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00:00Vietnam. After World War II, France, then America, become mired in the century's longest war.
00:13The pivotal event is one of the bloodiest and most historic battles of the 20th century.
00:18Diem Vien Phu.
00:30The End
00:39The End
00:44The End
00:49After the ruin of World War II, the European powers seek to regain their former colonies.
01:17Indochina is the most prized French possession, comprising Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam.
01:28But the war in Asia continues. Indochina is still occupied by the Japanese, and France faces another obstacle. Its ally America opposes colonialism.
01:42France had previously ruled Vietnam for 80 years, exploiting the rubber and rice economy and the cheap labor.
01:52Vietnam's peasants had repeatedly rebelled. Colonial conditions are described by Hanoi diplomat Ha Van Lau.
02:00Like all the young Vietnamese at that time, under the domination of the French colonialists, we felt that our liberty was gone.
02:14We felt that we were no longer independent. In colonialist days, from a political point of view, the word patriot was a synonym for criminal.
02:30And patriots were treated as such. That is to say, prison. There were more prisons than schools. Independence and liberty were empty words.
02:46One punishment for insurrection, public execution.
02:54But the Vietnamese nationalist movement grows under the charismatic leadership of Ho Chi Minh.
03:01Ho recognizes that Japan's impending defeat is a once in a lifetime opportunity to end colonialism.
03:08He sees America as his best means of achieving independence.
03:15After 32 years in exile, he returns to organized resistance.
03:22Born in central Vietnam, Ho is now 54.
03:26Both of his parents had been active nationalists.
03:30Ho had spent his exiled youth studying the Marxist revolution.
03:33In December 1944, Ho and other guerrilla leaders form a so-called workers' party known as the Viet Minh.
03:42Its military strategist is a former history teacher called Bo Nguyen Jap.
03:48Jap and Ho offer to aid the U.S. against the Japanese.
03:52America begins its Vietnam involvement by supporting Ho.
03:57It provides small arms for behind the lines resistance.
04:00The time, April 1945, exactly 30 years before the Vietnam War would end.
04:10Maintaining a gentle image, Ho is then seen by American contacts as more nationalist than communist.
04:19Major Archimedes Patti heads the first U.S. intelligence mission in Vietnam, sent by the OSS, the CIA's predecessor.
04:26Fifty American agents helped train the guerrillas and at times fight alongside of them, recalls Patti.
04:35It was a very small operation as far as the war is concerned, but nevertheless, it is true that they did work with the Viet Minh against the Japanese.
04:45Then later, the Jap and his Viet Minh crew went out to attack several Japanese outposts with our men after they had been trained by the Americans in the use of grenade launchers and flamethrowers and rifles, machine guns, VARs and so on.
05:05In August 1945, the Japanese surrender and Ho's guerrilla forces seize power, occupying Hanoi.
05:16On September 2nd, Ho Chi Minh declares independence.
05:21The middle class and Vietnam's Catholics are apprehensive, but nationalists and communists are overjoyed.
05:29Ho becomes his country's first president.
05:32The public celebration in Hanoi's Bardeen Square is recalled by American agent Archimedes Patti.
05:45It was a very touching ceremony. I could tell from the reaction from the crowd, and the crowd was fantastic.
05:53Ho was very anxious for recognition. He actually always kept harping on the point, why don't the United States give us moral support?
06:08We don't want anything else from them. Nothing but moral support.
06:12But America steps aside. The U.S. needs its European allies in the developing struggle against communism.
06:24The French reoccupy Vietnam. Colonialism returns.
06:42With no more American help, Ho Chi Minh first advocates cooperation with the French.
06:51Their response is to make Vietnam semi-autonomous.
06:55In 1946, Ho travels to France to negotiate, but finds no real political independence.
07:02Back in Hanoi, Ho tells his compatriots the terms are unacceptable.
07:08November 1946. The war begins.
