177. The Vietnam War: Lyndon Johnson, Americanisation, and Operation Rolling Thunder

26:22I think the North Vietnamese, we don't often think about this, but the North Vietnamese military suffered its own morale problems, much more so than we used to believe. We never hear about that. Tell us how you know that. Well, we've learned from memoir literature. We've learned from interviews, some of them of a fairly recent vintage where people feel maybe still somewhat reluctant to speak out, but they make clear that this was difficult. Various sources. I think we can now say that life was tough for a lot of people in the North as it was for Southerners. We're so familiar with that sort of killing fields world of commie villages, collectivization, thousands of peasants being marched out under a sort of communist banner to work in the rice fields together.

27:06How much of that is true in North Vietnam? Have they completely changed the social structure or is life continuing as before, but just with different leaders in the capital? I think there are historians who will be able to speak to this in greater knowledge than I can, who have done some of this research. I think some of what you've just described, William, is in fact, it can be transferred to North Vietnam. But there are also parts of North Vietnam where life, I think, has gone on, goes on much in the way that it did before and probably has gone on for generations. It really, my sense is, it really depends on where you are in the North and probably which phase of the war we're talking about.

27:46So if we start in 65 and then we end with the Paris Peace Accords in 73 or even the so-called fall of Saigon in 75, throughout that phase we'll have a different reality on the ground. Well, I mean, from this initial engagement of we'll send B-52s in and we'll just smother the place in bombs to the inevitable we'll send boots on the ground, things don't go well. And there is a national security memo that says in the United States that three-fourths of the battles are the enemy's choice of time, place, and duration. And so it is now becoming actually a scramble for honor and survival for the United States in Vietnam.

28:24And you have this terrible situation, which you talk about in the book, where the body count becomes metric, and the idea of an American victory, the parameters of that change substantially. Just tell us a bit more about that. Yeah. I mean, one of the things that's so fascinating about this is the degree to which, as Bernard famously put it, the Americans are dreaming different dreams from the French, but walking in the same footsteps. Because what you just quoted from that memo could be seen, can be seen in any number of French memos, French documentation, where they say the enemy is choosing where to fight, where he wants to engage, and where he doesn't want to engage.

29:06And so on so many aspects of this story, the Americans could have learned from the French experience, chose not to, which is something we can discuss. But the point is that with each passing month, though there are successes, and we should note that the introduction of American ground forces and the American air power does stave off the possibility of a South Vietnamese defeat. So these troops and the air power do make a difference. It's not as though they were inconsequential. They mattered and they helped in that regard. But nevertheless, with each passing month, the scale of the challenge that the Americans are confronting is not only similar to what the French were confronting, but one that thoughtful people are wondering, even with our immense firepower, which far exceeds what the French could muster, can we actually do this?

29:58And more and more, some of them are coming to the realization, we probably can't. It's a good place to take a break. Join us after the break when we try to find out what that dawning realization does to international politics and does to the people of both North and South Vietnam.

30:20Welcome back. We often tend to look at Vietnam because of the movies, because of the documentaries, because of the television footage from the American perspective. But Frederick, give us an idea of what it's like to be on the receiving end of these B-52s and their enormous payloads. Well, I guess I should be grateful for the fact that I haven't experienced this up close, and so I don't have that sort of an answer to your question, but it's clear. The scale of this, we can speak to. We're talking about from 1962 in very limited form to 1973, we're talking about 8 million tons of bombs. Let me say that again.

31:038 million tons of bombs dropped by, especially the United States, to a limited degree by the South Vietnamese Air Force, but by the United States on South Vietnam, North Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. And so we should note here, in passing at least, that Laotians and Cambodians, especially later in the story under Nixon, are themselves suffering under this aerial onslaught that goes on 24 hours of the day, seven days a week, without interruption. And what are the scale of the casualties? How many people are dying under these bombs? That's a very good question. And that's hard to grapple with. I mean, ultimately, the figures that we have for Vietnamese deaths are somewhere between two and four million.

31:55Out of a population of? In this period, I want to say 25 to 30. So very high. Very, very high proportion. Very high. And a majority of those who are killed are civilians. Was that the sixth of the population or something like that? Yeah, I would say that's a good estimate. I think the numbers lose a certain meaning for us when we get up to that figure, don't they? I mean, it's just it becomes this number that is hard to grapple with. Whereas when we say that somewhere on the order of 58 ,200 Americans would perish, somehow that one is easier for me to get my head around. We've seen the memorial in Washington with all the names exactly.

