The Americans said that in the Korean War, we did not completely lose, at least we maintained half of the "free countries" (the United States Oba President Ma boasted), and we could also gain the right to garrison troops in South Korea, and it was just a shame, so strong troops, so many "United Nations troops", so many advanced weapons, facing two so poor and weak countries, maintaining such a situation, and still so vibrant, there is really no way.
Well, the Korean War, you Oba President Ma, you Americans like to argue, then, the Vietnam War, the Americans have nothing more to say, it is simply a nest to the extreme, instigated to the extreme, do not dare to cross the 17th parallel line does not count, a war fought for twenty years, the economy was dragged down, the country was full of anti-war condemnation, and even had to completely abandon his "
Domino effect
Strategy, giving up half of "freedom", eventually gave up Vietnam's independence.
Well, let's go back to the events of the Vietnam War.
One
The importance of the fall of Indochina
On December 30, 1948, President Truman of the United States approved a report of the National Security Council, which included Indochina into the sphere of influence of the United States from the perspective of containing communism, and the United States National Security Council successively issued the "U.S. Position on Indochina" and the "U.S. Goals and Course of Action in Southeast Asia.", according to the recommendations of these two documents, the United States has the responsibility to take all practical measures in Southeast Asia to support the French in Indochina to protect the security interests of the United States.
In fact, this report said that it was to contain communism, in fact, it has nothing to do with communism, mainly to contain the Soviet Union and maintain the interests of the United States in Asia from the control of Stalin of the Soviet Union, because in 1949, President Truman of the United States Government once implied that the then US ambassador to China, Stuart Layden, contacted Premier Zhou Enlai of the Chinese Communist Party, and at the same time, president Vincent Oriol of the French government also sent people to contact the North Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh, hoping to support Vietnam, but at the same time they were rejected, and they were angry. The U.S. government closed the door to contact with the Chinese government, and the French government instead supported the former Vietnamese emperor Bao Da to establish the Provisional Government of Vietnam (South Vietnam) in Saigon.
In 1950, when the Korean War broke out, Douglas MacArthur led the "United Nations Army" led by the United States to fight shirtless, intervened in Korea, supported the pro-Western Syngman Rhee clique in South Korea to unify the Korean Peninsula, and ignored the serious warnings of the Chinese Chinese government, crossed the 38th Line, burned the flames of war to the Yalu River, and threatened New China. The myth of the invincibility of the US military has been broken, and the Korean War has become a nightmare for americans;
At the same time, the U.S. government supported the French in Indochina to encircle and suppress the VietnamEse People's Army led by the North Vietnamese Communist Party Ho Chi Minh, and the leader of the North Vietnamese guerrilla group, Ho Chi Minh, dragged his thin body and walked for 17 days and nights in the primeval forests of north Vietnam, to Beijing to ask Chairman Mao for support, and the Chinese government sent an advisory group headed by General Chen Geng and General Wei Guoqing, as well as all the military supplies ho Chi Minh needed to resist France and aid Vietnam. In May 1954, under the personal instructions of Chairman Mao and under the command of General Chen Geng, the Battle of Dien Bien Phu became famous in one battle, annihilating more than 16,000 French colonial troops, capturing the French commander General Castries, the French army surrendered, and a month later, the French colonial army withdrew all its troops from Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, and 23 countries, including China, the Soviet Union, the United States, France, Britain, Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, held a meeting in Geneva to reach an agreement on the restoration of peace in Indochina. The two sides were bounded by the 17th parallel north, the French colony (commonly known as South Vietnam) in the south, and the sphere of influence of the Viet Cong (commonly known as North Vietnam), and the Vietnamese government was divided into North Vietnam and South Vietnam.
Surprisingly, however, the United States refused to sign the Geneva Accords.
In fact, as early as April 1954, U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower used the "
This term explains and argues that if these two regions fail, the strategic interests of the United States and other capitalist countries in Asia will cease to exist, the Korean battlefield has been defeated, and Indochina can no longer be lost, as a way to illustrate and justify the necessity of preventing the fall of Indochina.
