tried after 1945 to really win any war. If Hanoi had been bombed early, Haiphong blockaded early, etc, things would have been different. Instead, U.S. soldiers had no social support, the media were against the war, and the war was defunded by Congress, with Vietnam the country lost.
I like the docu too, and I'm on Methadone too. Maybe it makes them interesting? :D More "pro-american" and patriotic (since there are only interviews of US soldiers and the wife of the highest ranking POW, a colonel, it seems like he died, only in the very end they show that he was released in 1972 (or 1973?) after peace... its 6-part ,"Vietnam in HD" is the US title, I like the German title more "Vietnam - Trauma of a generation" (Trauma as a big psychological damage, hope the word is correct). It is much shorter but single events are more detailled (tet offensive, the Ia Drang Valley Battle which was filmed 2002 with Mel Gibson as "We were soldiers" ("We were heroes" in Germany...) more detailled with interviews of the persons (Joe Galloway) and unknown soldiers, some of them were filmed than by the press. It also shows much stronger the effect of uncensored journalism right at the fights, US population watched this almost every day in the news and so on... This mistake won't happen so fast again... even if a soldier strictly wishes to be filmed if he was wounded or if he is in battle, the journalist is not allowed... he needs a written consent, and I think a special one from the Army, second point is that in Vietnam the Army used their vehicles/helicopters to bring journalists to the battles. Today only special selected reporters are allowed to join a unit and even than you can not record everything, if it is something negative they can tell/force you to stop filming... would be interesting, Vietnam war without the "bad" news and the protests in the US (90% of the evening news was about vietnam during the tet offensive for example) and a president who at least would allow the US Army to go into Laos and Cambodia right from the begining... more aggresive bombing, especially Hanoi and Haiphong (I think they were bombed for the first time in 1972 when only 30,000 soldiers were left in Vietnam, and the last of the 30,000 ground units left some weeks later... If not an invasion of North Vietnam than at least securing Laos/Cambodia (CIA Operations to bring the "right" men into power there, some financial aid and maybe there would have been 2 more (puppet)states in which the US could create a army and use the manpower there and stop finally the Ho Chi Minh-Trail or make it very very much difficult (you can transport people through underground tunnels, but not big artillery or anti aircraft machine guns (soviet 130-140mm or ~127mm, caliber 0.50), for that the tunnel size had to be very large compared to the tunnels in which even the mostly smaller asians had to crouch a bit. However the USA made sure that the Soviet Union has the same problem in Afghanistan. Lucky that Saudi Arabia paid 50% of the costs and at the same time lowered the oil prices to reduce soviet income of western currencies, the casualties were "only" ~15.000 soviet between x-mas 1979 and february 1989 compared to (I think) 58.200 american dead in 7 years, but the last 3 years the troop numbers were going down and down... the soviets had their numbers until 1988, but menpower lose was no problem, so the 15.000 are not important but the houndreds of Mi-24 "Hinds", Mi-8 Helicopters and others and Jets downed by SA-7 and Stingers, and many tanks, and armored personnel carriers lost, and corruption in the Red Army (Officers sold weapons to the enemy and gave old weapons to the new soldiers). Most were young conscripts from the Asian republics and Ukraine/Belorussia. Since the population in the asian republics growed much faster than in the Russian republic they did sent very much conscripts from the republics which were near Afghanistan or even bordering it (Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan which was not bordering it but was close, also quite many from Kirgisistan were used, if you look at the small size and population of these republics it was a very high rate compared to Russians (which were officers and/or pilot crews more often or part of the better trained forces like the paratroopers... US lost Iraq and Afghanistan too... Pakistan is supporting Afghanistan, but at the beginning of the war over 13 years ago they called Pakistan an "friend"... only because it was a save haven in the soviet-afghan war for the USA to train mujahedin (or transport them to the US for training) and to deliver goods through the port of Karachi since Afghanistan is landlocked... but most of the (soon 200 million!) population is "hating" america and the young kids often are indoctrinated in the Islamic schools, millions of potential fighters against the "West" (or the nonbelievers...), right now they are fighting each other at many fronts (Shiites against Sunnis and the Alawis in Syria and of course the Kurds in Iraq/Syria/Turkey ("Kurdistan"). But moslem countries have a very big population growth until 2025 and most of these countries economies will not grow fast enough, except the OPEC states, so they will stay poor or it will even get worse (Morocco as the last place where phosphate for fertilizers is being mined in large amounts is running out of reserves), and on the long term prices for oil/gas/coal/power and of course food will rise (since food is produced from fossil fuels in modern agriculture), the worldwide growth is going down, in Europe (especially East Europe) the population of many countries is already declining for many years, but worldwide there is still a growth, and we saw rise from 6 to 7 billion population quite fast, 8 billion will take some years longer but it will come... and they do not only need food, they need a lot of goods, and the US is losing economic and military power advantage from year to year (US reduces its military budget in FY2015, while China is increasing it as usual, same with the GDP which in China is growing by more per cent than in the US. Most estimates say that China will become Economic Power No. 1 between 2030 and 2040, but only if there will be no other recession in the USA (and the debt, debt bought by fed in the amount of some trillions = printing money virtually is a problem on the long term) or China... India will become No. 1 in Population and in 25 or 30 years a strong economic power too...
We are not looking at the political context of the Vietnam War, but purely military context. And this documentary proves that when it came to military battles, the U.S was clearly superior, whereas the Vietcong and NVA where superior in tactics and strategies.
