Vietnam war: how did the north Vietnamese win?

'American planes unleashed more bombs, many of them napalm, on Vietnam between 1965 and the end of 1967 than they had in all theaters of World War II.... By 1970 the total tonnage of bombs dropped by United States planes in Vietnam exceeded the tonnage dropped in all previous wars in human history.'

- James T. Patterson, Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974 (Oxford, 1996), p. 595.

How did the Viet Cong/NVA etc resist this? How did they organise, regroup and keep coming back against such extraordinary power? Would anybody have recommendations for a solid history of the North Vietnamese/anti-US forces during the Vietnam war, a history from their perspective?

There is no shortage of book and online accounts from the US perspective, but I'm finding it much harder to find examinations of the Viet Cong/NVA etc organisation. Some 2 million (at least) North Vietnamese died in the war, but the comparatively much smaller number of 58,000 US soldiers died in it. Yet we rarely hear of the Vietnamese dead.

In particular, how come the North Vietnamese kept coming back? If it really is true that between 1965 and 1968 the US dropped more bombs on Vietnam than all the bombs in WW II, what was motivating the Vietnamese to keep resisting given the huge numbers of Vietnamese who were dying? How many kms of tunnels did the North Vietnamese build across the country, how did they get all the workers to build them and what were conditions like in them?

This article covers some of the topics I'm trying to find out more about:Viet Cong and PAVN strategy, organization and structure

Anybody have any insight into how the North Vietnamese had such motivation and organisation?

FatherTed

They had been through it many times before with the Chinese and the French so for them basically the Americans were no different. A foreign invader in their country. They were relentless and coupled with a lot of US mistakes. Finally apathy set in with the US and they just wanted to get out. You should check out the recent 10 part documentary on PBS here in the US, not sure if it's viewable in Ireland but it is pretty comprehensive from both sides: http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/the-vietnam-war/watch/

Del.Monte

Plus the regime in South Vietnam was rotten at the heart and much of the army only existed on paper - with top officials pocketing the wages - and the only real resistance came from elite army elements in the final days by which time it was far too late.

riffmongous

From a military perspective, I've always enjoyed rewatching the old Battlefield series on Vietnam, I think they are up on YouTube still. There's 12 episodes based on key parts of the conflict, covering the weapons, organisation and plans of both sides.

beauf

Fuaranach wrote: »

...How did the Viet Cong/NVA etc resist this? How did they organise, regroup and keep coming back against such extraordinary power? ....

A lot of the US bombing was ineffective. You bomb a mud road. its still a mud road. you have to remember bombing was very inaccurate. Dropped a lot of bombs is pointless if most of them miss.

Manach

My reckoning, and likely butchering Clausewitz here, was the NV had the greater will to win and sustain themselves in the struggle. I would say, based on the last book on Vietnam I read (A Short History of the Vietnam War by Kerr) that the US Military did mount a credible performance, but that their army was geared towards fighting a European war against the Soviets in Europe, not in that location. As well, the failure of the US Congress to support the Southern Government by cutting off funding at a crucial time emboldened the North to make their final push to capture Saigon.

beauf

I think its a bit simpler than that. They never held ground. So every time they left an area the the VC/NVA were able to move back into their areas. They are repeating the same thing in Afghanistan.

Compare this to WWII where there was a front line and they pushed this forward eliminating the enemy forces as they did so.
Also a big difference was the US wasn't a liberating force. They were an occupying force. They weren't wanted there. The allies basically double crossed the Vietnamese after the 2nd world war. This was just an extension of that.

The North Vietnamese government and the Viet Cong were fighting to reunify Vietnam. They viewed the conflict as a colonial war and a continuation of the First Indochina War against forces from France and later on the United States. The U.S. government viewed its involvement in the war as a way to prevent a communist takeover of South Vietnam. This was part of the domino theory of a wider containment policy, with the stated aim of stopping the spread of communism.[62]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indochina_Wars

Unless you are wanted you won't win. The only way around that is to marry into the local population, so the population becomes merged. As did the Romans, Normans.

pedroeibar1

I saw a couple of episodes of the PBS series mentioned above - it was shown in Ireland, it’s now finished AFAIK, good and quite detailed. Contrary to what some say about not hearing of the Vietcong dead, a visit to Vietnam and a few military museums would change that view very quickly; generally any guided tour soon turns into a diatribe against the Americans.

