VDH on Mark Moyar’s latest book on the Vietnam War
[NOTE: My previous post on Moyar’s earlier work, and on the battle among historians about the history of the Vietnam War, is here. For those of you who are unaware of my own history with the Vietnam War – which consists of having had a boyfriend in heavy combat there in 1968-1969 – please see my “A mind is a difficult thing to change” series, especially the many posts included in Part 4. You can also do a search for the word “Vietnam” on this blog.]
These days we know Victor Davis Hanson as a pundit and columnist with an academic background. But that academic background is as military historian. As such he is uniquely positioned to review the second in Mark Moyar’s planned 3-part series on the Vietnam conflict. VDH’s take can be found here.
Some excerpts:
Moyar’s controversial argument in volume one centered on the disastrous decisions of these two administrations that ensured Americans would be sent into an uninviting distant theater of operations in the dangerous neighborhood of both communist China and Russia. Worse, they would be asked to fight under self-imposed limitations of the nuclear age in which their leaders could not achieve victory or perhaps even define it.
Still, Moyar argued that there was nevertheless a chance to achieve a South-Korean-like solution at much less cost, one that was thrown away through a series of American blunders. Most grievous was the American support for the 1963 coup that removed South-Vietnamese strongman president Ngo Dinh Diem and led to his almost immediate assassination‚ even as he was evolving into a viable wartime leader.
Moyar additionally deplored the biased and lockstep reporting of anti-war media, including its icons David “The Best and the Brightest” Halberstam and Neil “A Bright, Shining Lie” Sheehan, who operated on ideological premises far different from reportage in World War II and Korea. Both characteristically exaggerated American shortcomings consistent with their theme that Vietnam was an anti-colonialist war of liberation rather than a Cold War proxy fight over unilateral communist aggression.
I discussed some of that in my previously-linked post on Moyar’s first book on the subject.
More from VDH, on the second book:
Still, Moyar shows that too often the United States lacked a comprehensive strategy of victory and was shackled by unworkable rules of engagement—a now familiar dilemma in the half-century that followed in Afghanistan and Iraq. Most grievously, the military was too often blocked from fully interdicting supplies and manpower of the communists at their sources in North Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. Yet the more enemy men and materiel entered the theater unimpeded, a frustrated administration sought to compensate by single-mindedly increasing the numbers of American soldiers, purportedly in the fashion that had finally brought a stalemated “victory” in Korea.
Moyar’s President Johnson at times seems a tragic Hamlet-like figure. LBJ always claimed that he did not wish initially to send troops to Vietnam. But he was purportedly persuaded to do so by his hawkish Kennedy-leftover advisors—only eventually to be lectured to exit ignominiously by the very former zealots who advised him to escalate in the first place.
Those were “the best and the brightest.”
Also:
There was no real “Viet Cong,” a construct that Moyar shows was not much other than a few thousand communist agents in the South who posed as a large popular resistance movement. In truth, most hostiles in the South of any size were always North Vietnamese infiltrating communist troops and they had almost no popular support among the South Vietnamese.
The media continued to peddle fake news. Despite the claims of journalists and antiwar activists (often the same players), American public opinion supported the war for years. The people did not begin to turn against Vietnam until they tired of futile policies that either could not or would not unleash the military to win the war. Moyar suggests Americans were willing to assume enormous costs in the Cold War, but not in ossified theaters where their sons’ sacrifices were not in the service of victory.
I think that’s been pretty clear for decades to anyone who has studied the war in any depth, rather than following the popular MSM coverage.
Next:
Far from the Tet Offensive being a pivotal communist victory as reported by the media, the 1968 North Vietnamese holiday surprise attacks proved a veritable bloodbath for the North.
I covered that in some depth many years ago, particularly when discussing Peter Braestrup’s 1978 book Big Story (see this post, for example). But how many people know anything about Braestrup’s findings? A very small percentage, would be my guess.
More:
The disconnect between the American media and the realities of the war, evidenced in the North Vietnamese official archives remains striking. Moyar juxtaposes a media assuming the inevitable victory of the North Vietnamese with the communists despairing they were losing the war to the Americans. Each evening at home, as the American public was told we were being systematically killed and crippled by far more adept “jungle fighters,” the communists were mired in depression as they saw their mounting losses as unsustainable and found no other alternative than to go to Paris to negotiate a reprieve. The American military leadership that the media mocked as inept, and the soldiers who were caricatured as drug-ridden, crazed, disobedient, and near insurrectionary were never seen as such by “Charlie” who had to fight them….
An elected Republican hawk Richard Nixon, inheriting a war that already had cost 35,000 dead, was now opposed by the same Democrats who started it. A growing number of frustrated Americans wanted either to win the war or to get out. Nixon would soon take the gloves off, ensuring that a nearly defeated North would be subject to greater bombing pressures—even as the anti-war Left enjoyed complete control of a Congress that was suddenly liable to cut off aid to Saigon, could more easily mobilize against a now oppositional and conservative White House—and the ingredients of the Watergate debacle were on the distant horizon.
The Vietnam War isn’t important only to Boomers who remember it or who fought in it. It is important because – much like January 6th, only on a larger and more deadly scale – the left grabbed hold of the “narrative,” seized it, and ran with it. And that narrative has affected our history ever since.
As a history nerd and someone who spends a lot of time wargaming – and due to my focus on the World Wars I spend at least as much time wargaming the “First Indochina War”/“French” War as I do the US’s own- it is incredibly distressing how much of the narrative we have is essentially regurgitated period era Communist propaganda. As well as how many people uncritically believe the Gulf of Tonkin “incident” (really two) was a false flag (when in reality I am pretty sure even LBJ would’ve been more competent at making an actual false flag op).
Ironically Hanoi itself is becoming much more honest about it due to limited reforms and opening the archives up. But it is horrifying to see how many people drank the narrative of Good Uncle Ho up and will not consider otherwise. Sunk costs probably has something to do with it even where there isn’t overweening bias. And hundreds of thousands of people died.
The Vietnam War is one of the US’s most mismanaged wars by far, but I think it was mostly lost due to the media and lack of political will. And I think the comparisons to Korea are instructive. Of course there were very important differences between the two, starting with the lack of neutral countries flanking the two combatants that could be invaded by the communists as well as the more irregular nature of the fighting, but I think it is a telling example of how much bad leadership and subversion can destroy a nation and war effort. And hundreds of thousands died because of it.
And to see Ken Burns repackage a lie that the CIA intercepted a letter from Ho to Truman when neither the CIA or OSS existed at the alleged time destroyed much of what diminishing respect I still had for him.
Neo:
You nailed it in your last paragraph: the left grabbed the narrative and validated it through their hold on the legacy media. What was a winnable war gradually became unwinnable, and even immoral. And largely with the active support of the geniuses who originally supported it — in fact who got us into it.
How parallel is that situation to what we are doing now in Ukraine, where we are being pushed by holdovers from a previous administration to support a foreign war that is of only marginal concern to us. Jake Sullivan, Antony Blinken, Victoria Nulan, and a handful of others (leftovers from the Biden administration) are pushing us to spend huge sums of money, and gradually inching us toward involvement on the ground in Ukraine. it appears we already have advisors and trainers on the ground — remember that from Viet Nam? Only now the legacy media support the effort.
Being of a certain age I avoided the Draft in 1968. Who wanted to be drafted into the Marines, with a shortened training period and then shipped directly to VietNam. I didn’t, so before I graduated from College in June, 1968 I joined the Navy. I firmly believe that yes the war could have been “won” but constraints on the military precluded that from happening. The US and actually the world learned the wrong lessons from VN.
