A Summary of the battle for Hearts & Minds during the Vietnam War and the different factors that contributed towards the war.

1. Vietnam War

2. • 'Rolling Thunder' was designed to force the North Vietnamese into stopping
the infiltration of troops and supplies into South Vietnam and into peace
negotiations.
• The operation was split up into 5 stages;
1. In 1964 & 1965, bombing was limited to North Vietnam's industrial economy
2. May 1965, bombing commenced against air defences and transportation,
railways, roads and airfields.
3. Aug 1965 - winter 1966/67, air power was used to limit infiltration from the
north of men an supplies to the NLF and the PAVN divisions operating in the
south. Attacks against petroleum refineries began. Most of the operations
were concentrated at the DMZ and into North Vietnam.
4. 1967 - April 1968, attacks in & around Hanoi, Haiphong the main North
Vietnamese port and the buffer zone along the Chinese border involved the
highly controversial bombing of civilians in the major northern cities.
5. April - Nov 1968, there was a de-escalation of bombing as Johnson had
begun talks in Paris with the DRV. Bombing was now focused around the DMZ
line and in the northern parts of South Vietnam.
• The bombing is estimated to have done $600mllion of damage in the north,
but at a cost of lost aircraft alone of $6billion.

3. • The number of bombs dropped in the war links to the rolling sound of the
continuous ‘boom boom boom’ as it echoed around the mountains & hills around
Vietnam.
• Bomb tonnage rose from 63,000 in 1965 to 136,000 in 1966 to 226,000 in 1967.
• The average weekly bombing sorties also rose from 883 in 1965 to 3150 in April-
June 1967.
• It was estimated that between 1965-67, South Vietnamese and U.S. air personnel
dropped over 1million tons of bombs were dropped on South Vietnam, double that
dropped on North Vietnam.
• Throughout the duration of the war, 1965 – 1973, eight million tons of bombs were
dropped over Vietnam; this was more than three times the amount used in WWII.
This B-52 bomber was one of the aircraft used
to drop bombs on Vietnam.

4. • Search and destroy patrols went out looking for the Vietcong. It became an
offensive tool, crucial to General William Westmoreland’s second phase.
– In his three phase strategy, the first consisted of slowing down the VC Forces
– The second was to resume the offensive and destroy the enemy
– The third was to restore the area under South Vietnamese government control.
• The offensive began with Operation Junction City, where the American units
assigned had destroyed hundreds of tons of rice, killed 720 guerrillas, and
captured 213 prisoners.
• In Operation Junction City, reports also state that 282 U.S. soldiers were
killed while the VC lost 1,728 guerrillas.
• The patrols were very visible, and easy to ambush.
• This led to violence such as "Zippo raids" in 1967 to burn villages with US
Zippo lighters, and the uncalled-for massacre of peaceful villagers at My Lai
in 1968.
Troops of "A" Company, 1st Air Cavalry
Division, checking house during patrol.

5. Agent Orange
• An estimated 11½-11¾ million gallons of Agent
Orange was used to spray millions of hectares of
Vietnamese forest.
• Agents Green, Pink & Purple were used until
1964 when they were replaced by the more
efficient ‘Agent Orange’.
• It was given its name from the colour of the
orange-striped barrels in which it was shipped,
and was by far the most widely used of the so-
called "Rainbow Herbicides“
• The middle picture shows what happened when
someone was exposed to dioxin-contaminated
Agent Orange and it causes serious health
problems as well as the severe aliments to his
skin.
• The Vietnam Red Cross reported as many as 3
million Vietnamese people have been affected
by Agent Orange with an estimated 1million
people being left disabled and a further 500,000
children were born with defects.

6. Napalm
• Used by the U.S. Army from about 1965 to 1972
in the Vietnam War
• This mixture creates a jelly-like substance that,
when ignited, sticks to practically anything and
burns up to ten minutes.
• “Napalm is the most terrible pain you can ever
imagine” said Kim Phúc, a survivor from a
napalm bombing. (Pictured bottom right
wearing no clothes)
• “Water boils at 212°F. Napalm generates
temperatures 1,500°F to 2,200°F.” Kim Phúc
sustained third degree burns to portions of her
body. She was one of the only survivors of such
extreme measures.
• Air raids that used napalm were much more
devastating than flamethrowers (Top right); a
single bomb was capable of destroying areas up
to 2,500 square yards.

7. • The Phoenix Program was a program whose main objective was to
tear the Viet Cong infrastructure apart. Although it was contradictory,
the Phoenix Program used many of the same tactics as the program
which it was trying to destroy.
• Ran by the CIA – Central Intelligence Agency
• Initially named the Phuong Hoang Operation (named after a mythical
Vietnamese bird of prey)
• Program resulted in the arrest, detention, brutal interrogation and
execution of thousands of VC fighters and sympathizers at the hands
of the South Vietnam police and intelligence agencies.
• This was done in an attempt to cripple or eliminate South Vietnamese
communist guerrilla resistance to both the U.S. forces and the U.S.
backed government of South Vietnam.
This picture shows an Operation Phoenix mission
being conducted by US soldiers. Because the US
didn’t know who the VC were, they could have
potentially been torturing innocent people and
loosing their Hearts & Minds.