The US lost in Vietnam because they had neither the understanding nor the will necessary to win. During the war the US strategy changed frequently and the Vietcong adapted, as they had done to the French before that. Any answer really depends on the timeframe, but there is a theme/undercurrent of ‘guerrilla warfare’ that lies beneath the strategy of the Vietcong.
The Vietcong strategy was largely that of Mao Zedong, who was a great strategist (despite his subsequent murderous history), writing for e.g. On Protracted War. It was he who coined “The guerrilla must move amongst the people as a fish swims in the sea.”

The American-led counterinsurgent strategy initially was in two stages, firstly to “drain the sea”- i.e. get rid of the population, thereby destroying the support base and making the guerrilla ‘fish’ identifiable. Area by area they literally destroyed villages, transplanted entire communities and left poisoned rice caches. But of course not all were cleared.
The second stage was to win the ‘hearts and minds’ of the local population. This could never work - how could it when you destroy a village, often kill inhabitants and transplant the remainder? The US Command lost focus, became ineffective, failed to isolate and destroy the enemy, angered -and worse- turned the population against them and actually caused support for the Vietcong to increase. As a result it brought the Vietcong better access to intelligence (more people describing what was happening locally), and material and moral support.

Indiscriminate carpet bombing, (for its 'effectiveness' read up on the tunnels e.g. those at Cu Chi) mistreatment of locals, despising ARVIN allies and no feeling for what should be done resulted in intensifying the communist belief and fervour of Vietcong troops/supporters and it rallied thousands to their cause. (What Uncle Sam and its allies did and continues to do today in the Middle East, Iraq and Afghanistan is doing the very same, and converting many Muslims to fighters for the jihadist cause. )

The average GI grunt was badly educated, from an underclass, had no idea of local conditions, had no interest in what was going on and just wanted to serve his time as easily as possible and go home. The few (very few) senior brass who did understand were changed regularly at political whim or in accordance with whatever idea was flavour of the month. The US had no hope from day 1.

Books - Dispatches by Michael Herr is a seventies classic, as is Tim O’Brien’s If I Die in a Combat Zone.
Robert Mason’s Chickenhawk is a light read, very entertaining and sets a good background.
More serious is A Vietnam War Reader: American and Vietnamese Perspectives by Michael Hunt – I’ve only dipped into it, it gives stories from both sides and what I read was good.

The 1992 movie Dien Bien Phu (in French, don’t know if the CD release has subtitles) is great for the Indochine era, and the writer/ director (Pierre Schoendoerrfer, a French veteran) released a book on it sometime later. Donald Pleasance has a key role as a journalist, is great and has a cool French accent!

beauf

Thud ridge is another classic.

You get a sense that they kept fighting and hitting the same targets then reset back to Base and reset over. One book I read was a pilot in 65-67 then back again a few years later and very little had changed in terms of targets and battles.

robp

pedroeibar1 wrote: »

I saw a couple of episodes of the PBS series mentioned above - it was shown in Ireland, it’s now finished AFAIK, good and quite detailed. Contrary to what some say about not hearing of the Vietcong dead, a visit to Vietnam and a few military museums would change that view very quickly; generally any guided tour soon turns into a diatribe against the Americans.

 The US lost in Vietnam because they had neither the understanding nor the will necessary to win. During the war the US strategy changed frequently and the Vietcong adapted, as they had done to the French before that. Any answer really depends on the timeframe, but there is a theme/undercurrent of ‘guerrilla warfare’ that lies beneath the strategy of the Vietcong.
 The Vietcong strategy was largely that of Mao Zedong, who was a great strategist (despite his subsequent murderous history), writing for  e.g. On Protracted War. It was he who coined “The guerrilla must move amongst the people as a fish swims in the sea.”

 The American-led counterinsurgent strategy initially was in two stages, firstly to “drain the sea”- i.e. get rid of the population, thereby destroying the support base and making the guerrilla ‘fish’ identifiable. Area by area they literally destroyed villages, transplanted entire communities and left poisoned rice caches. But of course not all were cleared.
 The second stage was to win the ‘hearts and minds’ of the local population. This could never work - how could it when you destroy a village, often kill inhabitants and transplant the remainder?  The US Command lost focus, became ineffective, failed to isolate and destroy the enemy, angered -and worse- turned the population against them and actually caused support for the Vietcong to increase. As a result it brought the Vietcong better access to intelligence (more people describing what was happening locally), and material and moral support.

