The Human Cost Of The Vietnam War | Jungle War | War Stories

this channel is part of the history hit Network the Guerrilla revolutions which began in the wake of the second World War continued through the 1950s and Beyond patterns that emerged in earlier wars were repeated in the decades that followed death and displacement defoliation and destruction in Vietnam Cuba and Colombia All Nations transformed by jungle war people sought to recreate their worlds in the jungle Darkness envelops the soldier illness incapacitates and tension is ever present this is the story of the Jungle Wars that erupted across the globe in the 20th century people who fought for survival In the Jungle the soldiers who adapted their tactics to Guerrilla fighting and the civilians whose lives and homes were decimated by jungle war by 1967 the war in Vietnam was becoming increasingly unpopular on the American Home Front casualties were growing both military and civilian and the American public were beginning to question if the war could be won [Music] Americans will forgive anything but failure and although it were all sorts of strands in protest in America one of them was the drafts a lot of young people were terrified of being sent to Vietnam and wasting year of their lives or were still getting killed I think a very large number of Americans concluded that this was something which was failing and which was not going anyplace and in this they were right large-scale anti-war protests had been held as early as 1965. in October 1967 35 000 protested outside the Pentagon in the face of this growing public doubt General Westmoreland visited Washington to dispel concerns about the progress of the war [Music] we will prevail in Vietnam over the Communist aggression [Applause] so in late 67 westmoreland's in Washington he addresses Congress he reassures Americans that the war is on track that although it might still take some time to win the war that the light really was being seen at the end of the tunnel that the American way of war was prevailing but at the end of January 1968 but Viet Cong launched this massive offensive across South Vietnam the Tet Offensive undermined westmoreland's assurances and marked a turning point in the war in 1967 some within the North Vietnamese and Vietcong leadership advocated for a dramatic change in tactics a move away from guerrilla warfare in the search for a decisive victory Vietnamese and Viet Cong shifted tactics in the Tet Offensive primarily because they had lulled the Americans into a sense of almost security neither the North Vietnamese nor the Viet Cong had attacked in Mass for several years so the North Vietnamese realized that the Americans weren't expecting a major attack it began in late January 1968. the beginning of the Lunar New Year holiday known as Tet multiple attacks in multiple cities across the country were Unleashed the coastal cities of hoyan and natural and dakto and kantum in the central Highlands were among the cities attacked on the eve of the Tet Festival the following evening more cities were hit including sadek and canto in the South as well as Quang Tree close to the demilitarized zone it was a series of attacks unprecedented in the war to date somewhere maybe as many as 200 000 North Vietnamese and Viet Cong Fighters attacked around 100 American and South Vietnamese bases and cities all at once the idea was to create a toothache a headache a heart attack and a broken back all at the same time and that would create a systemic failure of the entire South Vietnamese infrastructure history hit is a streaming platform that is just for history fans with fantastic documentaries covering fascinating figures and moments in history from all over the world from the Battle of Trafalgar and the revolutionary era right through to the second world war if you are looking for your next military history fix then this is the service for you we're committed to Bringing history fans award-winning documentaries and podcasts that you cannot find anywhere else sign up now for a free trial and War Stories fans get 50 off their first three months just be sure to use the code War Stories at checkout another two phases of the offensive followed in May and August they attacked dozens of cities one is the attack in Saigon where they were able to attack the U.S embassy now they did not occupy the embassy as some Americans were told at the time but the very fact that the Viet Cong were able to launch this attack in the middle of the most important city in South Vietnam and take the war right to the center of American Authority in Saigon was very important foreign responded they did so with great force Allied planes blanketed cities with bombs house to house battles were fought by U.S Marines in some regions destruction reigned Supreme when the Vietcong retreated to Hamlet surrounding the cities the chaos followed them Villages inhabited by people who had been considered allies were bombed millions of civilians became refugees the North Vietnamese and the Vietcong came out in the open and they got pulverized the Viet Cong itself may be lost as