i cannot even begin to describe the heavy dose of nostalgia this series gives me, every time i hear the music i'm shot back in time to skipping high school in the morning to get baked and watch this show...
Agreed wholeheartedly, this is a masterpiece and should be a blueprint for future documentary makers. I find a lot of modern documentaries on warfare go way too in depth on political and social bias and emotion, and less just on a comprehensive information piece on the war/conflict itself.
What's interesting that the "strategic hamlets" tactic was much more successful with the British during the Malayan Emergency while dealing with Communist rebels there.
Yeah, nothing more than designed like the Indian reservations of the old west. Boy didn't that work well for them. I wonder what person in the CIA came up with that bright idea?
My grandpa told me that the second attack was actually a whale fart. He said that the Maddox picked up a whale fart on its radar and thought it was a torpedo. I don’t know if that’s true or not but it honestly wouldn’t surprise me.
very nice series keep up the good work im 60 yrs old so i did grow in this eara a really bad time in american history would if there was a war and nobody came
We fought for hundred of years. Fought back the chinese, then came the French, then the Japanese, then French came back, then USA, then Khmer Red Cambodia, then Chinese. Vietnamese are peaceful people but take revenge very strongly. Every bedtime stories for 2000 years are about fighting invaders. Right now There are atleast 50 million vietnamese know how to fight.
The young Sunisa Lee who only recently won Olympic Gold for her loved America is the daughter of Hmong refugees who fled Indochina following the American pullout. America had few real allies in the Vietnam war but the minority Hmong and Montagnard ethnic groups ,often discriminated against in their own land, were genuine friends in a country who’s leadership was based only upon the minority Vietnamese Catholic population.
In one of his last televised interviews John F. Kennedy expressed a lack of faith in the unpopular government of S. Vietnam. This was followed by his NSAM 263 directive calling for a complete withdrawal of all American advisors from Vietnam. Kennedy like Eisenhower before him was reluctant to shed American blood in support of a regime that did not enjoy popular support.
NSAM 263 didn’t call for an unconditional withdrawal though. It was a phased withdrawal predicated on the South Vietnamese government getting its act together, which it never did.
I will say this I have tremendous respect for any civilian having to endure a war on their land! Idk what I would’ve done or even if I could’ve lived through so many years of full out war!! Even after the bombing stopped them what? Man it saddens me. I pray for all lives affected by war but especially the civilians.
@@First-Last_name Unfortunately our current Prime Minister is a borderline communist and has done single handedly the most damage to our personal sovereignty I've seen since I've been alive.
@Ut1F70F Sin Huge, indepth reply. Thank you. The Domino Theory, in hindsight, was basically a conspiracy theory in my opinion. Countries such as Afghanistan, India or Thailand are so culturally different that they never became communist. Indonesia flirted with the Soviet Union but a right wing government during the Vietnam War murdered some 500.000 people suspect of having communist sympathies. It was game over after that domino wise. The Gulf of Tonkin incident basically started the Vietnam War and it was under false pretence. The U.S. was simply looking for an excuse to escalate the war. The Irag Invasion was basically the same false presentation of the circumstances. Saddam Hussein didn't have WMD nor was involved in the 9/11 attacks. Millions are dead, most of them civilians. So, that's why I stated gangsters of capitalism. Don't get me started on all the CIA operations across the world that targeted and overthrew democratically elected governments...
@Ut1F70F Sin Don't get me wrong. Communism brought some brutal dictators without a doubt. Before Lenin and Stalin came into power they were criminals, they robbed banks and killed people to sponsor their revolution. Pol Pot was a complete psychopath with his mass killings. There's no excuse for that. The Chinese communists let the Chinese National Army do most of the work in WW2 and emerged when the latter had taken most of the beating. There aren't many saints but when you advocate freedom and democracy and behind the scenes do the exact opposite and undermine countries you don't have the moral high ground. That's all I'm saying.
@Ut1F70F Sin Thanks for the "talk." Don't do anything stupid. Defending your family is always justified if they attack you. There's one more thing I wanted to convey to you. Wars are fought over resources and ideology. Colonialism was basically getting your profitable hands on the resources of other countries. Ideology is an entirely different matter and what often leads to conflicts is the fanaticism of your own ideology. There's fanaticism in how the economy should work but the last 2000 years it has also been about religion and I think you understand many religions agree about God but not in the way of worship. Keep thinking my friend and be safe.
Good to see the South Vietnamese were well armed with war-surplus U.S. military small arms, left-overs from the Second World War and the Korean War. Still, they did the job: you wouldn't be standing in front of one of them when it went bang. Bang!
The American war in So. Vietnam was lost in the early years of the war during the advisory phase of the U.S. military's involvement in So. Vietnam in the early 1960's. This is when the U.S. and the South Vietnamese ought to have won the war, when it was "small" and local, before either side escalated the conflict to a major regional war, which is of course what it became. The U.S. political leadership's acquiesence in the overthrow and murder of Ngo Dinh Diem also complicated and compounded the U.S.'s difficulty in successfully waging a winning war with the So. Vietnamese against the revolutionary-nationalist insurgency. Diem may have been a bigoted idiot but he did manage to maintain relative political stability in So. Vietnam during his time in office and that was badly needed to defeat the revolutionary-nationalist NLF/PLAF guerrilla movement.
