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@warographics643 you should do a video on "McNamaras Morons" officially known as "Project 100,000". They took mentally disabled men, some of whom were incapable of tying their own shoes or digging foxholes and sent them to Vietnam to fight. There are reports of some not being able to understand or follow basic orders, yet they were sent to die in a jungle. A good example is Forrest Gump, many were less mentally capable than him.
In Laos I met someone who said that his village was warned not to cook outside, as Lao people often did. His village wasn’t bombed, but neighboring villages were. The pilots assumed that any fires were VC campfires. Most of the time they were just villages where people cooked outside.
that's a tradition most of mainland Asia has, the dry kitchen (outside) and the wet kitchen (inside). Japan in antiquity used to have it too but nowadays it's mostly Southern China and SEA
My father's a Vietnam vet. While he has some hilarious stories that only warfare can provide (if you have a dark sense of humor), he always says - as you pointed out - "At least in Korea, we knew who the enemy was."
The enemy is our own Government. Throughout the war, orders on a grand strategic scale was just so wrong. Even up to now, I highly doubt that the common people even truly understand on what really happened during the Vietnam war. The conclusion of losing a war is based on loose assumptions. There’s so much morfe. But it’s already over, and there’s no point in raising the past except to learn the lesson.
I think the US fundamentally misunderstood WHY the war was being fought. They saw it as the West vs. Communism. But the North Vietnamese were nationalists first and Communists second. Also the US’s strategy just did not fit the kind of war they were fighting.
And they were natural and fierce adversaries of China; the country the US was supposedly trying to contain. And interestingly enough, the country that Ho Chi Minh admired the most was in fact, the USA. It was also the first country that Castro reached out to after the Cuban Revolution. Imagine if they'd done things just a little bit differently. A very good chance two massive future headaches might have at least been mitigated or even avoided altogether. Helluva powerful country but not too bright sometimes.
I think they understood, it was more the constant restraints they had to face. They didn’t want to invade the North because that could involve China and/or Russia nor did they want to expand into Laos or Cambodia.
Had some older relatives fight in that war. My dad’s cousin was a tunnel rat. Pops said his cousin ended his life 3 months after coming back. Now I live in Vietnam. Been here 8 years. I’ve spoken with many US vets who decided to just stay here after the war. There is a bar in district 1 in Saigon where you can see US and Vietnamese vets having food and beers together.
I am not surprised that there is a bar in Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh city) where veterans on both sides swap stories. That is one thing that civilians do not understand about veterans. Many of them can identify more with their former enemy than with civilians who never experienced the war. That is a great way to deal with PTSD: talk in a bar with your former enemy. I remember my Grandfather (who trained fighter pilots in WW2) spent hours talking to former-Luftwaffe pilot who was now a car salesman in southern California. They went on-and-one for hours like they were life-long friends, even though they had never met before.
@@FromPovertyToProgress there is a north viet guy who hangs out there a god bit. His English is ok, he loves to call me Castro when I have my camp hat on because of my long beard. His left arm is gone from the elbow down and he has scars on his neck and face. Dude had to have been a hardcore warrior in his prime.
One of the first failures that I witnessed was in the winter of 1965-66 when I Co. 3Batt 4th Marines was stationed on Hill 41 a few miles outside of DaNang. I was on night time patrols that went outside of the perimeter. What suprised me was that the patrols would often stop at the first available cover and spend the night there while calling in bogus position reports. That was fine with me as sleeping for a few hours in relative safety was a lot better than walking around all night in an area where VC patrols were active. I relate this story to illustrate one of the reasons why the USA lost the Viet war: very few US soldiers wanted to risk their lives for the political benefit of US leaders back in the USA.
The logistics success of the Ho Chi Minh trail doesn't receive enough attention. It just goes to show that human intelligence, ingenuity and determination applies whatever level of technology a people are working with.
There's a video about it on one of his other channels (I think Megaprojects?). It really was impressive. I'm hoping he'll also make one about the Cu Chi tunnels.
Yes, the Ho Chi Minh trail was the key to the war. Something the US never fully understood. Thinking that air power alone would shut down the logistics system was naive.
I had friends who were drafted to fight in Vietnam. A few never heard from again, and the rest came back 'different '. Being a girl, living on an island, seeing many young men in the army, it wasn't fair. I was out protesting the war while my friends were out there fighting. Horrible days.
It was a horrible war that US government should never have stuck its nose in. Alot of young guys with bright futures got drafted and killed. Pointless loss on both sides
When I came back from Nam, I noticed my GF was different so I kicked her to the curb. my friends changed so I k'd them also. I noticed rock music had changed. I stopped listening. On the TV cop or detective shows, the Nam vet gangs were rampant criminals and were reigned in and shot or arrested by TV heroes. I stopped watching TV. When I noticed complete strangers changed, I realized then it was actually me that had changed. The war ended with the Paris peace treaty under the Nixon administration, not by any defeat by the North. That title of this presentation on RUclips is a blatant lie! No, it's a fn lie! p.s. I hate the imposters claiming to be RVN vets. I ask 1 question and I know who the fakers are. On a past US Census last century, one question was: Are you a Viet Nam Veteran? Over 20 million answered yes. Harvey Steele Phu Bai 1-9-69 > 1-9-70. 31m20 = radio carrier and prime target.
@@galgamekthegreatlord4823 You should google the Equal Rights Amendment. It would have extended the draft to women and was broadly supported by Feminist organisations. It almost passed, too, until conservatives (led by conservative women) rallied against it. You're right to be angry about the inherent unequality of the draft, but your anger should be firmly directed at conservatives of both sexes. A sizable portion of women have fought for decades to either have the draft eliminated or make women eligible.
I used to work in a machine shop in Philadelphia before joining the military. One of the guys there, I used to eat lunch with every day told me he was in the military too. He was an officer in the NVA (North Vietnamese Army) during the Vietnam War. Nicest and hardest working dude I've ever met in my entire life.
Around 1980/82 I worked with some Sth. Vietnamese exmil. One showed me how to convert different semiauto's to full auto. None of them thought much of the NVA/VC that came here as refo's. But as they said, fighting for an ideology is different to living under it. They mainly wanted the invaders out & didn't think much past that. A lot of "cleansing" happened after the South fell.
@@donnyboon2896 You're viewing it through the lens of an American. In their mind, we were foreign invaders. Ideology played no part in it. We, like the French before us, were just foreign occupiers bombing their villages and cities, killing their women and children, poisoning their food and we Americans needed to be stopped.
Having spent a few months in Vietnam and visiting several sites and the War Museum in HCMC, you only get a glimpse of what the war was and even that was absolutely horrific. There are still unexploded bombs being found in the countryside. The museum have embryos of disabled babies with affects from agent orange and other chemicals dropped on the population. It's like something out of Alien. I wasn't alive when the war happened, though having seen that, the killing fields in Cambodia, and Hiroshima in Japan, its sad to see that with all the technology developments in the world, more war looks even more likely than peace ever does.
My grandfather fought in the war. He doesn't talk about it much, but what little he told me was horrific. Documentaries, War movies, and retrospective discussions from a civilian point of view don't capture how bad things really were over there. It was hell on earth, and the PTSD that veterans had to endure afterwards is indescribable.
PTSD is the least punishment those war criminals deserve, he does good by not talking about it, shame on him for fighting innocent villagers, the heroes were the people that faced jail for fleeing the draft, he was a coward for accepting to go
@@igormarcos687There's no doubt in my mind that you have absolutely no idea of what went on in Nam. No idea of how exactly the war is fought or how any war is truly fought. I'm not saying Nam was completely justified, but the shit I hear from both sides is ridiculous. I have a feeling that if you were drafted into the US military, you would be hesitant, but you would still go. It's easy to call someone a coward on the internet where there are next to no repercussions, but if put in the same situation, you'd become the very thing you seem to hate. I'd like to see you say that to someone face, but I know you wouldn't
Vietnamese here. I agree with the notion that PTSD is the lightest form of karma US soldiers could get. I don't care about "but they got drafted" bullshit, as it has the same disgusting taste as the Nazi's "but we're just following orders", doesn't justify the atrocities and killings.
I'm American and live in Vietnam. Actually my wife is from Hanoi and my father in law fought for the NVA. The fundamental misunderstanding the US had, and why it lost the war, is because it was a war for liberation and independence, more than ideology. The US effectively was trying to prop up a post colonial regime. As Russia is learning now in Ukraine, it's pretty had to defeat people who are fighting for the existence of their own country -- even if they are at a material disadvantage.
news must be slow in vietnam because Russia controls all the territory it was after...and then some. also vietnam isnt communist so how did the us lose exactly?
@@souljaboy4892 they did. But only after the US and South refused to hold legally mandated elections which the north would have won, due to their advocating unification and independence
@@souljaboy4892 it's not that simple. The UN agreement called for free national elections. The Western countries knew How Chi Minh would win so they blocked it
@@MMail1984 You are correct, the North would have won the election because Communist nations do not allow fair elections. Which is why USA and State of Vietnam never agreed to sign the Geneva Accords. Which is why elections were never “legally mandated.”
My father was a Naval Corpman attached to Marines stationed in Da Nang; as well as being on the U.S.S Canberra. He always told me, the hardest sight to grasp, was usually going into villages and treating the wounded men,woman and little children. And even though he directly wasnt handling Agent Orange, it still contaminated everything after the fact. So course he's dealing with the affects of that now. And i asked him one time, did he think we deserved to go over there? His response, "no! Thats the big brother policy coming into effect"
Da Nang is a beautiful tourist city now but I've heard they're hiding the fact that there's still Agent Orange contaminant there, waiting to be cleared somehow
@@thethaovatoquoc312why? The two wars had nothing to do with each other. Vietnam war had absolutely nothing to do with communism. That was the lie the people were told.
Landslide Lyndon first sent over activated reserves to fill the forces. this became unpopular since they had families and were devastated when the dads' were killed. Devastating to the re-election chances of DC fn' pols like LBJ. For a time, married reservists were not sent to Nam. MacNamara got the selective service to draft unmarried men. a couple of my friends rushed to the chapel and married. a few months later marriage was not a consideration to exempt individuals from being drafted. I was drafted by the pig Lyndon in March 24, 1968 along with 47,999 others to be used for a 1969 tet invasion which did not happen. 4000 for the Marines. Under Nixon's 2nd term, the Paris Peace treaty was signed and the US withdrew. a couple years later the treaty was violated by the invasion by N Vietnam of the south. Regards, H.Steele 31m20 radio operator & carrier (and prime combat target). Phu Bai. 1/9/69 > 1/9/70.
@@yoharve One of the Post-Vietnam War policy changes was to put many of the support units into the Reserve and Guard, so that any major mobilization would require their activation. This was not so smooth for the unprepared medical unit I was in during Desert Storm.
My father and my uncle’s all fought in Vietnam I am glad they made it home safe. I learned a lot from them about the war. That war never needed to happen.
The saddest part of the whole sorry story is that several successive Presidents knew that that the war was completely unwinnable but kept it going because ending the war would poll badly and they considered getting back in the White House more important than the lives of young Americans. Covered in detail in Ken Burns' documentary.
This was where the tables turned and why it’s still significant to American History. This was the first time America was seen and fought accordingly as the superior force. Before that, America was good, but was never so lopsided in their favor.
@@m.c.martin Strategies, tactics and logistics. Speak these things until your Blue. The Reality is the fact that while there was Political Will for this fight. The Will of the People was quite the opposite.
Granddad served in Vietnam. He left high school early for it but did ultimately work his way to a very high position in the US Airforce. The only story he ever told was also a very short and redacted one. They were trying to leave. While flying over enemy territory they ran out of ammo. They were under fire so they started lighting trash on fire and dropping it out of the door. If you asked him what it was like, he would say "awful" before telling you that war will never solve any problems.
yeah cuz america still has slaves after fighting the civil war and germany still has gas chambers after WW2. your grandpa might have been a shellshocked hippie
My father served in vietnam, and one of the few stories of his that I've been told, is about a concept he called 'booting'. Where, when a fellow marine was down, you would grab them by the boot. But sometimes, all that could come back, was the foot inside the boot.
I read somewhere that the amount of bomb dropped by the U. S. onto Indochina was far far exceed the total amount dropped in Europe in WW2. Considering the fact that the land area in Indochina was far smaller than that of Europe, you can imagine how much suffering that the Vietnamese people went through!!!
The Air Force had a lot of missions that were against suspected truck parks or river crossings. The pilots flying those missions called them toothpick makers because most of them had no results to show there was anything there to begin with.
Went to Vietnam last year and our guide showed us this small cave under a mountain/cliff side that you could lit fit like 30 ppl in on their knees. He told us that the Vietcong fixing the roads would lit just duck under there when the bombers came and then emerge to continue their repairs, rinse and repeat
Been to Vietnam twice and visited the Cu Chi tunnels. It's amazing because it's not far from Saigon, like at all, it really shows how little control of he country the US had.
@@Allen667sjja You have to visit Saigon and Da Lat plus he countryside if you get the chance. Just try stay away from District 1 in Saigon, the place is a tourist trap. I lived in District 4 when I was in Saigon, not by choice, I just sort of got lost and ended up in a hotel there and chose to stay. Turns out it used to be a "slum" back in the 90s but when I was there (2017) I thought it was a nice place. A bit "rough" in some spots as in most restaurants where just a grill with some tables and chairs (you know the sort). But people in the area where very friendly and everyone told me to "don't stay in District 1" and I understand why. I passed though there a few times and it's just filled with drunk tourists, con artists and prostitutes. And the the prices in District 1 where straight up robbery... except the banh minh you got from food carts, those where worth every dong, they where just that damn good. But when it came to pho (the noodle soup), coffee or just food in general the prices in any district outside District 1 was a fraction of the cost in District 1. Stay away from District 1. Da Lat is just awesome in general, go there :)
Usa and north vietnam sign a peace tree and usa killed millions of north vietnam and north only killed 60,000 usa soldiers then in 1975 after usa left the north attack and beat south after the usa train 1.3 million south vietnam soldiers to fight only 300,000 after the usa left just in case the north break the peace tree but the south lost so you really think usa lost plus the usa wasn't allowed to go to the North to fight they had to wait to the North come on there tuff the south to fight and arayat was going on in usa to the president can send the soldiers home,the usa didn't want to leave but they had to go the president sent them home so you do the math ask yourself a question did usa really lose!!
