177. The Vietnam War: Lyndon Johnson, Americanisation, and Operation Rolling Thunder
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Find the detail that moves you with immersive dining experiences from Sapphire Reserve. Chase, make more of what's yours. Learn more at chase.com slash sapphirereserve. Cards issued by JPMorgan Chase Bank and a member of FDIC. Subject to credit approval. Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnon. And me, William Durinpool.

And I'm delighted to say that we are still in the company of Frederick Lugerval, who is the author of Embers of War, The Fall of an Empire. The fabulous Frederick. We love him. The Making of America's Vietnam. You are a mesmerizing speaker, and we're really grateful that you are spending the time with us because we're learning so much. It also just knits together. You know, Vietnam still is part of our lives so much. There's so much on the television. There's so many movies. There's so many fantastic books and classic works of Vietnam.

of reportage and so on. And yet it's a sort of scattergun. It's a pointillist thing. And to just hear it all with a clear chronology, with the politics, with the hindsight, it's just revelatory. 100% agree. And on the last episode, we left you with this image of a man in Buddhist robes burning in the city of Saigon. And just for those that may be the younger audience,

folk who don't know that image, just describe it to us, Frederick, just so we have... He's completely stationary in a lotus position. He's cross-legged, isn't he? He's just sitting. Yeah, he's just sitting there and he has tipped off and his associates have tipped off news organizations that something is going to happen in the square. Be there.

And so they show up and they are ready for this. And nobody quite knows what's going to happen. And then he lights himself. Paws kerosene over his head. Yeah, in effect. And this is captured by these astonished photographers, these newsmen. And given their changing technology, within a day or two, it's in newspapers quite literally around the world.

This orange-robed monk, haloed in fire, sitting in a meditative position. And uttering not one cry. Not one cry of pain. Now that causes shockwaves around the world. In diplomatic circles, there is this, as you beautifully explained to us, there is a scurrying around of what are we going to do about this image? It is so damaging. But then there is a shot that is fired that changes everything.

And it's not the only one that we're going to be discussing. You sort of left us in the last episode with America's support of Zem saying Eisenhower gave a billion dollars to support him. JFK feels beholden to support him too and is trying to work out the best way of doing it. And they come

then to the realization that this man is intransigent. He won't do the things that are needed to keep hold of this territory. He's too draconian. He is ruling with an iron fist. He is losing the hearts and minds. So they start talking in those Washington circles about a coup. How far do those talks go? Well, those talks will ultimately end up in John F. Kennedy, in effect, giving a green light to the coup plotters who are dissident generals in South Vietnam.

Do we have the smoking gun there? When you go to the Kennedy archive, is there a letter or? You don't have a smoking gun indicating, you know, John F. Kennedy saying, okay, let's go. That does not exist. And I'd be surprised if we get any such thing. But I think you have the next best thing because it becomes clear through the evidence that we do have.

that these dissident generals have gotten approval from Washington, which means from Kennedy, to do this. But as Anita's pointed out, for several months before this, there is a debate in Washington. Lyndon Johnson, who's the vice president, is not in favor of a coup against Xi'an.

we got to work with this guy. He's the best we've got. He's been in power for a long time. I think we can still do this. And there are others who are saying it's never going to work. And by the way, it's not just Diem, it's his very influential brother, New. And so New is more and more, at least according to American assessments, New is more and more

He is responsible for some of these repressions against Buddhists and for some of the failures to implement land reform, etc. The war effort, meanwhile, is going worse and worse. The Viet Cong, as they're coming to be called, the insurgency, etc.

is gaining more and more territory. Something's got to happen. And just for clarity, are they losing the countryside? Is it now an urban regime and the countryside has gone over to the communists? More and more, it's an urban regime. At least, let's say, you would not travel to many parts of the countryside after sundown. Only a fool would do that. Certainly, you wouldn't do it if you're not part of a convoy. And so more and more,

this government is under siege. And the reason for this is that the peasants have a lot to gain through revolution. They're going to get more land. They're going to get the land reform that's not going on from the old colonial land holdings. That's right. They at least believe that they're going to get genuine land reform.

I think it would be a mistake to say that most people in the countryside are committed communists. In fact, I think there are probably many of them quite apolitical. So it's not that they have a kind of ideological attachment necessarily to the revolution, but they think more in practical terms that we're more likely to get something

from the insurgents than we are from the government. And you also touched on another thing in the last episode that I'd never really clocked before, that the old regime is specifically Catholic. What percentage of the people of Vietnam were practicing Buddhists at this point? Best estimate is that somewhere on the order of 85 to 90% are Buddhists. So of course, they're going to regard the Catholic regime as a quislings. They are. They're going to do that. And of course, they're also going to say that this foreign power

The Americans are more and more directing things. We fought the French. We won against the French. Now what is this through the back door? So he greenlights some kind of action against the French.

against Diem. Does he necessarily know it's going to end up in an assassination, not just of Diem, but also the brother that you just mentioned knew as well? Yeah, so on November 1st, this coup happens. On November 2nd, the two brothers are brutally murdered in the back of an armored personnel carrier. What happens? I mean, they're kidnapped from the palace and stuffed into an armored personnel character? Yes, they are. And by the way, Diem, this speaks of his...

maybe not his wisdom, but it speaks to his courage. Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., who's the American ambassador, says to Diem, "I can guarantee you safe transport out of Vietnam, you and your family." And Diem turns him down. Diem says, "I'm going to restore order." So he passes on an opportunity to save his own life. They are killed.