The war could have never been won by the US. The US reasons for involvement was wrong from the beginning, therefore it was doomed. US should have learned this lesson from the French. Arrogance and ignorance led to failure as the inevitable result. And what does America do, they repeated the same thing in Afghan. Now the US seems to want to try again in Ukraine.
@@niss2142 Neither the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan or the supply of weapons to Ukraine for it's defense are even remotely similar to the Vietnam War.
@@scottkrater2131 Afghanistan is closer to Vietnam than many people think, although it's biggest analogue is the Soviet-Afghan war because well it was the same fucking country lol
I think a big help to the so vietnam people in defending the country was a government that allowed land ownership to all economic levels of them defending your owned property and home might have went a long way . as well as paying the military decent with additional family support added ,, terrible so Vietnamese government's errors
The British had successfully employed a strategic hamlet program fighting Maoist guerilla’s in Mtaylasia prior to the war. The reason the program failed in Vietnam was due to the almost universal hatred of the S. Vietnamese government. In fact a majority of the S. Vietnamese population revered Ho Chi Minh after he successfully drove the colonial French out of the north. Eisenhower had once said that he would not commit American’s to fight for a country in which the people themselves would not fight for and yet in the end LBJ did just that.
The Gulf of Tonkin incident was a flagrant belligerence across the DMZ of both of the South Vietnamese and Americans - how we teach kids this was a valid defensive casus belli is beyond me.
What kills me is everyone focuses on the Gulf of Tonkin and the big bad Americans and ignores that North Vietnam was actively supporting armed incursions into sovereign South Vietnam. The mental gymnastics and hypocrisy is hilarious. Yeah they definitely should have just let the North invade the South, that would have for sure been the moral high ground at the time.
@@First-Last_name Not really, I'd argue both sides did horrific shit and honestly most of it is mute now, Vietnam is in a better place than a lot of Western nations now. Funny that.
@@Dexter037S4 "better then most western countries" well the last part makes your whole argument mute, so we can end it there.🤷♂️ Vietnam is ranked 65th and lower in almost every ranking, that's objective truth🙄 Funny that.
I find this war so intriguing I watched a lot of the soldiers speak and they said stuff like from are prospective we never lost that war we won it every single day yet they did lose a million and a half vietnamese killed most of the big battles won by the Americans but no matter the carnage the north would fight another day war is about much then then simply killing the enemy if you want to compare winning the through how many people were killed the Americans kicked ass they were devastating in that war 50 thousand Americans killed ok that's lots but vietnamese a million and a half that means the American won by something like 500 to one yet they still lost very interesting its funny we make the same mistakes even these days
They tried to kill as many as they could because you couldn't take ground. Why does nobody understand this about this war? You hear the same stupid comments over and over. The US and ARVN could not enter North Vietnam, Laos or Cambodia where the enemy was, it was purely a defensive war. They thought by killing as many VC and PAVN they could end the war through attrition and overwhelming firepower.
@@boblaryson3621 through back channels the chinese had already warned our presidents that any invasion of north vietnam laos or cambodia by us would give them the green light to attack across the border from the north just like they did in korea. our presidents didnt want that. we lost 50k dead without them. imagine the number of american dead if the chinese sent 800k men into north vietnam and then invaded the south? to finish this up the reason we didnt go north to north vietnam was because we were afraid of the chinese
2 episodes in and I am liking it overall. My one complaint is that it does try to paint the North Vietnamese and Vietcong as good guys when really they were just as awful in their own way. No side in this conflict was good, it was a war waged amongst baddies
Christian Spangler yeah they the vietcong stole food when they had to and killed southerners for being traitors but this was the direct effect of 2 foreign invasions. In times of war things are done differently. Exactly how we killed about 6 million not just from vietnam but Cambodia and laos.its estimated 1 million of the 3 million population died in laos even today cluster bombs are killing kids. These are the things that have to be done to fight wars. And if you go their today they are very nice people considering what has happened..
Really? Remind me, who bombed VIetnamese cities and towns flat? Who killed 3,000,000 Vietnamese people? Who decided to play god for another people on the other side of the world in the first place? Who tried to Nuke them in 1954? Who dumped a chemical weapon on the whole of Southeast Asia? And who did not get their cities flattened? Who did not have their people murdered and raped by an alien power? Who did not have any Chemical or Nuclear threat in their land? Who was not invaded? British Judge Norman Birkett said during The Nuremberg Trials: "The charges in the Indictment that the defendants planned and waged aggressive wars are charges of the utmost gravity. War is essentially an evil thing. Its consequences are not confined to the belligerent states alone, but affect the whole world. To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."