32:32The point is that the Vietnamese are dying in very large numbers. And you mentioned briefly, just as an aside there, Laos and Cambodia. What's happening there yet? We haven't yet got the whole sideshow thing of the Americans bombing Cambodia yet, have we? No. I mean, the main thing that's happening in Cambodia and Laos, I guess, or what causes them to be more and more drawn into the struggle is that the North Vietnamese are using what comes to be called the Ho Chi Minh Trail, which is really hundreds of trails. So it's a misnomer. But the Ho Chi Minh Trail is being used through Laos and Cambodia into South Vietnam to supply, to get both men and materiel into the south.

33:16And just for clarity's sake, these are two independent countries now. The French are out of both. The French are out of both and they are independent countries being increasingly drawn into the struggle. And of course, the North Vietnamese are seeking to be more and more present in both countries. There's in a sense a struggle for both and that'll become more pronounced as we proceed. But from an early point, Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defense, is saying to his associates, the so-called whiz kids, a group of very intelligent, in all cases, I think men that surround him. McNamara is saying, how do we interdict?

33:55How do we stop the supplies from flowing down the Ho Chi Minh trail into the South? Because he understands, I think correctly, that this is a key part of the struggle, that this is what's different about Vietnam as compared to Korea. In Korea, you don't have this problem. You've got the sea, we'll stop it, blockade the water. That's right. And so McNamara never quite figures this out. They try all kinds of different means to disrupt the trail with some success, it should be noted. Officially, both the government of Cambodia and the government of Laos are friendly to the Americans. Officially, that's a key word.

34:36It's unofficially, I think it's a more mixed picture. And they don't like the fact, understandably, that more and more their country is being drawn into this. Also, with the kind of ordinance that you've described falling out of the heavens, bombs are not discriminant. They don't find men of fighting age. They will kill men, women, and children. They also won't necessarily kill Vietnamese who are against you. They might even be on your side. at some point, you have this rule of thumb that goes out. If it's dead and it's Vietnamese, it's Viet Cong. I mean, when does that happen? And at that point, can you say, actually, you know what, you've lost the whole country.

35:16When you think that way about people, that's it for you. Yeah, I think that happens from an early point, that junior American commanders who are leading these troops in the field are basically reaching that conclusion. And I don't want to belabor the point, But I do want to say that French commanders reached that same point, where they couldn't tell friend from foe, how do you distinguish between people? Better not to try, or we're not going to try here because I have my own men to think about. The problem of course is that when you level a village, kill many of the people within that village, what are those surviving inhabitants going to do?

35:54Well, in at least some numbers, they're going to join the insurgency. because you are now responsible for my mother, my sister, my brother being killed. And so the French never could figure out what they would call pacification. The Americans could never quite figure out how counterinsurgency, which supposedly had an emphasis on winning hearts and minds, that is to say non-military measures, how you could square that objective with enhancing security which was a military endeavor. They never could quite figure that out. And again, just for clarity's sake, in the South, have you lost great areas of the country completely?

36:40Are the whole Viet Cong regiments owning swathes of territory, or are they hiding in the jungle? Is it cat and mouse still? What's the sort of situation? 1968, say. Oh, in 68, there's no question that there are large swaths of the South that are enemy-held, and that nobody goes into either day or night, convoy or no. Just to pick one example, you stay out of the extreme South, because that is Viet Cong held, and there's not even a thought of trying to recapture that until we solidify the control elsewhere. Is there a sense of a frontier? Is there an area beyond which Americans don't go? Is it shrinking?

37:22It's certainly shrinking. One of the acute questions for Lyndon Johnson in his final year or so in office, and then for the Nixon administration that succeeds him, is how to expand this perimeter, how to turn things around on the ground, which they under Nixon, to some extent, succeed in doing. But there's no question that it's a shrinking, a shrinking amount of territory in the South that is controlled by the ARVN and the United States. Before we get to Nixon, before we even talk about Nixon, let's just talk about LBJ and what happens to him as a result of this. I mean, you have got, as we've said, journalists and cameras and writers and authors who are sending back descriptions and images and moving pictures of the kind of destruction that's going on.

