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Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy, 1945-1975
An absorbing and definitive modern history of the Vietnam War from the acclaimed New York Times bestselling author of The Secret War.
Vietnam became the Western world’s most divisive modern conflict, precipitating a battlefield humiliation for France in 1954, then a vastly greater one for the United States in 1975. Max Hastings has spent the past three years interviewing scores of participants on both sides, as well as researching a multitude of American and Vietnamese documents and memoirs, to create an epic narrative of an epic struggle. He portrays the set pieces of Dienbienphu, the 1968 Tet offensive, the air blitz of North Vietnam, and also much less familiar miniatures such as the bloodbath at Daido, where a US Marine battalion was almost wiped out, together with extraordinary recollections of Ho Chi Minh’s warriors. Here are the vivid realities of strife amid jungle and paddies that killed two million people.
Many writers treat the war as a US tragedy, yet Hastings sees it as overwhelmingly that of the Vietnamese people, of whom forty died for every American. US blunders and atrocities were matched by those committed by their enemies. While all the world has seen the image of a screaming, naked girl seared by napalm, it forgets countless eviscerations, beheadings, and murders carried out by the communists. The people of both former Vietnams paid a bitter price for the Northerners’ victory in privation and oppression. Here is testimony from Vietcong guerrillas, Southern paratroopers, Saigon bargirls, and Hanoi students alongside that of infantrymen from South Dakota, Marines from North Carolina, and Huey pilots from Arkansas.
No past volume has blended a political and military narrative of the entire conflict with heart-stopping personal experiences, in the fashion that Max Hastings’ readers know so well. The author suggests that neither side deserved to win this struggle with so many lessons for the twenty-first century about the misuse of military might to confront intractable political and cultural challenges. He marshals testimony from warlords and peasants, statesmen and soldiers, to create an extraordinary record.
Vietnam became the Western world’s most divisive modern conflict, precipitating a battlefield humiliation for France in 1954, then a vastly greater one for the United States in 1975. Max Hastings has spent the past three years interviewing scores of participants on both sides, as well as researching a multitude of American and Vietnamese documents and memoirs, to create an epic narrative of an epic struggle. He portrays the set pieces of Dienbienphu, the 1968 Tet offensive, the air blitz of North Vietnam, and also much less familiar miniatures such as the bloodbath at Daido, where a US Marine battalion was almost wiped out, together with extraordinary recollections of Ho Chi Minh’s warriors. Here are the vivid realities of strife amid jungle and paddies that killed two million people.
Many writers treat the war as a US tragedy, yet Hastings sees it as overwhelmingly that of the Vietnamese people, of whom forty died for every American. US blunders and atrocities were matched by those committed by their enemies. While all the world has seen the image of a screaming, naked girl seared by napalm, it forgets countless eviscerations, beheadings, and murders carried out by the communists. The people of both former Vietnams paid a bitter price for the Northerners’ victory in privation and oppression. Here is testimony from Vietcong guerrillas, Southern paratroopers, Saigon bargirls, and Hanoi students alongside that of infantrymen from South Dakota, Marines from North Carolina, and Huey pilots from Arkansas.
No past volume has blended a political and military narrative of the entire conflict with heart-stopping personal experiences, in the fashion that Max Hastings’ readers know so well. The author suggests that neither side deserved to win this struggle with so many lessons for the twenty-first century about the misuse of military might to confront intractable political and cultural challenges. He marshals testimony from warlords and peasants, statesmen and soldiers, to create an extraordinary record.
896 pages, Hardcover
First published September 20, 2018
About the author
Max Hastings
104 books1,502 followersSir Max Hugh Macdonald Hastings, FRSL, FRHistS is a British journalist, editor, historian and author. His parents were Macdonald Hastings, a journalist and war correspondent, and Anne Scott-James, sometime editor of Harper's Bazaar.
Hastings was educated at Charterhouse School and University College, Oxford, which he left after a year.After leaving Oxford University, Max Hastings became a foreign correspondent, and reported from more than sixty countries and eleven wars for BBC TV and the London Evening Standard.
Among his bestselling books Bomber Command won the Somerset Maugham Prize, and both Overlord and The Battle for the Falklands won the Yorkshire Post Book of the Year Prize.
After ten years as editor and then editor-in-chief of The Daily Telegraph, he became editor of the Evening Standard in 1996. He has won many awards for his journalism, including Journalist of The Year and What the Papers Say Reporter of the Year for his work in the South Atlantic in 1982, and Editor of the Year in 1988.
He stood down as editor of the Evening Standard in 2001 and was knighted in 2002. His monumental work of military history, Armageddon: The Battle for Germany 1944-1945 was published in 2005.
He is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Sir Max Hastings honoured with the $100,000 2012 Pritzker Military Library Literature Award for Lifetime Achievement in Military Writing.
Hastings was educated at Charterhouse School and University College, Oxford, which he left after a year.After leaving Oxford University, Max Hastings became a foreign correspondent, and reported from more than sixty countries and eleven wars for BBC TV and the London Evening Standard.
Among his bestselling books Bomber Command won the Somerset Maugham Prize, and both Overlord and The Battle for the Falklands won the Yorkshire Post Book of the Year Prize.
After ten years as editor and then editor-in-chief of The Daily Telegraph, he became editor of the Evening Standard in 1996. He has won many awards for his journalism, including Journalist of The Year and What the Papers Say Reporter of the Year for his work in the South Atlantic in 1982, and Editor of the Year in 1988.
He stood down as editor of the Evening Standard in 2001 and was knighted in 2002. His monumental work of military history, Armageddon: The Battle for Germany 1944-1945 was published in 2005.
He is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Sir Max Hastings honoured with the $100,000 2012 Pritzker Military Library Literature Award for Lifetime Achievement in Military Writing.
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November 16, 2018
“If a soldier wanted to stay safe, his best course was to remain absolutely still, preferably in a hole: every movement made him more vulnerable. Yet it was the duty of infantrymen to move. They spent much of their field time seeking out the enemy in platoon, company, or battalion strength. For fifty thousand Americans fulfilling that role at any one time, exotic Asian nature became the new normal: the brilliant green of rice paddies, darker green of palm groves, small boys leading out water buffalo, farmers plodding with the patience of centuries behind ox-drawn wooden plows. At dusk grunts watched the buffalo being driven back home, flanks caked with mud from their wallows, pretty much like themselves. And somewhere concealed within all this rustic charm, there was the enemy…”
- Max Hastings, Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy, 1945-75
This is a book I have been waiting for a long time.
This is the Battle Cry of Freedom of the Vietnam War. A beautifully and pungently written single volume history that valiantly attempts the impossible task of capturing and clarifying this multilayered military, political, and human catastrophe.
The Vietnam War (encompassing the First Indochina War, between the French and Vietminh, and the Second Indochina War, pitting the U.S. and South Vietnam against the North Vietnamese and Vietcong) is a historical subject I have mostly avoided. First, like World War I, it is an imposingly complex subject. Adding to the complexity is the westerner’s difficulty in pronouncing the proper nouns – both people and locations – that are required to understand the story. Finally, and most importantly, Vietnam does not feel like settled history. It is still firmly implanted in living memory. I was born after the wars of Vietnam had concluded, but I grew up surrounded by people who had experienced parts of it firsthand. We are still collectively sorting out what it all meant. The war is still controversial and still being refought.
Max Hastings has convinced me that now is the time to start learning more about these tumultuous decades, which cost millions of lives and damaged many millions more; that dramatically reordered one society, and shattered another; that killed one president (Diem), destroyed another (Johnson), and tarnished a third (Nixon); that cost untold billions of dollars in military spending and economic aid; and that nearly squandered the trust that Americans have for government.
In Inferno, Hastings showed a magical touch for boiling down a titanic struggle, delivering perhaps the best one-volume history of World War II. He exceeds that triumph with Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy. While smaller in terms of numbers involved and casualties incurred, the Vietnam War is far more fraught and tangled, a moral gray zone as vast as the jungles of Southeast Asia.
Hastings starts with the briefest of overviews of the land over which so many people would come to grief:
After that, he begins his story proper in 1945, with the French (who had been thrashed by the Germans, collaborated with the Germans, and who had fired on American troops in North Africa) being allowed to retain their colony in Indochina. (One of the terrible ifs of the Vietnam War is what might have happened if the anti-colonialist Roosevelt had not died). Vietnam ends in 1975, with the fall of Saigon to the North Vietnamese. This thirty-year interval is crammed with a library’s worth of incidents.
The Vietnam War defies an easy presentation. There is no linear progression of events to follow. This is not World War II, for instance, where it is easy to track the ebb and tide of fortune by tracing territory that is lost and recaptured, decisive battles that are lost or won. The Vietnam War was fluid and ever-changing, with no front lines, no clear demarcation between friend and foe, with few large battles, and certainly no decisive ones. (An American advisor once compared the Vietnam War to an NFL game in which one team is dressed as the spectators and periodically hides the ball and runs up into the stands).
With this level of narrative difficulty, Hastings’s major accomplishment is in his structure and framework, his ability to take this massive and multifaceted tale and pare it down to something that is not only comprehensible, but also a joy to read.
Overall he employs a straightforward chronology, coverings events as they appear along the timeline. Though this is not a military history by any means, but he does provide set-piece reconstructions of some of the major engagements, including Dien Bien Phu, Hue, and Dai Do. Hastings also periodically employs a thematic method of approach. There is a chapter solely dedicated to Rolling Thunder, for instance, which allows him to focus on one facet of the war without distraction. Hastings also breaks his chapters down into smaller subsections, and he devotes many of those subsections to discussions on specific topics, such as the role of helicopters, the danger of booby traps, and a comparative analysis of the relative merits of the AK-47 versus the M-16.
Through this all, he pays close attention to the relationship between parties. While covering the obvious strain between the U.S. and South Vietnam, he also recognizes the strife between the North Vietnamese and their guerilla allies in the south. He is also conscious that the terminology of the war can be unfamiliar and often shifts over time. Thus, when the Vietminh (devoted to throwing out the French) transformed into the Vietcong (dedicated to throwing out the Americans), Hastings is sure to let you know.
Hastings is also incredibly successful in using individual stories as representative samples from which to extrapolate larger meaning. Throughout Vietnam, he continues to return to a discrete number of characters who we follow throughout the book. (A dramatis personae would have been helpful in this regard). This provides a lens that is at once wide-angled and intimate, that gives you the vast swath of experiences while also reminding you that history is not the recounting of dates and occurrences but a big story made up of countless smaller human dramas. To that end, Hastings utilizes a variety of voices: C.I.A. spooks and U.S. grunts; NVA infantrymen, VC guerillas, and communist cadres; and, of course, there are the peasants caught between impossible and opposing forces. You meet Dang Thuy Tram, a young revolutionary, the daughter of a Hanoi surgeon, whose diary was found when she was killed by an American patrol in 1970. You also meet Doug Ramsey, who spent seven years as a prisoner-of-war in unimaginable conditions.
One of the things that sets Hastings apart from many other author/historians is that he writes with a distinctly sharp tone. He can be caustic, sardonic, and witty. When discussing French officers Michel Bigeard and Pierre Langlais at Dien Bien Phu he notes: “[They] were better suited to enduring crucifixion than inspiring a resurrection.”
On the allocation of frontline troops as against support forces: “Maybe two-thirds of the men who came home calling themselves veterans – entitled to wear the medal and talk about their PTSD troubles – had been exposed to no greater risk than a man might incur from ill-judged sex or “bad shit” drugs.”
On the circularity of the war: “This was a Groundhog Day conflict, in which contests for a portion of elephant grass, jungle, or rice paddy were repeated not merely month after month, but year upon year, with no Andie McDowell as prize in the last reel.”
(I don’t know exactly why, but I am absolutely tickled at the idea of Max Hastings, the tough old foreign correspondent, sitting down to watch Groundhog Day).
Vietnam was an incredibly divisive conflict, but Hastings does an admirable job maintaining his neutrality. To be sure, he often repeats conservative/hawkish complaints (that the brutality of North Vietnam’s Stalinist regime is ignored; that antiwar protestors were hopelessly naïve; that the American press didn't tell the full story), but his overall position is that of skeptic. He is constantly questioning everyone and everything. Indeed, he seems to model himself after The Quiet American’s cynical Fowler. His scathing tongue knows no political party, and he unleashes a variety of slashing attacks on Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger that reminded me of the Velociraptors from Jurassic Park. And despite his handwringing about soldiers smoking marijuana and college students hanging North Vietnamese flags, his overall conclusion is that the American effort in Vietnam was doomed. In his view, no amount of military success could have changed the fact that South Vietnam was corrupt, tainted, and hopelessly disconnected from her citizens.
The struggle over the meaning of Vietnam has only just begin. We are, after all, still grappling with the American Civil War, which ended over 150 years ago. To his credit, Hastings does not attempt to draw any pat lessons. He understands that the answer to Vietnam will not be found in John Wayne’s blatantly propagandistic The Green Berets, and it will not be found in Jane Fonda’s reprehensible decision to sit on an NVA antiaircraft gun. The answer is not even in the middle, equidistant between two poles.
Instead of answers, Hastings provides experiences. He superbly traces the contours of this epochal disaster by charting the courses of the people who lived through it, and those who did not survive.
- Max Hastings, Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy, 1945-75
This is a book I have been waiting for a long time.
This is the Battle Cry of Freedom of the Vietnam War. A beautifully and pungently written single volume history that valiantly attempts the impossible task of capturing and clarifying this multilayered military, political, and human catastrophe.
The Vietnam War (encompassing the First Indochina War, between the French and Vietminh, and the Second Indochina War, pitting the U.S. and South Vietnam against the North Vietnamese and Vietcong) is a historical subject I have mostly avoided. First, like World War I, it is an imposingly complex subject. Adding to the complexity is the westerner’s difficulty in pronouncing the proper nouns – both people and locations – that are required to understand the story. Finally, and most importantly, Vietnam does not feel like settled history. It is still firmly implanted in living memory. I was born after the wars of Vietnam had concluded, but I grew up surrounded by people who had experienced parts of it firsthand. We are still collectively sorting out what it all meant. The war is still controversial and still being refought.
Max Hastings has convinced me that now is the time to start learning more about these tumultuous decades, which cost millions of lives and damaged many millions more; that dramatically reordered one society, and shattered another; that killed one president (Diem), destroyed another (Johnson), and tarnished a third (Nixon); that cost untold billions of dollars in military spending and economic aid; and that nearly squandered the trust that Americans have for government.
In Inferno, Hastings showed a magical touch for boiling down a titanic struggle, delivering perhaps the best one-volume history of World War II. He exceeds that triumph with Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy. While smaller in terms of numbers involved and casualties incurred, the Vietnam War is far more fraught and tangled, a moral gray zone as vast as the jungles of Southeast Asia.
Hastings starts with the briefest of overviews of the land over which so many people would come to grief:
Vietnam comprises 126,000 square miles, a few more than Italy or metropolitan France, most of which are either mountains shrouded in exotic vegetation or flatlands of extraordinary seasonal wetness and fertility. Almost every visitor who escaped the penance of exertion in the clinging heat was awed by its beauty and penned lyrical descriptions, celebrating views of “paddy fields in which water buffalo grazed, almost every one with a white egret perched on its back picking at insects; of vegetation so bright and green that it hurt the eyes; of waits at ferries beside broad rivers the color of café crème; of gaudy pagodas and wooden homes on stilts, surrounded by dogs and ducks; of the steaming atmosphere, the ripe smells and water everywhere, giving a sense of fecundity, of nature spawning, ripening and on heat.”
After that, he begins his story proper in 1945, with the French (who had been thrashed by the Germans, collaborated with the Germans, and who had fired on American troops in North Africa) being allowed to retain their colony in Indochina. (One of the terrible ifs of the Vietnam War is what might have happened if the anti-colonialist Roosevelt had not died). Vietnam ends in 1975, with the fall of Saigon to the North Vietnamese. This thirty-year interval is crammed with a library’s worth of incidents.