@@wiseandstrong3386-America fighting in Vietnam for 5 years with high tech weapons still got they ass kick by the Farmer with singles shot rifle against fully automatic M16😂
@@CTROCK It's not even worth replying to your stupid comment kid. Go on somewhere and learn something, the US military won every battle in Vietnam shut u p.
Is that the calculation from battle? Because soldiers might be killed by the other things like moquisto (no joke. Those little bitches kill a lot) and other medical problem. P/s: there were South Vietnam and other countries too so the number of died soldiers is a misleading at some points
yeah, the difference is that one side views this as a final war for liberation from there oppressors and one side views it as a waste of time that has men killed and if they come back they are still there in the mind
@@PersonstuckinMichigan You’re right, but…at the same time as soon as we left they started putting anyone associated with us or who weren’t communists into “reeducation” camps so…🙃
I have to stop you on that myth. Westmoreland was a known liar who used to inflate the casualty numbers of the NVA for morale purposes, that number is his estimation, which is completely false.
Most of the deaths were citizens, a lot of war crimes committed by the Americas like the Mai Lai Massacre, usually they would invade the wrong village of Viet Congs and would kill innocent and assault women continuously
I was an advisor on a south vietnamese river patrol boat in 1970…we invaded Cambodia in may. I was shot at but never hit. Sprayed with agent orange and did not die. I returned and went on to finish a 22 year Naval career which included a Degree in nuclear engineering……I still get flashbacks but have managed to supress the memories…I remain grateful to be still alive.
@@giannijones4631I always find it weird that Americans thank military personnel for doing their job, especially when it doesn't concern them at all. Just my thoughts. *doesn't concern the person who's thanking them
@@georgehh2574 Thank you is a different way of saving 'welcome home'. They followed orders from a corrupt government. The presidents, secretaries of state, etc. all knew this was a no win war. They would not let the soldiers win the war. McNamara, Kissinger did not care the men were POW, MIA they wanted the power. They were there to make sure the president got wanted they wanted.
I'm surprised that you didn't mention that Ho Chi Mihn had been an ally during WW2, and was a great admirer of both the United States as a country and the U.S. Constitution. That is of course, before the US broke its word and supported the French following WW2, as they were considered more important allies and Mihn found allies in China and the Soviet Union.
Political leaders often lie, particularly totalitarian ones. The idea that Ho was some closet pro-American democrat is ridiculous. He was involved in establishing multiple Communist parties and worked closely with the Soviets and Chinese communists his entire career. He established a regime that was almost identical to USSR and Communist China and that was his intention all along.
@@FromPovertyToProgress You might need to read up on him everything is not black and white. He liked the US because they overthrew their colonial master British Empire.
@@DubhghlasMacDubhghlas I have read dozens of books on the Vietnam war. Just because Ho liked one thing about USA does not disprove that he was not a Totalitarian Communist who wanted to use military force to impose his ideology on all of Indochina.
@@FromPovertyToProgress Go trolling somewhere else, no interest in discourse with anyone, who would so grossly misrepresent what was in the original comment and who equates the past tense, "HAD" to mean a deeply held, lifelong, closeted belief.
I am not trolling anything, nor did I misrepresent your original comment.. There is simply not evidence that Ho admired US constitution.... ever. Ho was a committed Communist since 1919, went to school and lived in the Soviet Union under Stalin many times and worked closely with Chinese Communists. He was also an important member of Comintern. He played a major role in the formation of many Communist parties long before 1946 when he pretended to love USA. After taking power he worked very closely with Chairman Mao. It so obvious that Ho was a dedicated Communist who was lying just to get US support.
16:07 Our family used to have a far relative lived with us when I was a kid, she was always so happy and energetic but as a kid I wondered why she lives with us instead of her family. My grandma told me that during the VN war (or as we refer to it as the American war), her father lit up an oil lamp during the night to fix his bike because he really needed it tmr, the Americans probably saw the light (or probably smelled the oil) and consequently bombed her house. She was at her friends house at the time and once she returned after hearing a loud bang, she came back to the sight a bomb crater where her entire family once lived. I guess that was operation Rolling Thunder.
We lost because our progress was determined by how many enemy combatants we killed instead of how much territory we'd gain. The battle of hill 937 was a perfect example. On May 10th, 1969 the 101st Airborne division fought the Vietcong on a hill in the A Shau Valley that the 101st called "Hamburger Hill". After 10 days of heavy fighting and casualties, the 101st succeeded in taking the hill. After a few weeks, the hill was simply abandoned by US forces. A few weeks later the Vietcong took back the hill without firing a shot.
@@capnhands “The official US Department of Defense figure was 950,765 communist forces killed in Vietnam from 1965 to 1974. According to figures released by the Vietnamese government in 1995, there were 1,100,000 North Vietnamese Army and Viet Cong military personnel deaths during the Vietnam War (including the missing).” I don’t think America lost 😂
@@Behindyoumortey the main objective of the war was for the north to lose and be annexed by the south. since the opposite happened it means the us lost.
One of my very first memories was seeing the helicopters taking people off the roof of the American Embassy in South Vietnam. When I grew up, I always thanked Vietnam Vets for fighting this stupid, pointless war. Part of the reason I work for VA now.
All combat troops left South Vietnam in 1973. The embassy thing happened in 1975 after the South Vietnamese Government gave up and the North ran over them.
0:55 - Chapter 1 - A far away fight 1:40 - Mid roll ads 3:25 - Back to the video 7:05 - Chapter 2 - An unconventional enemy 13:05 - Chapter 3 - The vietnamese heart 16:15 - Chapter 4 - The american trust 19:50 - Chapter 5 - Legacy
During the war, M. Scott Peck was an Army psychiatrist- he started to quiz the top brass and those in command about their knowledge and understanding of the Vietnamese and their culture. They made it clear to him that they had not and wanted none. He knew then how it would turn out.
No military leaders ever have a deep understanding of their adversary’s culture, but somehow half of them win anyway. It helps, of course, but it is not necessary.
@@PabloVelasco-hr3ko Seriously? Conquerors do not care about the culture they are conquering. They merely want to extract resources or impose their views on others.
Good report. I can confirm several of the points made but would like to add a couple more reasons for US military failure. Re: Bombing. In one case we went into 3pl canopy jungle where the B-52 aircraft had bombed. Several acres of trees were decimated with craters. Less than 1/4 mile away we found multiple bunkers & tunnels completely untouched. Re: False casualty reports. I remember watching the lieutenant radio in (at lowest reporting level) inflated reports of enemy casualties. I suspect inflation of enemy casualties occurred at each level of the command structure. Re: Rules of engagement. In one case our base camp was mortared from a nearby village. We could see the tubes popping. We were not allowed to return fire because the village was "friendly". Re: General state of training. I went over with a battalion unit. Our training consisted of tactical exercises that included such absurdities as low crawls into a mock Vietnamese village in the snow and war games in sub freezing weather (Ft. Lewis, Washington) When we got of the plane in Vietnam at 6:00 AM it was already 91° Fahrenheit. Re: Popular support. Absolutely NO language training was given. Those of us who tried to learn a little had to do so under the most difficult conditions as everything was almost always wet(Mekong delta). The farmers really didn't seem to care who held office in Saigon so long as rice farming continued. Identification of the enemy was a huge problem. The Viet Cong standard uniform was to dress in black pajamas. This was also standard dress for all of the farmers we met. We were attacked multiple times by women &/or children. Re: Troop morale. During the 1968 period when public support for the war in the US shifted radically (I didn't come home to the same country I left) one of my boys asked me why we were there. I responded we were trying to protect Vietnamese democracy but it was already becoming clear that we were supporting another corrupt autocracy. In short, those of us who served on th ground in the Vietnam war were in a very similar position to the Russian soldiers currently occupying Ukraine - poorly led, poorly trained, and lied to by our own government.
Fun fact : Vietnam defeated an invasion of the Chinese army, barely a couple of years after they defeated the Yanks !!! Defeating the 2 most powerful armies of the world within years, those so called paddy farmers of Vietnam could surely fight.. 🙏🏼
Do you even know what history is? You never thought to look up anything did you. The US killed over a million viet cong and lost 58 thousand of their own troops in a fight that they were just playing around with. It wasn’t even our homeland that was attacked, they just went over there to make some noise and made plenty of it and pulled out because there wasn’t anything else in it
Chine kicked their ass and left b4 the Vietnamese can counter attack and they tried to kick the usa out of Vietnam but got bodied so they hid in caves until the usa left themselves. They didn't by any means send America packing because of how they fought but played it smart knowing that the only weakness the usa has is usa themselves aka hippies protesting in dc
True. These Americans defending the US gotta admit we got our ass handed to us. We rolled in with a whole bunch of allies and they were so good Vietnam vets still have nightmares about it. The Vietcong were a bunch of farmers. Truly sad tho. RIP to those who died for the politicians and thanks to those who served. But that war shouldn't had gone for that long.
@@mcchicken5039 how did we get our asses kicked when we won every battle and had air superiority and traveled their country with ease and decimated the conventional nva to guerrilla fighters hiding in the jungle waiting and praying for the usa to leave
@@ericayala7387 I don't think you understand that invading and bombing an already war torn nation by the world's most advanced military isn't a bragging right. Victory or defeat of any war is determined by the achievement of objectives. Did US achieved it's objectives to prevent communists from taking over? No! Did Vietnamese won their objectives of defending themselves? Yes!
Knew the day was coming for a video on this subject! You honestly could write a book(s) on any subject as to why the US lost the war; but, it ultimately boils down to this- Just because our authorities wanted to go to war didn’t mean we as civilians/the ones fighting the war wanted to go to war. When you have even the slightest of hesitation or question of why you’re there against an army fighting for its own homeland you get the recipe for disaster. The French found out before us and we found out when Saigon fell in 1975.
exactly, you could write so many books about why the war was lost. there are so many reasons. one, the one that i chalk up to be the most important... was this: we (america) had promised, by JFK, to resupply south vietnam with munitions and weapons on a 1:1 basis, what that means, is that for every bullet lost, it would be replaced. that promise was upheld for well over a decade...JFK, Johnson, then Nixon. THEN the f*ckface by the name of kissenger negotiated some pisspoor things to have us quit the war while saving face.. we exited 1973. Then, one of the biggest mistakes in presidential history occured: watergate. nixon literally left overnight, and congress was PISSED. God bless Gerald Ford, as he tried to retain congress to upkeep the promise we made the south vietnamese, that we'd resupply them.. as they were winning the war at that point, the south vietnamese were battle hardened and knew how to fight. they managed to push back the VC until watergate. congress denied Ford's attempts, and we were no longer able to supply the south. the following weeks fell apart quick, as the ammo ran out. While the north vietnamese had China and the Soviet union resupply them like candy....and because of that? the north was able to enter saigon on april 30th, 1975. a dozen generals of the south had used their last bullets to take their own lives, rather ending things in their control than allow themselves to be captured by the north. it was a damn fucking shame, the south was doing amazing for themselves, they fought for 2 WHOLE YEARS alone, without us alongside them, until they ran out of ammo. Compare that to just last year, when we left afganistan..... the afgan army had hudnreds of BILLIONS of dolalrs worth of ammo, weapons, equipment, vehicles, and guess how long they lasted without america? 2 days. not even kidding. the taliban was about to arrive on the 3rd fucking day, and the afgan army dispersed and fled, didn't even try to fight. while the vietnamese did 2 whole years. afganistan now goes down as another error in our history, but vietnam was the ultimate showdown of the cold war, with it's many combatants, the culture, the inventions, the history is amazing. let that be a lesson to continue supplying Ukraine in their conflict for independence.
In vietnamese text books they teach this period as the national/independence wars, and they see from the indo china war until the vietnam war as a single very long conflict
That ignores the Vietnam side. Vast majority of South Vietnamese wanted to reunite with the north. And US preventing that from happening turned people against the US. You are never going win people to your side if you keep them from what they want. Then many of those soldiers who went over there committed war crimes that is not going win people over. US and Vietnam today have a fairly good relationship far as non allied nations do.
I’m Hmong and my grandfathers were some of the Laotian indigenous fighters trained by the CIA. Their service was the main reason why my family was able to come to the US after the war.
I appreciate that you have sponsors. Get paid. That being said, there is something beautifully hilarious in the juxtaposition of Simon's intense voice describing war and that same tone describing a video game
the worst part probably would be the drafted troops coming back home to an angry populace not knowing that terrors those young men were subjected to and seeing their brothers perish. its no wonder the fragging rate of us officers were so high.
not all that surprising realy. even today us-vets out of service are treated like trash unless they have a stable job. the government doesnt care about them cause they became useless to them from ptsd and combat wounds. and the population doesnt care because all they see is homeless trash. and for many americans homeless people are blamed for being lazy and stupid regardless of how they got on the street.
The main thing was the indefensible geography. Traditional logistics and tactics could handle a contained peninsula like Korea, but just glancing at a map of South Vietnam should have been enough to tell anyone that LBJ was out of his gourd to order American ground troops into that fight.
dudemcdudeface- It's the same reason that mighty Soviet Union that defeated over 2/3rds of Nazi Germany was unable to defeat Afghanistan, why nobody but Alexander the Great defeated Afghanistan ( he won because they challenged him to an open battle ). It's why the mighty Romans, the best on battlefield at the time, were unable to conquer the highlands. of Scotland, after conquering most of Europe,England & Southern Scotland. It boils down to terrain, & how the native people ( the insiders) use it to their😮 advantage against the foreign invaders ( the guys who are always on the outside)
quite the contrary, you didn't look close enough. The south was patterned with canals and swamp land. Natural obstacles right there! Also, to get supplies and armies to the south, people and material had to be moved through over 1000 km of mountainous terrain.
