Annotated Transcript of Episode 1
ANNOTATED TRANSCRIPT BURNS EPISODE 1 Déjà Vu (1858-1961)
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Contents
Minutes 1-10
1
00:00:01,566 --> 00:00:03,000 ANNOUNCER: MAJOR SUPPORT FOR "THE VIETNAM WAR"
2
00:00:03,000 --> 00:00:06,500 WAS PROVIDED BY MEMBERS OF THE BETTER ANGELS SOCIETY,
3
00:00:06,500 --> 00:00:10,466 INCLUDING JONATHAN AND JEANNIE LAVINE,
4
00:00:10,466 --> 00:00:13,366 DIANE AND HAL BRIERLEY,
5
00:00:13,366 --> 00:00:15,766 AMY AND DAVID ABRAMS,
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00:00:15,766 --> 00:00:18,266 JOHN AND CATHERINE DEBS,
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00:00:18,266 --> 00:00:21,166 THE FULLERTON FAMILY CHARITABLE FUND,
8
00:00:21,166 --> 00:00:23,233 THE MONTRONE FAMILY,
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00:00:23,233 --> 00:00:25,566 LYNDA AND STEWART RESNICK,
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00:00:25,566 --> 00:00:28,333 THE PERRY AND DONNA GOLKIN FAMILY FOUNDATION,
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00:00:28,333 --> 00:00:29,333 THE LYNCH FOUNDATION,
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00:00:29,333 --> 00:00:32,200 THE ROGER AND ROSEMARY ENRICO FOUNDATION,
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00:00:32,200 --> 00:00:35,633 AND BY THESE ADDITIONAL FUNDERS.
14
00:00:35,633 --> 00:00:37,533 MAJOR FUNDING WAS ALSO PROVIDED
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00:00:37,533 --> 00:00:39,266 BY DAVID H. KOCH...
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00:00:41,566 --> 00:00:43,766 THE BLAVATNIK FAMILY FOUNDATION...
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00:00:46,100 --> 00:00:48,533 THE PARK FOUNDATION,
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00:00:48,533 --> 00:00:50,700 THE NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES,
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00:00:50,700 --> 00:00:52,900 THE PEW CHARITABLE TRUSTS,
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00:00:52,900 --> 00:00:55,566 THE JOHN S. AND JAMES L. KNIGHT FOUNDATION,
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00:00:55,566 --> 00:00:58,333 THE ANDREW W. MELLON FOUNDATION,
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00:00:58,333 --> 00:01:01,000 THE ARTHUR VINING DAVIS FOUNDATIONS,
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00:01:01,000 --> 00:01:03,200 THE FORD FOUNDATION JUSTFILMS,
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00:01:03,200 --> 00:01:04,400 BY THE CORPORATION
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00:01:04,400 --> 00:01:05,633 FOR PUBLIC BROADCASTING,
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00:01:05,633 --> 00:01:07,600 AND BY VIEWERS LIKE YOU.
27
00:01:07,600 --> 00:01:08,733 THANK YOU.
28
00:01:13,266 --> 00:01:15,400 ANNOUNCER: BANK OF AMERICA PROUDLY SUPPORTS
29
00:01:15,400 --> 00:01:20,300 KEN BURNS' AND LYNN NOVICK'S FILM "THE VIETNAM WAR"
30
00:01:20,300 --> 00:01:22,700 BECAUSE FOSTERING DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES
31
00:01:22,700 --> 00:01:25,300 AND CIVIL DISCOURSE AROUND IMPORTANT ISSUES
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00:01:25,300 --> 00:01:27,600 FURTHERS PROGRESS, EQUALITY,
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00:01:27,600 --> 00:01:29,600 AND A MORE CONNECTED SOCIETY.
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00:01:34,066 --> 00:01:38,100 GO TO BANKOFAMERICA.COM/ BETTERCONNECTED TO LEARN MORE.
35
00:01:44,466 --> 00:01:50,233 (helicopter blades beating, growing louder)
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00:01:54,300 --> 00:01:56,000 (helicopter blades stop beating)
37
00:01:56,900 --> 00:01:58,500 (wind whipping, bullet whizzing)
38
00:02:02,033 --> 00:02:03,133 (gunfire)
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00:02:03,133 --> 00:02:04,833 (explosion)
40
00:02:06,400 --> 00:02:08,266 (helicopter blades beating, indistinct voices)
41
00:02:10,866 --> 00:02:13,166 (gunfire, distorted screaming)
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00:02:15,666 --> 00:02:18,500 (distorted Marine Corps Hymn playing)
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00:02:19,666 --> 00:02:21,133 (electronic hum)
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00:02:23,533 --> 00:02:31,600 (Marine Corps Hymn playing, crowd cheering)
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00:02:32,766 --> 00:02:35,633 KARL MARLANTES Marine 1969 Coming home from Vietnam 46
00:02:35,633 --> 00:02:39,500 was close to as traumatic as the war itself
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00:02:41,300 --> 00:02:44,433 For years nobody talked about Vietnam
48
00:02:44,433 --> 00:02:45,666 (gunfire)
49
00:02:45,666 --> 00:02:47,366 (marching band playing)
50
00:02:47,366 --> 00:02:49,066 We were friends with a young couple
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00:02:49,066 --> 00:02:53,733 and it was only after 12 years that the two wives were talking
52
00:02:53,733 --> 00:02:57,266 Found out that we both had been Marines in Vietnam.
53
00:02:57,266 --> 00:02:59,866 Never said a word about it.
54
00:02:59,866 --> 00:03:01,666 Never mentioned it.
55
00:03:01,666 --> 00:03:03,866 And the whole country was like that.
56
00:03:05,400 --> 00:03:08,433 It was so divisive.
57
00:03:08,433 --> 00:03:13,400 And it was like living in a family with an alcoholic father
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00:03:13,400 --> 00:03:15,800 (whispering) Shh, we don’t talk about that.
59
00:03:15,800 --> 00:03:18,033 (gunfire)
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00:03:18,033 --> 00:03:20,133 Our country did that with Vietnam.
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00:03:20,133 --> 00:03:23,000 It’s only been very recently that, I think,
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00:03:23,000 --> 00:03:25,766 That, you know the baby boomers are finally starting to say,
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00:03:25,766 --> 00:03:27,133 “What happened?
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00:03:27,133 --> 00:03:28,500 What happened?”
65
00:03:28,500 --> 00:03:31,866 (“A Familiar Taste” by Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross playing)
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00:03:38,266 --> 00:03:40,200 HENRY KISSINGER What we need now in this country
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00:03:40,200 --> 00:03:44,633 is to heal the wounds and to put Vietnam behind us.
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00:03:44,633 --> 00:03:47,833 (“A Familiar Taste” continues)
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00:03:56,600 --> 00:03:58,033 RICHARD NIXON The killing
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00:03:58,033 --> 00:03:59,900 in this tragic war must stop.
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00:04:02,100 --> 00:04:03,433 (“A Familiar Taste” continues)
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00:04:10,566 --> 00:04:13,300 LYNDON JOHNSON General Westmoreland’s strategy
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00:04:13,300 --> 00:04:15,033 is producing results.
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00:04:15,033 --> 00:04:19,333 The enemy is no longer closer to victory.
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00:04:21,266 --> 00:04:23,400 (“A Familiar Taste” continues)
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00:04:26,666 --> 00:04:28,833 ROBERT McNAMARA No matter how you measure it
77
00:04:28,833 --> 00:04:31,600 We’re better off than we thought we would be at this time.
78
00:04:36,966 --> 00:04:39,766 REPORTER: You have been less than candid
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00:04:39,766 --> 00:04:43,533 as to how deeply we are involved in Vietnam.
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00:04:43,533 --> 00:04:45,100 We have increased our assistance
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00:04:45,100 --> 00:04:47,300 to the government, its logistics.
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00:04:47,300 --> 00:04:49,666 We have not sent combat troops there.
83
00:04:49,666 --> 00:04:53,566 DWIGHT EISENHOWER: You have a row of dominoes set up
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00:04:53,566 --> 00:04:55,700 and you knock over the first one
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00:04:55,700 --> 00:04:57,566 and the last one, certainly it will go over.
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00:04:57,566 --> 00:04:59,833 HARRY TRUMAN: If aggression is successful in Korea,[1]
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00:04:59,833 --> 00:05:02,533 we can expect it to spread throughout Asia and Europe
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00:05:02,533 --> 00:05:03,800 and to this hemisphere.
89
00:05:06,133 --> 00:05:09,933 (“A Familiar Taste” continues)
90
00:05:19,733 --> 00:05:22,633 (“A Hard Rain is A-Gonna Fall” by Bob Dylan playing)
91
00:05:25,933 --> 00:05:32,433 ♪Oh where have you been, my blue-eyed son?♪
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00:05:32,433 --> 00:05:36,700 ♪And where have you been my darling young one?♪
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00:05:38,533 --> 00:05:42,966 MAX CLELAND: Viktor Frankl who survived the death camps in World War II,
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00:05:42,966 --> 00:05:46,033 wrote a book called Man's Search for Meaning.
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00:05:46,033 --> 00:05:48,433 DYLAN: ♪I’ve walked and I’ve crawled on six. . .♪
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00:05:48,433 --> 00:05:51,100 CLELAND: You know. “To live is to suffer.
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00:05:51,100 --> 00:05:55,700 To survive is to find meaning in suffering.”
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00:05:55,700 --> 00:06:00,233 And for those of us who suffered because of Vietnam,
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00:06:00,233 --> 00:06:04,733 That’s been our quest ever since.
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00:06:04,733 --> 00:06:11,333 DYLAN: ♪And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard♪
101
00:06:11,333 --> 00:06:13,400 ♪it’s a hard♪
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00:06:13,400 --> 00:06:18,033 ♪It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall♪
103
00:06:18,033 --> 00:06:22,100 NARRATOR: America s involvement in Vietnam began in secrecy.
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00:06:22,100 --> 00:06:27,100 It ended, 30 years later, in failure,[2]
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00:06:27,100 --> 00:06:30,333 witnessed by the entire world.
106
00:06:30,333 --> 00:06:33,400 DYLAN: ♪And what did you see, my darling young one?♪
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00:06:33,400 --> 00:06:36,600 NARRATOR: It was begun in good faith by decent people
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00:06:36,600 --> 00:06:39,333 out of fateful misunderstandings,
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00:06:39,333 --> 00:06:43,733 American overconfidence, and Cold War miscalculation.
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00:06:43,733 --> 00:06:49,166 And it was prolonged because it seemed easier to muddle through
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00:06:49,166 --> 00:06:52,300 than admit that it had been caused by tragic decisions,
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00:06:52,300 --> 00:06:55,433 made by five American presidents,
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00:06:55,433 --> 00:06:58,233 belonging to both political parties.
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00:06:58,233 --> 00:07:00,433 DYLAN: ♪I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleeding♪
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00:07:00,433 --> 00:07:02,300 NARRATOR: Before the war was over,
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00:07:02,300 --> 00:07:06,133 more than 58,000 Americans would be dead.
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00:07:06,133 --> 00:07:11,100 At least 250,000 South Vietnamese troops died
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00:07:11,100 --> 00:07:13,633 in the conflict, as well.
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00:07:13,633 --> 00:07:17,733 So did over a million North Vietnamese soldiers
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00:07:17,733 --> 00:07:19,100 and Viet Cong guerrillas,
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00:07:19,100 --> 00:07:22,366 DYLAN: ♪Sharp swords in the hands of young children♪
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00:07:22,366 --> 00:07:24,600 ♪And it’s a hard. . .
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00:07:24,600 --> 00:07:27,733 NARRATOR: Two million civilians, north and south,
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00:07:27,733 --> 00:07:29,633 are thought to have perished,
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00:07:29,633 --> 00:07:33,233 as well as tens of thousands more in the neighboring states
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00:07:33,233 --> 00:07:35,133 of Laos and Cambodia.
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00:07:35,133 --> 00:07:37,666 (helicopter blades whirring)
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00:07:37,666 --> 00:07:41,900 For many Vietnamese, it was a brutal civil war;
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00:07:41,900 --> 00:07:45,433 for others, the bloody climactic chapter
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00:07:45,433 --> 00:07:48,966 in a century old struggle for independence.
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00:07:48,966 --> 00:07:54,066 DYLAN: ♪And what you do now, my blue-eyed son?♪
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00:07:54,066 --> 00:07:56,500 NARRATOR: For those Americans who fought in it,
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00:07:56,500 --> 00:07:59,466 and for those who fought against it back home,
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00:07:59,466 --> 00:08:03,066 as well as for those who merely glimpsed it on the nightly news,
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00:08:03,066 --> 00:08:06,933 the Vietnam War was a decade of agony,
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00:08:06,933 --> 00:08:12,500 the most divisive period since the Civil War.
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00:08:12,500 --> 00:08:17,466 Vietnam seemed to call everything into question --
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00:08:17,466 --> 00:08:22,100 the value of honor and gallantry;
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00:08:22,100 --> 00:08:26,766 the qualities of cruelty and mercy;
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00:08:26,766 --> 00:08:31,400 the candor of the American government;
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00:08:31,400 --> 00:08:35,166 and what it means to be a patriot.
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00:08:36,833 --> 00:08:41,566 DYLAN: ♪Where hunger is ugly, where the souls are forgotten♪
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00:08:41,566 --> 00:08:43,766 NARRATOR: And those who lived through it
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00:08:43,766 --> 00:08:46,766 have never been able to erase its memory,
145
00:08:46,766 --> 00:08:50,000 have never stopped arguing about what really happened,[3]
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00:08:50,000 --> 00:08:55,666 why everything went so badly wrong, who was to blame,
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00:08:55,666 --> 00:08:58,366 and whether it was a worth it.
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00:09:02,033 --> 00:09:04,100 BAO NINH: It has been forty years. Even the Vietnamese veterans, we avoid talking about the war. People sing about victory, about liberation. They’re wrong. Who won and who lost is not a question. In war, no one wins or loses. There is only destruction. Only those who have never fought, like to argue about who won or lost.
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00:09:41,733 --> 00:09:43,766 DYLAN: ♪And it’s a hard
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00:09:43,766 --> 00:09:48,733 ♪It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall♪
151
00:09:54,300 --> 00:09:55,833 (song ends)
EPISODE ONE Déjà Vu (1854-1961)
152
00:10:00,433 --> 00:10:05,633 (Silk Road Ensemble playing “People and Fighters Unite”)
Minutes 10-20
153
00:10:24,766 --> 00:10:28,066 BAO NINH: The French attacked and colonized our country in the middle of the 19th century. The invasion was bloody and cruel.
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00:10:35,566 --> 00:10:39,033 NARRATOR: The French conquest of Indochina began with an attack
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00:10:39,033 --> 00:10:44,666 on the ancient Vietnamese port of Danang in 1858. [note picture]
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00:10:44,666 --> 00:10:48,266 It took 50 years to lay claim to the whole region--
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00:10:48,266 --> 00:10:52,933 Laos and Cambodia, as well as the 1,200-mile-long area
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00:10:52,933 --> 00:10:56,200 that would come to be called Vietnam.
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00:10:58,866 --> 00:11:02,166 All of this was ruled By a French governor-general
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00:11:02,166 --> 00:11:04,466 from his palace in Hanoi.
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00:11:06,100 --> 00:11:09,533 The French largely lived on plantation estates
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00:11:09,533 --> 00:11:13,866 and in cities, like Saigon, made to look as much as possible
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00:11:13,866 --> 00:11:16,033 like those at home.
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00:11:17,300 --> 00:11:20,633 Most did not even bother to learn the language
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00:11:20,633 --> 00:11:22,533 spoken by their subjects.
