All language subtitles for The Vietnam War S01E01 Deja Vu 1858 - 1961

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(helicopter blades beating, growing louder)

(helicopter blades stop beating)

(wind whipping, bullet whizzing)

(gunfire)

(explosion)

(helicopter blades beating,
indistinct voices)

(gunfire, distorted screaming)

(distorted Marine Corps Hymn playing)

(electronic hum)

(Marine Corps Hymn playing, crowd cheering)

KARL MARLANTES: Coming home from Vietnam

was close to as traumatic
as the war itself.

For years, nobody talked about Vietnam.

(gunfire)

(marching band playing)

We were friends with a young couple

and it was only after 12 years
that the two wives were talking.

Found out that we both had
been Marines in Vietnam.

Never said a word about it.

Never mentioned it.

And the whole country was like that.

It was so divisive.

And it's like living in a family
with an alcoholic father.

(whispering): "Shh, we
don't talk about that."

(gunfire)

Our country did that with Vietnam.

It's only been very recently that, I think,

that, you know, the baby boomers
are finally starting to say,

"What happened?

What happened?"

("A Familiar Taste" by Trent
Reznor & Atticus Ross playing)

HENRY KISSINGER: What we
need now in this country

is to heal the wounds and
to put Vietnam behind us.

("A Familiar Taste" continues)

RICHARD NIXON: The killing

in this tragic war must stop.

("A Familiar Taste" continues)

LYNDON JOHNSON: General
Westmoreland's strategy

is producing results.

The enemy is no longer closer to victory.

("A Familiar Taste" continues)

ROBERT McNAMARA: No matter
how you measure it,

we're better off than we thought
we would be at this time.

REPORTER: You have been less than candid

as to how deeply we are
involved in Vietnam.

We have increased our assistance

to the government, its logistics.

We have not sent combat troops there.

DWIGHT EISENHOWER: You have
a row of dominoes set up

and you knock over the first one

and the last one, certainly
it will go over.

HARRY TRUMAN: If aggression
is successful in Korea,

we can expect it to spread
throughout Asia and Europe

and to this hemisphere.

("A Familiar Taste" continues)

("A Hard Rain's A-Gonna
Fall" by Bob Dylan playing)

♪ Oh where have you been,
my blue-eyed son? ♪

♪ And where have you been,
my darling young one? ♪

MAX CLELAND: Viktor Frankl, who survived
the death camps in World War II,

wrote a book called Man's
Search for Meaning.

DYLAN: ♪ I've walked and
I've crawled on six... ♪

CLELAND: You know, "To live is to suffer.

To survive is to find
meaning in suffering."

And for those of us who
suffered because of Vietnam,

that's been our quest ever since.

DYLAN: ♪ And it's a hard,
it's a hard, it's a hard ♪

♪ It's a hard

♪ It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall ♪

NARRATOR: America's involvement
in Vietnam began in secrecy.

It ended, 30 years later, in failure,

witnessed by the entire world.

DYLAN: ♪ And what did you
see, my darling young one? ♪

NARRATOR: It was begun in
good faith by decent people

out of fateful misunderstandings,

American overconfidence, and
Cold War miscalculation.

And it was prolonged because it
seemed easier to muddle through

than admit that it had been
caused by tragic decisions,

made by five American presidents,

belonging to both political parties.

DYLAN: ♪ I saw a room full of men
with their hammers a-bleeding ♪

NARRATOR: Before the war was over,

more than 58,000 Americans would be dead.

At least 250,000 South
Vietnamese troops died

in the conflict, as well.

So did over a million
North Vietnamese soldiers

and Viet Cong guerrillas.

DYLAN: ♪ Sharp swords in the
hands of young children ♪

♪ And it's a hard...

NARRATOR: Two million
civilians, north and south,

are thought to have perished,

as well as tens of thousands
more in the neighboring states

of Laos and Cambodia.

(helicopter blades whirring)

For many Vietnamese, it
was a brutal civil war;

for others, the bloody climactic chapter

in a century-old struggle for independence.

DYLAN: ♪ And what'll you do
now, my blue-eyed son? ♪

NARRATOR: For those
Americans who fought in it,

and for those who fought
against it back home,

as well as for those who merely
glimpsed it on the nightly news,

the Vietnam War was a decade of agony,

the most divisive period
since the Civil War.

Vietnam seemed to call
everything into question...

the value of honor and gallantry;

the qualities of cruelty and mercy;

the candor of the American government;

and what it means to be a patriot.

DYLAN: ♪ Where hunger is ugly,
where the souls are forgotten ♪

NARRATOR: And those who lived through it

have never been able to erase its memory,

have never stopped arguing
about what really happened,

why everything went so badly
wrong, who was to blame,

and whether it was all worth it.

BAO NINH:

DYLAN: ♪ And it's a hard

♪ It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall ♪

(song ends)

(Silk Road Ensemble playing
"People and Fighters Unite")

BAO NINH:

NARRATOR: The French conquest of
Indochina began with an attack

on the ancient Vietnamese
port of Danang in 1858.

It took 50 years to lay
claim to the whole region...

Laos and Cambodia, as well
as the 1,200-mile-long area

that would come to be called Vietnam.

All of it was ruled by a
French governor-general

from his palace in Hanoi.

The French largely lived
on plantation estates,

and in cities, like Saigon, made
to look as much as possible

like those at home.

Most did not even bother
to learn the language

spoken by their subjects.

Instead they installed a
series of puppet emperors

and employed a network

of French-speaking Vietnamese
officials... mandarins...

willing to carry out their wishes.

The French put their subjects to
work building roads and canals,

railroads and bridges.

BAO NINH:

NARRATOR: The Vietnamese
people did not take easily

to French occupation,

just as they had fought
against earlier invasions

by the Chinese.

By the early 20th century,
nationalism was on the rise.

But anyone who dared resist
colonial rule risked exile,

prison, or the guillotine.