07:20There are three years of sporadic, inconclusive fighting.
07:24To the rest of the world, it is an obscure Asian conflict.
07:28But in December 1949, Mao Zedong's communist victory in China, followed by the Korean War, shocks America.
07:35The U.S. now arms the French in Indochina, and Mao provides modern weapons for the Viet Minh.
07:42Another three years pass, with Vietnam as an escalating east-west war.
07:47In 1952, the communist Viet Minh Army takes over the strategic valley of Dien Bien Phu.
07:59The valley dominates supply routes linking Vietnam, Laos, and China.
08:05The French commander, General Henri Navarre, decides to occupy Dien Bien Phu in a daring parachute assault.
08:11The purpose of Dien Bien Phu was to defend Laos, and I decided on the Dien Bien Phu entrenched camp, because with the state of my forces, which I said were inferior to those of the Viet Minh, in terms of mobile forces, the strategy of blocking the road from Laos to Dien Bien Phu was the only one which seemed to be reasonable, and I am still certain that it was the only one.
08:37November 1953. The French fight their way into Dien Bien Phu.
08:46The French air command has serious doubts. The valley is 170 miles from Hanoi. Supply planes can only just make the return trip.
08:57A French regional commander warns that Dien Bien Phu may become a battalion meat grinder.
09:14Now, having taken Dien Bien Phu, the French plan is to pursue the communists in their border sanctuaries.
09:20An immediate task is to repair the old airstrip, the only link to the outside.
09:37The French land equipment suited to an attack base. They don't envisage a fortification.
09:42The communist force, the Viet Minh, has two choices. Ignore the French action, or attack.
09:51Studying his tactical maps, the communist commander, General Jap, tells his officers,
09:57we will wipe out at all costs the whole enemy force at Dien Bien Phu.
10:02Jap is the master strategist throughout the Vietnam conflict.
10:06We had to count every bullet, but we were inspired because we never before had been able to gather such a force.
10:17We were optimistic, but there were many difficulties.
10:21When Chairman Ho gave me the leadership, we talked all night.
10:25He said to me, our forces grow stronger day by day, but we must not let the enemy destroy the strength.
10:31He asked, can you do it? I thought for a while and answered, the enemy won't be able to destroy our strength.
10:39The difficult thing will be to take the initiative.
10:43Six Viet Minh infantry divisions force march 20 miles a day.
10:48They head for a rendezvous with history across the distant mountain peaks.
10:53The French become aware that a communist ring is closing in the hills around them.
10:57General Navarre decides against pulling out, convinced his troops can hold.
11:03I decided to occupy Dien Bien Phu to set up an entrenched camp there,
11:08and if the camp was attacked, to defend it. That's all.
11:12December 1953. Half the 15,000 man French force are Algerians, Vietnamese, and French Legionnaires.
11:21Most of the equipment is American.
11:27The French try but fail to win the high ground.
11:30The communists hold the nearest hills to the north.
11:38Beyond the eyes of the French, an army of 20,000 peasants and tribesmen clears the way for the coming soldiers.
11:45They labor to open up jungle trails, a human convoy stretching 500 miles from the supply depots at the Chinese border.
11:54A veteran of Dien Bien Phu, Colonel Hao Van Lau.
11:59Getting supplies was very difficult, because we had to use routes through the jungle.
12:03We couldn't use the roads, the large roads, because of the bombings.
12:16And then to get one kilo of rice to the front at Dien Bien Phu, we had to use four kilos for the carrier,
12:22because the rice was transported on men's backs by bicycle.
12:31We couldn't heat the rice, because any smoke would attract planes.
12:37The French build a chain of fire bases on small hills across the valley.
12:50The seven main strong points are called Claudine, Jujet, Dominique, Eliane, Gabrielle, Beatrice and Isabel.
13:03The communist slogan is,
13:05Everything for the front, everything for victory.
13:09There is a new urgency.