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00:11:22,533 --> 00:11:26,333 instead they installed a series of puppet emperors
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00:11:26,333 --> 00:11:27,933 and employed a network
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00:11:27,933 --> 00:11:31,866 of French-speaking Vietnamese officials – mandarins --
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00:11:31,866 --> 00:11:34,066 willing to carry out their wishes.
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00:11:37,400 --> 00:11:41,866 The French put their subjects to work building roads and canals,
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00:11:41,866 --> 00:11:44,433 railroads and bridges.
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00:11:45,766 --> 00:11:48,133 BAO NINH: Of course the French were proud of their civilization, Which they boasted of bringing to the Vietnamese people. Of course, the Vietnamese people didn’t need French civilization. What they needed was independence.
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00:12:00,533 --> 00:12:03,500 NARRATOR: The Vietnamese people did not take easily
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00:12:03,500 --> 00:12:05,033 to French occupation,
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00:12:05,033 --> 00:12:07,900 just as they had fought against earlier invasions
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00:12:07,900 --> 00:12:09,533 by the Chinese.
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00:12:09,533 --> 00:12:13,733 By the early 20th century, nationalism was on the rise,
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00:12:13,733 --> 00:12:19,200 But anyone who dared resist colonial rule risked exile,
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00:12:19,200 --> 00:12:21,700 prison or the guillotine.
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00:12:24,133 --> 00:12:25,800 TRAN NGOC TOAN: S. Vietnamese Marines (speaking English) They control everything. The resources from our country. But mostly they took our independence And our freedom. When I was a small child, I got Nationalism already from school. I always looked at the French as my enemy. My enemy.
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00:12:52,566 --> 00:12:56,333 LAM QUANG THI: S. Vietnamese Army To the French, the Vietnamese were an inferior people. In Vietnam, there was no “égalité.” It was why we hated them so much.
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00:13:11,233 --> 00:13:13,233 (helicopter blades whirring)
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00:13:15,533 --> 00:13:18,833 JOHN MUSGRAVE: Marine 1967 My hatred for them was pure.
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00:13:18,833 --> 00:13:20,766 Pure
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00:13:20,766 --> 00:13:23,966 I hated them so much
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00:13:23,966 --> 00:13:25,533 And I was so scared of them.
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00:13:25,533 --> 00:13:27,566 (gunfire)
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00:13:29,866 --> 00:13:32,166 Boy, I was terrified of them.
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00:13:40,533 --> 00:13:43,566 And the scareder I got, the more I hated them.
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00:13:46,400 --> 00:13:49,800 I was an 18-year-old Marine rifleman with the ink still wet
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00:13:49,800 --> 00:13:51,966 on my high school diploma.
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00:13:51,966 --> 00:13:54,400 I didn’t want to shame myself in front of my buddies.
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00:13:56,466 --> 00:13:58,400 But I was so scared.
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00:13:58,400 --> 00:14:01,433 I felt like I was hanging onto my honor by my fingernails
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00:14:01,433 --> 00:14:03,133 the whole time I was there.
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00:14:08,200 --> 00:14:11,333 (“La Marsellaise” playing)
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00:14:13,700 --> 00:14:16,000 (crowd cheering)
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00:14:17,866 --> 00:14:20,033 NARRATOR: In the spring of 1919,
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00:14:20,033 --> 00:14:23,366 as the victorious Allied Powers met in Paris
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00:14:23,366 --> 00:14:27,166 to rebuild a world shattered by the Great War,
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00:14:27,166 --> 00:14:30,966 President Woodrow Wilson headed the American delegation
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00:14:30,966 --> 00:14:33,433 housed in the Hotel Crillon.
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00:14:36,233 --> 00:14:40,200 One day, a tall, slender, 29-year-old man
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00:14:40,200 --> 00:14:42,633 appeared with a petition for the president.
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00:14:42,633 --> 00:14:46,833 he and other Vietnamese nationalists had written.
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00:14:46,833 --> 00:14:50,200 Inspired by Wilson’s declaration
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00:14:50,200 --> 00:14:53,233 that the interests of colonial peoples should be given
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00:14:53,233 --> 00:14:56,466 equal weight with those of their European rulers,
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00:14:56,466 --> 00:15:00,200 the man was asking that this principle be applied
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00:15:00,200 --> 00:15:02,066 to his homeland.
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00:15:02,066 --> 00:15:06,766 The president’s secretary promised to show it to Wilson
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00:15:06,766 --> 00:15:10,500 but there is no evidence that he ever did.
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00:15:10,500 --> 00:15:13,033 His name was Nguyen Tat Thanh,
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00:15:13,033 --> 00:15:17,100 but he was now living under an alias, Nguyen Ai Quoc --
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00:15:17,100 --> 00:15:19,733 “Nguyen the Patriot.”
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00:15:21,033 --> 00:15:23,333 During his long shadowy career,
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00:15:23,333 --> 00:15:27,066 he would adopt some 70 different pseudonyms.[4]
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00:15:27,066 --> 00:15:30,300 finally settling on “the most enlightened one” --
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00:15:30,300 --> 00:15:33,733 Ho Chi Minh.
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00:15:33,733 --> 00:15:38,966 DUONG VAN MAI: Ho Chi Minh was a man who succeeded in projecting an image
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00:15:38,966 --> 00:15:43,000 of somebody who was totally dedicated to freeing
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00:15:43,000 --> 00:15:47,466 his country and his people from foreign domination.
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00:15:47,466 --> 00:15:51,600 to the point that he sacrificed his own well-being,
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00:15:51,600 --> 00:15:55,533 his own life, not having a family of his own.[5]
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00:15:56,933 --> 00:15:59,500 To Vietnamese, That’s a big sacrifice
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00:15:59,500 --> 00:16:02,366 because to us everybody needs a family.
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00:16:04,266 --> 00:16:07,033 NARRATOR: Ho Chi Minh was born in 1890,
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00:16:07,033 --> 00:16:10,066 the son of a minor official in the French regime.
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00:16:10,066 --> 00:16:13,066 After taking part in a demonstration
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00:16:13,066 --> 00:16:14,733 against the puppet emperor
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00:16:14,733 --> 00:16:16,600 and the Frenchmen who pulled his strings,
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00:16:16,600 --> 00:16:20,800 Ho was expelled from school and marked for arrest.
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00:16:22,833 --> 00:16:28,266 He left Vietnam in 1911 and remained in exile for 30 years.
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00:16:29,800 --> 00:16:33,166 He served as a cook’s helper aboard a French liner,
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00:16:33,166 --> 00:16:35,933 and visited New York and Boston,
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00:16:35,933 --> 00:16:40,966 where he worked for a time as a pastry chef at the Parker House.
237
00:16:40,966 --> 00:16:46,366 He shoveled snow in London, tinted photographs in Paris.
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00:16:47,766 --> 00:16:52,066 There Ho Chi Minh joined the French Socialist Party.
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00:16:52,066 --> 00:16:55,566 But, when he discovered the anti-colonial writings of Lenin,
240
00:16:55,566 --> 00:16:57,633 he became a communist.[6]
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00:16:59,033 --> 00:17:01,100 He was invited to Moscow to study,
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00:17:01,100 --> 00:17:04,266 underwent training as a Soviet agent,[7]
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00:17:04,266 --> 00:17:07,733 was sometimes criticized for being a nationalist first,
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00:17:07,733 --> 00:17:09,733 a communist second,[8]
245
00:17:09,733 --> 00:17:12,633 and then was dispatched to China
246
00:17:12,633 --> 00:17:15,966 to organize a cell of other Vietnamese exiles
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00:17:15,966 --> 00:17:20,566 and help establish the Indochinese Communist Party.[9]
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00:17:20,566 --> 00:17:24,433 Through it all, “He was taut and quivering,”
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00:17:24,433 --> 00:17:27,766 a friend remembered, “with only one thought--
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00:17:27,766 --> 00:17:30,666 his country, Vietnam.”
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00:17:31,933 --> 00:17:34,800 (air raid siren blaring)
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00:17:34,800 --> 00:17:36,100 (bombs whistling, exploding)
253
00:17:36,100 --> 00:17:37,366 (shouting)
254
00:17:40,300 --> 00:17:44,433 (gunfire, explosions)
255
00:17:44,433 --> 00:17:50,900 NARRATOR: By 1940, much of the world was at war again.
256
00:17:57,100 --> 00:18:01,266 Germany had seized most of Western Europe,
257
00:18:01,266 --> 00:18:03,166 including France.
258
00:18:06,666 --> 00:18:08,433 Imperial Japan threatened
259
00:18:08,433 --> 00:18:10,533 many of the European colonies in Asia,
260
00:18:10,533 --> 00:18:14,533 and occupied Vietnam where they permitted their allies,
261
00:18:14,533 --> 00:18:16,133 the collaborationist French,
262
00:18:16,133 --> 00:18:18,966 to continue to oversee their colony.
263
00:18:22,000 --> 00:18:25,666 To some Vietnamese, the coming of the Japanese
264
00:18:25,666 --> 00:18:30,433 seemed to signal a welcome end to white colonial rule.
265
00:18:30,433 --> 00:18:33,733 But Ho Chi Minh, still in exile in China,
266
00:18:33,733 --> 00:18:37,266 saw the Japanese as alien invaders,
267
00:18:37,266 --> 00:18:39,800 no more welcome than the French.
268
00:18:39,800 --> 00:18:42,933 They were only interested in exploiting his country
269
00:18:42,933 --> 00:18:48,800 and seizing Vietnamese crops to fill their own rice bowls.
270
00:18:48,800 --> 00:18:51,166 The time had come, he said,
271
00:18:51,166 --> 00:18:54,833 to rally “patriots of all ages and all types,
272
00:18:54,833 --> 00:18:59,000 Peasants, workers, merchants and soldiers”
273
00:18:59,000 --> 00:19:02,900 to defeat the Japanese and the collaborationist French.
274
00:19:06,600 --> 00:19:12,166 In February of 1941, after three decades away from his homeland,
275
00:19:12,166 --> 00:19:16,300 Ho Chi Minh stepped back across the Chinese border into Vietnam
276
00:19:16,300 --> 00:19:20,766 and set up headquarters near the remote village of Pac Bo
277
00:19:20,766 --> 00:19:23,700 in a limestone cave at the side of a mountain
278
00:19:23,700 --> 00:19:26,433 he named for Karl Marx,
279
00:19:26,433 --> 00:19:32,033 overlooking a jungle stream he named for his hero, Lenin.
280
00:19:34,333 --> 00:19:35,866 There, he founded a revolutionary movement,
281
00:19:35,966 --> 00:19:39,700 which he called the Vietnam Independence League--
282
00:19:39,800 --> 00:19:43,233 the Viet Minh.
283
00:19:43,333 --> 00:19:47,100 TRAN NGOC TOAN: S. Vietnamese Marine (speaking English) Everybody wanted to join the Viet Minh to fight. Nobody know about the Viet Minh as a communist organization.
284
00:19:56,166 --> 00:19:59,433 NARRATOR: To build and lead a fighting force for his revolution,
285
00:19:59,433 --> 00:20:02,166 Ho called upon Vo Nguyen Giap,
286
00:20:02,166 --> 00:20:04,666 a one time teacher of French history
287
00:20:04,666 --> 00:20:08,433 who had instructed the children of Hanoi’s elite.
288
00:20:08,433 --> 00:20:12,033 Giap was an early convert to communism,
289
00:20:12,033 --> 00:20:15,566 whose life-long hatred for the French intensified
290
00:20:15,566 --> 00:20:18,900 when they beat his wife to death in prison.
291
00:20:18,900 --> 00:20:23,400 Inspired by Napoleon, Lawrence of Arabia,
292
00:20:23,400 --> 00:20:26,966 and the communist Chinese revolutionary Mao Zedong,
293
00:20:26,966 --> 00:20:29,433 Giap had already begun to develop
294
00:20:29,433 --> 00:20:33,800 a distinctive theory of warfare that relied on guerrilla tactics
295
00:20:33,800 --> 00:20:38,833 until a full scale conventional attack could be mounted.[10]
296
00:20:38,833 --> 00:20:42,966 In the fight for independence, which he believed was coming,
297
00:20:42,966 --> 00:20:49,666 his armies, Giap said, would be “everywhere and nowhere.”
Minutes 20-30
298
00:20:49,666 --> 00:20:53,666 DUONG VAN MAI: The reason Vietnamese had always resort to guerrilla warfare
299
00:20:53,666 --> 00:20:56,200 was because we were a small country
300
00:20:56,200 --> 00:21:01,900 And it was just a way of fight the weak against the strong
301
00:21:01,900 --> 00:21:05,366 Don’t fight unless you’re sure you can win,
302
00:21:05,366 --> 00:21:08,766 and surprise is a big element.
303
00:21:10,500 --> 00:21:13,133 Choose your own battle.
304
00:21:18,633 --> 00:21:22,966 MIKE HEANEY: ARMY 1966 I had about 26 guys that day out of 45.
305
00:21:22,966 --> 00:21:25,400 We were always somewhat understrength
306
00:21:25,400 --> 00:21:27,833 And this day we were quite understrength.
307
00:21:29,500 --> 00:21:31,366 My platoon’s on point
308
00:21:36,333 --> 00:21:38,033 MAN: Go, go, go, go, go!
309
00:21:38,033 --> 00:21:40,966 HEANEY: And all of a sudden the very point man,
310
00:21:40,966 --> 00:21:44,666 the first guy in the column, said, “VC on the trail.
311
00:21:44,666 --> 00:21:45,933 VC on the trail.”
312
00:21:47,833 --> 00:21:50,333 Before I had a chance to digest this…
313
00:21:50,333 --> 00:21:51,466 (gunshot)
314
00:21:51,466 --> 00:21:53,200 . . .he went down, shot right through the chest.
315
00:21:53,200 --> 00:21:55,466 (gunfire)
316
00:21:55,466 --> 00:21:59,133 And what was a very Well-laid ambush erupted.
317
00:21:59,133 --> 00:22:02,633 (explosion, gunfire)
318
00:22:08,166 --> 00:22:10,433 (gunfire, shouting)
319
00:22:10,433 --> 00:22:12,533 I knew I’d lost a bunch of guys.
320
00:22:12,533 --> 00:22:16,900 I said a prayer to God saying, Basically,
321
00:22:16,900 --> 00:22:19,500 “If you need any more guys from my platoon, take me.
322
00:22:19,500 --> 00:22:21,266 Don’t take any more of my men.”
323
00:22:21,366 --> 00:22:25,533 As soon as said it, I freaked myself out and said,
324
00:22:25,633 --> 00:22:28,166 “Holy shit.
325
00:22:28,533 --> 00:22:33,866 Can I take that prayer back?”
326
00:22:35,300 --> 00:22:39,100 (gunfire, plane engine roaring)
327
00:22:39,100 --> 00:22:42,566 (explosion, alarm ringing)
328
00:22:42,566 --> 00:22:47,933 NARRATOR: By the spring of 1945,[11]
329
00:22:47,933 --> 00:22:51,233 more than three years after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor,
330
00:22:51,233 --> 00:22:53,400 the United States government was looking for allies
331
00:22:53,400 --> 00:22:55,466 behind the lines in Vietnam.
332
00:22:55,466 --> 00:22:58,900 The Americans were hoping to find a way
333
00:22:58,900 --> 00:23:02,166 to undermine Japanese forces there
334
00:23:02,166 --> 00:23:04,133 when they were contacted by Ho Chi Minh.
335
00:23:04,133 --> 00:23:09,200 DONALD GREGG: OSS/CIA And so it was decided to drop
336
00:23:11,600 --> 00:23:14,866 an OSS team in to meet with the Viet Minh leadership.