many as 80 000 Fighters which broke the back of the Viet Cong Force after 1968 the Viet Cong play a much lesser role in the fighting Siege on the city of way was particularly brutal and in way the Viet Cong really did occupy large parts of the city and it took the U.S Marines some weeks to dislodge them the Marines who were there were fighting a war that again was different from the conflict they'd been fighting in Vietnam they were fighting an urban War which they had not had to fight really in decades American and South Vietnamese forces recaptured the city the fighting in way had been televised the battle that took place in way was again a very public battle it was seen on TV and although the Americans prevailed them militarily it came at Great cost for the United States Army and for American credibility in Vietnam the graphic television footage of the fights in the cities galvanized Americans at home against the war on the battlefield from a military perspective this was a decisive defeat for the Viet Cong and a decisive victory for the Americans however the bigger picture here and this is where I think the North Vietnamese grasped that it's not just what you do in the battlefield it is how it's received back in the United States this becomes a public relations nightmare for the American Military there are studies that show that up until 1968 reporting in general was quite supportive of the war from 1968 onwards though there was a breakdown of elite consensus in the United States that more and more politicians but also economists said well this is too expensive that isn't working and this was then reflected in the media the polls indicate that the American people disapprove of President Johnson's handling of the war by a margin of total one most of them expressed their disapproval differently but at the end of the day the result is the same the military alternative still holds the field militarily the U.S and her allies earned a victory intent but the hearts and minds of the American people were lost the televised War had brought the brutal reality into their Lounge rooms Lyndon B Johnson also if you've ever been to his Ranch in in Texas he was obsessed about media coverage he has three televisions for example that he can even see from his dining room table because he was watching those main channels all the time but what were they saying about him what were they saying about his policy for him how Vietnam was represented was quite important [Music] now I certainly do not believe that the media lost America the war that was something that happened for all sorts of political and Military reasons but what the media's presence did and the fact that all this stuff that had been concealed from the folks back home in past Wars suddenly they were seeing in their living rooms the fact that people died in horrible ways they were seeing the naked child running screaming down the street after being caught up in a Napalm Strike they could no longer ignore the unbelievably brutal cost of these struggles as support for the war dwindled at home and the war dragged on with the outcome increasingly uncertain morale dropped and drug and alcohol abuse Rose in Vietnam marijuana opium hallucinogens and barbiturates were cheap and accessible from the early years of the war in 1969 heroin became readily available [Music] by 1971 35 000 American soldiers were said to be addicted to the drug connected to the rise in drug use and the drop in morale was the phenomenon of fragging named for the fragmentation grenade that was often the weapon of choice fragging was the practice of threatening killing or attempting to kill a fellow Soldier often the targets were officers or ncos it was often more subtle in previous Wars the officer would get shot in the back a grenade would land in the wrong place but in the Vietnam War it became endemic I have seen research say that there were between 600 and 1 000 incidents of fragging where officers and sergeants were attacked or threatened and there were about 90 deaths resulting from these incidents motives for fragging varied drugs and alcohol played a role sometimes resentments simmered due to harsh discipline others responded to feelings of vulnerability worried that an enthusiastic or Reckless leader might put troops at risk [Music] one soldier only 20 years old and due to complete his tour in six days said he killed his Lieutenant because he didn't like him during his court martial he still said he didn't know why he did it but this kid had been pushed to the brink he'd been a forward Scout for nine months of his 12-month deployment that's the most dangerous position you're the guy out the front and I think it got to him in the end strategically General Westmoreland responded to tet with aggressive Search and Destroy operations near the Cambodian border and north of Saigon proved initially successful [Music] in the Asha Valley in the central Highlands an air mobile assault operation also resulted in initial success pushing the Vietcong from their bases but the flaw in these operations was the temporary nature of that success the