The Vietnam War defies an easy presentation. There is no linear progression of events to follow. This is not World War II, for instance, where it is easy to track the ebb and tide of fortune by tracing territory that is lost and recaptured, decisive battles that are lost or won. The Vietnam War was fluid and ever-changing, with no front lines, no clear demarcation between friend and foe, with few large battles, and certainly no decisive ones. (An American advisor once compared the Vietnam War to an NFL game in which one team is dressed as the spectators and periodically hides the ball and runs up into the stands).
With this level of narrative difficulty, Hastings’s major accomplishment is in his structure and framework, his ability to take this massive and multifaceted tale and pare it down to something that is not only comprehensible, but also a joy to read.
Overall he employs a straightforward chronology, coverings events as they appear along the timeline. Though this is not a military history by any means, but he does provide set-piece reconstructions of some of the major engagements, including Dien Bien Phu, Hue, and Dai Do. Hastings also periodically employs a thematic method of approach. There is a chapter solely dedicated to Rolling Thunder, for instance, which allows him to focus on one facet of the war without distraction. Hastings also breaks his chapters down into smaller subsections, and he devotes many of those subsections to discussions on specific topics, such as the role of helicopters, the danger of booby traps, and a comparative analysis of the relative merits of the AK-47 versus the M-16.
Through this all, he pays close attention to the relationship between parties. While covering the obvious strain between the U.S. and South Vietnam, he also recognizes the strife between the North Vietnamese and their guerilla allies in the south. He is also conscious that the terminology of the war can be unfamiliar and often shifts over time. Thus, when the Vietminh (devoted to throwing out the French) transformed into the Vietcong (dedicated to throwing out the Americans), Hastings is sure to let you know.
Hastings is also incredibly successful in using individual stories as representative samples from which to extrapolate larger meaning. Throughout Vietnam, he continues to return to a discrete number of characters who we follow throughout the book. (A dramatis personae would have been helpful in this regard). This provides a lens that is at once wide-angled and intimate, that gives you the vast swath of experiences while also reminding you that history is not the recounting of dates and occurrences but a big story made up of countless smaller human dramas. To that end, Hastings utilizes a variety of voices: C.I.A. spooks and U.S. grunts; NVA infantrymen, VC guerillas, and communist cadres; and, of course, there are the peasants caught between impossible and opposing forces. You meet Dang Thuy Tram, a young revolutionary, the daughter of a Hanoi surgeon, whose diary was found when she was killed by an American patrol in 1970. You also meet Doug Ramsey, who spent seven years as a prisoner-of-war in unimaginable conditions.
One of the things that sets Hastings apart from many other author/historians is that he writes with a distinctly sharp tone. He can be caustic, sardonic, and witty. When discussing French officers Michel Bigeard and Pierre Langlais at Dien Bien Phu he notes: “[They] were better suited to enduring crucifixion than inspiring a resurrection.”
On the allocation of frontline troops as against support forces: “Maybe two-thirds of the men who came home calling themselves veterans – entitled to wear the medal and talk about their PTSD troubles – had been exposed to no greater risk than a man might incur from ill-judged sex or “bad shit” drugs.”
On the circularity of the war: “This was a Groundhog Day conflict, in which contests for a portion of elephant grass, jungle, or rice paddy were repeated not merely month after month, but year upon year, with no Andie McDowell as prize in the last reel.”
(I don’t know exactly why, but I am absolutely tickled at the idea of Max Hastings, the tough old foreign correspondent, sitting down to watch Groundhog Day).
Vietnam was an incredibly divisive conflict, but Hastings does an admirable job maintaining his neutrality. To be sure, he often repeats conservative/hawkish complaints (that the brutality of North Vietnam’s Stalinist regime is ignored; that antiwar protestors were hopelessly naïve; that the American press didn't tell the full story), but his overall position is that of skeptic. He is constantly questioning everyone and everything. Indeed, he seems to model himself after The Quiet American’s cynical Fowler. His scathing tongue knows no political party, and he unleashes a variety of slashing attacks on Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger that reminded me of the Velociraptors from Jurassic Park. And despite his handwringing about soldiers smoking marijuana and college students hanging North Vietnamese flags, his overall conclusion is that the American effort in Vietnam was doomed. In his view, no amount of military success could have changed the fact that South Vietnam was corrupt, tainted, and hopelessly disconnected from her citizens.
The struggle over the meaning of Vietnam has only just begin. We are, after all, still grappling with the American Civil War, which ended over 150 years ago. To his credit, Hastings does not attempt to draw any pat lessons. He understands that the answer to Vietnam will not be found in John Wayne’s blatantly propagandistic The Green Berets, and it will not be found in Jane Fonda’s reprehensible decision to sit on an NVA antiaircraft gun. The answer is not even in the middle, equidistant between two poles.
Instead of answers, Hastings provides experiences. He superbly traces the contours of this epochal disaster by charting the courses of the people who lived through it, and those who did not survive.
January 15, 2021
Kudos to my friend Matt for reviewing this book on here and thus piquing my interest. I am not very well-read in history (or anything else) and have read maybe 3 or 4 books on the Vietnam War and own perhaps a dozen more. Most of these are books about different major or minor battles, memoirs, books about specific divisions, e.g., the tunnel rats, etc. I had no overview of the war setting aside an old version of Stanley Karnow's Vietnam, a book I could never get into.
The great aspect of Sir Max Hasting's new book on Vietnam is that it is an almost complete history of the war era, beginning with the French, humiliated in WW II, trying to recapture some of their old glory by reasserting themselves in this distant colony where they had given the people culture and taught them to read Racine, in return for extracting a great deal of natural resources the country had to offer, along with the labor of the people.
Some historians have said that the lessons of history are never learned. Vietnam was ruled by various Chinese Dynasties, beginning around the early first Millennium, finally evicting their Chinese overlords. They successfully repulsed the Mongol Hordes on three separate occasions in the 13th Century. The fact they repulsed the Mongols three times might have given the French pause before they sent their priests in to convert the Viets from their Mahayana Buddhism and ancestor worship to the "true" faith, a conversion process which began when French traders first came to Vietnam in the 17th Century and evolved over a span of several hundred years into the French asserting increasing control until they ruled all of Vietnam by 1884. Their dominion there was not without its troubles and there were constant portents of uprisings, along with actual uprisings against the French encroachment.
Sir Max doesn't go into much detail about the country's history before the French returned in force in 1945 to reassert themselves over their lost colony. The French have made many blunders throughout their long history but this attempt to dominate Vietnam, where a rebel movement had begun stirring in the early 1940s--i.e., the Viet Minh, a communist group of reprobates with the effrontery to wish to run their country by themselves using whatever ideology they pleased, may have been their worst mistake since Napoleon invaded Russia.
The French might have been wise to let well-enough alone, but in their hubris they attempted to subdue the communist malefactors. France, with aid from British and Japanese, stemmed the initial Viet Minh rebellion-- but this control proved tenuous and in 1946 a guerilla war broke out, resulting in a 9-year battle in which the Viet Minh, aided with weapons and money by Russia and China, outfought and outmaneuvered the French, who suffered a particularly ignominious defeat in 1954 at the Battle of Dien Ben Phu (excuse my lack of diacritical marks). At this point, the French finally realized that perhaps they were not going to win this war and talks were held at Geneva where it was agreed the French would cease fighting in Vietnam and that elections would be held in a couple of years to determine the political fate of the nation. Not everyone in Vietnam supported the communist party and a 300-day grace period was given where people from north and south could migrate wherever they saw fit. About a million Viets fled south to escape living under communist rule.
Sir Max masterfully chronicles the French hubris and failure to realize the indomitable will of the Viet Minh to rid the land of croissants and mannerist playwrights. The French recruited other of their colonial minions--Algerians and various other Africans--to aid in their recolonization
Meanwhile, the Americans were watching this attempt to subdue the commies quite closely. This was the Cold War era, and those of you that lived through it know that democratic nations around the world quaked in fear of world communist takeover. There was also the notion of "the domino effect," where it was assumed that if Vietnam "fell," all of SE Asia would quickly follow suit and become part of the communist hegemony slowly engulfing the "free" world. Previous to WW II, the French had wrested control of what they called "French Indochina," including Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Sir Max does an excellent job of limning the paranoia of the time prevalent in the US and Russia. Of course, some of this paranoia was a byproduct of past events, but much was overkill.
One thing Sir Max's book taught me was that it takes a lot of reading of a great many books to arrive at some idea of the "truth" of historical events. In other history books, for example, I had read that President Eisenhower had been approached to have the US intervene to aid the French and had dismissed this notion unceremoniously. Sir Max's account show a President far more hawkish and anxious to intervene militarily but restrained only by the caution of his close advisors and lack of congressional support. He does send a fair amount of Americans to Vietnam to act in "advising" (read: spying) roles. Ostensibly, these "advisers" were there to shore up the S. Vietnamese army and to instruct the self-appointed President Ngo Dinh Diem who had been appointed Prime Minister and usurped the Presidency where he proved an unpopular and ineffectual leader.
Meanwhile, more "advisers" streamed in so that by the time of President Kennedy's assassination there were over 60,000 Americans in Vietnam. Diem fell out of favor with his US handlers and was himself assassinated in a military coup shortly before President Kennedy's death.
And on and on it goes, as Sir Max tells how the US rigged the now infamous Gulf of Tonkin affair to gain popular support to enter a full-scale war--a war that saw increasingly more American youth being conscripted into service and a great many American casualties (58,000 known by the end of the fighting. Not to mention the estimated millions of Vietnamese citizens and Viet Cong and NVA soldiers who were routinely outgunned by the superior weaponry and air power of the US and lost an estimated ten men to every one American casualty.
And Sir Max drives home the point that Americans in power saw a war with Vietnam as a lost cause, a war that would be a guerilla war, which Americans were not especially skilled in fighting, and which would probably be a long war of attrition that we would probably lose. Not all American advisors felt that loss was inevitable but most felt that we would need to become more involved in helping South Vietnam since we had emerged as the "leaders of the Free World" after WW II.
Another common theme running through his book is that, as with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to come, the US never had a plan for a strong leader in Vietnam who could rally the people behind a common cause. The war seemed to have become a matter of honor, and Sir Max notes that some historians are now coming round to the notion that though the war was a horrible debacle, it was necessary for the US to fight it to make a stand against the communists.
Sir Max is not a "value-free," just the facts sort of historian and the journalist in him often comes out as he makes clear that Ho Chi Minh was not the avuncular "Uncle Ho" now depicted and revered by young Vietnamese who have been indoctrinated. Rather, Ho is depicted as a ruthless revolutionary in the tradition of China's Chairman Mao, a leader who perpetrated many atrocities upon his countrymen and had an "end justifies the means" mentality.
Also noted are the many changes that took place among US soldiers and the American people as the war progressed and more lives were lost with seemingly no end in sight. Likewise, he recounts the malaise felt by the average Vietnamese peasant, who just longed for peace, and the fractiousness the war caused among the Vietnamese people, a people not united ideologically but definitely of one mind in wishing the American invaders to to go home. The gung-ho attitudes of the early US soldiers gave way by 1970 to many US soldiers using drugs, particularly heroin, "fragging" (killing) their superior officers if they deemed them to be incompetent, and refusal to engage in fighting or go on senseless patrols became far more commonplace as American society turned against the war in huge numbers and US fighting men often followed suit.
The venality of Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon in continuing the war for political gain is disdainfully noted, as is the illicit bombing in Laos and Cambodia authorized by the diabolical duo. The history continues to the bitter end with the final assault by the NVA on Saigon in 1975 and the communist takeover of the nation, with imprisonment for ARVN (S. Vietnamese Army) officers for long periods in "reeducation camps." Sir Max also touches on US prisoners of war and describes some of the gruesome conditions they lived under in captivity.
The Vietnam war is far too complicated to sum up in a 752-page book, but, so far, Sir Max's history is the best and most complete I have come across. It is a well-written overview by someone who has the advantages of being both an outsider and someone who was there reporting from Vietnam and who also lived in America during some of its most troubled times in the late 1960’s. I highly recommend it for the reader who wants an introduction to the Vietnam War, or as a precursor to studying more specific battles and political intrigues and citizen unrest (in both countries) during this conflict that destroyed many lives and human spirits.
The great aspect of Sir Max Hasting's new book on Vietnam is that it is an almost complete history of the war era, beginning with the French, humiliated in WW II, trying to recapture some of their old glory by reasserting themselves in this distant colony where they had given the people culture and taught them to read Racine, in return for extracting a great deal of natural resources the country had to offer, along with the labor of the people.
Some historians have said that the lessons of history are never learned. Vietnam was ruled by various Chinese Dynasties, beginning around the early first Millennium, finally evicting their Chinese overlords. They successfully repulsed the Mongol Hordes on three separate occasions in the 13th Century. The fact they repulsed the Mongols three times might have given the French pause before they sent their priests in to convert the Viets from their Mahayana Buddhism and ancestor worship to the "true" faith, a conversion process which began when French traders first came to Vietnam in the 17th Century and evolved over a span of several hundred years into the French asserting increasing control until they ruled all of Vietnam by 1884. Their dominion there was not without its troubles and there were constant portents of uprisings, along with actual uprisings against the French encroachment.
Sir Max doesn't go into much detail about the country's history before the French returned in force in 1945 to reassert themselves over their lost colony. The French have made many blunders throughout their long history but this attempt to dominate Vietnam, where a rebel movement had begun stirring in the early 1940s--i.e., the Viet Minh, a communist group of reprobates with the effrontery to wish to run their country by themselves using whatever ideology they pleased, may have been their worst mistake since Napoleon invaded Russia.
The French might have been wise to let well-enough alone, but in their hubris they attempted to subdue the communist malefactors. France, with aid from British and Japanese, stemmed the initial Viet Minh rebellion-- but this control proved tenuous and in 1946 a guerilla war broke out, resulting in a 9-year battle in which the Viet Minh, aided with weapons and money by Russia and China, outfought and outmaneuvered the French, who suffered a particularly ignominious defeat in 1954 at the Battle of Dien Ben Phu (excuse my lack of diacritical marks). At this point, the French finally realized that perhaps they were not going to win this war and talks were held at Geneva where it was agreed the French would cease fighting in Vietnam and that elections would be held in a couple of years to determine the political fate of the nation. Not everyone in Vietnam supported the communist party and a 300-day grace period was given where people from north and south could migrate wherever they saw fit. About a million Viets fled south to escape living under communist rule.
Sir Max masterfully chronicles the French hubris and failure to realize the indomitable will of the Viet Minh to rid the land of croissants and mannerist playwrights. The French recruited other of their colonial minions--Algerians and various other Africans--to aid in their recolonization
Meanwhile, the Americans were watching this attempt to subdue the commies quite closely. This was the Cold War era, and those of you that lived through it know that democratic nations around the world quaked in fear of world communist takeover. There was also the notion of "the domino effect," where it was assumed that if Vietnam "fell," all of SE Asia would quickly follow suit and become part of the communist hegemony slowly engulfing the "free" world. Previous to WW II, the French had wrested control of what they called "French Indochina," including Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Sir Max does an excellent job of limning the paranoia of the time prevalent in the US and Russia. Of course, some of this paranoia was a byproduct of past events, but much was overkill.
One thing Sir Max's book taught me was that it takes a lot of reading of a great many books to arrive at some idea of the "truth" of historical events. In other history books, for example, I had read that President Eisenhower had been approached to have the US intervene to aid the French and had dismissed this notion unceremoniously. Sir Max's account show a President far more hawkish and anxious to intervene militarily but restrained only by the caution of his close advisors and lack of congressional support. He does send a fair amount of Americans to Vietnam to act in "advising" (read: spying) roles. Ostensibly, these "advisers" were there to shore up the S. Vietnamese army and to instruct the self-appointed President Ngo Dinh Diem who had been appointed Prime Minister and usurped the Presidency where he proved an unpopular and ineffectual leader.
Meanwhile, more "advisers" streamed in so that by the time of President Kennedy's assassination there were over 60,000 Americans in Vietnam. Diem fell out of favor with his US handlers and was himself assassinated in a military coup shortly before President Kennedy's death.