337
00:23:14,866 --> 00:23:18,700 Paul Hoagland was the medic on the team.
338
00:23:18,700 --> 00:23:20,566 And the first thing he was to do was that he must attend
339
00:23:20,566 --> 00:23:23,700 to their leader, who was desperately sick.
340
00:23:23,700 --> 00:23:28,200 So he was taken to a grass shack
341
00:23:28,200 --> 00:23:29,833 where a bewhiskered, skinny man lay on a bundle of straw,
342
00:23:29,833 --> 00:23:31,466 Desperately ill.
343
00:23:33,766 --> 00:23:38,633 And that was Ho Chi Minh.
344
00:23:38,633 --> 00:23:41,700 NARRATOR: The OSS, the secret wartime precursor of the CIA,
345
00:23:41,700 --> 00:23:46,700 supplied Ho’s ragtag guerrillas with arms
346
00:23:46,700 --> 00:23:49,500 and marveled at how quickly they learned to handle them.
347
00:23:49,500 --> 00:23:53,800 Ho Chi Minh began to call his followers
348
00:23:53,800 --> 00:23:55,666 the “Viet-American Army” and praised the United States
349
00:23:55,666 --> 00:23:58,966 as a “champion of democracy”
350
00:24:00,166 --> 00:24:03,466 that would surely help them end colonial rule.
351
00:24:17,166 --> 00:24:21,866 BUI DIEM (speaking English): S Vietnamese Diplomat We saw the American coming. And when we look at the American, we consider them as a kind of free man Liberating the people. They have liberated Europe already.
352
00:24:21,866 --> 00:24:24,066 NARRATOR: Meanwhile, famine gripped the northern part of the country.
353
00:24:24,066 --> 00:24:26,000 Hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese
354
00:24:26,000 --> 00:24:29,366 were dying of starvation
355
00:24:32,200 --> 00:24:34,500 while Japanese storehouses were filled with rice.
356
00:24:34,500 --> 00:24:36,600 DUONG VAN MAI: In those days, garbage was collected
357
00:24:36,600 --> 00:24:41,366 by people pushing carts.
358
00:24:41,366 --> 00:24:43,300 And my mother remembers that every morning she would see
359
00:24:43,300 --> 00:24:45,766 these garbage carts going around
360
00:24:45,766 --> 00:24:47,366 and people picking up dead bodies and throwing them
361
00:24:47,366 --> 00:24:48,933 on the cart.
362
00:24:48,933 --> 00:24:52,666 It was incredible.
363
00:24:52,666 --> 00:24:57,166 And people who lived through it never, never forgot.
364
00:24:57,166 --> 00:24:59,366 NARRATOR: Duong Van Mai’s father was the deputy governor
365
00:24:59,366 --> 00:25:02,033 of a province east of Hanoi,
366
00:25:02,033 --> 00:25:04,833 the son and grandson of mandarins
367
00:25:04,833 --> 00:25:08,133 who had all served the French.
368
00:25:08,133 --> 00:25:13,033 He and his wife had 17 children.
369
00:25:13,033 --> 00:25:15,566 DUONG VAN MAI: Parents who had children who were, you know, plump,
370
00:25:15,566 --> 00:25:18,033 were very afraid of their children being stolen
371
00:25:18,033 --> 00:25:21,300 and killed.
372
00:25:21,300 --> 00:25:24,966 And it was really like hell on earth.
373
00:25:24,966 --> 00:25:27,133 The government didn’t have a clue on how to deal
374
00:25:28,633 --> 00:25:30,100 with this calamity.
375
00:25:30,100 --> 00:25:32,300 NARRATOR: But Ho Chi Minh did.
376
00:25:32,300 --> 00:25:35,666 He directed the Viet Minh
377
00:25:35,666 --> 00:25:39,966 to break into the Japanese storehouses wherever they could
378
00:25:39,966 --> 00:25:42,533 and distribute the rice to the people.
379
00:25:45,000 --> 00:25:46,666 They were hailed as saviors.
380
00:25:53,633 --> 00:25:54,766 (engine starts)
381
00:25:57,200 --> 00:26:00,500 August 6, 1945 (explosion)
382
00:26:00,500 --> 00:26:04,266 NARRATOR: When an atomic bomb destroyed Hiroshima,
383
00:26:04,266 --> 00:26:07,366 and three days later a second one destroyed Nagasaki.
384
00:26:09,333 --> 00:26:13,000 Japanese surrender seemed imminent.
385
00:26:13,000 --> 00:26:15,033 Ho Chi Minh called upon all Vietnamese to rise up
386
00:26:15,033 --> 00:26:17,500 and take over their own country
387
00:26:17,500 --> 00:26:20,033 before the Free French could reestablish
388
00:26:20,033 --> 00:26:25,333 their old colonial regime.
389
00:26:28,800 --> 00:26:31,833 They did, in cities and towns across the country.
390
00:26:31,833 --> 00:26:34,633 On September 2, 1945,
391
00:26:34,633 --> 00:26:37,633 the same day the Japanese formally surrendered,
392
00:26:37,633 --> 00:26:42,533 hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese
393
00:26:42,533 --> 00:26:45,866 streamed into Ba Dinh Square in Hanoi to see for the first time
394
00:26:45,866 --> 00:26:50,533 the mysterious leader of the Viet Minh
395
00:26:50,533 --> 00:26:54,133 and hear him proclaim Vietnam’s independence.
396
00:26:54,133 --> 00:26:58,766 (Ho Chi Minh speaking Vietnamese)
397
00:26:58,766 --> 00:27:02,900 NARRATOR: With an OSS officer standing nearby,
398
00:27:02,900 --> 00:27:05,633 Ho Chi Minh began with the words of Thomas Jefferson:
399
00:27:05,633 --> 00:27:08,400 “All men are created equal.
400
00:27:08,400 --> 00:27:11,600 “They are endowed by their creator
401
00:27:11,600 --> 00:27:14,433 “with certain unalienable rights;
402
00:27:14,433 --> 00:27:16,700 “that among these are life, liberty
403
00:27:19,333 --> 00:27:22,266 and the pursuit of happiness.”
404
00:27:39,133 --> 00:27:41,533 DONG SI NGUYEN: Viet Minh All Vietnamese people, not just me, felt that from now on Vietnam would be independent. Free, unified, territorially secure and officially named on the map of the world. Everybody was so proud.
405
00:27:41,533 --> 00:27:47,000 GEORGE WICKES: OSS Ho Chi Minh had great hopes
406
00:27:47,000 --> 00:27:48,866 that the U S would support the Vietnam desire for independence,
407
00:27:48,866 --> 00:27:52,666 not necessarily by intervening
408
00:27:52,666 --> 00:27:56,466 but by doing what it could
409
00:27:56,466 --> 00:28:00,200 to support an independence movement.
410
00:28:00,200 --> 00:28:03,333 NARRATOR: Ho Chi Minh’s hopes for American support were calculated[12]
411
00:28:03,333 --> 00:28:07,200 but understandable.
412
00:28:07,200 --> 00:28:10,433 President Franklin Roosevelt had promised a postwar world
413
00:28:10,433 --> 00:28:13,466 that would “respect the rights of all peoples
414
00:28:16,266 --> 00:28:20,133 to choose the form of government under which they live.”
415
00:28:20,133 --> 00:28:24,066 But Roosevelt was dead now, and his successor, Harry Truman,
416
00:28:24,066 --> 00:28:26,566 had inherited a very different world.
417
00:28:26,566 --> 00:28:30,466 The alliance with the Soviet Union
418
00:28:30,466 --> 00:28:34,133 that had won the Second World War had collapsed.
419
00:28:34,133 --> 00:28:38,800 The Soviets now occupied the Eastern European countries
420
00:28:38,800 --> 00:28:43,666 they had overrun, and hoped to spread their influence farther,[13]
421
00:28:43,666 --> 00:28:48,100 into Iran, Turkey, and the Mediterranean.
422
00:28:48,100 --> 00:28:50,766 A new cold war had begun.
423
00:28:50,766 --> 00:28:53,866 French President Charles De Gaulle warned
424
00:28:53,866 --> 00:28:57,566 that if the United States insisted on independence
425
00:28:57,566 --> 00:29:01,066 for her colonies, France might have no choice
426
00:29:01,066 --> 00:29:04,566 but to “fall into the Russian orbit.”
427
00:29:04,566 --> 00:29:10,033 The United States must do nothing to undercut
428
00:29:13,900 --> 00:29:17,633 the restoration of France’s empire, including Vietnam.
429
00:29:17,633 --> 00:29:20,700 GEORGE WICKES: OSS There were hardly any Americans in Vietnam, you know--
430
00:29:20,700 --> 00:29:23,000 State Department people, consular officials,
431
00:29:23,000 --> 00:29:25,066 a few businessmen.
432
00:29:25,066 --> 00:29:26,933 Hardly anyone from this country
433
00:29:26,933 --> 00:29:31,733 knew where Vietnam was located.
434
00:29:31,733 --> 00:29:35,233 NARRATOR: George Wickes was part of a seven-man OSS mission
435
00:29:35,233 --> 00:29:38,866 sent to Saigon, the largest city in the south.
436
00:29:38,866 --> 00:29:41,533 The United States was officially neutral,
437
00:29:41,533 --> 00:29:45,233 hoping the French and Viet Minh could reach
438
00:29:45,233 --> 00:29:48,900 some peaceful solution on their own.
439
00:29:48,900 --> 00:29:51,366 Allied leaders had agreed temporarily to divide Vietnam
440
00:29:51,366 --> 00:29:55,700 into two separate zones.
441
00:29:55,700 --> 00:29:56,833 Nationalist Chinese troops were to handle things in the north.
442
00:29:56,833 --> 00:29:59,166 British colonial troops would try to perform the same task
443
00:29:59,166 --> 00:30:00,333 in the south, where rival factions,
444
00:30:00,333 --> 00:30:02,100 including the French and Viet Minh, were already fighting
445
00:30:02,100 --> 00:30:06,433 in the streets of Saigon.
446
00:30:06,433 --> 00:30:09,300 WICKES: No one was in charge.
447
00:30:09,300 --> 00:30:11,833 On both sides, there was brutality and atrocity
448
00:30:11,833 --> 00:30:16,100 and violence.
449
00:30:16,100 --> 00:30:17,766 It wasn’t quite a civil war
450
00:30:17,766 --> 00:30:20,266 but it was getting very close to civil war
451
00:30:20,266 --> 00:30:22,366 in the streets of Saigon.
Minutes 30-40
452
00:30:22,366 --> 00:30:24,733 NARRATOR: Lieutenant Colonel Peter Dewey,
453
00:30:24,733 --> 00:30:27,800 the 28 year old commander of the OSS in Saigon,
454
00:30:27,800 --> 00:30:31,266 tried to make sense of it all.
455
00:30:31,266 --> 00:30:33,900 WICKES: Right from the start he was in touch with everybody--
456
00:30:33,900 --> 00:30:36,733 not only the French, but very soon he established
457
00:30:36,733 --> 00:30:39,633 a connection with various Vietnamese groups.
458
00:30:39,633 --> 00:30:43,766 The Viet Minh soon established themselves
459
00:30:43,766 --> 00:30:46,933 as the most successful.
460
00:30:46,933 --> 00:30:49,466 NARRATOR: Dewey, who spoke fluent French,[14]
461
00:30:49,466 --> 00:30:52,300 brokered talks between a Viet Minh spokesman
462
00:30:52,300 --> 00:30:55,266 and the senior French representative in the city.
463
00:30:55,266 --> 00:30:59,100 His efforts infuriated British general Douglas Gracey
464
00:30:59,100 --> 00:31:04,033 who commanded Allied forces in the south.
465
00:31:04,033 --> 00:31:07,066 Gracey was convinced that French control
466
00:31:07,066 --> 00:31:10,033 should be reimposed as soon as possible.
467
00:31:10,033 --> 00:31:12,966 By conferring with the Viet Minh, Gracey said,
468
00:31:12,966 --> 00:31:16,466 Colonel Dewey had become a “subversive” force.
469
00:31:16,466 --> 00:31:21,100 (gunfire)
470
00:31:21,100 --> 00:31:22,466 The violence in and around Saigon escalated.
471
00:31:22,466 --> 00:31:26,033 Colonel Dewey urgently cabled his superiors:
472
00:31:27,900 --> 00:31:30,800 Vietnam “is burning,” he wrote.
473
00:31:30,800 --> 00:31:34,433 “The French and British are finished here
474
00:31:34,433 --> 00:31:36,966 and the United States,” he concluded,
475
00:31:36,966 --> 00:31:39,600 “ought to clear out
476
00:31:39,600 --> 00:31:42,000 (gunfire)
477
00:31:42,000 --> 00:31:43,600 Two days later, September 26, 1945,
478
00:31:46,100 --> 00:31:50,700 he set out for the airport,
479
00:31:50,700 --> 00:31:52,233 prepared to fly to OSS headquarters.
480
00:31:52,233 --> 00:31:57,166 At a roadblock, the Viet Minh mistook Dewey for a Frenchman
481
00:31:57,166 --> 00:32:02,466 and opened fire.
482
00:32:02,466 --> 00:32:04,600 (gunfire)
483
00:32:04,600 --> 00:32:06,133 He was killed instantly.
484
00:32:06,133 --> 00:32:09,300 WICKES: Ho Chi Minh wrote to the United States
485
00:32:09,300 --> 00:32:13,200 lamenting the death of Dewey, whom he recognized
486
00:32:13,200 --> 00:32:17,300 as a person sympathetic to his cause.
487
00:32:17,300 --> 00:32:21,266 It seemed a terrible irony that Dewey,
488
00:32:21,266 --> 00:32:24,166 who was doing what he could to help
489
00:32:24,166 --> 00:32:26,900 the Vietnamese independence movement should have been killed
490
00:32:26,900 --> 00:32:30,666 by the Vietnamese by a mistake.[15]
491
00:32:30,666 --> 00:32:33,000 (electronic buzzing, muted helicopter blades beating)
492
00:32:38,400 --> 00:32:40,900 VINCENT OKAMOTO: Army 1968 An elderly African-American woman answered the door.
493
00:32:44,400 --> 00:32:49,233 I think she knew the instant she saw us why we were there.
494
00:32:54,133 --> 00:32:58,200 And the padre said, uh,
495
00:33:01,166 --> 00:33:03,500 “I’m, I’m terribly sorry to inform you,
496
00:33:03,500 --> 00:33:08,033 but your son was killed in Vietnam.”
497
00:33:08,033 --> 00:33:13,400 And she just sat down.
498
00:33:13,400 --> 00:33:14,533 Didn’t say a word.
499
00:33:14,533 --> 00:33:16,133 Then the. . . her husband says, “No, there’s a mistake.”
500
00:33:18,500 --> 00:33:22,233 He comes back with this letter.
501
00:33:22,233 --> 00:33:24,166 And he said, “Look, see?
502
00:33:24,166 --> 00:33:26,400 We got it yesterday my. . . our son was still a live yesterday.”
503
00:33:26,400 --> 00:33:31,400 And the chaplain looked at the letter
504
00:33:31,400 --> 00:33:34,633 and he said, “It’s a week old.
505
00:33:34,633 --> 00:33:36,766 I think your son was killed on the day he wrote this letter.”
506
00:33:36,766 --> 00:33:41,266 (“La Marseillaise” playing)
507
00:33:43,233 --> 00:33:47,200 NARRATOR: In the fall of 1945, a week after Colonel Dewey’s death,
508
00:33:49,033 --> 00:33:53,333 fresh French troops began arriving in Saigon,
509
00:33:53,333 --> 00:33:56,333 taking over from the British.