Given the situation, south Vietnam army should distribute their troops to defend villages... south Vietnam troops would fortified village and blend in with villagers and helped villigers for their daily life like running a farm and such so the troops can also get food from villigers while strengthen their bond between troops and villigers that helping each other so when the NLV attacked the south Vietnamese troops in the village with heavy mortars and artillery, the NLV would looked like the bad guy who put the risk of villigers in the village under threat.. the NLV also could not take supplies and recruited from villigers decreasing their ability to lunch guerilla warfare because villige is the core of guerilla. Also this would helped to develop villige economy because of the free labors that the troops given by running farms and such while keep soldiers fit rather than just sitting around. On the other hand the american troops would guard south Vietnamese cities while attacked north Vietnamese cities and aimed to destroy all government building to decreased north Vietnam capabilities to govern region or to build diplomatic ties to other countries so the north Vietnamese army would have no other choice to retake their cities back because if not they would govern region from jungle and making other countries look their government seem illegitimate. Also it would lure chinese army to openly all out battle. The NLV could not dig in because they were on the offensive making them vulnerable for heavy bomber. Even if they dig in to sieging their city with heavy artillery, it would put their own people in the city at great risk, making their force looked like bad guy in their own people eyes to attack guerilla in the jungle us army could deployed approximately 100 sniper team. each team deployed in two men. Each team would carry a radio, a map, and food for two mens in a week. They would be deployed in the jungle for a week and their mission is to scout and ambush guerillan by pinpoint the enemy position and radioing it for aircraft bomber and artillery to finnish them off. So instead of dropping bomb in random position that wasted amunition and relying for plane to see an enemy from the sky, that would be impossible because dense vegetation, with sniper they could see exact location of guerillan from ground. Because sniper team is working in two men and their trained and natured in camouflage they would be hard to detected. Plus they were not to snipe mission but to scout. And with radioing enemy position for heavy bomber and artillery, they could annihilated enemy without any casualties. Each week the sniper team would be replaced with another sniper team so the sniper team that being replaced can be resupplied and redeployed in the jungle for another week and so on the American should also develop a bomb that can penetrated deep into the ground and blast the tunnel from inside. So when sniper team see tunnel or bunker of enemy they could be blast from inside the ground
1. South Vietnam had made "Strategic Hamlets" to do exactly the same thing as you said. But they fucked up. 2. The Americans have use SR-71 blackbirds, spec ops soldiers so scout every locations that we are suspected to be in, and they have heavy artillery and strategic bombers to do the destruction, but that alerted us and then we began to hunt them, and you will have casualties no matter how much force you use. We don't stay in one place for you to fuck us, we move quick to fuck you back before you can. And even if we lose a strongpoint, there would be many more strongpoints that we can make. The Vietnam war was not a conventional war, it is a guerilla war that we Vietnamese have learned and used for a long time. You guys bring out the big guns and move slowly with overconfidence, believed that artillery will protect you, but instead you got chopped on many side, your men split up and try to fight back and then got killed, one by one and then every men you have in that sector died. 3. They have those bunker-piercing missiles and bombs, but as World War 1 and 2 showed, you would need 1000 artillery shells just to destroy 30 meters of trenches and tunnels. And even if they said "fuck it" and use all of their money to make many more of those missiles and bombs, the NLF will rebuilt those tunnels and trenches faster than you can use those missiles and bombs. So basically, they have done everything in your list but failed anyways.
@@tranthiminhchauam5538 1. Strategy hamlet is not good because it's forcing the people to empty the village by forcing them to move near the city and leaving their home and land that has been passing over for centuries by their ancestors. the lands has been a sacred to them and forcing them to live is like mocking their ancestors and traditions. The strategy should just be implemented by fortified the village so when the enemies attack and siege the fortified position they would also attack the village so the villagers would see the vietcong and north Vietnam as the bad guy. 2. i'm not trying to take your strong points i'm trying kill you piece by piece. Steadily but rapidly till you have no sufficient man power to launch an offence. 3. You can not denied that in order to lauch an offence, you need food to eat, and then you need weapons and ammo, therefore you need suplies. All war in all history and all locations, dependent on supplies that is why you make ho chi Minh trails to move your suplies through neutral territory. Sadly the American doesn't know that "the jungle is a natural weaknes for air reconnaissance". All big trees in the jungle can hide all heavy guns such as artillery, tanks, anti air guns and a non weapons such as big trucks can also hide in the jungle because jungle had a very dense leaf. So that is why it need eyes on the ground and the sniper team is perfect to hunt and track down enemies activity including supply line would be also under threat. Sniper is not easily to be found because they were trained naturally in camouflage they are mostly being found when they fired a shot but if they are not firing a shot finding them would be almost impossible plus they were in jungle territory where it was a heaven for sniper. 4. of course guerilla always move. Guerilla depending on mobility, in order to launch guerilla you need to be more fast than your opponent otherwise if you not fast enough to launch a hit and run attack you would be caught and surround by your opponent. Speed is a key for guerilla. that is why they should be hunt down by sniper team that were trained and natural in camouflage. Because sniper team were only two men, they were more mobile and more hidden in the jungle so they could launch guerilla against guerillan. The mission is not to shot guerillan one by one, that's just revealed sniper position or tell the enemies that there is sniper near by, but the snipers team would radio enemies position so the bomber or artillery could bomb the location that being coordinate by sniper team. This tactic is not to find enemy's fix position but to hunt them while they were on the move that is why the sniper team were given foods for weeks that means they would on the move to scout and followed the enemies position for week until they would being replaced by another sniper team. When the bomber dropped their bomb or the artillery fired their shell, the