TRAN NGOC TOAN (speaking English):

LAM QUANG THI:

(helicopter blades whirring)

JOHN MUSGRAVE: My hatred for them was pure.

Pure.

I hated them so much.

And I was so scared of them.

(gunfire)

Boy, I was terrified of them.

And the scareder I got,
the more I hated them.

I was an 18-year-old Marine
rifleman with the ink still wet

on my high school diploma.

I didn't want to shame myself
in front of my buddies.

But I was so scared.

I felt like I was hanging onto
my honor by my fingernails

the whole time I was there.

("La Marseillaise" playing)

(crowd cheering)

NARRATOR: In the spring of 1919,

as the victorious Allied
Powers met in Paris

to rebuild a world shattered
by the Great War,

President Woodrow Wilson
headed the American delegation

housed in the Hotel Crillon.

One day, a tall, slender,
29-nine-year-old man

appeared with a petition for the president

he and other Vietnamese
nationalists had written.

Inspired by Wilson's declaration

that the interests of colonial
peoples should be given

equal weight with those
of their European rulers,

the man was asking that
this principle be applied

to his homeland.

The president's secretary
promised to show it to Wilson,

but there is no evidence that he ever did.

His name was Nguyen Tat Thanh,

but he was now living under
an alias, Nguyen Ai Quoc...

"Nguyen the Patriot."

During his long, shadowy career,

he would adopt some 70
different pseudonyms,

finally settling on "the
most enlightened one"...

Ho Chi Minh.

DUONG VAN MAI: Ho Chi Minh was a man
who succeeded in projecting an image

of somebody who was totally
dedicated to freeing

his country and his people
from foreign domination

to the point that he
sacrificed his own well-being,

his own life, not having
a family of his own.

To Vietnamese, that's a big sacrifice

because to us everybody needs a family.

NARRATOR: Ho Chi Minh was born in 1890,

the son of a minor official
in the French regime.

After taking part in a demonstration

against the puppet emperor

and the Frenchmen who pulled his strings,

Ho was expelled from school
and marked for arrest.

He left Vietnam in 1911 and
remained in exile for 30 years.

He served as a cook's helper
aboard a French liner,

and visited New York and Boston,

where he worked for a time as a
pastry chef at the Parker House.

He shoveled snow in London,
tinted photographs in Paris.

There, Ho Chi Minh joined
the French Socialist Party.

But when he discovered the
anti-colonial writings of Lenin,

he became a communist.

He was invited to Moscow to study,

underwent training as a Soviet agent,

was sometimes criticized for
being a nationalist first,

a communist second,

and then was dispatched to China

to organize a cell of
other Vietnamese exiles

and help establish the
Indochinese Communist Party.

Through it all, "He was
taut and quivering,"

a friend remembered,
"with only one thought...

his country, Vietnam."

(air raid siren blaring)

(bombs whistling, exploding)

(shouting)

(gunfire, explosions)

NARRATOR: By 1940, much of
the world was at war again.

Germany had seized most of Western Europe,

including France.

Imperial Japan threatened

many of the European colonies in Asia,

and occupied Vietnam, where
they permitted their allies,

the collaborationist French,

to continue to oversee their colony.

To some Vietnamese, the
coming of the Japanese

seemed to signal a welcome
end to white colonial rule.

But Ho Chi Minh, still in exile in China,

saw the Japanese as alien invaders,

no more welcome than the French.

They were only interested
in exploiting his country

and seizing Vietnamese crops
to fill their own rice bowls.

The time had come, he said,

to rally "patriots of
all ages and all types,

peasants, workers, merchants and soldiers"

to defeat the Japanese and
the collaborationist French.

In February of 1941, after three
decades away from his homeland,

Ho Chi Minh slipped back across
the Chinese border into Vietnam

and set up headquarters near
the remote village of Pac Bo

in a limestone cave at
the side of a mountain

he named for Karl Marx,

overlooking a jungle stream
he named for his hero, Lenin.

There, he founded a revolutionary movement,

which he called the Vietnam
Independence League...

the Viet Minh.

TRAN NGOC TOAN (speaking English):

NARRATOR: To build and lead a
fighting force for his revolution,

Ho called upon Vo Nguyen Giap,

a one-time teacher of French history

who had instructed the
children of Hanoi's elite.

Giap was an early convert to communism,

whose life-long hatred for
the French intensified

when they beat his wife to death in prison.

Inspired by Napoleon, Lawrence of Arabia,

and the communist Chinese
revolutionary Mao Zedong,

Giap had already begun to develop

a distinctive theory of warfare
that relied on guerrilla tactics

until a full-scale conventional
attack could be mounted.

In the fight for independence
which he believed was coming,

his armies, Giap said, would
be "everywhere and nowhere."

DUONG VAN MAI: The reason Vietnamese
had always resort to guerrilla warfare

was because we were a small country.

And it was just a way of fight
the weak against the strong.

Don't fight unless you're sure you can win,

and surprise is a big element.

Choose your own battle.

MIKE HEANEY: I had about 26
guys that day out of 45.

We were always somewhat understrength.

And this day we were quite understrength.

My platoon's on point.

MAN: Go, go, go, go, go!

HEANEY: And all of a
sudden the very point man,

the first guy in the column,
said, "VC on the trail.

VC on the trail."

Before I had a chance to digest this...

(gunshot)

...he went down, shot
right through the chest.

(gunfire)

And what was a very
well-laid ambush erupted.

(explosion, gunfire)

(gunfire, shouting)

I knew I'd lost a bunch of guys.

I said a prayer to God saying, basically,

"If you need any more guys
from my platoon, take me.

Don't take any more of my men."

As soon as I said it, I
freaked myself out and said,

"Holy shit.

Can I take that prayer back?"

(gunfire, plane engine roaring)

(explosion, alarm ringing)

NARRATOR: By the spring of 1945,

more than three years after the
Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor,

the United States government
was looking for allies

behind the lines in Vietnam.

