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The Vietnam War - BBC4 Documentary

24

Comments

  • edited October 2017
    I wonder if at any point they will make reference to the indisputable fact that a large percentage of US troops were out of their nuts on pot and acid on a regular basis......and that the Vietcong were allegedly surreptitiously instrumental in setting up networks supplying said drugs to one and all.
    I heard this from an ex Vietnam US Airforce personnel who I knew in California.
    How ironic that the profits from this cunning arrangement went back into the enemy’s coffers.......you couldn’t make it up!
  • Series is only at 1966 just as the mass numbers of US troops start to come to Vietnam so most likely yet to come.
  • Interesting... I'll have to take a look at this

    I love History but growing up I've only really been interested in the Romans | Napoleonic | WW1 | WW2 eras with the latter only really covering the Allied side - Last few years though I've been trying to get into History across all the centuries.

    Vietnam and the Korean War especially interest me at the moment

    Dont want to take the discussion away from the thread but can anyone recommend any good books on the Vietnam War?
    Oxford Very short history of Vietnam War is a good starter
  • I've recorded the first 2 sets of programmes (4 in all) & watched the fiest one the other night.

    Never knew that Vietnam was a French colony & did all they could to keep control after WW2. Bloody French are useless - can't defend their own country in 1939 & then want to keep something on the other side of the world after 1945.

    hate the French with a passion.

    What... all of them?
    Including my wife and all my wonderful in-laws? Golf Addick, you are a prick!
  • I've recorded the first 2 sets of programmes (4 in all) & watched the fiest one the other night.

    Never knew that Vietnam was a French colony & did all they could to keep control after WW2. Bloody French are useless - can't defend their own country in 1939 & then want to keep something on the other side of the world after 1945.

    hate the French with a passion.

    A stupid and frankly racist thing to say.

    Not defending French Government and military actions in Vietnam, they should have stayed out in 1945 but came to regret staying on as the US did. Public opinion in France was, by the 50s, very much against the war and one the reasons they finally left so not ALL French people.

    Might as well say you hate the Americans for their involvement in Vietnam or hate the British for their involvement in lots of other colonial wars at the same time.
  • iainment said:

    iainment said:

    Worth checking out Ken Burns American Civil War and Baseball documentries.

    He did one on Jazz too that I've never got round to watching.

    You should. It's brilliant.
    Bit too much jazz in it
    Open your mind. It's as much history and sociology as all his stuff.
    Open your sense of humour and realise it was a joke
    Oh lol.

    But given your many comments about not liking jazz............
  • iainment said:

    iainment said:

    iainment said:

    Worth checking out Ken Burns American Civil War and Baseball documentries.

    He did one on Jazz too that I've never got round to watching.

    You should. It's brilliant.
    Bit too much jazz in it
    Open your mind. It's as much history and sociology as all his stuff.
    Open your sense of humour and realise it was a joke
    Oh lol.

    But given your many comments about not liking jazz............
    That was the joke
  • edited October 2017
    Excellent series so far, BBC4 certainly lead the way with history docs. I am gripped and usual Ken Burns quality.

    I am lucky to be goung to Vietnam with a group of veterans in March to study the Northern I Corps sector and Keh Sahn. I am not guiding (dont know enough about it) but uts part of our ongoing work with combat vets. Part of the tour will involve US/NVA &VC vets getting together.
  • iainment said:

    iainment said:

    iainment said:

    Worth checking out Ken Burns American Civil War and Baseball documentries.

    He did one on Jazz too that I've never got round to watching.

    You should. It's brilliant.
    Bit too much jazz in it
    Open your mind. It's as much history and sociology as all his stuff.
    Open your sense of humour and realise it was a joke
    Oh lol.

    But given your many comments about not liking jazz............
    That was the joke
    Double lol then. You're so deep.
  • edited October 2017

    Interesting... I'll have to take a look at this

    I love History but growing up I've only really been interested in the Romans | Napoleonic | WW1 | WW2 eras with the latter only really covering the Allied side - Last few years though I've been trying to get into History across all the centuries.

    Vietnam and the Korean War especially interest me at the moment

    Dont want to take the discussion away from the thread but can anyone recommend any good books on the Vietnam War?
    I would recommend Chickenhawk by Robert Mason. He was a helicopter pilot with the 1st Cavalry and its his memoir of the war.
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  • Interesting... I'll have to take a look at this

    I love History but growing up I've only really been interested in the Romans | Napoleonic | WW1 | WW2 eras with the latter only really covering the Allied side - Last few years though I've been trying to get into History across all the centuries.

    Vietnam and the Korean War especially interest me at the moment

    Dont want to take the discussion away from the thread but can anyone recommend any good books on the Vietnam War?
    If you can - Get hold of a copy of Chickenhawk by a guy called Robert Mason. He was a helicopter pilot. A very easy and fascinating read you won't put down until you've finished it. That's the only one of the many books on that war that I ever remember the title of.
  • Nadou said:

    I've recorded the first 2 sets of programmes (4 in all) & watched the fiest one the other night.

    Never knew that Vietnam was a French colony & did all they could to keep control after WW2. Bloody French are useless - can't defend their own country in 1939 & then want to keep something on the other side of the world after 1945.

    hate the French with a passion.

    What... all of them?
    Including my wife and all my wonderful in-laws? Golf Addick, you are a prick!
    Surely no one hates French women.....

    Phwoar....
  • Solidgone said:

    Fantastic food - fusion of French and Chinese.