13:10The great powers have just agreed to meet in Geneva in May 1954 to settle Cold War issues, including Indochina.
13:18This means the Viet Minh must achieve a decisive military victory within five months.
13:24The Viet Minh understood that if the French command could be seriously defeated at Dien Bien Phu,
13:32this would allow them politically to win the war.
13:35Then they decided to put everything into it, to take all the risks, increase their manpower, and accept even greater losses than before.
13:42And China granted massive assistance.
13:49Direct Chinese assistance includes 600 Russian-built Molotov trucks, which must defy air strikes and monsoon rains.
13:57The French believe their defenses can contain any attack.
14:05French intelligence knows the communists are bringing in heavy guns, but artillery experts underestimate their caliber and accuracy.
14:14Late February 1954.
14:16Five months of back-breaking labor has brought the communist armies to the door of Dien Bien Phu.
14:26The last 50 miles of mountain road have to be built virtually from scratch.
14:39They call the guns steel elephants.
14:41They dragged 200 heavy guns an inch at a time, half a mile a day, through mountains.
14:48Colonel Haub van Lau.
14:51Equipment had to be dragged by rope over men's shoulders.
14:56And one time a rope broke, and one of our artillerymen threw himself behind the wheel of this big piece of artillery
15:05to stop it from sliding into an abyss.
15:14That was the morale of our fighters, who would sacrifice themselves to save a piece of equipment from falling.
15:21Now they can outgun the French in the valley below by more than three to one.
15:32Ho Chi Minh issues directives from secret headquarters in safe mountainous jungle.
15:38He has one Western visitor, journalist Wilfrid Bichette.
15:46He came in with a sun helmet, and he turned that upside down on the table,
15:51and he just felt around with his hands in the bottom of it, and he said,
15:55Dien Bien Phu is a valley, and it's surrounded by mountains.
15:58The cream, the elite troops of the French expedition we call, are down there in that valley,
16:05and we're around in the mountains.
16:08And they'll never get out.
16:11Now General Jap, reviewing his 50,000-man force on the eve of battle, defines his tactics.
16:17He tells his staff,
16:19Strike surely, and advance surely.
16:22Strike to win. Strike only, when success is certain.
16:26To make success more likely, Jap has secreted his heavy guns and fortifications carved out of the mountains.
16:39The guns overlook the French, but are virtually undetectable.
16:48March 13th, sunset.
16:51The battle opens.
16:56The communist artillery dramatically reveals its presence, pounding the unsuspecting French on the valley floor below.
17:07The first waves of Viet Minh advance on strong point Beatrice, which overlooks the entire French position.
17:15The communists launch a whole infantry division against it.
17:18Under the heavy shelling, only one French fighter-bomber manages to take off.
17:28After the first communist losses, there's a pause.
17:37Then the attack continues.
17:40With the sudden heavy artillery barrage, the French realize they are in a trap.
17:45The first day, casualties are heavy.
17:48The artillery commander, Colonel Charles Pieroth, apologizes to his fellow officers, then commits suicide with a hand grenade.
17:59At outpost Beatrice, so-called suicide platoons breach the barbed wire perimeter.
18:09The French repulse three separate assaults.
18:11Of the 750 defenders, only 200 survive in the last-minute retreat.
18:25By midnight, Beatrice is in Viet Minh hands.
18:28March 15th, two more Diem Bien Phu outposts are repeatedly stormed.
18:39At heavy cost, the communists occupy half of Hill Gabrielle.
18:43The French-led troops fall back, then abandon the position.
18:50On March 17th, strong point Anne-Marie falls.
18:52Now three outposts are silenced, but the French estimate communists dead at 2,500.
18:59With some hills covered with dead and dying, the Viet Minh pause.
19:05French casualties are also high.
19:08A hospital plane is stranded, leaving the only French woman, nurse Genevieve de Gallard.
19:14We were putting the wounded inside the plane to take them back to Hanoi.
