Ho Chi Minh (19 May 1890–2 September 1969)
The single most influential figure in the Vietnamese nationalist movement, Ho was one of those rare figures in history who appear to transcend the movement which spawned them, and who come to personify a set of ideas and goals. The youngest of three children, Ho was born Nguyen Sinh Cung in 1890 in a village in central Vietnam. Ho spent his formative political years in exile. Between 1911–41, he travelled through Europe, USA, China and the Soviet Union. Even though he was criticized by communists for being a nationalist, he helped found the French Communist Party, and spent time studying in Moscow. He returned to Vietnam in 1941, and helped establish the Viet Minh, and worked with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) to resist the Japanese occupation of the country.
At the end of the war, he declared Vietnamese Independence, but failed to sustain this ideal in the face of French, British, and US opposition. While he had emphasized the nationalist nature of his movement throughout much of the 1940s, his need for external support and recognition led him to play up his communist credentials to a much greater extent towards the end of the decade. While Soviet recognition proved useful, it was the practical military assistance of the new People’s Republic of China which proved critical in sustaining the war effort against the French.
Thwarted in his attempt to create a united Vietnam at Geneva in 1954 and two years later by the failure of Diem to hold unification elections, Ho was forced to consolidate his grip on power in the North while waiting for Diem to be overthrown. The gradual escalation of US involvement threatened to place an insurmountable obstacle in his path, but he correctly predicted that the lack of political will in US for a long, bloody war would ultimately leave the way open for the conquest of the South.
Feted as the father of the DRV, Ho also played a key role in maintaining morale in the North during US bombing campaigns and the costly Tet Offensive. His death from heart failure in 1969 led to the creation of a posthumous cult of personality, with his body embalmed in a mausoleum and Saigon renamed Ho Chi Minh City after its capture in 1975.
General Vo Nguyen Giap (25 August 1911–)
With an academic background, and little formal military training, Vo Nguyen Giap rose to become not only North Vietnam’s pre-eminent strategist and military leader, but arguably one of the twentieth century’s best known commanders.
Before the outbreak of the First Indochina War, Giap was educated at the University of Hanoi, before becoming a history teacher. After joining the Indochina Communist Party in 1937, he was responsible for founding the Viet Minh with Ho in 1941. He subsequently led the resistance campaign against the Japanese in the north of Vietnam, with the assistance of US OSS agents. After the war, he was appointed both Minister of the Interior and Commander-in-Chief in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, and proclaimed the outbreak of war against the French on 19 December 1946. Regarded as the architect of the three-stage Dau Tranh strategy, Giap deployed a joint political-military approach which was designed to win over the population, gradually undermine the enemy’s will to fight, before progressing to conventional big unit battles. His greatest success against the French was undoubtedly the Battle of Dien bien phu in the spring of 1954. Surprising the French with his ability to move both a large army and heavy artillery into positions surrounding the French base, Giap inflicted such a defeat on France that they were forced to leave South East Asia forever.
Source: US Air Force Center of Military History
Giap turned his three-stage strategy on the new South Vietnamese Republic and US forces after 1954, successfully undermining the credibility of the ARVN, and managing to control most of the country’s Strategic Hamlets during the programme’s short-lived existence. Perhaps his biggest mistake was in believing that the time was right for a general offensive during Tet in January 1968. The failure of the offensive not only had a significant impact in terms of casualties, it virtually wiped out the Viet Cong in the countryside and prevented a further major campaign until Easter 1972.
After the US withdrawal, he was appointed Minister of Defence; a position he held until 1980.
Ngo Dinh Diem (3 January 1901–2 November 1963)
The architect of the South Vietnamese State, and the US’s principal ally in South East Asia, Diem’s political career came to an ignominious end when he was arrested, and shot dead in the back of an army van (with Ngo Dinh Nhu) after being deposed by his own forces in November 1963.