510
00:33:56,333 --> 00:34:00,366 They quickly established
511
00:34:00,366 --> 00:34:01,633 control of the city
512
00:34:01,633 --> 00:34:03,533 and set out to reoccupy
513
00:34:03,533 --> 00:34:04,933 the entire country.
514
00:34:04,933 --> 00:34:06,800 Ho Chi Minh hoped somehow to achieve independence
515
00:34:08,633 --> 00:34:12,466 without a war with France,
516
00:34:12,466 --> 00:34:14,500 and he still hoped the United States would intervene.
517
00:34:14,500 --> 00:34:18,000 “You never had an empire, never exploited the Asian peoples,”
518
00:34:18,000 --> 00:34:22,100 he would tell a visiting American journalist.
519
00:34:22,100 --> 00:34:25,300 “Do not be blinded by this issue of communism.”[16]
520
00:34:25,300 --> 00:34:29,333 LESLIE GELB: He did not want to fight the French as an enemy of America
521
00:34:29,333 --> 00:34:34,633 And, in fact, I saw the letters he wrote to President Truman
522
00:34:34,633 --> 00:34:40,866 saying “We believe in the same things you believe.”
523
00:34:40,866 --> 00:34:45,466 Those letters I saw in the CIA files,
524
00:34:45,466 --> 00:34:48,833 they had never been given to President Truman.[17]
525
00:34:48,833 --> 00:34:52,766 (children shouting)
526
00:34:54,199 --> 00:34:56,933 NARRATOR: In June of 1946, Ho Chi Minh returned to Paris
527
00:34:56,933 --> 00:35:01,633 in a fruitless attempt to get the French to live up
528
00:35:01,633 --> 00:35:04,666 to a promise they had made of increased autonomy[18]
529
00:35:04,666 --> 00:35:08,100 for his country.
530
00:35:08,100 --> 00:35:10,366 While Ho was away,
531
00:35:10,366 --> 00:35:12,333 General Giap began consolidating communist control
532
00:35:12,333 --> 00:35:15,733 of the revolution.
533
00:35:15,733 --> 00:35:17,200 He conducted a merciless purge[19]
534
00:35:17,200 --> 00:35:20,000 of members of rival nationalist parties[20]
535
00:35:20,000 --> 00:35:23,100 and people he called “reactionary saboteurs,”
536
00:35:23,100 --> 00:35:26,500 landlords and moneylenders, Trotskyites and Catholics,
537
00:35:26,500 --> 00:35:31,933 men and women accused of collaborating with the French.
538
00:35:31,933 --> 00:35:36,333 Hundreds were shot, drowned, buried alive.[21]
539
00:35:36,333 --> 00:35:40,766 LAM QUANG THI: I saw that Viet Minh killed their fellow Vietnamese. They weren’t actually fighting for the Vietnamese people. They fought only for the international communist system.
540
00:35:40,766 --> 00:35:42,733 NARRATOR: On December 19, 1946, after months of building tension,
541
00:35:53,733 --> 00:35:58,766 fighting broke out in Hanoi
542
00:35:58,766 --> 00:36:01,066 between the Viet Minh and the French.
543
00:36:01,066 --> 00:36:04,200 (gunfire)
544
00:36:04,200 --> 00:36:05,966 The Viet Minh proved no match for French firepower.
545
00:36:08,233 --> 00:36:11,533 Ho, Giap, and their comrades slipped out of the city
546
00:36:15,966 --> 00:36:20,933 and returned to their mountain stronghold far to the north.
547
00:36:20,933 --> 00:36:25,066 “Those who have rifles will use their rifles,”
548
00:36:27,166 --> 00:36:30,466 Ho declared in a radio address
549
00:36:30,466 --> 00:36:32,600 calling for a nationwide guerrilla war.
550
00:36:32,600 --> 00:36:35,533 “Those who have swords will use swords;
551
00:36:35,533 --> 00:36:39,500 those who have no swords will use spades or sticks.”
552
00:36:39,500 --> 00:36:44,733 NGUYEN NGOC: Viet Minh There was a profound sense of responsibility to fight for our country. I remember it as a happy, beautiful time. We sang even as we marched into battle, very romantic songs.
553
00:36:48,400 --> 00:36:53,400 NARRATOR: But the country Ho Chi Minh hoped to unite
554
00:37:15,033 --> 00:37:17,800 was itself bitterly divided.
555
00:37:17,800 --> 00:37:21,133 Families were being torn apart.
556
00:37:21,133 --> 00:37:23,600 Despite her father’s position in the French government,
557
00:37:23,600 --> 00:37:27,566 Duong Van Mai’s sister felt compelled to answer Ho’s call.
558
00:37:27,566 --> 00:37:32,466 DUONG VAN MAI: My older sister Thang was married
559
00:37:33,933 --> 00:37:37,700 to a man who had great sympathy for the Viet Minh.
560
00:37:37,700 --> 00:37:42,800 And by that time Ho Chi Minh had evacuated his government
561
00:37:42,800 --> 00:37:45,966 to the mountain base.
562
00:37:45,966 --> 00:37:47,300 So my sister and her husband trekked all the way
563
00:37:47,300 --> 00:37:51,100 from Hanoi toward the base
564
00:37:51,100 --> 00:37:53,366 in order to join the resistance against the French.
565
00:37:53,366 --> 00:37:57,033 So the Vietnam War was really a civil war
566
00:37:59,600 --> 00:38:02,366 down to the family level.
567
00:38:02,366 --> 00:38:04,000 NARRATOR: France poured thousands of men into Vietnam --
568
00:38:12,200 --> 00:38:16,066 French regulars, European Mercenaries, and colonial troops
569
00:38:16,066 --> 00:38:20,366 from Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Senegal--
570
00:38:20,366 --> 00:38:24,466 who fought alongside an army of Cambodians, Laotians,
571
00:38:24,466 --> 00:38:29,433 and anti-communist Vietnamese.
572
00:38:29,433 --> 00:38:32,400 French forces managed to occupy most of the large towns
573
00:38:36,100 --> 00:38:40,500 and province capitals
574
00:38:40,500 --> 00:38:42,000 and established hundreds of isolated outposts.
575
00:38:42,000 --> 00:38:47,033 The French also set out to try to win over rural Vietnamese
576
00:38:47,033 --> 00:38:51,866 through a program they called “pacification” --
577
00:38:51,866 --> 00:38:55,266 “Pacification” --
578
00:38:55,266 --> 00:38:57,466 building dikes, schools and roads, and vaccinating children.
579
00:38:57,466 --> 00:39:02,233 DUONG VAN MAI: The French would pacify a village
580
00:39:04,933 --> 00:39:07,433 and during the daytime they could control it.
581
00:39:07,433 --> 00:39:11,766 But at night the Viet Minh would come back.
582
00:39:11,766 --> 00:39:15,300 And so it was never completely secure.
583
00:39:15,300 --> 00:39:19,566 My father would shake his head and said, you know,
584
00:39:19,566 --> 00:39:23,166 “Pacification is really futile
585
00:39:23,166 --> 00:39:24,900 because it is like trying to hold sand in your fingers.”
586
00:39:24,900 --> 00:39:29,100 NARRATOR: The Viet Minh mined roads, blew up bridges and railroads,
587
00:39:32,433 --> 00:39:37,700 ambushed French patrols and then disappeared.
588
00:39:37,700 --> 00:39:42,866 French soldiers sometimes took revenge on the nearest village,
589
00:39:45,066 --> 00:39:49,433 burning homes, raping women,
590
00:39:49,433 --> 00:39:51,933 executing men suspected of aiding the Viet Minh.
591
00:39:51,933 --> 00:39:56,200 LE CONG HUAN: Viet Minh In 1948 in my home village the French came on tanks and burned our houses. They shot many of the water buffaloes tat we used to plow. When I was a little boy I witnessed that scene. It was seared into my memory.
592
00:40:01,033 --> 00:40:03,266 NARRATOR: But the communists proved every bit as ruthless as the French.
593
00:40:35,000 --> 00:40:39,900 “It is better to kill even those who might be innocent.”
594
00:40:39,900 --> 00:40:43,166 one commander said, “than to let a guilty person go.”
595
00:40:43,166 --> 00:40:49,000 And they specifically targeted
596
00:40:49,000 --> 00:40:51,300 anyone who had links to the French.
Minutes 40-50
597
00:40:51,300 --> 00:40:54,600 DUONG VAN MAI: Once my father started working for the French, then he was
598
00:40:54,600 --> 00:40:58,433 a target, especially the higher he rose,
599
00:40:58,433 --> 00:41:01,333 the bigger target he became.
600
00:41:01,333 --> 00:41:03,233 A Viet Minh agent actually came in with a pistol to shoot him
601
00:41:03,233 --> 00:41:09,400 but at the last moment decided not to.
602
00:41:09,400 --> 00:41:13,100 TRANG NGOC (“HARRY”) HUE: S. Vietnamese Army I saw the Viet Minh arrest Vietnamese soldiers in the French Army, strip them naked. And kill them savagely by burying them alive. They didn’t want to waste a bullet on these people. We lived under two oppressors.
603
00:41:15,466 --> 00:41:18,100 (gunfire)
604
00:41:47,666 --> 00:41:49,233 NARRATOR: French casualties continued to mount.
605
00:41:52,033 --> 00:41:55,366 “There are days when we are so discouraged
606
00:41:55,366 --> 00:41:58,300 that we would like to give it all up,”
607
00:41:58,300 --> 00:42:01,200 a French soldier wrote his mother.
608
00:42:01,200 --> 00:42:03,266 “Convoys under attack, roads cut,
609
00:42:03,266 --> 00:42:06,633 “firing in all directions every night,
610
00:42:06,633 --> 00:42:09,833 the indifference at home.”
611
00:42:09,833 --> 00:42:11,833 ROGER HARRIS: Marine 1967 While I was there I had the opportunity to call my mother,
612
00:42:21,300 --> 00:42:24,266 you know.
613
00:42:24,266 --> 00:42:26,366 And I was telling my mother what was happening over there,
614
00:42:26,366 --> 00:42:29,633 and was telling her how she shouldn’t believe
615
00:42:29,633 --> 00:42:32,700 what she sees in the newspaper and sees on television
616
00:42:32,700 --> 00:42:35,800 because we’re losing the war.
617
00:42:35,800 --> 00:42:38,500 I said “And you’ll probably never see me again
618
00:42:38,500 --> 00:42:41,366 “because we’re the most northern outpost that the Marines have,
619
00:42:41,366 --> 00:42:45,000 you know.”
620
00:42:45,000 --> 00:42:46,466 We could literally. . . could look right into North Vietnam.
621
00:42:46,466 --> 00:42:48,366 We could see the sparks when the guns fired on us.
622
00:42:48,366 --> 00:42:50,400 And I said “And everybody in my unit is dying.
623
00:42:50,400 --> 00:42:52,733 I probably won’t be coming back.”
624
00:42:52,733 --> 00:42:55,500 And my mother said, “No, you’re coming back.”
625
00:42:55,500 --> 00:42:57,633 She said, “I talk to God every day and you’re special.
626
00:42:57,633 --> 00:43:01,533 You’re coming back.”
627
00:43:01,533 --> 00:43:03,433 And I said “Ma, everybody’s mother thinks
628
00:43:03,433 --> 00:43:05,833 “that they’re special.
629
00:43:05,833 --> 00:43:08,033 You know I’m putting pieces of special people in bags.”
630
00:43:08,033 --> 00:43:12,133 (explosion)
631
00:43:13,466 --> 00:43:15,200 ED HERLIHY: August 29, 1949 President Truman’s dramatic announcement
632
00:43:17,466 --> 00:43:19,266 that Russia had the atom secret
633
00:43:19,266 --> 00:43:20,800 caused state departments all over the world
634
00:43:20,800 --> 00:43:22,533 to stir uneasily.
635
00:43:22,533 --> 00:43:25,233 HAL KUSHNER: Army Doctor, POW, Danville, VA We were very aware that there was a Cold War
636
00:43:25,233 --> 00:43:29,500 and that we had an enemy,
637
00:43:29,500 --> 00:43:31,400 and that enemy was the Soviet Union.
638
00:43:31,400 --> 00:43:35,466 The United States stood at one pole
639
00:43:35,466 --> 00:43:38,633 and the Soviet Union stood at the other pole.
640
00:43:38,633 --> 00:43:41,000 It was kind of a Manichean dynamic
641
00:43:41,000 --> 00:43:43,933 that there was evil and there was good.
642
00:43:43,933 --> 00:43:45,866 And we were good, and the other side was evil.
643
00:43:45,866 --> 00:43:48,000 It wasn’t morally ambiguous.
644
00:43:48,000 --> 00:43:51,066 NARRATOR: Just a few weeks after Russia became a nuclear power,
645
00:43:53,733 --> 00:43:58,066 there was more stunning news--
646
00:43:58,066 --> 00:44:00,000 communist forces under Mao Zedong seized control
647
00:44:00,000 --> 00:44:03,833 of China.
648
00:44:03,833 --> 00:44:06,466 Separate communist insurrections were also underway
649
00:44:06,466 --> 00:44:10,366 in the British colonies of Burma and Malaya.
650
00:44:10,366 --> 00:44:16,066 In January 1950, Mao formally recognized
651
00:44:16,066 --> 00:44:19,866 Ho Chi Minh’s insurgency and agreed to provide the arms,
652
00:44:19,866 --> 00:44:24,000 Equipment, and military training he had been seeking.[22]
653
00:44:24,000 --> 00:44:28,000 The Soviets recognized the Viet Minh as well,
654
00:44:28,000 --> 00:44:32,166 and also offered help.
655
00:44:32,166 --> 00:44:34,066 President Truman, who was being blamed
656
00:44:34,066 --> 00:44:37,733 by his political opponents for having “lost” China,
657
00:44:37,733 --> 00:44:41,533 and having failed to “contain” communism,
658
00:44:41,533 --> 00:44:43,966 approved a $23 million aid program
659
00:44:43,966 --> 00:44:47,566 for the French in Vietnam.
660
00:44:47,566 --> 00:44:50,400 The United States was no longer neutral.[23]
661
00:44:50,400 --> 00:44:55,166 SAM WILSON: Army We were caught on the horns of a dilemma
662
00:44:55,166 --> 00:44:58,166 of how can we maintain our friendship
663
00:44:58,166 --> 00:45:00,966 and our alliance with the French and support them in Indochina
664
00:45:00,966 --> 00:45:04,866 while we, as a former colony ourselves,
665
00:45:04,866 --> 00:45:08,533 sympathized with the Vietnamese and their aspirations
666
00:45:08,533 --> 00:45:11,666 for freedom and independence?
667
00:45:11,666 --> 00:45:13,666 ED HERLIHY: A highly trained and well equipped North Korean Army
668
00:45:18,300 --> 00:45:20,933 swarmed across the 38th parallel
669
00:45:20,933 --> 00:45:23,033 to attack unprepared South Korean defenders.
670
00:45:23,033 --> 00:45:25,233 (explosion)
671
00:45:25,233 --> 00:45:27,033 NARRATOR: In June of 1950, China’s ally,
672
00:45:27,033 --> 00:45:30,600 communist North Korea, invaded South Korea.
673
00:45:30,600 --> 00:45:34,333 (gunfire)
674
00:45:34,333 --> 00:45:35,866 President Truman ordered
675
00:45:35,866 --> 00:45:37,866 tens of thousands of American ground troops
676
00:45:37,866 --> 00:45:40,166 onto the Korean Peninsula.
677
00:45:40,166 --> 00:45:42,033 The United States and its allies
678
00:45:49,000 --> 00:45:50,866 eventually pushed the invaders back north.