19:20But the mechanic came back and told us,
19:27we can't take off because the oil tank has been damaged, severely damaged.
19:33And everybody was very upset, especially the wounded,
19:39because they thought it was the end of this hell place for them, and it wasn't.
19:45By March 28th, artillery fire closes the airstrip.
19:51The base is isolated.
19:53The French still fight on.
19:56Lieutenant Colonel Langley.
19:58That did not spell the end for me, or it would seem for my comrades.
20:04It did not mean the end of fighting for us, since if the planes could not land,
20:08they could still carry out parachuting operations.
20:10I did not consider the closing of the airfield to be a catastrophe, in terms of further combat.
20:15In a bold move to keep the aerial supply line open, the French go on the offensive.
20:25They use tanks to attack communist anti-aircraft emplacements on the western hills, flanking the main French forces.
20:31Several hundred Viet Minh resist fiercely.
20:39The French commit more tanks to the action and break through, led by paratroop commander, Lieutenant Colonel Bijar.
20:46It was the first victory of Dien Bien Phu.
20:51The Viet Minh were shattered.
20:53They wanted to show that they had units capable of fighting.
20:56So Colonel De Castries came back and said to me,
20:59Bruno, only you could have pulled this one through.
21:02I said, yes, Colonel, but operations like this cannot be carried out every day,
21:06because I just lost my best officers, both senior and junior.
21:10It would be possible if you gave me the men to start all over,
21:14but we cannot play this game very long.
21:26General Jack's second phase assault on March 30th concentrates on the strong points
21:31which protect the French command center.
21:36Two important outposts are overrun.
21:43The French push hard and retake them, but lose 2,000 men in five days.
21:53The Viet Minh enlarged the attacks, capturing strong point Eliane to the east.
21:58The French again counterattack.
21:59We started shooting, and we fired maybe 3,000 or 4,000 shots,
22:06and all the cannons of Dien Bien Phu, all the 120 mortars, were aimed at one position.
22:12All of a sudden, when the artillery had finished, the Air Force was there once more,
22:16and my men got out of the trenches and went to the attack.
22:19But the Viet Minh were also entrenched, maybe half of them had been killed.
22:24But there still remained the other half, and they fought like the great soldiers that they are.
22:29They fought man to man with daggers.
22:32After one whole day, we had recaptured Eliane One.
22:36So my men had to go back into the trenches.
22:38But they were digging upon fallen bodies.
22:42The soil was covered with dead bodies, French and Viet Minh.
22:46The smell was horrible.
22:48The terrible bloodshed now lowers Viet Minh morale.
22:52They have only one doctor for 50,000 men.
22:55General Jap admits to what he calls negative thoughts affecting troop performance.
23:00More frontal assaults risk destroying the Communist army.
23:03Jap decides on a radical change of tactics.
23:06Underground war.
23:10He uses tens of thousands of troops and civilians to dig a hundred-mile network of trenches.
23:21Soon, the six-foot-deep trenches reach like tentacles around the low hills in the valley center.
23:27When the trench lines are complete, Jap resumes the offensive.
23:31Now his troops are almost face-to-face with the French.
23:36France now urgently seeks U.S. intervention.
23:47America is already paying 80% of the war bill, providing giant Globemaster transports to airlift French reinforcements.
23:54The French request and get more American arms and fighter planes.
24:02But the U.S. wants its major allies to join the aid airlift.
24:06Britain refuses, fearing such intervention would escalate the East-West Cold War.
24:10America hesitates.
24:11As the hours of argument tick by, the Viet Minh guns decimate the MBM fold.
24:26It becomes so bad the French cannot even bury their death.
24:28Colonel Bijar.
24:29All the able battalions had come, all the battalions.
24:39I kept telling my men, we must find a formula.
24:41We must hold on one more day.
24:43The Americans will not let us down.
24:45They may come.
24:46We felt we needed a day, an extra day.