I did a wonderful Med Cruise, my Brother did not.
Now, VN would welcome the US back in to reopen the bid Naval base in Cam Ran Bay. Have been after us for a few years to do so.
Several years ago my neighbor and I took a tour of Mongolia. While there we came across a Marine LTG who had a group of military from other countries with him. They were doing fact finding, look and see, tour. One of the members was a Col. from NM.
About 4 yr ago my wife and I did a cruise in the region, stopping in Saigon, Hanoi, and Hue. We could not really be mistaken for anything but Americans. People were friendly, and really hated China. It is not the South China Sea but the Eastern Sea.
F:
I see the Ukraine war as very different from the Vietnam war, in nearly every way actually except a sort of domino theory underlying our participation. The Ukraine war features a military invasion of another country, more like the Gulf War, and the invasion is by Russia. The Vietnam war was more of a civil war (with the involvement of other countries such as China) and it featured a huge involvement of US military and enormous casualties for the US. That not only has not happened in Ukraine but I see zero indication that will ever happen, despite your claim. The resemblance between Ukraine and Vietnam is to the final act of Vietnam, after the “Vietnamization” of the war, when we had no fighting forces left there and our support was mostly monetary. Even then, the parallel isn’t good.
The author reviewed, and VDH, and Turtler are right, in my opinion, and in the opinion of my neighbor, the son of a fairly high-ranking South Vietnamese official who was thrown in prison once the North took over. They managed to get out a decade or so later, after much suffering. My neighbor always thanks men he sees wearing “Vietnam vet” caps.
But why was this particular battlefield chosen fletcher knebel thought iran would be the decade long comflict in seven days
I was in the Navy during the Viet Nam war and remember that after Tet, where the NVA got their butts kicked, we joked there was nothing left to shoot at in the south. Why don’t we move north? Instead, we let the NVA regroup and rebuild.
I see the Ukraine war as very different from the Vietnam war, in nearly every way actually except a sort of domino theory underlying our participation.
Actually I’ve heard a number of people claim that if we allow Putin to take Ukraine he will go on to take other former SSRs, including presumably the Baltic states.
Would one need to read the first book to follow the second?
Every time I read and think about Vietnam it’s like picking at a scab. I have a deep psychic wound from my service there. The wound is mostly healed and the intense anger I felt when the Congress stabbed the South Vietnamese in the back, is well under control now.
Four squadron mates and three close friends died there. Two other friends spent many years as POWs. When we cut off the funding for the South, I suddenly realized that our sacrifices had all been for naught. These weak-spined politicians had flushed it all down the toilet. My anger about that was deep seated and took years to come to grips with.
We did our best even though we doubted the tactics and the gradualism that was LBJ’s MO. It never occurred to us that we wouldn’t eventually win and see a successful partition of the country as we had accomplished in Korea. We had the better weapons, we had the money, we had the advantage. What we didn’t have was the intelligence that would have shown that the Commies were not as competent and powerful as LBJ, and later Nixon, seemed to believe.
I knew that LBJ wasn’t taking advice from the Joint Chiefs. Their advice was to blockade Haiphong, mine the harbor, cut the railroads into China and keep them cut. Bombing targets around Habi would have been done early on. Even blowing the Red Rive dam was on the table. Our squadron had been tasked with mining Haiphong Harbor and had plans for the mission, but it wasn’t done until Nixon ordered it in 1972. (My tour was in 1965.)
After the first two months of Rolling Thunder raids on the North we had silenced most of their triple A sites south of the Red River. Vinh and a few other sites were still dangerous, but we thought we had them pretty much on their heels. So, LBJ ordered a bombing pause. When we went back a couple of weeks later, it was as if we had never bombed them. The had established new triple A sites and were beginning to build SAM sites. We wanted to attack the SAM sites and keep them from going operational. Nope. WTF? That’s the way it went.
I imagine there are quite a few Iraq and Afghanistan vets around these days that are dealing with the same kind of anger that I had to deal with. They gave it their best but weren’t allowed to win. And after all the blood and treasure, the pols just pulled the plug. Our politicians and military have learned little from our history. It saddens me that it’s true.
It sets the background from 1950-1964
The narratives set by halberstam mixing up those who had abandoned chuang
Jimmy – see this white paper from the Estonian military. They certainly believe they’d be next on Putin’s list. I don’t know if they are right but it provides some insights to their thinking. https://kaitseministeerium.ee/sites/default/files/myths_and_lessons_0.pdf
Halberstam advanced even though he got it wrong so was sheehan prochnau arnett
Does counter-insurgency warfare work? The usually cited example, the British campaign in Malaysia, doesn’t really count, since the guerrillas were mostly not ethnic Malays and didn’t have strong support from the population. Guerrilla movements may have been defeated in South America, but it was the armies of those countries, not foreign forces, who would have won. Outside forces may win wars, but in the long run insurgents usually manage to outlast foreign occupiers. Native governments that have to call in foreign troops to win wars don’t usually survive once those troops are withdrawn. Recent experiences in Afghanistan don’t contradict that. I’m not sure if the war ISIS does.
Depends the guatemalans had success one might argue so did the salvadorans until 2006 or so when the fmln took power electorally
Malayan insurgents didnt really have a firm sanctuary
Neither did the greek guerillas
MIguel The Greek guerillas had a sanctuary in Yugoslavia and were making good use of it. Then Tito closed it and the thing was over.
You don’t win a war against someone with a sanctuary. See Afghanistan. You just pay the price to stay there, or you don’t.
JJ refers to “weak spined politicians”. Weak spine implies fear, or some variety of it. They had nothing to fear. The more likely motivation is that they wanted us to lose.
@ F
I disagree on both parts. For one, Ukraine is significantly more than “of only marginal concern to us” given their role in the global food supply and the ugly politics that’ll occur.
Secondly: It’s chic to blame “the holdovers from a previous administration” for unpopular wars like Nam and Ukraine, but I don’t think that is true. Certainly, a lot of Camelot groupies and Obamaites helped to deepen our involvement in first Nam and then Ukraine, but I think this misses that they were large acting in concert with a pretty wide consensus. There were very few people who wanted to outright see South Vietnam or Ukraine fall, and that hurt.
That does worry me, and it is why I want to limit our involvement.
Nowhere near as distinctive as you think. We’ve had advisors and trainers on the ground in countless countries and brushfire conflicts without it escalating to open troop commitment. The US advisor units and trainers were a signpost on the road to deeper commitment in Vietnam and other conflicts like Korea, but they aren’t always a road to troops on the ground. Just ask the Greeks, Malays, and Colombians.
My mind mentally adds “For Now.”
And that’s the kicker, isn’t it? How many times have legacy media and MSM largely supported or at least been neutral to a large scale military effort only to turn around and start ankle biting? Helping to cut the legs out?
@neo
Agreed for the most part, though I’d also add in the global proxy war issue.
I think this is underplaying the similarities. By about the late 1950s there were two very distinctive Vietnamese societies that had both plunged into civil war; a strong and increasingly totalitarian Communist regime in the North that would gradually cement itself around Hanoi and work to create a prototypical Total War State for the game of national reunificaiton and dominance over Indochina, and a corrupt and more divided but less outright oppressive authoritarian coalition government in Saigon. The heart of “the Vietnam War” as Americans know it was primarily the North invading the South through various means, and Moyar argues this (I’d argue maybe a bit too much by underselling the die hard communists in the South).