Try "Declassification and Transparency_NSA/CSS". Page 1, Click on "Gulf of Tonkin": Next click on "Chronology of events", next click on "Capt Hedrick testimony" (release 1) and under release 2, click on "Lawerene and Levenson chronology".(para 5). But only do that if you really want to know what happened. However if you prefer to follow the myth, don't waste your time as it will only make truth stranger than fiction and get you confused.( I suspect you aren't interested in truth)
I've watched these so many times I know long bits of narration by heart.
Me too! It’s actually hypnotic
Am I the only one who finds the title score (by David Galbraith) for the series to be hauntingly beautiful?
i agree.. the music score brings back a long haunting tragic war.
Ya , almost as good as the theme song for Vietnam - the 10000 day war. Check it out , it'll bring back memories for sure.
damn straight - sometimes I hear it in my head when I'm not watching
No. I've never liked it. It's like a tumor.
Agreed, it is awesome.
I cant tell you how much I love these shows!
Eerily awesome music that puts all the footage even more bone chilling. Thamks
I disagree. The music is the same 30 seconds of an annoying fusion of military brass and drums combined with something that sounds vaguely "Eastern". It reminds me of the stuff I hear on my son's video war games that fills the spaces between all the killing. It's only marginally better than 16 bit Mario Bros and not as interesting. I think "composer" David Galbraith was phoning it in on this one. Hope he keeps his day job, unless this is it.
The documentary however is really interesting. This war was the defining issue of my generation - I was drafted in 1970. The details and history bring a lot of background that I've not generally found in the reading I've done about the war. I just don't think the music brings anything to the telling of this story.
Mark K I agree with you, the music is incredibly fucking terrible and annoying; it's like a nightmarish 1980s sythesizer-riddled "martial" music.
I goto sleep listening to documentaries and this music has really messed with my head some nights.
#hardpass
@@markk164 well that depends was you even in Vietnam or were you just drafted and then you went elsewhere??
then of course based on footage know you're probably not actually going to see every area that they were in furthermore it more unlikely depends upon where you were stationed!!
I also find it interesting that they had the age dick wag about how young the commandos they left there but then the young commandos were confident because they had the tunnels!!
I mean if some son-of-a-bitch is about to blow your fucking head off you certainly don't stop and ask how fucking old they are....
furthermore everybody has the potential to pick up a gun and well-appointed itat whom they deem to be there in Ami and kill them it doesn't really matter why is there all this extra special aged dick wagging emphasis placed upon ya their age is a bunch of nonsensical BULLSHIT!
Great Series! Thanks for sharing these.
Also wanted to thank the uploader for this documentary...very interesting.
One of my favorite documentary series...excellent production! I have studied the Vietnam War extensively and this is a very good overall wrap up of the strategies employed,one of the best indeed.
Methadone for life??? Your name isn t funny. Methadone is strictly for weak losers who live off the proceeds of govt coffers. How can u say that u studied anything & use methadone (even as a name) ?Wise up, bitch!!!! Eddie in NYC
Methadone4Life This has to be the best. It is the most in depth and it doesn't point any fingers. It simply gives facts and historical data.
Fast Eddie well aren't you dumb as fuck. You know medical doctors and nurses give addicts methadone to ween them off crap and save their lives. Hence methadone4life makes sense.
@@fasteddie9055 you know, you are so quick to judge. If you recovered from heroin, as I did, you know the battle. Never, should one judge someone by the way they battle, they are fighting a war that you ain't part of. You're the bitch for being so arrogant. Don't relapse eddie in New York. You'll fucking lose everytime.
@@fasteddie9055 there is always some soft ass junkie worrying about other people and their lives/recovery, guess that's you. "Eddie in NYC" yeah nobody gives a single fk.
Those vc are really tough gotta give it to them, they resisted the best army in the world. Chapeau
Trying to understand, despite my own experiences, what my dad experienced in the hobo woods area ~ Christmas of 1966. It had a lasting effect.
I lost my big bro on May '66. 173 Airborne KIA by VC -small arms - North of Saigon.
RIP brother...
RIP HE DIED A HONORABLE DEATH THE MAN CALLED HE WENT. WASN'T HIS FAULT THE TIME IN HISTORY HE GOT CALLED
From what I have dealt with, my father and his buds, surviving seemed to be worse. Yes, some transitioned well but others, my father, remained connected to the events. Living with him was a challenge, being careful about making sudden noises. There was a gap in our relationship: seemed he was afraid of being too close.
*sorry for rambling *
There was no fighting in Saigon or near it except on the Tet offensive. What is your brother full name?
A politician's war.I kept yelling;Where are the B52 bombers?!
Those are insightful words.War is hell no doubt about it and once people can empathize with the experience they're compelled to tell us how lucky we were to survive but we don't call it luck for we are the ones who must live with the memories and images of horror that never go away. We killed to keep from being killed but every life I had to take took something irreplaceable from me that I'll never get back We lost 58,000 KIA but 150,000 Nam vets have taken their own lives. God saved me from it
US Air Force saved a lot of marines, without the bombing campaigns US casualties would have been astounding.Thank you Air Force.
When you study any well written text written in East Asia about Warfare you will note that it is important that you allow the enemy to believe he is winning. This allows you to prepare for the Tactics that will be repeated over and over and over, because the enemy thinks he is "winning" and won't change his tactics. We grossly underestimated the VC/NVA because they were SO low tech and poorly fed and clothed. Actually they just "traveled light" and were amazingly durable in face of hardship.
