THE WORLD WAR TWO GROUP discussion
GENERAL DISCUSSION AREA
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Post 1945 Conflicts
During the battle of Vĩnh Yên in 1951 the French introduced a new weapon during the fighting:"Giap had lost 6,000 dead and 8,000 wounded and had been defeated in the open field. French airpower, using a terrifying new weapon, had proved decisive. A Viet Minh officer wrote in his diary:
All of a sudden a sound can be heard in the sky and strange birds appear, getting larger and larger. Airplanes. I order my men to take cover from the bombs and machine-gun bullets. But the planes dive upon us without firing their guns. However, all of a sudden, hell opens in front of my eyes. Hell comes in the form of large, egg-shaped containers, dropping from the first plane, followed by other eggs from the second and third plane. Immense sheets of flames, extending over hundreds of meters, it seems, strike terror in the ranks of my soldiers. This is napalm, the fire that falls from the skies.
Another plane swoops down behind us and again drops a napalm bomb. The bomb falls closely behind us and I feel its fiery breath touching my whole body. The men are now fleeing in all directions and I cannot hold them back. There is no way of holding out under this torrent of fire that flows in all directions and burns everything in its passage. On all sides, flames surround us now. In addition, French artillery and mortars now have our range and transform into a fiery tomb what had been, tend minutes ago, a quiet part of the forest."
Battle of Vĩnh Yên:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_...
Further reading on the history of napalm:
Napalm: An American Biography by Robert M. Neer
When I was a boy, one of the places I lived was Ft. Sill OK-the home of the US Field Arty. Every Six months they would put on a fire power demonstration of all the weapon the US FA owned, up to an Honest John Rocket. In addition to the Arty, the Air Force would drop ordinance. One of the loads they dropped was Napalm. 4 a/c would each drop 2 cannasters. I could feel the heat in the stands. My father said the stands were more than a mile away from the target area- very nasty stuff!!
"International law does not specifically prohibit the use of napalm or other incendiaries against military targets,[22] but use against civilian populations was banned by the United Nations Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) in 1980"- That explains why we're not having fun with napalm against ISIS.
Dimitri wrote: ""International law does not specifically prohibit the use of napalm or other incendiaries against military targets,[22] but use against civilian populations was banned by the United Nations Convent..."Just as well, I couldn't handle being blamed for anything else by BBC News.
Despite being totally in awe of Waterstones Piccadilly, I picked up a couple of post-45 books:
Street Without Joy: The French Debacle in Indochina
One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War
Lol Jonny how is that "despite" being in awe of WS Picadily? Resisting the WW1/2 section?
Classic book "Street without Joy"!I've been enjoying "Embers of War" so much I had to find my DVD of the 1966 movie; "The Lost Command". I really like this old movie and love the start at Dien Bien Phu:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060637/?...
Both my current book and the movie now have me keen to read my copy of "Algeria: France's Undeclared War" by Martin Evans and watch the French movie; "L'ennemi intime":
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0825248/?...
Algeria: France's Undeclared War by Martin Evans
'Aussie Rick' wrote: "Classic book "Street without Joy"!I've been enjoying "Embers of War" so much I had to find my DVD of the 1966 movie; "The Lost Command". I really like this old movie and love the start at Dien Bi..."
You may like this classic novel about the French in Viet Nam and Algeria.
The Centurions
Jean Lartéguy
I've been looking for a decent HB copy for my library but may just have to buy a new PB edition. I was lucky to find a nice HB edition of this book a few years back:
St Michael And The Dragon by Pierre Leulliette
Amazing prices for a HB edition of "The Centurions" - £400.81 !!!!!
The author of "Embers of War" quotes a letter from Graham Greene to his son in relation to a bombing/strafing mission he went on with the French Air Force in Tonkin. The last sentence is striking:"Green returned to the scene in The Quiet American, inserting detailed he spared his son: 'Down we went again, away from the gnarled and fissured forest towards the river, flattening out over the neglected rice fields, aimed like a bullet at one small sampan on the yellow stream. The cannon gave a single burst of tracer, and the sampan blew apart in a shower of sparks; we didn't even wait to see our victims struggling to survive, but climbed up and made for home.' Fowler found the action troubling: 'There had been something so shocking in our sudden fortuitous choice of prey - we had just happened to be passing, one burst only was required, there was no one to return our fire, we were gone again, adding our little quota to the world's dead'."