And on the 4th of November, Kennedy dictates, as he sometimes did, probably for the purpose of his memoirs that he planned to write, but he dictates in the Oval Office an extraordinary message that I play for my students that is available on the web. Anybody can listen to this. But he talks about what's just happened in Saigon. He says, we have to accept responsibility for this.

You can tell that he's pained. I don't think he's putting this on. I think he is surprised by the fact that the brothers were actually assassinated. You could say that that's naive on JFK's part. He should have known that these are ruthless people. Of course, they're going to kill Diem and Nhu. By all accounts, I think he's shocked by this. He knows it's a fellow Catholic.

I think he understands that this has huge implications. Of course, those of us who listen to the tape, and I say this to my students, we know that three weeks later or less than three weeks later, he himself is going to be killed. Well, the second shot, if we count the assassination of both brothers as the first, the second shot that shakes the world, 22nd of November, 1963. Can we do the thought experiment thing? Because, I mean, had he stayed, had

Had he survived for longer, had he had that kind of pained epiphany while likening himself to, oh, I don't know, won't someone rid me of this troublesome priest? No, that's not what I meant. You know, had he been allowed to carry on? Would we have a very different situation in Vietnam? I think we would have. I've written about this most recently in the companion volume to Ken Burns' documentary film series on the war.

What, incidentally, a great film series. We should immediately recommend that to anyone listening in here. Yes, indeed. Along with your book, to look at the documentary of Ken Burns with that extraordinary archival footage. The footage, the music that is part of that series is amazing. How many parts is it?

I think it's maybe 10 or 11. I was a consultant on that series, so I should have an exact answer to your question. Of course you were. But there was a companion volume. There is a companion volume, which it's a history written by Jeff Ward, but it also has some freestanding essays. And mine is on this question, what would a surviving Kennedy have done? What I conclude is

is though that we can never know, of course, because it's a counterfactual. It's a resistant to conclusive answer. I suggest that the best answer, in my view, is that a surviving Kennedy would not have Americanized the war in the way that Lyndon Johnson did.

Well, look, you've introduced him now. Let's talk about him. Lyndon B. Johnson, the Democrat from rural Texas. I mean, people often contrast him, especially in the movies, where you have the polished, young and youthful and handsome exterior of a JFK to somebody who is rough, rough-talking, curt, disliked by so many people around him because he's downright rude. What was the real Lyndon B. Johnson all about?

I think the real Lyndon Johnson was a serious politician. He was a very intelligent man. He was not, to go to the subject at hand, I don't think he was relishing the prospect of war in Indochina. He was not a warmonger, but he was very conventional in his foreign policy views. He bought into the notion of a bipolar world.

in which the United States is combating godless communists, and it's got to do its part. He had a more unvarnished, I think, assessment of global politics than John F. Kennedy did. Wasn't able to see the grays or wasn't willing to see them in the same way that his predecessor was. And so I think he comes in on this terrible day, November 22nd, 1963, after the assassination in Dallas. He comes into the office

of the president and makes very clear in those key early days, I will not be the president who lost South Vietnam. Says to his aides, and I quote more or less exactly, "I want you to wake up each day and ask yourself, what can I do for South Vietnam today?" I think that's a really important change in the Oval Office, in the assessments, and I think it's gonna guide what happens in a very critical year,

1964, I think, is all important. And now it's Lyndon Johnson making the decisions, not Jack Kennedy. And what do those two assassinations do to the people of South Vietnam? Because one supposes you have two leaders taken out in such a brutal fashion.

there will be fear and turmoil in its wake. I'm imagining that most people didn't reflect sort of on the two killings in an in-depth way, but the effect, I think they understand, is important. Maybe especially in their case, the passing of Ziem.

Now you're going to have a new government. Will this one be more committed to our welfare, committed to real land reform, more committed to doing something here to combat this insurgency? There's that question. And I think among the more literate parts of the population, what does it mean that Washington now has a new leader? What is this new president all about? And what does that mean for our future? I mean, this war, as we know, is going to roll on and on and on for many more years.

Do you think it was effectively lost by this point? Do you think there's anything anyone could have done at this point to have stopped the North winning the Vietnam War? Yeah, I think it's possible. Certainly in hindsight, but more importantly, I think it's possible in the context of the time to imagine policy decisions made, let's say, beginning at the start of 1964, since that's where we are, that would have resulted in a kind of long-term Korea-type solution.

Meaning South Vietnam survives, like South Korea, into the indefinite future. I can imagine that scenario. Obviously, I've thought a lot about this. I think for me, the better answer is that it's possible but unlikely that you have South Vietnam surviving and thriving, not just in the short term, but medium term and indeed long term.

