The Vietnam War | Part 2 | The TV War | Free Documentary History

[Music] red is [Applause] god [Music] [Music] [Applause] the fear of encroaching communism drew america into the conflict of the vietnam wars fear scares the hell out of everybody and who pays for it people were so gung-ho about attacking the north vietnamese but they made some serious mistakes at first the 400 special forces were just sent as advisers to the vietnamese but these numbers were soon to escalate the word advisors needs to be taken with a grain of salt pilots were flying missions helicopters and large amounts of military equipment were being supplied by the united states we did the only ant war covers in america going on then you couldn't come out against the war kids were beaten up by cops in every town and city in america for coming out against the war public opinion which had supported the war at first turned when endless battles were shown nightly on television without any sign of success because of the exposure the american public became suddenly aware of how self-destructive this war was i was aghast at the number of people who really had no concept at all of what the war was about in a fighting sense the age of aquarius brings civil descent peace marches the death of a president and a north vietnamese leader who is playing a patient game when you put young men in harm's way they do bad things were there any americans who thought the americans were going to win the war so what are you doing in the jungle [Applause] [Music] from dallas texas the flash apparently official president kennedy died at 1 p.m central standard time vice president johnson has left the hospital in dallas but we do not know uh to where he has proceeded presumably he will be taking the oath of office shortly and become the 36th president of the united states lyndon johnson has made his way to the presidential plane there he takes the oath of office ensuring that presidential power is unbroken the first milestone of his presidency was the signing of the new civil rights act of 1964 into law the gulf of ton kin incident is used by johnson to launch into the war he has kept things low key till now in order to be re-elected as an ex-navy man he is keen to take up the challenge to finish the war and retaliates with air attacks the determination of all americans to carry out our full commitment to the people and to the government of south vietnam will be redoubled by this outrage america has misinterpreted ho chi minh's intentions and instead of supporting him earlier against the french they opposed him ho chi minh was a nationalist but with no other support he had to turn to the russians into the arms of the communists he wasn't a screaming nationalist fanatic didn't come across a fanatic at all i wasn't a communist he was a nationalist i mean he was a great hero to his country you know i mean they called him uncle ho and he looked like your uncle and it was he was smiling and uh he looked like a lovely guy the vast mekong river can provide food and water and power on a scale to dwarf even our own tba johnson was in the mindset that if he went in with force ho chi minh would capitulate johnson offers ho chi minh a vast development program for vietnam if they pull back and we remain ready with this purpose for unconditional discussions [Applause] ho chi minh calculates that he and general jiap will eventually rid vietnam of this american influence in the south president johnson for all his great virtues wasn't very strong on foreign policy he believed that overwhelming force worked he was a great texan wheeler dealer he figured that that if he waved the big stick he could negotiate with ho chi minh didn't want to negotiate with anyone in my view on reflection of course is that we may have picked the wrong side when it came to ho chi minh particular and general [ __ ] we were stuck with it and then all these murderous bombing runs begin johnson retaliates with operation rolling thunder [Music] the americans not being able politically to invade north vietnam tried to bomb it into a car park [Music] president johnson is advised that the u.s airfield at da nang is vulnerable to attack from the north vietnamese and the south vietnamese army lacks the strength to defend it [Music] i have asked the commanding general general westmoreland what more he needs to meet this mounting aggression [Music] general westmoreland requests a few battalions to protect the airfield this is the first of many requests for further troops and by the end of the year numbers of u.s troops would rise to 200 thousand they escalated and escalated lbj escalated and then then everybody was escalating it you know suddenly everyone in america is is affected the bombing campaign and increasing troops does little to stop the north vietnamese army moving personnel and supplies through laos and into south vietnam american b-52 planes are sent in to bomb north vietnam for the first time these continuous devastating air raids would last for three years and include the heavy deployments of agent orange agent orange was actually used on american highways to keep the weeds down off the side of the expressways but it was used in massive amounts in vietnam and there's a dioxin which causes the cancers of birth defect as more and more us troops are sent to vietnam the stark reality of the war hits home in america anti-war demonstrators protest u.s involvement in the vietnam war public support for the war begins to slide as anti-war demonstrations increase in the u.s the estimated 125 000 manhattan marchers include students housewives beatnik poets doctors businessmen teachers priests and nuns makeup and costumes were bizarre [Music] in a major war effort the ground offensive operation cedar falls begins 000 u.s and south vietnamese troops are sent to destroy viet cong operations and supply sites near saigon [Music] protest rallies and marches against the war in vietnam continued to increase veterans from world war 1 world war ii and korea stage a protest in new york city muhammad ali was world