Vietcong returned to continue the fight the appointment of General Abrams in July 1968 changed the strategy Search and Destroy operations and the strategy of attrition fell out of favor his one war policy leaned towards smaller patrols aimed at cutting off the Vietcong from the civilian population The Phoenix Program was part of this strategy The Phoenix Program involved clearing areas of Vietcong they would declare an area a free fire zone and that meant you could kill everything that moved they did that quite often in some terrible interest in men women children even water buffaloes massacred because there was demand from Saigon military headquarters for body counts that built up and up and up they thought we could kill enough people we must win it wasn't going to happen The Phoenix Program aimed to sever the support for the gorillas among Vietnamese civilians but North Vietnamese troops found support and Sanctuary beyond the borders of Vietnam when President Richard Nixon took office in 1969 with Henry Kissinger as state Secretary he oversaw the launch of operation menu a secret bombing campaign aimed at targeting North Vietnamese sanctuaries and supply routes in Cambodia the secret buying campaign in Cambodia was largely the initiative of Henry Kissinger Kissinger told Nixon that they had to find new ways of bringing military pressure to Burke coercive diplomacy he called it and so the idea of bombing the Communist sanctuaries in Cambodia was to exercise that coercion to force the North Vietnamese to start making concessions unfortunately all the familiar problems asserted themselves first of all target intelligence was very poor secondly inevitably a very large number of Cambodian civilians were being killed by this pretty erratic bombing so coercive diplomacy was a failure as this sort of stuff usually is and in the eyes of History I think that Henry Kissinger deserves to be harshly judged an estimated 150 000 Cambodian civilians were killed in the bombing campaign the 1970 invasion of Cambodia further destabilized the country support for the Cambodian Communist Party commonly known as the Khmer Rouge Rose in the aftermath the Vietnam War left Cambodia with a bitter Legacy all of this occurred as Nixon implemented a process known as Vietnamization in which U.S troops were gradually withdrawn from Vietnam ladies and gentlemen I have an of a substantially increased troop withdrawal from Vietnam over the next two months we will withdraw 45 000 Americans the focus shifted to bolstering the South Vietnamese army with training funds and weapons as tentative steps were made towards peace processes bitter fighting continued in the jungle the 1972 Easter offensive launched by North Vietnamese forces increased their hold on territory but it also resulted in significant casualties on both sides civilians suffered too with as many as 25 000 killed and a million more displaced the Vietnam War ended in Victory for the North Vietnamese and Vietcong forces the final blow came in 1975. the South Vietnamese government collapsed and the country was United as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam 1973 saw the withdrawal of the last U.S military unit the United States which had emerged Victorious from the jungle wars fought in the Pacific in World War II had difficulty coming to terms with the loss South Vietnam did fall to the Communist forces it is the case that the North Vietnamese prevailed and the Viet Cong prevailed so the United States lost that military conflict imagines that it doesn't lose Wars their whole mythology their whole National ethos is based on winning wars so in the immediate aftermath of the defeat in Vietnam in the 1970s the United States withdraws into itself the Vietnam syndrome as it's called supposedly guides American foreign policy the political Legacy of the war lingered the impact of the war also stayed with many who had served I haven't met one Vietnam veteran who isn't still affected by the war PTSD is a strange thing many of them of course never want to talk about it and I think for most of them it's only possible when they talk with other people who have gone through the same thing the impact of the war was more than psychological it also left a lasting imprint on the environment and the people of Indochina [Music] homes were destroyed bomb craters and mines littered the landscape one of the most profound impacts on both the environment and the people was the legacy of herbicidal warfare a key challenge in fighting a war in the jungle is that foliage conceals the enemy operation ranch hand was conceived to combat that challenge the Americans set themselves to use every scientific tool at their disposal to John win this thing and one of those tools was defoliation to John remove cover from the enemy and they use this on a colossal scale millions of gallons is costly stuff being sprayed across South Vietnam herbicidal Warfare against the Vietcong had in its sites food and foliage it aimed to defoliate areas that might be used as cover and to destroy cropland which might be used by the Viet Cong as a food source agent