They were fighting for their Independence and reunification of their people. We were there for ideology
and westmoreland was eager to oblige that deception
They used Mao 's tactics of mas infantry and mass artillery which actually originated from Stalin 's and beyond. Brainwashing, intimidating and coerce the population, sacrificing everyone to the last until victory regardless of the cost. Unlike the powerful yet transient US military intervention, they had the full support of the Communist bloc as long as they could hold out.
Greetings to our brave and heroic Vietnamese comrades.
If you take a look at this video it clearly illustrates that America didn't win all the battles of Vietnam. Just the battles that Americans wanted to fight, those so called set piece battles. The VC were clearly achieving their objectives on their missions while the Americans were not. That would be considered a defeat.
The biggest error in Academies and the Pentagon today is that they write the US won all the battles in Vietnam but lost the war. If they look at it more objectively they will see that it wasn't just lost on the strategic and political level but also on tactical level as well. You fight on the battlefields of your choosing if you want victory.
+Maldus Alver so the VC and NVA achieved their objectives in the 1968 Tet offensive huh? As a matter of fact not one North Vietnamese operation was successful beyond their initial attacks. May I assume that according to you the 1968 Tet offensive turned out the way the NVA & VC wanted?
1138thz no the Tet Offensive was a disaster but again that is another misconception of the Vietnam War. But all the search and destroy operations were not successful. So I guess the question is when do engagements and operations count as battles? If they don't then which is more important, the battles or the operations?
Maldus Alver no shit, shitlock. are you a professional detective?
Wun Hung Lo Just the person that decides to take notice of what everyone else chooses to ignore.
Wun Hung Lo nope, your just a miserable little troll. So if all you do is just talk shit about others, then don't come crying like a little bitch when you get you commie ass bleeding all over the place. You probably deserved it.
They were of course! Money and power is always the name if the game.
Especially for the French, who did not want to loose their colony and free rubber/ psuedo - economic slaves. Bear in mind the French had a much deeper history in Indochina as colonizers than the USA. Esienhower warned the USA about this kind of conflict before his retirement as President.
The music puts me into a trance nearly.....
Gotta love the U.S. airpower, i had an uncle who was p.o.w. during korean war that said if it wasnt for u.s. bombing near where he was held the n koreans would have beat him to death one night but insted they had to leave that camp and move him, he said he owed his life to them pilots....
Over the decades they have saved many many troops💪😎
Our air Force is the best in the world unbelievable firepower
You are all a bunch of experts! Nothing but trolls on both sides.
At West Point (US Army's Military Academy) our young men and women study the American Revolution as part of their curriculum. Ho Chi Minh and General Giap both studied the American Revolution extensively. Ironic that Ho and Giap admired Washington's tactics AND strategy to defeat a superior military (if given "home field" advantage). The Irony is that we were The Redcoats and the VC were the wily and independent Farmers and they kicked our ass, the same way we had beat the British...
We were not the Redcoats. America fought to stem the tide of communism, an oppressive and inhuman form of government
I must have missed the Victory Parades for the returning American Troops. Everybody loves a winner, but if you lose, lose gracefully. A "sore loser" is not respected in America, but rather despised. Didn't you ever play any team sports or was Vietnam it for you? America Loves a Winner! Loser's are not remembered in our culture...
16:47 firing sound does not match M-16 A1. It is a post production added sound.
Other than that, it is a great Documentary series, and well narrated.
I lived with a South Vietnamese exchange student for a few years in the '60s and '70s. He had to go back to his home in '72, just when the South really started taking a beating from the North. We Americans were withdrawing and it was just a terrible situation. Bai Qui Do had a kind of resignation about his lot in all this, and tried to think about the good side of it--seeing his family again. I don't know what became of him. I wonder what it is like now living under the fanatical North. I heard there was massive brainwashing and the use of "re-education camps" for those who favored democracy over a totalitarian regime. If anybody is watching this in Vietnam, have Bai get in touch with me. Thanks.
Very interesting video I never seen this before as a young draftee I was there arriving August 1968 was a member of the 25th infantry division bravo company 2/14th inf my mos was 11bravo infantry I was in almost all the areas in this video…cu chi was our base camp I knew about the tunnels underneath our camp…also was in the hobo woods the iron triangle…the Saigon river we were at a bridge called the phu cong the vc were always trying to blow up the bridge which they did..was up near tay ninth where the black virgin mountain was…was dropped off by Huey chopper on the Cambodian border many times..also was in those rubber tree plantations they were talking about…to me the scary place of all was the hobo woods..anyway interesting video brings back memories really feel fortunate to make it back home…Vietnam veterans our my brothers for life….
Thank u for going...as a draftee i thinking that was really hard.as a person with ptsd i can only imagine what it was like.✌🏻💯💚
Welcome home, Sandee.
À french general said during the WW 1: " the soldier must model his attitude on the morpion, this marvelous animal which holds on to the death, rather to let go". (sic). A kind of Westmorland with blunders in fact.
What a crock of horseshit! We, the Americans, were outfought and out thought constantly
and as a helicopter pilot I constantly saw it. The enemy was motivated and had a reason to be there and we did not! It was pitiful! Every life we lost was wasted! Completely wasted!
Please move to a communist country, then.
Altogether a massive clusterfuck that we could have actually learned from but instead decide to try it ALL OVER AGAIN four decades later. I love my country to death but goddaaaaaamn, do we pick the wrong battles.
Actually, we did learn, that's what the Powell Doctrine was. But then the guys on top got so intoxicated with their own power, that they decided to try and knock over seven countries in seven years. And I think it's rather obvious that we've been fighting much longer than seven years.