'Aussie Rick' wrote: "Amazing prices for a HB edition of "The Centurions" - £400.81 !!!!!"Holy Moly!
Dimitri wrote: "Lol Jonny how is that "despite" being in awe of WS Picadily? Resisting the WW1/2 section?"Blown away by the space mate - you'd fit Waterstones Sunderland on the ground floor twice! And I made a conscious decision to avoid the World Wars unless there was something special there - it didn't leap out!
I found this observation/commentary by the author of "Embers of War" very interesting and I was wondering what other people thought about it:"One detects subtle but important differences here in how the French and British on one hand and the Americans on the other approached the matter of diplomacy with Communist adversaries. Partly the divergence can be chalked up to Washington's hegemonic position - top dogs are seldom much interested in compromise. But other factors were at work as well. European governments, operating in physical proximity to rival powers of comparable strength, had long since determined that the resultant pressures placed a premium on negotiation and give-and-take. Only too familiar with imperfect outcomes, with solutions that were neither black nor white but various shades of gray, most European statesmen in the post-World War II era presumed that national interests were destined to conflict and saw diplomacy as a means of reconciling them. They were prepared to make the best of a bad bargain, to accept the inevitability of failures as well as successes in international affairs.
Americans, on the other hand, shielded from predatory powers for much of their history by two vast oceans, and possessing a very different historical tradition, tended to see things in much less equivocal terms. For them, Old World diplomacy, with its ignoble and complex political choices, had to be rejected, and decisions made on the definite plane of moral principle. The United States, that principle taught, represented the ultimate form of civilization, the source of inspiration for human-kind. Her policies were uniquely altruistic, her institutions worthy of special emulation. Any hostility to America was, by definition, hostility to progress and righteousness and therefore was, again by definition, illegitimate."
'Aussie Rick' wrote: "I found this observation/commentary by the author of "Embers of War" very interesting and I was wondering what other people thought about it:"One detects subtle but important differences here in ..."
I don't disagree. Americans have long had problems with "solutions that were neither black nor white but various shades of gray..." It has been our undoing on a number of occasions in addition to Vietnam. We don't do gray well. The explanations are complicated. It could be a narcissistic naiveté or the oft-proclaimed American exceptionalism ("What's wrong with you? Don't you know WE know what's right?"). In whatever case, it has been counterproductive.
'Aussie Rick' wrote: "I found this observation/commentary by the author of "Embers of War" very interesting and I was wondering what other people thought about it:"One detects subtle but important differences here in ..."
Pretty accurate in my book.
it's no wonder that the US didn't glean or learn anything from the Brits in the Malay Emergency.
Another interesting account from the book; "Embers of War":"Already two years before, in March 1951, when he commanded Western forces in Europe, Eisenhower had articulated an early version of the domino theory that would later be identified with his name - and his scepticism regarding a military solution in Vietnam. He wrote in his diary, after a Paris meeting with Jean de Lattre de Tassigny:
The French have a knotty problem [in Indochina] - the campaign out there is a draining sore in their side. Yet if they quite and Indochina falls to Commies, it is easily possible that the entire South-east Asia and Indonesia will go, soon to be followed by India. That prospect makes the whole problem one of interest to us all. I'd favour heavy reinforcement to get the thing over at once; but I'm convinced that no military victory is possible in that kind of theatre. Even in Indochina were completely cleared of Communists, right across the border is China with inexhaustible manpower."
Doubledf99.99 wrote: "'Aussie Rick' wrote: "I found this observation/commentary by the author of "Embers of War" very interesting and I was wondering what other people thought about it:"One detects subtle but importan..."
I'd gone through that thought process while reading Noel Barber, but of course the conditions "on the ground" in Malaya were totally different to Vietnam from the start of the insurgency. Some tactics used in Malaya were transplanted, the Strategic Hamlet campaign springing to mind, but the British had a totally different relationship with the Malayan population - as it was put across in Burns documentary, "Foreigners meant another invader." (In paraphrase)
I enjoyed this account of Bernard Fall's first assignment in Indochina:"Fall sought to understand the security situation inside the Red River Delta. A French officer assured him that defences were strong: 'We are going to deny the Communists access to the eight million people in this Delta and the three million tons of rice, and we will eventually starve them out and deny them access to the population.' Did the Viet Minh hold any areas in the delta? Fall asked. 'Yes,' the officer replied, pointing to his map, 'they hold those little blue blotches, 1, 2, 3, 4, and a little one over here.' How did he know? 'It is simple, when we go there we get shot at; that's how we know'."