@@Krasnoye158 Whatever defenses there were, were not used properly. In fact, Westmoreland intentionally sent US troops to meet the enemy halfway or more, effectively absorbing the cost of dealing with the natural barriers when it could have been a benefit instead. There were exceptions (the Montagnards), but by then our stupidity had essentially trained the enemy in how to circumvent Southern defenses. Ultimately we realized the best strategy never needed conventional ground troops in the first place. Training + funding + arms for the South, and Special Forces were the best way to go, but the damage was done and irreversible. The most basic strategic competence would have said so from the beginning, but there was a careerist idiot in charge, led by another careerist idiot, and a President willing to do literally anything to guarantee election in 1965.
I remember watching the news each evening and hearing the death counts for the day. I'm glad I was to young to understand what those numbers really meant.
Second that. I have stopped watching TV alltogether for many years now because on YT you can find good, original documentaries (like this one), cooking shows and other things.
He’s part of a team. This isn’t just him. You see credits. You see references from research. Clearly you don’t think he edits and films it? Please tell me you don’t think Superman or any other film character does every job in video production
3rd Batt/4th Marines/3rd Mar Div landed in Hue in 1965 and set up camp at the Phu Bai airport. I company was sent down to hill 41 outside of DaNang. I was on the night-time patrols that went out from that hill. The patrols would leave after dark. You can imagine my surprise when the patrol simply stopped a short distance from the hill, set in for the night, and called in bogus postion reports on the radio. Before dawn the patrol would wake up and return the short distance to the perimeter of hill 41. The CO would not have any idea that the patrol had just stayed in one spot all night. That is one of the many reasons why the USA lost the Viet war. No US soldier wanted to risk his life for it.
One thing you realize is that the US is good at war, but bad at political/social relations, and it's always the same: South Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, the US fight but doesn't even bother to understand the problem, and it's something that has worsened since Vietnam
We lost the vietnam war because we fought against a dedicated enemy who would keep fighting no matter how many of them we killed plus conventional warfare does not work so well in a jungle
I mean we beat the vietcong very badly and they lost most of their fighting capabilities in 1968 after the tet offensive but the NVA was very determined tbh
@@picklewithinternet2254 No the NVA was not very determined. They nearly suffered the same fate as the VC after the Easter offensive. Plus, Operation Linebacker II brought North Vietnam to its knees but because of congress, the U.S. had to withdraw from Vietnam.
@@awsumaustin7650 Actually not. The 68 Tet offensive was a massive military defeat for North Vietnam, the Viet Cong were almost completely destroyed as they all came out of hiding believing their comrades in the north that a popular civilian uprising would support them. That being said it was a massive political success in the the US as Westmoreland had recently made a statement about " light at the end of the tunnel ". There were US Commanders who better understood the conflict than Westmoreland and the politicians back in DC. Unfortunately the were not listened to or did not take command until it was too late. Linebacker ll was working as reported by neutral embassies in Hanoi that the the North Vietnamese were considering a truce or something to stop the fighting as they were running out of resources. Unfortunately The politicians who started a war we should not have gotten involved to begin with had no clue as to what the endgame should be. Most likely would not have happened the way it did had Kennedy not been killed. Check out the September 1963 Walter Cronkite interview with President Kennedy. It shows his perspective on the conflict in Vietnam at that time.
A point to note that not many know was that the nationalists wanting independence from France was happy to seek help from the West to support their independence, there were some promises made during ww2 about this to help the war effort against Japan. but when the Western nations turned them away to stick with France, these nationalists were forced to turn to the communists. When the country got cut up after the France Indochina war giving the North to communist sphere and South remain under France, done by foreign powers for political reasons without consulting much with what the Vietnamese wants, the stage was set.
Good points. Also, the 1954 Geneva Accords provided that the country would only be partitioned between North and South for 2 years. Then there was to be an election to reunify the country. However, Eisenhower realized that Ho Chi Minh would win so he colluded with S Vietnam's dictator, Ngo Dinh Diem, to nix the elections.
@@chrishamlin5863 No, Eisenhower realized that North would never allow a fair election as their had been so many sham elections in Communist countries up until that point. Typically almost 100% vote for Communist party line. And the Accords were never signed by USA or South Vietnam.
Totally inaccurate as Commie propaganda hogwash! The North Vietnamese Commies, under Commie Chinese puppet Ho Chi Minh, actually systematically purged and assassinated all Vietnam nationalist parties, including Vietnam Quoc Dan Dang. Commie China did not want Vietnam nationalist for the obvious reason, because the Vietnamese nationalists were vehemently against China's hegemony. Why didn't US President Truman trust Ho? That's because nobody trusted Commies, as actions always speak louder than words or lies. Commie Chinese Hu Kwan, aka Ho Quang, aka Ho Chi Minh was an active member of the French Communist Party in 1920's, then later an active member of Russian Communist Party or Bolsheviks 1920's and 1930's, and then an active member of Chinese Communist Party CCP or Chinese Red Army attache in 1940's, long before he reached out to Truman in 1946. How could anyone trust an Communist insurgent active for decades in global Commie movement? No wonder Truman couldn't trust the dude, not to mention he got many body-doubles as well. The real Nguyen Ai Quoc died in Hong Kong in 1932, but his impostor (Hu Kwan), a Chinese intel officer lived on to play his part. That's why "Ho Chi Minh" only ate imported Chinese food (his favorite was Gà rán Quảng Đông, or Guangdong fried chicken) and not Vietnamese food, wore only imported Chinese clothing and not Vietnamese, got tended by only imported Chinese nurses, and wrote and spoke Chinese better than Vietnamese. Even when he tried to write Vietnamese, his writings were full of spelling and grammatical errors like those of a 2nd grader. All true. Check out his photos and his archived letters. Not only that, Vietnamese Commies tried their hardest to brainwash people with lies about his being educated, single, and pure to fully devote his life and energy for his beloved country Vietnam, but in reality he was an addict (tobacco and alcohol), a Commie Chinese puppet, a mass murderer, a pedophile, and a playboy with third-grade education and multiple wives and mistresses. He even tried to mouth rape young Indonesian girls and was ordered not to do so. Search "President Ho told to stop kissing girls" The Straits Times, 8 March 1959, Page 8. In Vietnam, this criminal openly raped women, including Ms. Nong Thi Xuan and once she became pregnant, he murdered her whole family to cover up. Even former senior Party loyalist Bui Tin was shocked by his behavior. Of course, under order from his master Mao, dude brought Commie Chinese bloody rag for a flag from Commie China's Fujian province to his Pac-Bo cave in North Vietnam in 1941 and made it the flag of North Vietnam, then eventually the national flag of Vietnam after the North Vietnamese Commie terrorists invaded the free and prosperous Republic of South Vietnam, replacing the authentic national flag of Vietnam for 2000 years (yellow flag with 3 horizontal red stripes) dating back to the Trung Sisters Dynasty, 40 A.D. Consequently, both Woodrow Wilson and Truman's assessments of character proved to be correct, and butcher as Ho Chi Minh later committed mass murder, slaughtering nearly 1 million North Vietnamese landowners to rob their lands and homes during his deadly land-reform (1953-1956), following similar massacres committed by his Commie masters Lenin, Stalin, and Mao. More than 1 million North Vietnamese fled to South Vietnam during Geneva Peace Accord 1954 to escape Communist atrocities in North Vietnam as a result. Dude is ranked among the world's top 10 mass murderers of 20th century, along with fellow Commie butchers Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol-Pot. The land robbing remains an ongoing crime against Vietnamese citizens even to these days! Search "cuop dat dan" ("robbing lands of citizens") right here on RUclips to see countless clips of land-robbing by the utterly corrupt and brutal Vietnamese Commie regime against the citizens. All true. Do your research. The truth shall set you free!
Thank you Simon! As an American this war is so engrained in our culture but we rarely hear anything about it from a technical POV. Just how it was a mess, debacle etc etc but never any real detail. And when you do its tough to pick through bias: Conservatives would say "We WERE winning and could've easily defeated them but damn libs were being too soft, not bombing more and allowing the enemy to escape to peaceful spaces whenever we had them! And the media turned people against!" Liberals would say "We could never win it was too much a quagmire and they were motivated by freedom theyd never give up, this was just part of their never ending war for freedom vs Japan, France, China etc When someone will fire at a helicopter with bows and arrows you have no chance of winning over that" All of which may be true and I lean towards the latter, in the end it was inherently unwinnable but yes, glad to have a Simon video breaking it down and providing the background to it!
There’s a million reasons why. We lost in Korea. We lost worse in Vietnam. We treated our men as replaceable. We forced people who didn’t want to fight to fight. We treated em like crap after they got home. Made fun of them. Made stereotypes of their mental damage. We were disgusting monsters.
No I can not think of myself as a "disgusting monster". Folks in the United States had to have made big money out of the war - Bell Helicopter" for instance. But do not listen to me - I have always been somewhat cynical.......
Odd, I was thinking about this issue of US defeat in Vietnam today, and how it was the US seemed unaware or simply indifferent to the first Vietnam war, in which the French attempted to reassert colonial rule in 'Indochina' after WWII. It seems incredible that the US learned no lessons from what was then the immediate past. For the Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians it was a tragedy many decades long.
The US wasn't unaware or indifferent to the French war effort, they funded it. They gave billions to France, making up a majority of the funds for the war effort. They got involved direct when France gave up and pulled out
The recent experience of WW2 may have contributed to American arrogance. France had collapsed quickly against the Germans, whom the Americans had been able to defeat. In the 50s, France lost further wars in Indochina and Algeria, while the USA was able to hold their own in Korea. I'm guessing the Americans simply saw the French army as incompetent and assumed that they would experience none of it's problems.
It’s sad how we initially supported ho when they were under siege by Japanese but then turned on him when he aimed for uniting the country. Multiple times made an effort equate the United States struggle for colonial independence. All because relations with France and communism. Ken burns Vietnam doc is a real good piece.
The West and Communists were allies of convenience in WW2. It should not be surprising that they fell apart when the Cold War started. Both sides had very different goals.
At the end of WWII Truman should have forced France and the Netherlands to give -up their colonies, thus avoiding wars in Vietnam, Indonesia and Algeria over the next 2 decades.
One of my old fishing buddies was a Vietnam vet. One night over beers he started talking about his experience there and it was terrible. He told me about taking prisoners. He said they would tell them they had five seconds to run and they started shooting at them. War truly is terrible
The North Vietnamese Commie terrorists buried alive 10K civilians in Hue City (Central Vietnam) during the Tet Offensive 1968. During the war, they casually land-mined buses full of passengers travelling in South Vietnam, launched mortars into schools fully of school kids in South Vietnam, and throw grenades in markets full of shoppers in South Vietnam.
Anyone interested for a more in-depth view of the whole conflict should check out 'The Vietnam War' by Ken Burns (2017). 10 part, 18h documentary series that is unbelievable, starting with the very roots that set the stage to it's lasting influence to this day; with interviews from both sides, both at home and on the frontline, and important players; and incredibly exhaustive research on the subject. Some unbelievable images and photographs as well, and doesn't shy away from the atrocities both sides committed. 1000000% recommended. It's my all-time favorite documentary, I've never seen anything quite like it.
@@GregBrownsWorldORacing His Holocaust documentary was absolute crap though. Haven't really watched anything else from him and doubt I will after seeing that one.
We didn't lose, we "tactically retreated" Jk in all honesty its really weird reading how the US lost the Vietnam war because all through school we learned how we just left because it didnt make sense to be there anymore. We never "lost", just left. I even went to a relatively left leaning school and our textbook not once mentioned how we lost
@@kingace6186 super weird cuz cuz for us it was super glossed over. Instead it focused on social reforms happening at the time. Vietnam war always felt like a side note when we learned about the cold war
What you never mentioned was the fact that the majority of the American public and the vast majority of boys being sent to fight had never even heard of Vietnam. They had no idea where it was on a map. To most boys being sent there it might as well have been middle earth or Narnia they were going to, to fight the invading Martians.
Enter the GOAT Ali... You are my opposer when I want freedom. You are my opposer when I want justice. You are my opposer when I want equality. You won't even stand up for me in America for my religious beliefs, and you want me to go somewhere and fight - but you won't even stand up for me here at home!
Its better to just swallow one's pride and admit you lost. If you say the Soviets lost in Afghanistan (which they did), you HAVE to say that the Americans lost in Vietnam, no two ways about it.
@@hattorihanzo562 Yes but it was unquestionably a political defeat that impacted US Foreign Policy for many years afterwards. It doesn't matter if its a military defeat or a political defeat, a loss is a loss.
When you fight against the hearts of the people, even for a powerful nation or empire, it will be a tough fight - Romans in Scotland - American Revolution - Eastern Front - Vietnam War - War in Afghanistan
Tunisia (Arab Spring) The Invasion of William of Orange (Glorious Revolution) Solidarity Union in Poland. All three of the above were bloodless revolutions, an unarmed populace defeated a well-armed military. A fourth one might be the Soviet Army against Yeltsin, unarmed Muskovites defended Yeltsin. Successfully)
A quick early corrections: One, the Viet Minh had been fighting the Japanese since 1942, though in limited fashion, supplied and aided by US intelligence agents, with their main functions being helping recover downed US airmen sent on bombing missions to Indochina. Secondly, the Geneva Accords didn't split Vietnam into two countries. French and French-aligned forces were to withdraw to the south of the Demarcation line and Communist forces to the north, in order to avoid further fighting so a referendum could be held on the future of a unified Vietnam. The US knew Ho Chi Minh would undoubtedly win such a vote, and so created the Republic of Viet Nam in the south to avoid such a vote even happening
My grandpa was a NVA battalion captain in 68-69&70-71. He told me stories when he led troop to the South and by the time he got there the battalion reduce to a company, he said if the US bombing didnt get u there is a chance the jungle will.