And on and on it goes, as Sir Max tells how the US rigged the now infamous Gulf of Tonkin affair to gain popular support to enter a full-scale war--a war that saw increasingly more American youth being conscripted into service and a great many American casualties (58,000 known by the end of the fighting. Not to mention the estimated millions of Vietnamese citizens and Viet Cong and NVA soldiers who were routinely outgunned by the superior weaponry and air power of the US and lost an estimated ten men to every one American casualty.
And Sir Max drives home the point that Americans in power saw a war with Vietnam as a lost cause, a war that would be a guerilla war, which Americans were not especially skilled in fighting, and which would probably be a long war of attrition that we would probably lose. Not all American advisors felt that loss was inevitable but most felt that we would need to become more involved in helping South Vietnam since we had emerged as the "leaders of the Free World" after WW II.
Another common theme running through his book is that, as with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to come, the US never had a plan for a strong leader in Vietnam who could rally the people behind a common cause. The war seemed to have become a matter of honor, and Sir Max notes that some historians are now coming round to the notion that though the war was a horrible debacle, it was necessary for the US to fight it to make a stand against the communists.
Sir Max is not a "value-free," just the facts sort of historian and the journalist in him often comes out as he makes clear that Ho Chi Minh was not the avuncular "Uncle Ho" now depicted and revered by young Vietnamese who have been indoctrinated. Rather, Ho is depicted as a ruthless revolutionary in the tradition of China's Chairman Mao, a leader who perpetrated many atrocities upon his countrymen and had an "end justifies the means" mentality.
Also noted are the many changes that took place among US soldiers and the American people as the war progressed and more lives were lost with seemingly no end in sight. Likewise, he recounts the malaise felt by the average Vietnamese peasant, who just longed for peace, and the fractiousness the war caused among the Vietnamese people, a people not united ideologically but definitely of one mind in wishing the American invaders to to go home. The gung-ho attitudes of the early US soldiers gave way by 1970 to many US soldiers using drugs, particularly heroin, "fragging" (killing) their superior officers if they deemed them to be incompetent, and refusal to engage in fighting or go on senseless patrols became far more commonplace as American society turned against the war in huge numbers and US fighting men often followed suit.
The venality of Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon in continuing the war for political gain is disdainfully noted, as is the illicit bombing in Laos and Cambodia authorized by the diabolical duo. The history continues to the bitter end with the final assault by the NVA on Saigon in 1975 and the communist takeover of the nation, with imprisonment for ARVN (S. Vietnamese Army) officers for long periods in "reeducation camps." Sir Max also touches on US prisoners of war and describes some of the gruesome conditions they lived under in captivity.
The Vietnam war is far too complicated to sum up in a 752-page book, but, so far, Sir Max's history is the best and most complete I have come across. It is a well-written overview by someone who has the advantages of being both an outsider and someone who was there reporting from Vietnam and who also lived in America during some of its most troubled times in the late 1960’s. I highly recommend it for the reader who wants an introduction to the Vietnam War, or as a precursor to studying more specific battles and political intrigues and citizen unrest (in both countries) during this conflict that destroyed many lives and human spirits.
January 2, 2023
This was an incredible undertaking. In my opinion, Max Hastings never wrote a bad history book, this one included. This was a full-scale history of Western involvement in Vietnam including both the French and the Americans. The history of colonial French Indochina and the reduction of foreign power was solidified by the failed police interactions from 1945 to 1954. The latter date was the defeat at Dien Bien Phu and the subsequent turbulence from 1954 to 1960 of increased insurgency and North Vietnamese agitation in the South. During this time Vietnam fell into a tumultuous time of multiple national leadership changes, reform programs, coups, internal hardships, and American involvement to contain the spread of communism under the Eisenhower administration.
The 1960s saw escalation by both the JFK and LBJ administrations in attempts to show face to the world. Military advisors became defensive operations, clandestine operations, the extensive air campaign Operation Rolling Thunder, and the deployment of ground forces into offensive-combat roles.
Overall this was an excellent account of the of the Vietnam War. I would highly recommend this to anyone interested in Vietnam or someone who enjoys Max Hastings' writings. Thanks!
The 1960s saw escalation by both the JFK and LBJ administrations in attempts to show face to the world. Military advisors became defensive operations, clandestine operations, the extensive air campaign Operation Rolling Thunder, and the deployment of ground forces into offensive-combat roles.
President Lyndon Johnson said long afterward about Vietnam, "I knew from the start that I was bound to be crucified either way I moved. If I left the woman I really loved—the Great Society—in order to get involved with that bitch of a war on the other side of the world, then I would lose everything at home...But if I left that war and let the Communists take over South Vietnam, then I would be seen as a coward and my nation would be seen as an appeaser and we would both find it impossible to accomplish anything for anybody anywhere on the entire globe." pg 197Hastings covered many aspects of the Vietnam War: social problems and protest back home, combat experiences and jungle warfare, political and military objectives, the Tet Offensive, Vietnamization and the Nixon administration, Russian advisors in North Vietnam, and the eventual North Vietnamese large-scale offensive into the South.
Overall this was an excellent account of the of the Vietnam War. I would highly recommend this to anyone interested in Vietnam or someone who enjoys Max Hastings' writings. Thanks!
December 16, 2023
“Out on the South China Sea [in 1975], as the state of South Vietnam became history, a multitude of emotionally exhausted people gazed in wonderment upon a vast armada of warships large and small, transports, tankers and small craft crowding the billow, a scene that reflected the bitterest humiliation ever to befall the United States, though its deepest pain fell upon the people of South Vietnam.”
Max Hastings comes to the rescue once again.
This is the kind of book that is assigned as background reading in a typical introductory history class and the reason for that is obvious enough: a very good coverage of the entirety of the conflict in Vietnam. Having only watched the Burns-Novick’s documentary, I don’t think I could’ve done any better than reading Hastings’ one volume work. He has entered the semi-uncharted territory of Indochina Wars and has emerged triumphantly.
Vietnam is new stuff for me and I didn’t want to indulge in counter-factuals before grasping what actually happened in the first place. Hastings is opinionated as ever and his acerbic writing style is not lacking here either but he readily shifts between different viewpoints without fixating on one strand. More importantly he doesn’t disregard the fact that, when all is said and done, the war in Vietnam is a history of humans, of faulty individuals with ambition, recklessness, and savagery — and of lives destroyed and made in the span of nearly thirty years of hostilities.
(I’ve seen some arguments made against “humanist” histories holding that it is sentimental and pointless to give voice to individuals in “real” works of history as if humans of the past were lifeless functionary zombies. To be fair, this kind of history is not easy to get right; there is the sampling and confirmation bias that have to be accounted for when choosing from diaries, memoirs, and recollections; there is the oft-intractable difficulty of corroboration. But when it is done right, the intimacy and contingency that individual voices add, make the story firmly set on the ground and away from abstract ideas that we might fight over in our heads and arguments.)
The book starts with the First Indochina War between the French colonial troops and Northern communist revolutionaries rising behind the banner of Ho Chi Minh: the crumbling French Empire trying in vain to retain power in Vietnam and ignoring the desire of Vietnamese people for self-rule. This first phase culminated in the Battle of Dien Bien Phu and a shattering blow to French colonialism which Hastings devote four chapters to. As an aftermath of the battle, Vietnam was partitioned into two states in the 1954 Geneva Conference along the 17th parallel: the Communist North and the South State of Vietnam.
As always Max Hastings provides very good maps. In his own words his maps are “impressionistic” without unnecessary details and unit numbers. His battle descriptions though are not seamless and he abruptly jumps from one unit and commander to the next and you just have to sit there craving more detail about the ones you’ve already read about but apparently, he’s just done with them. I found myself suspended a few times between bungled segues. His handling of air-crews and the war in the air are much better. There are also lots of regiment and battalion numbers and unnecessary clock times specified in military format (e.g., 0340 hours). I’m nitpicking I know but I could’ve done without them because the book has only one or two paragraphs to describe the action of that unit.
Northern aggression starting in 1960, and its backing of the southern Vietcong, restarted the hellish cycle that Vietnam was caught up since 1946. With the difference that this time, the Northern Communists had to face the might of the United States Armed Forces. The United States slide into the war is covered briefly because the major focus of this book is on 1965 onwards where the tempo rose to its crescendo.
One thing stands out in Hastings’ account and that is while he fairly criticizes the US entry into the war and LBJ’s self-destructive escalation later on, he is more than willing to point out the viciousness of the Hanoi’s regime — a Stalinist system in the making. This is actually an important point because it’s easy to fall into the false equivalency trap and to say that both sides were as bad or to say that the North was worthy of winning because it enjoyed the support of its people. The United States deserves its great share of blame for getting involved in a war that didn’t have much prospect of success without continuous — and possibly indefinite — involvement, which is something that no foreign country can reasonably provide. But to say that the North was justified in creating an authoritarian country that ruined the lives of so many Vietnamese, is taking it a step too far. This is a balance that Hastings tries to strike and for the majority of his arguments, his positionings make sense. Max Hastings is the King of comparisons (which side suffered more, whose people suffered relatively more, you name it) but he avoids making shallow arguments and that’s why his strong comments don’t rattle.
The Hanoi regime enjoyed massive support from China and the Soviet Union but they didn’t make themselves conspicuous and they were supporting Hanoi and not substituting it in direct contrast to US policy making towards Saigon.
There are brief sketches of Russian advisors and SAM missile operators that helped Hanoi in its war against the USAF bomber and fighter squadrons and this is one those tidbits that I’m not going to forget:
A war that has foreign Russian soldiers eating frogs and calling it delicious, well that’s a war worth reading about if for nothing else.
After fifteen years of bloody conflict, the United States and ARVN couldn’t subdue the Vietcong or the Hanoi regime and Richard Nixon and Kissinger decided to sound the retreat. But not without prolonging the war for another six brutal years. They needed to secure some form of victory. After all the investments and the losses, it was hard to accept defeat and just leave the South Vietnamese at the mercy of Hanoi. And Hanoi wasn’t obliging in that regard. How could the US politicians have reached a compromise with Hanoi? An ideological regime that was hell-bent on unifying Vietnam and wouldn’t have settled for anything less. The Communist North was built upon the ideal of reunification and it’s not an easy job dealing with a system like that.
※※※
Compared with the Korean War and the relative success of the US intervention there, it might seem that the nation building project carried out in Vietnam wasn’t doomed from the start. There are lots of arguments and analysis holding that with a better strategy boosted by an all-embracing gusto and less restrictions, United States could’ve prevailed in thrashing the North and saving the South. But in hindsight, considering all the cases where the United States forces have tried to build democratic states in unstable regions (Afghanistan and Iraq) I think it is sensible to say that intervention cannot bring about endurable states that might justify the bloodletting of war. Now to be clear every new political system is essentially instable. And arguing that by relying on American support, these new states forfeited any real claim to legitimacy and thus were doomed from the beginning, ignores a host of other issues that can shatter a new system in their own right.
But heavily-supported governments usually lack that internal energy which is so apparent in those states that can withstand the pressures mostly on their own feet. This lack of internal drive coupled with the tarnished image of being a puppet (add corruption to that pile), make it even more difficult — if not more impossible — for a new government to survive its first decade in power. Max Hastings does call the Saigon government a puppet state in the conclusion and even if it’s not that descriptive, in the minds of people involved it played a big part. The southerners couldn’t trust their government because it wasn’t something of their own making and they were not ready to risk everything for it — a risk that was essential for victory.
Even in the case of Korea and with the prosperity that South Koreans have enjoyed so far compared to their northern neighbors, it is hard to say that intervention was completely justified back in 1950. Lots of things could’ve gone wrong and the end result could’ve been vastly different. Local and global situation was really different in the Korean War but the risks were nonetheless all too real. And even after the passage of 70 years, the shadow of possible conflict and escalation between South and North still looms in the peninsula.
Max Hastings comes to the rescue once again.
This is the kind of book that is assigned as background reading in a typical introductory history class and the reason for that is obvious enough: a very good coverage of the entirety of the conflict in Vietnam. Having only watched the Burns-Novick’s documentary, I don’t think I could’ve done any better than reading Hastings’ one volume work. He has entered the semi-uncharted territory of Indochina Wars and has emerged triumphantly.
Vietnam is new stuff for me and I didn’t want to indulge in counter-factuals before grasping what actually happened in the first place. Hastings is opinionated as ever and his acerbic writing style is not lacking here either but he readily shifts between different viewpoints without fixating on one strand. More importantly he doesn’t disregard the fact that, when all is said and done, the war in Vietnam is a history of humans, of faulty individuals with ambition, recklessness, and savagery — and of lives destroyed and made in the span of nearly thirty years of hostilities.
(I’ve seen some arguments made against “humanist” histories holding that it is sentimental and pointless to give voice to individuals in “real” works of history as if humans of the past were lifeless functionary zombies. To be fair, this kind of history is not easy to get right; there is the sampling and confirmation bias that have to be accounted for when choosing from diaries, memoirs, and recollections; there is the oft-intractable difficulty of corroboration. But when it is done right, the intimacy and contingency that individual voices add, make the story firmly set on the ground and away from abstract ideas that we might fight over in our heads and arguments.)
The book starts with the First Indochina War between the French colonial troops and Northern communist revolutionaries rising behind the banner of Ho Chi Minh: the crumbling French Empire trying in vain to retain power in Vietnam and ignoring the desire of Vietnamese people for self-rule. This first phase culminated in the Battle of Dien Bien Phu and a shattering blow to French colonialism which Hastings devote four chapters to. As an aftermath of the battle, Vietnam was partitioned into two states in the 1954 Geneva Conference along the 17th parallel: the Communist North and the South State of Vietnam.
As always Max Hastings provides very good maps. In his own words his maps are “impressionistic” without unnecessary details and unit numbers. His battle descriptions though are not seamless and he abruptly jumps from one unit and commander to the next and you just have to sit there craving more detail about the ones you’ve already read about but apparently, he’s just done with them. I found myself suspended a few times between bungled segues. His handling of air-crews and the war in the air are much better. There are also lots of regiment and battalion numbers and unnecessary clock times specified in military format (e.g., 0340 hours). I’m nitpicking I know but I could’ve done without them because the book has only one or two paragraphs to describe the action of that unit.
Northern aggression starting in 1960, and its backing of the southern Vietcong, restarted the hellish cycle that Vietnam was caught up since 1946. With the difference that this time, the Northern Communists had to face the might of the United States Armed Forces. The United States slide into the war is covered briefly because the major focus of this book is on 1965 onwards where the tempo rose to its crescendo.
One thing stands out in Hastings’ account and that is while he fairly criticizes the US entry into the war and LBJ’s self-destructive escalation later on, he is more than willing to point out the viciousness of the Hanoi’s regime — a Stalinist system in the making. This is actually an important point because it’s easy to fall into the false equivalency trap and to say that both sides were as bad or to say that the North was worthy of winning because it enjoyed the support of its people. The United States deserves its great share of blame for getting involved in a war that didn’t have much prospect of success without continuous — and possibly indefinite — involvement, which is something that no foreign country can reasonably provide. But to say that the North was justified in creating an authoritarian country that ruined the lives of so many Vietnamese, is taking it a step too far. This is a balance that Hastings tries to strike and for the majority of his arguments, his positionings make sense. Max Hastings is the King of comparisons (which side suffered more, whose people suffered relatively more, you name it) but he avoids making shallow arguments and that’s why his strong comments don’t rattle.
The Hanoi regime enjoyed massive support from China and the Soviet Union but they didn’t make themselves conspicuous and they were supporting Hanoi and not substituting it in direct contrast to US policy making towards Saigon.