 Indiscriminate carpet bombing,  (for its 'effectiveness' read up on the tunnels e.g. those at Cu Chi) mistreatment of locals, despising ARVIN allies and no feeling for what should be done resulted in intensifying the communist belief and fervour of Vietcong troops/supporters and it  rallied thousands to their cause. (What Uncle Sam and its allies did and continues to do today in the Middle East, Iraq and Afghanistan is doing the very same, and converting many Muslims to fighters for the jihadist  cause. )

I dont think we can attribute the NV victory to American warcrimes, as the North Vietnamese  committed far more against the Vietnamese people. The question is, how did they win despite immense brutality. Or did they really win hearts.

BalcombeSt4

There was a mixture of different factors.

The Americans just seen them as another Communist foe when really alot of the Vietnamese guerillas seen Communism as a means to end for the liberation of their country. People in the West might not understand but Communism was a very attractive idea to dirt poor farmers & peasents who just want a bit of extra land and larger bowls of rice.

The Americans usually paint it as North Vietnam vs South Vietnam & America when in reality it was most of Vietnam vs America.

The guerrillas used the Maoist military doctrine of People's Protracted War, which worked well for them. Wiki describes it as "The basic concept behind People's War is to maintain the support of the population and draw the enemy deep into the countryside (stretching their supply lines) where the population will bleed them dry through a mix of mobile & guerrilla warfare."

The Tet Offensive was a great success. Even tho it was a military failure it achieved all its political aims, and all war is governed by political objectives not enemy body counts.

And it was the first real TV war as well and images of little children running out of their homes with their skin burning of them after a napam attack is still shocking to this day. Plus you had things like the Mi Lai massacre which was basically like the Nazi massacre of Oradour-sur-Glaneand, thats not going to win you support.

pedroeibar1

robp wrote: »

I dont think we can attribute the NV victory to American warcrimes, as the North Vietnamese committed far more against the Vietnamese people. The question is, how did they win despite immense brutality. Or did they really win hearts.

I did not use the word warcrimes. I agree the NV were more ruthless, wiping out about a million of those they viewed as against them.

Militarily, it was a matter of body count. The US were and are reluctant fighters. They had WW2 and Korea in the two decades before Vietnam. That influenced their strategy, just as Vietnam had a huge impact on their strategy in the first Iraqi war. (Note) The NV leadership valued the lives of their troops (and others) at a much lower level then the US did theirs. The NV troops were highly skilled and motivated e.g. even as late as 1978 and outnumbered 3 to 1 they contained a Chinese incursion and generally are accepted as victors of that conflict.

Politically the North built on indoctrination, the government of the South was increasingly seen as corrupt (it was) and in the pockets of the French / Americans, so was regarded as no different to the Colonials. The general population wanted independence, in the South it was worn down – Indochina had been ceded to Japan by Vichy in 1940 so there was anti-Japanese/Colonial warfare since then. About 4 million were killed, one tenth of the population about one thirds of that number murdered, mostly by the NVA. These two tables give background data to the death count
Here and Here

The anti-communist population saw the end in sight once US aid was reduced and it was a capitulation of will in the South, not a winning of minds by the North.

(Note) This was why Bush Snr. did not finish the job properly. The allies had been expecting very heavy casualties, as indicated by the enormous field hospital structure; when this did not happen and the Iraqi’s fell back to Baghdad, the American led forces stopped short and then encouraged the Iraqis to rise up against Sadam. They did, received no support so they had chance and were annihilated.

beauf

"Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it."


Was never truer...

BalcombeSt4

pedroeibar1 wrote: »

I did not use the word warcrimes. I agree the NV were more ruthless, wiping out about a million of those they viewed as against them.

Militarily, it was a matter of body count. The US were and are reluctant fighters. They had WW2 and Korea in the two decades before Vietnam. That influenced their strategy, just as Vietnam had a huge impact on their strategy in the first Iraqi war. (Note) The NV leadership valued the lives of their troops (and others) at a much lower level then the US did theirs. The NV troops were highly skilled and motivated e.g. even as late as 1978 and outnumbered 3 to 1 they contained a Chinese incursion and generally are accepted as victors of that conflict.

Politically the North built on indoctrination, the government of the South was increasingly seen as corrupt (it was) and in the pockets of the French / Americans, so was regarded as no different to the Colonials. The general population wanted independence, in the South it was worn down – Indochina had been ceded to Japan by Vichy in 1940 so there was anti-Japanese/Colonial warfare since then. About 4 million were killed, one tenth of the population about one thirds of that number murdered, mostly by the NVA. These two tables give background data to the death count
Here and Here

The anti-communist population saw the end in sight once US aid was reduced and it was a capitulation of will in the South, not a winning of minds by the North.