sniper team would stay put while on camouflage to keep watching the bombing process to look wether the bombing are success or not and watch the movement of the remaining enemies that survive the bombing where they would go and where their position so the sniper team could send another coordinate position of the enemy for the plane or artillery to bombard again. the idea is to keep enemies casualties flown, artillery and bomber are not bombing randomly but more accurate at the position where the enemies are, and force the enemies number to depleted steadily and rapidly so they could not replaced man power fast enough to launch another offensive. So the coordination between sniper team, air bomber, and artillery would be offence while the main force would on the defence to fortified village so guerillan could not get suplies or recruitment from villigers plus they could launch propaganda on villagers telling the enemies are bad, don't help the enemy, and such - and such 5. If you build another bunker and tunnel faster, than you would not used concrete and metal but just a mere soil and woods. So the American should analyse the soil structure of the region and make another bomb that not just pentrate a concrete but can penetrated the ground very deep and blast it from inside the idea is not just to destroy the soil but to shake the rest of a tunnel that were more deep in the ground to collapse so anyone that were inside would be buried alive. This bomb can also create a landslide in mountainous terrain but first you need to burn the jungle mountain so it can easily create erotion. Moreover while you build another bunker or tunnel, you could be detected and watch by sniper team during your efforts and being harras with bombed everyday and just make you more casualties. This strategy and tactics can be modified to adapt on the situation in all jungle territory
@@oktafjakalase451 nice suggestions but that was also what the Generals of the US said. They have no way to deal with multiple tunnels, not saying even pin point all of them. Plus the Vietcong (NLF) will probably use that to their advantage, by luring you to make another tunnel for them. This is costly, time-consuming, and brings back little success. Also American strategy is not to hold the ground, so that plan is not suitable to the US in Vietnam
@@tranthiminhchauam5538 if you make another tunnel you would send people to dig it right? And while dig in, they would exposed and vulnerable in the surface. And if you said you could making a long tunnel so fast, you probably send so many people to dig it because you didn't used excavator or other heavy machine that was so high profile. Now that is the target, The people that you send to make another tunnel, when dig in, would be harass by sniper with coordination of bomber and artillery fire that bombing them while trying to dig the tunnel. So the first destruction of a tunnel is to lure you to send people to repair or to make another tunnel so when you send many people to dig again you would be harass by bombers and artillery.
@@oktafjakalase451 We dig tunnels inside our safe zones, and those tunnels have to be deep enough to not be spotted by your sniper teams and scouts. We aren't stupid to dig a tunnel in the zones where you can see.
The South Vietnamese Government must have really been bad for the population to choose Communism. But Vietnamese Communism is much different from North Korean Communism. The Vietnamese are happy now. North Korea the people suffer. It's no better than Pol Pot in Cambodia. It's so bizarre that one Communist country goes to war with another Communist government.
The South Vietnamese population didn't choose communism. If they did they would have rose up during the Tet Offensive like the North Vietnamese Communists and NLF thought. But they didn't. The South was conquered by the North.
We were fighting the South Vietnamese, North Vietnamese, Chinese, Russians and our own people at home. Did we we win that war on the battlefield? Yes we did.
Correction: the Americans won battles on the ground, not the war. By the time they evacuated, the tactical, operational, and strategic aims of the North were resumed and the South was taken in earnest. Caesar defeated the Briton tribes several times but after he left, they went back to the previous status quo. And while victory in battle goes a long way, overall tactical or operational victories leave the enemy incapable of subsequent offensives, counterattacks, or other operations. It was not the case in Vietnam which, further on, went to score real victories against the Chinese and Cambodians. Winning the war on the ground also means occupation, pacification, and strengthening political resolve.
i cannot even begin to describe the heavy dose of nostalgia this series gives me, every time i hear the music i'm shot back in time to skipping high school in the morning to get baked and watch this show...
Hahaha
This series needs to be digitally remastered (along with all docs in the Battlefield series) they don't make docos this comprehensive anymore.
Agreed wholeheartedly, this is a masterpiece and should be a blueprint for future documentary makers. I find a lot of modern documentaries on warfare go way too in depth on political and social bias and emotion, and less just on a comprehensive information piece on the war/conflict itself.
History isn't shown anymore, the American people must be as dumb as possible.
I served 82nd airborne 1972-73
Thank you. It was a tough time to serve.
Thank you for your service!
49:14 Turns out Joker from Full Metal Jacket was actually real.
4 eyes!
"...a disaster from the start..." such was South Vietnam
I have a Vietnam War era liquor flask that was found in a junk pile on the property Lyndon B Johnson's Texas home. Piece of history.
What's interesting that the "strategic hamlets" tactic was much more successful with the British during the Malayan Emergency while dealing with Communist rebels there.
The Plastic Metalhead Shitposter It was ruined by communists within the South Vietnamese government.
Also worked against the mau mau in Kenya. The name is a big euphemism though, they were pretty much prison camps.
Yeah, nothing more than designed like the Indian reservations of the old west. Boy didn't that work well for them. I wonder what person in the CIA came up with that bright idea?
these didnt work mainly because of the incompetence of the southern leadership
The reason may be that many (?) Vietnamese believe the spirits of their relatives live on their land, so they don’t want to leave them.
My grandpa told me that the second attack was actually a whale fart. He said that the Maddox picked up a whale fart on its radar and thought it was a torpedo. I don’t know if that’s true or not but it honestly wouldn’t surprise me.
Was he onboard the Maddox?
The battlefield series are just excellent documentaries, so well done! Wish they had a series for the Gulf wars, as well as Afghanistan!
Be patient Mr Tigercats one day they will
Best tv series ever made by PBS....information is spot on and the music fits the series to a T
Great series hats off to you
very nice series keep up the good work im 60 yrs old so i did grow in this eara a really bad time in american history would if there was a war and nobody came
Most of the brains responsible for this disaster were lost in '63...