Good thing he survived. For the vast majority it was a one-way ticket walking weeks through the jungle just to get to the battlefield. And then the really dangerous part took place. And it never ended until they died. “Born in the North to die in the South” was a popular slogan.
Another thing you didn't mention was tactics. The US military now views the tactics used as obsolete. Patrolling the forest in small numbers just played into the Vietcong hands.
Im fascinated by the Vietnam war. Its was just such a very strange conflict particularly in the manner which it was fought. "A bright shining lie" is a fabulous dissection of the war (albeit quite a tough read).
Well worth reading for anyone seriously interested in this topic. Neil Sheehan. But I'm guessing most young people aren't really reading 'books' anymore.
I love how we still fool ourselves into believing we didn't get the crap kicked out of us. We have a fragile ego and losing a war goes against our pathetic tough guy fantasies
Yeah, I remember back when I was in elementary school, a kid named 'Candy' Burris told me about his own brother being killed in Vietnam. He told me about how when the family was told, he just went outside and wept. Later, I asked my own brother who had been to Vietnam about 'Burris,' and he told me that he had been killed by a land mine. Everyone in the neighborhood who went to war knew who he was.
The communists there were much more willing to fight until the last person in their country was dead than we were. Got to admire their patience in that one.
@@jmoore112344The North Vietnamese we’re more nationalist than communist. Even now they seem less of the latter. They didn’t even want to expand the ideology, they just picked whatever government was best for their country.
@@subcommanderxelios800 It shows as well, they were willing to reestablish ties with the United States in the 90s and today are opposed to China's efforts to expand their influence throughout Asia particularly in their own country. After all, the Chinese attempted to invade Vietnam in 1979 and still think Vietnam is part of their domain.
The Japanese were far more fanatical and determined. Guess what? They lost, we won. The US never made one legitimate effort to invade North Vietnam, take their capital and force them to kiss our feet. They fought the war thinking the Vietnamese would honor a ceasefire the way North Korea has. They didn’t… the cowards signed a peace treaty, waited for us to leave and then re-invaded. No emotion, just facts.
One reason why the US didn't invade North Vietnam was China. China invaded during the Korean War which prolonged the stalemate and lead to more deaths. So America didn't invade NV so as to avoid bringing in China and perhaps even the Soviet Union.
America's apatite for the limited war was no match to Hanoi's hunger for liberation and national reunification. A quote from either Newsweek or Times sums it up all.
It was, since the Communists in Malaya were generally isolated from foreign backers, meaning they couldn't receive heavy weapons from China or the USSR. They also lacked a safe haven where their fighters could retreat over a border, resupply and regroup (understated importance of an insurgency).
And another big difference, Malaya was under British control, enabling a coordinated effort. The South Vietnamese government and armed forces were corrupt and weak, with infighting between generals, embezzlement of US aid and extremely low morale.
The no total-war doctrine. The US feat feared if they attacked the North directly they would draw China into the conflict in a direct manner. The channel 'HistoryMatters' did a concise video on the reason why.
I’ve often heard that the US in Vietnam, and the USSR in Afghanistan, are in many ways, mirror images of each other… Both major superpowers The superpower fighting an almost unseen enemy. both fighting an enemy using guerrilla warfare tactics. Both armies fighting in very inhospitable terrain. The enemy being funded and supplied by the other superpower bloc. And both superpowers, thinking it would last months, but ends up lasting years… Also, I am sure I read that, when the White House heard got news that the Soviet Union had started the invasion of Afghanistan, one very senior member of the Carter Administration was quoted as saying "Now, let's give the Soviets their own Vietnam"
The difference is the Soviets retreated before Diplomacy, America left after terms were negotiated in the Paris Peace Accords (which weren’t mentioned in the video)
The US suffered ~50,000 soldiers *killed in combat* in the war. Deaths were closer to 60,000 and casualties (killed and wounded from all causes) were 360,000.
With most modern US wars the majority of the deaths come when the troops return home. Iraq and Afghanistan saw low soldier deaths but the suicide rate of vets was quite high and it still is a problem. Also the US started using more private military contractors and those deaths aren't counted the same way.
@@DSTKO-w7z It should also be mentioned that for these recent wars, while fatalities are comparatively low by historical standards, the number of soldiers coming home with severely disabling physical injuries is comparatively quite large. The low KIA numbers might give you the impression these recent wars weren’t super-deadly or dangerous compared to Vietnam or Korea, but the fact is that while we can now save many more soldiers’ lives, we can’t make them whole again when they’ve suffered traumatic brain injuries or other severe wounds.
@@ChrisFarrell Likely one of the main reasons why vets have such high suicide rates. The U.S. government spent $2.3 trillion, and the war led to the deaths of 2,324 U.S. military personnel, 3,917 U.S. contractors and 1,144 allied troops. The numbers are good considering the US spent 20 years in Afghanistan but just in the year 2020 alone there were 6,146 Veteran suicides. So in 1 year more vets died by their own hands then were killed fighting a 20 year war.
I’m currently in Vietnam and after seeing this beautiful and scary country I can see why the USA lost. It’s too vast too big too much for a ground invasion with troops especially foreign
The US, like ancient Egypt, never loses a war, they just win them closer and closer to home, in this case they rebounded with the crushing defeat of the military powerhouse of Grenada
It all started in the 1950s and just went down south from there onwards, including many orchestrated coup d'états, specially in democratic goverments to be precised. USA citizens still wonder why there is so much anti-american sentiment in some of the countries they visit while also being mostly clueless about what exactly led them to react this way.
2Million is an understatement both suffered so greatly that some groups of American and Vietnamese solider took each other with mercy for a swift execution
I once had a guy lose his shit on me when I said we lost the Vietnam War. He claimed they never failed to achieve any objective and started asking me seemingly random history questions to "test" my 'Americanism' I guess. Of course I answered something wrong and he went on a tirade about how kids are so stupid these days and "what are these professors teaching" me. It was great fun.
some old bitter man, lots of them still need to believe that they did good. That they were bringing freedom and democracy that the vietcong were evil. Because if they didn't, they would have come to terms with the fact that they killed millions of people and saw their brothers die in the worst way possible... FOR NOTHING
3 reasons why they have lost: 1, Weapons 2, Motivation 3, Vietcong 1, Weapons: The VC used the AK-47, and on the other side the US used the M16. The M16 was a space age Weapons, and it was often jammed, due to the ambitiousness of the Weapon. If you hit the dirt, you must calculate with the fact that in firing it, it Will be jammed and you must clean it out in a firefight. On the other hand the VC used the good old AK-47. As some had said it was a pasant's Weapon. These was a story of a Green Beret Soldier who found a VC corpse weekes after combat. As the story says, the US guy had taken out the AK which had the Corpse's guts in it, then put it under water, the shoot with it. 2, Motivation The US fought this war due to fear of the "Domino Effect". If in Vietnam the communists won, the every neighbouring nation will fall under Communism. The Vietnamese people had fought for their freedom. They wanted to undependant from the French, the later on the same against the yankees. You can not right succesfully against such enemy who knows the country and who are fearless against the US. 3, Vietcong You can not win against such opponents who you don't see or hear, just when it was way too late. They had creative trapps planned for the US army, also the Ho-Chi Minh trail which was a miracle ín logistics. Also General Giap was an educated Man, with good leading skills and also Ho Chi Minh was a born leader. They did know when to hit the enemy and then when to disappear. If they did lost a battle, they also won. In Propaganda point of view definetely, the US civilicians had enough. In my Opinion the Vietcong army were the best Guerilla army in the last century.
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I'm surprised you didn't use the North Vietnamese army's actual name, the VietMinh, not Vietcong.
Fantastic game. played it way back when it first came out, been cool to watch a small game grow!
Wow, an entire 3 DAYS of free premium account...
@warographics643 you should do a video on "McNamaras Morons" officially known as "Project 100,000". They took mentally disabled men, some of whom were incapable of tying their own shoes or digging foxholes and sent them to Vietnam to fight. There are reports of some not being able to understand or follow basic orders, yet they were sent to die in a jungle. A good example is Forrest Gump, many were less mentally capable than him.
@@drewmagnet Wasn't the north's actual army the PAVN, or People's Army of Vietnam and the militias the Vietcong?
In Laos I met someone who said that his village was warned not to cook outside, as Lao people often did. His village wasn’t bombed, but neighboring villages were. The pilots assumed that any fires were VC campfires. Most of the time they were just villages where people cooked outside.
Wow, that's an interesting story. Thanks for sharing that one. Makes a lot of, somewhat unfortunate, sense.
Many idiots have told me that the U.S. didn't kill any civilians in the Southeast Asia conflicts.
that's a tradition most of mainland Asia has, the dry kitchen (outside) and the wet kitchen (inside). Japan in antiquity used to have it too but nowadays it's mostly Southern China and SEA
That’s so f-cked up. Surely that’s a war crime.
Still children being maimed and disabled by unexploded munitions in Laos.
My father's a Vietnam vet. While he has some hilarious stories that only warfare can provide (if you have a dark sense of humor), he always says - as you pointed out - "At least in Korea, we knew who the enemy was."
It's more than just that, in Vietnam the biggest enemy was the US leadership
And to this day Vietnam Veterans in Veteran Service Organization Bars detest Jane Fonda.
The Chinese!
Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia!
The enemy is our own Government. Throughout the war, orders on a grand strategic scale was just so wrong. Even up to now, I highly doubt that the common people even truly understand on what really happened during the Vietnam war. The conclusion of losing a war is based on loose assumptions. There’s so much morfe. But it’s already over, and there’s no point in raising the past except to learn the lesson.
I think the US fundamentally misunderstood WHY the war was being fought. They saw it as the West vs. Communism. But the North Vietnamese were nationalists first and Communists second.
Also the US’s strategy just did not fit the kind of war they were fighting.
For sure. As I understand it, Ho Chi Men was, prior to the conflict, a great admirer of the U.S.
And they were natural and fierce adversaries of China; the country the US was supposedly trying to contain. And interestingly enough, the country that Ho Chi Minh admired the most was in fact, the USA. It was also the first country that Castro reached out to after the Cuban Revolution.
Imagine if they'd done things just a little bit differently. A very good chance two massive future headaches might have at least been mitigated or even avoided altogether. Helluva powerful country but not too bright sometimes.
I think they understood, it was more the constant restraints they had to face. They didn’t want to invade the North because that could involve China and/or Russia nor did they want to expand into Laos or Cambodia.
They had Russian soldiers as advisors. Russia also armed North Viet Nam.
Great for the NVA, poor for the VC
Had some older relatives fight in that war. My dad’s cousin was a tunnel rat. Pops said his cousin ended his life 3 months after coming back. Now I live in Vietnam. Been here 8 years. I’ve spoken with many US vets who decided to just stay here after the war. There is a bar in district 1 in Saigon where you can see US and Vietnamese vets having food and beers together.
I am not surprised that there is a bar in Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh city) where veterans on both sides swap stories. That is one thing that civilians do not understand about veterans. Many of them can identify more with their former enemy than with civilians who never experienced the war. That is a great way to deal with PTSD: talk in a bar with your former enemy.
I remember my Grandfather (who trained fighter pilots in WW2) spent hours talking to former-Luftwaffe pilot who was now a car salesman in southern California. They went on-and-one for hours like they were life-long friends, even though they had never met before.
@@FromPovertyToProgress there is a north viet guy who hangs out there a god bit. His English is ok, he loves to call me Castro when I have my camp hat on because of my long beard. His left arm is gone from the elbow down and he has scars on his neck and face. Dude had to have been a hardcore warrior in his prime.
@@Lord_CabbyHow is Vietnam? You must like it there.
@@garlandgarrison3739 it’s pretty awesome here. Always something to do, and everything is more affordable here.
@cabby26 Everything is more affordable? I wonder if it's an upside to socialism? Shit the US just seems to be getting more expensive.
One of the first failures that I witnessed was in the winter of 1965-66 when I Co. 3Batt 4th Marines was stationed on Hill 41 a few miles outside of DaNang. I was on night time patrols that went outside of the perimeter. What suprised me was that the patrols would often stop at the first available cover and spend the night there while calling in bogus position reports. That was fine with me as sleeping for a few hours in relative safety was a lot better than walking around all night in an area where VC patrols were active.
I relate this story to illustrate one of the reasons why the USA lost the Viet war: very few US soldiers wanted to risk their lives for the political benefit of US leaders back in the USA.
Dragged into a war that no one wanted and because of stupid politics
That is usually how modern wars are nowadays. Stupid politics and being dragged into a war
@@kaylethstarbane7800Ukraine
Don’t forget the false flag Gulf of Tonkin.
Sounds familiar 🤔
Nah, everyone wanted communism destroyed, but what a foolish hill to die on, in Vietnam..
The logistics success of the Ho Chi Minh trail doesn't receive enough attention. It just goes to show that human intelligence, ingenuity and determination applies whatever level of technology a people are working with.
Yeah I remember reading that many young women volunteered to help with the transfer of supplies they seriously where brave
Logistics win wars.
There's a video about it on one of his other channels (I think Megaprojects?). It really was impressive. I'm hoping he'll also make one about the Cu Chi tunnels.
Yes, the Ho Chi Minh trail was the key to the war. Something the US never fully understood. Thinking that air power alone would shut down the logistics system was naive.
NO , the Democrat's told them exactly when and where their own boys were coming..WTF ? same flight path again tonite eh ?
I had friends who were drafted to fight in Vietnam. A few never heard from again, and the rest came back 'different '. Being a girl, living on an island, seeing many young men in the army, it wasn't fair. I was out protesting the war while my friends were out there fighting. Horrible days.
It was a horrible war that US government should never have stuck its nose in. Alot of young guys with bright futures got drafted and killed. Pointless loss on both sides
You still have time now to protest sexism. Women are too scared for war otherwise they would've help us change laws long ago.
When I came back from Nam, I noticed my GF was different so I kicked her to the curb. my friends changed so I k'd them also. I noticed rock music had changed. I stopped listening. On the TV cop or detective shows, the Nam vet gangs were rampant criminals and were reigned in and shot or arrested by TV heroes. I stopped watching TV. When I noticed complete strangers changed, I realized then it was actually me that had changed.