Who's buzzing in Lyndon Johnson's ear telling him, you know, it's all or nothing to play for? In a very important sense, nobody is. What I mean by that is I think that Lyndon Johnson has the conviction that he cannot be, certainly before his election, because let's remember, he hasn't been elected in his own right. He knows that in November of 1964, he will get a chance to emerge from under John F. Kennedy's shadow in his own right,

Until that moment, until I'm reelected, ideally in a landslide, I'm not going to do anything here that risks either losing South Vietnam or massively escalates in South Vietnam. He wants to keep the war sort of on the back burner through 1964. I don't think he needs to hear from anybody. I think he's hearing from Senate Democratic leaders. This is quite interesting.

That is to say the leadership in his own party is already expressing skepticism about any large scale effort to save South Vietnam. He's hearing from allied leaders, including the French, including the British, in so many words, be very careful about Americanizing this conflict. So he's already getting skepticism, which I think is so interesting.

But Johnson, I think, is determined to prevail. He's got to wait to make any decisions until after the election. And one final thing I'll say here is that I think, as I try to demonstrate in Choosing War, is that even in the summer of 1964, that is to say before the election,

He is laying plans to Americanize the conflict. So if anything, he's making a decision even now to make this a large-scale war even before the election. And when you say large-scale, what is the sort of scale of the Americanization we're talking? Well, one possibility in terms of what the Americanization will look like is that it's air power only. That is to say, you're going to use American air power, but the ARVN, the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, will still be the only fighting force on the ground.

Johnson is already saying air power is not going to be enough. We're going to need boots on the ground. And so I think from...

the fall of '64. And then if we look into those critical early weeks after the election, when he does win a landslide victory against Barry Goldwater. In those early weeks, there is a sense that this is going to have to be a two-phase escalation, that it's going to involve air power in the first instance, and then US ground forces, which Kennedy, throughout his term in office,

has resisted. Kennedy has always said, we're not going to have American ground troops. That's a very important distinction between the two. Because, I mean, again, let's not forget, this is not long after the end of the Second World War. People are tired of boots on ground that is foreign and far away. One person we haven't talked about is Ho Chi Minh. So, I mean, the assassination of his arch rivals, is that going to have put more lead in his pencil? Does he now think, okay, the path is now clear? How does he change his behavior?

I think the North Vietnamese leaders, including Ho, react to the killing of Diem and Nhu, the Austrian killing of these two, with misgivings. Interesting. Interesting. On the one hand, this should make it better for us. There's more instability. Maybe now we can complete the reunification of the country under our control.

I think there's also whispering in their ear a voice that says, au contraire, the new South Vietnamese government might be more responsive, might function better. And it's also possible that the Americans will now say, since we caused this coup, our flag is committed to Saigon in a way it was not before. Ergo, we are going to commit to the United States to this effort. So it's a really good question. But I think the response in Hanoi is mixed.

But Ho Chi Minh rolls his dice. You have a Viet Cong attack on the U.S. base at Pleiku. Is that the right pronunciation? That's right. In 1965 in February. Tell us about that. So what's happened here is that while Washington is deciding what to do under the LBJ, both before the election and after, in Hanoi, there's intensive discussions about what to do.

And historians disagree to some extent on what Hanoi is doing because the evidence is still fragmentary. We don't have access of the type that we would like to the full Vietnamese archival record, Politburo and so forth. But there's no question that Hanoi is also deciding to increase its own involvement in the South. So both sides are now ramping up their effort.

here in the early weeks of 1965. This Pleiku attack happens. There's uncertainty about whether this was a local commander who decided to do this, or was he directed to launch this attack from Hanoi? That's a very important question. We don't have a good answer to this. But there are massive casualties. Yes. And the point is that it cements... I don't want to make too much of this because I think LBJ had actually already decided to Americanize the war.

But this cements that decision. It gets attention in the United States. What are you going to do, Mr. President? Are you going to stand by and let this happen? No, you cannot do this. And so it furthers his already strong inclination to take these additional very fateful steps. And he does. And so in the spring and summer of 1965, this becomes a truly American war.

war. With a truly American sounding first operation, Operation Rolling Thunder. And JFK had thought about this and he described like any short, sharp blitzkrieg of this sort. He said it would be like alcohol, that the effects would wear off quickly. There would be a demand, a thirst for more, and the whole world would be left with an atrocious hangover. And that is indeed what happens. It is indeed. And Rolling Thunder, as you say, which commences in the

in March of 1965. Not to be confused with the Bob Dylan tour of the same name. No, no. I don't think many of us were doing that. Yeah, those two things are definitely separate. Yeah. But it becomes the Rolling Thunder, as you say, is indeed launched in March of 1965. What's fascinating about American decision-making in this period, if I may say, is that behind closed doors, way more than I expected when I started my research,

Behind closed doors, there is gloom. There is realism. There are misgivings about what's to happen. I had expected that when it started, Americans being Americans were to be filled with hubris. Nobody's going to be able to stop our military firepower from succeeding. How are these pajama-clad guerrillas possibly going to stop us? I had expected confidence on the part of U.S. commanders. Some of them had it.

