The Myth of Inevitable US Defeat in Vietnam
Title | The Myth of Inevitable US Defeat in Vietnam PDF eBook |
Author | Dale Walton |
Publisher | Routledge |
Pages | 200 |
Release | 2013-01-11 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 1136339876 |
This book offers a dispassionate strategic examination of the Vietnam conflict that challenges the conventional wisdom that South Vietnam could not survive as an independent non-communist entity over the long term regardless of how the United States conducted its military- political effort in Indochina.
Victory Denied
Title | Victory Denied PDF eBook |
Author | Clevelan Dale Walton |
Publisher | |
Pages | |
Release | 1998 |
Genre | |
ISBN |
The Myths of Tet
Title | The Myths of Tet PDF eBook |
Author | Edwin Moïse |
Publisher | University Press of Kansas |
Pages | 288 |
Release | 2017-11-21 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 070062502X |
Late in 1967, American officials and military officers pushed an optimistic view of the Vietnam War. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV) said that the war was being won, and that Communist strength in South Vietnam was declining. Then came the Tet Offensive of 1968. In its broadest and simplest outline, the conventional wisdom about the offensive—that it was a military defeat for the Communists but a political victory for them, because it undermined support for the war in the United States—is correct. But much that has been written about the Tet Offensive has been misleading. Edwin Moïse shows that the Communist campaign shocked the American public not because the American media exaggerated its success, but because it was a bigger campaign—larger in scale, much longer in duration, and resulting in more American casualties—than most authors have acknowledged. MACV, led by General William Westmoreland, issued regular estimates of enemy strength in South Vietnam. During 1967, intelligence officers at MACV were increasingly required to issue low estimates to show that the war was being won. Their underestimation of enemy strength was most extreme in January 1968, just before the Tet Offensive. The weak Communist force depicted in MACV estimates would not have been capable of sustaining heavy combat month after month like they did in 1968. Moïse also explores the errors of the Communists, using Vietnamese sources. The first wave of Communist attacks, at the end of January 1968, showed gross failures of coordination. Communist policy throughout 1968 and into 1969 was wildly overoptimistic, setting impossible goals for their forces. While acknowledging the journalists and historians who have correctly reported various parts of the story, Moïse points out widespread misunderstandings in regard to the strength of Communist forces in Vietnam, the disputes among American intelligence agencies over estimates of enemy strength, the actual pattern of combat in 1968, the effects of Tet on American policy, and the American media’s coverage of all these issues.
American Myth and the Legacy of Vietnam
Title | American Myth and the Legacy of Vietnam PDF eBook |
Author | John Hellmann |
Publisher | |
Pages | 241 |
Release | 1989-10 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 9780231058797 |
Probing the effect of the Vietnam War on the American self-image, the author uses popular culture, literature, and film to study how the myths and symbols of the war reflected the politics of Americans.
A Handbook of Military Strategy and Tactics
Title | A Handbook of Military Strategy and Tactics PDF eBook |
Author | Michiko Phifer |
Publisher | Vij Books India Pvt Ltd |
Pages | 247 |
Release | 2012-07-13 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 9382573283 |
The book discusses the importance of Military Strategy and Tactics during conflicts with some proven examples.
Triumph Regained
Title | Triumph Regained PDF eBook |
Author | Mark Moyar |
Publisher | Encounter Books |
Pages | 364 |
Release | 2023-01-10 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 1641772980 |
Triumph Regained: The Vietnam War, 1965–1968 is the long-awaited sequel to the immensely influential Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954–1965. Like its predecessor, this book overturns the conventional wisdom using a treasure trove of new sources, many of them from the North Vietnamese side. Rejecting the standard depiction of U.S. military intervention as a hopeless folly, it shows America’s war to have been a strategic necessity that could have ended victoriously had President Lyndon Johnson heeded the advice of his generals. In light of Johnson’s refusal to use American ground forces beyond South Vietnam, General William Westmoreland employed the best military strategy available. Once the White House loosened the restraints on Operation Rolling Thunder, American bombing inflicted far greater damage on the North Vietnamese supply system than has been previously understood, and it nearly compelled North Vietnam to capitulate. The book demonstrates that American military operations enabled the South Vietnamese government to recover from the massive instability that followed the assassination of President Ngo Dinh Diem. American culture sustained public support for the war through the end of 1968, giving South Vietnam realistic hopes for long-term survival. America’s defense of South Vietnam averted the imminent fall of key Asian nations to Communism and sowed strife inside the Communist camp, to the long-term detriment of America’s great-power rivals, China and the Soviet Union.
The Vietnam War Re-Examined
Title | The Vietnam War Re-Examined PDF eBook |
Author | Michael Kort |
Publisher | Cambridge University Press |
Pages | 267 |
Release | 2018 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 1107046408 |
An overview of the revisionist case on the Vietnam War, showing how it could have been won by the US at a lower cost than was suffered in defeat.