There are brief sketches of Russian advisors and SAM missile operators that helped Hanoi in its war against the USAF bomber and fighter squadrons and this is one those tidbits that I’m not going to forget:
The Russians hated the mosquitoes, ‘big as B-52s’ in the wondering words of one soldier. They were fascinated by the vicissitudes of diet. Their hosts provided them with far more generous rations than their own people received, together with copious supplies of beer, but meat was always short. Petr Zalipsky’s unit used grasshoppers as bait to catch giant frogs – ‘delicious, with sweet white flesh like chicken … to this day I prefer frog to seafood’. Many learned to enjoy eating snake, which they thought better than the local pork, which had bristles still clinging to it.
A war that has foreign Russian soldiers eating frogs and calling it delicious, well that’s a war worth reading about if for nothing else.
After fifteen years of bloody conflict, the United States and ARVN couldn’t subdue the Vietcong or the Hanoi regime and Richard Nixon and Kissinger decided to sound the retreat. But not without prolonging the war for another six brutal years. They needed to secure some form of victory. After all the investments and the losses, it was hard to accept defeat and just leave the South Vietnamese at the mercy of Hanoi. And Hanoi wasn’t obliging in that regard. How could the US politicians have reached a compromise with Hanoi? An ideological regime that was hell-bent on unifying Vietnam and wouldn’t have settled for anything less. The Communist North was built upon the ideal of reunification and it’s not an easy job dealing with a system like that.
※※※
Compared with the Korean War and the relative success of the US intervention there, it might seem that the nation building project carried out in Vietnam wasn’t doomed from the start. There are lots of arguments and analysis holding that with a better strategy boosted by an all-embracing gusto and less restrictions, United States could’ve prevailed in thrashing the North and saving the South. But in hindsight, considering all the cases where the United States forces have tried to build democratic states in unstable regions (Afghanistan and Iraq) I think it is sensible to say that intervention cannot bring about endurable states that might justify the bloodletting of war. Now to be clear every new political system is essentially instable. And arguing that by relying on American support, these new states forfeited any real claim to legitimacy and thus were doomed from the beginning, ignores a host of other issues that can shatter a new system in their own right.
But heavily-supported governments usually lack that internal energy which is so apparent in those states that can withstand the pressures mostly on their own feet. This lack of internal drive coupled with the tarnished image of being a puppet (add corruption to that pile), make it even more difficult — if not more impossible — for a new government to survive its first decade in power. Max Hastings does call the Saigon government a puppet state in the conclusion and even if it’s not that descriptive, in the minds of people involved it played a big part. The southerners couldn’t trust their government because it wasn’t something of their own making and they were not ready to risk everything for it — a risk that was essential for victory.
Even in the case of Korea and with the prosperity that South Koreans have enjoyed so far compared to their northern neighbors, it is hard to say that intervention was completely justified back in 1950. Lots of things could’ve gone wrong and the end result could’ve been vastly different. Local and global situation was really different in the Korean War but the risks were nonetheless all too real. And even after the passage of 70 years, the shadow of possible conflict and escalation between South and North still looms in the peninsula.
August 29, 2020
Page 282 1966 interview , my book
Pham Van Dong [North Vietnamese leader] inquired urbanely of Harrison Salisbury “And how long do you Americans want to fight Mr. Salisbury? One year? Two years? Three years? Five years? Ten Years? Twenty Years? We shall be glad to accommodate you.”
This book lives up to its title – it is indeed epic and a very sad tragedy. It is very well written as every paragraph delineates relevant details of this long war.
The author is very adept at moving from the high political level in Hanoi, Saigon and Washington to the civilians and soldiers in the rice paddies and small hamlets of Vietnam. We get views of the Vietnamese and French at the very beginning in the 1940’s and 1950’s – to the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese on the Ho Chi Minh trail.
Page 66
It was taken for granted in 1954, as it would be a decade later, that should the U.S. decide to deploy its might against rubber-sandaled peasants, Giaps’ army would suffer defeat, even obliteration.
Several issues stand out in this outstanding volume.
North Vietnam from the outset of partition in 1954 was a rigid dictatorship. No value was attached to human life particularly for the troops they put in the field (this is a standard for all communist regimes – Stalin during World War II, Mao in Korea). Ho Chi Minh put on a benevolent appearance to the West but inside North Vietnam authoritarianism ruled. The brutality of the Viet Cong (South Vietnamese fighting for communism in South Vietnam) and the NVA (North Vietnamese Army) was a match for that of the French, the South Vietnamese army, and the United States starting in the 1960’s. One could say that the inhumanity of the Viet Cong was more personal with beheadings and families massacred, whereas that by the U.S. was more technological – and seen by the media.
Page 364
Citizens of modern liberal democracies… are often impressed by the True Believer in other cultures. Hanoi’s success in the global propaganda contest was partially rooted in a policy of omerta – silence. The oppression of its own people, and the failure of its economic policies were curtained by censorship. No images of its war crimes existed.
Page 100
Whereas the Northern communists created a highly efficient police state, its workings veiled from the world, Diem [South Vietnamese leader until his assassination in 1963] and his family built a ramshackle one, its cruelties conspicuous. This achieved some success in inspiring fear, almost none in securing respect.
The South Vietnamese troops, for the most part, were seen as vastly inferior to their adversaries (Viet Cong and the NVA). Even though the Viet Cong and the NVA were ill-clad and ill-fed and many had to endure the Ho Chi Minh trail – they were tenacious fighters and grudgingly admired by the American military.
The U.S. had no idea or concept of Vietnam. They felt that Vietnam was a puppet of either or both the Soviet Union and China. The real puppets were the Vietnamese leaders in Saigon who had no say at all in what, first the French, and then the Americans were doing in their country. The U.S. became a colonial power in South Vietnam giving much credence to the communist cause.
Page 155
Kennedy’s Vietnam policy suffered from the same fundamental flaw as that of every other president between 1945 and 1975: it was rooted in the demands of U.S. domestic politics rather than in a realistic assessment of the Vietnamese people.
In 1964-65 the U.S. could have withdrawn from Vietnam. Lyndon Johnson was very popular and could easily have withstood the criticism. He was warned by several advisors to avoid the Vietnamese debacle. The Saigon government was inept and corrupt and not worth saving. After 1965 the war became a U.S. war.
Page 224 George Ball, 1965 (served in the state department)
“Politically South Vietnam is a lost cause. The country is bled white from twenty years of war and the people are sick of it. The Viet Cong – as is shown by the RAND Corporation study… are deeply committed. Hanoi has a government and a purpose and a discipline… The government in Saigon is a travesty."
And after 1965 Washington came to see all solutions through the lens of the military, with very little heed to the political and social issues of the country they came to occupy. It became a numbers game of fatalities and firepower.
Page 118
Successive Washington administrations have been seduced by the readiness with which they can order a [military] deployment, and see this promptly executed… The very presence of affluent Westerners, armed or unarmed, uniformed or otherwise, could not fail to exercise a polluting influence on a predominately rural and impoverished Asian society… Again and again, peasants were heard to say, whatever else was wrong with the communists, they were not getting rich. Western wealth and technology did not generate envy among poor Vietnamese; it merely emphasized a remoteness, an alienation from their enormous foreign visitors.
Page 126
The main thing those Americans who really knew about Vietnam knew was how little they knew.
The press was criticized (as it still is today) for being unpatriotic. But the press was far more truthful than the optimistic military briefings emanating from Saigon and Washington.
Page 416
Tet [the North Vietnamese offensive in January and February of 1968] imposed dreadful devastation, destroying forty-eight thousand Vietnamese homes and creating almost half a million refugees. The quotation attributed to an unnamed U.S. officer in those days – “It had become necessary to destroy the town to save it” is now believed to have been invented; yet the phrase seemed accurately to reflect the ghastly contradictions about America’s war “to preserve South Vietnam’s freedom.”
Tet, although militarily a failure for North Vietnam (it never came close to its goal of over-throwing the South Vietnamese government), successfully brought down the presidency of Lyndon Johnson. Tet showed on the TV screens of the world that North Vietnam was very capable of launching an offensive – the light at the end of the tunnel was the unrelenting force and pressure of the North Vietnamese.
Also starting in 1968 there was more and more rebelliousness in U.S. forces in South Vietnam. There was increased drug use, racial problems, and there are some startling descriptions of fragging – threats to or the actual killing of over-zealous officers.
Page 339 Phil Caputo
“Everything rotted and corroded quickly over there; bodies, boot leather, canvas, metal, morals.”
When Nixon took over in 1968 he coined the term “Vietnamization”.
Page 478 Ken Hughes
“Vietnamization was not a strategy Nixon seriously pursued; it was a fraud he perpetrated.” On the 19th of November (1969) Melvin Laird told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the Saigon government had been consulted before the policy was introduced. He lied, as Kissinger lied on the same issue: “Thieu [the South Vietnamese leader] was merely informed after it was decided.”
The U.S. washed its hands of Vietnam – and tried to pretend it had never happened. But such was not the case in Vietnam itself.
This is the tragic history of Vietnam which suffered arduously through thirty long years of war.
Pham Van Dong [North Vietnamese leader] inquired urbanely of Harrison Salisbury “And how long do you Americans want to fight Mr. Salisbury? One year? Two years? Three years? Five years? Ten Years? Twenty Years? We shall be glad to accommodate you.”
This book lives up to its title – it is indeed epic and a very sad tragedy. It is very well written as every paragraph delineates relevant details of this long war.
The author is very adept at moving from the high political level in Hanoi, Saigon and Washington to the civilians and soldiers in the rice paddies and small hamlets of Vietnam. We get views of the Vietnamese and French at the very beginning in the 1940’s and 1950’s – to the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese on the Ho Chi Minh trail.
Page 66
It was taken for granted in 1954, as it would be a decade later, that should the U.S. decide to deploy its might against rubber-sandaled peasants, Giaps’ army would suffer defeat, even obliteration.
Several issues stand out in this outstanding volume.
North Vietnam from the outset of partition in 1954 was a rigid dictatorship. No value was attached to human life particularly for the troops they put in the field (this is a standard for all communist regimes – Stalin during World War II, Mao in Korea). Ho Chi Minh put on a benevolent appearance to the West but inside North Vietnam authoritarianism ruled. The brutality of the Viet Cong (South Vietnamese fighting for communism in South Vietnam) and the NVA (North Vietnamese Army) was a match for that of the French, the South Vietnamese army, and the United States starting in the 1960’s. One could say that the inhumanity of the Viet Cong was more personal with beheadings and families massacred, whereas that by the U.S. was more technological – and seen by the media.
Page 364
Citizens of modern liberal democracies… are often impressed by the True Believer in other cultures. Hanoi’s success in the global propaganda contest was partially rooted in a policy of omerta – silence. The oppression of its own people, and the failure of its economic policies were curtained by censorship. No images of its war crimes existed.
Page 100
Whereas the Northern communists created a highly efficient police state, its workings veiled from the world, Diem [South Vietnamese leader until his assassination in 1963] and his family built a ramshackle one, its cruelties conspicuous. This achieved some success in inspiring fear, almost none in securing respect.
The South Vietnamese troops, for the most part, were seen as vastly inferior to their adversaries (Viet Cong and the NVA). Even though the Viet Cong and the NVA were ill-clad and ill-fed and many had to endure the Ho Chi Minh trail – they were tenacious fighters and grudgingly admired by the American military.
The U.S. had no idea or concept of Vietnam. They felt that Vietnam was a puppet of either or both the Soviet Union and China. The real puppets were the Vietnamese leaders in Saigon who had no say at all in what, first the French, and then the Americans were doing in their country. The U.S. became a colonial power in South Vietnam giving much credence to the communist cause.
Page 155
Kennedy’s Vietnam policy suffered from the same fundamental flaw as that of every other president between 1945 and 1975: it was rooted in the demands of U.S. domestic politics rather than in a realistic assessment of the Vietnamese people.
In 1964-65 the U.S. could have withdrawn from Vietnam. Lyndon Johnson was very popular and could easily have withstood the criticism. He was warned by several advisors to avoid the Vietnamese debacle. The Saigon government was inept and corrupt and not worth saving. After 1965 the war became a U.S. war.
Page 224 George Ball, 1965 (served in the state department)
“Politically South Vietnam is a lost cause. The country is bled white from twenty years of war and the people are sick of it. The Viet Cong – as is shown by the RAND Corporation study… are deeply committed. Hanoi has a government and a purpose and a discipline… The government in Saigon is a travesty."
And after 1965 Washington came to see all solutions through the lens of the military, with very little heed to the political and social issues of the country they came to occupy. It became a numbers game of fatalities and firepower.
Page 118
Successive Washington administrations have been seduced by the readiness with which they can order a [military] deployment, and see this promptly executed… The very presence of affluent Westerners, armed or unarmed, uniformed or otherwise, could not fail to exercise a polluting influence on a predominately rural and impoverished Asian society… Again and again, peasants were heard to say, whatever else was wrong with the communists, they were not getting rich. Western wealth and technology did not generate envy among poor Vietnamese; it merely emphasized a remoteness, an alienation from their enormous foreign visitors.
Page 126
The main thing those Americans who really knew about Vietnam knew was how little they knew.
The press was criticized (as it still is today) for being unpatriotic. But the press was far more truthful than the optimistic military briefings emanating from Saigon and Washington.
Page 416
Tet [the North Vietnamese offensive in January and February of 1968] imposed dreadful devastation, destroying forty-eight thousand Vietnamese homes and creating almost half a million refugees. The quotation attributed to an unnamed U.S. officer in those days – “It had become necessary to destroy the town to save it” is now believed to have been invented; yet the phrase seemed accurately to reflect the ghastly contradictions about America’s war “to preserve South Vietnam’s freedom.”
Tet, although militarily a failure for North Vietnam (it never came close to its goal of over-throwing the South Vietnamese government), successfully brought down the presidency of Lyndon Johnson. Tet showed on the TV screens of the world that North Vietnam was very capable of launching an offensive – the light at the end of the tunnel was the unrelenting force and pressure of the North Vietnamese.
Also starting in 1968 there was more and more rebelliousness in U.S. forces in South Vietnam. There was increased drug use, racial problems, and there are some startling descriptions of fragging – threats to or the actual killing of over-zealous officers.
Page 339 Phil Caputo
“Everything rotted and corroded quickly over there; bodies, boot leather, canvas, metal, morals.”
When Nixon took over in 1968 he coined the term “Vietnamization”.
Page 478 Ken Hughes
“Vietnamization was not a strategy Nixon seriously pursued; it was a fraud he perpetrated.” On the 19th of November (1969) Melvin Laird told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the Saigon government had been consulted before the policy was introduced. He lied, as Kissinger lied on the same issue: “Thieu [the South Vietnamese leader] was merely informed after it was decided.”
The U.S. washed its hands of Vietnam – and tried to pretend it had never happened. But such was not the case in Vietnam itself.
This is the tragic history of Vietnam which suffered arduously through thirty long years of war.
February 23, 2022
This is just the 3rd Vietnam war book I’ve read, after Vietnam: A History by Stanley Karnow, and The Best and the Brightest by David Halberstam. It offered some new things and was well worth the read.
This book spends much time “on the ground”, describing what it was like during the battles, or the day-to-day life of specific people there – both the military and civilians, and both the Americans and Vietnamese. For the Vietnamese, he relates stories and the perspectives of both supporters and opponents of the Communists. Hastings also does a nice job not just talking about specific stories, but zooms out to connect this to what was happening with decisions made by leadership.
One thing this book brought home, that I don’t remember as much from other books, was how brutally oppressive the Communists were. The repressions of the South Vietnamese government, and the brutality of some Americans, were widely discussed in the press, but the North Vietnamese actions were more hidden.
I liked that the author did not just selectively pick stories to shoehorn them into a central narrative. The different stories revealed the complexity. There were some general trends the stories revealed, for instance the disrespect and lack of understanding the Americans had for the Vietnamese, and how it hampered the war effort. But not everyone was like this. And for the ones that were like this, hearing their backstories about the stress and confusion of being unwillingly thrown into the situation, and their frustration at the inexperience of the South Vietnamese army, sheds some light on how it happened.