The war ended with the Paris peace treaty under the Nixon administration, not by any defeat by the North. That title of this presentation on RUclips is a blatant lie! No, it's a fn lie!
p.s. I hate the imposters claiming to be RVN vets. I ask 1 question and I know who the fakers are.
On a past US Census last century, one question was: Are you a Viet Nam Veteran? Over 20 million answered yes.
Harvey Steele Phu Bai 1-9-69 > 1-9-70. 31m20 = radio carrier and prime target.
@@galgamekthegreatlord4823 You should google the Equal Rights Amendment. It would have extended the draft to women and was broadly supported by Feminist organisations. It almost passed, too, until conservatives (led by conservative women) rallied against it. You're right to be angry about the inherent unequality of the draft, but your anger should be firmly directed at conservatives of both sexes. A sizable portion of women have fought for decades to either have the draft eliminated or make women eligible.
You are a large part of why the war was lost.
I used to work in a machine shop in Philadelphia before joining the military. One of the guys there, I used to eat lunch with every day told me he was in the military too. He was an officer in the NVA (North Vietnamese Army) during the Vietnam War. Nicest and hardest working dude I've ever met in my entire life.
Why did he leave the Communist Paradise and come to the land of evil Capitalism?
@@donnyboon2896He can Go Wherever he Wants. He Won!
@@darwinLee81283bạn trả lời thằng 3 soc lon rất hay ❤
Around 1980/82 I worked with some Sth. Vietnamese exmil. One showed me how to convert different semiauto's to full auto. None of them thought much of the NVA/VC that came here as refo's. But as they said, fighting for an ideology is different to living under it. They mainly wanted the invaders out & didn't think much past that. A lot of "cleansing" happened after the South fell.
@@donnyboon2896 You're viewing it through the lens of an American. In their mind, we were foreign invaders. Ideology played no part in it. We, like the French before us, were just foreign occupiers bombing their villages and cities, killing their women and children, poisoning their food and we Americans needed to be stopped.
Having spent a few months in Vietnam and visiting several sites and the War Museum in HCMC, you only get a glimpse of what the war was and even that was absolutely horrific. There are still unexploded bombs being found in the countryside. The museum have embryos of disabled babies with affects from agent orange and other chemicals dropped on the population. It's like something out of Alien. I wasn't alive when the war happened, though having seen that, the killing fields in Cambodia, and Hiroshima in Japan, its sad to see that with all the technology developments in the world, more war looks even more likely than peace ever does.
My grandfather fought in the war. He doesn't talk about it much, but what little he told me was horrific. Documentaries, War movies, and retrospective discussions from a civilian point of view don't capture how bad things really were over there. It was hell on earth, and the PTSD that veterans had to endure afterwards is indescribable.
PTSD is the least punishment those war criminals deserve, he does good by not talking about it, shame on him for fighting innocent villagers, the heroes were the people that faced jail for fleeing the draft, he was a coward for accepting to go
@@igormarcos687
You're Brazilian, your opinion does not matter
@@igormarcos687There's no doubt in my mind that you have absolutely no idea of what went on in Nam. No idea of how exactly the war is fought or how any war is truly fought. I'm not saying Nam was completely justified, but the shit I hear from both sides is ridiculous.
I have a feeling that if you were drafted into the US military, you would be hesitant, but you would still go. It's easy to call someone a coward on the internet where there are next to no repercussions, but if put in the same situation, you'd become the very thing you seem to hate. I'd like to see you say that to someone face, but I know you wouldn't
Vietnamese here. I agree with the notion that PTSD is the lightest form of karma US soldiers could get. I don't care about "but they got drafted" bullshit, as it has the same disgusting taste as the Nazi's "but we're just following orders", doesn't justify the atrocities and killings.
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤭
I'm American and live in Vietnam. Actually my wife is from Hanoi and my father in law fought for the NVA. The fundamental misunderstanding the US had, and why it lost the war, is because it was a war for liberation and independence, more than ideology. The US effectively was trying to prop up a post colonial regime. As Russia is learning now in Ukraine, it's pretty had to defeat people who are fighting for the existence of their own country -- even if they are at a material disadvantage.
news must be slow in vietnam because Russia controls all the territory it was after...and then some. also vietnam isnt communist so how did the us lose exactly?
Didn’t the north invade the south though?
@@souljaboy4892 they did. But only after the US and South refused to hold legally mandated elections which the north would have won, due to their advocating unification and independence
@@souljaboy4892 it's not that simple. The UN agreement called for free national elections. The Western countries knew How Chi Minh would win so they blocked it
@@MMail1984 You are correct, the North would have won the election because Communist nations do not allow fair elections. Which is why USA and State of Vietnam never agreed to sign the Geneva Accords. Which is why elections were never “legally mandated.”
My father was a Naval Corpman attached to Marines stationed in Da Nang; as well as being on the U.S.S Canberra. He always told me, the hardest sight to grasp, was usually going into villages and treating the wounded men,woman and little children. And even though he directly wasnt handling Agent Orange, it still contaminated everything after the fact. So course he's dealing with the affects of that now. And i asked him one time, did he think we deserved to go over there? His response, "no! Thats the big brother policy coming into effect"
It was LBJ wanting to be known as the great war time president. This was going to be his legacy.
Had LBJ never gotten into Vietnam, he would have gotten a second term
The Democrats would control the Presidency, Senate and House always up to today!
Da Nang is a beautiful tourist city now but I've heard they're hiding the fact that there's still Agent Orange contaminant there, waiting to be cleared somehow
Did you ask him if we did the right thing going over to Korea to fight Communists there and successfully defended South Korea as a result?
@@thethaovatoquoc312why? The two wars had nothing to do with each other. Vietnam war had absolutely nothing to do with communism. That was the lie the people were told.
Remember, if you're starting to draft your own men on a war where you're on the offensive.
It means you already lost the war.
There had been a draft for a long time prior.
Landslide Lyndon first sent over activated reserves to fill the forces. this became unpopular since they had families and were devastated when the dads' were killed. Devastating to the re-election chances of DC fn' pols like LBJ.
For a time, married reservists were not sent to
Nam. MacNamara got the selective service to draft unmarried men. a couple of my friends rushed to the chapel and married. a few months later marriage was not a consideration to exempt individuals from being drafted. I was drafted by the pig Lyndon in March 24, 1968 along with 47,999 others to be used for a 1969 tet invasion which did not happen. 4000 for the Marines.
Under Nixon's 2nd term, the Paris Peace treaty was signed and the US withdrew. a couple years later the treaty was violated by the invasion by N Vietnam of the south.
Regards,
H.Steele 31m20 radio operator & carrier (and prime combat target). Phu Bai. 1/9/69 > 1/9/70.
@@yoharve One of the Post-Vietnam War policy changes was to put many of the support units into the Reserve and Guard, so that any major mobilization would require their activation. This was not so smooth for the unprepared medical unit I was in during Desert Storm.
Russia would do well to remember this
@@MsRubyetVietnam is halfway around the world.
Ukraine is on Russia’s doorstep.
Hi Simon and team. Thank you addressing this subject that still reverberates in our history and foreign policy today.
My father and my uncle’s all fought in Vietnam I am glad they made it home safe. I learned a lot from them about the war. That war never needed to happen.
The saddest part of the whole sorry story is that several successive Presidents knew that that the war was completely unwinnable but kept it going because ending the war would poll badly and they considered getting back in the White House more important than the lives of young Americans. Covered in detail in Ken Burns' documentary.
Good thing we never repeated that mistake *cough cough Afghanistan cough cough*
So basically normal American politics , right ?
@@stefanocaraci4017 Normal hegemonic imperialism.
@@stefanocaraci4017 The Americans took notes from the Europeans.
No, the war was not unwinnable. The US just used terrible strategy and tactics. See my comments above.
As someone said the US should have known there own history and the guerrilla war with the the British this is like a mirror image
That's a myth. The war of independence was mainly a conventional war.
This was where the tables turned and why it’s still significant to American History. This was the first time America was seen and fought accordingly as the superior force. Before that, America was good, but was never so lopsided in their favor.
@@m.c.martin Strategies, tactics and logistics. Speak these things until your Blue. The Reality is the fact that while there was Political Will for this fight. The Will of the People was quite the opposite.
Hard to win a war when you NEVER set foot on your enemy’s soil (N Vietnam). Basically, you can never win… if you don’t friggin want to!
Sort of but 58k American soldiers dead vs over 1.1 million enemy solider dead. Like the other guy said the American public got tired of the war.
Granddad served in Vietnam. He left high school early for it but did ultimately work his way to a very high position in the US Airforce. The only story he ever told was also a very short and redacted one. They were trying to leave. While flying over enemy territory they ran out of ammo. They were under fire so they started lighting trash on fire and dropping it out of the door. If you asked him what it was like, he would say "awful" before telling you that war will never solve any problems.
My old man was a vet. Never pushed it on us. Only thing he ever said was we shouldn't have been there in the 1st place.
yeah cuz america still has slaves after fighting the civil war and germany still has gas chambers after WW2. your grandpa might have been a shellshocked hippie
My father served in vietnam, and one of the few stories of his that I've been told, is about a concept he called 'booting'. Where, when a fellow marine was down, you would grab them by the boot. But sometimes, all that could come back, was the foot inside the boot.
I read somewhere that the amount of bomb dropped by the U. S. onto Indochina was far far exceed the total amount dropped in Europe in WW2. Considering the fact that the land area in Indochina was far smaller than that of Europe, you can imagine how much suffering that the Vietnamese people went through!!!
The Air Force had a lot of missions that were against suspected truck parks or river crossings. The pilots flying those missions called them toothpick makers because most of them had no results to show there was anything there to begin with.
Went to Vietnam last year and our guide showed us this small cave under a mountain/cliff side that you could lit fit like 30 ppl in on their knees. He told us that the Vietcong fixing the roads would lit just duck under there when the bombers came and then emerge to continue their repairs, rinse and repeat
Been to Vietnam twice and visited the Cu Chi tunnels. It's amazing because it's not far from Saigon, like at all, it really shows how little control of he country the US had.
@@Vollification fr fr, wanted to visit the Cu Chi tunnels but it was out of the way sadly (I was in Pong Nha/ Da Nang)
@@Allen667sjja You have to visit Saigon and Da Lat plus he countryside if you get the chance. Just try stay away from District 1 in Saigon, the place is a tourist trap.
I lived in District 4 when I was in Saigon, not by choice, I just sort of got lost and ended up in a hotel there and chose to stay. Turns out it used to be a "slum" back in the 90s but when I was there (2017) I thought it was a nice place.
A bit "rough" in some spots as in most restaurants where just a grill with some tables and chairs (you know the sort). But people in the area where very friendly and everyone told me to "don't stay in District 1" and I understand why. I passed though there a few times and it's just filled with drunk tourists, con artists and prostitutes.
And the the prices in District 1 where straight up robbery... except the banh minh you got from food carts, those where worth every dong, they where just that damn good.
But when it came to pho (the noodle soup), coffee or just food in general the prices in any district outside District 1 was a fraction of the cost in District 1.
Stay away from District 1.
Da Lat is just awesome in general, go there :)
Also it’s mostly the women that repaired the road.
@@VollificationI enjoyed district 1. I was there for 2 weeks in June
Vietnam beat France, China and USA.
And Mongolia.
The US didn't lose
Usa and north vietnam sign a peace tree and usa killed millions of north vietnam and north only killed 60,000 usa soldiers then in 1975 after usa left the north attack and beat south after the usa train 1.3 million south vietnam soldiers to fight only 300,000 after the usa left just in case the north break the peace tree but the south lost so you really think usa lost plus the usa wasn't allowed to go to the North to fight they had to wait to the North come on there tuff the south to fight and arayat was going on in usa to the president can send the soldiers home,the usa didn't want to leave but they had to go the president sent them home so you do the math ask yourself a question did usa really lose!!
@@wiseandstrong3386-America fighting in Vietnam for 5 years with high tech weapons still got they ass kick by the Farmer with singles shot rifle against fully automatic M16😂
@@CTROCK It's not even worth replying to your stupid comment kid. Go on somewhere and learn something, the US military won every battle in Vietnam shut u p.
"Being bored" is the biggest cope I've ever seen
Right after "goodwill gesture" lol
It’s crazy because the death toll was calculated to 12:1 NVA soldiers to US, but if you try to fight a war on body count…doesn’t end well.
Is that the calculation from battle? Because soldiers might be killed by the other things like moquisto (no joke. Those little bitches kill a lot) and other medical problem.
P/s: there were South Vietnam and other countries too so the number of died soldiers is a misleading at some points
yeah, the difference is that one side views this as a final war for liberation from there oppressors and one side views it as a waste of time that has men killed and if they come back they are still there in the mind
@@PersonstuckinMichigan You’re right, but…at the same time as soon as we left they started putting anyone associated with us or who weren’t communists into “reeducation” camps so…🙃
I have to stop you on that myth. Westmoreland was a known liar who used to inflate the casualty numbers of the NVA for morale purposes, that number is his estimation, which is completely false.
Most of the deaths were citizens, a lot of war crimes committed by the Americas like the Mai Lai Massacre, usually they would invade the wrong village of Viet Congs and would kill innocent and assault women continuously
I was an advisor on a south vietnamese river patrol boat in 1970…we invaded Cambodia in may. I was shot at but never hit. Sprayed with agent orange and did not die. I returned and went on to finish a 22 year Naval career which included a Degree in nuclear engineering……I still get flashbacks but have managed to supress the memories…I remain grateful to be still alive.
Ok bro stop playing cod
@@giannijones4631I always find it weird that Americans thank military personnel for doing their job, especially when it doesn't concern them at all.
Just my thoughts.
*doesn't concern the person who's thanking them
We are trained from birth to be patriotic... Pledge of allegiance and all that
Its embarrassing.