Both suffered from assorted civil wars, with the North fighting the Vietnamese KMT, assorted anti-Communist guerillas, ethnic minorities, and the like that it squashed by the early 1960s. The South had to fight the Viet Minh/Cong, Communist guerillas loyal to the North, and also a host of groups like the BInh Xuyen drug cartel (which made the first attempt to violently seize Saigon after the British and French defeated the Communists there back in the 1940s) and various regional or confessional militias.
Ukraine is nowhere near as chaotic but the Kremlin did work hard to sell the conflict as a “Civil War” between Separatists and “Separatists” on one side and the Ukrainian government on another. And while I’ll be the first to argue many of said “Separatists” were reflagged troops from Russia proper that was nowhere near all of them.
To play Devil’s Advocate Neo, I do think there are parallels and not just to the Final Act of Vietnam. A lot of people who don’t know the “Vietnam War” that well or the wider Indochinese Wars tend to forget that Western troop involvement in the war pivoted a few times, starting with British, Indian, and Free French troops entering Indochina in 1945, first to deal with the Japanese and then to fight the Communists that attacked them, before transitioning to a mostly mixed French-local anti-communist force that defeated the communists in the South but suffered defeat in the North and saw the French withdraw with the North in control of the communists and the South inheriting the kind of coalition anti-communist government they cobbled together. Then you saw a good several years of almost entirely Viet v Viet fighting before Johnson committed troops.
This meant that the sort of faction and headcount profiles for the end of the war and the gap between the French pullout and American entry in force looked very very similar, and they do look rather similar to what we are seeing in Ukraine.
Panic Whores are notoriously unfaithful.
@Abraxas
Honestly yes. And frankly more often than not. The issue is that we tend to gravitate to the spectacular upsets more often than not, in large part because they are spectacular and mostly the ones that don’t fade into the background.
Even with that caveat the British pulled a similar victory in Kenya, against the Mau Mau (who were basically Kikuyu Supremacists and odd Commie-Nazi hybrids). Who had much stronger support from the populace, at least among their ethnic bases (though by no means all of it).
The French did likewise in Southern Indochina (which is one reason South Vietnam was a thing) and Cambodia, as well as Madagascar and militarily had driven the FLN into the Sahara when politics at home broke up. And that’s before I talk about their routing of Islamists in Northern Mali.
The US also doesn’t get half the credit it deserves for Afghanistan.
Mostly due to lack of priority. But Sandino in Nicaragua is a good counterpoint.
Honestly I don’t agree. Frankly even today most insurgents outright fail to outlast foreign occupiers/”foreign occupiers”, especially since those foreign occupiers are rarely acting in isolation. We remember the Viet Cong but not the South Korean Communist Underground that got broken up over the course of the 1940s (the real start of the Korean War being infiltration attacks and attempted revolts with coinciding Southern reprisals) through the 1960s.
The largest guerilla conflict of this century, especially in the Northern Hemisphere, was the assorted post-WWII uprisings and revolts in the “Warsaw Pact” from late WWII to the start of the 1960s, which the Soviets gradually warred down and subjugated. Iraq remains … tolerably intact under the leadership we helped.
Agreed, and the fact that the Soviets largely did the political and administrative side of things better helps.
I’d say so. Proto-ISIS in the form of AQII got all but wrecked in Iraq and had to retreat over the border to Syria where it transformed into ISIS, came back, and eventually was violently pushed back.
There’s a sort of mystique of the guerilla that I kind of find annoying because it is hugely overplayed. Guerillas lose a significant majority of the conflicts they’ve engaged in, full stop. And that’s probably true even in the last century, when the world wars mixed in with the cold war, pressure from both superpowers, and exhaustion leading to decolonization helped provide a number of RELATIVELY easy wins that helped give the image that’s true.
They are a formidable enemy and not to be underestimated, but also not to be overestimated. There’s a reason why by midwar or so after Tet the Viet Cong were all but trashed and the communists had to use Northern Regulars to basically make up the war effort.
@Richard Aubrey
Can’t agree. Even before the Tito-Stalin Split really solidified the Greek Communists were in a bad way, having failed multiple times to take Athens and having steadily lost control of the Peloponnese and Aegean Islands. The loyalists had already defeated them in multiple set piece battles near the border before the split cemented, and while the split clearly helped cripple them on the Northern Frontier I do think they were already well on the way to losing.
And you can win against an enemy with a sanctuary, though it is usually not the most cost effective and is difficult. Just ask Zarqawi where he is and why his successors had to flee over the border to Syria…twice. Likewise Tecumseh’s confederacy in Canada.
I fear that is the case for many. Especially now.
@Ray @JJ
Thank you both for your service. I sympathize a great deal with that.
Same. I didn’t even serve or have any immediate/nuclear family that have served since Korea but I still felt the UTTERLY INCANDESCENT RAGE when I saw how Biden was pulling out of Afghanistan and letting everything collapse. And I’m fundamentally a keyboard warrior/rubbernecker. I can only imagine how those who actually served felt like some of my friends.
I can also sort of sympathize with the “picking at a scab” feeling, though obviously not to the same degree. It is a bad habit of mine, and as a historian and war gamer I often seethe through it. My gaming does not help with that.
I am so very, very, very sorry. And I do believe the world as a whole owes you and yours an apology.
Jimmy and John Fisher: regarding the view from Estonia, I linked to Mark Steyn’s interview with Estonian politician Martin Helme exactly a year ago today on this forum:
https://www.thenewneo.com/2022/02/27/reading-putins-mind/#comment-2610312
Steyn’s interview with Helme is worth watching again. I was in Tallinn at the end of August last year. The mood at that time was surprisingly relaxed, even slightly optimistic. A middle-aged Estonian lawyer told me emphatically that “Russia will lose this war”. I wonder if he’d say the same thing today, with equal certainty. The Estonian Ministry of Defence white paper suggests not.
@ F > “What was a winnable war gradually became unwinnable, and even immoral. And largely with the active support of the geniuses who originally supported it — in fact who got us into it.”
@ Shirehome > “I firmly believe that yes the war could have been “won” but constraints on the military precluded that from happening”
@ Aubrey > “The more likely motivation is that they wanted us to lose.”
Certainly in the later years, the Left (not yet fully in control of the Democrat Party but making inroads) genuinely wanted the US to lose to the Communists, because of ideological unity or whatever reasons (probably more than one).
However, when the Democrats initially got the US into the war in Vietnam (and VDH makes that very clear, although today’s crop of leftists prefer to obfuscate and blame everything on Republicans, because, Nixon; the same way they neglect to mention that the Democrats were in charge of the Southern Secession, and against the Civil Rights Act), the Will to Lose wasn’t in evidence, as far as I can determine.
Okay, so serious question: how committed were the Democrats to defeating the Communists of the North in the beginning?
Did they start with that objective and gradually morph to the other side (as the Left gained more power?), signaling that change with the increasing constraints on the military (who could absolutely have won if allowed to do so, as Moyar and Hanson believe).
Or did they enter the war as some kind of cynical “gotta fool the rubes into thinking we’re not commie pinko fellow travelers, we’ll just punch Uncle Ho a couple of times, he’s a good target, pocket an easy “we tried our best” for patriot credentials, and move on” political ploy — and then discover wars aren’t quite so simple, and they were stuck with actually having to pretend to fight while doing everything possible not to actually beat the Communists?
Possibly a mix of motivations among Democrat leadership?
The Left excels at creating the narrative e.g. Russia hoax, CAGW, Covid etc.
