Vietnam War---alternative strategy

Indeed, it is beyond horrifc what happened in Cambodia. I think they have the American left of the 60's/70's to thank for their plight.

 

The decision of President Nixon to extend the war into Laos & Cambodia in 1970 started a whole new ball game to coin a phrase.
The massive B52 bombing campaign of Christmas 1972 was the most destructive concerted bombing mission in the history of ariel warfare.
Was a single bomb dropped in 1972 necessary?.
Some of these questions should be asked although 'The Pentagon Papers' published in 'The Washington Post' revealed the criminal execution of that war.
Then on the other hand Vietnam & Cambodia are slowly developing stable economies from manufacturing & tourism & food surpluses because,guess what,they have discovered a new political system that creates the right conditions for economic stability & growth.It's called: Capitalism.

 

Appallingly ,sounds about right.

 

What exactly would our blitzkrieg have attacked? We didn't invade South Vietnam....

Attacking North Vietnam would have done exactly the same thing that invading North Korea did a decade earlier, gotten China involved.

Use MacArther?!?!?! of course, he did so very well in Korea.

Ho Chi Minh was a communist since the 1920's, he never would have alligned himself with the US and established a democracy. He was a fanatical supporter of the Lenist-Marxist version of communism.

 

Total U.S. bomb tonnage dropped during:
World War II = 2,057,244 tons
Vietnam War = 7,078,032 tons (3-1/2 times WWII
tonnage)
​

Bomb tonnage dropped during the Vietnam War amounted to
1,000 lbs. for every man, woman and child in Vietnam.​

​

​

 

And this is the obvious piece of evidence suggesting that the American presence in Indochina was a complete waste of time and actually made things 20 times worse.
Communism would've failed eventually anyway because it doesn't work. The prescence of the the US forces only added fuel to the fire and helped the Khmer Rogue, Pathet Lao and VC recruitment drives!
The fact that the US supported ultra-right wing 'governments' (in some cases they behaved more like juntas...) who were probably almost as bad as the subsequent communist regiemes in all the 3 SE asian countries and the indiscriminate bombing campaign stirred up so much anger and hatred, which was exploted by the communist fighters and directed at the Americans.
Talk to people in north Lao now and many still don't really have a clue what the war was all about or who the Americans even were! They were just told by the Pathet Lao that the people bombing and levelling there villages were people called the Americans and that if they joined and fought for the Pathet Lao the bombs and death would stop...

I hope people here understand this point.

Should've just used trade embargos against the countries and eventually the communist regiemes wouldve crumbled away anyway and left with exactly the same as we are seeing now in these countries except maybe the death toll would be dramatically less...But of course we'll never know.

 

This thread is pointless for multiple reasons

1. The tactics you described are not much different from the strategy the US used in Vietnam. There WAS a massive air campaign, but a war cannot be won with an air campaign alone. The special forces DID play a relatively large roll in the war and there WAS naval bombardment.

2. You are comparing two completely different war efforts. The German army was fighting a traditional standing army with a clear line between members of the opposing military and innocent civilians. The United States was fighting against a rag tag guerilla army with little to no formal structure. It is impossible to destroy an unknown enemy and that is exactly what the United States was trying to do in Vietnam.

3. Hitler was merely fighting an army( a concrete opponent), while the United States in Vietnam was fighting against a ideology(an abstract opponent) which is nearly impossible to defeat in a population of poor, uneducated people who are easilly manipulated by supporters of the opposing ideology.

4. The Polish miltary in World War II was an unorganized, inexperienced shitshow that barely put up a fight. The North Vietnamese, on the other hand, were a battle hardened combat with decades of conflict with France before the United States was ever involved in Vietnam.

5. The United States was also fighting a war against the anti-war media, which is protected by the constitutional rights(something Hitler didn't need to worry about). As someone already pointed out, the United States won the Vietnam War in terms of casualties and traditional military victories, but could not sustain the war because of the effect that the media's negative bias towards the war.

 

very true

 

There is no acceptable strategy to defeat north vietnam starting in 1965.
Yes it could have been done.
But would require the destruction of much of southern china and a very risky showdown with the USSR.

IE: an expansion to a theater conflict with nuclear weapons.
easy to go 'ballistic' [excuse the pun]

The US could have 'won' such a war if 10 to 15% deaths to US citizens is
'acceptable' [while 'carparking' southern china and the USSR]
'another victory like that and we are fucked' [see, phyyric victory]

The world would be a far sader place now if it had of happened.

Occam

PS..Anyone wants to speak of specific points in this analysis..pm me

 

The chief reason for the massive increase in tonnage of bombs dropped in Vietnam was the advent of the jet engine. Many modern fighter jets can carry nearly as much bomb load as the piston engine "heavy bombers" of WWII. This is all due to the massive increase in horse power brought on by the jet engine.

 

I think the US lost the Vietnam War for a few reasons.

1. The Vietnamese didn't want the United States (as well as the other countries that sent troops such as Australia) in the country. The Vietnamese had just spent years fighting against French colonialism; they wanted to be independent of foreign meddling. No matter what the United States did they couldn't win the PR battle because most of the Vietnamese (even the non-communists) didn't want a foreign power controlling Vietnam. This meant that the Viet Cong had strong support from the Vietnamese public in both the North and the South.