On the street in downtown Dallas.....
Vietnam had nothing to lose....... except their country.
"ride of the valkyries intensifies"
Best docs ever!!!
My greatest respect for the Vietnamese people who lived in a state of constant war between 1940 and 1980 with stoic fortitude
We fought for hundred of years. Fought back the chinese, then came the French, then the Japanese, then French came back, then USA, then Khmer Red Cambodia, then Chinese. Vietnamese are peaceful people but take revenge very strongly. Every bedtime stories for 2000 years are about fighting invaders. Right now There are atleast 50 million vietnamese know how to fight.
@@Targer4uI believe Thai and Laotians also invaded Vietnam at a certain point and got mauled badly lol
The young Sunisa Lee who only recently won Olympic Gold for her loved America is the daughter of Hmong refugees who fled Indochina following the American pullout. America had few real allies in the Vietnam war but the minority Hmong and Montagnard ethnic groups ,often discriminated against in their own land, were genuine friends in a country who’s leadership was based only upon the minority Vietnamese Catholic population.
thank you
In one of his last televised interviews John F. Kennedy expressed a lack of faith in the unpopular government of S. Vietnam. This was followed by his NSAM 263 directive calling for a complete withdrawal of all American advisors from Vietnam. Kennedy like Eisenhower before him was reluctant to shed American blood in support of a regime that did not enjoy popular support.
NSAM 263 didn’t call for an unconditional withdrawal though. It was a phased withdrawal predicated on the South Vietnamese government getting its act together, which it never did.
I will say this I have tremendous respect for any civilian having to endure a war on their land! Idk what I would’ve done or even if I could’ve lived through so many years of full out war!! Even after the bombing stopped them what? Man it saddens me. I pray for all lives affected by war but especially the civilians.
Shame on usa for dropping 9 million tons of bombs on Vietnam, and think of the countless millions of tons dropped around the world since
@@texajp1946 Lol, shame on Mao. Shame on Pol pot and the khmer Rouge Shame on stain
Yes, life is hard enough without war😢
Yeah, luckily cluster bombs have been banned by Canada. A small baby step to peace
@@First-Last_name Unfortunately our current Prime Minister is a borderline communist and has done single handedly the most damage to our personal sovereignty I've seen since I've been alive.
I love Vietnam
History lesson. This is how the gangsters of capitailsm operate.
@Ut1F70F Sin Huge, indepth reply. Thank you. The Domino Theory, in hindsight, was basically a conspiracy theory in my opinion. Countries such as Afghanistan, India or Thailand are so culturally different that they never became communist. Indonesia flirted with the Soviet Union but a right wing government during the Vietnam War murdered some 500.000 people suspect of having communist sympathies. It was game over after that domino wise.
The Gulf of Tonkin incident basically started the Vietnam War and it was under false pretence. The U.S. was simply looking for an excuse to escalate the war. The Irag Invasion was basically the same false presentation of the circumstances. Saddam Hussein didn't have WMD nor was involved in the 9/11 attacks. Millions are dead, most of them civilians. So, that's why I stated gangsters of capitalism. Don't get me started on all the CIA operations across the world that targeted and overthrew democratically elected governments...
@Ut1F70F Sin Don't get me wrong. Communism brought some brutal dictators without a doubt. Before Lenin and Stalin came into power they were criminals, they robbed banks and killed people to sponsor their revolution. Pol Pot was a complete psychopath with his mass killings. There's no excuse for that. The Chinese communists let the Chinese National Army do most of the work in WW2 and emerged when the latter had taken most of the beating. There aren't many saints but when you advocate freedom and democracy and behind the scenes do the exact opposite and undermine countries you don't have the moral high ground. That's all I'm saying.
@Ut1F70F Sin Thanks for the "talk." Don't do anything stupid. Defending your family is always justified if they attack you. There's one more thing I wanted to convey to you. Wars are fought over resources and ideology. Colonialism was basically getting your profitable hands on the resources of other countries. Ideology is an entirely different matter and what often leads to conflicts is the fanaticism of your own ideology. There's fanaticism in how the economy should work but the last 2000 years it has also been about religion and I think you understand many religions agree about God but not in the way of worship. Keep thinking my friend and be safe.
@Ut1F70F Sin world 🌎 lives in peace if you ignore reality. Its a battle feild out there.
Man, that Ho Chi Minh --- you see him? He's moving forward and backward in time! He could age and rejuvenate at will!
My only complaint is instead of hearing actual audio of the individual you get a description, it's not like the audio isn't available.
wonderful series about the Vietnam War, the only thing is it's pretty lengthy as it tries to cover the details of the war spanning 12 episodes.
damn this game has such good quality
Good to see the South Vietnamese were well armed with war-surplus U.S. military small arms, left-overs from the Second World War and the Korean War. Still, they did the job: you wouldn't be standing in front of one of them when it went bang. Bang!
this was where, after 9 years of war, the vietnamese shattered France´s will to continue the war
I'd say they were already shattered after getting bloodied badly in WW1 and then being humiliated in WW2.
@@cefb8923 Since the US paid 80% of the cost for the French. They could keep fighting in Indo-China much longer than they´d otherwise be able to
How do they make this map
5:49 what a cruel irony
The American war in So. Vietnam was lost in the early years of the war during the advisory phase of the U.S. military's involvement in So. Vietnam in the early 1960's.