56:20 That's just changed my view of Bobby Mac. I'm amazed I never heard that before.
Yeah, we won all the Battles, yet in 1975 when I watched the NVA's Tanks rolling into Saigon, oops I mean Ho Chi Minh City, I KNEW who had won the War. Well at least we "won" all those battles...
I was "young and dumb" in the early 70's and I would have volunteered (rather than be drafted) had I been just a couple of years older. I was probably 30 years old before I absorbed enough information to realize what a foolish move that would have been. Our Vets must feel like they were lied to...
U.S.troops fought an unjust war against overwhelming odds in their environment and we fought hard never losing a major engagement.On 11/24/68 my unit surrounded in a desperate struggle out of ammo using our rifles as baseball bats knocking grenades back at them were rescued at the last minute by chopper gunships that were committed in other fights but got to us in time. The Military Channel want to present that fight and next year it will be aired then you'll see why we hate to be called losers.
God bless our brave soldiers..
Yeah God bless a bunch of invaders 🤦♂️
As a boy in Scotland the images on TV were that of oarpet bombing, napalm, helicopters, GIs shooting into the jungle and that wee burned girl.
Uncle Ho and Uncle Sam (BBC), 1998.
I humbly recommend that anyone genuinely interested in gaining a better understanding of the 'War in Vietnam' takes the time to watch this Doc (Uncle Ho & Uncle Sam, a Timewatch doc aired in the UK in the late 90s) Google it (it's already been uploaded here on You-Tube) and constitutes an informative and revealing document as well as a provocative glimpse into the story behind America's involvement in the affairs of South-East Asia during the 'Cold-War' (Vietnam specifically) divulging insight upon Hồ Chí Minh's tenure as an operative of the OSS during WWII.
Magic Transistor. Uncle Hô: 1 point, Uncle Sam: 0 point.
Yes, I believe the famous French Corea battalian was defeated at Mang yang pass in Vietnam as part of Mobile Groupe 100. They served well in Korea and were noted for their courage under fire. There were a number of mini wars going on at that time involving the communists. Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Greece, and a few others. Interesting book about that time is "Street without Joy" by Bernard Fall' Details the French struggle in Vietnam.
Nope, just armed men. No teachers, no farmers etc. I have a lot of respect for these men.
Yes that sounds about right. And yes, I am ancient history, but it was my war. I was there as well as many of my friends that I grew up with. Its interesting but understandable that it is ancient history for you. For us it was yesterday. It was a bitter war and fought in Vietnam as well as in the streets of the US. The myths and facts that were spread during that time were most often based on agenda and inuendo. All the more reason to learn what actually did happen. I love history:)
I wrote a few thousand words on the Tunnel Rats for my history A-level. There's a great book on the Cu Chi tunnels if you can find it.
The more I learn about Vietnam the more respect I have for those soldiers who fought in that war. I don't agree with the war, but these men were mostly boys prior to becoming soldiers & many were drafted for the sake of fighting for their country. It's is simply sad that they had to realize they were fighting for a dismal cause.
Every way the US fought since WW2 with the exception of Afghanistan could have been resolved diplomatically
I think you’re forgetting about the thousands of terrorists that Sadam was training in Iraq
The most proficient soldiers from the 20th century were that of the Wehrmacht and SS, and the NVA and VC. Unbelievably great soldiers.
Absolutely goddamn right. I couldn't agree with you more.
I don’t know about that
The SS were so fanatical they often times didn’t know when to withdrawal suffering many times more casualties then needed.
My Grandfather fought them all through Europe and won , sometimes wading through dead women children and babies executed by the “proficient”SS.
As for the NVA they were great light infantry but they took 10 to 1 losses against the Americans. And they only conquered the south after the US pulled out.
If the US had invaded North Vietnam the North would have been able to stop it .
The US had planned to kill until they could no longer raise an effective fighting force. (Which was a unclear goal) The North has since admitted that they were very close to the breaking point. A whole generation devastated by subpar American and UN troops .
@@Mosey410 You make some good points. The SS on the western front towards the end of the war were not comparable to those sent to the eastern front from the beginning. Your grandfather fought on the western front I take it?
We killed about 2 million VC and NVA. They weren't nearly as great as people make them out to be
@@canadadelendaest8687You didn't kill 2 million, stop believing official numbers, at best 800 000 both NVA and VC combined were killed, some giving even smaller number but 2 million South Vietnamese civilians were murdered by the US and ARVN troops.
29:43
"South of the Michelin Rubber Plantation"
Hm. Surely corporate and economic interests were not at the heart of this senseless and brutal war.
🤓ha ha ALWAYS corporate or other institutional interest is the cause of war and the destruction of our planet!
It certainly was! That was why the French colonized Vietnam (and the rest of Indochina) in the first place. Then they refused to give up their colonies after World War 2 and painted their cause as “anti communist” vs the “communist” Vietminh. Then the US got involved when the Cold War heated up against China.
So yip!
The Michelin rubberplant ? Westy cooking the books on the number of enemy all about money
We should have landed all our troops in North Vietnam and finished it. If you don't think our boys were good. Listen closely. "Sometimes the Vietnamese attacked in forces as large as 2,000 men", yet they never overran a single platoon size element. The narrarator keeps saying artillery and air saved the day. HELLO the guys on the ground call it. It's called war and we are just good at bringing it all together.