8. • On the morning of the 16th March 1968, 3 companies
of American troops were sent into the My Son area
near Quang Ngai. One of them was ‘Charlie Company’
• Their job was to seek out the enemy (V.C) and kill
them.
• There was no resistance where they landed because
they landed at the wrong village.
• My Lai was full of women and kids, but no young men.
This meant that their fathers were away fighting. They
must be VC.
• Patrols were reporting nonexistent contacts and
officers were inflating body counts until no one in the
Pentagon or the US government had any idea what
was really going on.
• Only 3 weapons were being shared between 141
enemy soldiers. This should have alerted someone
that something was wrong.
– It shows that the US didn’t know who the VC were or
what they were fighting against.
– It was just another day in Vietnam.
• As the war grew unpopular, the numbers joining the
Reserve Officer Training Corps at universities and
colleges declined rapidly. This shows a change in public
opinion as people saw more of what was actually
happening in Vietnam.
Photo taken by United States Army photographer Ronald L. Haeberle on 16th March 1968 in the
aftermath of the My Lai massacre showing mostly women and children dead on a road.
• The Vietnamese people didn’t care about democracy or
totalitarianism, capitalism, or Communism. They just
wanted to be left alone. By not doing this the US was
loosing the hearts & minds battle.
• The My Lai Massacre neatly summed up what was wrong
in Vietnam. The war that had begun with a lie continued
with lies.

9. • The U.S. chose to fight a conventional war in Vietnam believing the superiority of
their armed forces would eventually wear down the VC and the PLAF.
• CIA officer William Colby, founder of the program, told a Congressional committee
in 1971 that the Phoenix operation had killed 20,587 VC suspects in 2 years.
• The Truncheon & electric shock method of interrogation were in widespread use in
Vietnam.
– Almost all US advisers turned their backs on this method.
• Carefully disguised programs that use American funding and training to employ
local police in torture, death squads and mass detention had continued under US
sponsorship in Vietnam.
• In Iraq the top counterinsurgency advisor suggested that using a “global Phoenix
programme,” may help America win the war.
– Phoenix was used in South Vietnam by the CIA and there is evidence of its use in Iraq, as
there is torture being practiced on Iraqi fighters.
– The New York Times reported that there were as many as 10 secret prisons under the
Interior Ministry in Baghdad and the Los Angeles Times has said that the same Ministry
is funded by America.
– This suggests that Americans still use Phoenix and are trying to revive it, even though it
completely failed to win the Hearts and Minds of the Vietnamese people because the
American soldiers couldn’t tell who was VC and who was innocent.

10. • CORDS: Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support
• Formed to coordinate the US civil and military pacification programs.
• CORDS pulled together all the various US military & civilian agencies
involved in the pacification effort, including the State Department, the AID,
the USIA & the CIA.
• The first and most basic requirement for pacification had to be security,
because the rural population had to be kept safe from the main enemy
forces.
– The US wanted to developed programs to win over the people’s sympathy for
the South Vietnamese government and the U.S. forces.`
• CORDS was eventually taken over by the military. This gave them the
financial support that they needed, providing resources for the civilian
pacification programs. CORDS was established in May 1967 to advise and
support the Government of Vietnam’s pacification efforts such as Phoenix
operation.
• CORDS civilian & military advisory teams were dispatched throughout South
Vietnam’s 44 provinces and 250 districts.
• They went to South Vietnam to help the government fight Communism,
although the US didn’t help them as well as they should have.

11. • In the 1950’s, after Vietnam was divided into North & South, the Eisenhower administration sought to create an
economically viable and democratic nation of South Vietnam. US presidential administrators and Diem
proclaimed to be backing the will of the people of South Vietnam
• However by not truly enacting policies towards this goal, rebellion in the form of Buddhist uprisings where they
burnt themselves in the streets to protest about the worsening corruption of the Diem regime. This rebellion
reached its height in the summer of 1963. this was because, for the most part, the US chose to ‘ignore the
situation’ and allowed it to worsen to a point where it was pushing the Vietnamese people towards Ho Chi
Minh.
• All of these tactics the Americans used in Vietnam all link to their failure to capture the hearts and minds of the
Vietnamese people.
– Tactics like ‘Operation Rolling Thunder’ and ‘Search and Destroy missions’ killed many innocent people and pushed the
Vietnamese people to Ho Chi Minh and the communists because they were seen to be nationalist and not kill their own
people.
– America never understood the South Vietnamese people or Vietnam as a country, they couldn’t speak Vietnamese so the
Operation Phoenix missions would never work because the people would not be able to understand them.
– By using chemical weapons such as Napalm and Agent Orange to destroy the VC hiding cover meant they were harming
and killing innocent people without even realising it; as well as destroying their homeland and food supply.
• But the main reason why the US lost the hearts & minds of the Vietnamese people in the Vietnam War was
because they didn’t apply the failings of the French, and followed along the same path towards defeat.
– It shows that the French lost the hearts & minds of the Vietnamese people but the US only made things worse by using
much more destructive tactics.
This image shows a Buddhist monk
burning in the streets of Saigon in 1963
in protest of Diem’s corrupt regime.