24:49That is why we saw this thing through.
24:55Supplies are dwindling.
24:58By late April, the French control only a fraction of the valley center.
25:03Almost a third of the French force has been wiped out.
25:07The fate of the remaining 10,000 depends on getting ammunition and food.
25:13But pilots and troops are helpless as more and more supplies float into Communist territory.
25:21The Viet Minh trench lines are now just 300 yards from the French command bunker.
25:29Even the seriously wounded attempt to fight on.
25:32So some got up.
25:35One who had lost an eye, one who had lost an arm.
25:38One arm, we called him, said, we're going back.
25:41We saw boys arriving who had lost an arm or an eye and they were still asking for a weapon to continue fighting.
25:47It's indeed remarkable.
25:49There was a great spirit.
25:51When we went into that shelter where those men were, there was a foul smell and we could see maggots on legs.
25:56And Grovin left them on because he said, I think it prevents gangrene.
26:01So those maggots were moving around on the patient's legs and it was terrible.
26:06So around May 6th, we went to see the men with Langlais and everyone was exhausted.
26:11Completely exhausted.
26:13We knew we could go no further.
26:15There was no more ammunition and the men could not take it anymore.
26:18So when the Viet Minh attacked on May 7th, it was really the end.
26:22The end is an anticlimax. Resistance futile.
26:31The Viet Minh rushed the French command post where senior officers have been waiting to surrender.
26:39Among them, Colonel Langlais.
26:40Colonel Langlais.
26:44We heard something rolling over the roof.
26:47I was seated in my chair, not thinking of anything in particular.
26:51The stairs leading to the outside were in front of me and we could see a patch of sky there.
26:57We all thought, a grenade. God, a grenade would be thrown down the stairs and explode.
27:02But that wasn't the case.
27:05We saw a victorious Viet soldier in a cork helmet, wearing a gas mask and carrying a bayonet.
27:12His gun.
27:14Who said only, get out.
27:151730 hours, May 7th.
27:22Finally, the valley arena is silent.
27:26The Viet Minh victory has cost them an estimated 8,000 dead in the 55-day battle.
27:32But French Indochina is finished.
27:35On both sides, history records the battle is extraordinarily heroic.
27:39The aftermath, less so.
27:43The French are obliged to parade in mass surrender for the Communist cameras.
27:4810,000 prisoners start a march into captivity, which only one in two survive.
27:55Colonel Bijar.
27:57Apart from the casualties of Dien Bien Phu, more than half of the survivors of Dien Bien Phu died in captivity.
28:04Worn out and abandoned, they lay on the roadside and we were forbidden to help them.
28:09The Viet Minh would leave them to their fate, feeding them a handful of uncooked rice.
28:14What could they do?
28:15The poor fellows died along the roadside.
28:18They march for up to 60 days to the Red River prison camps 500 miles away.
28:25The Viet Minh are without doctors.
28:28Those who weaken die where they fall.
28:31The Geneva Conference in Indochina begins as Dien Bien Phu falls.
28:35Britain, France, Russia and China sign the accords.
28:40But America does not.
28:42The agreement partitions Vietnam at the 17th parallel.
28:46This border remains for 20 years.
28:48General Bone Wind Jap's victory at Dien Bien Phu at age 42 places him among the great generals of modern history.
29:01He is credited with building a small peasant force into a sophisticated modern army.
29:06In my opinion, they were exceptional infantrymen and they managed to defeat us.
29:12Now there weren't many of us.
29:13We were far from France, but we must admit they also beat the Americans.
29:18So they were exceptional and I really think they certainly are one of the best infantries in the world.
29:23Hanoi, October the 11th, 1954.
29:28The Viet Minh formally takes control of North Vietnam.
29:32Hanoi is a scene of mass ovation for Ho Chi Minh.
29:36Ho and his colleagues, an accepting partition, trust in the Geneva provision for joint national elections within two years.