Bernard Fall:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/21/op...
'Aussie Rick' wrote: "I enjoyed this account of Bernard Fall's first assignment in Indochina:Thank you for the link AR. It's a very good article.
Jonny wrote: "Doubledf99.99 wrote: "'Aussie Rick' wrote: "I found this observation/commentary by the author of "Embers of War" very interesting and I was wondering what other people thought about it:"One detec..."
Thats a good way to look at it.
I did see the Documentary about The Emergency, which was very good, I still need to see Burns documentary on Viet Nam.
I finished the book; "Embers of War" which I found to be an excellent account of the French Indochina War and America's involvement which led to the Vietnam War. I was struck throughout that this was a war that possibly didn't need to be fought. It should never really have happened but then again I suppose we can say that about many conflicts throughout history.I liked this quote from Bernard Fall at the end of the book:
"For as Fall once said, Americans were 'dreaming different dreams than the French but walking in the same footsteps'."
Embers Of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam by Fredrik Logevall
'Aussie Rick' wrote: "...I liked this quote from Bernard Fall at the end of the book:"For as Fall once said, Americans were 'dreaming different dreams than the French but walking in the same footsteps'.""
I like that!
Started reading:
It's about some former Waffen SS troops who wind up joining the French Foreign Legion and waging a counter insurgency in the Indochina War. I know that many have questioned the credibility of the account, but it should be a good read nonetheless.
Lawrence Brent Rogers wrote: "Started reading: It's about some former Waffen SS troops who wind up joining the French Foreign Legion and waging a counter insurgency in the Indochina War. I know..."
Its a classic account, one of my favourites. I hope you enjoy it, keep us posted.
Yep, many German vets ended up in the FFL
Picked up (another) copy of the Gulf War classic
Tornado Down yesterday.. my copies seem to grow legs...
I received this book today through a GR Giveaway. It looks interesting.
Flashpoint Trieste: The First Battle of the Cold War by Christian Jennings.
I've seen it about but haven't felt the urge to buy a copy, of course that could change so let us know your thoughts MR9 once you have had the chance to read the book.
Manray9 wrote: "I received this book today through a GR Giveaway. It looks interesting. [book:Flashpoint Trieste: The First Battle of the ..."Nice, will be interested in your review.
Manray9 wrote: "I received this book today through a GR Giveaway. It looks interesting. [book:Flashpoint Trieste: The First Battle of the ..."Nice, will be interested in your review.
'Aussie Rick' wrote: "Amazing prices for a HB edition of "The Centurions" - £400.81 !!!!!"Yeah, same here- I hate to settle for the trade paperbacks, but I'm damned if I'll pay US$600.00+ for a hardcover copy. The prices for English-language editions of The Centurions & The Praetorians have been absolutely obscene for at least fifteen years now. It doesn't make any sense; after all, these book were multi-million copy bestsellers in several languages, including English, and the demand can't be all that strong even after several years of General Petraeus and others promoting those books. Also, of course, editions in other languages are still quite inexpensive, as are most of Jean Lartéguy's other books... I checked prices on all of them several times while I was putting together his information here on GR (someone replaced the biographical sketch I wrote, but practically all the listings were originated by me, and nearly all the cover scans were uploaded by me as well). Happily, my favorite of all his books, Yellow Fever is still relatively inexpensive and has the most beautiful cover art as well:
...Incidentally, I saw yet another nice copy of his memoir, The Face Of War: Reflections On Men And Combat, for under US$10.00 the other day...
Yes, I'm afraid I will have to get the PB editions and keep my eyes peeled for an affordable HB edition.
Interesting paragraph from Obersturmfurhrer Hans Wagemueller in "Devil's Guard" about the ambush and encirclement of a battalion-strength element of Viet Minh. I think it sums up the mindset of the veterans in the German battalion. In order to defeat the guerrillas, you have to use their tactics against them."The captured company commanders, propagandists, commissars, and platoon leaders who were directly responsible for the massacre and mutilation of the French battalion were executed by what Eisner called 'shooting to bits.' The victims fingers were shot away one by one. His nose and ears followed; then slugs were fired into their kneecaps and feet. Throughout the process no vital organ was hit and the guerrilla leader was left to die by bleeding. It was not a senseless act of brutality. It was tit for tat. We wanted to plant such terror in their hearts that they would run, head over heels, when they heard us coming."