(Note) This was why Bush Snr. did not finish the job properly. The allies had been expecting very heavy casualties, as indicated by the enormous field hospital structure; when this did not happen and the Iraqi’s fell back to Baghdad, the American led forces stopped short and then encouraged the Iraqis to rise up against Sadam. They did, received no support so they had chance and were annihilated.

Is that a sick joke?

Children in Vietnam are still being born with birth defects 50 years on thanks to Agent Orange.

If they were reluctant it's because they knew they shouldn't have been there in the first place. We even know LBJ the ****ing President who was sending young people to an early grave taught they shouldn't have been there from the taped recordings he had with McNamara.

America attacked South Vietnam, no latter than 1962, thats when JFK sent the US air force to start bombing Sout Vietnamese villages & authorized the use of napalm attacks.

Deputy Secretary of Defense Roswell Gilpatric recommended to General Lyman Lemnitzer, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that for military operations involving Americans in South Vietnam The Pentagon develop a "suitable cover story, or stories, a public explanation, a statement of no comment...for approval of the Secretary of Defense."<

That was on the 4 January 1962, six days later they started praying the South Vietnamese landscape with Agent Orange, this was Operation ranch Hand which was an attempt to destroy as many crops as possible & force the rural populations into the cities.

Nice article here on the behaviour on US troops. https://www.opednews.com/articles/Kill-Anything-That-Moves-by-Chris-Hedges-130313-576.html

"One marine remembered finding a Vietnamese woman who had been shot and wounded," Turse writes. "Severely injured, she begged for water. Instead, her clothes were ripped off. She was stabbed in both breasts, then forced into a spread-eagle position, after which the handle of an entrenching tool--essentially a short-handled shovel--was thrust up her vagina. Other women were violated with objects ranging from soda bottles to rifles."

Yeah, there was a very good reason for the Vietnamese population to hate the Americans.

Del.Monte

^^^ Great incisive post - it was all the wicked Yankees fault - the North Vietnamese and the Vietcong were community workers. Vietnam was horrible but it was just one of many surrogate wars between the two big ideologies - after WW.II. it was East against West with countries in South East Asia, Africa, South America caught in the middle. A no-win scenario for all concerned. War is ****.

pedroeibar1

Del.Monte wrote: »

^^^ Great incisive post - it was all the wicked Yankees fault - the North Vietnamese and the Vietcong were community workers. Vietnam was horrible but it was just one of many surrogate wars between the two big ideologies - after WW.II. it was East against West with countries in South East Asia, Africa, South America caught in the middle. A no-win scenario for all concerned. War is ****.

Indeed. I did not bother to respond to either of Balcomb's posts as they are embarrassingly ill-informed, the latter a plain rant. I never wrote that the US forces did not commit atrocities, I wrote that the NV were more ruthless. That is fact.
His political leanings guide his views so he either refuses to accept or is unaware of the massacre by the VC of 6,000 civilians in Hué.

Or the deliberate shelling by the VC of fleeing civilians on the Quang Tri Highway? That too killed thousands and it’s still known by the whispered name of ‘the Highway of Terror’.

Never heard of the Dak Son Massacre when Viet Cong systematically killed a couple of hundred women and children with flame-throwers and grenades in a "vengeance" attack on a small village.

Unaware that at one period the VC commissars had murder quotas, e.g. the guy in charge of an area near Danang in 1970 was told to arrange the killing of 1,500 people he deemed to be ‘government tyrants’.

Or their atrocities to the Hill Tribes e.g. Hmong. Or the execution of thousands, those viewed as collaborators after the Sino War purely because they lived in the border area.
Or the ‘re-education’ of anyone who had risen above peasant status and was thus ‘an enemy of the people’.
Or their use of infantry as probing tactics.

Instead, poor old Balcombe focusses (in unnecessary graphic detail) on a few war crimes by US troops.

BalcombeSt4

Del.Monte wrote: »

^^^ Great incisive post - it was all the wicked Yankees fault - the North Vietnamese and the Vietcong were community workers. Vietnam was horrible but it was just one of many surrogate wars between the two big ideologies - after WW.II. it was East against West with countries in South East Asia, Africa, South America caught in the middle. A no-win scenario for all concerned. War is ****.

Thanks and I agree and so does Noam Chomsky think it was all Americas fault .

Well, some might have been I'm not sure what their jobs were before or after the war.