orange was the most extensively used and well-known of these herbicides [Music] military advisors called for its use as an effective weapon against guerrilla warfare a weapon which could reach areas where troops personnel carriers and helicopters could not the problem was that this is an aerosol this is a gas and so it could not only kill the foliage and also would end up having devastating effects on human respiratory systems the effects of the use of herbicides had long lasting consequences for the Vietnamese population and for the soldiers who were exposed while serving Earth defects and miscarriages Cancers and skin diseases have been attributed as a side effect of this jungle warfare tactic okay the Communist cause prevailed in the Vietnam War but American influence did not vanish one of the things I find fascinating about the Vietnam War is that the Americans lost it military the comedies won in 1975. and yet if you'd said to an American officer back in let's say 1964 how would you like Saigon to look in 2018 it'll be pretty much the way Saigon looks now all those glittering skyscrapers and Gucci shops and the whole studio match I believe that while America lost the war military today I think America culturally and economically has reversed the outcome of that war and this to me is the Supreme irony and this all reinforces one of the great lessons of the last Century's history that economics are at least as important as military factors in deciding the outcome of conflicts while Vietnam played host to Decades of conflict Fidel Castro was leading a revolution of his own in Cuba a guerrilla War based in the jungle of the Sierra Maestra mountains the Revolutionary movement which became known as the 26th of July Movement aimed to overthrow the Valencia Batista regime Tista had ruled Cuba between 1933 and 1944. but fled to America in that last year following the defeat of his party at the general election the Batista regime came to power in 1952 as a result of a CIA american-sponsored coup and Batista immediately canceled the 1940 Constitution something he had established in that year so immediately the regime got to work in persecuting its opponents and ushered in a period of repression but also of alignment with the United States for international interests and also a period of collaboration with U.S based multinationals and also with the American Mafia in 1953 then only 26 years old Fidel Castro LED an Insurrection against Batista from the beginning Castro was a larger than life character Castro was very persuasive quite a charismatic figure quite imposing also in many respect very tall very self-assured of Highly optimistic kind of personality and he was able to persuade a lot of the orthodoxo youth to join him in actions the son of a wealthy sugar farmer he was an idealist part of the henaracion Del centenario the Centenary generation it was a generation of young people in Cuba that were driven by nationalistic romantic ideas they wanted to make a difference in a time of dictatorship so he was fueled by all that Castro's first attempt to translate those romantic ideals into practice did not end well on the 26th of July 1953 Fidel along with his brother Raul 200 men and two women by his side attacked Ford moncada they aim to take the 1 000 soldiers defending the fort by surprise the plan failed the attack on moncada was a loss but in some ways Castro's arrest and trial proved a victory the trial gave Castro and his cause a public platform when he took the stand the 27 year old delivered an eloquent indictment of the regime it ended famously with the words sentence me I don't mind history will absolve me Castro was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment along with 25 of his comrades but bowing to public pressure Batista eventually granted amnesty to Castro and the other gorillas after regrouping in Mexico Castro returned to Cuba in 1956 with a small band of revolutionaries and set up his base in the Sierra Maestra mountains [Music] the mountains offered two draw cards one was inaccessibility the other was the potential to recruit sympathetic supporters there were a lot of peasants there who were very angry with the landowners and so they reckoned they would gain some support from these peasants [Music] as Castro's movement gained local support the Cuban population became increasingly dissatisfied with the Batista regime in this harsh dictatorship it was not very hard to recruit people people were really oppressed by fugensio Batista so there was this widespread National feeling that we have to get rid of this dictator among the most prominent of Castro's followers was a man he met in Mexico Ernesto cavara better known to the world as Che the pair profoundly influenced each other was deeply interested in left-wing movements in Latin America and I think he was also affected by the magnetism the leadership of Phil Castro during that time when they both met in Mexico for the castle made a huge impression on Guevara in turn shared his ideological beliefs what kevara brought to him was an American Vision of a struggle against imperialism