2. The Viet Cong launched a guerrilla campaign against the United States and the geography of Vietnam greatly suits this type of warfare. The swamps, rivers, jungle etc... All made it much easier for the low tech Viet Cong to successfully attack the high tech US.

3. Because the Vietnamese had been fighting for so long they were already battle hardened and fighting in familiar territory. Many of the US troops were green and were unfamiliar with Vietnam.

4. The United States forces were largely based in the cities whilst the fighting was done in the Jungle. The Viet Cong were in the Jungle all the time and therefore maintained a strangle hold on the countryside.

5. Because of the length of the battle the US soldiers themselves began to wonder why they were in Vietnam in the first place. This drop in morale greatly reduced the effectiveness of the US campaign.

6. The Viet Cong received support from the Soviet Union. The Soviets fought against the United States via proxy.

7. The USA actually dropped more bombs on Cambodia than they did on Vietnam. Did the USA accidentally invade the wrong country?

8. And lastly, the anti-war movement in the United States took off and US politicians saw it as pointless to maintain a war that was both unpopular and un-winnable.

9. The US objective may have been to scare the shit out of any would be communists in the surrounding countries, not to actually win the war.

 

lol

obviously

 

If u want a true alternative stategy

The US could have taken over N Vietnam in one day
[maybe 2 to allow for errors]
Actually quite easy

The problem is not doing it... but stopping NV from knowing it was going to happen
The greatest enemy lies within.

Occam

 

but it spawned the greatness that is Rambo....c'mon

 

In fact it was not Hitler, but Erich von Manstein, a brilliant strategic thinker. HE was the mastermind behind the victory over France. Hitler just had the brains to approve his plans.

 

yes... Manstein one of the greatest german commanders.
Hitler was an operational/tactical NOOB.

Manstein, Guderian, Kesslering, Rommel, Rundsted, Hoth, Balk,and many more

THEY.. gave germany the huge advances it gained in just 3 years. German operational leaders were FAR superior in practice than allies or soviets.
Especially .. say guderian... even patton wouldbe a child at his feet.

And the likes of montgomery.. that weasle, should be struck from history.


Occam

 

Blitzkreig is a tactic designed for use against an industrialized foe. It depends on the existance of a fairly good system of roads.

It would not work in Vietnam.

 

Mike

Agree. The US had everything they needed to fight well in vietnam...
Well trained men, good weapons, massive fire support...
Weild that in Bn level S&D units and they would have dominated the battlefield.
Yet US operational methods were scattered and obtuse.
You dont fight a mobile insurgent war with op/tac methods from a european
style frontline war.
Even excellent aircav were wasted in pointless ops.

The result. A country with less pop than california humiliates the
US millitary.

Occam

ps.. Have read that german units of the french foreign legion were especially feared by the viets..[ex wehrmacht]
Anyone know more on this?

 

There is one thing, everyone who argues about Vietnam seems to forget, in our country. And that thing is, that a movement, such as the Vietnamese Communist movement a.k.a. VietCong, do not, ever, win power and reunify nations without massive popular support. The US role was basically to do what we are doing in Iraq right now, to prop up a flimsy regime that we helped create, except the one in Saigon did not even have elections, and was an immensely corrupt military junta which was only able to control the major cities, through brute force. Sure, we could have obliterated the country by sheer force in a few days or weeks, and "won", by committing genocide, but that is not what the objective was. Because basically, even this nation's worst leaders (such as Nixon) were not Hitlerian madmen bent on conquering the world.

The VietCong did not win any war, the vietnamese people did. And the United States never could have beaten them because the Vietcongs guerillas were south Vietnamese, they supported the communist movement to unify the country. They wanted to reunify their nation under an indigenous movement, with their own leaders and their own utopian dreams. These dreams were of course warped by their unfair land management practices, their own tendency toward corruption at the inpenetrable higher levels of leadership, and the tendency for communist movements since the time of Stalin, to imprison or kill dissenters rather than argue with them as we do here. But the real reason so many people fled Vietnam is because, imagine ending a war in your country after the USA has burnt down all your forests and fields with chemical weapons, blown up most of your highways, bombed to death hundreds of thousands, and after thirty years of war, the country was in tatters, and the billions of $$ of US aid suddenly STOPPED.
The other reason was that a Chinese supported, and viciously hostile communist movement led by the Khmer Rouge had come to power in neighboring Cambodia, and the Khmer Rouge invaded Vietnam in 1977-78, committing massacres and causing thousands of people to try to escape the bloodbath. The war was not over, even after it ended...

 

Anyone who has a real intrest in this topic should read the book "On Strategy: a critical analysis of the Vietnam War" by retired USMC colonel Harry Summers. It addresses this topic exactly and is widely regaurded as the most important book on how the Vietnam War could have been won. A basic understanding of Clauswitz's trinity of war, as well as an understanding of attrition warfare and manuever warfare are required. I'm on my way to my Recent Military History class right now, so i don't have time to give a summary of his thesis, but if anyone has a true intrest in learning how the Vietnam should have been fought and why the United States lost I would be glad to give a run down. Otherwise I won't bother.