The anonymity of the Foreign Legion would make it virtually impossible for Vietnamese intelligence to mine the names of their opponents, yet this is truly a situation in real life where somebody should've told them "do you have any idea who you''re F***ing with ?"
I knew a German fighter pilot, successful ace who later joined the FFL and fought in Indochina, fascinating man indeed.
After the Burns general history, down to specifics with today's buy:
Hamburger Hill: The Brutal Battle for Dong Ap Bia: May 11-20, 1969
A good book on the subject, nice pick up Jonny. If your still keen on more on that particular battle this is a bit more in depth and from a personal perspective:
The Crouching Beast: A United States Army Lieutenant's Account of the Battle for Hamburger Hill, May 1969 by Frank Boccia
It's not until Béla Kun that you notice the pink ink used to write One Thousand Years: A Concise History Of Hungary (1988) but what it has to say on the 1956 uprising is darkly hilarious in its omission. the dogmatism of the Ràkosi leadership allowed no scope for important changes. This was even more the case after the 20th Congres of the Soviet Communist Party in february 1956, when Krushchev denounced Stalin's crimes. Therefore the tensions which had been building up over the years finally found expression on 23 October 1956. Hungarian society and its socialist system went through a profound and tragic crisis and emerged from it only at the cost of considerable sacrifice and losses.
Sounds like the Warsaw uprising if the Nazis had gone on to rule for 30 years. Apart frrom a few no-longer-anonymous group graves I don't think there's much left to see. Good thing the citadella evokes the 1945 siege.
Given the contemporary news about North Korea, it seems Gen. MacArthur had the correct vision of the consequences of not finishing off the NK regime when he had them backed into the very northwest tip of the peninsula. President Truman's fear of the PRC formally at war with the U.S. was a reasonable factor, however. The head butting between Washington military and political leadership and Gen. MacArthur, even before the Inchon landing, is evident in Hell To Pay: A Korean Conflict Novel: a Navy Pilot's Life-changing Adventure.
Peter wrote: "Given the contemporary news about North Korea, it seems Gen. MacArthur had the correct vision of the consequences of not finishing off the NK regime when he had them backed into the very northwest ..."If MacArthur was right, so was Truman. Trying to finish off North Korea brought in Chinese regulars and that was a war we weren't ready to dive into.
Peter wrote: "Given the contemporary news about North Korea, it seems Gen. MacArthur had the correct vision of the consequences of not finishing off the NK regime when he had them backed into the very northwest ..."Keep in mind, as Truman certainly did, in August 1949 the USSR successfully exploded an atomic bomb. Truman was seeking to de-escalate the conflict.
The link is A nice long read from the Daily Beast, an excerpt from the book, The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam
Max Boothttps://www.thedailybeast.com/the-inn...
Gen Curtis LeMay and Gen. Matthew Ridgeway both knew that even with an atomic bomb, US air superiority would have prevented the Soviets from aerial delivery, and they did not have the proper missile technology at that time. Truman stated that he was more concerned with Stalin driving into Western Europe through his puppet states Hungary, Poland, East Germany and Czechoslovakia, forcing a two front global conflict. That was a more realistic threat than dropping the big one in Korea. LeMay made the comment that, "Well, if Stalin is entertaining any thoughts about that bullshit, I can have a few dropped on the Kremlin to change his mind, with your permission Mr. President."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries... An amazing obituary of a very brave British soldier from the Korean War. All that's admirable in the British Tommy.
As part of my aim to get more understanding on the Indochina/Vietnam conflicts under my belt, I've made a start on
Ripcord: Screaming Eagles Under Siege, Vietnam 1970
Keep us posted on progress Jonny.
Peter wrote: "I recently published a 2nd Edition of a historical fiction set at the beginning of the Korean Conflict:
Sounds like an interesting read. I read in Mao: The Unknown Story that Stalin was the prime mover of the Korean War. The founder of the NK ruling dynasty sought refugee in the USSR from the Japanese at the beginning of WWII, and was groomed for return. Staling let the Chinese and North Koreans do the fighting, among other things because the Chinese had almost unlimited men (including the remnants of Mao's enemies from the Chinese Civil War) who would draw the US into a war they couldn't afford to fight. Meanwhile, Stalin hoped to take advantage of the fact that everyone's attention was focussed on the east to strengthen his grip on eastern Europe. Interestingly, there was a peasants' revolt in Yugoslavia only a few weeks before the outbreak of the Korean War, and one theory was that Stalin was behind it.