That’s a pretty good question, AesopFan. There’s no doubt in my mind that there were quite a few comm-symps or Marxists in government, academia, and the media even in those days.
My assignment in 1967 was as a recruiter of Navy pilots at Northern California colleges. The anti-war movement was in full swing, and I could see in action what I now realize was a forerunner of today’s politics.
The Marxist movement was gathering adherents. They are out and proud today. The beat goes on. But I have no idea about the motivations of our leaders during that time.
Turtler: “I am so very, very, very sorry. And I do believe the world as a whole owes you and yours an apology.”
Thanks for that. Actually, I was privileged to serve this country with stout-hearted men that had my back. It’s something I value.
@JJ
Indeed. But I imagine you and they – and the world at large – would have been better served with more competent leadership and a less divided public.
I am thinking of getting this series, rather have a paper copy than ebook so looking for that.
I posted this yesterday in the comment section for VDH’s article:
Our senior military leaders were corrupt, incompetent, unimaginative — equally as much, arguably more so, than our civilian leadership.
Both military and civilian leaders were of the vaunted “greatest generation.” And they failed us.
Most of all they failed the young Boomer grunts who fought the enemy so valiantly and effectively, never losing a major battle. A majority draftee army that proved itself time again in the crucible of combat. Betrayed and sold out by their greatest generation leaders.
Yeah, I’m bitter.
Also:
Woulda, coulda, shoulda . . . Bottom line, we lost. Thanks, Greatest Generation.
” A majority draftee army”. A popular belief. One of my friends was in the Army and volunteered for Viet Nam. He said the draftees didn’t want to be there and they didn’t want them there. They didn’t want to command draftees, they wanted regular army. As for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, they told LBJ what he had to do to win the war, and he wouldn’t do it. They said he had to mine Haiphong harbor to prevent resupply, but he was afraid the Russians and Chinese would intervene. They got their bluff in on him.
Jan, 1968 was the Tet offensive.
MLK assassinated in April.
RFK assassinated in June.
George Wallace runs for President and, in 1968, gets 46 electoral college votes, splitting off (mostly racist) Democrat votes so Nixon wins over HHH (my folks’ Dem choice)
So much was happening in the USA, so many changes. So much GREAT music! Mostly say hooray for our side (not really – mostly say the USA was wrong). Lots of the bad gets put onto Nixon and Republicans.
The Vietnam war against USSR supported commies staved off the Killing Fields for almost 20 years of global progress. Nixon, & LBJ, did “win” the war, as seen in the ’73 (Nobel prize generating) Paris Peace Accords. But the FBI got rid of Nixon (Deep Throat #2 guy Mark Felt, with illegal leaks) and the “anti-war” Dems won election in ’74. Dems then chose NOT to fulfill the US agreed to support for S. Vietnam when the commies attacked in ’75, breaking their agreement. We won the war but lost the “peace”, the fake commie peace.
Virtually none of the anti-war folk accept, or even get, blamed for the commie Killing Fields in Cambodia (25% murdered – worse than the Holocaust), nor the hundreds of thousands murdered in Vietnam by the commies.
But Ike’s USA was unwilling to accept a 1956 election in Vietnam when Ho Chi Minh would have won – so it wasn’t quite “fighting for Democracy” as much as fighting against communism. And so many elites then, and even more today, want to fight against imperfect capitalism far more than against the (literally) Imagined communism.
I remain enraged at the mis-information based fake history of Vietnam. Also at Biden’s running away in Afghanistan. Less upset about Iraq.
Full support for weapons, not cash, to Ukraine to fight KGB Putin.
All wars have many similarities to each other that are not the same as peace-time. As long as US body bags are not coming back, I expect continued US support for Ukraine.
Trump is wrong here – world peace only happens when all the world’s countries agree on borders. Tho Crimea remains a huge sticking issue, as will be seen this year, or next, when real peace talks start taking place.
Drone swarms with AI guidance will dominate the sky – the tank is not dead.
https://www.battleswarmblog.com/
Ray:
You are comprehensively wrong in your assessment.
You’re especially wrong in implying — you don’t say it explicitly — that the army, in fact the entire Vietnam-era military, was not a majority draftee army. It most certainly was — the farthest thing imaginable from a volunteer force. This was especially the case with the 11-Bravos in combat unit grunts, Getting drafted into the army was, during the mid-to-late 60s-height of the conflict, was quite likely to result in a one-way ticket to a combat infantry assignment.
By 1968 or thereabouts even the Marines were accepting draftees. Lots of them.
Note that I said that draftees, especially those at the sharp end of the spear, fought well. And they typically detested the “lifers” under whom they often served and whom they often regarded as contemptible careerist dimwits. The regular army was hardly an institution peopled by the cream of young American manhood.
The Joint Chiefs’ concept for fighting and winning the war was to fight a World War II style conflict. They advocated expanding the war beyond the borders in Vietnam and, with the connivance of the civilian leadership, they did so, fighting so-called secret wars in Laos and Cambodia. They did in fact mine Haiphong Harbor (under Nixon). Their determinations were terribly flawed — profoundly anti-Clauswitzian in the sense that they really did not understand that the war in Vietnam, like all wars, was an extension of politics (or policy, depending on which translation of Clausewitz one prefers) and that this fact must be taken into account in order to formulate a viable strategy for winning. Instead, in their arrogance and ignorance, they formulated a battle-centric strategy: win enough battles, convincingly, and kill sufficient numbers of the enemy, and victory will assuredly follow.
Except it didn’t. U.S. ground forces won every major battle in which they were engaged and still contrived to lose the war. Nor were the Joint Chiefs blind to the failure of the battle-centric approach. Which is why they advocated expanding the war. But this was out of the question as it would have provoked big-scale Soviet and Chinese intervention. It was a case Clauswitizan principles asserting their primacy in the conduct of war. Even LBJ, for all his ethical and intellectual flaws, saw that escalation to the extent advocated by his military leaders was recipe for disaster. Which is why he took to micromanaging the war. He didn’t trust his generals and he didn’t think that they were capable of achieving victory. He was right. Unfortunately he was no better than they at crafting a strategy for victory.
Those at top of the U.S. military hierarchy who understood the Clauswitizan politics/policy calculus remained mostly silent on this score. They might have resigned to protest and draw attention to the unfolding fiasco in Southeast Asia, but they didn’t.
In the decades since the end of the Vietnam war there has been a surfeit of explanations for our defeat that resemble, to greater or lesser extent, the Dolchstoßlegende (stab-in-the-back) theories promulgated in Germany to account for its defeat in the First World War. These explanations variously (or all at once) blame America’s civilian leadership, the antiwar movement, the media, etc. for our failure in Vietnam. There is some merit to these complaints. But the real reasons for our defeat are to be found in the in the inability and incompetence of the military leadership.
Thee was no stab in the back. Rather, our military leaders — members, every one of them, of the “Greatest Generation” — simply weren’t up to the task.
I’ve said my piece. IrishOtter49 out.
My father was Strategic Air Command before 7th Air Force for Viet Nam duty. He was in country from summer of ’67 to summer of ’68. He was a Major at the time and was the navigator on an ‘Electric Goon’. Before he returned to the US he was given a test and returned to SAC as a computer guy.
excerpt from an Electric Goon navigator:
“…The navigator was continuously in contact with the specialists using a private intercom. The pilots and engineer did not have access to this intercom since they were not cleared for this portion of the mission. There was a door between the pilot’s compartment and the rest of the aircraft and they were not allowed near us when we were working signals. There was also a normal intercom system for the pilots and navigator to communicate with each other…”.