The Americans were hoping to find a way

to undermine Japanese forces there

when they were contacted by Ho Chi Minh.

DONALD GREGG: And so it was decided to drop

an OSS team in to meet with
the Viet Minh leadership.

Paul Hoagland was the medic on the team.

And the first thing he was
told was that he must attend

to their leader, who was desperately sick.

So he was taken to a grass shack

where a bewhiskered, skinny
man lay on a bundle of straw,

desperately ill.

And that was Ho Chi Minh.

NARRATOR: The OSS, the secret
wartime precursor of the CIA,

supplied Ho's ragtag guerrillas with arms

and marveled at how quickly
they learned to handle them.

Ho Chi Minh began to call his followers

the "Viet-American Army," and
praised the United States

as a "champion of democracy"

that would surely help
them end colonial rule.

BUI DIEM (speaking English):

NARRATOR: Meanwhile, famine gripped
the northern part of the country.

Hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese

were dying of starvation

while Japanese storehouses
were filled with rice.

DUONG VAN MAI: In those
days, garbage was collected

by people pushing carts.

And my mother remembers that
every morning she would see

these garbage carts going around

and people picking up dead
bodies and throwing them

on the cart.

It was incredible.

And people who lived through
it never, never forgot.

NARRATOR: Duong Van Mai's
father was the deputy governor

of a province east of Hanoi,

the son and grandson of mandarins

who had all served the French.

He and his wife had 17 children.

DUONG VAN MAI: Parents who had
children who were, you know, plump,

were very afraid of their
children being stolen

and killed.

And it was really like hell on earth.

The government didn't have
a clue on how to deal

with this calamity.

NARRATOR: But Ho Chi Minh did.

He directed the Viet Minh

to break into the Japanese
storehouses wherever they could

and distribute the rice to the people.

They were hailed as saviors.

(engine starts)

(explosion)

NARRATOR: When an atomic
bomb destroyed Hiroshima,

and three days later a second
one destroyed Nagasaki,

Japanese surrender seemed imminent.

Ho Chi Minh called upon
all Vietnamese to rise up

and take over their own country

before the Free French could reestablish

their old colonial regime.

They did, in cities and
towns across the country.

On September 2, 1945,

the same day the Japanese
formally surrendered,

hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese

streamed into Ba Dinh Square in
Hanoi to see for the first time

the mysterious leader of the Viet Minh

and hear him proclaim
Vietnam's independence.

(Ho Chi Minh speaking Vietnamese)

NARRATOR: With an OSS
officer standing nearby,

Ho Chi Minh began with the
words of Thomas Jefferson:

"All men are created equal.

"They are endowed by their creator

"with certain unalienable rights;

"that among these are life, liberty

and the pursuit of happiness."

DONG SI NGUYEN:

GEORGE WICKES: Ho Chi Minh had great hopes

that the U.S. would support the
Vietnam desire for independence,

not necessarily by intervening

but by doing what it could

to support an independence movement.

NARRATOR: Ho Chi Minh's hopes for
American support were calculated

but understandable.

President Franklin Roosevelt
had promised a postwar world

that would "respect the
rights of all peoples

to choose the form of government
under which they live."

But Roosevelt was dead now, and
his successor, Harry Truman,

had inherited a very different world.

The alliance with the Soviet Union

that had won the Second
World War had collapsed.

The Soviets now occupied the
Eastern European countries

they had overrun, and hoped to
spread their influence farther,

into Iran, Turkey, and the Mediterranean.

A new cold war had begun.

French president Charles De Gaulle warned

that if the United States
insisted on independence

for her colonies, France
might have no choice

but to "fall into the Russian orbit."

The United States must
do nothing to undercut

the restoration of France's
empire, including Vietnam.

WICKES: There were hardly any
Americans in Vietnam, you know...

State Department people,
consular officials,

a few businessmen.

Hardly anyone from this country

knew where Vietnam was located.

NARRATOR: George Wickes was
part of a seven-man OSS mission

sent to Saigon, the largest
city in the south.

The United States was officially neutral,

hoping the French and Viet Minh could reach

some peaceful solution on their own.

Allied leaders had agreed
temporarily to divide Vietnam

into two separate zones.

Nationalist Chinese troops were
to handle things in the north.

British colonial troops would
try to perform the same task

in the south, where rival factions,

including the French and Viet
Minh, were already fighting

in the streets of Saigon.

WICKES: No one was in charge.

On both sides, there was
brutality and atrocity

and violence.

It wasn't quite a civil war

but it was getting very close to civil war

in the streets of Saigon.

NARRATOR: Lieutenant Colonel Peter Dewey,

the 28-year-old commander
of the OSS in Saigon,

tried to make sense of it all.

WICKES: Right from the start he
was in touch with everybody...

not only the French, but
very soon he established

a connection with various
Vietnamese groups.

The Viet Minh soon established themselves

as the most successful.

NARRATOR: Dewey, who spoke fluent French,

brokered talks between
a Viet Minh spokesman

and the senior French
representative in the city.

His efforts infuriated British
general Douglas Gracey,

who commanded Allied forces in the south.

Gracey was convinced that French control

should be reimposed as soon as possible.

By conferring with the
Viet Minh, Gracey said,

Colonel Dewey had become
a "subversive" force.

(gunfire)

The violence in and
around Saigon escalated.

Colonel Dewey urgently
cabled his superiors:

Vietnam "is burning," he wrote.

"The French and British are finished here

and the United States," he concluded,

"ought to clear out of Southeast Asia."

(gunfire)

Two days later, September 26, 1945,

he set out for the airport,

prepared to fly to OSS headquarters.

At a roadblock, the Viet Minh
mistook Dewey for a Frenchman

and opened fire.

(gunfire)

He was killed instantly.

WICKES: Ho Chi Minh wrote
to the United States

lamenting the death of
Dewey, whom he recognized

as a person sympathetic to his cause.