@@georgehh2574 Thank you is a different way of saving 'welcome home'. They followed orders from a corrupt government. The presidents, secretaries of state, etc. all knew this was a no win war. They would not let the soldiers win the war. McNamara, Kissinger did not care the men were POW, MIA they wanted the power. They were there to make sure the president got wanted they wanted.
@@georgehh2574You being not an American (USA)- we wouldn’t expect you to understand.
I'm surprised that you didn't mention that Ho Chi Mihn had been an ally during WW2, and was a great admirer of both the United States as a country and the U.S. Constitution. That is of course, before the US broke its word and supported the French following WW2, as they were considered more important allies and Mihn found allies in China and the Soviet Union.
Political leaders often lie, particularly totalitarian ones.
The idea that Ho was some closet pro-American democrat is ridiculous. He was involved in establishing multiple Communist parties and worked closely with the Soviets and Chinese communists his entire career. He established a regime that was almost identical to USSR and Communist China and that was his intention all along.
@@FromPovertyToProgress You might need to read up on him everything is not black and white. He liked the US because they overthrew their colonial master British Empire.
@@DubhghlasMacDubhghlas I have read dozens of books on the Vietnam war. Just because Ho liked one thing about USA does not disprove that he was not a Totalitarian Communist who wanted to use military force to impose his ideology on all of Indochina.
@@FromPovertyToProgress Go trolling somewhere else, no interest in discourse with anyone, who would so grossly misrepresent what was in the original comment and who equates the past tense, "HAD" to mean a deeply held, lifelong, closeted belief.
I am not trolling anything, nor did I misrepresent your original comment..
There is simply not evidence that Ho admired US constitution.... ever.
Ho was a committed Communist since 1919, went to school and lived in the Soviet Union under Stalin many times and worked closely with Chinese Communists. He was also an important member of Comintern. He played a major role in the formation of many Communist parties long before 1946 when he pretended to love USA. After taking power he worked very closely with Chairman Mao.
It so obvious that Ho was a dedicated Communist who was lying just to get US support.
The US had absolutely no reason to be in Vietnam. Vietnam was never a threat to the United States.
16:07 Our family used to have a far relative lived with us when I was a kid, she was always so happy and energetic but as a kid I wondered why she lives with us instead of her family. My grandma told me that during the VN war (or as we refer to it as the American war), her father lit up an oil lamp during the night to fix his bike because he really needed it tmr, the Americans probably saw the light (or probably smelled the oil) and consequently bombed her house. She was at her friends house at the time and once she returned after hearing a loud bang, she came back to the sight a bomb crater where her entire family once lived.
I guess that was operation Rolling Thunder.
We lost because our progress was determined by how many enemy combatants we killed instead of how much territory we'd gain. The battle of hill 937 was a perfect example. On May 10th, 1969 the 101st Airborne division fought the Vietcong on a hill in the A Shau Valley that the 101st called "Hamburger Hill". After 10 days of heavy fighting and casualties, the 101st succeeded in taking the hill. After a few weeks, the hill was simply abandoned by US forces. A few weeks later the Vietcong took back the hill without firing a shot.
Frank Thomson the old mans medic was one of the few to leave the hill .
The war was a draw Americans killed more Vietcon etc
@@Behindyoumortey We didn't lose, we left
@@capnhands “The official US Department of Defense figure was 950,765 communist forces killed in Vietnam from 1965 to 1974. According to figures released by the Vietnamese government in 1995, there were 1,100,000 North Vietnamese Army and Viet Cong military personnel deaths during the Vietnam War (including the missing).” I don’t think America lost 😂
@@Behindyoumortey
the main objective of the war was for the north to lose and be annexed by the south.
since the opposite happened it means the us lost.
One of my very first memories was seeing the helicopters taking people off the roof of the American Embassy in South Vietnam. When I grew up, I always thanked Vietnam Vets for fighting this stupid, pointless war. Part of the reason I work for VA now.
All combat troops left South Vietnam in 1973. The embassy thing happened in 1975 after the South Vietnamese Government gave up and the North ran over them.
More people should have thanked Vietnam vet that came home. It's not their fault that they were drafted there for irrational objectives.
And many war mongers still don't want to accept the reality 49 years later. America lost to rice farmers😂😂😂
TRUE
facts USA is overrated
0:55 - Chapter 1 - A far away fight
1:40 - Mid roll ads
3:25 - Back to the video
7:05 - Chapter 2 - An unconventional enemy
13:05 - Chapter 3 - The vietnamese heart
16:15 - Chapter 4 - The american trust
19:50 - Chapter 5 - Legacy
Thanks ig
During the war, M. Scott Peck was an Army psychiatrist- he started to quiz the top brass and those in command about their knowledge and understanding of the Vietnamese and their culture. They made it clear to him that they had not and wanted none. He knew then how it would turn out.
But who took the flak for their fuck ups? The public needed somebody to kick around for “losing” the war and that was us not the idiots in charge.
No military leaders ever have a deep understanding of their adversary’s culture, but somehow half of them win anyway. It helps, of course, but it is not necessary.
@@FromPovertyToProgress literally every succesful conqueror has taken time to understand a culture and people before invading.
@@PabloVelasco-hr3ko Seriously? Conquerors do not care about the culture they are conquering. They merely want to extract resources or impose their views on others.
@@PabloVelasco-hr3ko Yes, we know that Hitler and Napoleon spent all their time studying foreign cultures before going to war.
LOL
Good report. I can confirm several of the points made but would like to add a couple more reasons for US military failure.
Re: Bombing. In one case we went into 3pl canopy jungle where the B-52 aircraft had bombed. Several acres of trees were decimated with craters. Less than 1/4 mile away we found multiple bunkers & tunnels completely untouched.
Re: False casualty reports. I remember watching the lieutenant radio in (at lowest reporting level) inflated reports of enemy casualties. I suspect inflation of enemy casualties occurred at each level of the command structure.
Re: Rules of engagement. In one case our base camp was mortared from a nearby village. We could see the tubes popping. We were not allowed to return fire because the village was "friendly".
Re: General state of training. I went over with a battalion unit. Our training consisted of tactical exercises that included such absurdities as low crawls into a mock Vietnamese village in the snow and war games in sub freezing weather (Ft. Lewis, Washington) When we got of the plane in Vietnam at 6:00 AM it was already 91° Fahrenheit.
Re: Popular support. Absolutely NO language training was given. Those of us who tried to learn a little had to do so under the most difficult conditions as everything was almost always wet(Mekong delta). The farmers really didn't seem to care who held office in Saigon so long as rice farming continued.
Identification of the enemy was a huge problem. The Viet Cong standard uniform was to dress in black pajamas. This was also standard dress for all of the farmers we met. We were attacked multiple times by women &/or children.
Re: Troop morale. During the 1968 period when public support for the war in the US shifted radically (I didn't come home to the same country I left) one of my boys asked me why we were there. I responded we were trying to protect Vietnamese democracy but it was already becoming clear that we were supporting another corrupt autocracy.
In short, those of us who served on th ground in the Vietnam war were in a very similar position to the Russian soldiers currently occupying Ukraine - poorly led, poorly trained, and lied to by our own government.
What about politicians?
You got it. Exact same as good Russians that have to fight in Ukraine now against their will
Can't believe there are actually people who still think the USA didn't lose Vietnam. Failed to achieve any of our war goals and ran away.
Fun fact : Vietnam defeated an invasion of the Chinese army, barely a couple of years after they defeated the Yanks !!!
Defeating the 2 most powerful armies of the world within years, those so called paddy farmers of Vietnam could surely fight.. 🙏🏼
Do you even know what history is? You never thought to look up anything did you. The US killed over a million viet cong and lost 58 thousand of their own troops in a fight that they were just playing around with. It wasn’t even our homeland that was attacked, they just went over there to make some noise and made plenty of it and pulled out because there wasn’t anything else in it
Chine kicked their ass and left b4 the Vietnamese can counter attack and they tried to kick the usa out of Vietnam but got bodied so they hid in caves until the usa left themselves. They didn't by any means send America packing because of how they fought but played it smart knowing that the only weakness the usa has is usa themselves aka hippies protesting in dc
True. These Americans defending the US gotta admit we got our ass handed to us. We rolled in with a whole bunch of allies and they were so good Vietnam vets still have nightmares about it. The Vietcong were a bunch of farmers. Truly sad tho. RIP to those who died for the politicians and thanks to those who served. But that war shouldn't had gone for that long.
@@mcchicken5039 how did we get our asses kicked when we won every battle and had air superiority and traveled their country with ease and decimated the conventional nva to guerrilla fighters hiding in the jungle waiting and praying for the usa to leave
@@ericayala7387 I don't think you understand that invading and bombing an already war torn nation by the world's most advanced military isn't a bragging right. Victory or defeat of any war is determined by the achievement of objectives. Did US achieved it's objectives to prevent communists from taking over? No! Did Vietnamese won their objectives of defending themselves? Yes!
Knew the day was coming for a video on this subject! You honestly could write a book(s) on any subject as to why the US lost the war; but, it ultimately boils down to this- Just because our authorities wanted to go to war didn’t mean we as civilians/the ones fighting the war wanted to go to war. When you have even the slightest of hesitation or question of why you’re there against an army fighting for its own homeland you get the recipe for disaster. The French found out before us and we found out when Saigon fell in 1975.
If the U.S. politicians aren't willing to let their soldiers win the war, then perhaps they shouldn't have sent them there in the first place.
exactly, you could write so many books about why the war was lost. there are so many reasons. one, the one that i chalk up to be the most important... was this: we (america) had promised, by JFK, to resupply south vietnam with munitions and weapons on a 1:1 basis, what that means, is that for every bullet lost, it would be replaced. that promise was upheld for well over a decade...JFK, Johnson, then Nixon. THEN the f*ckface by the name of kissenger negotiated some pisspoor things to have us quit the war while saving face.. we exited 1973.
Then, one of the biggest mistakes in presidential history occured: watergate. nixon literally left overnight, and congress was PISSED. God bless Gerald Ford, as he tried to retain congress to upkeep the promise we made the south vietnamese, that we'd resupply them.. as they were winning the war at that point, the south vietnamese were battle hardened and knew how to fight. they managed to push back the VC until watergate. congress denied Ford's attempts, and we were no longer able to supply the south.
the following weeks fell apart quick, as the ammo ran out. While the north vietnamese had China and the Soviet union resupply them like candy....and because of that? the north was able to enter saigon on april 30th, 1975. a dozen generals of the south had used their last bullets to take their own lives, rather ending things in their control than allow themselves to be captured by the north.
it was a damn fucking shame, the south was doing amazing for themselves, they fought for 2 WHOLE YEARS alone, without us alongside them, until they ran out of ammo. Compare that to just last year, when we left afganistan..... the afgan army had hudnreds of BILLIONS of dolalrs worth of ammo, weapons, equipment, vehicles, and guess how long they lasted without america? 2 days. not even kidding. the taliban was about to arrive on the 3rd fucking day, and the afgan army dispersed and fled, didn't even try to fight. while the vietnamese did 2 whole years. afganistan now goes down as another error in our history, but vietnam was the ultimate showdown of the cold war, with it's many combatants, the culture, the inventions, the history is amazing. let that be a lesson to continue supplying Ukraine in their conflict for independence.
In vietnamese text books they teach this period as the national/independence wars, and they see from the indo china war until the vietnam war as a single very long conflict
Right, it was because the good honest yank didn't really want to fight.
Sure.
That ignores the Vietnam side. Vast majority of South Vietnamese wanted to reunite with the north. And US preventing that from happening turned people against the US. You are never going win people to your side if you keep them from what they want. Then many of those soldiers who went over there committed war crimes that is not going win people over.
US and Vietnam today have a fairly good relationship far as non allied nations do.
I’m Hmong and my grandfathers were some of the Laotian indigenous fighters trained by the CIA. Their service was the main reason why my family was able to come to the US after the war.
Gorilla warfare, United States trying to kill a mosquito with a sledgehammer.
Typical america
No way, even the gorillas fought?!
I appreciate that you have sponsors. Get paid. That being said, there is something beautifully hilarious in the juxtaposition of Simon's intense voice describing war and that same tone describing a video game
The topics are just to draw you in so they can sell you something
@@richard8242 As long as I get educated and entertained, I don't care
Rest in peace to those that passed away.
"We'll be home by christmas"
This phrase is literally cursed 🥶
Because we were the bad guys... Not necessarily the boys on the ground doing the fighting, but certainly those in power that sent them there.
it is hard not to blame or feel bad for anyone who enlisted. perhaps not as guilty as the ones pulling the strings, but guilty nonetheless.
@@FH-rp5orboth sides did too many war crimes
@@FH-rp5orthe politicians were the bad guys who cost us the war
the worst part probably would be the drafted troops coming back home to an angry populace not knowing that terrors those young men were subjected to and seeing their brothers perish. its no wonder the fragging rate of us officers were so high.
I can imagine that some enlisted troops brought forward ideas to make things better for themselves but the officers just said no
I see, that the death of the innocents wasnt the worst part
Or it was because dogshit american soldiers murdered innocent civilians.#MyLaiMassacre
not all that surprising realy.
even today us-vets out of service are treated like trash unless they have a stable job.
the government doesnt care about them cause they became useless to them from ptsd and combat wounds.
and the population doesnt care because all they see is homeless trash.
and for many americans homeless people are blamed for being lazy and stupid regardless of how they got on the street.
@@LiLJohnDoe19 of course not Viet cong were brown so their lives didn't matter to the US /sarcasm btw
The main thing was the indefensible geography. Traditional logistics and tactics could handle a contained peninsula like Korea, but just glancing at a map of South Vietnam should have been enough to tell anyone that LBJ was out of his gourd to order American ground troops into that fight.
dudemcdudeface- It's the same reason that mighty Soviet Union that defeated over 2/3rds of Nazi Germany was unable to defeat Afghanistan, why nobody but Alexander the Great defeated Afghanistan ( he won because they challenged him to an open battle ). It's why the mighty Romans, the best on battlefield at the time, were unable to conquer the highlands. of Scotland, after conquering most of Europe,England & Southern Scotland. It boils down to terrain, & how the native people ( the insiders) use it to their😮 advantage against the foreign invaders ( the guys who are always on the outside)
quite the contrary, you didn't look close enough. The south was patterned with canals and swamp land. Natural obstacles right there! Also, to get supplies and armies to the south, people and material had to be moved through over 1000 km of mountainous terrain.