“The North Vietnamese had employed a very sophisticated radio communication system between their headquarters and all elements of their Army and the Vietcong throughout South Vietnam. … The radio signals we were attempting to find and locate were very low power–only four watts. Their standard radio transmitter was very small. They were human powered by a generator with bicycle pedals pumped by a person lying on his back. “
IrishOtter49:
No, and a sort of modified yes.
See this:
However, a certain percentage (unknown) of those who volunteered only did so to give them more of a choice compared to being drafted. That’s the “modified yes” part.
And draftees were certainly not always sent to combat in Vietnam. But many were. That would be an interesting statistic to learn. I certainly knew a draftee who was sent to combat in Vietnam – my boyfriend.
IrishOtter49: there was a lot of Clausewitzian reflection on command failure after the Vietnam War. The work I remember best is Col. Harry G. Summers’ book entitled “On Strategy: the Vietnam War in Context”. Spent a lot of time on it in grad school. I’ve still got my 1981 Carlisle Barracks/USGPO paperback edition with the olive-green cover. There were other books in this vein (e.g. Gabriel and Savage, “Crisis in Command” [1978]).
Lewis Sorley’s “A Better War” (1999) argues that we were winning the war under Gen. Creighton Abrams. I haven’t read Moyar, so don’t know if or how much he cites Sorley. I’m just glad to see that Moyar finally landed a gig at a university. Well, college.
A major book about the military and political decisions made by LBJ and the Joint Chiefs is “Dereliction of Duty” by H. R. McMaster. He details how LBJ ignored the advice of the Joint Chiefs. He is of the opinion, as am I, that his not listening to the Joint Chiefs was a major mistake.,
The major fear of the U.S. leadership was that China, and the USSR would join the war and set off another World War. It was based on China’s entry into the Korean conflict.
What we didn’t know, or at least our intelligence never uncovered, was that while China and the USSR provided major arms and other support, neither country was in a position to become directly involved.
There’s this: “In 1968, China’s strategic environment changed as Sino-Soviet relations took a decisive turn for the worse. When China was seeking rapprochement with America, “North Vietnam was still locked in a desperate struggle with the Americans,” which created serious implications for Sino-DRV relations.[1]:?195? These factors combined with the Cultural Revolution in China to trigger tension and conflict between Beijing and Hanoi, leading to the end of China’s assistance.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_in_the_Vietnam_War
Since Beijing and the Kremlin were on the outs, the USSR provided most of the aid to North Vietnam from 1968 on. Since most of the military aid had to come by ships, mining Haiphong Harbor and blockading North Vietnam would have starved them of the needed supplies. Additionally, our intelligence always overestimated the economic strength of the USSR. They sent a few pilots and SAM operators to the North but had no stomach for sending large numbers of personnel.
IMO, our fears of the USSR and China getting further involved were overblown. if our intelligence assessments had been better, we would have known that.
Also, IMO, had the Joint Chiefs’ advise been followed, the North would have agreed to a North-South partition agreement before 1968. Rolling Thunder was conducted mostly with limited targeting and major efforts to minimize collateral damage. But it was still effective. From VDH’s report:
“It is also not accurate that Johnson’s “Rolling Thunder” air campaigns were nonsensical indiscriminate area bombings that slaughtered civilians without achieving much utility, in supposed contrast to the deadly Linebacker I and II precision and smart-bombing campaigns that followed in the Nixon Administration. In fact, North Vietnamese archives reveal that even Rolling Thunder terrified the enemy, especially during the abject obliteration of Tet forces surrounding Khe Sanh. Most of the communists’ later diplomacy was designed not to achieve a two-nation settlement but to stop at any cost the devastating bombing. ”
You had to be there to understand how limited the attacks actually were. Much more could have and should have been done.
One thing that I have to mention here is the role that interservice rivalry played in the war. I saw it up close and personal on several occasions. My experiences could fill a book, so I won’t belabor the subject here. Trust me that it played a role in how effective our military efforts were.
I often wonder if the interservice competition for money and glory is still as vigorous as it was back then.
Vietnam was always an unwinanble war (unwinnable in the sense that North Vietnam would ever acquiesce to an independent South Vietnam). I came to that conclusion longe before reading Max Hastings excellent book “Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy”. One of the interesting facts that I never knew was that in North Vietnam 200,000 youg men every year were becoming of military age – we could not kill them all. Eventually Vietnam opened its books and admitted that the combined NVA/VC forces had 1.1 – 1.4 million dead/and or missing – yet they still fought on! Someone once said to those who wanted to “bomb them into the Stone Age (Curtis LeMay?) that they already were in the Stone Age.
@Tom Grey
Well said on the whole. Though that said…
The big issue I see is that the reason Ho would have won the election was because he’d have systematically rigged it in the North (and indeed one of his greatest failures was an attempt to force similar in the South, which was not only out of his control but alienated the Southerners).
@BrooklynBoy
The issue I see is that is not the definition of winning the war. South Korea does not exist today because North Korea really “acquiesces” to its existence, certainly not in any sort of voluntary or willing manner. Pace Clausewitz, war is politics by other means and that means imposing one’s will upon the enemy. If that will is that a nation should be independent when one’s enemy would rather not, so be it.
I found it to be moderately interesting but by no means a genius.
Honestly, we probably could. The communists suffered about 900,000 dead by their own estimates and while not all of those were Northerners most were.
In any case, the issue isn’t killing them all – since the North could never send all of them to battle or even to fields of direct military applicability – but to destroy enough of them and weaken the North that they stop.
Indeed, but see above. And even then they had to take several pauses in the process. That level of loss gives many opportunities to consolidate, shore up defenses, and so on.
Not really. They ranged from early 20th century industrialization to Bronze Age, Qing Style agricultural complexes. And indeed that is one reason the bombings were so inconvenient for them: they knew that they could not sustain the war when literally bombed to the stone age or even to a limited level.
We have seen it is very hard to do long term counterinsurgency specially in a region that had at leasr one sanctuary and resupply point
Take guatemala they fought a really brutal strategy based on french and american tactics the penalty was a bogus genocide charge against rios montt
Miguel cervantes
I worked on a drilling rig in the jungle (Alta Verapaz) when Lucas Garcia was the General-President. The madam of a house of prostitution introduced me to some of his relatives in his home town (Las Casas). Only in Guatamala! Bit of a war zone. Guerillas took over a rig 10-20 miles away for a couple of hours. Several months after I left Guatemala, I was in the Houston office. On the job board: “Due to mortar fire at the air strip, we are considering increasing per diem by $10.” 🙂
The rig hands wanted nothing to do with either of the Gs. (Generals or guerrillas). They told me that some generals/colonels had appropriated some land in the area for themselves- which I read about in NACLA several years later. They also said that the guerrillas had killed some people in town (Raxruja) for being informants/orejas. Given what they told me about the Generals’ land grabs, I tend to believe them on killing informers- though either side could have done it.
Family friends knew Camilo Torres, the Colombian guerrilla-priest. My friends’ mother had dedicated her doctoral thesis to Camilo Torres. As a result, I came to Latin America with the idea that guerillas loved the people and the people loved the guerrillas. In Guatamala and other places, I found out that was not necessarily the case.
Which doesn’t mean the Generals were saints, either.
Neo, re
25% (648,500) of total forces in country [Vietnam] were draftees.
What percentage of that 25 percent were 11-Bravo combat grunts? In other words: were line combat units majority-draftee in their composition?