a struggle against military regimes that supported American Capital was not a communist in the in the 50s he was a nationalistic driven person with antimperialist ideas but he was not ideologically driven to check out what I was and his brother wrote Castro also was so those were the biggest influences on Fido Castro during that time that shaped the future of Cuba from their Mountain Base this small band of gorillas numbering sometimes less than 200 faced Batista's Army of thousands despite their small numbers the attack on La Plata Army Post in January 1957 proved their effectiveness as Guerrilla Fighters they infiltrated the post by using information gleaned from a civilian friendly to the soldiers in the attack which lasted only minutes the guerrillas gathered essential supplies food and ammunition anticipating Pursuit they set an ambush for any troops that planned to follow them it worked and set the strategy for future engagements by Castro's gorillas Frost and highly well-trained Guerrilla force with the incompetence of the Batista forces a demoralized army not really supporting the dictator much pumping their way about the jungle of the Syria Maestra there was no competition there the Cuban gorillas proved to be adaptable they responded to the ebb and flow the strengths and weaknesses of Batista's Army retreating when the Army was strong moving in to exploit weaknesses when they appeared once established in the mountains the gorillas made an effort to help the local people tools were established a hospital built to treat wounded gorillas also provided care for campesinos local farmers foreign 1958 Batista launched his summer offensive on the mountains operation Verano known to the gorillas as la offensiva Batista's forces had the advantage in numbers and weapons his men were confident of victory but the gorillas knew the ground on which they fought and believed passionately in their cause there is a point in the beginning of the Rebel Army in the mountains that there were a couple of dozens of people fighting an entire Army and from that point to become a real army in the mountains it was very hard but they had no other options at that time Batista deployed a force of twelve thousand soldiers seven thousand of them knew recruits into the jungle to destroy the gorillas they failed to do so and so the conflict wore on the Cuban Revolution was not fought in the jungle alone there was a significant Urban element to the 26th of July Movement the Sierra Maestra gorillas have loomed large in the history of the revolution but leaders within the urban underground played a significant role in the decisions and actions of the movement the urban guerrillas launched attacks within the city conducting acts of sabotage Espionage and bombing strategically important targets throughout this female gorillas played a crucial role usually the mass will be much more suspicious than women so women will be in charge of giving packages and sending notes and even to establish communication between the mountains the gorilla and the mountains and the people in the clandestinity in the city persuasion is a vital weapon in any jungle war an independent newspaper the El Cubano Libra and radio station radio rebelda gave the gorillas a means to spread messages to the people from their jungle base regular radio broadcasts began in February 1958. by December it was one of the highest rating stations in Cuba Castro enthusiastically embraced this method of persuasion where he was very very skillful PR operator indeed and don't forget there was a civilian movement of 26th of July had very strong roots among students and among workers in the west part of the island as well and his speeches also very skillfully couched in terms of bringing back democracy and changing Cuba's Reliance on on the monoculture in August 1958 Castro took his fight out of the Jungle aiming to secure Victory across Cuba it was a far more challenging Prospect the support and protection offered in the jungle they knew so well vanished in this new phase of the war despite the challenges revolutionaries secured victory in December 1958. Che guevara's column of guerrillas marched into Santa Clara this Victory spurred on the defeat of Batista who fled in the dawn of the new year it was the dawn of a new era for Cuba [Applause] Guevara set off to enact his Revolution Beyond Cuba he came to a grisly end in the Bolivian jungle in October 1967. but Cuba was changed from the jungles of the Sierra Maestro mountains a small band of gorillas had fought in solidarity with their Urban counterparts transformed the nation I think that the legacy of the revolution first of all it comes from the first three to five years of the revolution after half a century of governments failing to give basic rights to the people this government comes and they give free healthcare free education they make the country safer even all the prostitution and all the gambling is radically eliminated so they did in a couple of years what half a century before couldn't do the achievements in education in health were much extraordinary also in