***** Absolute smashing of the enemy. If the objective was to save South Vietnam then the prudent thing to do would have been destroyed North Vietnam's ability to wage war. The problems in Iraq are there not because we went in to Iraq, it is because we just gave them a date and walked out. I fear we will do the same thing in Afghanistan.
***** I am well aware of a insurgency and how it operates. Fought them myself. That is why you don't fight them. You remove the people supplying them. In this case, you call China and Russia's bluff and you smash North Vietnam, hang Min and Giap from the same tree. Don't make us come back. Or we could stay, but it would be our call. Not the beck and call of a bunch of dumbasses running around in the Jungle with no weapons.
***** Having fought an insurgency. Everyone knows who the bad guys are, Just kill them. Then your done. Your examples are people that tried the thing. It is too easy. We should never and I mean never use armed force, but when we do then we leave nothing. Plow salt 12 feet in the ground. Never have to come back ever. You would have to do it twice maybe.
+akgeronimo501 WELL SAID. From some of the clueless comments I have heard on this forum it appears that it is beyond the capacity of some to understand that the Tactical Air Command is in truth an integral part of the Army's force matrix.
1138thz Yep. People think being good at war is cheating. The old saying don't make it a fair fight. I'm glad someone else understands it.
No, I mean I was an airman, Ssgt at the time who often flew to different places to do my work. Those who I knew who were soldiers or marines often had little idea of where they were, other than 'in the bush'. Not the same as being a resident, living in town or a village.
You've ot to hand it to NLF/PLAF guerrillas. They were only armed with infantry weapons and completely outgunned, without artillery, armor, or tactical air support, and still kept the initiative in fighting the fighting arms of the U.S. armed forces and kept the Americans guessing.
_In war, the moral is to the physical as three to one._ --Napoleon
Wrong. They had artillery as well as flak batteries. Also, they had endless resources and men to draw on.
@@gh87716Bullshit. The revolutionary-nationalist guerrillas in the interior of South Vietnam were armed only with infantry weapons. Their heaviest weapon was the 82mm mortar and hand-held rocket-propelled grenade launchers.
The North Vietnamese had artillery emplaced only in the borderlands of Laos and on the northern side of the Demilitarized Zone where they could shell across the border into the border areas of South Vietnam.
It was not until the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the U.S. withdrawal that the North Vietnamese brought in 120mm mortars and Katyusha rocket artillery.
@@gh87716Wrong. The NLF/PLAF revolutionary-nationalist guerrillas in the interior of South Vietnam were armed only with infantry weapons. Their heaviest weapon was the 82mm mortar and hand-held B-40 rocket-propelled grenade launchers. The North Vietnamese could only deploy and emplace artillery in the borderlands of Laos and on the northern side of the Demilitarized Zone from where the could only strike the northern border areas of South Vietnam. It was not until the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the U.S. withdrawal that the North Vietnamese began to deploy 120mm mortars and rocket artillery within South Vietnam's borders.
@@asmodeus0454 Those guerrillas were always supported by the North, which was actually supplied and equipped much better than the south and American forces were. If nothing else, the commies had an endless supply of men, which counted for more than artillery, especially considering the Americans couldn't use it everywhere.
Also, you seem to forget that the Vietcong failed and lost to the anti-communist forces during the Tet offensive, after which the NVA had to go down to the South themselves.
@@asmodeus0454 Yes and they failed. You worship them and say they "kept the Americans guessing". Well, no sh1t, Sherlock...they're in a fckin JUNGLE. It's easy to be a tough warrior when you've got endless supplies of guns and men with the backing of China and the Soviet Union.
And even with all that, the Vietcong still FAILED and were taken over by the NVA in the south.
Lol you commie worshipping m0r0ns love to portray the Vietcong as some kind of grassroots native uprising, when it was nothing but a communist front created and supported by the NVA.
I don't recall from where, I think it was a slide in a lecture by George C. Herring. I'll try to find it.
i hear all the comments about this war but you do realize its more to war than just fighting . You must also have a diplomatic side to end a war otherwise all wars would continue forever which is not the case. In the end must come to an agreement to end all hostilities.
+Tajidin Abd
diplomatic side between vietnam and america? how could the war be going for ever? vietnamese soldiers swimming to america? the war was over as the americans went home. this was their kind of diplomacy. my ass.
think ... then talk.
what are you rambling on about. learn to read what I typed
No war was ever won through complete or mere military matter, nor was one ever ended a single time through pure military conflict, as much as they'd like to it is not the General's who decide when war is over, it is the Politicians and this is something as a military analyst you must understand again, and again... but it is difficult to continually recall when connecting things lol
We left, licking our wounds, but you are right on one point. We (USA) did win every major engagement. Ask a Vet who walked "point" just we could get ambushed (bait) so we could call in our overwhelming Airpower and Artillery Fire. A LOT of poor bastards had to walk into booby traps, punji sticks or well executed ambushes so we could use our technology. I watched the evening news aand saw the NVA drive tanks down Highway 1 and into Saigon in 1975. I know a lot of vets who KNOW we lost.
That's sort of how I remember it. You can visit Ho Chi Minh City and see the Flags flying, even today. A lot of old vets are doing it to sort of half apologize and half put that ugly war behind them. You ought to go sometime. It was an ugly time to be an American and now it's just embarrassing to watch all the "Rambo" type movies made in the 80's to soothe the vets on the losing side.
I think the score is cool as well.
Moral of the story, stay out of other countries business.
It ain't that simple if you your country has interest .
@@samuelademeso9041 bb
The Russian s and Chinese too. Not just the Americans.