679
00:45:50,866 --> 00:45:55,333 Meanwhile, in southern China,
680
00:45:55,333 --> 00:45:57,733 Mao’s military was beginning to turn the Viet Minh
681
00:45:57,733 --> 00:46:00,233 into a modern fighting force,
682
00:46:00,233 --> 00:46:04,133 capable of inflicting a heavy toll on the French occupiers.
683
00:46:04,133 --> 00:46:08,333 In July, the Truman administration
684
00:46:15,566 --> 00:46:17,500 quietly dispatched transport planes
685
00:46:17,500 --> 00:46:20,400 and a shipload of jeeps to Vietnam.
686
00:46:20,400 --> 00:46:23,133 Thirty-five military advisors went along to oversee their use.
687
00:46:23,133 --> 00:46:28,933 None of them, and no one in the American embassy,
688
00:46:30,766 --> 00:46:33,733 spoke a word of Vietnamese.[24]
689
00:46:33,733 --> 00:46:37,766 But the United States was now officially in Vietnam.
690
00:46:37,766 --> 00:46:42,133 In October of 1950,
691
00:46:44,300 --> 00:46:46,566 hundreds of thousands of Chinese troops
692
00:46:46,566 --> 00:46:49,733 began pouring into North Korea,
693
00:46:49,733 --> 00:46:52,000 driving the allies back down the peninsula.
694
00:46:52,000 --> 00:46:56,066 As that fighting raged,
695
00:46:56,066 --> 00:46:57,733 Truman continued to increase military aid
696
00:46:57,733 --> 00:47:01,166 for the French war in Vietnam.
697
00:47:01,166 --> 00:47:04,033 HARRY TRUMAN: If aggression is successful in Korea,
698
00:47:07,666 --> 00:47:09,400 we can expect it to spread throughout Asia and Europe
699
00:47:09,400 --> 00:47:12,800 and to this hemisphere.
700
00:47:12,800 --> 00:47:14,133 (mortar fire)
701
00:47:14,133 --> 00:47:16,733 We are fighting in Korea
702
00:47:16,733 --> 00:47:19,166 for our own national security and survival.
703
00:47:19,166 --> 00:47:21,900 (“Mean Old World” by T-Bone Walker playing)
704
00:47:25,400 --> 00:47:28,666 NARRATOR: In the autumn of 1951,
705
00:47:28,666 --> 00:47:30,800 a young Massachusetts congressman
706
00:47:30,800 --> 00:47:33,033 named John F Kennedy dined at the rooftop bar
707
00:47:33,033 --> 00:47:37,000 of the Hotel Majestic, overlooking Saigon.
708
00:47:37,000 --> 00:47:39,866 (distant gunfire)
709
00:47:39,866 --> 00:47:41,133 As he and his party ate
710
00:47:41,133 --> 00:47:43,100 they could hear the thunder of guns across the Saigon River.
711
00:47:43,100 --> 00:47:47,600 French commanders assured Kennedy
712
00:47:47,600 --> 00:47:50,800 that with more American support,
713
00:47:50,800 --> 00:47:53,266 French rule would be re-established.
714
00:47:53,266 --> 00:47:56,466 But Kennedy spent two hours with Seymour Topping,
715
00:47:56,466 --> 00:48:00,200 a seasoned American reporter,
716
00:48:00,200 --> 00:48:02,400 who gave him a very different perspective:
717
00:48:02,400 --> 00:48:05,233 The French were losing, he said,
718
00:48:05,233 --> 00:48:07,900 and many Vietnamese, who had once admired the Americans,
719
00:48:07,900 --> 00:48:11,766 were beginning to despise them for backing the French.
720
00:48:11,766 --> 00:48:16,100 Kennedy believed the reporter.
721
00:48:16,100 --> 00:48:19,366 Unless the United States could persuade the Vietnamese
722
00:48:19,366 --> 00:48:22,800 that it was as opposed to “injustice and inequality”
723
00:48:22,800 --> 00:48:26,533 as it was to communism,
724
00:48:26,533 --> 00:48:28,200 he told his constituents when he got home,
725
00:48:28,200 --> 00:48:31,200 the current effort would result in “foredoomed failure.”
726
00:48:31,200 --> 00:48:36,566 (Rosemary Clooney singing Come On-a My House)
727
00:48:36,566 --> 00:48:39,500 ♪Come on-a my house, my house, I’m gonna give you candy.♪
728
00:48:39,500 --> 00:48:45,000 NARRATOR: In 1952,
729
00:48:45,000 --> 00:48:46,900 General Dwight Eisenhower was elected president,
730
00:48:46,900 --> 00:48:50,300 in part because he promised to take a tougher stance
731
00:48:50,300 --> 00:48:53,200 on communism.
732
00:48:53,200 --> 00:48:55,266 That year, American taxpayers
733
00:48:55,266 --> 00:48:58,600 were footing more than 30% of the bill
734
00:48:58,600 --> 00:49:01,266 for the French war in Vietnam.
735
00:49:01,266 --> 00:49:04,366 Within two years,
736
00:49:04,366 --> 00:49:06,433 that number would rise to nearly 80%.
737
00:49:06,433 --> 00:49:09,933 CLOONEY: ♪Everything, everything, Everything.♪
738
00:49:09,933 --> 00:49:13,266 RICHARD NIXON: And many of you ask this question:
739
00:49:13,266 --> 00:49:15,700 Why is the United States spending
740
00:49:15,700 --> 00:49:18,000 hundreds of millions of dollars
741
00:49:18,000 --> 00:49:19,833 supporting the forces of the French Union
742
00:49:19,833 --> 00:49:24,066 in the fight against communism in Indochina?
743
00:49:24,066 --> 00:49:27,800 I think perhaps if we go over to the map here,
744
00:49:27,800 --> 00:49:30,133 I can indicate to you why it is so vitally important.
745
00:49:30,133 --> 00:49:34,700 Here’s Indochina.
746
00:49:34,700 --> 00:49:37,000 If Indochina falls,
747
00:49:37,000 --> 00:49:38,366 Thailand is put in [an] almost impossible position.
748
00:49:38,366 --> 00:49:41,700 The same is true of Malaya with its rubber and tin.
749
00:49:41,700 --> 00:49:44,866 Now I may say that as far as the war in Indochina is concerned,
750
00:49:44,866 --> 00:49:49,933 that I was there, right on the battlefield, or close to it,
751
00:49:49,933 --> 00:49:54,833 and it’s a bloody war, and it’s a bitter one.
752
00:49:54,833 --> 00:49:57,400 (explosions)
753
00:49:57,400 --> 00:50:02,700 NARRATOR: By 1953, the French had been fighting for seven years.
754
00:50:02,700 --> 00:50:07,466 They had suffered over 100,000 casualties
755
00:50:07,466 --> 00:50:10,866 and failed to pacify the countryside.
756
00:50:10,866 --> 00:50:14,100 Six commanders had come and gone.
757
00:50:14,100 --> 00:50:17,800 Nevertheless, the seventh commander,
758
00:50:17,800 --> 00:50:20,066 General Henri Navarre, assured his countrymen
759
00:50:20,066 --> 00:50:23,266 that victory was near.
760
00:50:23,266 --> 00:50:24,866 “Now we can see it clearly,” he said,
761
00:50:24,866 --> 00:50:27,966 “Like the light at the end of the tunnel.”
Minutes 50-60
762
00:50:27,966 --> 00:50:31,933 Meanwhile large parts of the French population were horrified
763
00:50:33,866 --> 00:50:37,800 by reports of French brutality
764
00:50:37,800 --> 00:50:40,433 and the widespread use of napalm[25]--
765
00:50:40,433 --> 00:50:43,233 gelatinized petroleum that burned foliage,
766
00:50:43,233 --> 00:50:48,066 homes and human flesh.
767
00:50:48,066 --> 00:50:50,600 When returning French troops disembarked at Marseilles,
768
00:50:53,400 --> 00:50:56,900 members of the longshoremen’s union pelted them with rocks.
769
00:50:56,900 --> 00:51:01,400 Parisian leftists began to call the conflict
770
00:51:01,400 --> 00:51:04,633 “La Sale Guerre” “The Dirty War”.
771
00:51:04,633 --> 00:51:07,833 (police sirens wailing, people chanting)
772
00:51:11,466 --> 00:51:14,966 RON FERRIZZI: The camera was a close up,
773
00:51:16,066 --> 00:51:18,466 was over the shoulder of this storm trooper
774
00:51:18,466 --> 00:51:21,633 who had a kid by the scruff of his shirt and he smacks him.
775
00:51:21,633 --> 00:51:25,333 REPORTER: People screaming. . .
776
00:51:25,333 --> 00:51:26,533 FERRIZZI: At that moment in time,
777
00:51:26,533 --> 00:51:28,700 I realized that anybody who really cared for America
778
00:51:28,700 --> 00:51:31,466 was sent halfway around the world
779
00:51:31,466 --> 00:51:32,966 chasing some ghost in a jungle.
780
00:51:32,966 --> 00:51:36,600 In the meantime, my country is being torn apart.
781
00:51:36,600 --> 00:51:39,633 So I saw somebody who looked like my dad
782
00:51:39,633 --> 00:51:41,933 hitting somebody who looked like me.
783
00:51:41,933 --> 00:51:43,600 Whose side would I be on?
784
00:51:43,600 --> 00:51:45,433 ED HERLIHY: In Korea, three years of combat end
785
00:51:53,333 --> 00:51:56,000 as United Nations and communist negotiators at Panmunjom
786
00:51:56,000 --> 00:51:58,966 sign a truce.
787
00:51:58,966 --> 00:52:00,166 NARRATOR: In July of 1953,
788
00:52:00,166 --> 00:52:03,166 the Korean War ended in a negotiated settlement
789
00:52:03,166 --> 00:52:06,700 and a still divided peninsula.
790
00:52:06,700 --> 00:52:08,700 American policymakers saw it as proof
791
00:52:08,700 --> 00:52:12,100 that communism in Asia could be contained.
792
00:52:12,100 --> 00:52:15,500 HERLIHY: And in Washington, a dramatic evening press conference. . .
793
00:52:15,500 --> 00:52:17,400 NARRATOR: That fall, the French indicated their willingness
794
00:52:17,400 --> 00:52:20,533 to begin talks to end the fighting in Vietnam.
795
00:52:20,533 --> 00:52:24,600 Ho Chi Minh agreed to meet.
796
00:52:24,600 --> 00:52:28,133 But before the negotiators were to convene in Geneva,
797
00:52:28,133 --> 00:52:32,166 each side sought to improve its position on the battlefield.
798
00:52:32,166 --> 00:52:37,233 General Navarre set up a fortified base
799
00:52:38,766 --> 00:52:41,333 in a remote valley in northwestern Vietnam
800
00:52:41,333 --> 00:52:44,300 called Dien Bien Phu, where he hoped to lure the Viet Minh
801
00:52:44,300 --> 00:52:48,933 into a decisive battle.
802
00:52:48,933 --> 00:52:51,000 Navarre was certain that superior French firepower
803
00:52:53,100 --> 00:52:56,200 and air support would crush any attack by the Viet Minh.
804
00:52:56,200 --> 00:53:01,366 He and his commanders saw no need to worry
805
00:53:01,366 --> 00:53:04,033 about the jungle covered hills that overlooked his 11,000 men,
806
00:53:04,033 --> 00:53:08,633 dug in on the valley floor.
807
00:53:08,633 --> 00:53:11,566 The artillery commander was so confident of victory,
808
00:53:11,566 --> 00:53:16,000 he complained, “I have more guns than I need.”
809
00:53:16,000 --> 00:53:20,100 Genera1 Giap saw his chance.[26]
810
00:53:23,100 --> 00:53:25,833 “We decided to wipe out at all costs the whole enemy force
811
00:53:25,833 --> 00:53:30,400 at Dien Bien Phu,” he remembered.
812
00:53:30,400 --> 00:53:33,466 To do it, he pulled off one of the greatest logistical feats
813
00:53:35,466 --> 00:53:39,300 in military history--
814
00:53:39,300 --> 00:53:41,200 a feat that would be restaged in propaganda films
815
00:53:41,200 --> 00:53:44,466 and celebrated for decades.
816
00:53:44,466 --> 00:53:47,733 A quarter of a million civilian porters--
817
00:53:47,733 --> 00:53:51,766 nearly half of them women--
818
00:53:51,766 --> 00:53:53,133 moved everything he needed for a siege, from sacks of rice
819
00:53:53,133 --> 00:53:58,033 to disassembled artillery pieces,
820
00:53:58,033 --> 00:54:00,300 on foot through the jungle.
821
00:54:00,300 --> 00:54:03,433 Gap surrounded the valley with 50,000 soldiers
822
00:54:03,433 --> 00:54:08,366 and 200 big guns, dug in and camouflaged so well
823
00:54:08,366 --> 00:54:13,600 they could not be spotted from the air.
824
00:54:13,600 --> 00:54:18,233 On March 13, 1954,
825
00:54:19,866 --> 00:54:23,833 Viet Minh artillery on the hill sides
826
00:54:23,833 --> 00:54:26,233 began raining down 50 shells a minute
827
00:54:26,233 --> 00:54:29,533 on the French troops huddled below.
828
00:54:29,533 --> 00:54:32,666 (explosions)
829
00:54:32,666 --> 00:54:34,933 The airstrip was destroyed.
830
00:54:34,933 --> 00:54:36,733 The besieged troops could only be reinforced
831
00:54:39,666 --> 00:54:42,833 and resupplied by airdrop.
832
00:54:42,833 --> 00:54:45,733 The French artillery commander,
833
00:54:49,266 --> 00:54:51,000 who had underestimated his enemy, committed suicide.
834
00:54:51,000 --> 00:54:55,966 NEWSREEL NARRATOR: The airlift to Dien Bien Phu continues,
835
00:54:55,966 --> 00:54:59,133 vital men and supplies for the heroic garrison
836
00:54:59,133 --> 00:55:01,733 that has defied the massed Viet Minh onslaughts
837
00:55:01,733 --> 00:55:03,466 for over six weeks.
838
00:55:03,466 --> 00:55:04,566 Today, Dien Bien Phu is a human dam
839
00:55:04,566 --> 00:55:07,733 trying to stem the red tide
840
00:55:07,733 --> 00:55:09,733 that threatens to engulf Southeast Asia.
841
00:55:09,733 --> 00:55:11,900 NARRATOR: The French government begged President Eisenhower
842
00:55:13,433 --> 00:55:16,333 to intervene.
843
00:55:16,333 --> 00:55:17,933 He refused to act without Congressional approval
844
00:55:17,933 --> 00:55:21,400 and support from European allies.
845
00:55:21,400 --> 00:55:24,300 Britain said no
846
00:55:24,300 --> 00:55:26,433 and the Congress would not support unilateral action.
847
00:55:26,433 --> 00:55:30,400 JOHN F KENNEDY: The communists
848
00:55:30,400 --> 00:55:31,700 under Ho Ch Minh are able to claim that they are fighting
849
00:55:31,700 --> 00:55:34,366 for independence and the French appear to be fighting
850
00:55:34,366 --> 00:55:37,066 for a maintain. . . maintenance of colonial rule.
851
00:55:37,066 --> 00:55:39,433 I therefore believe
852
00:55:39,433 --> 00:55:40,800 that before the United States moves in, in any degree,
853
00:55:40,800 --> 00:55:44,100 that independence must be granted to the people,
854
00:55:44,100 --> 00:55:46,666 that the people must support the struggle.
855
00:55:46,666 --> 00:55:48,466 NARRATOR: “I am convinced,” Eisenhower confided to his diary,
856
00:55:50,133 --> 00:55:54,166 “that no military victory is possible in this theater.”
