preface
In the war waged by the United States for hegemonism, if you ask the Americans which war they hate the most and hate the most, then the answer is undoubtedly the Vietnam War.
The Vietnam War was a war recognized by the Americans as meaningless and plunged the United States into a quagmire. With the rise of anti-war sentiment in the United States,
In 1973, the U.S. government officially announced its withdrawal from the Vietnam War, withdrawing all its troops.
Although the United States withdrew from the Vietnam War, for the American soldiers who participated in the Vietnam War, the shadow left on the battlefield has been deeply rooted in their hearts.
The losses they suffered on the battlefield, especially at the hands of a "mysterious force" in Vietnam, made American soldiers unforgettable.
What kind of origin did this "mysterious force" make the American soldiers so noisy? And what did the Vietnam War after World War II bring to the United States?
Next, this video will be with you to understand the relevant content. Before that, please pay attention to the officials and like it.
America's containment of communism
Before the outbreak of World War II, Vietnam was colonized by france. After World War II, the VietnamEse Independence League led by Ho Chi Minh, also known as the Communist Party of Vietnam, after a long period of hard struggle, got rid of French colonial rule and established the "Democratic Republic of Vietnam" in Hanoi on September 2, 1945.
But France was not reconciled, and it was there
On April 27, 1949, he secretly supported the exiled former Vietnamese emperor Bao Da. Emperor Bao established the Provisional Government of Vietnam in Saigon and became head of state.
That's it
Vietnam split in two, creating a situation in which North Vietnam, led by Ho Chi Minh, and South Vietnam, ruled by Emperor Bao, faced each other.
In 1954, France was defeated on the battlefield in Vietnam. On 7 May, French troops were surrounded by the Vietnamese People's Army at Dien Bien Phu and surrendered.
Just when the Vietnamese people thought that they were finally going to usher in a peaceful life, the United States quietly intervened, replaced the French position in South Vietnam, deposed Bao The Great, and supported Diệm Dinh Yan as the president of the new regime and established the Republic of Vietnam.
The United States interfered in Vietnam's affairs without thinking too much, but also to consolidate its hegemonic position in the world.
As early as December 30, 1948, then-U.S. President Harry S. Truman approved a National Security Council report, The 48-2 Report.
The report recommended that the United States "pay special attention to French Indochina," leading the United States to firmly establish a policy of "preventing further Communist Expansion in Asia."
On the one hand, with the founding of New China and the formation of the Sino-Soviet alliance, on the other hand, because of the direct confrontation between China and the United States in the Korean War, and China's support for the Vietnamese National Liberation Movement. The U.S. government feels even more that the threats facing the United States are ubiquitous.
After the Formation of the Cold War situation, the United States actively supported Japan in Asia and "contained" New China. At the same time, he also turned his attention to the Indochina Peninsula.
The Indochina Peninsula not only has an extremely important strategic position and economic value, but most importantly, Ho Chi Minh, who was extremely influential in the Vietnamese national liberation movement, also has direct ties with the Communist Party.
The United States did not want to see colonial imperial regimes replaced by Soviet-controlled political institutions.
Thus between 1950 and 1952,
Proceeding from the standpoint of curbing communism, the US National Security Council has successively introduced it
U.S. Positions On Indochina and U.S. Goals and Course of Action in Southeast Asia
，
The indochina conflict is considered to be part of the confrontation between East and West and has global significance. According to the recommendations of these two documents,
The United States has a responsibility to take all practical measures in Southeast Asia to support the French in Indochina and to prevent further Communist expansion to protect U.S. security interests.
U.S. forces intervene in the Vietnam War
In the 1950s, the characteristics of the Cold War had changed a lot, and new forms emerged.
"Local Wars"
。 In April 1954, U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower, who for the first time used the term "domino effect" at a press conference, claimed that if a country in Indochina "fell" under communist rule, the entire defense line of the Western camp in Indochina would collapse like a "domino" and fall completely.
Therefore, in order to prevent the "fall" of the Indochina Peninsula, the United States intervened in Vietnam in 1954 to support the South Vietnamese regime led by Diệm Diem to curb the development of North Vietnam.
During this time, Eisenhower continued to provide military assistance advisory groups to the South Vietnamese government, playing an important role in the training and equipping of south Vietnamese troops.
During Kennedy's reign,
The "domino effect" theory is the guiding ideology of the United States' Vietnam policy and the entire Cold War strategy. Kennedy saw Vietnam as "the pillars, vaults, and fortresses of the free world in Southeast Asia."
He claimed: "If the 'red tide' overwhelms Vietnam, then the security of Southeast Asian countries and even India and Japan will be seriously threatened!" ”
At the end of April 1961, Kennedy ordered intensified covert warfare while adding military advisers to Vietnam and sending the first U.S. special forces.
On May 14, Kennedy sent 400 U.S. "special operations forces" and 100 military advisers into South Vietnam.
The incident marked the beginning of special warfare.
From the second half of 1963 onwards, the Operations of the South Vietnamese National Liberation Front intensified sharply, and the "special warfare" of the United States was on the verge of bankruptcy. The deterioration of the military situation prompted the Kennedy administration to consider an escalation of the war.
In August 1964, the United States bombed North Vietnam under the pretext of the "Gulf of Tonkin Incident", and the US military began to intervene in the Vietnam War on a large scale.
When it first became involved in the Vietnam War, the United States agreed that the Vietnam War would end completely within a year or two. At the same time, many people in the United States believe that it is very correct to enter the war, and the New York Times once commented with a sense of justice:
"U.S. military interventions are designed to limit the expansion of the civil war in Vietnam."