eradicating poverty in establishing equality on the negative side of course we have a quasi-authoritarian state a one-party state which won't Brook any dissent the revolution which emerged Victorious from the jungle delivered brutal judgments to those deemed to have been associated with the Batista regime arrests torture and executions were carried out throughout the nation the general elections Castro promised failed to eventuate his control over Cuba lasted until he ceded power to his brother due to illness in 2006. Castro formally stepped down in 2008. [Applause] he died in November 2016. I think that the generation of centenario the Centenary Generations Legacy in Cuba is positive in the way that they get rid of a real violent dictatorship and of course from there on it can be very divisive while you think about it Fidel Castro and his success with the Cuban Revolution inspired others to begin Revolutions of Their Own in Colombia the jungle became a Haven and a hideout for guerrillas fighting a brutal War which affected Colombian Society for Generations there were some they were fighting in the countryside and from this liver Al gorillas then emerged to important Guerrilla groups of today the farc the aren't revolutionary force of Colombia and the eln The Liberation Army so those are the most important groups that were created in the 1960s in a way following the Cuban Revolution conflict in Colombia had its roots in the Thousand Days war between liberals and conservatives at the turn of the 20th century in the middle of the 20th century violence erupted again in a period known as La Valencia a very charismatic politician with the name of jorgeous Promised Land Reform and into the rule of the oligarchy and consequently was shot down in a Bogota Street which led to this up search in the cities known as the bogataso now of course the Liberals and the left including the Communist Party blamed the conservatives for for the assassination so from here you got a period of a decade where a conflict is Unleashed between 1948 and 1957 somewhere between 250 000 and 300 000 people were killed the city of Bogota was destroyed and then the conflict moved to the countryside and the two political parties kept fighting until they reached an agreement in 1957 that was called the national front in which the two political parties will stop fighting and then they will distribute power for years it will be the conservatives and four years it will be the Liberals and with that agreement they excluded all other Paris and possibilities so there was no real democracy here in the 1960s in the wake of laviolencia two key Guerrilla groups emerged to challenge the government They promoted a policy of armed settlement the fact was born on May 18 1964. as a response to the Colombian armed forces that surrounded and attacked mariketalia which was the principal Rebel agrarian community at the time so even before the farc was officially recognized or known as a guerrilla movement you're looking at pretty much a situation of this first landless peasants who were fighting to survive [Music] when it form because the elites traditionally they had owned large states Skyrim branches and in the 1940s and 50s coffee growing was a big business and the elites wanted to expand their land holidays for coffee plantations of many persons were displaced and had to move to other areas and because of that some joined the farc like the farc the eln claimed to represent the rights of peasants the Guerrilla group also included religious influences it wasn't built within and established within the climbing peasantry but within the classrooms and the churches there was a very different demographic to the elen than with the farc as in other Guerrilla movements women took an active role both as supporters and his combatants women joined voluntarily there were many couples also so some people say that yes well women were only given the role of cooks or you know washing laundry and doing all those things but they were combatants and they were decision makers and they were also negotiating with the government for women escaping husband abuse poverty wishing to live a life of poverty and so forth and for children drawn into the conflict or forced to join the paramilitary groups which was one of the civilian defense militia strategies one other option was to join the Insurgency where they were given an education a chance to express themselves politically and also to live a life that was different and offered hope but it's very different to the lifestyle of a paramilitary or the army in the 1980s right-wing paramilitary groups formed the largest being the United self-defense forces of Colombia a group which became deeply entrenched in the cocaine trade and significant human rights violations these movements too were based within the jungle this in a way paradoxically was both the strength and limitation of the Insurgency its strength was its ability to survive in the jungle but the limitations of course was that it remained contained so to speak in the jungle the farc initially confined their activities to rural