29:43Ho is confident he will win.
29:46But the elections are never held.
29:48Opposed by Washington and Saigon.
29:51A new war will gradually develop.
30:00In a period of legal migration, almost a million people leave the Communist North.
30:05Most are Catholics.
30:13French and American Navy ships take them to Saigon, capital of the new U.S.-supported Republic of Vietnam.
30:25At the same time, about 100,000 communists travel more.
30:29After the partition, there is social upheaval.
30:43In the north, land reform is hasty and savage.
30:46Landowners are executed, as many as 50,000 according to Western accounts.
30:50Peasant opposition forces the Hanoi regime to modify the land reform.
31:03The communist leader, Ho Chi Minh, is still personally popular.
31:08Known to his people as Bac Ho, Uncle Ho.
31:12For some years, he concentrates on nation building.
31:15Determined to unite Vietnam as it was centuries earlier.
31:18A former emperor, Bo Dai, who also ruled under the French, heads a weak and distrusted government in South Vietnam.
31:31Bo Dai, known as the Playboy King, installs a prime minister he believes he can control.
31:38Go Dinh Diem.
31:42Diem becomes the American hope for a non-communist Vietnam.
31:45He is now 53, unmarried.
31:49A devout Catholic from a powerful family.
31:52He has an impressive record in the civil service.
31:55He is known for his nationalism and religious puritanism, which led him into self-exile abroad for many years.
32:02Now he is back to try and run a nation broken in two by war.
32:06But Diem's authority barely extends beyond Saigon, the capital city.
32:13When Diem curtails prostitution and gambling, a powerful gangster organization sends its own army against Diem's.
32:20They attack the presidential palace, the national police headquarters, and terrorize the streets.
32:26When Diem's forces drive the streets.
32:27When Diem's forces drive the streets.
32:28When Diem's forces drive the streets.
32:29When Diem's forces drive the rebels out of Saigon.
32:31When Diem's forces drive the rebels out of Saigon.
32:32And he later crushes the rebels.
32:33In doing so, he angers head of state,lie.
32:35When diem's forces drive the rebels out of Saigon.
32:50And he later crushes the religious servants.
32:52In doing so, he angers head of state,lie.
32:55But Diem's forces drive the rebels out of Saigon, and he later crushes the religious sects.
33:00In doing so, he angers head of state Bo Dai, then absent in France.
33:06Bo Dai is allegedly getting payoffs from the various sects.
33:10He tries to recall his prime minister. Diem ignores him.
33:14The American military advisor to Diem, Edward Lansdale.
33:18Diem was receiving lots of popular support from the people.
33:23I felt that he was in command of the situation, and what had happened was a very necessary step by him,
33:32and felt that he should stay.
33:35And I said, well, your only authority is from Bo Dai.
33:41The only highest authority would be from the people, and the only way to do that is through a plebiscite.
33:47I cautioned him against being carried away and rigging the election.
33:54I said, all you need is a fairly large majority.
33:59I don't want it to suddenly read in the newspapers that you've won by 99.99%.
34:05Diem wins with 98% of the vote.
34:09He becomes South Vietnam's first president.
34:13His family rules like a Mandarin court.
34:16Government, he says, functions through close personal relations at the top.
34:21His elder brother, Thuc, is Archbishop of Hue.
34:24His younger brother, Nhu, is appointed chief advisor.
34:30Madame Nhu becomes official hostess.
34:32Her father is named ambassador to the United States.
34:35Her mother is a government observer at the United Nations.
34:38Diem presides over a national assembly, but he allows it to meet only once or twice a year.
34:54After 15 months in power, Diem has an army of 135,000, partly trained by a few American advisors.
35:03But communist strength in the countryside is growing.
35:06Diem wants more U.S. help.
35:08The U.S. president again and again calls South Vietnam an important Western bulwark against communism.
35:29The cost of defending freedom, of defending America, must be paid in many forms and in many places.