But certainly most of the civilians, Johnson himself, Robert McNamara, who's the Secretary of Defense, McGeorge Bundy, National Security Advisor, the top leadership in Congress, there is a gloomy realism here about what lies ahead. And even now, think about this, even now, Lyndon Johnson tells his wife, Lady Bird, I'm trapped on Vietnam.

Whichever way I go, I'm going to lose. He understands right at the beginning that this is going to be his downfall. And this is 1965. You've got 10 more years to roll, but already- I was just thinking sort of slow motion walking through your own ruin and knowing that you're slow motion walking through your own ruin.

So how do things escalate after Operation Rolling Thunder begins? So Rolling Thunder, which is the sustained aerial campaign, begins here in March. And the first Marines splash ashore at Da Nang, also in early March 1965. And then in the weeks to come,

More and more, the new American military commander, William Westmoreland, asks for more troops. He gets them. So by the end of 65, you have 180,000 American troops on the ground and you have this sustained warfare. And is it already the conflict we know from the movies? Is it the Palm, Agent Orange, and all that stuff? All that stuff is here. We should also note...

That Hanoi is escalating itself in response to the US. Some historians say that it was the North Vietnamese who escalated first and the Americans responding to them. I have a somewhat different view on this, but the point is that both sides, there is this escalatory ladder that you see and it starts here and it just continues. There's an interesting thing though, too, in the fact that you've got this escalating war overseas. And by the way, we haven't mentioned that there is now a military government that's

that is running South Vietnam. They are generals. They are men in uniform with guns who are also battle-hungry at this point. But for LBJ, who has always been characterized as someone who was always more interested in domestic policy than he was on overseas policy,

It is getting on his bloody nerves that every day you've got Cronkite talking about what's going on in Vietnam. You've got, you know, not Robin Williams, but similar, piping out either dissent of soldiers or the kind of difficulties faced by American soldiers on the ground. You've got blanket coverage and he wants that.

to turn. He wants that to stop, doesn't he, LBJ? Because it's getting, apart from anything else, in the way of his domestic agenda. He can't talk about the things he wants to do in America because everything is all about Vietnam, Vietnam, Vietnam. I mean, there's so many ironies here because in 65...

One of the reasons he Americanizes the war is because he thinks that in order to pass his great society legislation, as he put it, the woman I really love rather than the bitch of a war in Southeast Asia, if I'm going to be able to pass that legislation, I need to have everybody in Congress or at least the vast majority of people on Congress with me. And if I'm going to do that, I need to stand firm in South Vietnam. I think he was mistaken in that view, by the way, but I think he held that view. So it's ironic that

that he thinks that in order to have, to implement the Great Society, this amazing set of domestic legislation, I need to stand firm. So as you're suggesting, Anita, as the war goes on, as we get into 66 and 67, that very domestic legacy, those programs are increasingly threatened.

precisely because of the scale of this military conflict. You know, it always shocks me how intelligence people can often think such stupid things. That somebody could suppose in a democracy with a free press that you could just say nothing to see here and everyone would stop looking. I'm often astonished by the simplicity of thought from people in complex societies

To put a particular twist on this, I am astonished how often, and it connects with your point, Anita, how often leaders paint themselves into a corner. So they will say time and time again, South Vietnam is critical to our security. It's critical to American security. It's critical to Western security.

That makes it hard to back away if at some point you decide, well, maybe it's not critical. Moreover, the other thing you say time and time again publicly, if you're Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, is there's light at the end of the tunnel. We're about to turn the corner. Things are looking better.

And again, it becomes very hard to back away from this if you have said this publicly time and again, because Republicans will- They'll hold you to it. Exactly. Didn't you tell us last month that this was critical? I put to you, sir, that you said on the 4th of March. And, you know, the thing is, people don't learn. Again, again, I'll bang on about this. They'll be home by Christmas. You know, the kind of things that were uttered during world wars, which were then completely ripped into this blood-soaked confetti.

Why doesn't anybody learn ever from this? Anyway, sorry, that's my rant over. On you go. What I would love to know, Frederick, is what's going on in the North at the same time. Is it a society entirely focused on fighting the war in the South? We always view this from the kind of American position, taking the blows. But what's it look like in the North looking South? I mean, there's just really good scholarship coming out by historians utilizing the sources that are available, which are still incomplete.

But nevertheless, we're learning so much about life both in South Vietnam and in North Vietnam. And I do think we need to understand this struggle from a Vietnamese perspective.

And so some of this more recent scholarship is hugely important. What we're learning is that life was really rough in North Vietnam for ordinary people. Have you got the sort of collectivization you get under the Khmer Rouge? Are people starving? What sort of thing is going on? I'm not sure that there is mass starvation. I haven't seen evidence of that effect, but real political repression that goes on. So even if we don't include the effects of American bombing,

which becomes more and more pronounced over time and causes real hardships, needless to say. The actions of the government itself is responsible for deep, I think, disaffection in North Vietnam. I think the North Vietnamese, we don't often think about this, but the North Vietnamese military suffered its own morale problems, much more so than we used to believe. We never hear about that. Tell us how you know that. That's so interesting. We've learned from memoir literature. We've learned from interviews, some of them written

of a fairly recent vintage where people feel maybe still somewhat reluctant to speak out, but they make clear that this was difficult. Various sources, I think we can now say that life was tough for a lot of people in the North as it was for Southerners. We're so familiar with that sort of killing fields world of commie villages, collectivization, thousands of peasants being marched out under a sort of communist banner to work in the rice fields together.

