By Jim Mamer / Original to ScheerPost
This is the third part of my exploration of how high school American History textbooks describe American wars and the opposition to them. Part 1 dealt with the American Revolution, the Mexican-American War, Spanish American War and World War I. Part 2 focused on World War II and Korea, both of which faced little opposition. Part 3, is focused on the Vietnam War.
To repeat what I have written earlier, my basic assumption remains that when schools teach about a war, it is their responsibility to teach about the philosophical and moral reasons some people opposed that war.
The problems I found with earlier textbook descriptions of American wars continue to be a problem here. Vietnam is treated as an isolated historical episode, largely disconnected from other wars and the policy decisions that carry across decades. This particularly applies in the context of Cold War containment.
I remind readers that a suggestion that any war is the result of a single incident makes student understanding of historical complexity seem unnecessary. In the case of American involvement in Vietnam, different texts suggest different motivations and very different starting points.
One can find various texts that begin American participation in 1954, when the French lost the battle in Dien Bien Phu. Others date the beginning of participation to 1961 when President Kennedy began to escalate American involvement from about 700 U.S. military personnel in 1961 to around 16,000 in 1963. Most textbooks date the American war back to the deadly hoax that resulted in the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution.
All this can make for an interesting class discussion, but what is certain is that U.S. involvement in Indochina slowly evolves from at least WWII.
The Vietnam War in Textbooks and Elsewhere
We are fighting a war in Asia for an objective no one can define. If it is to make the world safe from aggression, that is a slogan, not a possibility. If it is to contain communism, that is not to be accomplished by destroying the society where the containment is being tried out.
— Barbara Tuchman, Essay on Vietnam March, 1968
If textbook coverage of the Korean War is shockingly brief, the opposite is true of coverage dedicated to the American war in Vietnam. In “The Americans,” coverage runs to more than 20 pages. In “History Alive!,” it is close to double that.
Unfortunately, more coverage does not equal better coverage. In both textbooks, the essence of what is reported is a combination of “things that happened,” strategic misinformation and missing information.
Textbook descriptions of the Vietnam War
In “The Americans,” coverage begins with the story of A. Peter Dewey, a Lieutenant Colonel in American intelligence (then the Office of Strategic Services). He was killed at a roadblock in 1945 and in this book, he is called “the first American to die in Vietnam.”
Then the text continues, “…he would not be the last… As Vietnam’s independence effort came under communist influence, the U.S. grew increasingly concerned…” This suggestion that Vietnam’s independence was being newly influenced by communist forces is deliberate misinformation.
Vietnam’s independence movement was always “under” communist influence and the Americans knew it. The leader in the fight for Vietnamese independence, Ho Chi Minh, had founded the Communist Party of Vietnam in 1941, at which time, he also set up the Viet Minh, a coalition that led the struggle for independence from French colonial rule.
What is the purpose of suggesting that Vietnam’s independence effort was coming under communist influence? To me it was written that way to give the impression that the U.S. might have supported Vietnamese independence until the communists got involved.
It was also to avoid explaining that the communist-led Viet Minh worked with the U.S. against Japanese forces during WWII. When the war ended, and the imperial French began their attempt to retake Vietnam, the U.S. simply switched sides and supported the French. All of that is missing from both textbooks.
In “History Alive!,” coverage begins with a description of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. In this text the first two names on the memorial provide the identity of the first two Americans to die in Vietnam. They are Chester Ovnand and Dale Buis who were killed “in a surprise attack” on their camp in 1959.
The Creation of South Vietnam
Curious students might wonder why the U.S. had a military encampment in Vietnam in 1959, but instead of an explanation, “History Alive!” provides this inexplicable sentence: “Before the United States entered the Vietnam War, politicians and their advisers argued about the wisdom of getting drawn into the conflict.”
The reason I label this “inexplicable” is because there was no “Vietnam War” before the U.S. decided to support the French effort to re-occupy their former colonies in Indochina. In fact, U.S. support created the country of South Vietnam in 1954 after the French were defeated and the Geneva Accords temporarily partitioned the country.
In that agreement, Vietnam, which had been divided at the 17th parallel in 1954, was to have an election to reunify the country in 1956. The election never happened because it was blocked by the U.S. and the American supported leader of South Vietnam, Ngo Dinh Diem. Again, this is missing from both texts.
The idea that there was debate about “the wisdom of getting drawn into the conflict” when in reality, if there was debate, it was about the wisdom blocking implementation of the Geneva Accords provisions. Blocking Geneva ensured that South Vietnam and North Vietnam would exist as separate countries, which made conflict inevitable.