35:38Unassisted, Vietnam cannot at this time produce and support the military formations essential to it.
35:47Military, as well as economic help, is currently needed in Vietnam.
35:52For Washington, the early China-Soviet alliance under Mao and Khrushchev arouses fears of United Communism.
36:02The U.S. sees an immediate danger of North Vietnam becoming the route for a Chinese and Russian takeover of Southeast Asia.
36:08In the late 50s, military aid for South Vietnam is considered part of America's wider strategic interest.
36:20Diem has refused to allow the elections called for by the Geneva Agreement.
36:24He has no national organization, and his army is weak.
36:30Eisenhower now backs South Vietnam with a show of naval strength and privately pressures Diem to make political reforms.
36:38Diem attempts land reform.
36:41It fails.
36:42He tries to extend government control to the countryside, but his methods antagonize many peasants.
36:48He begins the strategic Hamlet program.
36:53These are fortified villages which control as much as defend the population.
37:021959.
37:04North Vietnam makes the fateful decision.
37:07It will challenge Diem militarily.
37:10Communist organizers born in the South begin to infiltrate back.
37:14Their numbers quickly grow to about 5,000.
37:18They will challenge you.
37:19They will challenge you.
37:20They will challenge you.
37:21They will challenge you.
37:25Soon, a network of rebel bases is ready.
37:31A guerrilla war is launched under the banner of Ho Chi Minh.
37:40Terror and counter-terror spread through the countryside.
37:44Diem's troops attack and burn communist villages.
37:46In 1959, U.S. military advisers total only 350.
37:55A large part of American aid is goodwill, but it helps mainly the cities.
38:01Poverty continues and corruption spreads.
38:05Diem's family and friends control the economy.
38:08They isolate him from the people.
38:09An influential critic, General Tran Van Don.
38:14He began to be oppressive.
38:17Inept.
38:19Ambitious.
38:21Ambitious.
38:23He would like to become the king of Vietnam.
38:29And he believed too much that God ordered him to be in South Vietnam with a mystic mission.
38:47In America, newly elected President John F. Kennedy adopts Eisenhower's policy.
38:55Vietnam cannot fall to the communists.
38:58Assistant Secretary of State Roger Hilsman.
39:01When President Eisenhower had his private conversation with Kennedy on inauguration day,
39:07President Eisenhower said, I think you're going to have to send troops.
39:12And if you do, I will come up from Gettysburg and stand beside you and support you.
39:17Six months later, in September 61, the war widens.
39:25The communists seize the provincial capital near Saigon.
39:29They publicly execute the provincial chief.
39:38The guerrilla strength is now estimated at 26,000 men, up 500% within two years.
39:44DiEM asked the United States for a treaty to guarantee South Vietnam's existence.
39:55Kennedy consults his personal military advisor, General Maxwell D. Taylor.
40:00I met the President one morning in the White House, just walking down a corridor.
40:04He said, I have a letter here from President DiEM. Tell me how to answer it.
40:08Well, it, I changed my, I spent the next 11 years involved in answering the questions or related thereto.
40:17Because it really amounted the question, was the United States' favor a major increase in the military effort to accomplish the political objectives in Vietnam?
40:26Kennedy increases military aid. Within days, the first American helicopter units arrive.
40:34A newsreel of December 1961 conveys the optimism.
40:40New techniques in jungle warfare are being mounted against the rebels in South Vietnam with rousing success.
40:46Helicopter forays, christened eagle flights, carry small detachments of Vietnamese troops into the swamps and jungles of the Camal Peninsula,
40:55where Viet Cong guerrillas have successfully eluded pursuit on the ground.
40:59Whirlybirds swoop in to deposit soldiers where rebels have been reported, and the troops quickly spread out through swamp and jungle to surround the Communist enemy.
41:08Usually, the rebels quickly fade from villages, but a pincer attack flushes them from the surrounding jungles.