How much of that is true in North Vietnam? Have they completely changed the social structure or is life continuing as before, but just with different leaders in the capital? I think there are historians who will be able to speak to this in greater knowledge than I can, who have done some of this research. I think some of what you've just described, William,

is in fact, it can be transferred to North Vietnam. But there are also parts of North Vietnam where life, I think, has gone on, goes on much in the way that it did before and probably has gone on for generations. It really, my sense is, it really depends on where you are in the North and probably which phase of the war we're talking about. So if we start in '65 and then we end with the Paris Peace Accords in '73 or even the so-called fall of Saigon in '75,

Throughout that phase, we'll have a different reality on the ground. Well, I mean, from this initial engagement of we'll send B-52s in and we'll just smother the place in bombs to the inevitable, we'll send boots on the ground, things don't go well.

And there is a national security memo that says in the United States that three-fourths of the battles are the enemy's choice of time, place, and duration. And so it is now becoming actually a scramble for honor and survival for the United States in Vietnam. And you have this terrible situation, which you talk about in the book, where the body count becomes metric. And the idea of an American victory, the parameters of that change.

change substantially. Just tell us a bit more about that. Yeah, I mean, one of the things that's so fascinating about this is the degree to which, as Bernard famously put it, the Americans are dreaming different dreams from the French, but walking in the same footsteps. Because what you just quoted from that memo could be seen, can be seen in any number of French memos.

French documentation where they say the enemy is choosing where to fight, where he wants to engage, and where he doesn't want to engage. And so on so many aspects of this story that the Americans could have learned from the French experience chose not to, which is something we can discuss. But the point is that with each passing month,

though there are successes. We should note that the introduction of American ground forces and the American air power does stave off the possibility of a South Vietnamese defeat. These troops and the air power do make a difference. It's not as though they were inconsequential. They mattered and they helped in that regard. Nevertheless, with each passing month, the scale of the challenge that the Americans are confronting is not only similar to what the French were confronting,

but one that thoughtful people are wondering, even with our immense firepower, which far exceeds what the French could muster, can we actually do this? And more and more, some of them are coming to the realization we probably can't. It's a good place to take a break. Join us after the break when we try to find out what that dawning realization does to international politics and does to the people of both North and South Vietnam.

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Welcome back. We often tend to look at Vietnam because of the movies, because of the documentaries, because of the television footage from the American perspective. But Frederick, give us an idea of what it's like to be on the receiving end of these B-52s and their enormous payloads.

Well, I guess I should be grateful for the fact that I haven't experienced this up close, and so I don't have that sort of an answer to your question, but it's clear the scale of this we can speak to. We're talking about from 1962 in very limited form.

to 1973, we're talking about 8 million tons of bombs. Let me say that again. 8 million tons of bombs dropped by, especially the United States, to some extent, a limited degree by the South Vietnamese Air Force, but by the United States on South Vietnam, North Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. And so we should note here, in passing at least, that Laotians and Cambodians

especially later in the story under Nixon, are themselves suffering under this aerial onslaught that goes on 24 hours of the day, seven days a week, without interruption. And what are the scale of the casualties? How many people are dying under these bombs? That's a very good question, and that's hard to grapple with. I mean, ultimately, the figures that we have for Vietnamese deaths

deaths are somewhere between two and four million. Out of a population of? In this period, I want to say 25 to 30. So very high, very, very high proportion. Very high. And a majority of those who are killed are civilians. Was that a sixth of the population or something like that? Yeah, I would say that's a good estimate. I think that the...

The numbers lose a certain meaning for us when we get up to that figure, don't they? I mean, it's just, it becomes this number that is hard to grapple with. Whereas when we say that somewhere on the order of 58,200 Americans would perish, somehow that one is easier for me to get my head around. We've seen the memorial in Washington with all the names, exactly. The point is that the Vietnamese are dying in very large numbers. And you mentioned briefly, just as an aside there, Laos and Cambodia.

What's happening there yet? We haven't yet got the whole sideshow thing of the Americans bombing Cambodia yet, have we? No. I mean, the main thing that's happening in Cambodia and Laos, I guess, or what causes them to be more and more drawn into the struggle is that the North Vietnamese are

are using what comes to be called the Ho Chi Minh Trail, which is really hundreds of trails, so it's a misnomer. But the Ho Chi Minh Trail is being used through Laos and Cambodia into South Vietnam to supply, to get both men and materiel into the South. And just for clarity's sake, these are two independent countries now. The French are out of both. The French are out of both countries.

and they are independent countries being increasingly drawn into the struggle. And of course, the North Vietnamese are seeking to be more and more present in both countries. There's just, in a sense, a struggle for both, and that'll become more pronounced as we proceed. But from an early point, Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defense, is saying to his associates, the so-called whiz kids,

a group of very intelligent, in all cases, I think, men that are surrounding him. McNamara is saying, "How do we interdict? How do we stop the supplies from flowing down the Ho Chi Minh Trail into the South?" Because he understands, I think correctly, that this is a key part of the struggle, that this is what's different about Vietnam as compared to Korea.