In any event I stand by my criticism and condemnation of the military leadership, especially those involved in the formulation of strategy and tactics, and in the actual conduct of combat operations. The rank-and-file, draftees and volunteers alike, did the best they could in the circumstances; and their best was generally very good indeed. But, for reasons stated, their efforts counted for nothing, ultimately.
Hubert: Richard Gabriel, coauthor with Robert Savage of Crisis in Command: Mismanagement in the Army is a personal friend, colleague, and sometime collaborator on works of military history. We share the same views on the military of the Vietnam era — and afterward. Check out his book Military Incompetence: Why the American Military Doesn’t Win for additional insights on this subject.
So does Richard Gabriel have a bayonet to sharpen or axe to grind on this subject?
I don’t know, historians can be an argumenative lot.
🙂
It is an oversimplification, but not too much of one, to say that American military strategy in Vietnam was a strategy of attrition conducted by the so-called big battalions using massive firepower to kill the enemy in numbers that would, eventually, fatally weaken Hanoi’s ability to wage war. Enemy losses became the metric for battlefield success and, because it was a war of attrition, would seem to point the way to victory in the war as a whole. The top brass and civilian luminaries such Robert S. MacNamara. one of FDR’s former “Whiz Kids,” convinced themselves that they had it all figured out, and no wonder — were they not truly the Best and the Brightest of their generation? Certainly, they thought so. Better still, they had RAND Corp. charts and graphs and computer models to back their play. How could we lose?
om:
Rick Gabriel has a pronounced aversion to arrogance, incompetence, and vainglory on the part of military leaders. He was a career army officer with a specialty in intelligence who served in Vietnam. Years later, in 1982, he was “sent” to Israel just prior to the start of Operation Peace in Galilee, in the capacity of an advisor to confer with Israeli leaders on the IDF’s pending invasion of Lebanon. In a face-to-face meeting with Ariel Sharon, he strongly advised against military intervention, saying words to the effect that Israel would be sorry if it took this course of action. Subsequently he embedded with the IDF tank column that spearheaded the drive to Beirut.
As events were to prove, Sharon and Israel should have heeded his warning.
IrishOtter49:
Did you read the whole quote? The second part says this: “Draftees accounted for 30.4% (17,725) of combat deaths in Vietnam.” That would help tell you the answer to your question: “What percentage of that 25 percent were 11-Bravo combat grunts? In other words: were line combat units majority-draftee in their composition?”
when they can’t succeed by use of force, they use propaganda or lawfare or every other tactic, that we see being employed against bourgoies elements, in this country, communists are like a plague, we saw the apex of this in 2020, the strategy for so called blm and antifa, you don’t give up rhetorical real estate to the enemy,
I think macarthur had it largely right about Asian wars, which wallace shawn turned into a joke in princess bride, of course he was the fool in the series,
Neo:
Yes I read the whole quote. Of course I did.
The number of draftee KIA does not by any means firmly answer my question concerning the draftee/volunteer composition of line combat units. It is a useful indicator, but no more than that.
Re miguel: I think macarthur had it largely right about Asian wars,
What did he get right?
MacArthur had a mixed record in Asian conflicts.
Historians do live to argue.
Dead men tell no tales, but citations and sources/records sometimes tell.
Neo:
Are you suggesting that 30 percent draftee KIA means that draftees comprised 30 percent of combat units; and that 70 percent volunteer KIA means that volunteers comprised 70 percent of the total?
Because if you are . . . well, I dunno about that.
Neo:
You are right and I am wrong concerning the composition of the Vietnam-era army. Clearly it was not “largely” a draftee army. The figures don’t lie: it was largely a volunteer army.
Because, of course combat soldiers/sailors/airmen volunteers vs draftees had different survival rates, or casualty rates, because? Any actual data?
Never mind. I’m not a historian and don’t have personal stories to share.
George Wallace runs for President and, in 1968, gets 46 electoral college votes, splitting off (mostly racist) Democrat votes so Nixon wins over HHH (my folks’ Dem choice)
Four of the five states won by Wallace had been won by Goldwater in 1964. Two of them had been carried by uncommitted slates of electors in 1960.
IrishOtter49: thanks for the tip about Gabriel’s “Military Incompetence”. I’ll check it out. I noticed that it was published in 1986, after Grenada but before Desert Storm. Did the latter operation change Gabriel’s opinion of the U.S. military?
As I recall, Gabriel and Savage’s “Crisis in Command” was one of the first works that contributed to a sort of cult of the Wehrmacht among U.S. military writers in the post-Vietnam period. Like most trends in historical writing, this one provoked a reaction in the form of Col. Peter Mansoor’s “The G.I. Offensive in Europe: The Triumph of American Infantry Divisions, 1941-1945” (1999). Mansoor argued that the much-maligned U.S. Army infantry divisions in WWII were in fact superior to the best Wehrmacht divisions in combat effectiveness and staying power. A tough argument to refute, since we won. Uncontested air superiority might have had something to do with it as well.
IrishOtter49:
I’m suggesting that, in the absence of data to the contrary, we can conclude that the statistics on combat deaths indicate it’s most likely that the combat units were made of a majority of volunteers with something roughly like a third draftees.
Hubert:
Having to rely on horses because you don’t have oil or a robust automotive industry didn’t do the Germans any good logistically. The Germans were hard pressed to support their forces in North Africa (or in the East for that matter).
I’m suggesting that, in the absence of data to the contrary, we can conclude that the statistics on combat deaths indicate it’s most likely that the combat units were made of a majority of volunteers with something roughly like a third draftees.
I’ve seen articles in the Journal of Political and Military Sociology on studies which attempted to distinguish between different strands of those who enlisted, namely between those whose enlistment was contingent on the alternative being conscription and those whose enlistment was more thoroughly voluntary. IIRC, conscripts accounted for about 35% of those who entered service de novo during the period running from 1965 to 1972 and the two sorts of enlistees 65%. The conscripts went into the Army while those enlisting were distributed between all four services, the Guard and Reserves, the Coast Guard, and the Merchant Marine. As for meeting manpower requirements generally, there were lots of men who re-enlisted and a small flow from activating.Reserves. If I’m not mistaken, about 95% of the manpower deployed to VietNam itself was contributed by the Army and the Marines.
(My data is from half remembered tables in period Statistical Abstracts).
Art Deco
Minor quibble. People stationed elsewhere–Taiwan, for example–could be TDY in country or in Thailand. Usually aviation. That would change the ratio of services in theater.
As to what the generals should have done, the other guy has a vote.
And Ike didn’t have politicians telling him to take it easy on the Germans because it might make them mad.
Conflicts on the asian mainline are proscribed my geopolitics the enemies are not. Wallace and goldwater realized the ostensible reasons were not the actual motivations for these conflicts
Follow grandpa on Facebook as he brings up antiwar slogans from the 60’s in threads about Ukraine and gets a 30 day timeout!
Neo, re I’m suggesting that, in the absence of data to the contrary, we can conclude that the statistics on combat deaths indicate it’s most likely that the combat units were made of a majority of volunteers with something roughly like a third draftees.
You’re quite right. I agree.
Art Deco: Good point. Thanks.
The french were in algeria for 8 years after indochina the brits in aden for 4 years
You might ask patton about that. Look at the officer that rose through the ranks in the last expeditionary phase in south asia and the levant
Hubert, re Did the latter operation [Desert Storm] change Gabriel’s opinion of the U.S. military?
Good question. I’m talking to him later today. I’ll ask.