It seemed a terrible irony that Dewey,

who was doing what he could to help

the Vietnamese independence
movement should have been killed

by the Vietnamese by a mistake.

(electronic buzzing, muted
helicopter blades beating)

An elderly African-American
woman answered the door.

I think she knew the instant
she saw us why we were there.

And the padre said, uh,

"I'm... I'm terribly sorry to inform you,

but your son was killed in Vietnam."

And she just sat down.

Didn't say a word.

Then the... her husband says,
"No, there's a mistake."

He comes back with this letter.

And he said, "Look, see?

We got it yesterday, my... our
son was still alive yesterday."

And the chaplain looked at the letter

and he said, "It's a week old.

I think your son was killed on
the day he wrote this letter."

("La Marseillaise" playing)

NARRATOR: In the fall of 1945, a
week after Colonel Dewey's death,

fresh French troops began
arriving in Saigon,

taking over from the British.

They quickly established

control of the city

and set out to reoccupy

the entire country.

Ho Chi Minh hoped somehow
to achieve independence

without a war with France,

and he still hoped the United
States would intervene.

"You never had an empire, never
exploited the Asian peoples,"

he would tell a visiting
American journalist.

"Do not be blinded by
this issue of communism."

LESLIE GELB: He did not want to fight
the French as an enemy of America.

And, in fact, I saw the letters
he wrote to President Truman

saying, "We believe in the
same things you believe."

Those letters I saw in the CIA files,

they had never been given
to President Truman.

(children shouting)

NARRATOR: In June of 1946, Ho
Chi Minh returned to Paris

in a fruitless attempt to
get the French to live up

to a promise they had made
of increased autonomy

for his country.

While Ho was away,

General Giap began consolidating
communist control

of the revolution.

He conducted a merciless purge

of members of rival nationalist parties

and people he called
"reactionary saboteurs"...

landlords and moneylenders,
Trotskyites and Catholics,

men and women accused of
collaborating with the French.

Hundreds were shot, drowned, buried alive.

LAM QUANG THI:

NARRATOR: On December 19, 1946,
after months of building tension,

fighting broke out in Hanoi

between the Viet Minh and the French.

(gunfire)

The Viet Minh proved no
match for French firepower.

Ho, Giap, and their comrades
slipped out of the city

and returned to their mountain
stronghold far to the north.

"Those who have rifles
will use their rifles,"

Ho declared in a radio address

calling for a nationwide guerrilla war.

"Those who have swords will use swords;

those who have no swords
will use spades or sticks."

NGUYEN NGOC:

NARRATOR: But the country
Ho Chi Minh hoped to unite

was itself bitterly divided.

Families were being torn apart.

Despite her father's position
in the French government,

Duong Van Mai's sister felt
compelled to answer Ho's call.

DUONG VAN MAI: My older
sister Thang was married

to a man who had great
sympathy for the Viet Minh.

And by that time Ho Chi Minh
had evacuated his government

to the mountain base.

So my sister and her husband
trekked all the way

from Hanoi toward the base

in order to join the
resistance against the French.

So the Vietnam War was really a civil war

down to the family level.

NARRATOR: France poured
thousands of men into Vietnam...

French regulars, European
mercenaries, and colonial troops

from Morocco, Algeria,
Tunisia, and Senegal...

who fought alongside an army
of Cambodians, Laotians,

and anti-communist Vietnamese.

French forces managed to
occupy most of the large towns

and province capitals

and established hundreds
of isolated outposts.

The French also set out to try
to win over rural Vietnamese

through a program they calledpacification...

pacification...

building dikes, schools and
roads, and vaccinating children.

DUONG VAN MAI: The French
would pacify a village

and during the daytime
they could control it.

But at night the Viet Minh would come back.

And so it was never completely secure.

My father would shake his
head and said, you know,

"Pacification is really futile

because it's like trying to
hold sand in your fingers."

NARRATOR: The Viet Minh mined roads,
blew up bridges and railroads,

ambushed French patrols,
and then disappeared.

French soldiers sometimes took
revenge on the nearest village,

burning homes, raping women,

executing men suspected
of aiding the Viet Minh.

LE CONG HUAN:

NARRATOR: But the communists proved
every bit as ruthless as the French.

"It is better to kill even
those who might be innocent,"

one commander said, "than
to let a guilty person go."

And they specifically targeted

anyone who had links to the French.

DUONG VAN MAI: Once my father started
working for the French, then he was

a target, especially the higher he rose,

the bigger target he became.

A Viet Minh agent actually came
in with a pistol to shoot him

but at the last moment decided not to.

TRANG NGOC ("HARRY") HUE:

(gunfire)

NARRATOR: French casualties
continued to mount.

"There are days when we are so discouraged

that we would like to give it all up,"

a French soldier wrote his mother.

"Convoys under attack, roads cut,

"firing in all directions every night,

the indifference at home."

ROGER HARRIS: While I was there I had
the opportunity to call my mother,

you know.

And I was telling my mother
what was happening over there,

and I was telling her how
she shouldn't believe

what she sees in the newspaper
and sees on television

because we're losing the war.

I said, "And you'll
probably never see me again

"because we're the most northern
outpost that the Marines have,

you know."

We could literally... could
look right into North Vietnam.

We could see the sparks
when the guns fired on us.

And I said, "And everybody
in my unit is dying.

I probably won't be coming back."

And my mother said, "No,
you're coming back."

She said, "I talk to God every
day and you're special.

You're coming back."

And I said, "Ma, everybody's mother thinks

"that they're special.

You know, I'm putting pieces
of special people in bags."

(explosion)

ED HERLIHY: President Truman's
dramatic announcement

that Russia had the atom secret

caused state departments all over the world

to stir uneasily.

HAL KUSHNER: We were very aware
that there was a Cold War

and that we had an enemy,

and that enemy was the Soviet Union.

The United States stood at one pole

and the Soviet Union
stood at the other pole.

It was kind of a Manichean dynamic

that there was evil and there was good.