In February 1955, the United States took over from France the training of the South Vietnamese army and announced its support for the Diệm regime to abolish the throne of Emperor Bao Da of Vietnam, establish the Republic of Vietnam, and begin full involvement in the Vietnam War.
The South Vietnamese regime under the support of Eisenhower.
Diệm Dinh Yan, because of his active anti-communism, was supported by the Eisenhower government, and his anti-colonialist stance was supported domestically, and eventually succeeded in ascending to the throne, under the manipulation of several of his brothers Diệm, Diệm Đồm, and Diệm Đạm, overthrew Emperor Bao Da of Vietnam, established the Republic of Vietnam, and established a pro-American South Vietnamese regime.
However, the nature of the South Vietnamese government and the Chinese Nationalist government at that time was the same, basically composed of compradors and traitors under the control of the remnants of the French colonialists, and its legitimacy was not only not recognized by the Vietnamese people, but even Wu Dinh Yan himself could not fully control it. Therefore, in order to maintain his rule in South Vietnam, Ng Teng Yan on the one hand indulged the big capitalists and big landlords to oppress the people and acquiesced to bureaucrats selling out their official positions; on the other hand, he vigorously engaged in secret agent politics, purged dissidents, wantonly spied on the people, and engaged in white terror, and the south Vietnamese police and secret service agencies could even kill civilians on the spot without trial. During the Spring Festival Offensive, Viet Cong guerrillas took control of hue prisons, released prisoners, and found that the city of hundreds of thousands of people actually held more than 10,000 people, as evidenced by the white terror of the South Vietnamese regime. This corrupt and reactionary rule was deeply hated by the people of South Vietnam.
Wu Tingyan
The South Vietnamese army, on the other hand, was essentially a reactionary army, based on the establishment of a puppet army by the French colonists. Not only is corruption serious, factional struggles are fierce, and it has completely inherited many vices of the colonizer puppet army, such as officers can beat and abuse soldiers wantonly, and officers arbitrarily withhold soldiers' food and wages, resulting in bad relations between officers and soldiers. On the battlefield, accustomed to following the orders of the Americans, lacking experience in independent command of combat, they were often panicked and vulnerable to the blows of the North Vietnamese People's Army.
In 1955, with the support of the United States, The South Vietnamese regime of Diệm Dinh Yan launched the "Control of the Communists" and "Annihilation of the Communists" campaigns and wantonly massacred the North Vietnamese Communist Party, and in 1959, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Vietnam decided to overthrow the Republic of Vietnam by force, and sent a large number of military personnel to infiltrate the territory of the Republic of Vietnam and began to organize armed subversion of the Vietnamese puppet government.
Successive U.S. administrations, from Eisenhower to John F. Kennedy, provided substantial aid to the South Vietnamese regime, from the economy to the dispatch of special forces, from military advisory missions to FBI agents, sparing no effort to help South Vietnam against North Vietnamese infiltration and suppress North Vietnamese guerrillas.
However, the Diệm regime did not meet the expectations of the Americans, who were helpless in the face of the maneuverable tactics and strong combat strength of the North Vietnamese guerrillas, and were often at a complete disadvantage in battle. At the same time, the corruption and incompetence of the South Vietnamese government and the white terror also aroused the resentment of the people, who either rose up in resistance or fled to North Vietnam, Vietnam in December 1960
Southern National Liberation Front
It was founded, all of which were composed of organizations in South Vietnam that supported the overthrow of the government of the Republic of Vietnam, and were actually controlled by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of North Vietnam.
South Vietnamese police massacred North Vietnamese guerrillas
Later, the Americans were also soberly aware of this problem, from 1963, President Kennedy made it clear that if it were not for the Government of The Ngo Dinh of the Qing Dynasty, the United States would not be able to win, so the U.S. Government secretly supported the South Vietnamese military to launch a military coup, and successively re-fostered several puppet regimes such as Yang Wenming and Nguyen Van Thieu, but because the United States itself colonialist routine, just like the original Kuomintang government, was not really for the interests of Vietnam, what they cultivated were just puppets. There was no ability to change this environment, so much so that in the end, the vast rural areas of South Vietnam were ceded to the North Vietnamese guerrillas, and the South Vietnamese regime was in a state of flux.