38:08As a result, you've got a mass anti-war movement among particularly the students who are objecting to their friends, you know, who are being drafted into this war that is becoming more unpopular by the day. You've got the chart on campuses and beyond. Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids have you killed today? This must be a nightmare for anybody who is trying to run a country. And it's one that is completely out of his control. I think it's exactly right. It's a nightmare for Lyndon Johnson. Not to excuse his decision making at all, but I do reflect on the fact that he felt from the start that he was trapped whichever way he went on Vietnam.

38:52And this was not a war that he wanted. And he said as much to Lady Bird, his wife. And I think about that. At the same time, I don't think this was inevitable. Lyndon Johnson had choices. And they were there at the beginning. And these are choices that are evident not only in hindsight, they were evident at the time. His own vice president, Hubert Humphrey, said to him in February of 1965, in so many words, in an amazing memo, Humphrey said, don't do this. Do not escalate this war. If you do, you're going to divide the American people. You're going to divide the Democratic Party. You're going to, in effect, threaten your own re-election in 1968.

39:28Moreover, he said, Humphrey, you don't need to do this because 1965, and I quote, is the year of minimum political risk for this administration. You don't have to worry about the Republicans. So he's hearing this message, he nevertheless takes the plunge, as we've been discussing. And by the time we get into 1968, the Tet Offensive, this large-scale communist attack, he is besieged. And you've got in the wings, potentially Robert Kennedy, who might run against him for the Democratic nomination. Eugene McCarthy has already announced that he's going to do this. Meanwhile, you've got Walter Cronkite, the most trusted man in America.

40:09Cronkite is going on the evening news to say, this is a stalemate. I see no reason to believe this is going to get any better. What are we doing here, in so many words? This is what Johnson is facing in March of 1968, as he begins to think about potentially making a hugely consequential announcement. Tell us a little about the Americans going into Vietnam. Again, we know how many of the young men being shipped into action are young black men, and the white kids at Harvard seem to be able to escape at this point from recruitment. How far is that true? I think it's substantially true that because of the student deferments, and because of other means that the privileged had to escape service, certainly escape combat service, that's the makeup of the American military force.

41:03That is to say it is working class. There is a larger percentage of African Americans relative to the size of the population than there should be. The Pentagon becomes aware of this. And so over time, you see the share of black Americans in fighting positions go down until it's roughly equal to their percentage of the population, but that's not true early on. And the Harvard kids and the Yale kids are, by and large, able to avoid service. If you go into Memorial Church at Harvard, my institution, and you see all the names for World War I Americans who perished, and then a huge number of Harvard students who perished in World War II, and then you see how much smaller it gets, and a very small number for Harvard.

41:51I'm sorry for the Vietnam War. And this is about to be the moment that Jimi Hendrix arrives in. Yeah, but also Martin Luther King, who comes out against LBJ, who once they were simpatico, and now he's like, this is the madness of Vietnam. I want nothing to do with this. Also, we should mention, apart from the racial disparity, this is also a meat mill or meat grinder that is devouring the very, very young. We all know in this country, and perhaps you're familiar with it well, there was a very huge pop hit in the 1980s by Paul Hardcastle, who said, the average age of a combat soldier in World War II is 21.

42:27In Vietnam, it was 19. No, no, no, 19, 19, 19. But it is. I mean, the fact that this is a country that seems to be chewing on its own youth is also potent, isn't it? It is. And if you look at the documentaries of the war, there's the Ken Burns documentary that we discussed. There's also an older one called Vietnam, a television history, which I think is marvelous from 1983. and you see the interviews with these American servicemen later, obviously, but you see them recall why they went. You know, my father had fought in World War II, and my brother had been in Korea. It was my turn, and I answered the call.

43:06And then you reflect upon the fact, which they could not have known, these 19-year-olds, these 20-year-olds. You reflect on the fact that in Washington, with the doors closed, Johnson is saying, I'm not sure we can win this war. He says it's in 1964, a year before the escalation. Johnson says, what is Vietnam worth to me? What's it worth to this country? In other words, while these young men are answering the call to service, their very leaders are questioning whether the cause is even worthwhile, whether the war is necessary and whether it's winnable. It's during the infamous Tet Offensive that you've got this US general who delivers a line that, I mean, a lot of people will know, anybody who reads anything or watches anything about Vietnam.