857
00:55:54,166 --> 00:55:59,033 Still, without consulting Congress,
858
00:55:59,033 --> 00:56:01,866 the President had secretly sent more American transport planes,
859
00:56:01,866 --> 00:56:05,800 their markings painted over and flown by civilian contractors,
860
00:56:05,800 --> 00:56:11,566 to help resupply the desperate French troops at Dien Bien Phu.
861
00:56:11,566 --> 00:56:16,266 GELB: Everyone understood that in and of itself
862
00:56:19,833 --> 00:56:22,333 Vietnam didn’t mean very much.
863
00:56:22,333 --> 00:56:25,866 But they believed, I believed, if we lost it,
864
00:56:25,866 --> 00:56:30,100 that the rest of Asia would tumble to communism.
865
00:56:30,100 --> 00:56:33,033 EISENHOWER: You have broader considerations that might follow
866
00:56:33,033 --> 00:56:38,033 what you would call the falling domino principle.
867
00:56:38,033 --> 00:56:42,766 You have a row of dominoes set up,
868
00:56:42,766 --> 00:56:45,400 and you knock over the first one,
869
00:56:45,400 --> 00:56:47,333 and what will happen to the last one is the certainty
870
00:56:47,333 --> 00:56:51,233 that it will go over very quickly.
871
00:56:51,233 --> 00:56:54,266 (explosion)
872
00:56:56,000 --> 00:56:58,133 (muted gunfire)
873
00:57:02,166 --> 00:57:05,166 NARRATOR: On the afternoon of May 7, 1954, after 55 days of siege,
874
00:57:15,433 --> 00:57:21,500 the exhausted French forces at Dien Bien Phu surrendered.
875
00:57:21,500 --> 00:57:26,833 They had lost 8,000 men, killed, wounded, or missing.
876
00:57:29,366 --> 00:57:34,166 Genera Giap had lost three times as many,
877
00:57:36,900 --> 00:57:41,400 but he had won a great victory.
878
00:57:41,400 --> 00:57:44,600 NGUYEN THOI BUNG: Viet Minh Half of our country was liberated by the victory at Dien Bien Phu We had eliminated an entire French army corps. The victory instilled in us the belief in our ability to win.
879
00:57:45,633 --> 00:57:49,466 NARRATOR: Even Duong Van Mai’s parents could not help but be impressed.
880
00:58:01,766 --> 00:58:06,566 DUONG VAN MAI: They were very proud
881
00:58:06,566 --> 00:58:08,700 that the Viet Minh had defeated the French,
882
00:58:08,700 --> 00:58:11,566 this great Western power.
883
00:58:11,566 --> 00:58:13,500 Admiration and respect on the one hand,
884
00:58:13,500 --> 00:58:17,466 but fear on the other hand.
885
00:58:17,466 --> 00:58:19,866 And fear was the stronger emotion.
886
00:58:19,866 --> 00:58:22,566 NARRATOR: “We have been caught bluffing by our enemies,”
887
00:58:24,200 --> 00:58:26,966 Senate Minority Leader Lyndon Johnson said.
888
00:58:26,966 --> 00:58:30,766 “Today it is Indochina, tomorrow Asia may be in flames.
889
00:58:30,766 --> 00:58:35,866 And the day after the Western Alliance will be in ruins.”
890
00:58:35,866 --> 00:58:42,000 DONALD GREGG: We should have seen it as the end of the colonial era
891
00:58:42,000 --> 00:58:45,066 in Southeast Asia, which it really was.
892
00:58:45,066 --> 00:58:48,300 But instead we saw it in Cold War terms,
893
00:58:48,300 --> 00:58:50,833 and we saw it as a defeat for the free world
894
00:58:50,833 --> 00:58:55,533 that was related to the rise of China.
895
00:58:55,533 --> 00:58:57,333 And it was a total misreading of a pivotal event,
896
00:58:57,333 --> 00:59:02,566 which cost us very dearly.
897
00:59:02,566 --> 00:59:05,266 (chanting)
898
00:59:05,266 --> 00:59:07,433 (newsreel music playing)
899
00:59:07,433 --> 00:59:11,066 JACK TOBIN: The former home of the League of Nations,
900
00:59:11,066 --> 00:59:13,200 Geneva, Switzerland, where East is meeting West
901
00:59:13,200 --> 00:59:15,533 in the international conference
902
00:59:15,533 --> 00:59:16,866 that may decisively affect the political future of Asia.
903
00:59:16,866 --> 00:59:20,500 NARRATOR: The day after the fall of Dien Bien Phu,
904
00:59:20,500 --> 00:59:23,833 diplomats from nine nations[27] gathered in Geneva
905
00:59:23,833 --> 00:59:27,800 to settle the future of Vietnam.
906
00:59:27,800 --> 00:59:30,533 The talks dragged on for nearly two-and-a-half months.
907
00:59:30,533 --> 00:59:34,700 Despite their victory,
908
00:59:37,666 --> 00:59:39,466 Ho Chi Minh and General Giap could not keep fighting
909
00:59:39,466 --> 00:59:43,166 without more support from China and the Soviet Union.
910
00:59:43,166 --> 00:59:48,533 But China had lost a million men in Korea
911
00:59:48,533 --> 00:59:51,900 and did not want to become involved in another war
912
00:59:51,900 --> 00:59:55,133 along its border.
913
00:59:55,133 --> 00:59:56,666 The Soviet Union was hoping to ease tensions with the West.
914
00:59:56,666 --> 01:00:02,566 Both of Ho Chi Minh’s communist patrons urged him to agree
915
01:00:02,566 --> 01:00:07,533 to a negotiated settlement,
916
01:00:07,533 --> 01:00:09,500 a partition like the one that had ended the Korean War.
917
01:00:09,500 --> 01:00:13,966 Ho had no option but to give in.[28]
918
01:00:13,966 --> 01:00:17,300 In the end, no one was satisfied.
919
01:00:21,100 --> 01:00:24,000 Vietnam was temporarily to be divided at the 17th parallel.
920
01:00:25,966 --> 01:00:31,066 The 130,000 French-led troops stationed in the North
921
01:00:31,066 --> 01:00:35,666 were to withdraw to the South,
922
01:00:35,666 --> 01:00:37,766 and somewhere between 50,000 and 90,000 Viet Minh
923
01:00:37,766 --> 01:00:41,833 were to “re-group” to the North.
924
01:00:41,833 --> 01:00:44,466 The two halves would be separated
925
01:00:44,466 --> 01:00:46,333 by a demilitarized zone until an election could be held
926
01:00:46,333 --> 01:00:50,800 to reunify North and South Vietnam,
927
01:00:50,800 --> 01:00:54,100 an election everyone knew Ho Chi Minh would win[29].
Minutes 60-70
928
01:00:54,100 --> 01:00:59,233 The Geneva agreement called for a general election in two years, Which would reunify the country. Everybody believed it. Nobody thought it would last more than 20 years.
929
01:01:01,766 --> 01:01:06,233 (cheering)
930
01:01:14,733 --> 01:01:16,266 NGUYEN THO BUNG: I went to the North to train, To liberate the South one day.[30] But I could never believed the war would be so fierce. The violence was unimaginable.
931
01:01:16,266 --> 01:01:18,800 KARL MARLANTES: Marine 1969 We had started walking up
932
01:01:34,266 --> 01:01:35,933 and we had probably gotten about a third of the way up the hill
933
01:01:35,933 --> 01:01:37,900 and then they unleashed on us.
934
01:01:37,900 --> 01:01:39,500 (explosion, gunfire)
935
01:01:39,500 --> 01:01:42,200 We were in the middle of this horrible shit sandwich.
936
01:01:42,200 --> 01:01:44,633 That’s what we called it.
937
01:01:44,633 --> 01:01:46,566 (explosion, gunfire)
938
01:01:48,233 --> 01:01:51,600 One of the things that I learned in the war is that
939
01:01:51,600 --> 01:01:55,600 We’re not the top species on the planet because we’re nice.
940
01:01:55,600 --> 01:01:59,166 People talk a lot about how we, the military turns, you know,
941
01:02:02,033 --> 01:02:05,200 kids into, you know, killing machines and stuff.
942
01:02:05,200 --> 01:02:08,133 And I’ll always argue that it’s just finishing school.
943
01:02:08,133 --> 01:02:10,766 (gunfire)
944
01:02:10,766 --> 01:02:12,566 (shouting)
945
01:02:12,566 --> 01:02:16,766 NEWSREEL NARRATOR: Braving the dangers of the open sea in tiny, rickety craft,
946
01:02:19,133 --> 01:02:22,966 thousands of Roman Catholic and Buddhist faith
947
01:02:22,966 --> 01:02:25,533 have found life impossible under the communists.
948
01:02:25,533 --> 01:02:28,000 For them, it’s freedom or nothing.
949
01:02:28,000 --> 01:02:31,500 NARRATOR: Under the Geneva Accords,
950
01:02:34,666 --> 01:02:36,600 civilians living in either half of Vietnam
951
01:02:36,600 --> 01:02:39,533 would have 300 days to do so.
952
01:02:39,533 --> 01:02:41,866 DUONG VAN MAI: My mother and father wanted to stay
953
01:02:41,866 --> 01:02:44,866 and meet my sister Thang again
954
01:02:44,866 --> 01:02:49,000 because they knew Thang would come back.
955
01:02:49,000 --> 01:02:51,100 But on the other hand they couldn’t risk that.
956
01:02:51,100 --> 01:02:53,600 They were convinced that when Ho Chi Minh and his government
957
01:02:53,600 --> 01:02:55,733 arrived in Hanoi,
958
01:02:55,733 --> 01:03:00,900 my father would be the first one to be killed
959
01:03:00,900 --> 01:03:03,066 and all of us would be persecuted.
960
01:03:03,066 --> 01:03:06,633 And I remember the day we left
961
01:03:06,633 --> 01:03:08,633 I looked around and thought, “I’ll never come back here again.”
962
01:03:11,300 --> 01:03:13,366 It was extremely traumatic.
963
01:03:13,366 --> 01:03:16,766 It was like the ground was suddenly cut from under you.
964
01:03:19,100 --> 01:03:21,033 NARRATOR: In the end, some 900,000 refugees,
965
01:03:21,033 --> 01:03:25,800 including more than half of all the Catholics
966
01:03:25,800 --> 01:03:31,433 living in the North,
967
01:03:31,433 --> 01:03:33,766 fled to the South, many of them aboard American ships.
968
01:03:33,766 --> 01:03:35,066 The United States hoped somehow to encourage the building
969
01:03:35,066 --> 01:03:40,300 of a legitimate[31] government in the South.
970
01:03:44,600 --> 01:03:48,200 That government was now headed by Ngo Dinh Diem.
971
01:03:48,200 --> 01:03:50,566 Both a Roman Catholic and a Confucian
972
01:03:52,666 --> 01:03:57,333 in a largely Buddhist country,
973
01:03:57,333 --> 01:04:00,166 he was a celibate bachelor who had once planned to be a priest.
974
01:04:00,166 --> 01:04:02,433 GELB: The war for us really started when we became the partner,
975
01:04:02,433 --> 01:04:07,300 or would say the victim, of President Diem.
976
01:04:07,300 --> 01:04:13,566 We were going to help him turn South Vietnam into a democracy.
977
01:04:13,566 --> 01:04:18,700 That s what he said he wanted to do.
978
01:04:18,700 --> 01:04:23,900 And we believed him.
979
01:04:23,900 --> 01:04:25,433 NARRATOR: Like Ho Chi Minh,
980
01:04:25,433 --> 01:04:26,633 Diem had spent years abroad seeking support[32]
981
01:04:26,633 --> 01:04:28,933 for his own brand of Vietnamese nationalism.
982
01:04:28,933 --> 01:04:32,666 He was a veteran politician whose loathing for the French
983
01:04:32,666 --> 01:04:36,366 was matched only by his hatred for the communists,
984
01:04:36,366 --> 01:04:39,866 who had imprisoned him and buried alive his eldest brother[33]
985
01:04:39,866 --> 01:04:43,666 and his nephew.
986
01:04:43,666 --> 01:04:47,500 Diem was aloof, autocratic,
987
01:04:47,500 --> 01:04:49,966 mistrustful of anyone much beyond his own family.[34]
988
01:04:49,966 --> 01:04:53,333 He also proved to be shrewd, Resourceful,
989
01:04:53,333 --> 01:04:56,666 and skilled at exploiting the weaknesses of his opponents.
990
01:04:56,666 --> 01:05:00,800 But he faced a daunting task in creating a new country.
991
01:05:00,800 --> 01:05:04,866 The French, who still had thousands of troops
992
01:05:04,866 --> 01:05:10,966 stationed in the South, detested Diem.
993
01:05:10,966 --> 01:05:14,000 Several provinces were under the sway of religious sects
994
01:05:14,000 --> 01:05:17,566 with armies of their own.
995
01:05:17,566 --> 01:05:21,566 Tens of thousands of Viet Minh soldiers had gone north,
996
01:05:21,566 --> 01:05:23,966 but several thousand cadre--
997
01:05:23,966 --> 01:05:28,233 trained and dedicated Communist Party workers--
998
01:05:28,233 --> 01:05:30,466 had stayed behind to organize resistance in the countryside.
999
01:05:30,466 --> 01:05:33,833 And Saigon itself was ruled by the Binh Xuyen,
1000
01:05:33,833 --> 01:05:39,866 a crime syndicate backed by the French.
1001
01:05:39,866 --> 01:05:44,033 RUFUS PHILLIPS: CIA/USAID And the French were behind the Binh Xuyen
1002
01:05:44,033 --> 01:05:47,400 sort of supporting them
1003
01:05:47,400 --> 01:05:49,833 because they didn’t want Diem to succeed.
1004
01:05:49,833 --> 01:05:51,466 And that became the central contest.
1005
01:05:51,466 --> 01:05:54,433 NARRATOR: Some in the CIA believed that Diem could be the savior
1006
01:05:54,433 --> 01:05:56,433 of South Vietnam.
1007
01:05:58,400 --> 01:06:02,533 Others were not so sure.
1008
01:06:02,533 --> 01:06:04,633 “He’s a messiah without a message,”
1009
01:06:04,633 --> 01:06:06,600 one diplomat reported to Washington.
1010
01:06:06,600 --> 01:06:08,766 The U S ambassador agreed.
1011
01:06:08,766 --> 01:06:11,866 On Apr 27, 1955,
1012
01:06:11,866 --> 01:06:15,433 President Eisenhower decided to end American support[35]
1013
01:06:15,433 --> 01:06:18,766 for Diem’s regime.[36]
1014
01:06:18,766 --> 01:06:23,100 (gunfire)
1015
01:06:23,100 --> 01:06:25,666 But then Diem made an all-out assault
1016
01:06:25,666 --> 01:06:26,733 on the Binh Xuyen syndicate.
1017
01:06:26,733 --> 01:06:30,100 (sirens blaring, gunfire)
1018
01:06:30,100 --> 01:06:32,566 DUONG VAN MAI: Suddenly, in the middle of the day,
1019
01:06:32,566 --> 01:06:34,666 we heard gunfire and then we saw flames
1020
01:06:34,666 --> 01:06:36,733 and the neighborhood was burning.
1021
01:06:36,733 --> 01:06:41,200 MICHAEL FITZMAURICE: There are hundreds of dead and wounded on both sides
1022
01:06:41,200 --> 01:06:43,633 as the street fighting continues for an entire week.
1023
01:06:43,633 --> 01:06:46,600 For the United States, the situation presents
1024
01:06:46,600 --> 01:06:49,533 a grave problem.