    Frogs legs in salt and chilli are to die for in our restaurant asiatique we frequent - and I ain't joking either
  • Missed It said:

    Interesting... I'll have to take a look at this

    I love History but growing up I've only really been interested in the Romans | Napoleonic | WW1 | WW2 eras with the latter only really covering the Allied side - Last few years though I've been trying to get into History across all the centuries.

    Vietnam and the Korean War especially interest me at the moment

    Dont want to take the discussion away from the thread but can anyone recommend any good books on the Vietnam War?
    I would recommend Chickenhawk by Robert Mason. He was a helicopter pilot with the 1st Cavalry and its his memoir of the war.
    Chickenhawk is very good, also Despatches by Michael Herr. For a feel for the atmosphere in Saigon when the French were still there, The Quiet American by Graham Greene is excellent - but obviously a novel.

    If you find a decent overall history of the war, let me know - I've never been able to. When the next instalment of Caro's incredibly brilliant biography of Lyndon Johnson comes out, that should serve as a proxy (there was quiet a bit about the origins of American involvement in Vietnam in the last volume).

    For the Korean war, Max Hastings' history is very decent.
  • Tim Page's Nam,

    is a book of photographs by local boy Tim Page. Recommended.
  • By the way it’s Viet Nam
  • Americans got involved in the region because they believed in the 'domino theory' at the time - if x country fell to communism, then the adjacent ones would surely follow - look at the map and you can see why this theory provoked the action they took - Vietnam had (as far as the Americans were concerned at the time) the potential to spread communism across South East Asia - their doctrine at the time 'demanded' they took action

    Little known fact - post WW2 Britain enabled France to return as colonial power in French Indo China (Vietnam), and utilised the services of Japanese POW's to help that happen
  • Americans got involved in the region because they believed in the 'domino theory' at the time - if x country fell to communism, then the adjacent ones would surely follow - look at the map and you can see why this theory provoked the action they took - Vietnam had (as far as the Americans were concerned at the time) the potential to spread communism across South East Asia - their doctrine at the time 'demanded' they took action

    Little known fact - post WW2 Britain enabled France to return as colonial power in French Indo China (Vietnam), and utilised the services of Japanese POW's to help that happen

    Interesting.....care to explain how that was achieved?
  • Solidgone said:

    By the way it’s Viet Nam

    You need to tell the makers of the documentary then because they say it's Vietnam as does Wikipedia , Lonely Planet and the foreign travel office.
  • Americans got involved in the region because they believed in the 'domino theory' at the time - if x country fell to communism, then the adjacent ones would surely follow - look at the map and you can see why this theory provoked the action they took - Vietnam had (as far as the Americans were concerned at the time) the potential to spread communism across South East Asia - their doctrine at the time 'demanded' they took action

    Little known fact - post WW2 Britain enabled France to return as colonial power in French Indo China (Vietnam), and utilised the services of Japanese POW's to help that happen

    Interesting.....care to explain how that was achieved?
    End of WW2 France had no military forces of an organised 'state' to reclaim their colonies - we had large forces, incl Far East

    France asked us to 'recover' French Indo China for them from the Japanese, until they could put together forces to replace us

    We did not have suffienct troops to control the whole country

    The people of French Indo China had long wanted to chuck out the French - they were no friends of the Japanese either, who had ruled the region during WW2 with an iron fist

    So for the British forces the ideal solution was to use the former Japanese occupying soldiers to help them maintain control until the French returned
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  • Cheers for the heads up on this. Just caught up and it is a truly superb documentary.
  • edited October 2017
    .
  • Another shout out for Michael Herr's Despatches, the definitive Nam book.

    Also A Bright Shining Lie by Neil Sheehan, who has turned up speaking in the programme.
  • Americans got involved in the region because they believed in the 'domino theory' at the time - if x country fell to communism, then the adjacent ones would surely follow - look at the map and you can see why this theory provoked the action they took - Vietnam had (as far as the Americans were concerned at the time) the potential to spread communism across South East Asia - their doctrine at the time 'demanded' they took action

    Little known fact - post WW2 Britain enabled France to return as colonial power in French Indo China (Vietnam), and utilised the services of Japanese POW's to help that happen

    Interesting.....care to explain how that was achieved?
    End of WW2 France had no military forces of an organised 'state' to reclaim their colonies - we had large forces, incl Far East

    France asked us to 'recover' French Indo China for them from the Japanese, until they could put together forces to replace us

    We did not have suffienct troops to control the whole country

    The people of French Indo China had long wanted to chuck out the French - they were no friends of the Japanese either, who had ruled the region during WW2 with an iron fist

    So for the British forces the ideal solution was to use the former Japanese occupying soldiers to help them maintain control until the French returned
    Fascinating!
    Thanks flashheart.
  • I done a couple of tours of Nam......

    DageNham
  • Bump.

    Caught up on episodes 7 & 8 last night. Doesn't get any less interesting. Amazing stuff. Had no idea how wide spread the protest movement was.
  • Addickted said:

    Some of the inside and behind the scene details are mind-blowing, particularly the recorded, candid conversations of Johnson. Hope to hear the same from Nixon from 1969.

    Well I got my wish - should have realised what a snidey backstabber Nixon was.

    The recorded telephone conversations between LBJ and "Dick" was eye opening - particularly the outright lie about the behind the scenes talks with the NV Government.

  • Bump.

    Caught up on episodes 7 & 8 last night. Doesn't get any less interesting. Amazing stuff. Had no idea how wide spread the protest movement was.

    I remember at 13yo going with my mate to Grosvenor Square to demonstrate at the American embassy in 1968. It was, perhaps, the protest they showed in the programme.
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