North Vietnam, with the full support of both the two great powers of China and the Soviet Union.
Although at that time, the relations between China and the Soviet Union Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev had broken down, but because of the same camp of the socialist government, after the outbreak of the Vietnam War, the two countries invariably chose to fully support the North Vietnamese government, providing unconditional economic and military assistance, and condemning the United States' disregard for international norms, wanton interference in the internal affairs of other countries, and invasion of Vietnam by force.
In addition to the large amount of aid to Vietnam during the Period of The War to Resist France and Aid Vietnam, in 1962, the Chinese government provided 230 battalions of weapons and equipment to the North Vietnamese government free of charge, and the following year, China and North Vietnam signed documents related to the coordinated operations of the two armies. After the "Beibu Gulf Incident", the Chinese government sent a large number of professional units such as railway troops, engineers, and anti-aircraft artillery to North Vietnam. At the same time, after the north Vietnamese regime leaders visited China in 1965, the two sides also signed an agreement to send ground troops to north Vietnam. By the end of the war, China had given Vietnam more than $20 billion in aid and sacrificed more than 1,000 soldiers.
Although the Soviet Union was blocked by the United States before the start of the Vietnam War, due to its proximity to China, many materials were continuously transported to North Vietnam through China, although it was not as powerful as China, but it provided High-precision weapons and equipment to North Vietnam, including anti-aircraft weapons, surface-to-air missile facilities, small warships, advanced radar detection systems, fighters and bombers, etc., stationed a large number of military experts, and directly participated in some military operations in the late Vietnam War. From 1968 to 1973, with the breakthrough development of Sino-US relations, the Soviet Union became more active in the Vietnam War and its aftermath, which eventually led to the signing of the Paris Peace Treaty between the United States and Vietnam.
How fortunate the North Vietnamese People's Army under the leadership of Ho Chi Minh was that a war was fully supported by both the two great powers of China and the Soviet Union, and it can be said that without the continuous military and material support of these two countries, as long as the road that calls ho Chi Minh Trail to deliver materials today was cut off by the US military, Vietnam would not be today's Vietnam.
However, with the complete rupture of Sino-Soviet relations later, Vietnam, which was once a vassal state of China and received selfless assistance from China to resist France and resist the United States, forgot the kindness of the Chinese people, fell to the Soviet Union in an all-round way, continued the policy of relying on the great powers, and became a tool for the Soviet Union to resist China.
Fourth, the 17th parallel north, the embarrassment of the US government.
Some Chinese public knowledge questioned that the Chinese government had never said that "THE US army must not cross the 17th parallel, otherwise the Chinese government will definitely send troops to participate in the war like the Korean War." This is just a fabrication of later generations, and the Americans did not think of crossing the 17th parallel at all, because the US government wants a divided Vietnam.
But I would like to ask, since the U.S. government wants Vietnam to be divided into South Vietnam and North Vietnam, why did it not sign it at the Geneva Conference? In fact, the Truman Administration's Asia Strategy, Eisenhower's "Strategy for Asia".
"The strategy, including later President Kennedy, President Andrew Johnson, and president Nixon, has continued this policy, hoping to turn Vietnam into a front line to contain China and the Soviet Union, only because they are intimidated by the terrifying land warfare capabilities of the powerful Chinese Army, and dare not cross this red line, and can only hope that the South Vietnamese government will arm them and eliminate North Vietnam through the South Vietnamese army."
In 1955, the Vietnam War broke out, and like the Korean War, the United States supported South Vietnam against North Vietnam based on its own interests, and as the war escalated, the United States openly declared that it regarded China as its main enemy and plotted to launch a larger, world war in Asia.