Diem grew up in a rich, aristocratic Vietnamese family, and spent time working under Emperor Bao Dai. He went on to become a hardline regional governor, gaining a reputation for taking a tough anti-communist line, and for demonstrating an independent position between French colonialism and the Viet Minh nationalists. During the First Indochina War he was captured and almost killed by the Viet Minh. After escaping, he visited the United States, where he met politicians such as the (Roman Catholic) senator John F. Kennedy. After the French defeat, he returned to Vietnam and was put forward, in the face of French opposition, by the US delegation as a possible ruler of South Vietnam.
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The defining moment in his rise to the top of South Vietnamese politics was the 1955 referendum over who should rule the country: Bao Dai or himself. Relying heavily on CIA subversion, vote-rigging, and physical intimidation of potential Bao Dai voters, he achieved an overwhelming victory; claiming to have won 98.2 per cent of the vote. Once in power, he proved himself to be as intolerant of political opposition as he was enthusiastic to develop a system of nepotism and patronage. Although Roman Catholics made up approximately 10 per cent of the population, all positions of political and military power and land ownership were in the hands of Catholics. He arrested tens of thousands of political opponents, targeting suspected communists for the most part, but also including trade unionists and Buddhists in his trawl of prisoners.
As opposition to his rule grew, and US tolerance of his methods was undermined by his failure to stabilize South Vietnam, his grip on power gradually weakened. In February 1962 two disaffected South Vietnamese air force pilots bombed the presidential palace. Diem survived unharmed, but authorized his brother to increase repression on political dissidents. By October 1963, the CIA and the US Ambassador to South Vietnam, were aware that senior Vietnamese officers were developing a plan to overthrow Diem. On 1 November, with US permission, the plan was implemented resulting in his death in the van.
Madame Nhu (Tran Le Xuan) (15 April 1924–24 April 2011)
Mme Nhu was arguably the most controversial figure of South Vietnam’s brief history. An advocate of women’s rights, but an opponent of abortion and contraception, hailed as the saviour of South East Asia in the 1950s by the US media, then lambasted for her callous insensitivity towards the regime’s opponents, she was a deeply complicated character who appeared to intoxicate as much as revile even her political enemies.
Born Tran Le Xuan into a wealthy (Buddhist) Vietnamese family, she married Ngo Dinh Nhu at the age of eighteen, and quickly abandoned Buddhism for her husband’s Roman Catholic faith. An early victim of the First Indochina War, she was taken prisoner by the Viet Minh for four months along with her daughter and mother-in-law. After her brother-in-law assumed control of South Vietnam in 1955, she became the most powerful female in South East Asia as a member of the South Vietnamese National Assembly. Her husband’s control of the secret police, and her unofficial role as the hermit-like Diem’s ‘first lady’ guaranteed her both headlines and influence.
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As US patience with Diem waned, Mme Nhu resorted to high profile campaigns to defend her brother-in-law’s regime. In 1963, she dismissed the self-immolation of Buddhist monks as a ‘barbeque’ and condemned their lack of patriotism for using imported petrol. She followed this up with a controversial lecture tour of US campuses where she was both ignominiously ignored by her own father, ambassador to to the US, and pelted with eggs by US students.
It was during this tour that she was informed of her husband and Diem’s death at the hands of the army. Her children were given free passage from South Vietnam and she settled with them in Paris, then Rome. Even in her later years, she wasn’t far from controversy: in 1986 her brother, Tran Van Khiem, was charged with smothering their parents to death. She refused to condemn him, instead claiming he was the victim of a US conspiracy.
Nguyen Van Thieu (5 April 1923–29 September 2001)
Nguyen Van Thieu presided over two critical periods in the decline of South Vietnam. He served as President while the US withdrew from the country in 1973, and remained in power until shortly before the final collapse of the country in April 1975. His first major involvement in the country’s political fortunes came as a supporter of Ho Chi Minh’s nationalist movement, rising to the position of District commander. However, this dalliance with the Viet Minh lasted barely a year, once he realized that the nationalist movement was a front for communist insurgents.
After studying at various military academies, he fought with the French against the Viet Minh until the end of the war in 1954. He was promoted to the rank of corps commander in the South Vietnamese Army, and spent time training in the USA. He was amongst the group of army officers who carried out the coup against Diem in 1963, and then maintained his position within the army leadership during a succession of coups 1964–65.