43:54It became necessary to destroy the town in order to save it. How many weeks did the Tet Offensive go on for? Yeah, tell us about the Tet Offensive. Give us a clear picture of that. Yeah, so in 67 in Hanoi, there's a vociferous debate about how to change this stalemate. We can keep sending troops into the meat grinder. The Americans can do the same, but America is a very powerful country. Can we really go on indefinitely doing this? And there is a division in the Politburo between those like Ho, who want to take a more moderate course, avoid further escalation. Ho is the more moderate one, really?

44:33Oh yeah, he's the more moderate one and has been for some years. And now the key figure in Hanoi, which is no longer Ho, but it's Lei Zouan. Well, I want to know more about Leigh Swan. Who is he? What's his backstory? Leigh Swan is a totally extraordinary character in the story. And we don't know all that much about him. He's an elusive figure, but I think highly important. And we know that he hailed from central Vietnam, that he was a founding member of the Indochinese Communist Party. So he was there early on and then was imprisoned by the French, really for the duration of World War two. And it's after that point that he slowly but surely ascends in the leadership.

45:12He basically runs the revolution in the South after the French defeat, becomes General Secretary of the party in 1960. Is he from the South or where's his home? He's from Quang Tri. He's from the central part of the country, not far from the old imperial capital of Hue, but is a committed revolutionary. And certainly by the time we get into the mid-60s, it's fair to say that he is the principal day-to-day decision maker in Hanoi. It's funny because Ho Chi Minh is such a dominant figure in our imagination. Well, it's true. And Ho's health is beginning to fail by the time we get into the American war.

45:54How old is he? He's going to be ultimately about 78 or 79. So yeah. And Lei Zouan could never quite match the charisma of Ho. He never had that avuncular kind of charm that Ho could exhibit. But in terms of his importance to the story, he's immense. 20 years younger then? He's about 20 years younger, 17 or 18 years younger. I think he was born in 1908. So that makes him a generation basically younger than Ho. So you're passing from, in Indian terms, the sort of Gandhian and Nehruvian generation down to a sort of not quite Mrs. Gandhi generation. Yeah, I think that's a fair comparison. I do think that some people exaggerate the degree to which Lei Zouan, even in 59 and 60, had become supreme.

46:42I think Ho Chi Minh into the mid-60s is still ultimately the most important official, but we do need to reckon with Lei Zouan as well. The impact of Ho Chi Minh can't be underestimated, especially in the American psyche. Again, looking at propaganda posters of the time, I mean, I don't even know where Mifflin is, but it must be a small town in America somewhere. But there is this poster saying, ho, ho, Ho Chi Minh, the NLF is going to win when Saigon falls, gather in Mifflin for a rally. So, I mean, there is that kind of presumption. Mifflin is invested too, you know. There totally is. And I think about the following sometimes that here he is in 1919 at Versailles, this unknown figure.

47:22He rents a mourning coat so that he can look presentable. And he tries desperately to get in to see the American president at Versailles, Woodrow Wilson. And of course, fails. You can just sort of picture him knocking on the window or whatever. But ultimately, this guy will become far more recognizable than Woodrow Wilson, known to far more people than Woodrow Wilson. But nobody knew that in 1919. Another story that we haven't done, which is at this moment playing out at an important generational divide too, are the Morrisons. Jim Morrison of the Doors. His father is the admiral at the beginning of the Vietnam War in the Gulf of Tonkin.

48:05And by the time we're now talking in 1968, Jim Morrison is avoiding the draft in California. Maybe that story has been written up, but if it hasn't been, that is a great… It's a great generational divide, isn't it? Yeah. But by the time we get into this period, it is Lei Zuan and his associates who are the principal decision makers. They make this decision to launch a major offensive in the South in the hopes that it'll spur an uprising among South Vietnamese, that the South Vietnamese populace will say, we're going to rise up against the government. And this is the Tet Offensive that we read about?

48:45Yes. So how does it begin? It is a holiday, isn't it? It's a holiday, the Vietnamese New Year, and it begins right at the end of January 1968. So it's like the Christmas offensive. Yes, we could call it something similar to this. And what it is, it's a series of attacks throughout South Vietnam. Some are quite successful in the early going, some are not. The uprising does not happen. And the Americans, along with the South Vietnamese, are able to beat back the offensive, including in South Vietnam, in Saigon, not before extraordinary images are broadcast around the world of the American embassy under siege.