The Chinese Government declares to the whole world that China will not take the initiative to provoke a war against the United States, and that Chinese words count, but if Asia, Africa, or any country in the world is invaded by imperialism headed by the United States, the Chinese Government and the Chinese people must give support and assistance."
The U.S. invasion of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam is an encroachment on China, and the people of Chinese will never sit idly by and stay unsaved!
In the face of the arrogant remarks of some military figures in the US government, the Chinese government stated: "Chinese people are not afraid of this set, we have never based our security on the goodwill of the United States not to invade, for US imperialism and all its running dogs, China is ready, if the United States imposes war on China, no matter how many people it comes and what weapons it uses, including nuclear weapons, it can be said with certainty that it will be able to enter and leave, and once the war is fought, there will be no boundaries." ”
Regarding the outbreak of the Vietnam War, Chairman Mao said: "If the United States dares to risk hitting North Vietnam, the Chinese army should drive over." We still adopt the form of volunteers, we don't need to be afraid of US interference, it is nothing more than another Korean War, if they bomb or land, we will fight, the United States can send troops, Chinese will not come out? Chinese go to Vietnam, it's just a step away. ”
Premier Zhou Enlai drew up a plan for this directive: The United States will take one step and China will take one step; the United States will send troops, and China will also send troops.
Chairman Mao made it clear that the US military must not cross the 17th parallel north.
afterward
Beibu Gulf Incident
erupt
，
The war began to escalate on a large scale, and the US military sent a large number of bombers across the 17th parallel to bomb North Vietnam continuously, so the Chinese government also sent air defense troops, engineers, and railway troops into North Vietnam to support.
In July 1965, when the U.S. military asked President Johnson to send more troops to South Vietnam, and made it clear that as long as the U.S. ground forces directly participated in the war and crossed the 17th parallel, they could achieve a complete victory in Vietnam, but Johnson was worried that the move might irritate China, Johnson said: "MacArthur also thought that China would not ..." Although U.S. military circles say this is different from North Korea, Johnson said: "I must consider whether China will enter the war." In the nearly 20 years from the beginning of the war to the end of the war, the United States carried out countless large-scale bombings, including what "saturation bombing" and "scorched earth policy", what the "rolling thunder" plan implemented by General Li Mei, chief of staff of the US Air Force, to blow up North Vietnam back to the "Stone Age", etc., but from beginning to end, the US ground troops did not dare to cross the 17th degree line one step, the Americans knew in their hearts what was going on in the Korean War, Chinese was a matter of words, and they did not want to have a head-on confrontation with Chinese in their hearts. It was a nightmare.
In 1967, China successfully exploded the first hydrogen bomb, which had a great impact on the US military and made them completely abandon the idea of crossing the 17th parallel.
Fifth, 20 years without winning, deep in the quagmire of war, the economy collapsed, and the US military withdrew in disgrace.
From 1955, when the United States took over the work of training the South Vietnamese army from France and sent a large number of military advisory groups into Vietnam, to 1962, when the US government officially entered Vietnam under the pretext of the Beibu Gulf Incident, the US military officially entered Vietnam and launched the Vietnam War, until March 1975, when the US ground troops withdrew from South Vietnam, and in the nearly 20 years since the end of the Vietnam War, the US military has invested more than 500,000 ground troops in the Vietnam battlefield, not including South Korea, Japan, the Federal Republic of Germany, Taiwan, New Zealand, Australia, and Thailand The soldiers participating in the war in the Philippines, Laos, Cambodia and other countries, including more than 2 million South Vietnamese troops at their peak, spent at least 250 billion US dollars, including the economic and military assistance of the South Vietnamese government, sacrificed nearly 60,000 American soldiers, wounded more than 300,000 American soldiers, lost 8612 aircraft, of which more than 1100 were shot down, becoming the United States after World War II, the largest number of participants, the most significant impact, the longest time span of a war, paid such a big price. In the end, even the North Vietnamese guerrillas in South Vietnam could not be eliminated, and they had to suddenly abandon the South Vietnamese government, return home in disgrace, and quietly end the Vietnam War.