41:18A successful airstrike like this one will bring in prisoners by the dozen, a new kind of warfare that is turning the tide of battle.
41:25In their enlarged advisory role, American lives are now at risk.
41:36Though not officially in combat, they lead the South Vietnamese into battle.
41:46By late 1961, guerrilla ambush is frequent and costly.
41:50They control to some degree most of the countryside, tying down Saigon's 200,000-man army.
41:57The war is costing one million dollars a day.
42:00On U.S. advice, a self-defense program to arm remote populations like the Montagnards, begins in the Central Highlands.
42:09The CIA's Saigon chief at that time, William Colby.
42:14With the authority of the President, Ziem and his brother, Nu, we began these programs of arming mountain scout teams, things of this nature.
42:27Arming villages in the area of Man Matuot, spreading 50 or 100 weapons into such a village for its own protection.
42:46And then gradually spreading out to additional villages until you formed an area, so-called an ink spot as it spreads through the blotter, of safety against outward infiltration.
43:03And we began this in about 1960, this process of doing this.
43:09And by 1962 or 3, we had armed something like 30,000 of these people.
43:17Then comes a sudden setback.
43:27In May 63, a nationwide crisis begins when Buddhists are denied the traditional right to fly religious flags.
43:34The Buddhist riot.
43:37Forty are killed.
43:39Thousands arrested by the secret police headed by Diem's brother, Nu.
43:44Week after week, Buddhist monks commit public suicide in protest.
43:50These human tortures appall Washington.
43:59American Ambassador Frederick Nolting argues that Diem is not to blame.
44:05It was contrived, in my opinion, strictly by the Viet Cong.
44:10It was a political rather than religious outbreak, motivated by political rather than religious motives.
44:25A new American Ambassador arrives, Henry Cabot Lodge.
44:29He wants Diem's family, especially brother Nu, removed from power.
44:33Lodge meets with Diem.
44:35He was as unreceptive as I've ever seen a human being be.
44:41And he almost said to me, well, what business is it of yours whether I have my brother here to advise me or not?
44:51To which, of course, that was a very good answer.
44:54It's my business because the President of the United States has made it my business.
44:58I didn't say that.
45:00But I thought that.
45:02I thought that.
45:04President Kennedy was hoping it would work itself out.
45:08And became sympathetic to the idea of a coup if the Americans were not responsible and not involved in it.
45:15For Diem, the end would come not from the Communists, but from his own army.
45:21Within three months, he would be assassinated by his generals.
45:28More U.S. equipment arrives in Vietnam in 1963.
45:31And the changing role of the American advisors portends a widening war.
45:39In five years, their numbers have risen from a few hundred to more than 16,000.
45:48Their job is to train and guide South Vietnamese troops.
45:52To lead them into combat, but not to join them.
45:54But as the ground fire increases, the Americans start firing back.
46:04The destination this typical day is a small airstrip in the Mekong Delta.
46:09A South Vietnamese unit has reported heavy casualties.
46:18American advice on ambush precautions has been ignored.
46:21Air cover had been unavailable.
46:24A support unit, which might have saved the situation, fails to advance.
46:28The result?
46:30One hundred South Vietnamese casualties.
46:33Two American ground advisors wounded.
46:38U.S. helicopter pilots must come to the rescue.
46:41The operation is called Dust Off.
46:44Again and again, the advisors become ambulance men,
46:46picking up the dead and wounded of an ally who ignores their advice.
46:53There is growing disillusionment in the field and in Washington.
46:57But the very weakness of their allies seems to demand greater American involvement.
47:02In 1963, the U.S. had planned to withdraw 1,000 advisors.
47:12Instead, their numbers increase by 50%.
47:15There are 23,000 Americans in Vietnam by the end of 1964.
47:21And they are only the beginning.
47:23and the十."
47:24Thank you very much.
47:25Thank you very much.
47:27Let's get celebrated.
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