Another general trend the stories revealed was how bad the morale of American soldiers had gotten by the end of the war. I did not realize how fragging incidents were horrifyingly common, to the extent that officers regularly feared them and it impacted their decision making. Soldiers would openly defy their commanding officers, and not face any sanctions. It’s just mind-boggling to me that we continued slogging through the war when morale was this bad and we weren’t making any progress.
The cynicism by Nixon and his team to stay in and draw the war out, even though they themselves believed it was futile, is infuriating. You can look at the numbers and see that Nixon did reduce troop levels and there were fewer deaths each year after 1968. But they also continued aggressive bombing campaigns that unnecessarily extended the war while not even improving their bargaining position during peace talks.
The Nixon team’s primary goal was to just have some sort of “decent interval” from withdrawal to when Saigon would inevitably fall, that allowed them to save face. About 21,000 Americans died after 1968, during 5 years of war, in pursuit of a slightly better bargaining position that was never achieved.
This book spends much time “on the ground”, describing what it was like during the battles, or the day-to-day life of specific people there – both the military and civilians, and both the Americans and Vietnamese. For the Vietnamese, he relates stories and the perspectives of both supporters and opponents of the Communists. Hastings also does a nice job not just talking about specific stories, but zooms out to connect this to what was happening with decisions made by leadership.
One thing this book brought home, that I don’t remember as much from other books, was how brutally oppressive the Communists were. The repressions of the South Vietnamese government, and the brutality of some Americans, were widely discussed in the press, but the North Vietnamese actions were more hidden.
I liked that the author did not just selectively pick stories to shoehorn them into a central narrative. The different stories revealed the complexity. There were some general trends the stories revealed, for instance the disrespect and lack of understanding the Americans had for the Vietnamese, and how it hampered the war effort. But not everyone was like this. And for the ones that were like this, hearing their backstories about the stress and confusion of being unwillingly thrown into the situation, and their frustration at the inexperience of the South Vietnamese army, sheds some light on how it happened.
Another general trend the stories revealed was how bad the morale of American soldiers had gotten by the end of the war. I did not realize how fragging incidents were horrifyingly common, to the extent that officers regularly feared them and it impacted their decision making. Soldiers would openly defy their commanding officers, and not face any sanctions. It’s just mind-boggling to me that we continued slogging through the war when morale was this bad and we weren’t making any progress.
The cynicism by Nixon and his team to stay in and draw the war out, even though they themselves believed it was futile, is infuriating. You can look at the numbers and see that Nixon did reduce troop levels and there were fewer deaths each year after 1968. But they also continued aggressive bombing campaigns that unnecessarily extended the war while not even improving their bargaining position during peace talks.
The Nixon team’s primary goal was to just have some sort of “decent interval” from withdrawal to when Saigon would inevitably fall, that allowed them to save face. About 21,000 Americans died after 1968, during 5 years of war, in pursuit of a slightly better bargaining position that was never achieved.
May 31, 2019
The only reason to read popular books about history for which there are plenty of academic studies around is to learn something about how to tell an interesting story. Hastings is a well-known war writer and as expected, can spin a narrative that is mostly interesting and flows well. He gives fair warning about the focus being on military history, so at least I could expect the boring bits about battles.
The author flaunts his conservative credentials from the beginning by calling WWII allied cooperation with the USSR 'capitulation to Stalin', the 1945 UK government a 'socialist' one, and so on. The spirit of 'bad people on all sides' is strong with this one, although whataboutism mostly rears its head in conjunction with discussion of American atrocities. Perhaps Hastings' true colours show best when he manages to put the blame on the racial strife among US troops on the shoulders of the black power movement. Casual racism among white soldiers is mentioned, but as an afterthought. Wow...
The only women in the book are prostitutes without names, grieving US mothers, and one Vietnamese actress. There is very little on the impact of the war on everyday lives, beyond the already familiar narrative of destruction.
It's a war book, and perhaps I was expecting too much. Not bad, but not great either.
The author flaunts his conservative credentials from the beginning by calling WWII allied cooperation with the USSR 'capitulation to Stalin', the 1945 UK government a 'socialist' one, and so on. The spirit of 'bad people on all sides' is strong with this one, although whataboutism mostly rears its head in conjunction with discussion of American atrocities. Perhaps Hastings' true colours show best when he manages to put the blame on the racial strife among US troops on the shoulders of the black power movement. Casual racism among white soldiers is mentioned, but as an afterthought. Wow...
The only women in the book are prostitutes without names, grieving US mothers, and one Vietnamese actress. There is very little on the impact of the war on everyday lives, beyond the already familiar narrative of destruction.
It's a war book, and perhaps I was expecting too much. Not bad, but not great either.
October 8, 2018
As an overview of the disaster that overtook Vietnam over the thirty year period after the end of the Second World War, Max Hastings has admirably succeeded in laying bare the reasons for failure, first of the French colonial forces and then of the U.S. backed South Vietnamese government.
Writing with an impartial eye, and helped by the testimonies of hundreds of the participants, the wars and political manoeuvring are described in sufficient detail to give an overview of events and the experience of the French, American, ANZAC and Vietnamese (both North and South) participants while the elements in the escalation of the war and their effects are also covered. An extensive bibliography will allow for any holes in the specifics of the story to be filled.
A well balanced account of one of the great tragedies of the later twentieth century. Well worth reading as a general overview, and recommended to anyone with an interest in the conflict or area, or looking for an impartial voice.
Writing with an impartial eye, and helped by the testimonies of hundreds of the participants, the wars and political manoeuvring are described in sufficient detail to give an overview of events and the experience of the French, American, ANZAC and Vietnamese (both North and South) participants while the elements in the escalation of the war and their effects are also covered. An extensive bibliography will allow for any holes in the specifics of the story to be filled.
A well balanced account of one of the great tragedies of the later twentieth century. Well worth reading as a general overview, and recommended to anyone with an interest in the conflict or area, or looking for an impartial voice.
January 13, 2023
Max Hastings' Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy is one of the best one-volume syntheses of Vietnam War scholarship for a general audience. Hastings, who covered the war as a correspondent, is clear-eyed to the point of being utterly cynical about the war and the mythology that's been built up about it, on all sides. He has marginal sympathy for the Communist Vietcong and their North Vietnamese backers, noting that the brutality of Ho Chi Minh's state in Hanoi in its collectivization efforts and treatment of political prisoners was as severe in type (if not quite degree) as any other revolutionary regime. On the other hand, neither does he have much time for the succession of corrupt and brutal dictators that misgoverned South Vietnam, from the messianic Ngo Dinh Diem to the flamboyantly corrupt Nguyen Cao Ky and Nguyen Van Thieu, always more popular with his American backers than his won people. But Hasting's harshest judgments are left towards the United States, who for decades pursued a destructive policy that denied political and military reality in Indochina; who propped up dictators in Saigon only turn against them when they showed any degree of independence; who pretended to care about democracy and self-determination while denying the Vietnamese. Hastings is unsparing towards any of these players (let alone the colonialist French), and he seems to enjoy skewering mythology and tackling sacred cows, like authors Bernard Fall, Frances FitzGerald and Harrison Salisbury. Far from invincible, Hanoi's Politburo was often wavering and on the verge of collapse; American generals who insisted they could win the war if only Washington would unleash them (or reactionaries who blamed media coverage and protesters) were delusional, since their “bombing Vietnam to the Stone Age” tactics were antithetical to the war they were fighting; the Vietnamese people were less "instinctively anti-colonial" than pragmatic and proud, like people anywhere; overall, the common history of the war appears to be a tissue of unsustainable and self-aggrandizing myths. Hastings only shows sympathy for the Vietnamese people, oppressed by "twin tyrannies" in Hanoi and Saigon, terrorized by Vietcong or bombed ruthlessly by American and South Vietnamese troops, their right to self-determination ruthlessly denied on all sides; and occasionally, the American servicemen who were forced into a war they little understood and came to resent, though many committed indefensible war crimes. His conclusion that "neither side deserved to win" is harsh, but not unfair on the basis of evidence presented; his kaleidoscopic view of political cynicism, military folly and on-the-ground experiences of soldiers and civilians ensures that the book lives up to its grandiose subtitle.
November 8, 2018
This is a beautifully written, riveting story, a book that enlightened me in so many ways. Max Hastings never forgets that history is about human happenings--not movements, not ideologies, not guns or germs or steel. I was fourteen when the Vietnam War ended. My childhood memories are punctuated by memories of this war, and of protests against this war. What a joy, a relief even, to fill in the blanks about events that shaped my world before I could really understand them. The aspect I appreciate most about this book is the way it humanizes actors in the war who were just names to me before--in particular Ho Chi Minh. But even the smallest actors in this story are treated humanely by Hastings--for instance a story about two old women, selling peppers:
American Howard Simpson watched exuberant parachutists tearing down a Saigon street in a jeep which crushed and scattered a row of bamboo panniers, filled with red peppers laid out to drain the sun. After the vehicle passed, two old women set to work painstakingly to collect the debris and salvage what they could of their ravaged wares. Here was a minuscule event amid a vast tragedy, yet Simpson asked himself, how could it fail to influence the hears and minds of its victims, those two elderly street sellers?
An elegiac recreation of a time and a war that continues to echo on into the present.
American Howard Simpson watched exuberant parachutists tearing down a Saigon street in a jeep which crushed and scattered a row of bamboo panniers, filled with red peppers laid out to drain the sun. After the vehicle passed, two old women set to work painstakingly to collect the debris and salvage what they could of their ravaged wares. Here was a minuscule event amid a vast tragedy, yet Simpson asked himself, how could it fail to influence the hears and minds of its victims, those two elderly street sellers?
An elegiac recreation of a time and a war that continues to echo on into the present.
March 8, 2020
While not a triumph of style, for a book that attempts to précis the entire Vietnam conflict across 650 fact-packed pages, you would find Hastings’s monster tough to trounce. The writer’s pellucid approach is perfect when seeking to suck on a mere information pipe, though what is missing are the sphincter-tightening descriptions of the average Vietnamese villager’s experience living a life of collateral damage for decades, or the perspective of the black grunt facing constant racism from an institutionally racist marine corp, headed by a sequence of institutionally racist presidents. These things are perhaps better left to novelists or memoirs, from whom Hastings cribs when required, so that criticism could be slapped away without snark. Hastings’s forensic detail and skill for concise, fuss-free summation makes this a tremendous, essential history, with requisite scorn heaped on the administrations trading in human lives for reasons of pec-flexing nationalism.
July 8, 2020
British historian Max Hastings has written a book on the Vietnam War. A lengthy book (in my case: 33 hours of listening time), but nowhere does the book become boring. This was my first book on the Vietnam War, so a lot was new to me. He starts with Dien Bien Phu and ends with the fall of Saigon and its aftermath. By quoting from diaries and interviews, we get a good overview of both sides of the story. In this, we see the war as overwhelmingly through the eyes of the Vietnamese people, where both the US and North Vietnamese get their equal share of blunders and atrocities.
April 5, 2021
Since the 2020 pandemic, I have had a lot of time to spend reading books, and this I have utilized to the full extent. Before I read this book, I had a basic knowledge about the war in Vietnam, but now that I have read this book, my understanding has widened, and I am apt to pick up other books on this war. One thing that really made me give this book a five-star rating was the fact that it has been one of the few books where at certain moments within it, I shed a tear, and for me, when a book can evoke emotions from the reader, it is a masterpiece.
Max Hastings is a wonderful author, and I feel that I was foolish to only start reading his work this year. This was the first book I have ever read that Hastings has written, and I look forward to checking out his other works. He really did a wonderful job in this work; he didn’t have a bias for one side, instead, he called out the bluffs of both sides, and showed just how brutal the Vietnam war was.
Being an American, I have learned about the Vietnam war through school, my own inclination to research, and through the stories I have heard from veterans I have met. One of my family members was drafted into Vietnam, and his experiences are something he refuses to talk about. My family used to forewarn me, to never ask him about it because he is known to get furious, because of what he had seen, and after reading this, I believe I can understand why. This book was pretty consistent with showing us the horrendous killings that both sides committed, and how a generation of young American men died for a cause that seemed noble and righteous, but now seems pure folly. There were examples of kind hearted soldiers, and then examples of soldiers who, went on killing sprees against innocent civilians.
Too add to my paragraph above, I think in many ways the Vietnam war was a disaster to my country, and we still feel its effects today. As a Christian, I see how people today have thrown their morals out the window (due to their mistrust of authority figures and pre-1965 cultural norms) , but I have often asked myself “when did this all start?” and I have to look no further than the Vietnam war.
As someone who has a mistrust of government, and politicians this book solidifies those beliefs. This book showed me how my nations government was no better than the communists in its pursuit of means to achieve its desired ends. Coups, corruption, CIA operations, a false flag to get involved in a war we couldn’t win, a president lying to the public about his bombings in Vietnam to win re-election; Generals, cabinet members, and the military industrial complex pushing for war all for the sake of profit and expansionism. But then again, men like McNamara, President Johnson, Westmoreland, and their peers didn't realize these facts, so I guess I must not criticize them too harshly. These same things are happening in this country today, and have been happening since.
To all those who lost their lives in this conflict, I hope they are at peace now.
Max Hastings is a wonderful author, and I feel that I was foolish to only start reading his work this year. This was the first book I have ever read that Hastings has written, and I look forward to checking out his other works. He really did a wonderful job in this work; he didn’t have a bias for one side, instead, he called out the bluffs of both sides, and showed just how brutal the Vietnam war was.
Being an American, I have learned about the Vietnam war through school, my own inclination to research, and through the stories I have heard from veterans I have met. One of my family members was drafted into Vietnam, and his experiences are something he refuses to talk about. My family used to forewarn me, to never ask him about it because he is known to get furious, because of what he had seen, and after reading this, I believe I can understand why. This book was pretty consistent with showing us the horrendous killings that both sides committed, and how a generation of young American men died for a cause that seemed noble and righteous, but now seems pure folly. There were examples of kind hearted soldiers, and then examples of soldiers who, went on killing sprees against innocent civilians.
Too add to my paragraph above, I think in many ways the Vietnam war was a disaster to my country, and we still feel its effects today. As a Christian, I see how people today have thrown their morals out the window (due to their mistrust of authority figures and pre-1965 cultural norms) , but I have often asked myself “when did this all start?” and I have to look no further than the Vietnam war.
As someone who has a mistrust of government, and politicians this book solidifies those beliefs. This book showed me how my nations government was no better than the communists in its pursuit of means to achieve its desired ends. Coups, corruption, CIA operations, a false flag to get involved in a war we couldn’t win, a president lying to the public about his bombings in Vietnam to win re-election; Generals, cabinet members, and the military industrial complex pushing for war all for the sake of profit and expansionism. But then again, men like McNamara, President Johnson, Westmoreland, and their peers didn't realize these facts, so I guess I must not criticize them too harshly. These same things are happening in this country today, and have been happening since.
To all those who lost their lives in this conflict, I hope they are at peace now.
June 22, 2024
A superb history of the Vietnam imbroglio - if there is one book anyone interested in this horrible war should read it is this because Max Hastings has managed to brilliantly encompass this complex colonial war, civil war and cold war war in one volume and to weave its multifarious strands into a comprehensible narrative.
Is this the final word on Vietnam? of course not. Is it the best history? impossible to say unless you define what y90u mean by best. What this history does is give equal weight and importance to what happened before the US committed large scale troops to the conflict and it also tells the story of this conflict as one of Vietnam, not as the story of America's involvement in Vietnam. This is vitally important and though it may seem obvious to a European reader like myself far to many American readers seem to have difficulty viewing events outside of an American prism. Not that this skewered view is confined to Vietnam I recently read a Goodreads reviewer commenting on a history of WWII how interesting it was to read about the war from a European point of view.
America was deeply affected by Vietnam and its assumption of France's role as blinkered supporter of South Vietnam had a tremendous impact in terms of destruction and suffering but the USA had zero influence on the outcome of the war because the USA never had a understanding of the conflict or a policy that was based on the Vietnam reality. American policy in Vietnam was not about illusory or even achievable goals in Vietnam whether military or political but about how American actions in Vietnam played out in terms of internal US politics. The North Vietnamese knew this and were willing to wait until the American people became disillusioned with a conflict they didn't understand and didn't care about. They knew the cost to their people would be horrific and they chose to make them bear that burden.
