"Vietnam - an Epic Tragedy 1945-1975" - a review..

...ever found yourself part way into a book and thought - "Good God, what have I taken on!" .. in a good kind of way of course... 
So it was with this book - it is HUGE. The scope is enormous - from the end of the Second World War to the fall of Saigon, and the research is meticulous and the detail very, very, extensive..

I 'enjoyed' every minute as Hastings is one of my favourite historians, he has an easy to read style that keeps you engaged, but it is a big old book and kept me occupied for almost a month...

So what do you get?

An almost week by week history of the Vietnamese conflict from the French Colonial period to shprtly after the last American troops were withdrawn*

How the scene was set first by French colonial  occupiers who returned at the end of the war looking to pick up where they left off but finding an all too different environment dominated by the communist movement lead by Ho Chi Minh, that they were incapable of adapting to, or controlling..

The increasing numbers of 'atrocities' met by a greater and greater French military reaction lead by French Foreign Legion and other regular troops that culminated in the miraculous victory by Giap  (surely one of the great unknown military strategists) and the Viet Minh communist forces at Dien Bien Phu [clicky] which culminated in France giving up it's control, and the partition of Vietnam into the communist north (capital Hanoi) and non-communist south (capital Saigon) either side of a demilitarized zone..  horrifying times - they think almost a million people moved south out of the north region - mostly Catholics - and because of fear of punishment by the Viet Minh if they stayed..

..and it got worse...

Poor southern governments (utterly, and appallingly inept), communist incursions driven by Hanoi, civil unrest in the south driven by protest at the state of government, and subsequent crackdowns lead to a military coup and the first of a succession of generals in charge of south Vietnam and surely, but slowly at first, US involvement to support the generals began to grow from about 1964 (Hastings is good on the Tonkin incident, very even handed) plateauing at about half a million troops by 1965..

The American's poured billions into Vietnam, and thousands of their troops died, and for little or no benefit... there was a fundamental failing in that for all the war bodies, tanks, bombs, Huey's (and in one operation the Americans used 500 of them - what a sight that would have been!!), shells and ammunition, there was a disconnect between the American's and the south Vietnamese that never saw the south Vietnamese really engage with what they needed to do - it was almost like they (not all of them) sat back and let the American's get on with it..

It's all in here..  Khe Sanh, US issues with drugs, collapse of morale, collapse of discipline, "fragging" (I knew the phrase, but not what it actually was about), My Lai, the role of the Australian's (I had not realised how many troops they committed), the Ho Chi Minh trail, Arclight (the B52 bomber strategy).. hugely readable, and I was itching to start a collection until I looked over and saw the painting table already pre-loaded...

..and then there was Tet, and it all started to really unravel - the American's and their south Vietnamese allies may have won the tactical battle, but the strategic battle was won by the Viet Minh and from that point onwards the descent is rapid...

Withdrawal of American troops starts, driven by opinion in the US and the anti-war movement, and then aid starts to dry up, and then the Americans leave the south Vietnamese unsupported except for a whole load of empty promises no US politician was ever going to enact in the climate of opinion at the time...

Saigon eventually fell to the Viet Minh just 7 years after Tet..

Superb book - definitely a 10'er - but oh my, so depressing - the inevitability of the failure was clear, and the whole sorry history reminded me very much of the book I read on the Fall of France [clicky] - there is that same inevitability (the southern Vietnamese army even had their own "Dunkirk moment") and you just know that it is not going to end well...

Wholly recommended

*we don't count "advisors" as troops...