1025
01:06:49,533 --> 01:06:51,733 Diem finally regains control of Saigon.
1026
01:06:51,733 --> 01:06:52,900 NARRATOR: In the end, Diem’s forces prevailed.
1027
01:06:54,700 --> 01:06:57,733 Eisenhower now saw no option but to stick with Diem.
1028
01:06:59,500 --> 01:07:03,766 The French then announced their intention to withdraw completely[37]
1029
01:07:03,766 --> 01:07:09,833 from South Vietnam, ending nearly a century of occupation.
1030
01:07:09,833 --> 01:07:15,233 PHILLIPS: Diem became wildly popular because he seemed to embody
1031
01:07:15,233 --> 01:07:21,466 the nationalist cause in the South.
1032
01:07:21,466 --> 01:07:26,600 He succeeded in getting the French
1033
01:07:26,600 --> 01:07:29,200 out of Vietnam all the way.
1034
01:07:29,200 --> 01:07:31,266 And Ho Chi Minh had only got them out of the northern half.
1035
01:07:31,266 --> 01:07:33,233 NARRATOR: Flush with victory, Diem called for a referendum in the South.[38]
1036
01:07:33,233 --> 01:07:36,800 The CIA warned him not to meddle too much with the returns.
1037
01:07:36,800 --> 01:07:42,733 But when the ballots were counted,
1038
01:07:42,733 --> 01:07:48,200 Diem claimed to have won 98.2% of the vote.
1039
01:07:49,266 --> 01:07:51,233 On October 26, 1955, Ngo Dinh Diem named himself
1040
01:07:51,233 --> 01:07:57,000 the first President of the brand-new Republic of Vietnam.
1041
01:07:58,766 --> 01:08:04,466 The election to reunify the North and South
1042
01:08:04,466 --> 01:08:10,200 that had been promised at Geneva would never be held.[39]
1043
01:08:10,200 --> 01:08:14,166 GELB: He became our ally, or rather our master,
1044
01:08:14,166 --> 01:08:17,733 because the goal of preventing
1045
01:08:17,733 --> 01:08:24,000 the communists from taking over the South
1046
01:08:24,000 --> 01:08:26,600 was so strong that we couldn’t afford for him to lose.
1047
01:08:26,600 --> 01:08:28,899 So Diem started to boss us around.
1048
01:08:28,899 --> 01:08:35,433 And this was a typical relationship.
1049
01:08:35,433 --> 01:08:38,266 You need any ally you believe
1050
01:08:38,266 --> 01:08:40,366 to be the centerpiece of your foreign policy.
1051
01:08:40,366 --> 01:08:42,766 They understand that right away.
1052
01:08:42,766 --> 01:08:45,866 And the tail wags the dog.
1053
01:08:45,866 --> 01:08:47,466 ED HERLIHY: From the Far East comes a distinguished visitor.
1054
01:08:47,466 --> 01:08:50,200 President Ngo Dinh Diem of Vietnam is accorded
1055
01:08:54,566 --> 01:08:56,866 one of President Eisenhower’s rare airport greetings,
1056
01:08:56,866 --> 01:08:59,700 as he arrives for a four-day state visit.
1057
01:08:59,700 --> 01:09:02,733 President Diem, one of America’s staunchest allies
1058
01:09:02,733 --> 01:09:05,466 in Southeast Asia,
1059
01:09:05,466 --> 01:09:07,833 will seek an increase in aid to shore up his country
1060
01:09:07,833 --> 01:09:09,066 against increasing communist pressure,
1061
01:09:09,066 --> 01:09:11,800 a request to which the president lends a sympathetic ear.
1062
01:09:11,800 --> 01:09:13,833 NARRATOR: Most politicians, Democrats as well as Republicans,
1063
01:09:13,833 --> 01:09:19,266 now seemed to share the changing views
1064
01:09:19,266 --> 01:09:23,333 of Senator John F Kennedy.
1065
01:09:23,333 --> 01:09:25,399 South Vietnam’s “our offspring,” he said.
1066
01:09:25,399 --> 01:09:27,466 “We cannot abandon it.”
1067
01:09:27,466 --> 01:09:31,066 If it fell the United States would be “held responsible
1068
01:09:31,066 --> 01:09:32,700 and our prestige in Asia will sink to a new low.”
1069
01:09:32,700 --> 01:09:37,200 There had never before been a South Vietnamese nation.[40]
1070
01:09:37,200 --> 01:09:41,399 but Americans, who had rebuilt much of their own country
1071
01:09:41,399 --> 01:09:46,899 during the New Deal and had helped rebuild Western Europe
1072
01:09:46,899 --> 01:09:50,166 through the Marshall Plan,
1073
01:09:50,166 --> 01:09:53,933 were convinced they could build one nonetheless.
1074
01:09:53,933 --> 01:09:55,200 (blows whistle)
1075
01:09:55,200 --> 01:10:00,066 Eisenhower ordered scores of American civilians[41]
1076
01:10:00,066 --> 01:10:02,133 to South Vietnam, full of plans for economic development
1077
01:10:02,133 --> 01:10:06,133 meant to win, he hoped, the hearts and minds
1078
01:10:06,133 --> 01:10:09,866 of the Vietnamese people.
1079
01:10:09,866 --> 01:10:13,833 But those civilians would always be outnumbered
1080
01:10:13,833 --> 01:10:15,533 by military advisors,
1081
01:10:18,433 --> 01:10:21,633 with orders to modernize, train, and equip Diem’s forces,
1082
01:10:21,633 --> 01:10:23,400 now called the Army of the Republic of Vietnam -- the ARVN.
1083
01:10:23,400 --> 01:10:27,733 Some ARVN officers found American methods unsuited
1084
01:10:27,733 --> 01:10:33,766 to the guerrilla war they expected to wage
1085
01:10:33,766 --> 01:10:39,300 against the communists.[42]
Minutes 70-END
1086
01:10:39,300 --> 01:10:41,900 Most American military advisors were veterans
1087
01:10:41,900 --> 01:10:44,066 of the war in Korea,
1088
01:10:44,066 --> 01:10:46,900 determined to prepare South Vietnamese forces
1089
01:10:46,900 --> 01:10:48,233 to slow a conventional invasion from the North.
1090
01:10:48,233 --> 01:10:52,000 But no one in North Vietnam
1091
01:10:52,000 --> 01:10:57,533 was planning a conventional invasion.[43]
1092
01:10:57,533 --> 01:11:01,300 Ho Chi Minh was focused on rebuilding his country,[44]
1093
01:11:01,300 --> 01:11:04,900 devastated by more than a decade of war.
1094
01:11:04,900 --> 01:11:08,900 The communists imposed brutal land reforms
1095
01:11:08,900 --> 01:11:12,900 modeled on those underway in China
1096
01:11:15,300 --> 01:11:19,066 with a ruthlessness that left [45] thousands of people dead,
1097
01:11:19,066 --> 01:11:21,266 including not only landlords who had sided with the French,
1098
01:11:21,266 --> 01:11:25,966 but also many villagers who had fought with the Viet Minh.
1099
01:11:25,966 --> 01:11:29,433 Ho Chi Minh was still determined to reunite Vietnam.
1100
01:11:29,433 --> 01:11:33,833 But he worried that if he took direct military action
1101
01:11:36,466 --> 01:11:40,233 against the South,
1102
01:11:40,233 --> 01:11:43,000 the United States would be drawn more deeply into the struggle.[46]
1103
01:11:43,000 --> 01:11:44,600 He cautioned his comrades in the South to put their faith
1104
01:11:44,600 --> 01:11:48,766 in political agitation and avoid violence.
1105
01:11:48,766 --> 01:11:52,233 But that message rang hollow
1106
01:11:52,233 --> 01:11:56,066 among embattled Southern revolutionaries
1107
01:11:58,433 --> 01:12:00,500 struggling to survive
1108
01:12:00,500 --> 01:12:03,433 under Diem’s increasingly harsh regime.
1109
01:12:03,433 --> 01:12:05,300 In a campaign he called “Denounce the Communists,”
1110
01:12:05,300 --> 01:12:10,200 Diem had imprisoned tens of thousands of citizens
1111
01:12:10,200 --> 01:12:14,833 without trial and ordered the executions of hundreds more.[47]
1112
01:12:14,833 --> 01:12:18,366 Now, the communists took matters into their own hands
1113
01:12:18,366 --> 01:12:24,533 and began attacking South Vietnamese officials.
1114
01:12:24,533 --> 01:12:28,533 LE QUAN CONG: Viet Minh We didn’t have guns then so we used machetes to kill they tyrants. During the uprising, we killed a security officer named Soc. Twelve of us got together with machetes. He ran out and fell into the rice paddy. We hacked him to death. Then, we told the people that anyone who attended Soc’s funeral Would be killed. Nobody dared to go.[48]
1115
01:12:28,533 --> 01:12:32,333 NARRATOR: As violence in South Vietnam intensified,
1116
01:12:33,700 --> 01:12:38,700 new leaders emerged in Hanoi.
1117
01:13:11,866 --> 01:13:16,100 Ho Chi Minh would remain the face of the revolution
1118
01:13:16,100 --> 01:13:18,866 around the world, but he now began to share power
1119
01:13:18,866 --> 01:13:22,333 with men who were growing impatient with his caution,
1120
01:13:22,333 --> 01:13:26,366 men about whom Americans knew almost nothing.[49]
1121
01:13:26,366 --> 01:13:29,633 The most important proved to be a carpenter’s son[50]
1122
01:13:29,633 --> 01:13:34,233 from Quang Tri province in the South named Le Duan.
1123
01:13:36,366 --> 01:13:39,266 He had helped found the Indochinese Communist Party,
1124
01:13:39,266 --> 01:13:45,400 survived nearly ten years in a French prison,
1125
01:13:45,400 --> 01:13:49,033 and proved himself a shrewd political infighter
1126
01:13:49,033 --> 01:13:52,566 as he rose to become First Secretary of the Party.[51]
1127
01:13:52,566 --> 01:13:55,700 NGUYEN NGOC: Viet Minh I met Le Duan for the first time in 1951. I was a young cadre. I saw that he was very different from the other leaders. He understood the will of the Southern people. Le Duan carried their will to the North.
1128
01:13:55,700 --> 01:13:59,266 NARRATOR: By 1959, Le Duan and his hard line allies[52]
1129
01:14:01,166 --> 01:14:05,233 were gaining influence within the North Vietnamese Politburo
1130
01:14:34,133 --> 01:14:38,233 and beginning to change its policy.
1131
01:14:38,233 --> 01:14:42,266 They now argued that Hanoi should do everything
1132
01:14:42,266 --> 01:14:44,900 within its power to help Southern revolutionaries
1133
01:14:44,900 --> 01:14:48,900 remove Diem by force.
1134
01:14:48,900 --> 01:14:52,033 BUI DIEM (speaking English) The North Vietnamese adopted a more expressive posture. They did not accept the division of the country, as such. And they would try to have the country reunified again, at any cost.
1135
01:14:52,033 --> 01:14:54,400 NARRATOR: Now bands of 40 to 50 armed Viet Minh
1136
01:14:56,366 --> 01:15:00,733 began slipping back home into South Vietnam,
1137
01:15:15,933 --> 01:15:19,633 following jungle paths hacked through the Laotian mountains
1138
01:15:19,633 --> 01:15:22,966 that the Americans would soon call the Ho Chi Minh Trail.[53]
1139
01:15:22,966 --> 01:15:26,900 Violence against the Diem regime steadily accelerated.
1140
01:15:26,900 --> 01:15:31,533 (gunfire)
1141
01:15:37,500 --> 01:15:40,800 (siren blaring)
1142
01:15:40,800 --> 01:15:42,466 On the evening of July 8, 1959, at Bien Hoa,
1143
01:15:42,466 --> 01:15:44,500 20 miles northeast of Saigon,
1144
01:15:50,500 --> 01:15:55,733 six American military advisors were watching a movie
1145
01:15:55,733 --> 01:15:57,600 in their mess hall.
1146
01:15:57,600 --> 01:16:01,966 Viet Minh guerrillas, who had crept silently
1147
01:16:01,966 --> 01:16:03,566 into the compound, opened fire through the windows.
1148
01:16:05,166 --> 01:16:07,366 (rapid gunfire)
1149
01:16:07,366 --> 01:16:11,033 Major Dale Buis from Pender, Nebraska,
1150
01:16:11,033 --> 01:16:13,700 and Master Sergeant Chester Ovnand
1151
01:16:16,533 --> 01:16:19,533 from Copperas Cove, Texas, were killed.
1152
01:16:19,533 --> 01:16:21,733 They were the first American soldiers to die from enemy fire[54]
1153
01:16:21,733 --> 01:16:25,266 in the Vietnam War.
1154
01:16:27,400 --> 01:16:31,866 JOHN KENNEDY: We must prove all over again,
1155
01:16:31,866 --> 01:16:33,833 to a watching world, as we sit on a most conspicuous stage,
1156
01:16:35,233 --> 01:16:37,933 whether this nation,
1157
01:16:37,933 --> 01:16:43,766 conceived as it is with its freedom of choice,
1158
01:16:43,766 --> 01:16:45,400 its breadth of opportunity, its range of alternatives,
1159
01:16:45,400 --> 01:16:49,600 can compete with the single-minded advance
1160
01:16:49,600 --> 01:16:54,266 of the communist system.
1161
01:16:54,266 --> 01:16:56,800 NARRATOR: On November 8, 1960, John Fitzgerald Kennedy was elected
1162
01:16:56,800 --> 01:16:58,500 President of the United States.
1163
01:16:58,500 --> 01:17:04,300 His Vice President was Senator Lyndon Johnson.
1164
01:17:04,300 --> 01:17:06,966 They had narrowly beaten Vice President Richard Nixon
1165
01:17:06,966 --> 01:17:10,900 and his running mate, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge.
1166
01:17:10,900 --> 01:17:14,900 During the campaign, both Kennedy and Nixon
1167
01:17:14,900 --> 01:17:18,266 had pledged to hold the line against international communism
1168
01:17:19,600 --> 01:17:22,633 wherever it seemed to be a threat.
1169
01:17:22,633 --> 01:17:27,366 But very few Americans knew or cared about
1170
01:17:27,366 --> 01:17:29,933 what was going on in Vietnam.
1171
01:17:29,933 --> 01:17:34,000 Six weeks after Kennedy’s election,
1172
01:17:34,000 --> 01:17:36,400 at a remote jungle village called Tan Lap
1173
01:17:38,100 --> 01:17:40,333 near the Cambodian border,
1174
01:17:40,333 --> 01:17:43,400 representatives of southern revolutionary groups
1175
01:17:43,400 --> 01:17:45,300 met to form a new organization to replace the Viet Minh,
1176
01:17:45,300 --> 01:17:49,300 dedicated to overthrowing Ngo Dinh Diem
1177
01:17:49,300 --> 01:17:53,500 and ousting the foreigners supporting him.
1178
01:17:53,500 --> 01:17:56,333 Behind the scenes Le Duan and his communist comrades in Hanoi
1179
01:17:56,333 --> 01:18:00,333 were orchestrating everything.
1180
01:18:00,333 --> 01:18:06,066 The new organization would be called
1181
01:18:06,066 --> 01:18:10,100 the National Liberation Front--the NLF.[55]
1182
01:18:10,100 --> 01:18:11,966 The armed wing of the NLF was called
1183
01:18:11,966 --> 01:18:16,266 the People’s Liberation Armed Forces,[56]
1184
01:18:17,766 --> 01:18:21,000 but its enemies in Saigon and Washington preferred
1185
01:18:21,000 --> 01:18:23,833 a more disparaging term.