It is hard for someone like me, who as a child watched nightly news bulletins of ever increasing US casualties and presumed that this was a war I might have to go and fight (thankfully I didn't) just as my father and grandfather had gone and fought in world wars one and two, to ever stand completely outside this conflict but it is essential for everyone to understand that this was always the war of the Vietnamese people and they paid the price in blood and horrors. If this war traumatized and tore apart the American people just imagine what it did to the Vietnamese. By putting them center stage Max Hastings has written not only a brilliant history of the war but set a new bench mark in how this war must be written about in future.
Is this the final word on Vietnam? of course not. Is it the best history? impossible to say unless you define what y90u mean by best. What this history does is give equal weight and importance to what happened before the US committed large scale troops to the conflict and it also tells the story of this conflict as one of Vietnam, not as the story of America's involvement in Vietnam. This is vitally important and though it may seem obvious to a European reader like myself far to many American readers seem to have difficulty viewing events outside of an American prism. Not that this skewered view is confined to Vietnam I recently read a Goodreads reviewer commenting on a history of WWII how interesting it was to read about the war from a European point of view.
America was deeply affected by Vietnam and its assumption of France's role as blinkered supporter of South Vietnam had a tremendous impact in terms of destruction and suffering but the USA had zero influence on the outcome of the war because the USA never had a understanding of the conflict or a policy that was based on the Vietnam reality. American policy in Vietnam was not about illusory or even achievable goals in Vietnam whether military or political but about how American actions in Vietnam played out in terms of internal US politics. The North Vietnamese knew this and were willing to wait until the American people became disillusioned with a conflict they didn't understand and didn't care about. They knew the cost to their people would be horrific and they chose to make them bear that burden.
It is hard for someone like me, who as a child watched nightly news bulletins of ever increasing US casualties and presumed that this was a war I might have to go and fight (thankfully I didn't) just as my father and grandfather had gone and fought in world wars one and two, to ever stand completely outside this conflict but it is essential for everyone to understand that this was always the war of the Vietnamese people and they paid the price in blood and horrors. If this war traumatized and tore apart the American people just imagine what it did to the Vietnamese. By putting them center stage Max Hastings has written not only a brilliant history of the war but set a new bench mark in how this war must be written about in future.
September 5, 2023
an outstanding view of one of America's darkest hours ... where refusal to understand and face facts kept the deaths coming, month after month after month ... there is no excuse for the decisions of LBJ and McNamara ... I'll get to the decisions of Nixon and Kissinger, who did understand the facts and are therefore even more culpable, as I write the remaining chapters of my new historical novel.
a few excepts ...
... The egregious error committed by US statesmen and commanders was not that of lying to the world but rather that of lying to themselves.
... McNamara told young UPI reporter Neil Sheehan that “every quantitative measurement we have shows that we’re winning.” He did not perceive that the “quantitative measurements” were being pulled out of the air
... McNamara developed an ill-founded belief that he understood the military. James Reston later wrote shrewdly in the New York Times, “He has the sincerity of an Old Testament prophet, but something is missing; some element of personal doubt, some respect for human weakness, some knowledge of history.”
... Kissinger had never supposed Vietnam winnable. He shared with Nixon the conviction that, whatever the merits of the allied cause, the war was draining wholly excessive political attention, material resources, and moral authority from the pursuit of US vital interests elsewhere. This brilliant, charismatic figure overcame his employer’s dislike of both Jews and intellectuals by displaying first his loyalty, then an unscrupulousness to match the president’s own. Though essentially an ice-cold human being, he was skilled at simulating warmth and geniality. ... He believed the North Vietnamese could be induced to compromise only “by being confronted by insuperable obstacles on the ground.” A first step was to launch massive but secret B-52 bombings of communist sanctuaries.
a few excepts ...
... The egregious error committed by US statesmen and commanders was not that of lying to the world but rather that of lying to themselves.
... McNamara told young UPI reporter Neil Sheehan that “every quantitative measurement we have shows that we’re winning.” He did not perceive that the “quantitative measurements” were being pulled out of the air
... McNamara developed an ill-founded belief that he understood the military. James Reston later wrote shrewdly in the New York Times, “He has the sincerity of an Old Testament prophet, but something is missing; some element of personal doubt, some respect for human weakness, some knowledge of history.”
... Kissinger had never supposed Vietnam winnable. He shared with Nixon the conviction that, whatever the merits of the allied cause, the war was draining wholly excessive political attention, material resources, and moral authority from the pursuit of US vital interests elsewhere. This brilliant, charismatic figure overcame his employer’s dislike of both Jews and intellectuals by displaying first his loyalty, then an unscrupulousness to match the president’s own. Though essentially an ice-cold human being, he was skilled at simulating warmth and geniality. ... He believed the North Vietnamese could be induced to compromise only “by being confronted by insuperable obstacles on the ground.” A first step was to launch massive but secret B-52 bombings of communist sanctuaries.
February 13, 2022
It's been a long time since I've taught about the war in Vietnam, and this big beast was the passive refresher I needed to get my head back in the game. Hastings analysis of the war in Vietnam is wide-reaching, thorough, and nuanced at every turn. It's a narrative that follows the scope of significant events, forces, and themes, but that is brought to life through the stories of individual experience. You'll be hard-pressed to find an overview as comprehensive as this.
July 20, 2023
Max Hastings (born 1945) traveled to Vietnam as a journalist several times during the course of the war. In 1975 he was in Saigon, intending to cover the North Vietnamese takeover when, as he confesses, “I lost my nerve, forced a path through the mob of terrified Vietnamese around the US embassy, and scrambled over a wall with some assistance from the Marine defenders. A few hours later I was evacuated in a Jolly Green Giant [Sikorsky HH-3E helicopter] to the USS Midway.” (xxi) His book is not based on these personal experiences, but surely benefits from his sense of place and time.
Hastings begins with the briefest of histories, mentioning Vietnam’s “thousand years of rule by the Chinese,” colonization by the French, and occupation by the Japanese (2-8). The bulk of the book—650 pages—continues in chapters of about 20 pages each that cover events from the French defeat at Dienbienphu in November 1953 through the US entry to the war, escalation, the “rolling thunder” bombing campaign, Tet offensive, the crumbling of the US army, through the end of the war in 1975 and its bitter aftermath, the whole vivid with stories told in the voices of individual combatants, both US and Vietnamese.
Hastings appears to have absorbed the vast English-language literature on the war, as well as “hundreds of thousands of words of translated Vietnamese documents, histories, and memoirs,” provided by Merle Pribbenow, “who served with the CIA’s Saigon station from 1970 until the final evacuation” (651). He has also interviewed “scores of contemporary witnesses” from both sides, including even Soviet veterans who served in air defence units in North Vietnam. As a result, he is able to tell the story of the war, “what it was like” (xx), from all sides. It is an astonishing feat of compression and judgement.
Hastings excels at summing up in a few words the origins of the truly epic tragedy that unfolded:
“Lyndon Johnson became merely one among a long procession of national leaders over the past century to discover the limitations of aerial bombardment.” (293)
“Just as the Luftwaffe’s 1940 blitz on Britain enabled Winston Churchill to energise the British people to meet it, so US bombing proved a godsend to North Vietnam’s leaders, empowering them to rally their citizens against a visible menace from the skies, rather than for the mere political objective of reunification.” (309)
On the Tet offensive:
For Australians my age, the Vietnam War was the background to our otherwise privileged childhoods. Our babysitter ca. 1968 was a university student who regularly demonstrated against Australian involvement in the war and that convinced me I needed to go to university too. The year I graduated I spent the summer guiding Japanese tourists around Canberra; one of the drivers was a veteran who had been exposed to Agent Orange and all of his children were adversely affected.
The way Australia’s government treated South Vietnamese who had worked for them is shameful:
As always, Hastings is unsparing in his judgements of political and military leaders on both sides. The cost of their folly and hubris was paid by the ordinary men and women who were there and continues to be paid by their descendants. A depressing but necessary history.
Hastings begins with the briefest of histories, mentioning Vietnam’s “thousand years of rule by the Chinese,” colonization by the French, and occupation by the Japanese (2-8). The bulk of the book—650 pages—continues in chapters of about 20 pages each that cover events from the French defeat at Dienbienphu in November 1953 through the US entry to the war, escalation, the “rolling thunder” bombing campaign, Tet offensive, the crumbling of the US army, through the end of the war in 1975 and its bitter aftermath, the whole vivid with stories told in the voices of individual combatants, both US and Vietnamese.
Hastings appears to have absorbed the vast English-language literature on the war, as well as “hundreds of thousands of words of translated Vietnamese documents, histories, and memoirs,” provided by Merle Pribbenow, “who served with the CIA’s Saigon station from 1970 until the final evacuation” (651). He has also interviewed “scores of contemporary witnesses” from both sides, including even Soviet veterans who served in air defence units in North Vietnam. As a result, he is able to tell the story of the war, “what it was like” (xx), from all sides. It is an astonishing feat of compression and judgement.
Hastings excels at summing up in a few words the origins of the truly epic tragedy that unfolded:
Kennedy’s Vietnam policy suffered from the same fundamental flaw as that of every other president between 1945 and 1975: it was rooted in the demands of US domestic politics, rather than in a realistic assessment of the interests and wishes of the Vietnamese people. (155)
The fatal error of the US was to make an almost unlimited commitment to South Vietnam, where its real strategic interest was miniscule, when the North—the enemy—was content to stake all, and faced no requirement to secure or renew popular consent. Moreover, the 1964-65 American takeover of the South, which is what took place, legitimised Vietnamese communism. (229)Hastings also provides convincing assessments of the variety of military strategies tried and failed:
“Lyndon Johnson became merely one among a long procession of national leaders over the past century to discover the limitations of aerial bombardment.” (293)
“Just as the Luftwaffe’s 1940 blitz on Britain enabled Winston Churchill to energise the British people to meet it, so US bombing proved a godsend to North Vietnam’s leaders, empowering them to rally their citizens against a visible menace from the skies, rather than for the mere political objective of reunification.” (309)
On the Tet offensive:
In truth, history shows that citizen uprisings almost invariably fail—consider Warsaw 1944, Budapest 1956, Prague 1968—unless there is a collapse of will by the ruling regime and its forces. (415)Hastings does not neglect the experience of women, particularly Vietnamese women, from the tragic story of Nguyen Thuy Nga, mistress and then second wife of Le Duan, the second most powerful figure in North Vietnam after Ho Chi Minh (102-3), to the “six hundred thousand labourers, mostly women, [who] were eventually employed on making good bomb damage: after pilots attacked the Kep railyards on the vital China line, it reopened to traffic inside twenty hours” (311-12). Only his occasional references to “girls” (250, 360) strike the wrong note, though I imagine that he is simply using the argot of the men who were there.
[The Tet offensive] precipitated the collapse of Lyndon Johnson’s presidency, and of the American people’s will to win in Vietnam. Tet became a stunning manifestation of an important truth about modern wars: success or failure cannot be judged solely, or even principally, by military criteria. Perception is critical, and the events of February 1968 became a perceptional disaster for American arms. The communists were deemed to have secured a triumph, merely by displaying the power to engulf South Vietnam in destruction and death, even if most of the latter fell upon their own fighters and hapless bystanders. (375)
For Australians my age, the Vietnam War was the background to our otherwise privileged childhoods. Our babysitter ca. 1968 was a university student who regularly demonstrated against Australian involvement in the war and that convinced me I needed to go to university too. The year I graduated I spent the summer guiding Japanese tourists around Canberra; one of the drivers was a veteran who had been exposed to Agent Orange and all of his children were adversely affected.
The way Australia’s government treated South Vietnamese who had worked for them is shameful:
Though Australians had played a notable role in South Vietnam’s defence, now their country’s Labor government ordered that RAAF aircraft evacuating their residual personnel should not carry refugees. […] Of 3,667 people who sought Australian visas in those days [1975], only 342 applications were successful, and just seventy-six eventually travelled: the embassy’s Vietnamese staff were abandoned (614).(Later, according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam..., just over 100,000 Vietnamese refugees were resettled in Australia.)
As always, Hastings is unsparing in his judgements of political and military leaders on both sides. The cost of their folly and hubris was paid by the ordinary men and women who were there and continues to be paid by their descendants. A depressing but necessary history.
December 14, 2021
This is a massive and a massively disheartening book about America’s most notorious war. Indeed, the subject is so immense (and I was so ignorant beforehand) that I find myself at a loss for what to say. I will, therefore, confine myself to a few comments on Hastings’s writing.
This book is a military history that has everything except military history. By that I mean that anyone looking for a strategic overview of how the war was planned, fought, won, and lost, will be sorely disappointed. This is not a book written for generals. Hastings is, instead, most focused on the experiences of lowly individuals—most often, individual soldiers. The best chapters of this book are the ones in which Hastings takes the reader into the lives of an infantryman, a POW, or a pilot on a bombing mission, where is he able to capture both the terror and the dreariness of life at war.
If Hastings has any bone to pick, it is to argue that the victors were no better—morally speaking—than the vanquished. Though he is hardly an apologist for France or the United States, he is just as keen to condemn the North Vietnamese communists, whom he sees as escaping the judgment of history through their policy of secrecy and repression. Yet even considering the harsh realities of life under this regime, it is hard for the reader to wish that, say, the United States had somehow “won” the war, considering the extreme callousness and cruelty with which we waged it. The final picture is of a great mass of innocent people who are caught in a crossfire of two parties bent merely on domination, neither of which is concerned about their welfare. An “epic tragedy” indeed.
Although Hastings is not, in my opinion, a particularly incisive commentator, he is a vivid writer with a good eye for the dramatic. Combined with his thoroughness and extensive research, this makes for a worthy book about a very depressing war.
This book is a military history that has everything except military history. By that I mean that anyone looking for a strategic overview of how the war was planned, fought, won, and lost, will be sorely disappointed. This is not a book written for generals. Hastings is, instead, most focused on the experiences of lowly individuals—most often, individual soldiers. The best chapters of this book are the ones in which Hastings takes the reader into the lives of an infantryman, a POW, or a pilot on a bombing mission, where is he able to capture both the terror and the dreariness of life at war.
If Hastings has any bone to pick, it is to argue that the victors were no better—morally speaking—than the vanquished. Though he is hardly an apologist for France or the United States, he is just as keen to condemn the North Vietnamese communists, whom he sees as escaping the judgment of history through their policy of secrecy and repression. Yet even considering the harsh realities of life under this regime, it is hard for the reader to wish that, say, the United States had somehow “won” the war, considering the extreme callousness and cruelty with which we waged it. The final picture is of a great mass of innocent people who are caught in a crossfire of two parties bent merely on domination, neither of which is concerned about their welfare. An “epic tragedy” indeed.
Although Hastings is not, in my opinion, a particularly incisive commentator, he is a vivid writer with a good eye for the dramatic. Combined with his thoroughness and extensive research, this makes for a worthy book about a very depressing war.
November 17, 2021
List of Illustrations
List of Maps
Introduction
Note on Styles Adopted in the Text
Glossary
--Vietnam: An Epic History of a Tragic War
Acknowledgements
Notes and References
Bibliography
Index
List of Maps
Introduction
Note on Styles Adopted in the Text
Glossary
--Vietnam: An Epic History of a Tragic War
Acknowledgements
Notes and References
Bibliography
Index
March 22, 2020
Still catching up on my Goodreads feed -- and what I've read. Max Hastings is among my very favorite historians. (His chronicle of the the last year of the Second World War in Europe, Armageddon, remains for me the definitive account of Germany in 1944/1945.) Vietnam is just as thorough, though it spans two decades, following the war from the mid-1950s through its end in the mid-1970s. If you enjoy history -- and military history -- this is a another great read for the quarantine.
January 22, 2019
A careful, well-researched,and fast-paced overview of the war.