Finished the introduction which gives a potted history of the war in the A Shau Valley and 101 Airborne's war. Nolan makes a couple of pertinent points; first of all on 'Hamburger Hill':"The military was made to understand after Dong Ap Bia that minimizing American casualties was more important than closing with the enemy if President Richard M. Nixon was to maintain public support long enough to implement Vietnamization, the policy by which U. S. units were to be gradually withdrawn and replaced by a better-trained, better-equipped ARVN. Ironically, like Tet, the other psychological disaster of the war, Hamburger Hill had been a tactical victory."
The problems of strategy in Vietnam post-Tet:
"The problem was that whereas the communists were willing to absorb whatever losses were required to achieve their goals, the U. S. Army was trying to fight a war, or, more precisely, keep the enemy at bay until the ARVN could stand on its own, without taking the kind of casualties that would further exacerbate the political divisions in the United States."
The state of the US military in Southeast Asia in 1970:
"However unmotivated, the grunts were still good soldiers in comparison to the mass of support troops in the rear. Discipline, dry-rotting since around the middle of 1968—the big problems were drugs, racial tension, the hatred between draftees and lifers—had completely fallen apart in the rear by 1970–71. There was spawned the hideous fragging phenomenon in which unit leaders who tried to maintain order were killed or wounded with fragmentation grenades rolled into their quarters at night by their own troops."
And finally, the difficulty of effective airstrikes in jungle:
"There was by then an air force forward air controller (FAC) above the battlefield in a little O-1 Bird Dog. The FAC reported a fourth mortar position on a small knoll at the northern base of Hill 902. The FAC, meanwhile, marked targets with white phosphorus (WP) rockets. At the forty-five-minute mark, F-4 Phantom fighter-bombers began laying bombs and napalm canisters (snake ’n nape) on 805 and, given the sniper fire, that part of the ridgeline running southeast from Ripcord toward Hill 805. It was quite a show, and some of the troops on Ripcord broke out their cameras as the jets flashed past in the valley below. The tactical air strikes—tac air, for short—were right on the money, but the Phantoms had no sooner pulled up than the mortar crew under the bombs defiantly lobbed a few more rounds toward Ripcord. Later, two LOHs from a 2-17th Cav White Team went down for another look, only to draw more automatic fire from Hill 805."
Jonny, if you are looking for a good overview of the wars in Indo-China, Fredrik Logevall's
is probably the best ever written to date. If you would like a more in-depth understanding of that history, however, and are interested enough to put a great deal of time & effort into gaining that understanding, I would suggest starting with
and
. After that, you should be just about ready for Bernard B. Fall's indispensable works, particularly
&
, but his other books are also well worth reading...
THE WORLD WAR TWO GROUP
Books mentioned in this topic
The Angel of Dien Bien Phu: The Lone French Woman at the Decisive Battle for Vietnam (other topics)The Korean War: 1945-1954 (other topics)
Korea: War Without End (other topics)
The Vietnam War: A Military History (other topics)
The Angel of Dien Bien Phu: The Lone French Woman at the Decisive Battle for Vietnam (other topics)
More...
Authors mentioned in this topic
Allan Reed Millett (other topics)Allan Reed Millett (other topics)
Richard Dannatt (other topics)
Geoffrey Wawro (other topics)
David W. Cameron (other topics)
More...
"There was in effect a truce in the fighting from July to September, as the war came to a stop in the wet. The rain fell almost continuously, and the rivers overflowed. The spongy, saturated jungles were virtually impassable by French troops - and, for that matter, by Viet Minh units - and the going was not much easier in the watery surfaces of the deltas. Recalled one French observer: 'The soldiers were overwhelmed and blinded by the forces of nature, by the soaking vegetation, the mountains that vanished in the clouds, the rivers swirling with turbid, dangerously rapid water, by the mud, the heat, by everything. It was a formless, green-gray world, devoid of outline, inimical, a world in which every movement, even eating was an effort'."