This is when the U.S. and the South Vietnamese ought to have won the war, when it was "small" and local, before either side escalated the conflict to a major regional war, which is of course what it became.
The U.S. political leadership's acquiesence in the overthrow and murder of Ngo Dinh Diem also complicated and compounded the U.S.'s difficulty in successfully waging a winning war with the So. Vietnamese against the revolutionary-nationalist insurgency.
Diem may have been a bigoted idiot but he did manage to maintain relative political stability in So. Vietnam during his time in office and that was badly needed to defeat the revolutionary-nationalist NLF/PLAF guerrilla movement.
The war could have never been won by the US. The US reasons for involvement was wrong from the beginning, therefore it was doomed. US should have learned this lesson from the French. Arrogance and ignorance led to failure as the inevitable result. And what does America do, they repeated the same thing in Afghan. Now the US seems to want to try again in Ukraine.
@@niss2142 Neither the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan or the supply of weapons to Ukraine for it's defense are even remotely similar to the Vietnam War.
@@scottkrater2131 Afghanistan is closer to Vietnam than many people think, although it's biggest analogue is the Soviet-Afghan war because well it was the same fucking country lol
I think a big help to the so vietnam people in defending the country was a government that allowed land ownership to all economic levels of them defending your owned property and home might have went a long way . as well as paying the military decent with additional family support added ,, terrible so Vietnamese government's errors
10:55
Well, pretty much no point in watching past this point. That is just incompetent, the whole way the strategic hamlet program was organized.
The British had successfully employed a strategic hamlet program fighting Maoist guerilla’s in Mtaylasia prior to the war. The reason the program failed in Vietnam was due to the almost universal hatred of the S. Vietnamese government. In fact a majority of the S. Vietnamese population revered Ho Chi Minh after he successfully drove the colonial French out of the north. Eisenhower had once said that he would not commit American’s to fight for a country in which the people themselves would not fight for and yet in the end LBJ did just that.
The Gulf of Tonkin incident was a flagrant belligerence across the DMZ of both of the South Vietnamese and Americans - how we teach kids this was a valid defensive casus belli is beyond me.
USA constantly white washes their war criminal history
What kills me is everyone focuses on the Gulf of Tonkin and the big bad Americans and ignores that North Vietnam was actively supporting armed incursions into sovereign South Vietnam.
The mental gymnastics and hypocrisy is hilarious. Yeah they definitely should have just let the North invade the South, that would have for sure been the moral high ground at the time.
@@cefb8923 Considering that was what the peace deal was, yeah unironically.
It was just an excuse to escalate the war further.
Wait, this isn't Battlefield Vietnam.
I loved that game
These videos lower my blood pressure, so pleasing to watch the Vietnamese drive the colonizers off their land.
It was a tragedy on both sides.
@@stuvo1977 NVA was worse though
Do you mean watch the Vietnamese get their ass kicked by the Americans for years on end?
@@First-Last_name Not really, I'd argue both sides did horrific shit and honestly most of it is mute now, Vietnam is in a better place than a lot of Western nations now.
Funny that.
@@Dexter037S4 "better then most western countries" well the last part makes your whole argument mute, so we can end it there.🤷♂️ Vietnam is ranked 65th and lower in almost every ranking, that's objective truth🙄
Funny that.
I find this war so intriguing I watched a lot of the soldiers speak and they said stuff like from are prospective we never lost that war we won it every single day yet they did lose a million and a half vietnamese killed most of the big battles won by the Americans but no matter the carnage the north would fight another day war is about much then then simply killing the enemy if you want to compare winning the through how many people were killed the Americans kicked ass they were devastating in that war 50 thousand Americans killed ok that's lots but vietnamese a million and a half that means the American won by something like 500 to one yet they still lost very interesting its funny we make the same mistakes even these days
They tried to kill as many as they could because you couldn't take ground. Why does nobody understand this about this war? You hear the same stupid comments over and over. The US and ARVN could not enter North Vietnam, Laos or Cambodia where the enemy was, it was purely a defensive war. They thought by killing as many VC and PAVN they could end the war through attrition and overwhelming firepower.
We lost due to cowards and traitors in dc
@@boblaryson3621 through back channels the chinese had already warned our presidents that any invasion of north vietnam laos or cambodia by us would give them the green light to attack across the border from the north just like they did in korea. our presidents didnt want that. we lost 50k dead without them. imagine the number of american dead if the chinese sent 800k men into north vietnam and then invaded the south? to finish this up the reason we didnt go north to north vietnam was because we were afraid of the chinese
2 episodes in and I am liking it overall. My one complaint is that it does try to paint the North Vietnamese and Vietcong as good guys when really they were just as awful in their own way. No side in this conflict was good, it was a war waged amongst baddies
Christian Spangler yeah they the vietcong stole food when they had to and killed southerners for being traitors but this was the direct effect of 2 foreign invasions. In times of war things are done differently. Exactly how we killed about 6 million not just from vietnam but Cambodia and laos.its estimated 1 million of the 3 million population died in laos even today cluster bombs are killing kids. These are the things that have to be done to fight wars. And if you go their today they are very nice people considering what has happened..