It is said that one of the most insulting pose photos of Americans
Although there were many factors in the Vietnam War that led to the inability of the US military to win and completely eliminate the North Vietnamese People's Army, such as not daring to send ground troops across the 17th parallel of the North, fearing their hands and feet in the war, and letting the fire of North Vietnam never extinguish, such as the continuous military and economic assistance to Vietnam between China and the Soviet Union, such as the inability to eliminate the Vietnamese army's reserve supply line - Ho Chi Minh Trail, resulting in the continuous delivery of various equipment, weapons and supplies of the North Vietnamese army to the front line, such as the corruption and incompetence of the South Vietnamese regime, etc., however, according to the strongest strength of the United States in the world, And the huge price paid, and the situation that China and the Soviet Union did not explicitly declare direct participation in the war, at least in the establishment and maintenance of a stable South Vietnamese regime, there should be no problem, but the US military is so bearish, so instigated, even did not protect half of south Vietnam, fought for 20 years, and had to roll back to the United States in ashes.
North Vietnam People's Army
From 1967, with the rising death toll of American soldiers, especially the photos of the extremely cruel and extremely tragic war scenes on the Battlefield in Vietnam, the United States began to erupt wave after wave of anti-war climaxes, and at the same time, the benefits of the economic prosperity promoted in the early stage of the war all ceased to exist, and there was inflation in the United States, and the economy experienced a sharp decline. The dollar's hegemony has been hit hard and there has been a huge fiscal deficit, all of which has forced the US government to start to consider negotiations, hoping to get out of the mud of this war as soon as possible in the most decent way.
A photograph of the Vietnam War that sparked the U.S. anti-war campaign
On January 15, 1973, the U.S. government decided to indefinitely cease the bombing of North Vietnam, and on January 27, the Quartet participating in the Paris Conference on Vietnam formally signed the so-called Paris Peace Treaty of the Agreement on ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam, the capital of France, and within the next two months, all U.S. troops except some military advisers withdrew from Vietnam.
On April 30, 1975, helicopters carrying the last U.S. advisers flew out of Saigon, and five hours later, North Vietnamese tanks roared into the South Vietnamese Presidential Palace, and South Vietnamese President Yang Wenming announced his surrender. On January 2, 1976, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam unified the Republic of Vietnam and established the name of the country as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, and the city of Saigon was renamed Ho Chi Minh City, ending the Vietnam War.
Sixth, Americans never stop reflecting.
I remember that after the end of the Korean War, Americans also went through a lot of introspection, wrote a lot of memoirs, and for the Vietnam War, former US Secretary of State Dr. Henry Kissinger also began to reflect: "」
The Vietnam War may have been a tragedy, and the United States should not have broken into it at all.
Senior U.S. Senator George McGovern said: "
I believe that the War of Indochina was the greatest military, political, economic and moral error in the history of our country.
"Words are like that!
Vietnamese women in the U.S.-Vietnam War
McNamara, a former U.S. Secretary of Defense who left office nearly 30 years after the Vietnam War, published a book in 1995 titled "Review: Tragedies and Lessons of Vietnam." McNamara argues that U.S. government policymakers don't realize it."
Neither our people nor our leaders are omnipotent. In matters that do not concern our own survival, it is up to the international community to judge what is in the best interests of another country and people, and we do not have the natural power to shape any other country with our own ideals or choices. But in many parts of the world, we are still repeating similar mistakes.
"
The Vietnam War also completely changed the pattern of hegemony between the United States and the Soviet Union: throughout the 1970s, the United States turned to a strategic defensive position, while the Soviet Union was in a strategic offensive position.
In order to counter the Soviet offensive, President Nixon of the United States government, in order to recover the wounds of the war as soon as possible and revitalize the US economy, set his sights on the People's Republic of China and began to seek reconciliation with China.