@@Krasnoye158 Whatever defenses there were, were not used properly. In fact, Westmoreland intentionally sent US troops to meet the enemy halfway or more, effectively absorbing the cost of dealing with the natural barriers when it could have been a benefit instead. There were exceptions (the Montagnards), but by then our stupidity had essentially trained the enemy in how to circumvent Southern defenses.
Ultimately we realized the best strategy never needed conventional ground troops in the first place. Training + funding + arms for the South, and Special Forces were the best way to go, but the damage was done and irreversible. The most basic strategic competence would have said so from the beginning, but there was a careerist idiot in charge, led by another careerist idiot, and a President willing to do literally anything to guarantee election in 1965.
@@Krasnoye158not to mention the hardship of fighting in tropical region.
The American soldiers were not prepare for the harsh weather and diseases.
@@003thezg3 most North Viet Nam solders were flat land dwellers. They were not ready for jungle/mountainous life neither.
I remember watching the news each evening and hearing the death counts for the day. I'm glad I was to young to understand what those numbers really meant.
An excellent documentary! A lot of information packed into a condensed package that told a basic, complete history of the conflict. Well narrated!
Been a longtime fan and I just wanna say your YT channels are beyond fascinating. So many hours listening to them at work. Please keep them coming
Second that. I have stopped watching TV alltogether for many years now because on YT you can find good, original documentaries (like this one), cooking shows and other things.
“They got bored and withdrew”. That means they lost brother
Who lost more ppl tho lmao😂😢
@@weeb1987 who completed its objective. Americans got smoked by Paddy farmers😂
@@radjabovsteacup6517 you guys got smoked keep crying about it
How does Simon pump so much content out. It's incredible
It has always been his team… imagine if he was alone.
The writers under water writers
My personal hypothesis is, that there is more than one Simon...
It's down to the 60-70% asides.
He’s part of a team. This isn’t just him. You see credits. You see references from research. Clearly you don’t think he edits and films it? Please tell me you don’t think Superman or any other film character does every job in video production
3rd Batt/4th Marines/3rd Mar Div landed in Hue in 1965 and set up camp at the Phu Bai airport. I company was sent down to hill 41 outside of DaNang. I was on the night-time patrols that went out from that hill. The patrols would leave after dark. You can imagine my surprise when the patrol simply stopped a short distance from the hill, set in for the night, and called in bogus postion reports on the radio. Before dawn the patrol would wake up and return the short distance to the perimeter of hill 41. The CO would not have any idea that the patrol had just stayed in one spot all night.
That is one of the many reasons why the USA lost the Viet war. No US soldier wanted to risk his life for it.
One thing you realize is that the US is good at war, but bad at political/social relations, and it's always the same: South Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, the US fight but doesn't even bother to understand the problem, and it's something that has worsened since Vietnam
You forgot Ukraine
@@lorddaquanofhouserastafari4177 What about Ukraine?
@@brrrrrtenjoyer if you don’t know what we are doing there don’t even ask
@@lorddaquanofhouserastafari4177 We're not "there". We're giving weapons. Nothin wrong with that. USSR did the same with Vietnam.
@@lorddaquanofhouserastafari4177 The role of the US in the Ukrainian War is only that of arms seller and intelligence provider, not much more.
We lost the vietnam war because we fought against a dedicated enemy who would keep fighting no matter how many of them we killed plus conventional warfare does not work so well in a jungle
I mean we beat the vietcong very badly and they lost most of their fighting capabilities in 1968 after the tet offensive but the NVA was very determined tbh
@@picklewithinternet2254 No the NVA was not very determined. They nearly suffered the same fate as the VC after the Easter offensive. Plus, Operation Linebacker II brought North Vietnam to its knees but because of congress, the U.S. had to withdraw from Vietnam.
@Dr.Fatherland I think you may be a little bit lacking in facts there my dude.
@@awsumaustin7650 I mean. it's still true, no?
@@awsumaustin7650 Actually not. The 68 Tet offensive was a massive military defeat for North Vietnam, the Viet Cong were almost completely destroyed as they all came out of hiding believing their comrades in the north that a popular civilian uprising would support them. That being said it was a massive political success in the the US as Westmoreland had recently made a statement about " light at the end of the tunnel ". There were US Commanders who better understood the conflict than Westmoreland and the politicians back in DC. Unfortunately the were not listened to or did not take command until it was too late. Linebacker ll was working as reported by neutral embassies in Hanoi that the the North Vietnamese were considering a truce or something to stop the fighting as they were running out of resources. Unfortunately The politicians who started a war we should not have gotten involved to begin with had no clue as to what the endgame should be. Most likely would not have happened the way it did had Kennedy not been killed. Check out the September 1963 Walter Cronkite interview with President Kennedy. It shows his perspective on the conflict in Vietnam at that time.
A point to note that not many know was that the nationalists wanting independence from France was happy to seek help from the West to support their independence, there were some promises made during ww2 about this to help the war effort against Japan. but when the Western nations turned them away to stick with France, these nationalists were forced to turn to the communists. When the country got cut up after the France Indochina war giving the North to communist sphere and South remain under France, done by foreign powers for political reasons without consulting much with what the Vietnamese wants, the stage was set.
Good points. Also, the 1954 Geneva Accords provided that the country would only be partitioned between North and South for 2 years. Then there was to be an election to reunify the country. However, Eisenhower realized that Ho Chi Minh would win so he colluded with S Vietnam's dictator, Ngo Dinh Diem, to nix the elections.
@@chrishamlin5863 No, Eisenhower realized that North would never allow a fair election as their had been so many sham elections in Communist countries up until that point. Typically almost 100% vote for Communist party line.
And the Accords were never signed by USA or South Vietnam.
Totally inaccurate as Commie propaganda hogwash! The North Vietnamese Commies, under Commie Chinese puppet Ho Chi Minh, actually systematically purged and assassinated all Vietnam nationalist parties, including Vietnam Quoc Dan Dang. Commie China did not want Vietnam nationalist for the obvious reason, because the Vietnamese nationalists were vehemently against China's hegemony.
Why didn't US President Truman trust Ho? That's because nobody trusted Commies, as actions always speak louder than words or lies. Commie Chinese Hu Kwan, aka Ho Quang, aka Ho Chi Minh was an active member of the French Communist Party in 1920's, then later an active member of Russian Communist Party or Bolsheviks 1920's and 1930's, and then an active member of Chinese Communist Party CCP or Chinese Red Army attache in 1940's, long before he reached out to Truman in 1946. How could anyone trust an Communist insurgent active for decades in global Commie movement? No wonder Truman couldn't trust the dude, not to mention he got many body-doubles as well. The real Nguyen Ai Quoc died in Hong Kong in 1932, but his impostor (Hu Kwan), a Chinese intel officer lived on to play his part. That's why "Ho Chi Minh" only ate imported Chinese food (his favorite was Gà rán Quảng Đông, or Guangdong fried chicken) and not Vietnamese food, wore only imported Chinese clothing and not Vietnamese, got tended by only imported Chinese nurses, and wrote and spoke Chinese better than Vietnamese. Even when he tried to write Vietnamese, his writings were full of spelling and grammatical errors like those of a 2nd grader. All true. Check out his photos and his archived letters. Not only that, Vietnamese Commies tried their hardest to brainwash people with lies about his being educated, single, and pure to fully devote his life and energy for his beloved country Vietnam, but in reality he was an addict (tobacco and alcohol), a Commie Chinese puppet, a mass murderer, a pedophile, and a playboy with third-grade education and multiple wives and mistresses. He even tried to mouth rape young Indonesian girls and was ordered not to do so. Search "President Ho told to stop kissing girls" The Straits Times, 8 March 1959, Page 8. In Vietnam, this criminal openly raped women, including Ms. Nong Thi Xuan and once she became pregnant, he murdered her whole family to cover up. Even former senior Party loyalist Bui Tin was shocked by his behavior. Of course, under order from his master Mao, dude brought Commie Chinese bloody rag for a flag from Commie China's Fujian province to his Pac-Bo cave in North Vietnam in 1941 and made it the flag of North Vietnam, then eventually the national flag of Vietnam after the North Vietnamese Commie terrorists invaded the free and prosperous Republic of South Vietnam, replacing the authentic national flag of Vietnam for 2000 years (yellow flag with 3 horizontal red stripes) dating back to the Trung Sisters Dynasty, 40 A.D.
Consequently, both Woodrow Wilson and Truman's assessments of character proved to be correct, and butcher as Ho Chi Minh later committed mass murder, slaughtering nearly 1 million North Vietnamese landowners to rob their lands and homes during his deadly land-reform (1953-1956), following similar massacres committed by his Commie masters Lenin, Stalin, and Mao. More than 1 million North Vietnamese fled to South Vietnam during Geneva Peace Accord 1954 to escape Communist atrocities in North Vietnam as a result. Dude is ranked among the world's top 10 mass murderers of 20th century, along with fellow Commie butchers Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol-Pot. The land robbing remains an ongoing crime against Vietnamese citizens even to these days! Search "cuop dat dan" ("robbing lands of citizens") right here on RUclips to see countless clips of land-robbing by the utterly corrupt and brutal Vietnamese Commie regime against the citizens. All true. Do your research. The truth shall set you free!
The sad part was no one held accountable.
Thank you Simon! As an American this war is so engrained in our culture but we rarely hear anything about it from a technical POV. Just how it was a mess, debacle etc etc but never any real detail. And when you do its tough to pick through bias: Conservatives would say "We WERE winning and could've easily defeated them but damn libs were being too soft, not bombing more and allowing the enemy to escape to peaceful spaces whenever we had them! And the media turned people against!" Liberals would say "We could never win it was too much a quagmire and they were motivated by freedom theyd never give up, this was just part of their never ending war for freedom vs Japan, France, China etc When someone will fire at a helicopter with bows and arrows you have no chance of winning over that"
All of which may be true and I lean towards the latter, in the end it was inherently unwinnable but yes, glad to have a Simon video breaking it down and providing the background to it!
😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊l😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊
I've read and seen a lot of analysis about this conflict but I'm about to watch Simon's take on it and I'm sure I won't be disappointed....😊
There’s a million reasons why. We lost in Korea. We lost worse in Vietnam. We treated our men as replaceable. We forced people who didn’t want to fight to fight. We treated em like crap after they got home. Made fun of them. Made stereotypes of their mental damage. We were disgusting monsters.
Why will people fight..knowing..they represent..the evil empire ?
@@ganboonmeng5370 One word, Propaganda and that goes for all super powers around the world
No I can not think of myself as a "disgusting monster". Folks in the United States had to have made big money out of the war - Bell Helicopter" for instance. But do not listen to me - I have always been somewhat cynical.......
We didn’t lose in Korea because if we did South Korea wouldn’t exist rn
If the US lost in Korea, then then 'North' Korea would be the only Korea.
Sometimes there isnt an enemy till you go looking for enemies...
Odd, I was thinking about this issue of US defeat in Vietnam today, and how it was the US seemed unaware or simply indifferent to the first Vietnam war, in which the French attempted to reassert colonial rule in 'Indochina' after WWII. It seems incredible that the US learned no lessons from what was then the immediate past. For the Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians it was a tragedy many decades long.
The US wasn't unaware or indifferent to the French war effort, they funded it. They gave billions to France, making up a majority of the funds for the war effort. They got involved direct when France gave up and pulled out
The recent experience of WW2 may have contributed to American arrogance. France had collapsed quickly against the Germans, whom the Americans had been able to defeat. In the 50s, France lost further wars in Indochina and Algeria, while the USA was able to hold their own in Korea. I'm guessing the Americans simply saw the French army as incompetent and assumed that they would experience none of it's problems.
Pretty good Simon! Though at 12:40 you discribed the vc as an insurgency when technically that was America.
It’s sad how we initially supported ho when they were under siege by Japanese but then turned on him when he aimed for uniting the country. Multiple times made an effort equate the United States struggle for colonial independence. All because relations with France and communism. Ken burns Vietnam doc is a real good piece.
The West and Communists were allies of convenience in WW2. It should not be surprising that they fell apart when the Cold War started. Both sides had very different goals.
American just come to Vietnam for want to upgrade best friend, ha ha ha, crazy. This war made 5 American president as stupid guys
Communism is a Western Ideology
@@FromPovertyToProgress Vietnam was not allied with Soviet and China at that time.
@@angkhoanguyen6114 Ho Chi Minh and his followers were aligned with Soviets and China Communists since 1920s.
At the end of WWII Truman should have forced France and the Netherlands to give -up their colonies, thus avoiding wars in Vietnam, Indonesia and Algeria over the next 2 decades.
One of my old fishing buddies was a Vietnam vet. One night over beers he started talking about his experience there and it was terrible. He told me about taking prisoners. He said they would tell them they had five seconds to run and they started shooting at them. War truly is terrible
The North Vietnamese Commie terrorists buried alive 10K civilians in Hue City (Central Vietnam) during the Tet Offensive 1968. During the war, they casually land-mined buses full of passengers travelling in South Vietnam, launched mortars into schools fully of school kids in South Vietnam, and throw grenades in markets full of shoppers in South Vietnam.
Anyone interested for a more in-depth view of the whole conflict should check out 'The Vietnam War' by Ken Burns (2017). 10 part, 18h documentary series that is unbelievable, starting with the very roots that set the stage to it's lasting influence to this day; with interviews from both sides, both at home and on the frontline, and important players; and incredibly exhaustive research on the subject. Some unbelievable images and photographs as well, and doesn't shy away from the atrocities both sides committed. 1000000% recommended. It's my all-time favorite documentary, I've never seen anything quite like it.