In Korea, you don't have this problem. You've got the sea. We'll stop it. Blockade the water. That's right. And so McNamara never quite figures this out. They try all kinds of different means to disrupt the trail. With some success, it should be noted. Officially, both the government of Cambodia and the government of Laos are friendly to the Americans. Officially, that's a key word. It's unofficially, I think it's a more mixed picture.

and they don't like the fact, understandably, that more and more their country is being drawn into this. Also, with the kind of ordinance that you've described, falling out of the heavens, bombs are not discriminant. They don't find men of fighting age. They will kill women and children. They also won't necessarily kill Vietnamese who are against you. They might even be on your side. At some point, you have this rule of thumb that goes out. If it's dead,

and it's Vietnamese, it's Viet Cong. I mean, when does that happen? And at that point, can you say, actually, you know what, you've lost the whole country when you think that way about people, that's it for you? Yeah, I think that happens from an early point, that junior American commanders who are leading these troops in the field are basically reaching that conclusion. And I don't want to belabor the point, but I do want to say that French commanders reached that same point.

where they couldn't tell friend from foe. How do you distinguish between people? Better not to try, or we're not going to try here because I have my own men to think about. The problem, of course, is that when you level a village, kill many of the people within that village, what are those surviving inhabitants going to do? Well, in at least some numbers,

they're going to join the insurgency because you are now responsible for my mother, my sister, my brother being killed. And so the French never could figure out what they would call pacification. The Americans could never quite figure out how counterinsurgency, which supposedly had an emphasis on winning hearts and minds, that is to say non-military measures, how you could square that objective with pacification.

enhancing security, which was a military endeavor. They never could quite figure that out. And again, just for clarity's sake, in the South,

Have you lost great areas of the country completely? Are the whole Viet Cong regiments owning swathes of territory, or are they hiding in the jungle? Is it cat and mouse still? What's the sort of situation? 1968, say. Oh, in 68, there's no question that there are large swaths of the South that are enemy-held territories.

and that nobody goes into either day or night, convoy or no. Just to pick one example, you stay out of the extreme south. Right. Because that is Viet Cong held, and there's not even a thought of trying to recapture that until we solidify the control elsewhere. Is there a sense of a frontier? Is there an area beyond which Americans don't go? Is it shrinking? It's certainly shrinking. One of the acute questions is,

for Lyndon Johnson in his final year or so in office, and then for the Nixon administration that succeeds him, is how to expand this perimeter, how to turn things around on the ground, which they under Nixon, to some extent, succeed in doing.

But there's no question that it's a shrinking amount of territory in the South that is controlled by the Arvin and the United States. Before we get to Nixon, before we even talk about Nixon, let's just talk about LBJ and what happens to him as a result of this. So, I mean, you know, you have got...

As we've said, journalists and cameras and writers and authors who are sending back descriptions and images and moving pictures of the kind of destruction that's going on. As a result, you've got a mass anti-war movement among particularly the students who are objecting to their friends, you know, who are being drafted into this war that is becoming more unpopular by the day.

You've got the chart on campuses and beyond. Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids have you killed today? This must be a nightmare for anybody who is trying to run a country. And it's one that is completely out of his control. I think it's exactly right. It's a nightmare for Lyndon Johnson. Not to excuse his decision making at all, but I do reflect on the fact that he felt from the start that he was trapped inside.

whichever way he went on Vietnam. And this was not a war that he wanted. And he said as much to Lady Bird, his wife. And I think about that. At the same time, I don't think this was inevitable. Lyndon Johnson had choices. And they were there at the beginning. And these are choices that are evident not only in hindsight, they were evident at the time. His own vice president, Hubert Humphrey, said to him in February of 1965, in so many words, in an amazing memo, Humphrey said, don't do this.

Do not escalate this war. If you do, you're going to divide the American people. You're going to divide the Democratic Party. You're going to, in effect, threaten your own re-election in 1968. Moreover, he said, Humphrey,

You don't need to do this because 1965, and I quote, is the year of minimum political risk for this administration. You don't have to worry about the Republicans. So he's hearing this message. He nevertheless takes the plunge, as we've been discussing. And by the time we get into 1968, the Tet Offensive, this large-scale communist attack, he is besieged.

And you've got in the wings, potentially Robert Kennedy, who might run against them for the Democratic nomination. Eugene McCarthy has already announced that he's going to do this. Meanwhile, you've got Walter Cronkite, the most trusted man in America. Cronkite is going on the evening news to say,

This is a stalemate. I see no reason to believe this is going to get any better. What are we doing here, in so many words? This is what Johnson is facing in March of 1968 as he begins to think about potentially making a hugely consequential announcement. Tell us a little about the...