1186
01:18:23,833 --> 01:18:27,433 In their eyes, the revolutionaries were
1187
01:18:27,433 --> 01:18:29,500 Communist Traitors to the Vietnamese Nation --
1188
01:18:29,500 --> 01:18:32,900 the Viet Cong.
1189
01:18:32,900 --> 01:18:36,466 (muted shouting)
1190
01:18:36,466 --> 01:18:38,033 HUY DUC: Our leaders said, “We are willing sacrifice to the last Vietnamese person.” We exulted in those slogans. The people couldn’t fully understand that behind those heroic slogans was their own sacrifice. History will judge whether the war was worth the sacrifice.
1191
01:18:43,933 --> 01:18:48,700 JOHN KENNEDY: January 20, 1961 Let every nation know,
1192
01:18:51,166 --> 01:18:55,833 whether it wishes us well or ill,
1193
01:19:28,100 --> 01:19:30,666 that we shall pay any price, bear any burden,
1194
01:19:30,666 --> 01:19:36,366 meet any hardship, support any friend,
1195
01:19:36,366 --> 01:19:42,366 oppose any foe, to assure the survival
1196
01:19:42,366 --> 01:19:47,333 and the success of liberty.
1197
01:19:47,333 --> 01:19:52,500 TIM O’BRIEN: Army 1969 For me, I’d always thought of courage
1198
01:19:52,500 --> 01:19:53,933 as charging enemy bunkers or standing up under fire.
1199
01:20:06,266 --> 01:20:08,833 But just to walk, day after day from village to village
1200
01:20:08,833 --> 01:20:13,366 and through the paddies and up into the mountains,
1201
01:20:13,366 --> 01:20:19,400 just to get up in the morning and look out at the land
1202
01:20:19,400 --> 01:20:24,100 and think, “In a few minutes I’ll be walking out there
1203
01:20:24,100 --> 01:20:28,500 “and will my corpse be there, over there?
1204
01:20:28,500 --> 01:20:32,100 “Will I lose a leg out there?”
1205
01:20:32,100 --> 01:20:35,400 Just to walk felt incredibly brave.
1206
01:20:35,400 --> 01:20:36,900 I would sometimes look at my legs as I walked,
1207
01:20:38,700 --> 01:20:42,366 Thinking, how am I doing this?
1208
01:20:42,366 --> 01:20:45,300 (“A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” by Bob Dylan playing)
1209
01:20:45,300 --> 01:20:47,766 ♪Oh where have you been my blue-eyed son?♪
1210
01:20:51,733 --> 01:20:57,833 ♪And where have you been my darling young one?♪
1211
01:20:57,833 --> 01:21:01,766 ♪I’ve stumbled on the side of 12 misty mountains.♪
1212
01:21:04,133 --> 01:21:08,466 ♪I’ve walked and I’ve crawled on six crooked highways.♪
1213
01:21:11,266 --> 01:21:15,066 ♪I’ve stepped in the middle of seven sad forests.♪
1214
01:21:18,166 --> 01:21:22,233 ♪I’ve been out in front of a dozen dead oceans.♪
1215
01:21:24,600 --> 01:21:28,700 ♪I’ve been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard.♪
1216
01:21:31,166 --> 01:21:35,566 ♪And it’s a hard, It’s a hard,♪
1217
01:21:37,600 --> 01:21:42,200 ♪It’s a hard, It’s a hard,♪
1218
01:21:44,466 --> 01:21:47,800 ♪It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.♪
1219
01:21:47,800 --> 01:21:51,900 ♪Oh what did you see my blue-eyed son?♪
1220
01:21:51,900 --> 01:21:57,066 ♪And what did you see my darling young one?♪
1221
01:22:02,366 --> 01:22:06,633 ♪I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves a around it.♪
1222
01:22:09,100 --> 01:22:13,000 ♪I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it.♪
1223
01:22:15,833 --> 01:22:20,333 ♪I saw a black branch with blood that kept drippin’.♪
1224
01:22:22,466 --> 01:22:26,333 ♪I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin’.♪
1225
01:22:29,300 --> 01:22:33,333 ♪I saw a white ladder all covered with water.♪
1226
01:22:35,933 --> 01:22:39,900 ♪I saw 10,000 talkers whose tongues were all broken.♪
1227
01:22:42,633 --> 01:22:46,300 ♪I saw guns with sharp swords in the hands of young children.♪
1228
01:22:49,200 --> 01:22:53,133 ♪And it’s a hard, It’s a hard,♪
1229
01:22:55,933 --> 01:23:00,966 ♪It’s a hard, and it’s a hard,♪
1230
01:23:00,966 --> 01:23:04,366 ♪It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.♪
1231
01:23:04,366 --> 01:23:08,233 ♪And it’s a hard, It’s a hard,♪
1232
01:23:08,233 --> 01:23:13,700 ♪It’s a hard, and it’s a hard,♪
1233
01:23:16,100 --> 01:23:19,733 ♪It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.♪
1234
01:23:19,733 --> 01:23:23,200 Captioned by Media Access Group at WGNH Access wgnh.org
1235
01:23:23,200 --> 01:23:28,433 ANNOUNCER: LEARN MORE ABOUT THE FILM
1236
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1237
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1238
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1239
01:23:46,166 --> 01:23:50,100 ON BLU-RAY AND DVD.
1240
01:23:50,100 --> 01:23:51,566 THE COMPANION BOOK, SOUNDTRACK,
1241
01:23:51,566 --> 01:23:53,233 AND ORIGINAL SCORE FROM THE FILM
1242
01:23:53,233 --> 01:23:54,900 ARE ALSO AVAILABLE.
1243
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1244
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1245
01:23:57,433 --> 01:23:59,533 EPISODES OF THIS SERIES ALSO
1246
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1247
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1248
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1249
01:24:04,600 --> 01:24:05,700 KEN BURNS' AND LYNN NOVICK'S FILM "THE VIETNAM WAR"
1250
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1251
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1252
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1253
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1254
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1255
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1256
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1257
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1258
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1259
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1260
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1261
01:24:49,066 --> 01:24:51,466 THE FULLERTON FAMILY CHARITABLE FUND,
1262
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1263
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1264
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1265
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1266
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1267
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1268
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1269
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1270
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1271
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1272
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1273
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1274
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1275
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1276
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1277
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1278
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1279
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1280
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1281
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References
- ↑ See how well the Korean Truce is working today. [ed.]
- ↑ America's involvement in VN did not "end in failure." As long as US forces were in SVN, America's military involvement there was a tactical success, not a failure.
- ↑ The early academic characterizations of the war were written by far-left and left-liberal professors who were active members of anti-war protest movements. Their hostile view of U.S. foreign policy and the U.S. military in Vietnam was institutionalized as the consensus academic orthodoxy on the war by a new generation of leftist professors trained by those of the 1960s. The orthodox version of the U.S. Phase of the Second Indochina War from 1965 to 1972 is that it was an unnecessary, immoral, illegal, ineffective, unwinnable waste of lives and money in a shameful, militarily futile, neo-imperialist intrusion into an indigenous South Vietnamese insurgency and/or civil war against a corrupt and repressive regime. The Revisionist version of the war is that it was a nobly motivated, legally and morally justified, militarily winnable, and until 1974 militarily successful war against both the invading North Vietnamese Army and their indigenous Viet Cong subordinates. The sole purpose of the U.S. participation in the war was to defend the Republic of Viet Nam from Communist aggression until its own armed forces were able to do so.
- ↑ One of Ho Chi Minh's pseudonyms was "Nguyen O Phap" = Nguyen the French Hater. Like his idol, Lenin, his main lifetime motivation was hatred.
- ↑ FALSE: HCM had an official wife in China, but abandoned her when communists were being persecuted in China: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeng_Xueming He also had several affairs: with a married Russian woman, a French woman, and had an illegitimate child: https://www.questia.com/magazine/1G1-75122073/ho-chi-minh-s-love-child He also kept a mistress who was 40 years younger than he was, who was eventually clubbed to death in an effort to keep his reputation: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/vietnam/4307137/Ho-Chi-Minh-mistress-murdered-by-his-comrades.html
- ↑ He is also considered to be a founder of the French Communist Party.
- ↑ Ho Chi Minh spent a year and a half in Moscow learning to subvert Asian governments by planting spies and saboteuers; recruiting, organizing, and training covert and clandestine Communist cells; and propagandizing vulnerable targets.
- ↑ In Comintern’s training program (see link to come) criticism is an important part of recreating the student in the proper image. His actions as Head of State show that ideology rather than nationalism had the higher priority.
- ↑ The ultimate goal of the Indochinese Communist Party was not merely Communist hegemony in Vietnam, but in all of Indochina (including Laos & Cambodia) plus Thailand.
- ↑ This is Mao's Three Phase Doctrine of War. Giap did not "develop a distinctive theory of warfare." He merely adapted Mao's 3-phase model of revolutionary warfare with few changes. Giap was not a military genius and was only competent at logistics and organization, not at tactics, operations, or leadership.
- ↑ See Ho Chi Minh During WWII
- ↑ "... calculated to disguise his totalitarian Leninist ideology.
- ↑ "...hoped to spread their influence ...." = "planned to spread their hegemony ...."
- ↑ The narration is much concerned that the Americans didn’t speak Vietnamese, but acknowledges here that French was a lingua franca.
- ↑ The Viet Minh classification of this as a "mistake" should not be readily accepted.
- ↑ At least he acknowledges what Burns downplays.
- ↑ These letters appear in the State Department history, whether or not they made it to Truman, they were known.
- ↑ Insert link to paper citing Turner research.
- ↑ the estimated number of people killed by Giap in 1946 should be stated (not "hundreds," but thousands).
- ↑ the other categories of victims are here to draw your attention away form the execution of Ho's rival nationalists.
- ↑ Don't imagine this was done without Ho Chi Minh approval.
- ↑ How is this different than the US supporting the French or SVN?
- ↑ This supposes that the US had any interest in supporting a Communist regime.
- ↑ See Flags
- ↑ Standard communist propaganda tropes about "chemical" warfare
- ↑ Had it been up to Giap, there never would have been a DBP, see Giap's Generalship.
- ↑ Both North and South Vietnam were counted among the nine participants, suggesting equal legitimacy. Bao Dai appointed Ngo Dinh Diem as his Prime Minister as the opening of the sessions. Diem was not “chosen” by the U.S.
- ↑ "Ho had no option but to give in" to the partition of Vietnam. He did so over the strong objections of his followers, because he was a loyal, obedient Communist subordinate of the USSR, who always put the welfare of the Communist Party over his own or Vietnam's welfare.
- ↑ See Reunification Elections
- ↑ If there was so much confidence in the outcome of an election, why train guerrillas in the North?
- ↑ Choice of words: “Competent” or “Qualified” might be appropriate, but SVN’s “legitimacy” is equal to or greater than that of the Hanoi “regime”. See article on Legitimacy.
- ↑ He lived in a monastery
- ↑ Seems a reasonable basis for hatred. [ed.]
- ↑ A certain amount of backstabbing seems endemic to Vietnam. Ask any of Giap or Le Duan’s victims [ed.]
- ↑ See Battle of the Y- Bridge
- ↑ The word “regime” is a loaded word, used in reference to the French and to various SVN governments, but never in regard to the Communists. See article on “Legitimacy.”
- ↑ See Battle of the Y- Bridge.
- ↑ The referendum was a plebiscite on disbanding the monarchy and instituting a republic. It was held on October 23, 1955
- ↑ See Reunification Elections.
- ↑ When European merchants and missionaries arrived in Asia in the 17th century, they found two Vietnamese nations, one in the North, which they called Tonkin, and one in the South, which they called Cochinchina. The Southern nation was formed by Vietnamese who emigrated into the south after it was opened up by Vietnamese armies that conquered the Cham kingdom in the 1570s. For fifty years, from the 1620s to the 1670s, these two countries were constantly at war, with the Northerners seeking to conquer the Southerners, and with the Southerners fending off the Northerners by building a network of defensive walls extending from the mountains to the sea at the modern city of Đồng Hới. These two Vietnamese countries existed separately from the late 16th century until 1802 when the Southerners conquered the North and for the first time created the country of Vietnam as we now see it on maps. Southerners and Northerners continue to display their different heritages to the present time. See: Olga Dror and K. W. Taylor, Views of Seventeenth-Century Vietnam: Christoforo Borri on Cochinchina and Samuel Baron on Tonkin (Ithaca: Cornell University Southeast Asia Program Publications, 2006); K. W. Taylor, “The Vietnamese Civil War of 1955-1975 in Historical Perspective,” in Andrew Wiest and Michael J. Doidge, eds., Triumph Revisited: Historians Battle for the Vietnam War (New York: Routledge, 2010), pp. 17-28; K. W. Taylor, A History of the Vietnamese (Cambridge University Press, 2013), Chapters 6, 7 & 8.
- ↑ Many of whom were academics, e.g. Michigan State. When the anti-war fervor took to the USA, a reverse McCarthyism took place on the campuses at home.
- ↑ This is an argument brought up repeatedly. The ARVN was trained for war: specifically defense of their country from the ultimate invasion from the North. Parallel to this, General Williams had the few US counter-insurgency manuals translated into Vietnamese and Special Forces teams were brought in to conduct ranger training with specific units of ARVN. A parallel program training police and Civil Defense cadre was instituted under US Embassy control, using retired SF personnel to conduct the program. This was 1957-1961 period.
- ↑ c.f. Giap’s theory of warfare and Mao’s Three Phase Doctrine of War.
- ↑ In 1956, instead of negotiating an election with Diem, he was focused on the brutal land reform program and a rebellion in Nghe An province. He also began the precursor units to the 559 (May 1959) element that ran the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
- ↑ [tens of]
- ↑ Given the Land Reform and the Nghe An rebellion, the US did not appear to be a primary concern at this time.
- ↑ This seems tame in comparison to what was happening in the North and the placement here, in juxtaposition with the North’s land reform, seems designed to draw attention away from the former.
- ↑ Not all VC had guns at that time, but that did not stop them from assassinating their fellow villagers. Did they disembowel Soc’s wife? See article “Casualties” showing year by year assassinations and disappearances, compared to RVN arrests.
- ↑ The U.S apparently knew very little about anybody in Vietnam, including Ho Chi Minh, as evidenced by the continued questions as to his being a communist of nationalist. See article “Flags.”
- ↑ Is this intended as a biblical allusion?
- ↑ Date?
- ↑ Date of Le Duan's accession?
- ↑ See article on troop movement dates. Also, HCM Trail is later known as Averill Harriman Memorial Highway.
- ↑ This assumes that the bullets that killed Peter Dewey were “friendly fire?”
- ↑ The National Liberation Front was just a deceptive sham, not a functional organization.
- ↑ Since we have already noted ARVN and PLAF, we should remind the viewer that the Northern soldiers were called PAVN or “People’s Army of Viet Nam,” an epithet that conveys no more popular merit than calling the Northern regime “Democratic Republic of Viet Nam.” PAVN stands for “People’s Army of Viet Nam.” “People’s” is a Marxist-Leninist euphemism for coercive central government collectivism. The term North Vietnamese Army (NVA) is more descriptive, because: 1) the Army of the Republic of Viet Nam (ARVN) was also composed of people; 2) all national armies belong to their political regimes, not to their entire population; and 3) all national armies are a percentage of their nation's population, not the entire population. The first U.S. ambassador to the Republic of Viet Nam in 1964 and the U.S. ambassador to the Paris Peace Talks in 1968 both used the more accurate term, North Vietnamese Army. – Email of GEN Andrew Goodpaster (ret.) to McLeroy, May 3, 1996. Westmoreland, William; A Soldier Reports; Doubleday; Garden City, NY; 1976; p.43.