Really? Remind me, who bombed VIetnamese cities and towns flat? Who killed 3,000,000 Vietnamese people? Who decided to play god for another people on the other side of the world in the first place? Who tried to Nuke them in 1954? Who dumped a chemical weapon on the whole of Southeast Asia?
And who did not get their cities flattened? Who did not have their people murdered and raped by an alien power? Who did not have any Chemical or Nuclear threat in their land? Who was not invaded?
British Judge Norman Birkett said during The Nuremberg Trials:
"The charges in the Indictment that the defendants planned and waged aggressive wars are charges of the utmost gravity. War is essentially an evil thing. Its consequences are not confined to the belligerent states alone, but affect the whole world.
To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."
I love peace
Given the situation, south Vietnam army should distribute their troops to defend villages... south Vietnam troops would fortified village and blend in with villagers and helped villigers for their daily life like running a farm and such so the troops can also get food from villigers while strengthen their bond between troops and villigers that helping each other so when the NLV attacked the south Vietnamese troops in the village with heavy mortars and artillery, the NLV would looked like the bad guy who put the risk of villigers in the village under threat.. the NLV also could not take supplies and recruited from villigers decreasing their ability to lunch guerilla warfare because villige is the core of guerilla. Also this would helped to develop villige economy because of the free labors that the troops given by running farms and such while keep soldiers fit rather than just sitting around.
On the other hand the american troops would guard south Vietnamese cities while attacked north Vietnamese cities and aimed to destroy all government building to decreased north Vietnam capabilities to govern region or to build diplomatic ties to other countries so the north Vietnamese army would have no other choice to retake their cities back because if not they would govern region from jungle and making other countries look their government seem illegitimate. Also it would lure chinese army to openly all out battle. The NLV could not dig in because they were on the offensive making them vulnerable for heavy bomber. Even if they dig in to sieging their city with heavy artillery, it would put their own people in the city at great risk, making their force looked like bad guy in their own people eyes
to attack guerilla in the jungle us army could deployed approximately 100 sniper team. each team deployed in two men. Each team would carry a radio, a map, and food for two mens in a week. They would be deployed in the jungle for a week and their mission is to scout and ambush guerillan by pinpoint the enemy position and radioing it for aircraft bomber and artillery to finnish them off. So instead of dropping bomb in random position that wasted amunition and relying for plane to see an enemy from the sky, that would be impossible because dense vegetation, with sniper they could see exact location of guerillan from ground. Because sniper team is working in two men and their trained and natured in camouflage they would be hard to detected. Plus they were not to snipe mission but to scout. And with radioing enemy position for heavy bomber and artillery, they could annihilated enemy without any casualties. Each week the sniper team would be replaced with another sniper team so the sniper team that being replaced can be resupplied and redeployed in the jungle for another week and so on
the American should also develop a bomb that can penetrated deep into the ground and blast the tunnel from inside. So when sniper team see tunnel or bunker of enemy they could be blast from inside the ground
1. South Vietnam had made "Strategic Hamlets" to do exactly the same thing as you said. But they fucked up.
2. The Americans have use SR-71 blackbirds, spec ops soldiers so scout every locations that we are suspected to be in, and they have heavy artillery and strategic bombers to do the destruction, but that alerted us and then we began to hunt them, and you will have casualties no matter how much force you use. We don't stay in one place for you to fuck us, we move quick to fuck you back before you can. And even if we lose a strongpoint, there would be many more strongpoints that we can make. The Vietnam war was not a conventional war, it is a guerilla war that we Vietnamese have learned and used for a long time. You guys bring out the big guns and move slowly with overconfidence, believed that artillery will protect you, but instead you got chopped on many side, your men split up and try to fight back and then got killed, one by one and then every men you have in that sector died.
3. They have those bunker-piercing missiles and bombs, but as World War 1 and 2 showed, you would need 1000 artillery shells just to destroy 30 meters of trenches and tunnels. And even if they said "fuck it" and use all of their money to make many more of those missiles and bombs, the NLF will rebuilt those tunnels and trenches faster than you can use those missiles and bombs.
So basically, they have done everything in your list but failed anyways.
@@tranthiminhchauam5538
1. Strategy hamlet is not good because it's forcing the people to empty the village by forcing them to move near the city and leaving their home and land that has been passing over for centuries by their ancestors. the lands has been a sacred to them and forcing them to live is like mocking their ancestors and traditions. The strategy should just be implemented by fortified the village so when the enemies attack and siege the fortified position they would also attack the village so the villagers would see the vietcong and north Vietnam as the bad guy.
2. i'm not trying to take your strong points i'm trying kill you piece by piece. Steadily but rapidly till you have no sufficient man power to launch an offence.
3. You can not denied that in order to lauch an offence, you need food to eat, and then you need weapons and ammo, therefore you need suplies. All war in all history and all locations, dependent on supplies that is why you make ho chi Minh trails to move your suplies through neutral territory. Sadly the American doesn't know that "the jungle is a natural weaknes for air reconnaissance". All big trees in the jungle can hide all heavy guns such as artillery, tanks, anti air guns and a non weapons such as big trucks can also hide in the jungle because jungle had a very dense leaf. So that is why it need eyes on the ground and the sniper team is perfect to hunt and track down enemies activity including supply line would be also under threat. Sniper is not easily to be found because they were trained naturally in camouflage they are mostly being found when they fired a shot but if they are not firing a shot finding them would be almost impossible plus they were in jungle territory where it was a heaven for sniper.