At the time, President Dwight Eisenhower chose to invest huge sums of money in transforming South Vietnam into a viable country, but in his memoir, “Mandate for Change,” he wrote that “…had elections been held…possibly 80 per cent of the population would have voted for the Communist Ho Chi Minh.” (Eisenhower’s assessment is missing from both texts.)
I assume that missing information or misinformation is not a mistake, but intended to serve a purpose. The purpose here seems to make simple Cold War anti-communism a realistic justification for the Vietnam War.
Nevertheless, given that Vietnam, in 2024, has a communist government in which both the U.S. government and American businesses have a working relationship, it seems likely that the misinformation and missing information in both texts is meant to prevent students from drawing the conclusion that two decades of war, which killed at least 3 million Vietnamese and almost 60,000 Americans, was unnecessary.
From the beginning, the Catholic Ngo Dinh Diem was regarded as anti-communist and he was supported by both the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations. Unfortunately, he was unpopular with most Vietnamese. Eventually on Nov. 1, 1963 the U.S. supported the coup that resulted in Diem’s execution. Then on Nov. 22, 1963, Kennedy was assassinated.
In case the term “U.S. sponsored coup” is too vague, the last telephone conversation between the U.S. Ambassador to South Vietnam Henry Cabot Lodge and President Diem was recorded.
Here is part of that conversation, which ends with an American offer of “safe conduct out of the country” if Diem would resign. That, of course, makes a lie of Lodge’s assertion, in the same conversation, that the U.S. “cannot possibly have a view.”
Diem: Some Units have made a rebellion and I want to know, what is the attitude of the U.S.?
Lodge: I do not feel well enough informed to be able to tell you. I have heard the shootings … And it is 4:30 A.M. in Washington and the U. S. Government cannot possibly have a view.
Diem: But you must have some general ideas. After all, I am Chief of State. I have tried to do my duty. I want to do now what duty and good sense require. I believe in duty above all.
Lodge: You have certainly done your duty. As I told you only this morning, I admire your courage and your great contribution to your country. No one can take away from you the credit for all you have done. Now I am worried about your physical safety. I have a report that those in charge of the current activity offer you and your brother safe conduct out of the country if you resign. Had you heard this?
Diem: No. (pause) You have my phone number.
After President Diem was killed, both textbook narratives tell a similar story of escalation, decline and loss:
President Lyndon Johnson, South Vietnam and Escalation
After Diem’s death, a string of military leaders attempted to lead South Vietnam. The new U.S. President Lyndon Johnson escalated American involvement.
In Aug. 1964 when the U.S. was secretly directing attacks against North Vietnam, there were allegations that the American destroyer U.S.S. Maddox was fired upon by the North Vietnamese. Both textbooks leave this vague, but even in the textbooks, it is clear that no attacks by the North Vietnamese occurred on Aug. 4.
In “The Americans,” it is reported that the crew of the Maddox testified that they had heard no hostile gunfire. In “History Alive!,” the section ends with the sentence, “In fact, no attack had occurred.”
Nevertheless, on Aug. 7, 1964 Congress passed what Johnson wanted, the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which allowed the president “to take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States…” Given this power, in early 1965, Johnson began massive and sustained bombing of the North.
Johnson and his advisors continuously escalated American involvement in the war. Eventually a total of five other nations sent troops to fight alongside the U.S. in this American war. These nations were Australia, New Zealand, Republic of Korea, Thailand and the Philippines; but none of them are mentioned in the textbooks.
The Communist Menace, again
The manner in which both of these texts continually refer to “containing communism” and taking a “firm stance against the communist threat” amounts to misinformation. Just as in the Korean War, textbook authors and publishers want students to assume that communism, despite massive evidence to the contrary, was a monolith.
The fact that the Vietnamese communists were Vietnamese nationalists is never taken seriously in the textbooks, probably because it would contradict the continuous use of the term “communist threat.”
A Predictable American Loss
The textbooks also seem to express surprise at the continued failure of American policy. In “The Americans,” for example, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara is quoted saying, “I didn’t think these people had the capacity to fight this way. If I had thought they would take this punishment and fight this well I would have thought differently at the start.”
In the end, from 1964 to Aug. 1973, the U.S. dropped 7,662,000 tons of bombs and other ordnance in the war. This far exceeded that dropped in World War II and the Korean War combined. In April 1969, the number of American troops in Vietnam reached its highest point at 543,400.
On Mar. 29, 1973, the last U.S. combat unit left Vietnam. And as the North Vietnamese overcame the South in April 1975, Nixon ordered all remaining American personnel to evacuate.