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In 1965, he was appointed Head of State; a notional figurehead with power residing with the Prime Minister, Nguyen Cao Ky. By 1967, Thieu was strong enough to run for President with Ky as his subordinate running mate in the country’s first presidential elections. The rigged election, gave Thieu the power to rule as a virtual dictator, presiding over a corrupt political system which relied entirely on the military and US aid for survival. He strongly resisted US attempts to broker a deal with North Vietnam, and felt betrayed by the their later withdrawal and failure to carry out its promise not to leave the South on its own in the event of a resumption of hostilities.
However, he had not been forgotten, the CIA flew him and two suitcases full of gold to Taiwan, from where he moved to south London. He remained in England until the later stages of his life, when he relocated to Massachusetts.
Robert McNamara (9 June 1916–6 July 2009)
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Robert McNamara’s reputation as the brightest of the best, US’s most high-profile Defense Secretary rested on a particularly rational, almost scholarly approach to foreign affairs. He started from the perspective that international crises could be managed, and by following a clear set of procedures. This approach was heavily influenced by statistical analysis refined during his time at Berkeley, US Bomber Command, and as the first non-Ford to be President of the Ford Motor Company. This approach appeared to be vindicated during the Cuban Missile Crisis, October 1962, but its application in South East Asia, through the use of graduated escalation in the period 1961–64, and then through the crossover point as the target for US victory, proved to be flawed.
By November 1967, McNamara began to have severe doubts whether the war could indeed be won in Vietnam, and was affected by rifts within his own family over the conflict. He announced that he would resign from office, but was persuaded to stay in post until the spring of 1968. After politics, McNamara became President of the World Bank and largely disappeared from public life, with the exception of an attempt on his life in 1971, when a fellow passenger, recognizing McNamara, tried to push him off the Martha’s Vineyard ferry. During the 1990s, he returned to the debate over Vietnam, publishing his own memoirs of the period, In Retrospect, and appearing as the subject of Errol Morris’ 2003 documentary The Fog of War.
George Ball (21 December 1909–26 May 1994)
A diplomat easy to dub ‘the man who was always right’, George Ball’s reputation as a critic of US policy towards South East Asia during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations often cast him to the fringes of decision-making, but eventually saw him vindicated when the ‘wise men’ group of senior advisors decided to halt US escalation after the 1968 Tet Offensive.
Believing that the main arena for USA Cold War policy should be Europe, Ball argued against growing escalation from 1961. When the Taylor-Rostow Report recommended the dispatch of 8,000 US troops in October, Ball predicted that 500,000 would be required within four years. Although President Kennedy famously described him as being ‘crazy as hell’ for this prognosis, the experience of Americanization in 1965–68 vindicated Ball’s original fears.
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In spite of his attitude to the Vietnam War, Ball was not a pacifist, but argued that developing strong relationships with her Western European partners should be the US’s prime objective, which in turn would lead to a rapprochement with the USSR.
After resigning in 1966, he maintained a strict silence over the administration’s approach to the war, only returning to his critical theme after Johnson had left office. He became chair of Lehman Brothers before acting as US Ambassador to the UN for a brief period during the last few months of Johnson’s presidency. He returned to Lehman Brothers in 1968, and continued to write and speak on international issues, gaining a new reputation as a critic of US relations with Israel.
General Maxwell Taylor (26 August 1901–19 April 1987)
Raised in Kansas City, Taylor graduated high school with outstanding grades, and moved onto West Point as the First World War was coming to an end. During the Second World War, he made his name as a commander with the 82nd Airborne, carrying out jumps over Italy, and Normandy. He was the first US general to land in Normandy, as he led a party of paratroopers tasked with the clearing the way for the D-Day invasion.
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Although he served with distinction in both West Berlin and the Korean War, he found himself out of favour with the Eisenhower administration. While the new president wanted to cut conventional forces, and focus on his New Look policy, Taylor strongly advocated an expensive modernization of the US Army. President Kennedy, who had been impressed with Taylor’s critique of US strategy while serving as a congressman in the 1950s, appointed him as a military advisor in 1961, and Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1962.