The narrative is balanced, straightforward, and very readable, and Hastings does a great job capturing the tragedy of the war and the North and South Vietnamese experiences; there weren’t a lot of “good guys” the way he tells it. He ably covers how American morale deteriorated over time and the kinds of successes and failures the Americans experienced, and Hastings does a particularly good job covering and humanizing the communist side, describing the history of their terror tactics, how effectively they could adapt to America’s supposed technological superiority, and ramming home how determined they were to achieve victory. He also describes how the lack of press access made it easy for people to ignore North Vietnamese atrocities. Ho Chi Minh is covered well, and Hastings argues that Le Duan was more important and had a more direct impact. His coverage of Nixon is particularly scathing, and his portrait of Johnson doesn’t have the sympathy a lot of historians bring to it; Hastings criticizes Johnson for not engaging the public in a debate over Vietnam policy and for not preparing them for what was ahead. His coverage of Kissinger is surprisingly mild.
Hastings succeeds in avoiding a lot of cliches about the war, stressing how the dynamics and nature of the war changed from year to year and how diverse the experiences of soldiers could be. He is pretty critical of all sides’ military leadership overall, contends that American strategy was a problem bigger than any one American commander, and argues that America never really adopted any useful lessons from the war (he also emphasizes the role played by US presidential politics in so many of the war’s consequential decisions)
The narrative is rich, well-written and insightful, and does a great job integrating many different perspectives while keeping the story moving along. However, the book sometimes seems to focus more on the soldiers than on the higher-ups. The book’s scope obviously means not everything can be covered in as much detail as some may prefer; the Phoenix Program, the communists' logistics system, Americans’ various advisory efforts in the ARVN, the inner workings of the NVA, the Pentagon Papers affair, and economic issues, for example. The narrative can also get a little choppy at times (the inclusion of personal accounts often feels a little disjointed), and can transition abruptly. Also, the coverage of the North Vietnamese leadership feels a bit simplistic, and some other aspects of the war he covers come off the same way (cowardly ARVN soldiers, incompetent South Vietnamese officials, etc.) Hastings doesn’t really engage the historiography of the war much. And at one point he writes that Australia started national military service because of the war (they did?) The writing has some untranslated French here and there. There is also little on the war’s impact and legacy. At one point Dale Buis and Chester Ovnand are called "Dale Ruis" and "Chester Overnand."
Still, a balanced, comprehensive and thoughtful work.
The narrative is balanced, straightforward, and very readable, and Hastings does a great job capturing the tragedy of the war and the North and South Vietnamese experiences; there weren’t a lot of “good guys” the way he tells it. He ably covers how American morale deteriorated over time and the kinds of successes and failures the Americans experienced, and Hastings does a particularly good job covering and humanizing the communist side, describing the history of their terror tactics, how effectively they could adapt to America’s supposed technological superiority, and ramming home how determined they were to achieve victory. He also describes how the lack of press access made it easy for people to ignore North Vietnamese atrocities. Ho Chi Minh is covered well, and Hastings argues that Le Duan was more important and had a more direct impact. His coverage of Nixon is particularly scathing, and his portrait of Johnson doesn’t have the sympathy a lot of historians bring to it; Hastings criticizes Johnson for not engaging the public in a debate over Vietnam policy and for not preparing them for what was ahead. His coverage of Kissinger is surprisingly mild.
Hastings succeeds in avoiding a lot of cliches about the war, stressing how the dynamics and nature of the war changed from year to year and how diverse the experiences of soldiers could be. He is pretty critical of all sides’ military leadership overall, contends that American strategy was a problem bigger than any one American commander, and argues that America never really adopted any useful lessons from the war (he also emphasizes the role played by US presidential politics in so many of the war’s consequential decisions)
The narrative is rich, well-written and insightful, and does a great job integrating many different perspectives while keeping the story moving along. However, the book sometimes seems to focus more on the soldiers than on the higher-ups. The book’s scope obviously means not everything can be covered in as much detail as some may prefer; the Phoenix Program, the communists' logistics system, Americans’ various advisory efforts in the ARVN, the inner workings of the NVA, the Pentagon Papers affair, and economic issues, for example. The narrative can also get a little choppy at times (the inclusion of personal accounts often feels a little disjointed), and can transition abruptly. Also, the coverage of the North Vietnamese leadership feels a bit simplistic, and some other aspects of the war he covers come off the same way (cowardly ARVN soldiers, incompetent South Vietnamese officials, etc.) Hastings doesn’t really engage the historiography of the war much. And at one point he writes that Australia started national military service because of the war (they did?) The writing has some untranslated French here and there. There is also little on the war’s impact and legacy. At one point Dale Buis and Chester Ovnand are called "Dale Ruis" and "Chester Overnand."
Still, a balanced, comprehensive and thoughtful work.
December 30, 2018
I enjoyed this history very much. I've read other histories by Max Hastings and so expected this one to be comprehensive, analytical, full of insight, and wise. It is.
This is narrative history, the story or events. His style is to combine the historical record of events with close snapshots of personal experiences, both those directly involved and those responsible for the planning and circumstances. But aside from the narrative, Hasting's brilliance is that he, better than most, has the ability to decode the meaning of events, the overarching history and takeaways from it in a couple of pages. These are the great kernels of insight and combinations of kernels making this one of the most balanced analyses of the war I've read. His perceptions approach the level of wisdom and is particularly acute in assessments of U. S. motivations and communist political vision. He seems to see everything clearly, from our our decisions to enter the war until our decisions to not intervene in North Vietnam's final offensive 10 years later. The ability of Hastings to make clear in a few paragraphs a complex subject others have devoted pages and even chapters to and yet still muddled, makes his achievement even more remarkable. He explains that victory was never a given for either side, and much of what he tells across 752 pages are variations of this uncertainty.
It's not a military history that details the maneuvering of battalions so much as a history of decisions. And their impact. Obviously many pages are spent on such pivotal moments as 1954's Dienbienphu or 1968's Tet Offensive, or even events more shadowed, like the North Vietnamese cleansing Hue of its intellectual class. These are familiar topics. But Hastings has written of well-known, well-traveled events and made them engaging and new. It's in his telling of each phase or step of his long history that he best displays his skill at moving from the broad overview of, say, strategic planning down to individual experience. He describes and analyzes it deeply at the same time. Understanding that history is the interpretation of events directed by personalities, he includes the personal perceptions of those involved, and of both sides.
As I say, a familiar story. I've read quite a lot of the war's history and yet still came across subjects which are neglected in other writings. Aware that media coverage and the antiwar dissent were largely responsible for negatively impacting the morale of our units in the field, I found fascinating Hastings's rather thorough discussion of the topic. He discusses the moral implications of almost every aspect of the war. I appreciated his views. In fact, this was most interesting to me because a week ago I'd finished Henry Kissinger's book Ending the Vietnam War in which he admits the immorality of abandoning South Vietnam to eventual defeat by the North while also deserting a cause in which we lost 58,000 lives. I thought it interesting that Hastings agrees with this assessment while also savaging Kissinger for his duplicitous role as a peace negotiator and National Security Advisor intent on getting America out of the war rather than bringing peace to South Vietnam. He tells us the story of a Marine who served in Vietnam and later became a general commanding troops in the 1st Gulf War who says the great lesson he carried home from Vietnam was "Tell the truth." Hastings does, I think.
I was impressed with the book's closing chapter, "Afterwards," the analysis of results. What we're left with today is that tragic loss of millions of lives, including 58,000 Americans, the damage to America's image and credibility, and the ultimate bankruptcy of communism. What we have today is an austere communist Vietnam now, 43 years later, even more under the huge cultural influence of the west. And that cultural center of gravity is in the South where the name Ho Chi Minh City is steadily losing ground to the old name, Saigon. It's in his "Afterward" that Hastings explains what I've felt for a long time, that Korea and Vietnam were the same geopolitical situation. The final point made is that of Truong Huy San, who was 13-years old when the war ended. He tells us that South Vietnam "has proved to be the historic victor because its values increasingly dominate the country." Obviously I like this book because Hastings shares many of my own views.
This is narrative history, the story or events. His style is to combine the historical record of events with close snapshots of personal experiences, both those directly involved and those responsible for the planning and circumstances. But aside from the narrative, Hasting's brilliance is that he, better than most, has the ability to decode the meaning of events, the overarching history and takeaways from it in a couple of pages. These are the great kernels of insight and combinations of kernels making this one of the most balanced analyses of the war I've read. His perceptions approach the level of wisdom and is particularly acute in assessments of U. S. motivations and communist political vision. He seems to see everything clearly, from our our decisions to enter the war until our decisions to not intervene in North Vietnam's final offensive 10 years later. The ability of Hastings to make clear in a few paragraphs a complex subject others have devoted pages and even chapters to and yet still muddled, makes his achievement even more remarkable. He explains that victory was never a given for either side, and much of what he tells across 752 pages are variations of this uncertainty.
It's not a military history that details the maneuvering of battalions so much as a history of decisions. And their impact. Obviously many pages are spent on such pivotal moments as 1954's Dienbienphu or 1968's Tet Offensive, or even events more shadowed, like the North Vietnamese cleansing Hue of its intellectual class. These are familiar topics. But Hastings has written of well-known, well-traveled events and made them engaging and new. It's in his telling of each phase or step of his long history that he best displays his skill at moving from the broad overview of, say, strategic planning down to individual experience. He describes and analyzes it deeply at the same time. Understanding that history is the interpretation of events directed by personalities, he includes the personal perceptions of those involved, and of both sides.
As I say, a familiar story. I've read quite a lot of the war's history and yet still came across subjects which are neglected in other writings. Aware that media coverage and the antiwar dissent were largely responsible for negatively impacting the morale of our units in the field, I found fascinating Hastings's rather thorough discussion of the topic. He discusses the moral implications of almost every aspect of the war. I appreciated his views. In fact, this was most interesting to me because a week ago I'd finished Henry Kissinger's book Ending the Vietnam War in which he admits the immorality of abandoning South Vietnam to eventual defeat by the North while also deserting a cause in which we lost 58,000 lives. I thought it interesting that Hastings agrees with this assessment while also savaging Kissinger for his duplicitous role as a peace negotiator and National Security Advisor intent on getting America out of the war rather than bringing peace to South Vietnam. He tells us the story of a Marine who served in Vietnam and later became a general commanding troops in the 1st Gulf War who says the great lesson he carried home from Vietnam was "Tell the truth." Hastings does, I think.
I was impressed with the book's closing chapter, "Afterwards," the analysis of results. What we're left with today is that tragic loss of millions of lives, including 58,000 Americans, the damage to America's image and credibility, and the ultimate bankruptcy of communism. What we have today is an austere communist Vietnam now, 43 years later, even more under the huge cultural influence of the west. And that cultural center of gravity is in the South where the name Ho Chi Minh City is steadily losing ground to the old name, Saigon. It's in his "Afterward" that Hastings explains what I've felt for a long time, that Korea and Vietnam were the same geopolitical situation. The final point made is that of Truong Huy San, who was 13-years old when the war ended. He tells us that South Vietnam "has proved to be the historic victor because its values increasingly dominate the country." Obviously I like this book because Hastings shares many of my own views.
May 23, 2019
The subtitle says it all: An Epic Tragedy. I learned so much from this book, not only about what happened, but also about the how and the why. If you want the Vietnam War in one volume, this is a good choice. Educational, engaging, and narrated by a skilled reader (a must for a book almost 34 hours long). I liked how Hastings organized the book. He went roughly chronologically, but also thematically. Often chapters about the fighting on the ground were followed by something else—the air war, how the war affected the US, etc. I feel like the ground war was covered, but it was also broken up and that made for a better reading (or listening) experience, in my opinion.
In hindsight, it’s easy to say the US probably shouldn’t have gotten involved. We went in, in part, to protect South Vietnam from a communist takeover. In the end, the entire country fell under communist control anyway. US involvement didn’t prevent anything, it just prolonged the war and the prolonged war caused so much suffering and so many deaths. But those who were making the decisions didn’t have the gift of hindsight. They saw things through the light of the Munich Accords and WWII, and an assumption that China and the Soviet Union were united and needed to be stopped. It’s a tricky question. Was it right to go in? Would success (or at least a standoff similar to North/South Korea) have made it a right policy? Did failure make it wrong?
Some of the themes I found interesting and worth noting in this review:
South Vietnam’s government was far from model. North Vietnam was worse, but they were better at hiding their atrocities, so most people didn’t know how bad they were. South Vietnam’s government, on the other hand, had all its flaws exposed for the world to see.
Far too often, US presidents acted not in the best interests of the Vietnamese or even of the Americans, but based on the election cycle and acting (or postponing action) to help their party stay in power.
There were problems with our armed forces (fragging, drugs, mistreatment of civilians), but there was also courage and sacrifice. The courage displayed by rescue helicopter crews in particular stood
out.
Other countries, notably Australia, were also involved, and their involvement stirred up mixed reactions in their countries too.
It’s extremely hard to fight wars against infiltrating guerillas who keep coming and coming and coming. It’s also hard to fight against governments (like North Vietnam and most other communist countries) that don’t care all the much about their own people getting killed.
Overall, 4 plus stars for this informative, well-written book. It's my first by Hastings, but I doubt it will be the last.
In hindsight, it’s easy to say the US probably shouldn’t have gotten involved. We went in, in part, to protect South Vietnam from a communist takeover. In the end, the entire country fell under communist control anyway. US involvement didn’t prevent anything, it just prolonged the war and the prolonged war caused so much suffering and so many deaths. But those who were making the decisions didn’t have the gift of hindsight. They saw things through the light of the Munich Accords and WWII, and an assumption that China and the Soviet Union were united and needed to be stopped. It’s a tricky question. Was it right to go in? Would success (or at least a standoff similar to North/South Korea) have made it a right policy? Did failure make it wrong?
Some of the themes I found interesting and worth noting in this review:
South Vietnam’s government was far from model. North Vietnam was worse, but they were better at hiding their atrocities, so most people didn’t know how bad they were. South Vietnam’s government, on the other hand, had all its flaws exposed for the world to see.
Far too often, US presidents acted not in the best interests of the Vietnamese or even of the Americans, but based on the election cycle and acting (or postponing action) to help their party stay in power.
There were problems with our armed forces (fragging, drugs, mistreatment of civilians), but there was also courage and sacrifice. The courage displayed by rescue helicopter crews in particular stood
out.
Other countries, notably Australia, were also involved, and their involvement stirred up mixed reactions in their countries too.
It’s extremely hard to fight wars against infiltrating guerillas who keep coming and coming and coming. It’s also hard to fight against governments (like North Vietnam and most other communist countries) that don’t care all the much about their own people getting killed.
Overall, 4 plus stars for this informative, well-written book. It's my first by Hastings, but I doubt it will be the last.
July 7, 2019
The north Vietnamese had two distinct advantages on the South, ideology and complete control of the press. They were able to use effective propaganda to galvanise their population against a far richer and better equipped south Vietnamese enemy. The french and American forces neither had any ultimate goal nor could control their own press, a press which pounced upon any infringement of their own army as opposed to the North who were able to control all their propaganda because they controlled their own press.
The french and the Americans also considered Vietnamese far less superior, therefore expected the south to fail after they left. They also wanted to punish the Vietnamese by leaving the south to be pulverised by the north as they blamed the south for their losses.
The french and the Americans also considered Vietnamese far less superior, therefore expected the south to fail after they left. They also wanted to punish the Vietnamese by leaving the south to be pulverised by the north as they blamed the south for their losses.
July 8, 2024
Unfortunately, this highly rated book simply wasn’t for me.
This book is a seriously detailed dive into the entire Vietnam War, starting all the way back during World War II. When I say detailed, I mean it's packed with so many facts and figures that it almost feels like you're reading an encyclopedia on the topic. If you're a history buff or someone who loves getting into the nitty-gritty of military strategies and political maneuvers, this book has a lot to offer. Hastings has done his homework, no doubt about it.