champion from 1964 until 1967 when he was stripped of his titles he caused a sensation when he refused to be inducted into the army my name is white people not viet cong chinese or japanese i saw just no comment on boxing religion induction no comments on the weapon he refused to step forward he was sentenced to five years in jail they took they stripped his title while he was waiting for the supreme court to start his case he spent his time going to colleges talked all over the country he gave young people the guts to come out against the [Music] other war activists such as joan baez pete seeger and bob dylan had joined what was to become an international movement against the vietnam war in april 1967 martin luther king jr makes a powerful speech previously he had not been vocal about vietnam in order not to upset president johnson as the civil rights legislation was going through during his presidency he speaks out against u.s policy in vietnam calling america the greatest purveyor of violence in the world he publicly denounces their military presence in vietnam and proposes a merger of the anti-war and civil rights movement the promises of the great society have been shot down on the battlefield of vietnam the pursuit of this widened war has narrowed the promised dimensions of this domestic welfare programs making the poor white and negro bear the heaviest burdens both at the front and at home [Music] in june 1967 the first monterey pop festival takes place showcasing many artists who've been expressing their anti-vietnam feelings when jimi hendrix takes to the stage many young men in the audience already have their draft papers [Music] and then you have the who smashing up guitars on the other and jimi hendrix somewhere in the middle and that would certainly have been a kind of rallying cry for a you know increasing anti-vietnam sentiment there have been various incidents of burning draft cards but this was brought into intense focus when it was acted out in the musical hair in new york in october 1967. people in colleges were pretty well organized by this time because they'd been fighting for civil rights so they knew how to protest and this essentially divides the country that the younger generation know how to cause trouble know how to if necessary avoid the draft and flee to canada whereas the older people remember world war ii i remember being right [Music] 1967 the summer of love had a bloody underbelly young american boys are sent to fight their counterparts in vietnam this will be brought to a terrifying conflagration with the shock of the tet offensiveness [Music] secretary of defense robert mcnamara visits general westmoreland to assess the situation on the ground their advice to president johnson is taken up and troop numbers are eventually increased to more than five hundred thousand as more and more u.s troops enter vietnam the siege of khaesan begins and the marines are cut off the united states had begun to suspect that the north vietnamese strategy was to lure the americans into a remote outpost americans thought that they could win that if they built up enough forces and win a conventional battle against the north vietnamese and so they built up the large base of kaisan they expected that the attack would come there and indeed it built up all through december and january however this was a distraction from the main event on the night of january 30th the vietnamese new year some 80 000 viet cong attacked 36 capitals 64 towns and four american bases around 4 000 viet cong attacked saigon occupied the grounds of the us embassy and hit general westmoreland's headquarters this was known as the tet offensive americans have to engage intense force to recover from the sudden onslaught the americans think they're in control of the country then comes the teter fences tet is the vietnamese lunar new year the americans say that there's no chance that the vietcong would attack them during tet it would be like a starting offensive on christmas day it wouldn't happen however again nobody read the vietnamese history books the vietnamese won one of their greatest victories against the chinese attacking on tet the tet offense was essentially led by the southern vietnamese communist viet cong backed by the north vietnamese but it was a viet cong inspired uprising dozens and dozens of cities came under near simultaneous attack by mostly nlf southern guerrillas who had been moved into position largely unknown to the u.s forces suddenly every town and city in south vietnam there are explosions going off there's there's gunfire the vietcong even send a suicide squad into the american embassy and they hold it for hours this is on american television the americans see their own embassy occupied by the enemy the fact that the vietcong had entered the american embassy in saigon and caused a great deal of damage shattered public opinion and american faith in winning the war if the war was ever winnable they can't believe what they're saying they're being told that they're winning this for and it doesn't seem that they are the battle for hue was the response to tet to endeavour to take back the territory that had been lost to the viet cong it's regarded as one of the bloodiest and longest battles of the vietnam war ending in march 1968 fighting is violent and if ever a marine had to rely on his own quickness and toughness this was it house to house street to street for three long weeks massive retaliation was taken and the vietcong was swept out out of the cities and and largely annihilated and this is again was part of ho chi minh strategy because he realized that eventually he was going to win the war and he didn't want these annoying southerners many of whom were at the vietcong weren't necessarily communists they were just nationalists he wanted to get rid of them and this was a wonderful way to do it this meant that the north vietnamese forces which had not even appeared in many parts of the south for instance the mekong delta by that time now began to play a much bigger role in the war and it