Under Kennedy, Taylor helped develop the doctrine of flexible response, which featured an emphasis on counterinsurgency and limited war at its core. Both of these, Taylor was to argue in his 1961 report on the situation in South Vietnam should be applied to the war against Communism in South East Asia. He continued to serve President Johnson after Kennedy’s assassination, until his move to South Vietnam as US Ambassador in 1964. He retired from this post in 1965.
General William Westmoreland (26 March 1914–18 July 2005)
Born near Spartanburg, South Carolina, William Westmoreland went on to fight in most of the US’s major areas of conflict during the Second World War and the Cold War. He served as Superintendent at West Point, and enjoyed the patronage of two Presidents. However, by the end of 1968 his reputation was in tatters. So much so that in 1980 Ronald Reagan, at the time the aspiring nominee for the Republican party’s presidential nomination, refused to sit next to him on a flight, for fear that he be tarnished by association with the disgraced former general.
As commander of Military Assistance Command, Vietnam he believed in the policy of attrition, refusing to accept that a small nation such as North Vietnam could absorb huge losses. This belief led him to misinterpret the critical lessons of the war, none more so than the unsuitability of conventional large unit tactics to the jungles of Vietnam. While he rightly pointed to the horrendous casualty figures on the communist side, this ignored the growing casualty lists, and equipment losses on the US side.
The Tet Offensive turned out to be the beginning of the end of his military career in Vietnam. After announcing the light at the end of the tunnel in a press conference at the end of 1967, his claims of impending success were shown to be hollow, as the North Vietnamese launched their largest campaign of the conflict thus far. Even as Westmoreland emphasized the success of the ARVN and US forces in crushing the offensive, images of Viet Cong guerrillas in the grounds of the US embassy, and holding out in Hue only served to undermine his credibility still further.
Following Tet, Westmoreland requested another 200,000 troops and the mobilization of the National Guard in order to inflict the hammer blow on the Communists. He later called the refusal to provide these troops, ‘the turning point for failure in Vietnam’. In June 1968, he was replaced by Creighton Adams, returning to Washington as US Army Chief of Staff.
Henry Kissinger (27 May 1923–)
Born in southern Bavaria, Kissinger’s family fled Nazi Germany in 1938 and settled in New York. He returned to Germany during the Second World War, as an interpreter and intelligence officer for the US Army. After the war, he made his name as a historian and advisor to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. He was a pioneer of the ‘flexible response’ doctrine, which called for a more varied approach to settling international disputes than Eisenhower’s clumsy New Look policy of massive retaliation. A key influence on Kissinger’s ideas was a belief that a limited nuclear war would be winnable. This was a significant departure to the theory of Mutually Assured Destruction which had governed Cold War nuclear diplomacy during the 1950s.
He came to Richard Nixon’s attention while serving as an aide to Nelson Rockefeller during the latter’s unsuccessful bid for the Republican nomination in 1968. President Nixon appointed Kissinger Special Assistant for National Security Affairs, and in that role he appeared to enjoy a higher profile than the Secretary of State, William Rogers. He argued that the USA should pursue a pragmatic approach to foreign policy, ands seek to maintain international security through a policy of bipolarity: i.e. ensuring that the USA and USSR remained as the dominant nations.
As Special Assistant, Kissinger was responsible both for the escalation of the war in South East Asia, through the secret bombing of Cambodia, and for developing diplomatic relations with North Vietnam, China, and the Soviet Union. His secret backchannel diplomacy enabled Nixon to visit both Beijing and Moscow in the first half of 1972, and resulted in agreement with Le Duc Tho, North Vietnam’s chief negotiator by October of the same year.
Kissinger’s role was formalized in September 1973, when he was appointed Secretary of State; a position he maintained under Nixon’s successor Gerald Ford. For his role in ending the Vietnam War, he was jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize with Le Duc Tho in the same year.