And we were good, and the
other side was evil.

It wasn't morally ambiguous.

NARRATOR: Just a few weeks after
Russia became a nuclear power,

there was more stunning news...

communist forces under Mao
Zedong seized control

of China.

Separate communist insurrections
were also underway

in the British colonies
of Burma and Malaya.

In January 1950, Mao formally recognized

Ho Chi Minh's insurgency and
agreed to provide the arms,

equipment, and military
training he had been seeking.

The Soviets recognized
the Viet Minh as well,

and also offered help.

President Truman, who was being blamed

by his political opponents
for having "lost" China,

and having failed to "contain" communism,

approved a $23 million aid program

for the French in Vietnam.

The United States was no longer neutral.

SAM WILSON: We were caught
on the horns of a dilemma

of how can we maintain our friendship

and our alliance with the French
and support them in Indochina

while we, as a former colony ourselves,

sympathized with the Vietnamese
and their aspirations

for freedom and independence?

ED HERLIHY: A highly trained and
well-equipped North Korean Army

swarmed across the 38th parallel

to attack unprepared
South Korean defenders.

(explosion)

NARRATOR: In June of 1950, China's ally,

communist North Korea, invaded South Korea.

(gunfire)

President Truman ordered

tens of thousands of American ground troops

onto the Korean Peninsula.

The United States and its allies

eventually pushed the invaders back north.

Meanwhile in southern China,

Mao's military was beginning
to turn the Viet Minh

into a modern fighting force,

capable of inflicting a heavy
toll on the French occupiers.

In July, the Truman administration

quietly dispatched transport planes

and a shipload of jeeps to Vietnam.

Thirty-five military advisors
went along to oversee their use.

None of them, and no one
in the American embassy,

spoke a word of Vietnamese.

But the United States was
now officially in Vietnam.

In October of 1950,

hundreds of thousands of Chinese troops

began pouring into North Korea,

driving the allies back down the peninsula.

As that fighting raged,

Truman continued to increase military aid

for the French war in Vietnam.

HARRY TRUMAN: If aggression
is successful in Korea,

we can expect it to spread
throughout Asia and Europe

and to this hemisphere.

(mortar fire)

We are fighting in Korea

for our own national security and survival.

("Mean Old World" by T-Bone Walker playing)

NARRATOR: In the autumn of 1951,

a young Massachusetts congressman

named John F. Kennedy
dined at the rooftop bar

of the Hotel Majestic overlooking Saigon.

(distant gun fire)

As he and his party ate,

they could hear the thunder of
guns across the Saigon River.

French commanders assured Kennedy

that with more American support,

French rule would be re-established.

But Kennedy spent two hours
with Seymour Topping,

a seasoned American reporter,

who gave him a very different perspective:

the French were losing, he said,

and many Vietnamese, who had
once admired the Americans,

were beginning to despise
them for backing the French.

Kennedy believed the reporter.

Unless the United States could
persuade the Vietnamese

that it was as opposed to
"injustice and inequality"

as it was to communism,

he told his constituents when he got home,

the current effort would result
in "foredoomed failure."

(Rosemary Clooney singing
"Come On-a My House")

♪ Come on-a my house, my house,
I'm gonna give you candy ♪

NARRATOR: In 1952,

General Dwight Eisenhower
was elected president,

in part because he promised
to take a tougher stance

on communism.

That year, American taxpayers

were footing more than 30% of the bill

for the French war in Vietnam.

Within two years,

that number would rise to nearly 80%.

CLOONEY: ♪ Everything,
everything, everything ♪

RICHARD NIXON: And many
of you ask this question:

Why is the United States spending

hundreds of millions of dollars

supporting the forces of the French Union

in the fight against
communism in Indochina?

I think perhaps if we go
over to the map here,

I can indicate to you why
it is so vitally important.

Here's Indochina.

If Indochina falls,

Thailand is put in almost
impossible position.

The same is true of Malaya
with its rubber and tin.

Now may I say that as far as the
war in Indochina is concerned,

that I was there, right on the
battlefield, or close to it,

and it's a bloody war,
and it's a bitter one.

(explosions)

NARRATOR: By 1953, the French had
been fighting for seven years.

They had suffered over 100,000 casualties

and failed to pacify the countryside.

Six commanders had come and gone.

Nevertheless, the seventh commander,

General Henri Navarre,
assured his countrymen

that victory was near.

"Now we can see it clearly," he said,

"like the light at the end of the tunnel."

Meanwhile, large parts of the
French population were horrified

by reports of French brutality

and the widespread use of napalm...

gelatinized petroleum that burned foliage,

homes, and human flesh.

When returning French troops
disembarked at Marseilles,

members of the longshoremen's
union pelted them with rocks.

Parisian leftists began
to call the conflict

"La Sale Guerre"... "The Dirty War."

(police sirens wailing, people chanting)

RON FERRIZZI: The camera was a close-up,

was over the shoulder of this storm trooper

who had a kid by the scruff of
his shirt and he smacks him.

REPORTER: People screaming...

FERRIZZI: At that moment in time,

I realized that anybody who
really cared for America

was sent halfway around the world

chasing some ghost in a jungle.

In the meantime, my
country's being torn apart.

So I saw somebody who looked like my dad

hitting somebody who looked like me.

Whose side would I be on?

ED HERLIHY: In Korea,
three years of combat end

as United Nations and communist
negotiators at Panmunjom

sign a truce.

NARRATOR: In July of 1953,

the Korean War ended in
a negotiated settlement

and a still-divided peninsula.

American policymakers saw it as proof

that communism in Asia could be contained.

HERLIHY: And in Washington, a
dramatic evening press conference...

NARRATOR: That fall, the French
indicated their willingness

to begin talks to end the
fighting in Vietnam.

Ho Chi Minh agreed to meet.

But before the negotiators
were to convene in Geneva,

each side sought to improve its
position on the battlefield.