All the major powers try to get influence in the weaker nation's
The policy of not invading NV doomed the US to failure . Had the US troops invaded and captured Honoie the NV would have been forced to fight the US and not send aid to the south which would have allowed the US to defeat the VC in the south .
Cool Saint china and Russia would've intervened if the USA invaded the North
+Jo Te My grandfather fought in Vietnam oh Lord I can only imagine wtf he went through I hate that they send our young ones to die but at least send them the right way smh Vietnam could have been avoided they wanted help,Independence
MR STFU exactly right. They wanted independence.
US could have wiped Hanoi out at anytime! so.
@Mr.agent 47 Chinese and Vietnamese were never friends. You are applying a totally different situation.
The US never supported the French in their reoccupation of Vietnam after WWII. In fact US policy was just the opposite. Starting with Roosevelt during the second WW the US was opposed to French colonization. That only changed when Mao took control of China in 1949 and started shipping large quantities of war material to the Viet Minh. The French were in the process of giving up control and establishing free democratic governments in Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam, when Ho took control.
I find it interesting that the Korean War and the First Indochina War were concurrent with each other.
WHY do they keep playing recordings of tank gears squeaking and squeaking AAAND SQUEAKING! FUCK THIS! it ruins the whole thing
That action alone is enough for a sensible group to realise that backing the French against the Vietnamese was associating oneself with the worst predations of French occupation. It is the mark of utter bastards to export food while people starve, but it was done by European powers and is rarely mentioned in polite company. There is a subtle racism in mainstream history that ignores such atrocities of 'Western' powers, whether in Ireland, Vietnam or Bengal.
Don't argue with us. Remember, we LIKE ti piss people off. How are you friend?
It was Trumans policy to contain communism after the Berlin Wall, Eastern europe, Greece, Korea, Checoslovakia, insurgencies in Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines. Vietnam was viewed in that light. In Korea the US did its part to keep Sigman Rhee from trying to invade the north by not supplying heavy weapons while Russia heavily armed and trained the military of the north. Stalin though Kim would win and he'd have a nice warm water port.
I can't tell if you really mean that or you're being sarcastic. The only vet I know who didn't think the military ever lied to the public or it's own servicemen was also a USAF SSgt a guy from New Mexico. I must ask him again where and when he served during the Vietnam war. You might have known each other.
They wanted to capture the VC headquarter, and in fact they were walking on it. Irony when you take us. When you see this GI burning a patio, you can imagine how they didn't understand vietnamese culture, in two hours you build a new one, worse it was made to be abandoned.
When you research "NSA Gulf of Tonkin Incident" 1st pg , click on 'Chronology of Events". 2nd pg click on Heddricks testemony the click on Lawrence and levenson chronology (para 5). Realize in 1964 teletype was the fastest means of communication, there were several stations involved in the message traffic, and time zones differed between all. I will give you more help if you find it difficult military reading. And No, the US remained neutral after WWII on Indochina until May of 1949.
The Brit naval blockage kept Vorbeck from being supplied and his small company of regulars and 1700 Askaris tribesmen lived off food weapons and ammo they took after winning battles.Those 600K could have been used in Europe. In 1 battle 8K Brits against 1K Germans lost 800 KIA 300 WIA and had several thousand taken prisoners with only 15 German KIA.When these soldiers were told to give up do you think the Germans felt that they lost the war? Their Gov. lost the Wehrmacht followed orders.
"no saint" is quite the understatement. I'm not praising Ho, but lets drop the pretense that such things as human are a real factor in foreign policy, other than as a convenient soundbyte for public consumption. All types of dictators have been tolerated, armed and otherwise supported if their interests co-incide with those of more powerful nations.
Well actually water would have been a better solution, But the only drawback to that was to have found ALL Tunnel entrances before you started flooding the tunnels so that you could have covered them before anyone got out, either with guns or grenades or mortars. But hindsight is a good thing, at the time NO one even though of that, simply because the nearest large amount of water near to the complex to have be able to cope with the amount needed, was the Mekong River which was many miles away.
Yeah im not into a nature vs nurture debate. But I do think that although they dont take part directly in criminal life they do work like mafias, a family can be like a mafia i dont know if you understand my point. They keep close ties, follow the same rules and have one common objective like a mafia or a family.
French understood this warfare but have been betrayed by politicians and business men, American didn't understand and were betrayed by their own people. Same result: dead soldiers wasted for nothing.
Another irony was that Ho Chi Minh was confident that the USA would support Vietnam in their anti-imperialist war against the French because they'd fought an anti-imperialist war against the British.
It's fantastic.
LOL, yes, you would have thought the Japanese and French could have been a bit more charitable. Not so aware of the British/Irish history, but I understand it did bring my great grandfather to the US from Ireland. I understand there were several famines under Ho as well, not to mention after the war. People who live in glass houses should not throw stones.
Ho Chi Minh and the Leaders were in Hanoi the entire time...
Randy you got it all right but "kick our ass". Tet was Ho's last chance, it failed but he found an ally in the media who reported the facts incorrectly. By that time the VC were no longer an effective fighting force and had to join the ranks of the NVA against them my unit had an 11-1 kill ratio using small unit tactics. We won every major battle against them, we lost 58,000 KIA but they lost so many they can only estimate. We didn't lose we were ordered to leave a place we shouldn't have been.
Korea had been colonised by the Japanese, not the French, (who failed in their attempt in 1866), so in terms of strategic interest, the US had no need to placate the previous occupiers of Korea, but after WW2, they were willing to give concessions to France, so I wouldn't agree that they viewed them the same.