became necessary for the communist forces to have north vietnamese reinforcements to keep up their level of activity after the first day marines own just two blocks of the city two blocks and the price is dear the military was a defeat for them but in political and public relations terms it was a huge success and uh badly damaged american morale particularly at home and the tide of the war changed on the north side of the river the enemy's position begins to crumble marines along with the south vietnamese army marine and ranger units move into the imperial palace this great strategist was ho chi minh because he realized fighting the americans it wasn't about what actually happened in vietnam it was what happened on the television sets in the united states so if he could get the war on the news every night he knew that america would tire of it sooner or later and he'd get his way finally the job is finished 25 days of heavy fighting enemy losses in the thousands and each marine knows he's been a part of a historic battle knows he rates the traditional well done although america did win back their territory this was a huge turning point in the war as america loses its appearance of invincibility vietnam was the first television war it was on the nightly news in america and it was on the news here in the uk and so had a phenomenal impact it was in american living rooms every evening it's getting me dark now cia men and mps have gone into the embassy and are trying to get the snipers out this is the main vietnamese language radio station in saigon and it went on and on and on and of course the people in america knew that their sons were going and there were shots of the body bags coming home and it's terribly demoralizing america has this great sort of culture of winning and they believe that with their wealth their technical expertise and their manpower that they could do anything the smoke turned on us again and out of it in the briefest lull in the crossfire soldiers came running out carrying children every time he went around the corner you see a palm leaf move and you think christ it's an ambush every time you see a junk you think oh it's full of explosives i mean this is how american television had weaned me into vietnam so i went out there convinced i was either going to be killed or i was going to fail in the story my very first story in vietnam apocalypse now the scene where they're on that uh little boat big machine gun up there but that was my first story river marine patrol it was called and i was absolutely terrified i mean really quite terrifying [Applause] patrols like these and the mekong delta are convinced that they're winning their war against the vc they've put a success there as evidence of their success the number of vc dead and the number of vc defectors but they have nevertheless the substantial backing of thousands of well-armed and well-trained troops plus barracks ships helicopters and gunships and the river marine force the problem about tv is that when there was big things happening in vietnam your bosses wanted daily news television journalists would go to a battlefield but they would have to leave the battlefield by a certain time to get back to saigon airport and shipped their film to hong kong there were no satellites of course we were shooting film usually if you're doing a feature story you just get to new york then they would develop it and edit it with your narration now it's sort of hard i think for journalists tv journalists today to relate to the fact that we were writing our narrations without ever having seen the film that we were narrating you just watched what you were covering you watched what your cameraman was filming you wrote to what you thought he had filmed and you laid down the narration and offered when the fire spreads the people leave and in no time at all that area is charred and ruined and destroyed you couldn't go too far so my area of operations tended to be down in the mekong which as it turns out was a pretty dangerous place to be anywhere after six in the evening there was nothing to do that's when we all got into trouble um and now i mean there was nothing like 24 hours news and i remember when the satellite first came up it was charles collingwood who said to me oh glory days are over we're gonna have to work for a living now [Music] the journalists working out of saigon all seem to have a huge affection for the city it is their retreat from the war a short helicopter ride away nothing could be more of a contrast to the war than their cocktail hour back at the hotels we stayed at a hotel in lamsong square which is bang next to the congress building the safest part of town that little center seemed to be protected saigon is a fantastic place to be a very exciting atmosphere didn't seem to be in great danger at that time there were french restaurants there were um there was no french residual community there who were very attached to vietnam who had vietnam vietnamese wives a lot of them it was french the wide streets the plazas the squares the trees the flowers and the restaurants you could go to war in the most horrific circumstances and see some rather dreadful things and then you'd come back and go out into saigon cross the road and have the most superb french meal with quite excellent french wine [Music] the american public has no escape from the war general westmoreland's request for more troops had required students to be drafted this results in an increase in demonstrations as the public feel helpless against this distant struggle the ho chi minh trail was developed from earlier footpaths used for trading it started just south of hanoi and due to the mountain range trong son the trail dropped into laos and cambodia and then into south vietnam west of dalat at first it took several months to reach the south however the volume of traffic expanded gradually from carrying loads on soldiers backs or in carts to improvements being made to accommodate heavy trucks dotted along the routes were fuel storage tanks and field hospitals the