49:26And it looks like the thing is about to fall because the enemy has penetrated the embassy compound, etc., etc. So an image is formed, which I think is important in the American popular consciousness, that it's a further sign that we're losing this thing. This is as early as 1968, and the thing will roll on until 1975, but already the embassy is in the sights of the Viet Cong. Even though the offensive is thwarted, and even though you could say that militarily the Tet Offensive is a defeat for Hanoi, which I think it was, politically, I'm not so sure. Politically, in terms of deepening American disaffection with the war, you could say that the offensive succeeded, and that people like Walter Cronkite, who traveled to South Vietnam to report on this, come back with this very sober view, which he announced on the CBS broadcast.

50:20Other journalists did the same. More and more lawmakers, both senators and House members, are singing from the same hymnal. You write in your book that in February 1968, 68 less than one third of americans believe that they're making progress in vietnam and also at the same time of course lbj's approval ratings are plummeting yeah all of this leads to a deep exhaustion depression misery in lbj who is putting his head around into the situation room tell me news tell me the latest hoping that something good is going to come out of this he's having dreams he confesses about vietnam one in which he talks about a stampede of cattle coming towards him and he can't move.

51:03He's rooted to the spot. It's really interesting. I'll just read a little extract of that just to give you the psyche of the man because these things are so valuable. I felt I was being chased on all sides by a giant stampede. Vietnam, the inflationary economy, rioting blacks, demonstrating students, marching welfare mothers, squawking professors, that'd be you, and hysterical reporters, that would be me. This is an untenable situation for him. Just talk us through the last few days of LBJ and then we'll draw this to a conclusion, but we will continue with the Vietnam story in a third episode of Empire.

51:41But how does it all come, not with a bang, but with a whimper to an end for LBJ? I mean, it's just cinematic, isn't it? He gives this speech on March 31st, 1968, in which he had two versions. So even close aides didn't know which version he would give. It's like Boris Johnson at Brexit. Yes, like Boris Johnson at Brexit. One of the versions included the announcement that he was not going to seek re-election, and the other one did not. So right to the end, Johnson himself was torn. But he ultimately gives this speech to the American people, in which he says, I do not seek, and I shall not accept, or I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president.

52:26Boom. And I just imagine Americans on their living room couches turning to each other and saying, did he just say what I think he just said? And so this is, I think, the big difference between his announcement and Joe Biden's. I think the whole world was expecting some version of Biden's announcement. But with Johnson, I think this was not something that even close aides recommended. He dropped out. What's also interesting, though, is that in the subsequent weeks, I think he changed his mind. He wanted, I think, to be drafted at the convention. What, for people to beg him, please stay, Lyndon, please stay.

53:02Yeah, I think he changed his mind. And that's one reason why he's reluctant to throw his support to Hubert Humphrey, who becomes, after RFK's assassination, I think even had Kennedy not been assassinated, I think Humphrey was going to be the nominee. But Johnson is reluctant, I think, to support Humphrey. One reason why I think Johnson was reluctant to support Humphrey is that some part of him preferred Nixon. Some part of LBJ wanted Nixon to succeed him. Why? Because Nixon would be more likely to continue the Vietnam commitment to make sure the thing turned out okay in the end, which would, of course, be a way of vindicating his own policies.

53:41A good place to end it. Join us again when we conclude this three-part series on Vietnam. I'm Frederick. Thank you so much, Frederick. Longavell will be with us again. Till the next time we meet, it's goodbye from me, Anita Arnand. And goodbye from me, William de Rumpel.

54:00The Volkswagen Beetle started out as Hitler's dream car. It wound up as a beloved hippie icon and the best-selling car of all time. How did that happen? I'm Jacob Goldstein. And I'm Robert Smith. On Business History, we tell the surprising stories behind the inventions and entrepreneurs that shaped our economy. And the story of the Beatle is truly surprising. It has so much in it. He says you should be able to mount machine guns on it. Sure. Not for the family vacation, but, you know, for other things. You never know. Other plans. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. And for full video episodes, search Business History Podcast on YouTube.