This may take a few replies but please follow for our disagreement is a matter values.If you'd been there as an enemy you wouldn't argue the for they know victory was given to them. In WWI the Germans lost the war right,the army on the western front did't feel as though they lost the war because their enemy didn't advance any further or retake the sectors they assaulted.The war in East Africa was fought with a few hundred Askari tribesmen trained by German Col.Vorbeck.600K Brits were reverted.
The Japanese impressed the western powers by having their own strong empire and winning a war against the Russians, and they were occupied after the war. I'm referring to allowing a country to become independent from a european colonizer. It's generally not allowed to happen, because the resources are valued too much, look at East Timor... Portugese colony, then briefly free, before being invaded by Indonesia with Kissinger's and Gerald Ford quickly exiting the country the US had armed.
Any one Near Fire base Husky April 1969
Brilliant deduction Mr. Balls I'm living proof of marine close air support and navy/marine pilots are the best at it.My unit ran 3 man patrols and could roam the bush as silent cats and when we saw them the more the merrier with our radio we had access to death from the sky, fire base artillery and the USS New Jersey in Danang harbor, we hurt them.If Charlie hit a whole marine regiment they knew they were outnumbered but F4's, Chopper gunships bought Charlie hot things that sent him to hell.
One would imagine that carpet bombing and defoliation agents also have an effect on the ability to grow and distribute food. War impacts every aspect of life, and it is ironic that the US, got drawn into this one as administrations changed and policies shifted from preferring not to support the French occupation, to replacing them. And all those Vietnamese and US servicemen got to pay the price.
The same way we beat the British...
randy95023 Exactly!
Surprisingly why didn't you learn from that?
This woulda been a place, that woulda been as harda in close fighting, and fighting that a man could face
We Lost fair and squre. Body counts mean nothing or else you could say the Confederates beat the Union in our Civil War or the Germans beat the Soviets in WW2. Both cases the "body count" of the winning side was massively larger than the losing side. We won every battle yet lost the War. Don't blame it on the politicians either because had we gone North of the DMZ about 35 Divisions of Chinese would have jumped in and YOUR name would be on the Wall with a LOT MORE than 58,000 names on it..
Hope to see more documentaries ,,, Cheer Up Tội ác Mỹ ngụy
Again, the US was for Vietnams independence. That was not the issue. The issue was the people of the south not wanting communism. The communists had used brutality and murder in gaining their power and wanted to take over the south. During the partition almost a million North Vietnamese fled to the south. The people of the south wanted there freedom and to be left alone to farm their land. They didn't want it taken from them and be murdered by the communists.
The war should’ve never been fought in South Vietnam. Invade North Vietnam and sever it from China and its supplies and the war would’ve ended in a year.
Why? I wouldn't know what to say but it just seems that all has evolved in that direction...
Still better than Ho who murdered all those who held the land. Certainly no charity on Ho's part. Many from Ireland made it to the US in the 18 hundreds and suffered much descrimination when they arrived. However they rose to the ocassion and made a name for themselves. We salute the Irish Americans every St Patricks day. My wife who is Korean always wears her green on St Paddies. I suspect the food problems in Vietnam were directly connected to Pol Pots, with many forced labor camps.
Why didn't the GIs just stick a flamethrower into a tunnel entrance and empty it?
I sometimes am so gobsmacked at the lack of awareness of decision makers from the powerful western countries. (I count my country as one of the non-powerful western countries). If something didn't happen to your country, then your leaders can't comprehend the meaning and depth of it. Exporting food while people starve is not quickly forgotten or forgiven. Both the French and Japanese hoarded rice during the Vietnamese Famine. Brits did the same during the Irish famine mid 19th Century.
Where is the part 2 sir ,thank you
I also could not see part two, any luck?
You can't accept that it was the French and Americans who were in the wrong? Ah, patriotism, how it narrows the mind. Vietnamese were fiercely nationalist, and did ask for US help for their independence from French colonialism. They turned to Chinese and Russians for support when it became obvious the Americans would support the French occupiers. Who else could they turn to?
The US position on Vietnam and the return of the French (which the US did not want) was that of neutrality. The US would not allow any weapons sales to France if they were to be used in Vietnam. In part because Ho had fought against the japanese withn the US. While the French capitulated to the Japanese. The support from Mao and the Chinese entering into the war in Korea changed all that. Do you feel the US should have supplied money and arms to fight the French?
I'm not pissed off nor pissing off :) Just exchanging viewpoints with Gerry here. Keeping well.
Communists never lost the initiative in the war.
If USA had another jungle to fight in. What would they do diffrent ? Does anybody have a idea ? Like how would they take on North Korea ?
People often post that the U.S. "lost" the war. Obviously, a country of rice farmers didn't militarily defeat America. But the U.S. never tried after 1945 to really win any war. If Hanoi had been bombed early, Haiphong blockaded early, etc, things would have been different. Instead, U.S. soldiers had no social support, the media were against the war, and the war was defunded by Congress, with Vietnam the country lost.
Was this a war for Oil ? I heard they found Oil in Vietnam.
I like the docu too, and I'm on Methadone too. Maybe it makes them interesting? :D More "pro-american" and patriotic (since there are only interviews of US soldiers and the wife of the highest ranking POW, a colonel, it seems like he died, only in the very end they show that he was released in 1972 (or 1973?) after peace... its 6-part ,"Vietnam in HD" is the US title, I like the German title more "Vietnam - Trauma of a generation" (Trauma as a big psychological damage, hope the word is correct). It is much shorter but single events are more detailled (tet offensive, the Ia Drang Valley Battle which was filmed 2002 with Mel Gibson as "We were soldiers" ("We were heroes" in Germany...) more detailled with interviews of the persons (Joe Galloway) and unknown soldiers, some of them were filmed than by the press. It also shows much stronger the effect of uncensored journalism right at the fights, US population watched this almost every day in the news and so on...