trail was covered by the heavy jungle canopy and therefore hidden from us bombing raids until the bombing became so intense destroying the jungle and using agent orange to defoliate even so the determination of the north vietnamese would just make another path around to join the trail again this trail was supplying several hundred thousand troops in the south against the us [Music] my unit was trying to achieve a workable interdiction of the ho chi minh trail where it came into south vietnam north of saigon they bombed the ho chi minh trail with the supply trail that ran down through laos and lately through cambodia the ho chi minh trail was in fact a series of trails some of them big enough to take vehicles down because they carried the stuff it was weapons food medicine that sort of thing for the fighters in the south or either north vietnamese or viet cong so the bulk of the people we fought in firefights were either north vietnamese coming down the trail or viet cong the great story of the war the best story of the war was never told because the best story of the war was the ho chi minh trail how the guys got from north vietnam from hanoi to a large extent into south vietnam and when they got to south vietnam managed to fight is superhuman a year of my life was spent either ambushing people or trying to avoid being ambushed by them that was it it was ambush warfare and that's what the nature of the firefights were the fantasy the journalistic fantasy was to go down the trail with the north vietnamese but it never happened for years now the vietcong have been strong in the delta it's where they've always raised taxes food and recruits and recently they've even been enrolling boys of 14 and 15. but the americans say that since the tet offensive vietcong tactics have become much more aggressive pressure came down from the top levels to inflate the body count and sometimes this was done with false reporting of the number of communists killed in particular actions but also including civilian casualties in the body the americans thought they'd succeeded in keeping at least the main waterways of the delta clear of yet calm but now they find that they're not safe even there [Music] the person who first realized ho chi minh strategy was robert mcnamara that the communists were controlling the action in the battlefield they could attack and run away at will so they could control how many people they were losing what their casualties were and all they were doing was keeping their casualties down to below their birth rate which meant essentially they could fight forever and of course the americans weren't going to fight forever eventually they'd go home the nlf also were able to keep recruiting amongst people who were disillusioned or disgusted by uh the destruction and the casualties inflicted on the vietnamese rural population it was the kind of place where you had you know brothers fighting for the arvin the south vietnamese army run by the south vietnamese american puppets and then you had his brother in the viet cong and the americans could never understand what was going on they didn't understand the language they didn't understand the culture they didn't understand how that was possible i mean there weren't any can you imagine the second world war you have won a a gi and his brother is with the nazis unimaginable but this is what was going on through the whole war president johnson continues this huge u.s bombing campaign of rolling thunder targeting the ho chi minh trail in the main the tonnage of ordnance would surpass all that was dropped in world war [Music] i don't want a man in here to go back home thinking otherwise we are going to win [Music] there's another aspect to the war in vietnam which is race this was the first time there was a major commitment of mixed race units and a lot of young black americans wanted to prove their status in in america society their manhood if you will he wanted to get young black men into the army so i could supply proper medical assistance to them give them education and get them out of the ghettos and improve their lot as the war started go badly the black guy said well hold on why are we dying dying over here when the enemies back home in america in the early years of the war the black and latino soldiers were professionals in mostly mixed race units by the end of 1968 draftees account for over 30 percent of american troops amongst these are many black soldiers who are growing more and more disaffected in what they call the white man's war when there were so many racial issues to deal with back home as the casualty rate increased conscription was now to include college students who had previously been exempt this meant that although the majority of u.s soldiers were still volunteers their numbers now included middle-class white americans who were forced to defer their university education [Music] when i first went out there in 68 the majority of the infantry men were all working class americans but when the americans abandoned this avoidance of the draft and suddenly in in vietnam we saw the arrival not of the officer class but of white middle-class kids in the ranks these are young men who have to go and fight and the draft comes in and so you may have to fight against your will and then the whole idea of the draft dodger comes in well it wasn't the fact so much that they were university students it was the middle class the middle class was getting drafted not a chance forget it which is why there hasn't been a draft since then world war ii draft was i mean everybody believed in the war you suddenly had middle class kids being drafted in to do the same job and they were writing letters home their parents were appealing to their congressmen and that's when it all started to change giant protests were not only not even so much the soldiers as their mothers because what the hell is my boy doing in vietnam he should be doing his graduate work now well you could get a student deferment for a while but the middle class was getting drafted which you can make