Miguel: people forget that the French were at war continuously from 1939 (WWII) through 1962 (Algeria). One of the iconic French movies that Huxley recently watched–“The Umbrellas of Cherbourg” (1964)–takes place during the Algerian war.
Om: yup, the German army had chronic transport and POL (petroleum, oils, and lubricants) issues. Despite that, it managed to conquer all of Western Europe, all of Eastern Europe, a big chunk of North Africa, and a big chunk of European Russia. It has been a long time since I read British military historian Richard Overy’s “Why the Allies Won” (1995), but I do remember that he argued, convincingly, that the Allied victory in Europe was a close-run thing.
Despite that, it managed to conquer all of Western Europe, all of Eastern Europe, a big chunk of North Africa, and a big chunk of European Russia.
They had forces in North Africa and the co-operation of Italy and Vichy France. They did not conquer North Africa. They also did not conquer Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, Hungary, Roumania, Bulgaria, or Albania. Their ‘conquest’ of Yugoslavia saddled them with years of counter-partisan warfare. Their ‘conquest’ of northern Italy was an attempt to salvage the situation once the Italian government has switched sides.
WRT WWII I read an interesting account by a historian whose name I can’t recall.
His thesis: That Mussolini’s megalomanic blundering in Yugo and Greece made it necessary for Hitler to send in the Wehrmacht to help get him out of the mess he had made thus causing the planned launch of Barbarossa to be delayed by several weeks, if not almost an entire month.
The rest is…as they say, “history”….
(I’m more than a bit tickled by the idea that the Western world owes a tremendous debt to Mussolini…
OMMV certainly….)
They came quite close until el alemein, how would they have fared in gaza and arabia proper
Close but no hoookah.
The Jewish leadership of Palestine E.I. prepared for Rommel’s breakout and invasion by digging a network, bunkers, caves and shelters in the Carmel range.
Cairo was pretty much evacuated by anyone non-essential.
Not too many expected the British and allied forces to hold.
But they did.
Magnificently…as Montgomery redeemed himself and chased Rommel westward and back to Europe, albeit with some setbacks.
Mussolini did Hitler a favor by forcing Germany to divert to the Balkans in May instead of invading the Soviet Union.
It so happened that the western Soviet Union experienced heavy rains throughout May 1941, turning roads into muddy quagmires and softening the ground in the vast open expanses off European Russia. Had the Wehrmacht invaded in May or early June the German panzer, mechanized, and motorized divisions that spearheaded operation Barbarossa would in very short order have encountered rasputitsa conditions: Russia’s greatest military asset, “General Mud.” The German mobile columns would have swiftly bogged down, stopped literally in their tracks. This would have resulted in the halting of the German blitzkrieg, the onset of static warfare and, quite possibly, a Soviet victory by the end of summer.
By the time the Germans did invade on 22 June 1941 the rains had ceased and the ground had dried out and hardened — perfect blitzkrieg conditions which the Germans exploited to the fullest.
Barry Meislin:
I seem to recall the Americans having something to do with the defeat of Axis forces in North Africa . . . with chasing Rommel back to Europe. . . .
Hubert:
Conquer, for about 5 years (Poland, anyway) at their greatest in areas closest to their borders. Pretty short life, not a good plan to start a war and hope you can grab the resources to win it. Japan got the oil extra. but found they couldn’t move it to their home islands once the USN fixed their torpedoes. Germany never got reliable or adequate supplies if oil for example.
Regarding Richard Overly, working my way through Blood and Ruins, about 1/3 in 3 months so far. Not great, seems apologetic almost for the Germans, hasn’t said boo about the Soviet empire, but is quite critical of Great Britian and other empires. Seems a flawed lens (empires) through which to view the conflict. Maybe, the book, will get better.
Hubert:
Conquer, for about 5 years (Poland, anyway) at their greatest in areas closest to their borders. Pretty short life for their lack of resources.
Regarding Richard Overly, working my way through Blood and Ruins, about 1/3 in 3 months so far. Not great, seems apologetic almost for the Germans, hasn’t said boo about the Soviet empire, but is quite critical of Great Britian and other empires. Seems a flawed lens (empires) through which to view the conflict. Maybe, the book, will get better.
That was a lesson the russians should have learned from their frunze manuals i think the rule seems to be dont invade russian from the west,
And yet, and yet . . . the German’s came within a hair’s breadth of destroying the Soviet state.
It was, as Wellington remarked of Waterloo, a very “near-run thing.”
Even after the Battle of Kursk in 1943 Stalin was secretly putting out peace feelers to Germany, exploring the possibility of a negotiated settlement.
The coulda-woulda-shoulda school of mil hist operates thusly:
Country Green starts out with Strategy A. The other side, Country Yellow, responds with Strategy A sub One. That was the reality.
But Country Green SHOULD have started out with Strategy B, which would defeat Country Yellow’s response…A sub One. Works every time. Country Yellow does not do B sub One.
In Viet Nam, we should not have tried to kill all the bad guys. Instead, we should have hop-scotched all over the map until they got dizzy. Maybe used helicopters or something. That would have fixed it, by golly.
Less snarky, between restricted fire zones, limitations on supporting fires (In OCS, we were told that, three minutes after a call for arty, we would have rounds on the ground where we needed them. Figured that was cool. In the authorized fire class, we were told it might take a hour to get clearance, if ever. Didn’t care for that. So you figured where you were going, got clearance the day before, just in case) and really weird stuff going on wrt the air war up north–see Broughton, “Thud Ridge” and “Going Downtown, The Air War Against Washington and Hanoi–we got a lot of good guys killed to no point.
One intel guy told me that “gradual escalation” was the best way to get young Americans killed yet invented, and that wasn’t a military idea.
Met a captain who’d had a platoon come under fire while in choppers. Asked for gunships into the tree line. Nope. Restricted fire zone. Would prep it with his machine guns. Nope. Restricted fire zone. Twenty-six American 11B–God’s noblest creation–assaulted the tree line yelling BANG! BANG! until the VC fired at them and allowed them to fire back. Twenty were hit.
My father, veteran of a war fought with different rules, asked who was the traitor who put those limits. Johnson and McNamara.
Not sure the foregoing was the result of inadequate Clauswitzitis.
Not to flog a dead thread, but:
Deco: OK, make that most of Western Europe (the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, and Italy/Sicily from 1943-1945–IIRC, the Nazi forces in northern Italy were never defeated in battle but surrendered intact) and most of Eastern Europe, plus Denmark, Norway, and the Balkans, which I forgot to mention but you helpfully did. As for North Africa, well, I think Tunisia, Libya, and half of Egypt qualifies as a “big chunk”, even if most of the fighting took place within a few miles of the Mediterranean coast. Your threshold for determining chunkhood may be higher. And yes, they had help–or “help”–from the Italians and Romanians, as well as the Blue Division (Spain) and Waffen-SS divisions composed of volunteers from occupied countries and territories. Finland was also an ally from 1941-1944.
Om: yes, it would be more accurate to say the Nazis “occupied” or “dominated” rather than “conquered” some of those areas. My point was that, for a largely horse-drawn army with chronic petrol and other logistics problems, they conquered, occupied, or otherwise controlled a pretty big swath of real estate–from the Norwegian Arctic Circle, to the English Channel, to the Caucasus Mountains, to the Tunisian Dorsal. I haven’t read Overy’s latest book on WWII, but the reviews describe it as being organized around the theme of “empire” and focused primarily on the European variety. Not surprising the USSR doesn’t figure prominently in it.