The Americans going into Vietnam, again, we know how many of the young men being shipped into action are young black men, and the white kids at Harvard seem to be able to escape at this point from recruitment. How far is that true? I think it's substantially true that because of the student deferments and because of other means that the privileged had to escape service, certainly escape combat service,

That's the makeup of the American military force. That is to say, it is working class. There is a larger percentage of African Americans relative to the size of the population than there should be. The Pentagon becomes aware of this. And so over time, you see the share of Black Americans in fighting positions go down until it's roughly equal to their percentage of the population. But that's not true early on.

And the Harvard kids and the Yale kids are, by and large, able to avoid service. If you go into Memorial Church at Harvard, my institution, and you see all the names for World War I Americans who perished, and then a huge number of Harvard students who perished in World War II, and then you see how much smaller it gets, and a very small number for Harvard students.

I'm sorry for the Vietnam War. And this is about to be the moment that Jimi Hendrix arrives in. Yeah, but also Martin Luther King, who comes out against LBJ, you know, who once they were simpatico, and now he's like, you know, this is the madness of Vietnam. You know, I want nothing to do with this. Also, we should mention, apart from the racial disparity, this is also a meat mill or meat grinder that is devouring the very, very young. We all know in this country, and perhaps you're familiar with it, well, there was a very huge

pop hit in the 1980s by Paul Hardcastle, who said, you know, the average age of a combat soldier in World War II is 21. In Vietnam, it was 19, no, no, no, no, 19, 19,

But it is, I mean, the fact that this is a country that seems to be chewing on its own youth is also potent, isn't it? It is. And if you look at the documentaries of the war, there's the Ken Burns documentary that we discussed. There's also an older one called Vietnam, a Television History, which I think is marvelous from 1983. And you see the interviews with these American servicemen later, obviously, but you see them recall why they went.

You know, my father had fought in World War II and my brother had been in Korea. It was my turn. And I answered the call. And then you reflect upon the fact, which they could not have known, these 19-year-olds, these 20-year-olds. You reflect on the fact that in Washington, with the doors closed, Johnson is saying, I'm not sure we can win this war. He says it's in 1964, a year before the escalation. Johnson says, what is Vietnam worth to me?

What's it worth to this country? In other words, while these young men are answering the call to service, their very leaders are questioning whether the cause is even worthwhile, whether the war is necessary and whether it's winnable. It's during the infamous Tet Offensive that you've got this US general who delivers a line that, I mean, a lot of people will know, anybody who reads anything or watches anything about Vietnam. It became necessary to destroy the town in order to save it.

How many weeks did the Tet Offensive go on for? Yeah, tell us about the Tet Offensive. Give us a clear picture of that. Yeah, so in 67 in Hanoi, there's a vociferous debate about how to change this stalemate. We can keep sending troops into the meat grinder. The Americans can do the same. But America is a very powerful country. Can we really go on indefinitely doing this?

And there is a division in the Politburo between those like Poe who want to take a more moderate course

avoid further escalation. Ho is the more moderate one, really? Oh yeah, he's the more moderate one and has been for some years. And now the key figure in Hanoi, which is no longer Ho, but it's Le Xuan. Well, I want to know more about Le Xuan. Who is he? What's his backstory? Le Xuan is a totally extraordinary character in the story. And we don't know all that much about him. He's an elusive figure, but I think highly important. And we know that he hailed from central Vietnam.

that he was a founding member of the Indochinese Communist Party. So he was there early on and then was imprisoned by the French really for the duration of World War II. And it's after that point that he slowly but surely ascends in the leadership. He basically runs the revolution in the South after the French defeat.

becomes General Secretary of the Party in 1960. Is he from the south, or where's his home? He's from Kuang-Tri. He's from the central part of the country, not far from the old imperial capital of Hue.

but as a committed revolutionary. And certainly by the time we get into the mid-60s, it's fair to say that he is the principal day-to-day decision maker in Hanoi. It's funny because Ho Chi Minh is such a dominant figure in our imagination. Well, it's true. And Ho's

health is beginning to fail by the time we get into the American War. How old is he? He's going to be ultimately about 78 or 79. So yeah. And Lezwan could never quite match the charisma of Ho. He never had that avuncular kind of charm that Ho could exhibit. But in terms of his importance to the story, he's immense. 20 years younger? He's about 20 years younger, 17 or 18 years younger. I think he was born in 1908.

So that makes them a generation basically younger than her. So you're passing from, in Indian terms, the sort of Gandhian and Naruvian generation down to a sort of not quite Mrs. Gandhi generation. Yeah, I think that's a fair comparison. I do think that some...

Some people exaggerate the degree to which Lei Zeng even in 59 and 60 had become supreme. I think Ho Chi Minh into the mid-60s is still ultimately the most important official, but we do need to reckon with Lei Zeng as well. The impact of Ho Chi Minh can't be underestimated, especially in the American psyche. Again, you know, looking at propaganda posters of the time.

I mean, I don't even know where Mifflin is, but it must be a small town in America somewhere. But there is this poster saying, "Ho, ho, ho chi minh, the NLF is going to win when Saigon falls, gather in Mifflin for a rally." So, I mean, there is that kind of presumption. Mifflin is invested too, you know? There totally is. And I think about the following sometimes, that here he is in 1919 at Versailles, this unknown figure.