a coherent theory saying that that's why we lost the war they're only going there for a year tour whereas the vietnamese fighters are there all the time so every time you send a fresh young guy who's just come out of college they have to start again with a new guy who knows nothing all the challenges have been met the enemy is not beaten but he knows that he has met his master in the field president johnson was under tremendous pressure over the lack of victory in vietnam the battle of hue had been the response to the tet offensive as u.s forces managed to regain the territories that had been lost but all their claims of victory were like dust in the hand because this amounted to only a stalemate in addition at home despite all his efforts to pass a civil rights act through congress to become law the lack of improvement for the black situation caused the black power movement to be active against him the democratic party splits into many factions johnson does badly in the new hampshire primary and ends his bid for re-election the nation is stunned with american sons in the field far away with america's future under challenge right here at home with our hopes and the world's hopes for peace and the balance every day i do not believe that i should devote an hour or a day of my time to any personal partisan causes or to any duties other than the awesome duties of this office the presidency of your country accordingly i shall not see and i will not accept the nomination of my party for another term as your president the famous cbs anchor wanted cronkite he hadn't been in vietnam since 1965 he went back saw what he had to see and said on american television we're not winning we can't win and at this point president johnson says if i've lost walter i've lost the american public and he resigns a strike in memphis causes martin luther king jr to return to his hometown after his march had been interrupted with civil unrest he gave his i came to the mountaintop speech and i've looked over and i've seen the promised land i may not get there with you but i want you to know the night that we as a people will get to the promised land [Applause] so i'm happy tonight i'm not wearing about anything i'm not fearing any man mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the lord [Applause] at his motel the next day preparing to leave for another meeting martin luther king jr is shot in the head and dies that april sees the beginning of riots in many u.s cities let me tell you what those four years have done to america the longest war that america's ever had in this history the worst crime wave we've ever had in our history the highest taxes we've ever had in our history the highest rate in the cost of living that we've had in a generation and the lowest respect for the united states of america in our history as the squabbling for the presidential election continues violent conflict breaks out particularly in newark and detroit in chicago a huge anti-war protest outside the democratic national convention leads to ugly clashes with police hubert humphrey gains the democratic nomination but loses to nixon by a majority vote of less than one percent along comes president nixon who promises peace with honor to get the boys out of there everything going gonna be all right i decided in my mind i was in vietnam at the time that i would vote for nixon because he rather than hubert humphrey would end the war and he would some find some way to extricate the united states out of that mess unfortunately that's not what he gave america he pulled some of the people out he expanded the wall into cambodia and laos [Music] however less than two months into office president nixon orders the secret bombing of cambodia ostensibly to destroy the ho chi minh trail and the supply enclaves just over the border this covert bombing of over half a million tons of ordnance would actually stretch across the whole of cambodia and was carried out without the knowledge of congress or the u.s public we will aid cambodia cambodia is the nixon doctrine in its purest form in cambodia what we are doing is helping the cambodians to help themselves [Music] as part of nixon's strategy of reducing soldiers on the ground and attacking the vietnamese communists while trying to negotiate peace in paris he launched an illegal bombing against the vietcong camps in cambodia and he even followed up that with an illegal invasion richard nixon gave the order for the strategic bombing of cambodia using usb-52 high-altitude bombing aircraft and the escalation of the bombing of cambodia occurred from march 1969 the war had been spilled over from south vietnam we learned later there have been secret american bombing going on um the south vietnamese forces and americans moved into cambodia to try and wipe out the vietnamese communist sanctuary areas in the eastern part of cambodia which bordered on south vietnam [Music] ho chi minh dies general [ __ ] carries on the strategy of the war the age of aquarius ends with students being shot down by the ohio national guard south vietnam has lost its u.s support and fights a desperate war alone against the north nixon's secret war crimes are brought to light in the pentagon papers in the washington post with the new york times general [ __ ] still stands strong for the north as the war in vietnam rages on [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Free Documentary - History

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Keywords: Free Documentary, Documentaries, Full Documentary, documentary - topic, documentary (tv genre), History, History Documentaries, Free Documentary History, History Documentary, The Vietnam War, Vietnam War, Vietnam War Documentary, Vietnam, Viet Cong, US Army Documentary, US Marines, Saigon, Ho Chi Minh, Indochina, Indochina Documentary, Lê Duẩn, Võ Nguyên Giáp, John F Kennedy, RFK, MLK, Tet Offensive, South Vietnam, 1968 Documentary, Cold War Documentary, My Lai Massacre

Id: W5-iR_5L1LQ

Length: 42min 37sec (2557 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 17 2022