Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy, 1945-1975 by Max Hastings is an amazing read. He joins a select group of amazing authors, journalists, and veterans who have written key histories. His insights should change the views of all Americans about Vietnam.
We are approaching the 75th anniversary of our long, slow walk into Southeast Asia. This book will give a more “stable” view of conditions in which America defended South Vietnam against communist aggression.
Hasting’s efforts will make you question long-held beliefs about the war. His access to new materials, declassified by both the US and Vietnam governments. Hastings truly fulfills his book’s title of an epic tragedy. He writes stories by famous leaders and everyday soldiers affected by three decades of war across Indochina.
His introduction of Ho Chi Minh, the war against Japan and colonial French rule during World War II helped reinforce how Ho Chi Minh would set up a revolutionary party set against the backdrop of wars across both Europe and Asia. From World War I to the Korean War, the role of Asian independence from British, French and Dutch colonial rule set Southeast Asia on a path towards war that would span a full generation. Hastings is very good at looping Americans back to events like the 1962 Cuban missile crisis.
Hastings reveals long-held narratives may no longer be valid. Did America lose the Tet Offensive? Hastings writes the US Army response to the Tet surprise attacks actually resulted in the near elimination of the Vietcong. Yet those first news reports and domestic public reaction to the countrywide attacks forever placed Tet as a communist victory.
Hastings details how Tet was planned by Le Duan with newly released materials. Ho Chi Minh and Vo Ngyyen Giap, heroes against the French were removed from their communist party leadership roles and kept out of the country during the late planning stages of Tet. Ho was in China while Gaip was in Hungary. This sets the stage, to actually understand how poorly American intelligence monitored the enemy’s leadership.
In late 1967 General Westmoreland, in an address to the US Congress boasted the enemy was faltering. Tet would prove him wrong and forever stain his career. The political impact to LBJ was overwhelming. President Johnson was a master politician yet simply caved to Cronkite’s Tet assessment:.
“A devastating intervention came from CBS’s Walter Cronkite, a World War II veteran who was the nation’s favourite uncle. In February he visited Hue, then told Fred Weyand: ‘I’ve seen those thousands of bodies. And I have decided that … I’m going to do everything possible in this war to bring it to an end.’ The general said: ‘It was particularly troubling … because of the incredible respect Walter had from the American people.’ Weyand was disgusted that Cronkite spoke as if the Americans and South Vietnamese had been responsible for the Hue massacres: ‘I can see where a person might say, “Well, this war is so ghastly, it must end.” But how you could turn it and make it seem that the North Vietnamese should be permitted to win is beyond me.’
Weyand had a fair point, but on 27 February Cronkite told his millions of viewers: ‘To say we are closer to victory today is to believe in the face of the evidence … optimists who have been wrong … To say we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic yet unsatisfactory conclusion … It is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out is to negotiate – “not as victims, but as an honourable people who lived up to their pledge to victory and democracy and did the best they could.’ Cronkite’s words represented wisdom, and no member of his vast audience was more stunned by them than Lyndon Johnson.”
—page535
The most important lesson by Hastings? American troops almost eliminated the Viet Cong as a fighting unit during Tet. A second, smaller ‘Mini Tet‘ in May 1968 and third Tet in the August timeframe proves how alarmed North Vietnamese leaders were after absorbing enormous losses:
“In the aftermath of Tet, morale slumped among the NVA and Vietcong, who acknowledged a military defeat that cost them around twenty thousand dead. Hanoi’s official history concedes that ‘the battlefield had temporarily turned in favour of the enemy … Our posture and strength were seriously weakened.’ By the communists’ own estimates, exposure to US firepower had cost some guerrilla units 60–70 per cent of their strength.”
—page532
Cronkite was misled. The Army had the Vietcong by the throat. This may be one of the most important lessons from Hastings. Especially in this age, for parents and grandparents who lived through this era.
The North held their fight was for independence. They never wavered. For American Presidents Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson & Nixon along with Diem and military junta, the definition was never clear. The PR lesson from Hastings? Hanoi held a single message, a ‘purpose to fight’ that removing the imperialists and their puppets held for over 30 years. For the US the message changed with every administration and Saigon military coup following Diem’s assassination.
Hasting’s work has received positive support: “This is a work of considerable quality, marked by a possibly unique combination of military expertise, historical grasp and journalistic skill in unearthing hitherto undiscovered human stories of the war, as well as judiciously selecting from among others already known. It helps, too, not to be an American, because that lends a certain useful distance.”
This effort places Hastings’ book at the top of my list for any college’s Vietnam 101 class. My history class about the war assigned readings: Stanley Karnow’s breakthrough work of 1986 Vietnam: A History which sync’d with his Emmy award-winning PBS Series, Vietnam: a Television War. Optional reads: Michael Herr’s Dispatches and Philip Caputo’s A Rumor of War. Luckily in the 2018 release, Hastings acknowledges the new PBS series by Ken Burns ‘The Vietnam War’ and the larger story by Caputo. I can remember CBS 60 minutes presented a segment ‘Vietnam 101’ which revealed the war was the most popular class across colleges in the early 1990s.
I feel the detail of Hastings recently released materials from both America and Vietnam place his book next to Karnow’s work to define the war. At 866 pages, this may seem no easy task. But the pages fly by, often in frustration. Both authors reported from Vietnam, Karnow since 1959 and Hastings from 1968. My other compliment to Max. After reading many books on the Vietnam war, this work reveals critical new aspects and greater details of key events that changed the course of the war. America misinterpreted many events as they were unfolding.
Time may heal old wounds but history proves America may need to reconsider key events and shift our view of success in Vietnam.