4. of course guerilla always move. Guerilla depending on mobility, in order to launch guerilla you need to be more fast than your opponent otherwise if you not fast enough to launch a hit and run attack you would be caught and surround by your opponent. Speed is a key for guerilla. that is why they should be hunt down by sniper team that were trained and natural in camouflage. Because sniper team were only two men, they were more mobile and more hidden in the jungle so they could launch guerilla against guerillan. The mission is not to shot guerillan one by one, that's just revealed sniper position or tell the enemies that there is sniper near by, but the snipers team would radio enemies position so the bomber or artillery could bomb the location that being coordinate by sniper team. This tactic is not to find enemy's fix position but to hunt them while they were on the move that is why the sniper team were given foods for weeks that means they would on the move to scout and followed the enemies position for week until they would being replaced by another sniper team. When the bomber dropped their bomb or the artillery fired their shell, the sniper team would stay put while on camouflage to keep watching the bombing process to look wether the bombing are success or not and watch the movement of the remaining enemies that survive the bombing where they would go and where their position so the sniper team could send another coordinate position of the enemy for the plane or artillery to bombard again. the idea is to keep enemies casualties flown, artillery and bomber are not bombing randomly but more accurate at the position where the enemies are, and force the enemies number to depleted steadily and rapidly so they could not replaced man power fast enough to launch another offensive. So the coordination between sniper team, air bomber, and artillery would be offence while the main force would on the defence to fortified village so guerillan could not get suplies or recruitment from villigers plus they could launch propaganda on villagers telling the enemies are bad, don't help the enemy, and such - and such
5. If you build another bunker and tunnel faster, than you would not used concrete and metal but just a mere soil and woods. So the American should analyse the soil structure of the region and make another bomb that not just pentrate a concrete but can penetrated the ground very deep and blast it from inside the idea is not just to destroy the soil but to shake the rest of a tunnel that were more deep in the ground to collapse so anyone that were inside would be buried alive. This bomb can also create a landslide in mountainous terrain but first you need to burn the jungle mountain so it can easily create erotion. Moreover while you build another bunker or tunnel, you could be detected and watch by sniper team during your efforts and being harras with bombed everyday and just make you more casualties. This strategy and tactics can be modified to adapt on the situation in all jungle territory
@@oktafjakalase451 nice suggestions but that was also what the Generals of the US said. They have no way to deal with multiple tunnels, not saying even pin point all of them. Plus the Vietcong (NLF) will probably use that to their advantage, by luring you to make another tunnel for them. This is costly, time-consuming, and brings back little success. Also American strategy is not to hold the ground, so that plan is not suitable to the US in Vietnam
@@tranthiminhchauam5538
if you make another tunnel you would send people to dig it right? And while dig in, they would exposed and vulnerable in the surface. And if you said you could making a long tunnel so fast, you probably send so many people to dig it because you didn't used excavator or other heavy machine that was so high profile. Now that is the target, The people that you send to make another tunnel, when dig in, would be harass by sniper with coordination of bomber and artillery fire that bombing them while trying to dig the tunnel. So the first destruction of a tunnel is to lure you to send people to repair or to make another tunnel so when you send many people to dig again you would be harass by bombers and artillery.
@@oktafjakalase451 We dig tunnels inside our safe zones, and those tunnels have to be deep enough to not be spotted by your sniper teams and scouts. We aren't stupid to dig a tunnel in the zones where you can see.
Do you know Vietnam?
Dam Krauts
Nice try but Germany wasn't in this war.
@@overcastandhaze Wrong! Thousands of EX-SS Troops fought in Dien Bien Phu. Last battle of the SS....
AfD Stammtisch Priborn Source?
"Did America give up when the Germans bombed us at Pearl Harbor? Toga! Toga!Toga!"
The South Vietnamese Government must have really been bad for the population to choose Communism. But Vietnamese Communism is much different from North Korean Communism. The Vietnamese are happy now. North Korea the people suffer. It's no better than Pol Pot in Cambodia. It's so bizarre that one Communist country goes to war with another Communist government.
The Vietnamese government was invaded and occupied by China for 30 ish years
The South Vietnamese population didn't choose communism. If they did they would have rose up during the Tet Offensive like the North Vietnamese Communists and NLF thought. But they didn't. The South was conquered by the North.
42:46 VC offensive
We were fighting the South Vietnamese, North Vietnamese, Chinese, Russians and our own people at home. Did we we win that war on the battlefield? Yes we did.
Vietnam war was a resounding strategic victory for North Vietnam. Since USA failed to achieve it's goals it was a defeat for the USA.
@@elhombredeoro955 Plus on the battlefield US Forces only fought the NLF and the NVA.
The Americans forces and allies did, YOU didn’t win anything
" Did we we win that war on the battlefield? Yes we did."
That is true. It is also irrelevant.
Correction: the Americans won battles on the ground, not the war. By the time they evacuated, the tactical, operational, and strategic aims of the North were resumed and the South was taken in earnest. Caesar defeated the Briton tribes several times but after he left, they went back to the previous status quo. And while victory in battle goes a long way, overall tactical or operational victories leave the enemy incapable of subsequent offensives, counterattacks, or other operations. It was not the case in Vietnam which, further on, went to score real victories against the Chinese and Cambodians. Winning the war on the ground also means occupation, pacification, and strengthening political resolve.