General Navarre set up a fortified base

in a remote valley in northwestern Vietnam

called Dien Bien Phu, where he
hoped to lure the Viet Minh

into a decisive battle.

Navarre was certain that
superior French firepower

and air support would crush
any attack by the Viet Minh.

He and his commanders saw no need to worry

about the jungle-covered hills
that overlooked his 11,000 men,

dug in on the valley floor.

The artillery commander was
so confident of victory,

he complained, "I have
more guns than I need."

General Giap saw his chance.

"We decided to wipe out at all
costs the whole enemy force

at Dien Bien Phu," he remembered.

To do it, he pulled off one of
the greatest logistical feats

in military history...

a feat that would be
restaged in propaganda films

and celebrated for decades.

A quarter of a million civilian porters...

nearly half of them women...

moved everything he needed for
a siege, from sacks of rice

to disassembled artillery pieces,

on foot through the jungle.

Giap surrounded the valley
with 50,000 soldiers

and 200 big guns, dug-in
and camouflaged so well

they could not be spotted from the air.

On March 13, 1954,

Viet Minh artillery on the hillsides

began raining down 50 shells a minute

on the French troops huddled below.

(explosions)

The airstrip was destroyed.

The besieged troops could
only be reinforced

and resupplied by airdrop.

The French artillery commander,

who had underestimated his
enemy, committed suicide.

NEWSREEL NARRATOR: The airlift
to Dien Bien Phu continues...

vital men and supplies
for the heroic garrison

that has defied the massed
Viet Minh onslaughts

for over six weeks.

Today, Dien Bien Phu is a human dam

trying to stem the red tide

that threatens to engulf Southeast Asia.

NARRATOR: The French government
begged President Eisenhower

to intervene.

He refused to act without
Congressional approval

and support from European allies.

Britain said no

and the Congress would not
support unilateral action.

JOHN F. KENNEDY: The communists

under Ho Chi Minh are able to
claim that they are fighting

for independence and the
French appear to be fighting

for a maintain... maintenance
of colonial rule.

I therefore believe

that before the United States
moves in, in any degree,

that independence must be
granted to the people,

that the people must support the struggle.

NARRATOR: "I am convinced,"
Eisenhower confided to his diary,

"that no military victory is
possible in this theater."

Still, without consulting Congress,

the president had secretly sent
more American transport planes,

their markings painted over and
flown by civilian contractors,

to help resupply the desperate
French troops at Dien Bien Phu.

GELB: Everyone understood
that in and of itself,

Vietnam didn't mean very much.

But they believed, I
believed, if we lost it,

that the rest of Asia would
tumble to communism.

EISENHOWER: You have broader
considerations that might follow

what you would call the
falling domino principle.

You have a row of dominoes set up,

and you knock over the first one,

and what will happen to the
last one is the certainty

that it will go over very quickly.

(explosion)

(muted gunfire)

NARRATOR: On the afternoon of May
7, 1954, after 55 days of siege,

the exhausted French forces
at Dien Bien Phu surrendered.

They had lost 8,000 men,
killed, wounded, or missing.

General Giap had lost three times as many,

but he had won a great victory.

NGUYEN THOI BUNG:

NARRATOR: Even Duong Van Mai's parents
could not help but be impressed.

DUONG VAN MAI: They were very proud

that the Viet Minh had defeated the French,

this great Western power.

Admiration and respect on the one hand,

but fear on the other hand.

And fear was the stronger emotion.

NARRATOR: "We have been caught
bluffing by our enemies,"

Senate Minority Leader Lyndon Johnson said.

"Today it is Indochina,
tomorrow Asia may be in flames.

And the day after, the Western
Alliance will lie in ruins."

DONALD GREGG: We should have seen
it as the end of the colonial era

in Southeast Asia, which it really was.

But instead we saw it in Cold War terms,

and we saw it as a defeat
for the free world

that was related to the rise of China.

And it was a total misreading
of a pivotal event,

which cost us very dearly.

(chanting)

(newsreel music playing)

JACK TOBIN: The former home
of the League of Nations,

Geneva, Switzerland, where
East is meeting West

in the international conference

that may decisively affect the
political future of Asia.

NARRATOR: The day after the
fall of Dien Bien Phu,

diplomats from nine nations
gathered in Geneva

to settle the future of Vietnam.

The talks dragged on for
nearly two-and-a-half months.

Despite their victory,

Ho Chi Minh and General Giap
could not keep fighting

without more support from
China and the Soviet Union.

But China had lost a million men in Korea

and did not want to become
involved in another war

along its border.

The Soviet Union was hoping to
ease tensions with the West.

Both of Ho Chi Minh's communist
patrons urged him to agree

to a negotiated settlement,

a partition like the one that
had ended the Korean War.

Ho had no option but to give in.

In the end, no one was satisfied.

Vietnam was temporarily to be
divided at the 17th parallel.

The 130,000 French-led troops
stationed in the North

were to withdraw to the South,

and somewhere between
50,000 and 90,000 Viet Minh

were to "re-group" to the North.

The two halves would be separated

by a demilitarized zone until
an election could be held

to reunify North and South Vietnam,

an election everyone knew
Ho Chi Minh would win.

NGUYEN VAN TONG:

(cheering)

NGUYEN THOI BUNG:

KARL MARLANTES: We had started walking up

and we had probably gotten about
a third of the way up the hill

and then they unleashed on us.

(explosion, gunfire)

We were in the middle of
this horrible shit sandwich.

That's what we called it.

(explosion, gunfire)

One of the things that I
learned in the war is that

we're not the top species on
the planet because we're nice.

People talk a lot about how well
the military turns, you know,

kids into, you know, killing
machines and stuff.

And I'll always argue that
it's just finishing school.

(gunfire)

(shouting)

NEWSREEL NARRATOR: Braving the dangers
of the open sea in tiny, rickety craft,

thousands of Roman Catholic
and Buddhist faith

have found life impossible
under the communists.

For them, it's freedom or nothing.