Indeed, best I've seen so far. 10/10 would recommend
It's a great series, just like his others.
Yes I have watched it. Amazing. Told through the perspective of all sides. Would love to watch it again but not sure where is available in the UK.
Anyone that believes the lies Ken Burns tells needs to see a shrink
@@GregBrownsWorldORacing His Holocaust documentary was absolute crap though. Haven't really watched anything else from him and doubt I will after seeing that one.
We didn't lose, we "tactically retreated"
Jk in all honesty its really weird reading how the US lost the Vietnam war because all through school we learned how we just left because it didnt make sense to be there anymore. We never "lost", just left. I even went to a relatively left leaning school and our textbook not once mentioned how we lost
The U.S. lost because of 1. The Media. 2. Anti-War Protesters and 3. The Politicians were refusing to let their soldiers win the war.
Your school must've sucked then.
We didn't lose in afghan but "tactically retreated" next 5-10 years excuse
My school's history books just acted like the Vietnam War never happened at all. I was bamboozled when I learned about it on my own.
@@kingace6186 super weird cuz cuz for us it was super glossed over. Instead it focused on social reforms happening at the time. Vietnam war always felt like a side note when we learned about the cold war
What you never mentioned was the fact that the majority of the American public and the vast majority of boys being sent to fight had never even heard of Vietnam. They had no idea where it was on a map. To most boys being sent there it might as well have been middle earth or Narnia they were going to, to fight the invading Martians.
😆
Enter the GOAT Ali... You are my opposer when I want freedom. You are my opposer when I want justice. You are my opposer when I want equality. You won't even stand up for me in America for my religious beliefs, and you want me to go somewhere and fight - but you won't even stand up for me here at home!
We knew where it was.
The United States couldn’t remain in Vietnam forever, but Vietnam must remain in Vietnam forever
Describing them as losing is going to annoy some americans a lot.
Good
Yeah because it's not true
Its better to just swallow one's pride and admit you lost. If you say the Soviets lost in Afghanistan (which they did), you HAVE to say that the Americans lost in Vietnam, no two ways about it.
@@madgavin7568depends on how you define losing. From a sole military perspective the usa didnt lose this war in the slightest.
@@hattorihanzo562 Yes but it was unquestionably a political defeat that impacted US Foreign Policy for many years afterwards. It doesn't matter if its a military defeat or a political defeat, a loss is a loss.
When you fight against the hearts of the people, even for a powerful nation or empire, it will be a tough fight
- Romans in Scotland
- American Revolution
- Eastern Front
- Vietnam War
- War in Afghanistan
Tunisia (Arab Spring)
The Invasion of William of Orange (Glorious Revolution)
Solidarity Union in Poland.
All three of the above were bloodless revolutions, an unarmed populace defeated a well-armed military. A fourth one might be the Soviet Army against Yeltsin, unarmed Muskovites defended Yeltsin. Successfully)
You forgot Russia in Ukraine.
My dad served in Vietnam as an engineer. He barely made it back. But because he did, I was born and can now comment on videos! 🇺🇸
A quick early corrections: One, the Viet Minh had been fighting the Japanese since 1942, though in limited fashion, supplied and aided by US intelligence agents, with their main functions being helping recover downed US airmen sent on bombing missions to Indochina.
Secondly, the Geneva Accords didn't split Vietnam into two countries. French and French-aligned forces were to withdraw to the south of the Demarcation line and Communist forces to the north, in order to avoid further fighting so a referendum could be held on the future of a unified Vietnam. The US knew Ho Chi Minh would undoubtedly win such a vote, and so created the Republic of Viet Nam in the south to avoid such a vote even happening
The the OSS Deer Team marched into Hanoi with the Viet Minh after Japan's surrender.
My grandpa was a NVA battalion captain in 68-69&70-71. He told me stories when he led troop to the South and by the time he got there the battalion reduce to a company, he said if the US bombing didnt get u there is a chance the jungle will.
Good thing he survived. For the vast majority it was a one-way ticket walking weeks through the jungle just to get to the battlefield. And then the really dangerous part took place. And it never ended until they died.
“Born in the North to die in the South” was a popular slogan.
Another thing you didn't mention was tactics. The US military now views the tactics used as obsolete. Patrolling the forest in small numbers just played into the Vietcong hands.
US military typically conducted “search and destroy” missions in big units.
I would enjoy seeing an Australian video/perspective on the Vietnam war. Although they had less troops deployed there they still had a part in it
Im fascinated by the Vietnam war. Its was just such a very strange conflict particularly in the manner which it was fought.
"A bright shining lie" is a fabulous dissection of the war (albeit quite a tough read).
Well worth reading for anyone seriously interested in this topic. Neil Sheehan. But I'm guessing most young people aren't really reading 'books' anymore.
I love how we still fool ourselves into believing we didn't get the crap kicked out of us. We have a fragile ego and losing a war goes against our pathetic tough guy fantasies
Who lost more ppl tho?😂😢
But the pusszzy was good, and the dope was far out man.
Yeah, I remember back when I was in elementary school, a kid named 'Candy' Burris told me about his own brother being killed in Vietnam. He told me about how when the family was told, he just went outside and wept. Later, I asked my own brother who had been to Vietnam about 'Burris,' and he told me that he had been killed by a land mine. Everyone in the neighborhood who went to war knew who he was.
On today’s episode of “Places my Home Country should’ve never been”
The communists there were much more willing to fight until the last person in their country was dead than we were. Got to admire their patience in that one.
Well yeah, they were defending their home from foreign invaders.
@@jmoore112344The North Vietnamese we’re more nationalist than communist. Even now they seem less of the latter. They didn’t even want to expand the ideology, they just picked whatever government was best for their country.
@@subcommanderxelios800 It shows as well, they were willing to reestablish ties with the United States in the 90s and today are opposed to China's efforts to expand their influence throughout Asia particularly in their own country. After all, the Chinese attempted to invade Vietnam in 1979 and still think Vietnam is part of their domain.
That is why we say in ex Yugoslavia:" Smrt Fašizmu Sloboda Narodu" and " Bolje grob nego rob"!
The Japanese were far more fanatical and determined. Guess what? They lost, we won. The US never made one legitimate effort to invade North Vietnam, take their capital and force them to kiss our feet. They fought the war thinking the Vietnamese would honor a ceasefire the way North Korea has. They didn’t… the cowards signed a peace treaty, waited for us to leave and then re-invaded. No emotion, just facts.
One reason why the US didn't invade North Vietnam was China. China invaded during the Korean War which prolonged the stalemate and lead to more deaths. So America didn't invade NV so as to avoid bringing in China and perhaps even the Soviet Union.
Yes, China played a major role in the Vietnam war, but it is almost always neglected.
@@FromPovertyToProgress China ended up betrayed Vietnam and sided with US.
America's apatite for the limited war was no match to Hanoi's hunger for liberation and national reunification.
A quote from either Newsweek or Times sums it up all.
Run by lifers.
I was told by an American airforce general that the US had copied British tactics in Malaya but the that war was very different to Vietnam.
It was, since the Communists in Malaya were generally isolated from foreign backers, meaning they couldn't receive heavy weapons from China or the USSR. They also lacked a safe haven where their fighters could retreat over a border, resupply and regroup (understated importance of an insurgency).
And another big difference, Malaya was under British control, enabling a coordinated effort. The South Vietnamese government and armed forces were corrupt and weak, with infighting between generals, embezzlement of US aid and extremely low morale.
Apparently, not being able to invade the north half of Vietnam no one remembers and was a big part of the problem for not winning the war.
They didn't want another Yalu to happen
The no total-war doctrine. The US feat feared if they attacked the North directly they would draw China into the conflict in a direct manner.
The channel 'HistoryMatters' did a concise video on the reason why.
It would have been the Korean War 2.0. I do not think that was a viable strategy.
Much respect for Vietnam people.
Lmao
More respect to your smooth analysis I just subscribe to your channel
I’ve often heard that the US in Vietnam, and the USSR in Afghanistan, are in many ways, mirror images of each other…
Both major superpowers
The superpower fighting an almost unseen enemy.
both fighting an enemy using guerrilla warfare tactics.
Both armies fighting in very inhospitable terrain.
The enemy being funded and supplied by the other superpower bloc.
And both superpowers, thinking it would last months, but ends up lasting years…
Also, I am sure I read that, when the White House heard got news that the Soviet Union had started the invasion of Afghanistan, one very senior member of the Carter Administration was quoted as saying "Now, let's give the Soviets their own Vietnam"
The difference is the Soviets retreated before Diplomacy, America left after terms were negotiated in the Paris Peace Accords (which weren’t mentioned in the video)
Very good and unbiased analysis. Thank you for telling this complicated story well.
The US suffered ~50,000 soldiers *killed in combat* in the war. Deaths were closer to 60,000 and casualties (killed and wounded from all causes) were 360,000.
With most modern US wars the majority of the deaths come when the troops return home. Iraq and Afghanistan saw low soldier deaths but the suicide rate of vets was quite high and it still is a problem. Also the US started using more private military contractors and those deaths aren't counted the same way.
@@DSTKO-w7z It should also be mentioned that for these recent wars, while fatalities are comparatively low by historical standards, the number of soldiers coming home with severely disabling physical injuries is comparatively quite large. The low KIA numbers might give you the impression these recent wars weren’t super-deadly or dangerous compared to Vietnam or Korea, but the fact is that while we can now save many more soldiers’ lives, we can’t make them whole again when they’ve suffered traumatic brain injuries or other severe wounds.
@@ChrisFarrell Likely one of the main reasons why vets have such high suicide rates. The U.S. government spent $2.3 trillion, and the war led to the deaths of 2,324 U.S. military personnel, 3,917 U.S. contractors and 1,144 allied troops. The numbers are good considering the US spent 20 years in Afghanistan but just in the year 2020 alone there were 6,146 Veteran suicides. So in 1 year more vets died by their own hands then were killed fighting a 20 year war.
How much did Vietnam loose
@@justanaveragesloth4141 They lost probably way more civilians then soldiers. Because the body count included farmers, women and children too.
I’m currently in Vietnam and after seeing this beautiful and scary country I can see why the USA lost. It’s too vast too big too much for a ground invasion with troops especially foreign
No, the loss was because the leaders lied to their own people and acted to keep the lies going. Gulf of Tonkin was a lie.
The US, like ancient Egypt, never loses a war, they just win them closer and closer to home, in this case they rebounded with the crushing defeat of the military powerhouse of Grenada
The British burned down the WH. You do realize this?
Oh wait you serious
We invaded Panama too, not that they’re any more powerful
This is nothing new. We've failed in almost every conflict we've been in and lost bad bad in Afghanistan
TRUE
It was more letting the Allies down than anything else.
As an American I will tell you. We have a history of losing wars, against people that's did nothing to us. Everyone else, look out.❤
The Native Americans, Iraqis, and Serbians all have something to say to you 😂
It all started in the 1950s and just went down south from there onwards, including many orchestrated coup d'états, specially in democratic goverments to be precised. USA citizens still wonder why there is so much anti-american sentiment in some of the countries they visit while also being mostly clueless about what exactly led them to react this way.
@Mr.Byrnes Natives are now buying back America, one hamburger at a time. We did not do well in Iraq, and Serbia was not innocent. Cheers bro..🥂
NOT TRUE.
Who did we lose to again?.... 😂...
2Million is an understatement both suffered so greatly that some groups of American and Vietnamese solider took each other with mercy for a swift execution
I once had a guy lose his shit on me when I said we lost the Vietnam War. He claimed they never failed to achieve any objective and started asking me seemingly random history questions to "test" my 'Americanism' I guess. Of course I answered something wrong and he went on a tirade about how kids are so stupid these days and "what are these professors teaching" me. It was great fun.
its common knowledge that the United States lost, we were the bad guys lol Its your fault you kept entertaining the dude.
some old bitter man, lots of them still need to believe that they did good. That they were bringing freedom and democracy that the vietcong were evil. Because if they didn't, they would have come to terms with the fact that they killed millions of people and saw their brothers die in the worst way possible... FOR NOTHING
Which battle did the US lose and then surrender?
3 reasons why they have lost:
1, Weapons
2, Motivation
3, Vietcong
1, Weapons:
The VC used the AK-47, and on the other side the US used the M16.
The M16 was a space age Weapons, and it was often jammed, due to the ambitiousness of the Weapon.
If you hit the dirt, you must calculate with the fact that in firing it, it Will be jammed and you must clean it out in a firefight.
On the other hand the VC used the good old AK-47. As some had said it was a pasant's Weapon. These was a story of a Green Beret Soldier who found a VC corpse weekes after combat.
As the story says, the US guy had taken out the AK which had the Corpse's guts in it, then put it under water, the shoot with it.
2, Motivation
The US fought this war due to fear of the "Domino Effect". If in Vietnam the communists won, the every neighbouring nation will fall under Communism.
The Vietnamese people had fought for their freedom. They wanted to undependant from the French, the later on the same against the yankees. You can not right succesfully against such enemy who knows the country and who are fearless against the US.
3, Vietcong
You can not win against such opponents who you don't see or hear, just when it was way too late.
They had creative trapps planned for the US army, also the Ho-Chi Minh trail which was a miracle ín logistics.
Also General Giap was an educated Man, with good leading skills and also Ho Chi Minh was a born leader. They did know when to hit the enemy and then when to disappear. If they did lost a battle, they also won.
In Propaganda point of view definetely, the US civilicians had enough.
In my Opinion the Vietcong army were the best Guerilla army in the last century.
What about the Media, anti-war protesters, and the politicians?
The world’s most technologically advanced military was defeated by a much more determined and brave foe fighting a foreigner for their homeland.
Politicians lost that war
@@paulluna6379 no, you did
@@joshuafrimpong244 Sounds like yo weren’t paying attention to anything back then. Smoking that hippie lettuce, weren’t you 🤔
They were all brave. But unfortunately America had Kissinger and he was a sociopath monster who only cares about himself and power
@@paulluna6379 yeah you still lost thought and treated your vets like crap
Very good analysis