This mistake won't happen so fast again... even if a soldier strictly wishes to be filmed if he was wounded or if he is in battle, the journalist is not allowed... he needs a written consent, and I think a special one from the Army, second point is that in Vietnam the Army used their vehicles/helicopters to bring journalists to the battles. Today only special selected reporters are allowed to join a unit and even than you can not record everything, if it is something negative they can tell/force you to stop filming... would be interesting, Vietnam war without the "bad" news and the protests in the US (90% of the evening news was about vietnam during the tet offensive for example) and a president who at least would allow the US Army to go into Laos and Cambodia right from the begining... more aggresive bombing, especially Hanoi and Haiphong (I think they were bombed for the first time in 1972 when only 30,000 soldiers were left in Vietnam, and the last of the 30,000 ground units left some weeks later...
If not an invasion of North Vietnam than at least securing Laos/Cambodia (CIA Operations to bring the "right" men into power there, some financial aid and maybe there would have been 2 more (puppet)states in which the US could create a army and use the manpower there and stop finally the Ho Chi Minh-Trail or make it very very much difficult (you can transport people through underground tunnels, but not big artillery or anti aircraft machine guns (soviet 130-140mm or ~127mm, caliber 0.50), for that the tunnel size had to be very large compared to the tunnels in which even the mostly smaller asians had to crouch a bit. However the USA made sure that the Soviet Union has the same problem in Afghanistan. Lucky that Saudi Arabia paid 50% of the costs and at the same time lowered the oil prices to reduce soviet income of western currencies,
the casualties were "only" ~15.000 soviet between x-mas 1979 and february 1989 compared to (I think) 58.200 american dead in 7 years, but the last 3 years the troop numbers were going down and down... the soviets had their numbers until 1988, but menpower lose was no problem, so the 15.000 are not important but the houndreds of Mi-24 "Hinds", Mi-8 Helicopters and others and Jets downed by SA-7 and Stingers, and many tanks, and armored personnel carriers lost, and corruption in the Red Army (Officers sold weapons to the enemy and gave old weapons to the new soldiers). Most were young conscripts from the Asian republics and Ukraine/Belorussia.
Since the population in the asian republics growed much faster than in the Russian republic they did sent very much conscripts from the republics which were near Afghanistan or even bordering it (Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan which was not bordering it but was close, also quite many from Kirgisistan were used, if you look at the small size and population of these republics it was a very high rate compared to Russians (which were officers and/or pilot crews more often or part of the better trained forces like the paratroopers...
US lost Iraq and Afghanistan too... Pakistan is supporting Afghanistan, but at the beginning of the war over 13 years ago they called Pakistan an "friend"... only because it was a save haven in the soviet-afghan war for the USA to train mujahedin (or transport them to the US for training) and to deliver goods through the port of Karachi since Afghanistan is landlocked... but most of the (soon 200 million!) population is "hating" america and the young kids often are indoctrinated in the Islamic schools, millions of potential fighters against the "West" (or the nonbelievers...), right now they are fighting each other at many fronts (Shiites against Sunnis and the Alawis in Syria and of course the Kurds in Iraq/Syria/Turkey ("Kurdistan"). But moslem countries have a very big population growth until 2025 and most of these countries economies will not grow fast enough, except the OPEC states, so they will stay poor or it will even get worse (Morocco as the last place where phosphate for fertilizers is being mined in large amounts is running out of reserves), and on the long term prices for oil/gas/coal/power and of course food will rise (since food is produced from fossil fuels in modern agriculture), the worldwide growth is going down, in Europe (especially East Europe) the population of many countries is already declining for many years, but worldwide there is still a growth, and we saw rise from 6 to 7 billion population quite fast, 8 billion will take some years longer but it will come... and they do not only need food, they need a lot of goods,
and the US is losing economic and military power advantage from year to year (US reduces its military budget in FY2015, while China is increasing it as usual, same with the GDP which in China is growing by more per cent than in the US. Most estimates say that China will become Economic Power No. 1 between 2030 and 2040, but only if there will be no other recession in the USA (and the debt, debt bought by fed in the amount of some trillions = printing money virtually is a problem on the long term) or China... India will become No. 1 in Population and in 25 or 30 years a strong economic power too...
KilonBerlin You Germans have too much time on your hands
Methadone ?your gonna wish you were dead when you come off that shit a friend of mine did he couldn't do nothing for months
We are not looking at the political context of the Vietnam War, but purely military context. And this documentary proves that when it came to military battles, the U.S was clearly superior, whereas the Vietcong and NVA where superior in tactics and strategies.
Try "Declassification and Transparency_NSA/CSS". Page 1, Click on "Gulf of Tonkin": Next click on "Chronology of events", next click on "Capt Hedrick testimony" (release 1) and under release 2, click on "Lawerene and Levenson chronology".(para 5). But only do that if you really want to know what happened. However if you prefer to follow the myth, don't waste your time as it will only make truth stranger than fiction and get you confused.( I suspect you aren't interested in truth)
I'll pass on spending any of my money in their damnable country. You ARE right about the Rambo Type movies. Thanks.
Đã 9 năm rồi anh còn ổn không