But here's the thing – and this is a big thing – it can be overwhelming. Hastings chronicles every battle, movement, and defeat with such thoroughness that it starts to feel more like a textbook than a story. This book lacks the engaging, narrative style that makes history come alive.
I get it, the Vietnam War is complicated, and there are tons of moving parts to cover. But Hastings' focus on stacking facts overshadows the human element. We still have plenty of people alive today who experienced that war firsthand, and their stories could have added so much depth and emotion to the book. I wanted to hear more about what it was like on the ground, from the people who lived through it – their hopes, fears, and reflections now that they've had decades to think about it.
Hastings highlights the political complexities and the many missteps made by both the American and Vietnamese leadership. He’s not afraid to call out the blunders and misguided decisions that fueled the conflict. This part of the book gives a clearer picture of the behind-the-scenes chaos and the often flawed nature of political decision-making.
Another strong point is how Hastings situates the Vietnam War within the larger context of the Cold War. He does a capable job showing how global politics influenced what happened on the ground in Vietnam. If you’re interested in the broader geopolitical landscape, these sections are solid.
However, despite these strengths, the lack of storytelling is a major downside for me. When I read about war, I want to feel connected to the people who experienced it. I want to hear their voices, understand their struggles, and see the war through their eyes. Hastings' book is so focused on the macro-level details that it misses out on these micro-level stories that bring history to life.
In the end, "Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy" is a meticulously researched book that offers a comprehensive look at the Vietnam War. It's a resource for anyone wanting to dive deep into the military and political aspects of the conflict. Hastings is an impressive fact stacker, but I was really hoping for more of a storyteller to make this epic tragedy feel more immediate and real.
This book is a seriously detailed dive into the entire Vietnam War, starting all the way back during World War II. When I say detailed, I mean it's packed with so many facts and figures that it almost feels like you're reading an encyclopedia on the topic. If you're a history buff or someone who loves getting into the nitty-gritty of military strategies and political maneuvers, this book has a lot to offer. Hastings has done his homework, no doubt about it.
But here's the thing – and this is a big thing – it can be overwhelming. Hastings chronicles every battle, movement, and defeat with such thoroughness that it starts to feel more like a textbook than a story. This book lacks the engaging, narrative style that makes history come alive.
I get it, the Vietnam War is complicated, and there are tons of moving parts to cover. But Hastings' focus on stacking facts overshadows the human element. We still have plenty of people alive today who experienced that war firsthand, and their stories could have added so much depth and emotion to the book. I wanted to hear more about what it was like on the ground, from the people who lived through it – their hopes, fears, and reflections now that they've had decades to think about it.
Hastings highlights the political complexities and the many missteps made by both the American and Vietnamese leadership. He’s not afraid to call out the blunders and misguided decisions that fueled the conflict. This part of the book gives a clearer picture of the behind-the-scenes chaos and the often flawed nature of political decision-making.
Another strong point is how Hastings situates the Vietnam War within the larger context of the Cold War. He does a capable job showing how global politics influenced what happened on the ground in Vietnam. If you’re interested in the broader geopolitical landscape, these sections are solid.
However, despite these strengths, the lack of storytelling is a major downside for me. When I read about war, I want to feel connected to the people who experienced it. I want to hear their voices, understand their struggles, and see the war through their eyes. Hastings' book is so focused on the macro-level details that it misses out on these micro-level stories that bring history to life.
In the end, "Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy" is a meticulously researched book that offers a comprehensive look at the Vietnam War. It's a resource for anyone wanting to dive deep into the military and political aspects of the conflict. Hastings is an impressive fact stacker, but I was really hoping for more of a storyteller to make this epic tragedy feel more immediate and real.
September 13, 2019
Can there ever be redemption from the terrors, on all sides, from this war? A disquieting account which serves to magnify all that went wrong from start to finish. Sadly, it was not a deterrent to the future violence in Afghanistan and Iraq. So much toxic shame.
September 8, 2023
De Sir Max Hastings, historiador y periodista británico, estamos acostumbrados a sus obras dedicadas a la Segunda Guerra Mundial, por citar Armageddon: The Battle for Germany, 1944-1945 o Nemesis: The Battle For Japan, 1944-45 entre otros muchos. Sin embargo uno de los detalles menos conocidos sobre su vida y obra es que en sus primeros años como periodista, fue corresponsal de guerra durante el conflicto de Vietnam desde 1968. Muchos años después de su experiencia periodística de primera mano en el sudeste asiático, el autor decidió recopilar textos y entrevistas para plasmar a través de su interesante y particular estilo narrativo, la historia del conflicto bélico más importante de la segunda mitad del siglo XX. En esta monumental obra que hoy nos ocupa, Hastings lleva a cabo un minucioso recorrido por los antecedentes, el desarrollo y las consecuencias de la Guerra de Vietnam, sumergiéndose tanto en la perspectiva estadounidense como en la vietnamita (incluyendo a combatientes y civiles de Vietnam del Sur como el del Norte). A lo largo de casi 900 páginas, Hastings examina las complejidades políticas, sociales y militares que rodearon el conflicto, desde la época colonial francesa hasta la humillante derrota y retirada de las tropas estadounidenses y la reunificación de Vietnam por los comunistas.
Tal vez lo más destacable de este libro sea la siempre loable capacidad del autor para contextualizar los acontecimientos y las decisiones tomadas por los líderes políticos y militares de la época. Y más allá de ser un manual de batallas y movimiento de tropas, el enfoque está en el lado humano (o inhumano) del conflicto, explorando las cruentas y dolorosas experiencias de los soldados y sobre todo, la población civil vietnamita, quienes en últimas fueron los que soportaron la pesada y sangrienta carga de una guerra atípica, violenta y deshumanizada.
Sin embargo, el libro no es perfecto. Aunque Hastings se esfuerza por ofrecer una visión equilibrada y objetiva de la guerra, el anticomunismo que siempre ha predicado el autor sale a flote. Lastimosamente al momento de examinar muchas de las causas y consecuencias de la guerra, Hastings apela constantemente a la falacia tu quoque, donde será común encontrarse con frases como: "el ejército norteamericano cometió abusos, sin embargo el Vietcong mató muchos civiles". Estos juicios y opiniones personales del autor tienen una clara tendencia a trasladar la carga y la culpa al bando comunista para convertir al Vietcong y al Ejército Vietnamita del Norte en los victimarios injustificados de una invasión territorial y militar por parte de una potencia extranjera.
A pesar de lo anterior, "La guerra de Vietnam: Una tragedia épica, 1945-1975" resulta ser un muy buen libro de divulgación sobre dicho conflicto, en especial la edición de Crítica que incluye un librillo anexo con un extenso y magnífico material fotográfico; muy recomendable para quien se acerque por primera vez a la historia de tan brutal guerra, eso sí, andando con cuidado y considerando la postura política del autor. En todo caso, sigo pensando que el mejor, más objetivo y mucho más consistente libro sobre la guerra de Vietnam es y será La guerra del Vietnam: Una historia oral de Christian G. Appy.
Tal vez lo más destacable de este libro sea la siempre loable capacidad del autor para contextualizar los acontecimientos y las decisiones tomadas por los líderes políticos y militares de la época. Y más allá de ser un manual de batallas y movimiento de tropas, el enfoque está en el lado humano (o inhumano) del conflicto, explorando las cruentas y dolorosas experiencias de los soldados y sobre todo, la población civil vietnamita, quienes en últimas fueron los que soportaron la pesada y sangrienta carga de una guerra atípica, violenta y deshumanizada.
Sin embargo, el libro no es perfecto. Aunque Hastings se esfuerza por ofrecer una visión equilibrada y objetiva de la guerra, el anticomunismo que siempre ha predicado el autor sale a flote. Lastimosamente al momento de examinar muchas de las causas y consecuencias de la guerra, Hastings apela constantemente a la falacia tu quoque, donde será común encontrarse con frases como: "el ejército norteamericano cometió abusos, sin embargo el Vietcong mató muchos civiles". Estos juicios y opiniones personales del autor tienen una clara tendencia a trasladar la carga y la culpa al bando comunista para convertir al Vietcong y al Ejército Vietnamita del Norte en los victimarios injustificados de una invasión territorial y militar por parte de una potencia extranjera.
A pesar de lo anterior, "La guerra de Vietnam: Una tragedia épica, 1945-1975" resulta ser un muy buen libro de divulgación sobre dicho conflicto, en especial la edición de Crítica que incluye un librillo anexo con un extenso y magnífico material fotográfico; muy recomendable para quien se acerque por primera vez a la historia de tan brutal guerra, eso sí, andando con cuidado y considerando la postura política del autor. En todo caso, sigo pensando que el mejor, más objetivo y mucho más consistente libro sobre la guerra de Vietnam es y será La guerra del Vietnam: Una historia oral de Christian G. Appy.
April 26, 2021
Max Hastings, a noted British Journalist of military affairs who covered the Vietnam War during the LBJ years and is a New York Times best-selling Author, has written a new book on that war. True to its title, his history portrays Vietnam as a “tragedy.” Hastings narrative of over 700 pages further depicts this tragedy as truly ‘epic’ - mainly from the view of and its impact on the Vietnamese people. Indeed, from the start, it is clear that author’s intent is to convey “something of the enormity of the experience that the Vietnamese people endured over three generations, from the consequences of which they remain unliberated to this day.” To make his point to those who see the war from an American prism, he reminds his readers that “this was predominantly an Asian tragedy, upon which a US nightmare was overlaid [and in which] around forty Vietnamese perished for every American.”
In focusing on the war as largely a Vietnamese tragedy, Hastings’ book does much to fill a void in some notable histories of the war. For example, several popular histories such as Halberstam’s “The Best and the Brightest,” Sheehan’s “A Bright Shining Lie,” and Karnow’s “Vietnam: A History”focus primarily on the US actors and actions; and do not cover in much depth the role of the Vietnamese played in the conflict - other than South Vietnam and its Army was corrupt and inefficient, and North Vietnam, its Army and supporting southerners, determined and driven. Now we have a history that rightfully pays much more attention, especially as seen from the years 1945 to 1975, to what the conflict meant to the Vietnamese as a whole, to include its leaders, soldiers, and people - both in the North and South.
In doing so, Hastings’ book also does a service in dispelling several popular and orthodox lingering myths about the conflict. For example, using more extensive and broader interviews than the Ken Burns TV series, he shows that the North Vietnamese did not hold a monopoly over the nationalist aspirations of the Vietnamese people. Rather, he demonstrates that many in the south had similar aspirations; and they fought equally as hard and bravely for their vision of a Vietnam state free from the yoke and what would turn out to be the horrors of communism. The great tragedy for those Southern Vietnamese, Hastings argues, is that their leaders were too focused on themselves, rather than resolving national issues; and in the end were sold out for political expediency by their US supporters.
Other myths the author dispels is that the war was initially fought primarily over Southern Vietnamese domestic discontent of an illegally formed political entity that did not represent or honor the heritage of the Vietnamese people; and begun and mainly fought by Southern communist nationalists supported by their Northern brethren. While he holds no punches in criticizing the corruptness and ineptitude of the various Southern Vietnamese governments and their senior military officials, he convincingly shows that the Northern Communist leaders and its Army dominated both the nature and conduct of the war; that Northern leaders, to include Ho Chi Minh, ruthlessly imposed at great human costs their views of what the future of the Vietnamese peoples must be; and that, in the end, the North betrayed the aspirations of its Southern communists.
In focusing this history on the struggle and plight of the Vietnamese, Mr. Hastings sometimes relegates or neglects certain important aspects the role and nature of the American involvement. The result is a lack of balance in his observations and conclusions on the relationships between the US conduct of the war with the South Vietnamese civil and military aspects. Thus, the author buys in to the common, but misrepresented, view that the US military neglected the importance of civil affairs and security and focused too much on the shooting war. Moreover, the authors predominate focus on what was indeed an epic tragedy to the Vietnamese people, often leads to a scant, brief, and underrepresented explanation of important decisions and mistakes of US civilian and military leaders that often affecting the Vietnamese, as well as how the war also was a tragedy for Americans.
Nevertheless, Mr. Hastings’ book is an important contribution to an understanding of the Vietnam War. It corrects many past and current misperceptions, and brings to focus the plight, cost, and present situation of the Vietnamese people. This is a must read for anyone who seeks to understand the immense tragedy of the war, not just from the American perspective.
In focusing on the war as largely a Vietnamese tragedy, Hastings’ book does much to fill a void in some notable histories of the war. For example, several popular histories such as Halberstam’s “The Best and the Brightest,” Sheehan’s “A Bright Shining Lie,” and Karnow’s “Vietnam: A History”focus primarily on the US actors and actions; and do not cover in much depth the role of the Vietnamese played in the conflict - other than South Vietnam and its Army was corrupt and inefficient, and North Vietnam, its Army and supporting southerners, determined and driven. Now we have a history that rightfully pays much more attention, especially as seen from the years 1945 to 1975, to what the conflict meant to the Vietnamese as a whole, to include its leaders, soldiers, and people - both in the North and South.
In doing so, Hastings’ book also does a service in dispelling several popular and orthodox lingering myths about the conflict. For example, using more extensive and broader interviews than the Ken Burns TV series, he shows that the North Vietnamese did not hold a monopoly over the nationalist aspirations of the Vietnamese people. Rather, he demonstrates that many in the south had similar aspirations; and they fought equally as hard and bravely for their vision of a Vietnam state free from the yoke and what would turn out to be the horrors of communism. The great tragedy for those Southern Vietnamese, Hastings argues, is that their leaders were too focused on themselves, rather than resolving national issues; and in the end were sold out for political expediency by their US supporters.
Other myths the author dispels is that the war was initially fought primarily over Southern Vietnamese domestic discontent of an illegally formed political entity that did not represent or honor the heritage of the Vietnamese people; and begun and mainly fought by Southern communist nationalists supported by their Northern brethren. While he holds no punches in criticizing the corruptness and ineptitude of the various Southern Vietnamese governments and their senior military officials, he convincingly shows that the Northern Communist leaders and its Army dominated both the nature and conduct of the war; that Northern leaders, to include Ho Chi Minh, ruthlessly imposed at great human costs their views of what the future of the Vietnamese peoples must be; and that, in the end, the North betrayed the aspirations of its Southern communists.
In focusing this history on the struggle and plight of the Vietnamese, Mr. Hastings sometimes relegates or neglects certain important aspects the role and nature of the American involvement. The result is a lack of balance in his observations and conclusions on the relationships between the US conduct of the war with the South Vietnamese civil and military aspects. Thus, the author buys in to the common, but misrepresented, view that the US military neglected the importance of civil affairs and security and focused too much on the shooting war. Moreover, the authors predominate focus on what was indeed an epic tragedy to the Vietnamese people, often leads to a scant, brief, and underrepresented explanation of important decisions and mistakes of US civilian and military leaders that often affecting the Vietnamese, as well as how the war also was a tragedy for Americans.
Nevertheless, Mr. Hastings’ book is an important contribution to an understanding of the Vietnam War. It corrects many past and current misperceptions, and brings to focus the plight, cost, and present situation of the Vietnamese people. This is a must read for anyone who seeks to understand the immense tragedy of the war, not just from the American perspective.
February 25, 2019
The Vietnam war from 1945 to 1975. What it has done to a colonial power, to a superpower, and to a small poor country and finally to the individuals involved. For what? Has anybody learned anything from that conflict? The US has gone from a doctrine of "policeman of the world" to "America First" where former allies are now treated like new enemies. This book is about follies, lies, cultural misunderstandings and dismal leadership: sounds familiar? Maybe crooked leadership at the top has been going for a lot longer than people realize.
April 17, 2021
This was an endlessly interesting book about thirty years of Vietnamese history. The French involvement was only about the first quarter of the book then the rest focused on America's time in Vietnam. It covered all levels of the fight; political, military strategy and individual skirmishes. As usual it was the civilians who suffered the most - under both sides. It is sad that one of the most frequent words in the book was "lied". The general public and the soldiers on both sides were lied to on a regular basis so that the politicians could promote their agenda. An excellent read.
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