He rents a morning coat so that he can look presentable. And he tries desperately to get in to see the American president at Versailles, Woodrow Wilson. And of course, it fails. You can just sort of picture him knocking on the window or whatever. But ultimately, this guy will become far more recognizable than Woodrow Wilson, known to far more people than Woodrow Wilson. But nobody knew that in 1919. Another story that we haven't done, which is at

this moment playing out at an important generational divide too, are the Morrisons. Jim Morrison of the Doors, his father is the admiral at the beginning of the Vietnam War in the Gulf of Tonkin. And by the time we're now talking in 1968, Jim Morrison is avoiding the draft in California. Maybe that story has been written up, but if it hasn't been, that is a great... It's a great generational divide, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah.

But by the time we get into this period, it is Le Xuan and his associates who are the principal decision makers. They make this decision to launch a major offensive in the South in the hopes that it'll spur an uprising among South Vietnamese.

that the South Vietnamese populace will say, "We're going to rise up against the government." And this is the Tet Offensive that we read about? Yes. So how does it begin? Tet is a holiday, isn't it? It's a holiday, the Vietnamese New Year, and it begins right at the end of January 1968. So it's like the Christmas Offensive? Yes, we could call it something similar to this. And what it is, it's a series of attacks throughout South Vietnam

Some are quite successful in the early going, some are not. The uprising does not happen, and the Americans, along with the South Vietnamese, are able to beat back the offensive, including in Saigon. Not before extraordinary images are broadcast around the world of the American embassy under siege.

and it looks like the thing is about to fall because the enemy has penetrated the embassy compound, etc. So an image is formed, which I think is important in the American popular consciousness,

that it's a further sign that we're losing this thing. This is as early as 1968, and the thing will roll on to 1975, but already the embassy's in the sights of the Viet Cong. Even though the offensive is thwarted, and even though you could say that militarily the Tet Offensive is a defeat for Hanoi, which I think it was, politically,

I'm not so sure. Politically, in terms of deepening American disaffection with the war, you could say that the offensive succeeded and that people like Walter Cronkite, who traveled to South Vietnam to report on this, come back with this very sober view, which he announced on the CBS broadcast. Other journalists did the same. More and more lawmakers

both senators and House members, are singing from the same hymnal. You write in your book that in February 1968, less than one-third of Americans believe that they're making progress in Vietnam. And also, at the same time, of course, LBJ's approval ratings are plummeting.

All of this leads to a deep exhaustion, depression, misery in LBJ who is putting his head around into the situation room, tell me news, tell me the latest, hoping that something good is going to come out of this. He's having dreams, he confesses, about Vietnam. One in which he talks about a stampede of cattle coming towards him and he can't move, he's rooted to the spot. It's really interesting. I'll just read a little extract of that just to give you the psyche of the man because he thinks it's so valuable. I

I felt I was being chased on all sides by a giant stampede. Vietnam, the inflationary economy, rioting blacks, demonstrating students, marching welfare mothers, squawking professors, that'd be you, and hysterical reporters, that

That would be me. This is an untenable situation for him. Just talk us through the last few days of LBJ and then we'll draw this to a conclusion. But we will continue with the Vietnam story in a third episode of Empire. But how does it all sort of come, not with a bang, but with a whimper to an end for LBJ? I mean, it's just cinematic, isn't it? He gives this speech on March 31st, 1968, in which he had two versions.

So even close aides didn't know which version he would give. It's like Boris Johnson and Brexit. Yes, like Boris Johnson and Brexit. One of the versions included the announcement that he was not going to seek re-election, and the other one did not. So right to the end, Johnson himself was torn, but he ultimately gives this speech to the American people in which he says, I do not seek, and I shall not accept, or I will not accept,

the nomination of my party for another term as your president. Boom. And I just imagine Americans on their living room couches

turning to each other and saying, did he just say what I think he just said? And so this is, I think, the big difference between his announcement and Joe Biden's. I think the whole world was expecting some version of Biden's announcement. But with Johnson, I think this was not something that even close aides recommended. He dropped out. What's also interesting, though, is that in the subsequent weeks, I think he changed his mind.

He wanted, I think, to be drafted at the convention. For people to beg him, please stay, Lyndon, please stay. Yeah, I think he changed his mind. And that's one reason why he's reluctant to throw his support to Hubert Humphrey, who becomes, after RFK's assassination, I think even had Kennedy not been assassinated, I think Humphrey was going to be the nominee. But Johnson is reluctant, I think, to support

Humphrey. One reason why I think Johnson was reluctant to support Humphrey is that some part of him preferred Nixon. Some part of LBJ wanted Nixon to succeed him. Why? Because Nixon would be more likely.

to continue the Vietnam commitment, to make sure the thing turned out okay in the end, which would, of course, be a way of vindicating his own policies. A good place to end it. Join us again when we conclude this three-part series on Vietnam. Frederick, thank you so much. Frederick Langevaal will be with us again. Till the next time we meet, it's goodbye from me, Anita Arnon. And goodbye from me, William de Rimpel. Thank you.