Opposition to the American war in Vietnam
It’s always the old to lead us to the wars
Always the young to fall
Now look at all we’ve won with the saber and the gun
Tell me, is it worth it all?— Phil Ochs, I Ain’t Marching Anymore 1965
In contrast to the lack of organized opposition to the Korean War and WWII, the anti-Vietnam War movement emerged as a substantial force in American politics, first by building on a decade of visible struggles for Civil Rights (and Free Speech), and second by relentless efforts to draw attention to inexcusable violence and to educate as much of the public as possible.
In the two textbooks I’ve been using, there is a fundamental difference in how they describe opposition to the war. In “The Americans,” which is the older of the two, first published in 1999, opposition is seen as emerging from university students “becoming more active socially and politically.” They are accurately portrayed as being influenced by the civil rights struggles and the Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley.
While in “History Alive!,” the more recent text (first published in 2019), the section on opposition to the war begins with this: “Before 1966, the majority of Vietnam War protesters were college students, pacifists, and members of a few radical groups. Most Americans deemed these critics unpatriotic…”
Then, in an attempt to describe the emergence of the antiwar movement, the text suggests that a good deal of the motivation came from televised hearings of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “Television continued to influence Americans’ perception of the war, as war news was broadcast into their living rooms nightly.”
If the idea that thousands of young Americans were radicalized by watching televised congressional hearings seems improbable, I assure you I had to re-read it more than once. The difference between the two textbooks is not reassuring.
Nevertheless, my generation did grow up seeing a great deal on television. Especially influential were the struggles for racial justice and witnessing, usually from the safety of our homes, the racist opposition, the disturbing assassinations, as well as significant victories for civil rights.
I was in elementary school when the Montgomery Bus Boycott was sparked by the arrest of Rosa Parks in 1955. And over the next decade, again, thanks to television, I was inspired by those who struggled against segregation at lunch counters as well as in housing, education and transportation.
I was in high school when the Civil Rights Act was signed in 1964 and I remember hearing that same year about the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and Fannie Lou Hamer, probably from my father who had a habit every four years of watching the Democratic Convention.
I was still in high school when I read a few parts of Bernard Fall’s “Street Without Joy” and during my first year in college I finished it and read his book on Dien Bien Phu, “Hell in a Very Small Place.”
I couldn’t have been the only teenager to have found Fall’s reporting interesting could I? His books showed me that American intervention in Vietnam was a successor to French colonialism. That made me immune to ubiquitous news reports suggesting that South Vietnam was just another victim of “international communism.”
A Peace Movement
The 1960s, according to Lawrence Wittner, “began with a burst of creative energy among peace activists.” The first target of protest was nuclear weapons.
In the state of Washington, women organized Women’s Strike for Peace against nuclear weapons and nuclear testing. And in 1961, they put together protest demonstrations in more than 20 cities.
In 1962, the Student Peace Union mobilized 4,000 college students to picket the White House and lobby Congress for a ban on nuclear weapons.
Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) was founded in 1960 by, among others, Al Haber and Tom Hayden. In 1965, SDS organized an antiwar march in Washington co-sponsored by Women’s Strike for Peace. The first SDS teach-in against the war was held in the University of Michigan, followed by hundreds more across the country.
That approach—having organized discussions oriented toward informed action—helped to create the most well-informed mass movement in American history. In my first year of college, I took part in multiple teach-ins, which proved to be of great benefit to my understanding of issues not covered in classes.
As might be obvious, among the first tasks for antiwar activists was to attract media attention and to educate as many people as possible about the real history of Indochina. That history necessarily included U.S. support for French imperialism, U.S. sabotage of the 1954 Geneva Agreements on Vietnam and the need to expose the absurdity of the claim that communism was monolithic.
During the Vietnam War, pacifists were the first to refuse to cooperate with the draft. Originally conscientious objector status was limited to those with religious objections, but the regulations had changed and men could now refuse to perform military service “on the grounds of freedom of conscience or religion.”
To be declared a conscientious objector one only needed to fill out an application, answer a series of questions, and submit testimonials. During the war, about 170,000 men were classified as conscientious objectors but 300,000 were denied that status.
With President Johnson’s rapid escalation of the war under cover provided by the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, antiwar activities spread rapidly. But in spite of that, even widespread protests often failed to generate much publicity.
One reason, cited by Wittner, was the mass media’s continued uncritical acceptance of American foreign policy and deference to government officials. For the most part the media “refused to acknowledge even the existence of dissent.”
Some forms of dissent attracted more media attention. A few protestors patterned their protest after Vietnam’s Buddhist protestors who in 1963, resorted to an ancient tradition of self-immolation. Others publicly vandalized draft records.
The first American political self-immolation occurred on Mar. 16, 1965. Alice Herz, an 82-year-old peace activist and refugee from Nazism, burned herself to death in Detroit to protest the bombings in Vietnam.