NARRATOR: Under the Geneva Accords,

civilians living in either half of Vietnam

who wanted to relocate to the other

would have 300 days to do so.

DUONG VAN MAI: My mother
and father wanted to stay

and meet my sister Thang again

because they knew Thang would come back.

But on the other hand
they couldn't risk that.

They were convinced that when
Ho Chi Minh and his government

arrived in Hanoi,

my father would be the
first one to be killed

and all of us would be persecuted.

And I remember the day we left.

I looked around and I thought,
"I never come back here again."

It was extremely traumatic.

It was like the ground was
suddenly cut from under you.

NARRATOR: In the end,
some 900,000 refugees,

including more than half
of all the Catholics

living in the North,

fled to the South, many of
them aboard American ships.

The United States hoped somehow
to encourage the building

of a legitimate government in the South.

That government was now
headed by Ngo Dinh Diem.

Both a Roman Catholic and a Confucian

in a largely Buddhist country,

he was a celibate bachelor who
had once planned to be a priest.

GELB: The war for us really started
when we became the partner,

or I would say the victim,
of President Diem.

We were going to help him turn
South Vietnam into a democracy.

That's what he said he wanted to do.

And we believed him.

NARRATOR: Like Ho Chi Minh,

Diem had spent years abroad seeking support

for his own brand of
Vietnamese nationalism.

He was a veteran politician
whose loathing for the French

was matched only by his
hatred for the communists,

who had imprisoned him and
buried alive his eldest brother

and his nephew.

Diem was aloof, autocratic,

mistrustful of anyone much
beyond his own family.

He also proved to be shrewd, resourceful,

and skilled at exploiting the
weaknesses of his opponents.

But he faced a daunting task
in creating a new country.

The French, who still
had thousands of troops

stationed in the South, detested Diem.

Several provinces were under
the sway of religious sects

with armies of their own.

Tens of thousands of Viet
Minh soldiers had gone north,

but several thousand cadre...

trained and dedicated
Communist Party workers...

had stayed behind to organize
resistance in the countryside.

And Saigon itself was
ruled by the Binh Xuyen,

a crime syndicate backed by the French.

RUFUS PHILLIPS: And the French
were behind the Binh Xuyen,

sort of supporting them

because they didn't want Diem to succeed.

And that became the central contest.

NARRATOR: Some in the CIA believed
that Diem could be the savior

of South Vietnam.

Others were not so sure.

"He is a messiah without a message,"

one diplomat reported to Washington.

The U.S. ambassador agreed.

On April 27, 1955,

President Eisenhower decided
to end American support

for Diem's regime.

(gunfire)

But then Diem made an all-out assault

on the Binh Xuyen syndicate.

(sirens blaring, gunfire)

DUONG VAN MAI: Suddenly
in the middle of the day

we heard gunfire and then we saw flames

and the neighborhood was burning.

MICHAEL FITZMAURICE: There are hundreds
of dead and wounded on both sides

as the street fighting
continues for an entire week.

For the United States,
the situation presents

a grave problem.

Diem finally regains control of Saigon.

NARRATOR: In the end,
Diem's forces prevailed.

Eisenhower now saw no option
but to stick with Diem.

The French then announced their
intention to withdraw completely

from South Vietnam, ending
nearly a century of occupation.

PHILLIPS: Diem became wildly popular
because he seemed to embody

the nationalist cause in the South.

He succeeded in getting the French

out of Vietnam all the way.

And Ho Chi Minh had only got
them out of the northern half.

NARRATOR: Flush with victory, Diem
called for a referendum in the South.

The CIA warned him not to meddle
too much with the returns.

But when the ballots were counted,

Diem claimed to have won 98.2% of the vote.

On October 26, 1955, Ngo
Dinh Diem named himself

the first president of the
brand-new Republic of Vietnam.

The election to reunify the North and South

that had been promised at
Geneva would never be held.

GELB: He became our ally,
or rather our master,

because the goal of preventing

the communists from taking over the South

was so strong that we couldn't
afford for him to lose.

So Diem started to boss us around.

And this was a typical relationship.

You need any ally you believe

to be the centerpiece
of your foreign policy.

They understand that right away.

And the tail wags the dog.

ED HERLIHY: From the Far East
comes a distinguished visitor.

President Ngo Dinh Diem
of Vietnam is accorded

one of President Eisenhower's
rare airport greetings,

as he arrives for a four-day state visit.

President Diem, one of
America's staunchest allies

in Southeast Asia,

will seek an increase in aid
to shore up his country

against increasing communist pressure,

a request to which the president
lends a sympathetic ear.

NARRATOR: Most politicians,
Democrats as well as Republicans,

now seemed to share the changing views

of Senator John F. Kennedy.

South Vietnam is "our offspring," he said.

"We cannot abandon it."

If it fell, the United States
would be "held responsible

and our prestige in Asia
will sink to a new low."

There had never before been
a South Vietnamese nation,

but Americans, who had rebuilt
much of their own country

during the New Deal and had
helped rebuild Western Europe

through the Marshall Plan,

were convinced they could
build one nonetheless.

(blows whistle)

Eisenhower ordered scores
of American civilians

to South Vietnam, full of plans
for economic development

meant to win, he hoped,
the hearts and minds

of the Vietnamese people.

But those civilians would
always be outnumbered

by military advisors,

with orders to modernize,
train, and equip Diem's forces,

now called the Army of the
Republic of Vietnam... the ARVN.

Some ARVN officers found
American methods unsuited

to the guerrilla war they expected to wage

against the communists.

Most American military
advisors were veterans

of the war in Korea,

determined to prepare
South Vietnamese forces

to slow a conventional
invasion from the North.

But no one in North Vietnam

was planning a conventional invasion.

Ho Chi Minh was focused on
rebuilding his country,

devastated by more than a decade of war.

The communists imposed brutal land reforms

modeled on those underway in China

with a ruthlessness that left
thousands of people dead,

including not only landlords
who had sided with the French,

but also many villagers who had
fought with the Viet Minh.