areas but in 1982 the organization decided to go on the offensive aiming for political and economic centers the farc and the eln both employed violence extortion abduction and hijacking in their cause landmines were also planted and took the lives of thousands chemical weapons were employed to destroy crops chemicals like agent green and so on have been used to not only destroy the water supply of the insurgents but also kill crops and that continues and that has a disastrous effect on the Ecology of Colombia to this very day the conflict has also shattered the lives of Millions according to climbing government figures approximately 7 million Colombians have died since the end of Love Valencia the situation was so serious that by 1998 any travel on the roads outside of Bogota were almost guaranteed to end in kidnapping or death was state of Siege CH and nobody could go out nobody would go to malls or to the movies because they were all afraid of bombings and all kinds of violence that was rampant at the time during the Cold War guerrillas found financial support from communist countries when the Cold War ended the drug trade presented itself as a new Avenue for funding the cocaine trade came to dominate Colombia petition with right-wing militias further fueled this conflict as did the Small Arms trade the United States framed its involvement in the conflict and the context of the War on Drugs later on way into the 20th century a major program that was implemented by President Bill Clinton was planned Colombia so that was a 7 billion dollar counter-insurgency package which under the rhetoric of the War on Drugs funded Colombia's military so that until the present day has been you could say the outcome of much of how the militarization of Colombian Society occurred a conflict which lasts for decades inevitably affects everyone in the nation Colombia is no exception Generations have lived in a war zone we all have been affected by the conflict in one way or another we all have relatives who have been killed in the conflict we know many people who have been kidnapped not only by the gorillas you know but the paramilitars by the state so it has changed the composition of the country a peace deal was negotiated in 2016. more than 10 000 fart gorillas began the transition to civilian life but it will not be an easy one for the gorillas or the nation the decades-long conflict has become part of the fabric of Colombian Society many people were born in the conflict I was born at the beginning of the conflict so for some people is the way of life they don't see other Alternatives so if they are not part of a gorilla movement they are part of a product military group or they go to the Army because of poverty because the substantial conditions of the country in terms of inequality have no change at all in the second half of the 20th century jungles across the world were inundated with weapons drugs death and displacement the Vietnam War ushered in a new era of warfare an era in which war was televised and judged from home strategy and policies changed as public opinions shifted the United States sought and found ways to intervene in Jungle Wars without putting combat troops on the ground success in Cuba encouraged Rebels and revolutionaries in Central and South America to take up arms in pursuit of their own cause throughout the years Jungle War evolved new weapons and tactics were developed in line with technological advancements but in many ways its principles stayed constant the idea is always to leverage the terrain to utilize booby traps landmines to take advantage of the demoralizing psychological effects of the Jungle to not only destroy enemy forces but also to demoralize to hurt their will to fight those who served within the jungle faced constant exhaustion they negotiated rough terrain and climate combating a myriad of diseases and illnesses in addition to the often elusive enemy they lived with the fear of the unknown civilians who had the misfortune of living within War zones often became targets of Suspicion themselves campaigns to win hearts and Minds often included displacement and sometimes death when a place once called home transformed into a Battlefield supply lines have always been critical from Guadalcanal to the Ho Chi Minh trail the ability to move people ammunition arms and other supplies often proved to be a decisive Factor politics changed the course of these wars Democratic and communist superpowers funded proxy wars gorillas overthrew regimes to recreate nations in their own vision over the course of decades Millions died as a result of jungle wars fought across the globe throughout the mall the jungle remained neutral thank you

Channel: War Stories

Views: 489,354

Keywords: military history, war, war documentary, military tactics, war stories, history of war, battles, Full Documentary, Vietnam, Vietnam War, Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, Cuban revolution, Colombian revolution, viet cong, the vietnam war

Id: A5GyEpG9npk

Length: 50min 21sec (3021 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 01 2023