Yet the United States underestimated Vietnam's capabilities too much and overestimated its own strength.
The U.S. military did have the advantage of being well-armed, but the North Vietnamese army also had a wealth of combat experience, familiarity with the terrain, and the advantage of being a soldier for all.
During the Vietnam War, the Vietnamese army was very good at using the terrain advantage to fight guerrilla warfare, and sometimes the American army was still looking for the enemy, and it did not know where the North Vietnamese army had come from.
meanwhile
pitfall
It was also a common tactic used by the North Vietnamese army. The military and civilians of the South VietnamEse National Liberation Front will always be covered with various traps on the road through or near the military barracks to dominate the Us army. These traps are generally three meters deep, with bamboo spikes underneath, or horse honeycombs, and some contain man-eating ants, and if you are not careful, you will die by falling into the trap.
In addition to the use of tactics, it is also important that almost all vietnamese soldiers.
In the brutal and tragic Vietnam War, men, women and children, everyone took up arms to defend their homeland. At that time, there were probably hundreds of thousands of women in Vietnam, some of whom were responsible for learning to operate anti-aircraft weapons, repairing roads that had collapsed by U.S. Air Force bombing, patrolling and sending outposts in military barracks; some were responsible for organizing intelligence, spy teams, and transporting supplies to the army.
Vietnam's mysterious unit "Widow Company"
Among the troops made up of these women, there is a "mysterious unit" that makes American soldiers recall it creepily.
This "mysterious force" is called
"Widow Company"
, as the name suggests, is made up of women whose husbands died in the war.
The members of the "Widow Company" have a high degree of hatred for the US military. In order to avenge the death of their families, they will kill American soldiers by any means.
The most commonly used "widow company" is the beauty plan, these women will deliberately bathe in the river, lure the American soldiers who are not strong in willpower, and when the American army cannot withstand the temptation and runs to the river, it will be shot by snipers who are ambushed not far away. When the sniper loses, the women in the river will kill them with knives hidden around them, and they don't care even if they exchange their lives for their lives. At the same time, the members of the "Widow's Company", some of whom were also specially responsible, mixed into the US military camp and poisoned the food inside when the US military relaxed its vigilance. Vietnam's "widow company" has caused the US military a lot of headaches, because the US military is completely unable to distinguish who is not a member of the "widow company" of Vietnamese women.
The irregular guerrilla warfare and the fierce fighting of the female soldiers of the "widow company" have caused great pressure in the hearts of the US troops.
An American captain from the battlefield in Vietnam once said:
"In Vietnam, both the elderly and children need to be vigilant, but the most terrifying thing is the widows who have lost their husbands!"
Other U.S. soldiers said:
"When you see a single woman in Vietnam, don't look and think too much, just shoot!" Under various factors, american soldiers were completely unpopular in the Vietnam War, and the United States was dragged out for 20 years in the Vietnam War before it withdrew.
The United States broke out an anti-war movement and lost the war against Vietnam
There is no doubt that the Vietnam War dragged down the United States.
In the seven years that the U.S. military entered the war, nearly half of the country's ground troops, one-fifth of the air force and one-quarter of the navy were mobilized, but the combat objectives were not achieved. The United States also appeared during this period
$36.1 billion
In order to cope with the increasingly large military expenditure, the United States has to issue a large number of dollars.
The defeat in the Vietnam War not only caused people to lose confidence in the United States, but also in the dollar, triggering an unprecedented dollar crisis.
There was a massive sell-off of dollars in the international market, which in turn was used in financial markets to empty U.S. gold reserves, reducing U.S. gold reserves to $10.5 billion, while foreigners held up to $50 billion.
In this case, the dollar is also gradually becoming "American paper", and the Bretton Woods system in the United States has collapsed.
These circumstances also laid the groundwork for the major changes in American society that followed. As the Vietnam War escalated, the United States needed to invest more, which was even more dramatic
American society is in turmoil, and more and more people are disgusted that the United States participated in the Vietnam War.
Anti-war sentiment continued to rise, and even appeared
"Anti-War Movement"
。
After the "Pentagon Papers" incident, the "anti-war movement" reached its climax.
In 1971, a U.S. government review of the Vietnam War.
In the end, the document that concluded that "no matter how many people the United States sends, Hanoi can eat it, and there is no hope that the war will end" was made public.
Ordinary people's hopes for american victory in the Vietnam War were greatly reduced, so there were "anti-war" rallies everywhere, and violent clashes between ordinary people and American police escalated.
The United States is even more volatile at home.
Internally, American society was in turmoil; on the outside, the United States not only had no chance of victory in the Vietnam War, but instead affected its hegemonic status.
The situation of "the United States attacking the Soviet Union and defending" has changed to "the Soviet Union attacking the United States and defending the United States."
Former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said: "The Vietnam War may have been a tragedy, and the United States should not have broken into it at all." ”
In 1973, the United States declared the Vietnam War defeated and withdrew its troops from Vietnam.
In the downtown area of Saigon City, a group of reporters watched the last American helicopter go away and wrote:
"The Star-Spangled Banner no longer flies over the warring cities, Saigon has surrendered, and the final phase of the long battle for national unity is over. The vast American military apparatus, like the French twenty-one years ago, fell prey to the relentless struggle of Ho Chi Minh's followers..."
However, although the U.S. army retreated, the wounds left on the Vietnamese people were permanent.
The "widow company", which was regarded as a flood beast by American soldiers, suffered seriously after the end of the war
War syndrome
。 What the United States put in the Vietnam War
Agent Orange
, in severe
While destroying the environment, it also "creates" a large number of deformed babies, and until now the impact has not been eliminated.