IrishOtter49: thanks for the Gabriel connection–let us know his take on Desert Storm when/if you have a chance.
@Art Deco
This is true, though they were more than capable of strongarming both. In particular they were quick to occupy Tunisia under their own power after it became clear Vichy’s military was collapsing as a result of Torch.
Half-true.
They did not conquer Switzerland in spite of wanting to, mostly because they recognized it would be prohibitively expensive.
They did not conquer Portugal because it was neutral and closely aligned enough (especially due to Spain) that they deemed it counterproductive. Especially with Portuguese soldiers fighting alongside the Germans in the USSR with Salazar’s support.
One can make a pretty good argument they played a role in conquering Spain, due to their support of the Nacionalistas in the Spanish Civil War. Moreover, Franco heavily supported their war effort, to the point where Spanish and Portuguese fitted out the Azul Division.
Hungary they actually did conquer in 1944, as a result of getting word that Horthy was planning to turn his coat and either declare neutrality or join the winning side. However, it spent most of the war (and even the interwar period) as Germany’s staunchest European ally.
Albania is a similar story though even less successful. The Italians conquered it in 1939, just before the invasion of Poland, and the Nazis swept in and conquered it after they fell, but it was always quite weak and they were gradually pushed out.
Romania and Bulgaria were cases where the Nazis might have been able to pull a late war Operation Panzerfaust but were too slow on the draw, and in any case they primarily owed their allegiance voluntarily.
So to sum up:
Not Conquered, Too Tough: Switzerland.
Not Conquered, Allied: Bulgaria, Romania.
Allied, Conquered: Hungary, Albania
Not Conquered, Aligned: Portugal, Spain.
Agreed.
Sure, but they still took over everything North of Naples in a remarkable campaign.
@Barry Meislin
I’ve heard of it, but I think it’s a bit too “pop history.” Certainly the expectation of an upcoming Barbarossa put the Axis under monumental strain and is one reason Hitler ordered preparations to invade the Balkans be conducted on such a quick scale, but the exact day or week I think mattered less than many expect. Especially since one reason for Barbarossa’s timing was the thawing and trying of early Spring. The Axis clearly had expectations they could and might have to delay it further than it already was. And in any case the real problems behind Axis failures in Barbarossa were deeper rooted (poor logistics, underestimating the Soviets, lack of Fall and Winter kit, probably the world’s largest act of insubordination by Halder etc. al. shifting the focus from the South and the conquest of cereals and oil to the center around Moscow, leading to more overstretching and a hungrier Reich to the justifiable-for-once rage of Shicklegruber, actively recruiting for the enemy by mass murder) than the exact timing.
Agreed. I think the issue has less to do with the timing of Barbarossa so much as it drained Axis resources playing bush war in the Balkans and also forcing the Axis to split focus.
@IrishOtter49
Agreed.
Indeed? I’ve never seen ironclad evidence of that, though I have heard accusations. Though I’m leery about it, especially that late in the war. Both the Soviets and Germans needed the foodstuffs and fuel of the Western Soviet Union. So even if Stalin was doing this, I figure they were more of a political move to jockey for position than an actual peace feeler.
@Hubert
This is utter nonsense and not something I’ll sit for.
The Nazi forces in Italy were REPEATEDLY defeated in battle, which is one reason why they continued retreating. And they knew this. With their surrender being prompted by the massive Western Allied breakthroughs in the Spring of 1945 making their position untenable.
It is true there was nowhere near the kind of sudden, pre-mature breakdown in Axis organization we see in the likes of Operation Bagration or Operation Cobra and they retained a fair amount of integrity and even ability to strike back ( a lot of people don’t realize that the Winter of 1944 saw a sister offensive in Northern Italy were the Nazis and Italian Fascists acquitted themselves well against mostly US troops), but they were steadily getting beaten down (admittedly often after hard fighting and great sacrifice).
Agreed.
To be fair Libya was pre-war Italian territory and so they were mostly let in, but beyond that I agree.
Agreed.
Agreed.
Which does nothing to reassure me I’ve read some of his work and it seemed competent, if not overly amazing, but what you and the others mention make me worry.
Looking at eastern Europe, the longest the Germans occupied any place they conquered was about six and a half years. Poland from October 39 to when the Red Army arrived in various portions of it.
The Germans started cheating on the military portions of the Versailles Treaty almost immediately–cadre army, luftwaffe training at Stalin’s invitation in Ukraine, so forth.
Mean time, as Sowell pointed out in Intellectuals and War, the rest of the potential victims convinced themselves nothing was going to happen. See Oxford Union, 1933.
That an anschluss was successful is not a surprise. The thing was so dicey that, in 36, German officers were planning on canning Hitler if the French resisted in the Rhineland, because at that time, Germany had no chance in terms of combat power. But the French weakness encouraged the Germans, including their confidence in Hitler’s reading of their enemies.
The point is not absolute power in German hands, but power relative to their potential enemies. See, just for fun, 1914.
Fast attack, success. The bulk of the following war was putting them back in their box, with them on the defensive with the advantages that provides.
So not a dead thread, then.
Turtler: “This is utter nonsense and not something I’ll sit for.” Wait till you hear my take on the war in Ukraine.
Actually, you express my meaning in one of your next sentences: “It is true there was nowhere near the kind of sudden, pre-mature breakdown in Axis organization we see in the likes of Operation Bagration or Operation Cobra and they retained a fair amount of integrity and even ability to strike back”.
That’s my point. The German forces in northern Italy were not destroyed. They were not broken. They were not wiped out. They were still combat effective. There was no Battle of the Seelow Heights in northern Italy. Under Kesselring, von Senger und Etterlin, von Mackensen, and von Vietinghoff, the Germans conducted an exemplary defensive campaign and were still an effective–even a formidable–fighting force right up until they surrendered on May 2, 1945. Kind of like the German forces in the Courland Pocket on the Eastern front. Not that it made a bit of difference to the end result.
OK, enough armchair general-ing. Got to get ready for movie night at my place. Tonight: “Cool Hand Luke” (1967).
@Hubert
No, not really. The Allied April offensive wiped them out, and it is worth noting that the surrender at Caserta happened a full day before Hitler suicided, and after Army Group B at Stalingrad and the confusingly Also-named/Army-Group-B at the Ruhr it was the third Army Group sized German formation to give up the ghost.
Indeed, frankly the Allied advances into Lombardy did more to destroy Kesselring’s forces than Seelowe did to break the defense of Berlin, since after the Allied breakthrough into Liguria the Axis on that front essentially collapsed while around Centeal Brandenburg the Germans were bitterly holding on in division sized forces and on very rare occasions even counterattacking (mostly notably at Bautzen, where German troops finished routing Communist Polish ones with some Soviet support on the very day Kesselring surrendered).
The idea that Kesselring’s Army Group C wasn’t wiped out or were still combat effective is belied by the timeline as well as by the records of the Axis leadership, including Kesselring himself.
Which is one reason why Mussolini was running for the Austrian border in a Nazi uniform when he was captured and executed on April 28th, why the Germans surrendered the next day well ahead of the other German military fronts in Europe, and why Kesselring himself noted that the Axis lacked the ability to put up organized resistance on the Divisional level for more than a couple days after when it actually gave up.
Some die hards did continue fighting into early May (and then there was a strange case of the Black Prince leading the X-MAS frogmen to the edges of Veneto to fight back invading Communist Yugoslav troops), but the game was well and truly up.
And I feel not acknowledging this does a great disservice to the Allied troops that fought through Italy.
Fair enough. Enjoy. It is a classic.