On Nov. 2, 1965, Norman Morrison, a 31-year-old Quaker pacifist, set himself on fire below the third-floor window of Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara at the Pentagon, emulating the actions of the Vietnamese monk Thich Quang Duc.
One week later, Roger Allen LaPorte, a 22-year-old member of the Catholic Worker movement, did the same in front of the United Nations headquarters in New York.
Opposition to the war was growing. In 1966, the year I graduated from high school, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) put out a statement expressing sympathy for “the men in this country who are unwilling to respond to a military draft.”
In 1967, David Harris and others founded The Resistance, a group created to oppose the draft and the war. They encouraged young men across the country to refuse to cooperate with the draft, culminating in a massive draft card turn-in in Oct. 1967. The idea was to overwhelm the Selective Service System through nonviolent refusal to cooperate. I have never seen any mention of this in any textbook.
On June 1, 1967, the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) was founded in New York City by Jan Berry after he marched together with other vets in a demonstration to oppose U.S. policy and participation in the Vietnam War. It has been one of the most effective antiwar organizations.
In 1971, VVAW organized the Winter Soldier Investigation. Veterans were asked “if they had witnessed or participated in any of the following: search and destroy missions, crop destruction or POW mistreatment. Their testimonies were read into the Congressional Record by Republican Senator Mark Hatfield of Oregon.
That same year, VVAW put together a week of protest events during which Vietnam Veterans famously threw war medals on the Capitol Steps.
By May 1970, following the US invasion of Cambodia, and the killing of students at Kent State and Jackson State Universities, over 25,000 draft cards were collected and returned.
In May 1968, Daniel and Philip Berrigan, two Catholic priests, led a group of antiwar activists in a raid on the draft files at Catonsville, Maryland. They took 378 draft files, brought them to the parking lot in wire baskets, doused them with homemade napalm, and set them on fire. Their action inspired many others. Almost 300 draft boards were vandalized from 1968 to 1972.
Over time, the anti-Vietnam War movement encompassed a broad section of the American public. According to the historian Melvin Small, “By 1969 there may have been as many as 17,000 national, regional, and local organizations that could be considered in the movement…”
As I wrote at the start of this three-part series on opposition to war, my basic assumption is that when teachers and textbooks teach about wars, it is their responsibility to also teach about the philosophical and moral reasons some people oppose them. How much of the information listed above was in your high school textbook? In the texts I’ve examined there is very, very little, but don’t take my word for it. Ask others how much of this they were presented with.
Just as the wars against Indigenous peoples are still buried in textbook sections titled “Manifest Destiny,” the American war in Vietnam is often “covered” in textbooks with minimal exploration of the roots of the conflict and very little respectful description of the antiwar movement.
It should go without mention that it does not help anyone if students only learn that a war happened, that people were killed and that a lot of things were destroyed. Wars start for a variety of reasons, most of which can be identified, debated and challenged if necessary. Those should be part of every American History text and class.
Of all the literature that has emerged from the Vietnam War, none is more effective than that of paralyzed veteran Ron Kovic. I wonder if any of his three extraordinary books are used in history or English classes. When I’m feeling optimistic I tell myself they must be.
Tragically, our educational system still insists on teaching uncomplicated, noncontroversial history, or perhaps, what Orwell might call “patriotic” history. Even though textbooks are filled with descriptions of war and excuses for war, teaching about antiwar movements remains unreasonably difficult.
Students are taught that in this country, we are guaranteed freedom of religion, freedom of conscience and freedom of speech. What good are those if not used to discuss, debate and evaluate the various justifications for war? What good are those freedoms if not used to embrace opposition to wars deemed aggressive, unjust or simply unnecessary?
And One More Thing
I’ve seen, in a half dozen textbooks, mention of Mario Savio and the Berkeley Free Speech Movement as an inspiration for political activism, but I’ve not seen more than a few words quoted. Here is the essential part of what Savio said to explain what was behind the Berkeley Free Speech Movement. It still seems applicable to what surrounds us now.
There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart that you can’t take part! You can’t even passively take part! And you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus — and you’ve got to make it stop! And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it — that unless you’re free the machine will be prevented from working at all!
— Sproul Hall, UC Berkeley, December 2, 1964
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Jim Mamer
Jim Mamer is a retired high school teacher. He was a William Robertson Coe Fellow for the Study of American History at Stanford University in 1984. He served as chair of the History and Social Sciences department for 20 years (first at Irvine High and then at Northwood High). He was a mentor teacher in both Modern American History and Student Assessment. In 1992 he was named History and Social Sciences Teacher of the Year by the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS).
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