Ho Chi Minh was still
determined to reunite Vietnam.

But he worried that if he
took direct military action

against the South,

the United States would be drawn
more deeply into the struggle.

He cautioned his comrades in
the South to put their faith

in political agitation and avoid violence.

But that message rang hollow

among embattled Southern revolutionaries

struggling to survive

under Diem's increasingly harsh regime.

In a campaign he called
"Denounce the Communists,"

Diem had imprisoned tens
of thousands of citizens

without trial and ordered the
executions of hundreds more.

Now, the communists took
matters into their own hands

and began attacking South
Vietnamese officials.

LE QUAN CONG:

NARRATOR: As violence in
South Vietnam intensified,

new leaders emerged in Hanoi.

Ho Chi Minh would remain
the face of the revolution

around the world, but he
now began to share power

with men who were growing
impatient with his caution,

men about whom Americans
knew almost nothing.

The most important proved
to be a carpenter's son

from Quang Tri province in
the South named Le Duan.

He had helped found the
Indochinese Communist Party,

survived nearly ten years
in a French prison,

and proved himself a
shrewd political infighter

as he rose to become First
Secretary of the party.

NGUYEN NGOC:

NARRATOR: By 1959, Le Duan
and his hardline allies

were gaining influence within
the North Vietnamese Politburo

and beginning to change its policy.

They now argued that Hanoi
should do everything

within its power to help
Southern revolutionaries

remove Diem by force.

BUI DIEM (speaking English):

NARRATOR: Now, bands of
40 to 50 armed Viet Minh

began slipping back home
into South Vietnam,

following jungle paths hacked
through the Laotian mountains

that the Americans would soon
call the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

Violence against the Diem
regime steadily accelerated.

(gunfire)

(siren blaring)

On the evening of July
8, 1959, at Bien Hoa,

20 miles northeast of Saigon,

six American military advisors
were watching a movie

in their mess hall.

Viet Minh guerrillas,
who had crept silently

into the compound, opened
fire through the windows.

(rapid gunfire)

Major Dale Buis from Pender, Nebraska,

and Master Sergeant Chester Ovnand

from Copperas Cove, Texas, were killed.

They were the first American
soldiers to die from enemy fire

in the Vietnam War.

JOHN KENNEDY: We must prove all over again,

to a watching world, as we sit
on a most conspicuous stage,

whether this nation,

conceived as it is with
its freedom of choice,

its breadth of opportunity,
its range of alternatives,

can compete with the single-minded advance

of the communist system.

NARRATOR: On November 8, 1960, John
Fitzgerald Kennedy was elected

president of the United States.

His vice president was
Senator Lyndon Johnson.

They had narrowly beaten
Vice President Richard Nixon

and his running mate,
Senator Henry Cabot Lodge.

During the campaign, both Kennedy and Nixon

had pledged to hold the line
against international communism

wherever it seemed to be a threat.

But very few Americans knew or cared about

what was going on in Vietnam.

Six weeks after Kennedy's election,

at a remote jungle village called Tan Lap

near the Cambodian border,

representatives of southern
revolutionary groups

met to form a new organization
to replace the Viet Minh,

dedicated to overthrowing Ngo Dinh Diem

and ousting the foreigners supporting him.

Behind the scenes, Le Duan and
his communist comrades in Hanoi

were orchestrating everything.

The new organization would be called

the National Liberation Front... the NLF.

The armed wing of the NLF was called

the People's Liberation Armed Forces,

but its enemies in Saigon
and Washington preferred

a more disparaging term.

In their eyes, the revolutionaries were

Communist Traitors to
the Vietnamese Nation...

the Viet Cong.

(muted shouting)

HUY DUC:

JOHN KENNEDY: Let every nation know,

whether it wishes us well or ill,

that we shall pay any
price, bear any burden,

meet any hardship, support any friend,

oppose any foe, to assure the survival

and the success of liberty.

TIM O'BRIEN: For me, I'd
always thought of courage

as charging enemy bunkers
or standing up under fire.

But just to walk, day after
day from village to village

and through the paddies and
up into the mountains,

just to get up in the morning
and look out at the land

and think, "In a few minutes
I'll be walking out there

"and will my corpse be there, over there?

Will I lose a leg out there?"

Just to walk felt incredibly brave.

I would sometimes look
at my legs as I walked,

thinking, how am I doing this?

("A Hard Rain's A-Gonna
Fall" by Bob Dylan playing)

♪ Oh, where have you been,
my blue-eyed son? ♪

♪ And where have you been,
my darling young one? ♪

♪ I've stumbled on the side
of 12 misty mountains ♪

♪ I've walked and I've crawled
on six crooked highways ♪

♪ I've stepped in the middle
of seven sad forests ♪

♪ I've been out in front
of a dozen dead oceans ♪

♪ I've been ten thousand miles
in the mouth of a graveyard ♪

♪ And it's a hard, it's a hard ♪

♪ It's a hard, it's a hard ♪

♪ It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall ♪

♪ Oh, what did you see,
my blue-eyed son? ♪

♪ And what did you see,
my darling young one? ♪

♪ I saw a newborn baby with
wild wolves all around it ♪

♪ I saw a highway of
diamonds with nobody on it ♪

♪ I saw a black branch with
blood that kept drippin' ♪

♪ I saw a room full of men with
their hammers a-bleedin' ♪

♪ I saw a white ladder
all covered with water ♪

♪ I saw 10,000 talkers whose
tongues were all broken ♪

♪ I saw guns with sharp swords
in the hands of young children ♪

♪ And it's a hard, it's a hard ♪

♪ It's a hard, and it's a hard ♪

♪ It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall ♪

♪ And it's a hard, it's a hard ♪

♪ It's a hard, and it's a hard ♪

♪ It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall. ♪

Captioned by Media Access Group
at WGBH, access.wgbh.org

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