In his fiery speeches to troops during World War II, General George S Patton used to declare: ‘The Americans love a winner… That’s why Americans have never lost and will never lose a war, for the very thought of losing is hateful to an American.’ It was just as well that General Patton did not live to the 1960s and 1970s, because there was no way that anyone could say the Americans won the war in Vietnam.
The Vietnam conflict effectively began soon after the end of the Second World War. Initially, the Communist nationalists, led by the wily Ho Chi Minh, fought the French, who sought to restore their colonial authority in what they called Indochina. After a massive defeat at the battle of Dien Bien Phu in May 1954, the French withdrew and Vietnam was divided along the 17th Parallel. The North became a Communist state led by Ho, and the South became a supposedly free but in reality deeply corrupt republic led by Ngo Dinh Diem and members of his close family.
Ho Chi Minh then sought to reunite the country under Communist rule. The Americans looked on, and President Eisenhower feared that if South Vietnam went Communist then all of South-east Asia would fall quickly, ‘like a row of dominoes’. Amid the intense rivalry of the Cold War, it would represent a huge defeat if Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Burma, Thailand, and possibly even India fell into the Communist camp.
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