Second indochina war: further reading guide

Feel free to modify/change the image if it's too graphic (it's of the My Lai Massacre), and please suggest stuff to add to the reading guide.

The German communist left journal Kommunistisches Programm had a three part series that may be relevant, translated by Libri Incogniti:

Not a bad analysis. I'll add it to the list. There are certainly more works just critiquing American imperialism than there are those critiquing both that and the Lao Dong Party/Vietnamese Communist Party, so it's sort of refreshing to see both. Then again the majority of Vietnamese actually supported Ho and the DRV, as American officials constantly lament throughout the documentary record, and which was also the reason why the Diem government refused to ever hold the reunification elections as specified in the Geneva Accords of 1954. Nonetheless, I agree that there was nothing "socialist/communist" about the Vietnamese Communist Party, whether before or after reunification.

Thanks for getting this started. For now I have moved this into the Further reading guide. Have updated the graphic image, and used the latest Solidarity pamphlet which superseded the earlier one.

Np. I'll try to add links for the books and articles and possibly upload some of the content on here. I'll also probably reformat all the entries into proper citations with more info at some point (kind of like the China reading guide).

It's rather interesting how the term "Viet Cong" was actually a pejorative invented by the Saigon government that the National Liberation Front never used themselves (and which is still not used in Vietnam today). Ngo Vinh Long (who recently passed away) argued that it was coined by Nguyễn Văn Châu as a homonym for "Diệt Cộng" (meaning to "annihilate the communists") and was part of the Diem government's Anti-Communist Denunciation Campaign. See this correspondence here, and also the above "Remembering Vietnam" clip starting at around 14:53. It's sort of a testament to the effectiveness of U.S./Saigon propaganda that virtually everyone in the West, whether intentionally or not, treats it as if it were some "official term" for the NLF (or rather the Vietnamese who rose up against the aggression of the U.S.-backed Diem regime). I'd be interested in other sources discussing the origins of the term; most sources seem to acknowledge that it's a pejorative or slang term, but don't really go into any depth.

I feel like it deserves a special mention that Nguyen Cao Ky, the South Vietnamese Prime Minister and later Vice President, expressed an admiration for Hitler on numerous occasions, such as in a 1965 interview with a British journalist. Ky made such comments while American officials attempted to portray "communism" in Vietnam (a peasant country) as an existential threat on the same level as Nazi Germany. War hawks also cited the Western accommodation of Nazi Germany (e.g. the Munich Agreement) as an example of why the U.S. should act more decisively in Southeast Asia. It was thus not very convenient for the U.S. when one of the people they were supporting described Hitler as their only hero! It was reported in a number of different news outlets at the time. Here's the Jewish Telegraphic Agency for example:

A statement by South Vietnamese Premier Nguyen Cao Ky that Adolf Hitler is his personal hero has upset Washington officials committed to the Saigon regime, it was learned here today. Gen. Ky told the London Sunday Mirror, in an interview printed in the Washington Post, that “People ask me who my heroes are. I have only one–Hitler.”

Gen. Ky explained that the basis of his admiration for the Nazi Fuehrer was that Hitler succeeded in unifying a divided Germany around himself. He reportedly added that South Viet Nam should have “four or five Hitlers to deal with subversive elements and unify the Vietnamese nation.”

One official source here said that Gen. Ky may have admired Hitler as a nationalist leader of Germany, but that Washington authorities felt this should not be interpreted as an endorsement of Hitler’s anti-Jewish policies.