Source G is another photograph, this time of a Vietnamese woman being held at gunpoint by American troops. The caption tells us that she is under suspicion of being a member of the Vietcong. This photograph could have been taken by the Americans however it could also have been staged by the Vietcong to act as propaganda, discouraging Americans from supporting the war. It suggests that women were part of the war but this woman is just suspected by the Americans and it has not been proved that she is a member of the Vietcong. I do not feel that this is a reliable source due to this fact.
When all sources are compared, they do all suggest that women were part of the war and Source F in particular is a very reliable source, which shows women to not only be involved but also have roles of authority in the Vietcong. Sources D and E are not clear enough to be able to distinguish whether the soldier is female and so I do not feel as though they are reliable enough to use as evidence. However, I feel that Source F alone gives enough proof and information to draw the firm conclusion that women in Vietnam did play a role in the war.
C) Study Sources H, J and I.
Is there enough evidence in these sources to give us a reliable image of United States troops at war in Vietnam?
Source H is a drawing from an American children’s book showing US troops landing in Vietnam. This is a secondary piece of evidence and an artist’s inaccurate representation. This could be biased as it is drawn by an American and due to the fact it is from a children’s book it may be simplified or the truth could be censored. The drawing could have been published to show the American troops to be bold and well equipped, travelling into a foreign country.
Source I is a photograph of a wounded American soldier in Vietnam. This is clearly a primary, American source although there is a possibility that the scene could have been staged. The photograph is of very poor quality and so we have to trust the caption, as it is not possible to identify the troops to be American.
Source J is an extract from a letter published by an American newspaper. The letter was written by an American father who wanted his son to be sent home from Vietnam. The father has copied a portion of a letter he received from his son. His son comments on the indiscriminate nature of the American search and destroy missions. This is a very useful source but it also has a high likely hood of being biased. The original letter could have been elaborated or toned down by the father or the newspaper. The soldier writing could have fabricated parts in an attempt to return home. However, we can assume that this source is reasonably reliable as we know that missions such as the one described in letter did occur and were indiscriminate, for example, the My Lai Massacre. The newspaper, which published this, was probably a supporter of the Peace Movement as this information is definitely against the war in Vietnam.
I do not feel that these three sources provide enough evidence to give us a reliable image of US troops at war in Vietnam.
Source H is not biased against or in favour of the US troops but it provides very little information about the troops. Source I could be anti-war propaganda, it shows US troops suffering wounds a conflict-inflicted injuries from an unnecessary war. This source does not show any conflict, it shows that US troops did sustain injuries but little else. I do not feel that this is a biased source; it does not illustrate any opinions or views. Source J is the most informative source and if we can trust it, we can learn from it the soldier’s views on the tasks they were given in Vietnam. We learn that they did not approve of their methods and they felt guilt and remorse for the families and innocents they had murdered.
However, I do not feel that these three sources alone are informative enough to tell us fully about all aspects of a US soldiers’ duty for us to build up an entire image. We do not see enough information about the conflicts with the Vietnamese troops or how much the troops feared dying. A diary would have been very useful to help us to produce a reliable image.
D) Study Sources K, L and M.
Use these sources and your own knowledge to explain how effective Napalm and Agent Orange were in America’s attempt to win the Vietnam War.
Source K is a very famous photograph showing Vietnamese children attempting to escape a US Napalm bombing. As it is a photograph was can be sure that it is a primary source, and judging by the US troops behind the children we can presume it was taken by an American photographer or a member of the world’s press. However, the photographer was probably against the war, as a supporter would not disclose a photograph of this graphic nature because it would, and did discourage people to support the war. This may have been why the photograph was taken, propaganda to discourage civilians from supporting the war. It is to support the protests against chemical weapons and it is very unlikely for this photograph to be biased.
Source L is an extract from a school textbook, which was published in 1990. The statement tells us of how the US was criticised worldwide for their use of chemical weapons. It is unlikely that this extract is biased although it could be simplified as it is in a school textbook. We do not know who wrote the source but it was written either by an English or American historian.
Source M features two photographs of the same scene before and after chemical bombing attacks in Vietnam. These photographs clearly show the effects of Agent Orange on the landscape of Vietnam. This source would be very unlikely to have been staged as it is on a huge scale and it is unlikely to be biased because we know that Agent Orange did have these effects. This could have been a primary example of propaganda against the use of chemical weapons. We are not aware of the nationality of the photographer although we presume that this could be an impartial photographer who is aiming just to show the effects and this is why we can doubt that the source is biased.
It is clear to see the effects of napalm by using source K. Napalm was designed to kill people whereas Agent Orange was an industrial defoliant designed to uncover the hiding places of the Vietcong in the jungle. Napalm would be dropped from planes onto Vietnamese villages in an attempt to wipe out suspected members of the Vietcong. However, napalm was indiscriminate and killed many men women and children who were not at all involved with the Vietcong. Source K shows children running through the streets trying to escape a napalm attack. One child who became very famous due to this attack, Kim Phuc is pictured naked. She has torn off her clothes to try to escape injury. The publicity of this photograph turned people from all across the world against the Vietnam War. An international protest began to stop the war in Vietnam from continuing.
Napalm burst into flames on impact. The bombs covered everything they hit with burning jelly, causing people’s flesh to blister and melt. Agent orange would be dropped on huge areas of jungle, stripping the area to the bare soil. Large areas of land would be left cratered, scorched and desert. Crops were lost and families starved. Agent orange also had lasting long-term side effects to the American troops who handled it. It caused cancer and children of these men could be born with terrible deformities. Vietnamese women also suffered miscarriages or produced offspring suffering disabilities both mentally and physically. for many years after the war had ended.
Napalm killed huge amounts of people and this was the aim of the weapon. It was effective in this sense however; it was very ineffective in aiding the American attempts for victory. Agent Orange killed and maimed the Vietnamese landscape in the same degree napalm maimed and killed people. Unlike napalm however, the lasting effects of Agent Orange can still be seen today, and its witched roles with napalm beginning to destroy and maim people’s lives
The chemical weapons proved reasonably ineffective during the war in the American’s attempt to win in Vietnam but they proved very effective in destroying a country and the Vietnamese people’s futures.
E) Study Sources N and P.
Source N and Source P give different interpretations of the importance of the anti-war movement to the ending of the war. What reasons can you give to explain this difference?
Source N (i) is a drawing from an American school textbook showing an anti-war demonstration at the Kent State University. We do not know who the artist was or when the picture was drawn, although it must be secondary. I believe that this was drawn to focus mainly on the slogans and not the actually protest. However, we can see from this source that these protests were designed to show the President that the people of his country were against his decisions.
Source N (ii) is a caption from a book that was published in 1990 along with the drawing in Source N (i). We know now that the drawing is secondary from this second part to the source and that this caption in Source N (ii) is from an American school textbook. As ever, this source may have been simplified or censored to be suitable for the children reading it.
This source is biased in favour of Nixon; it suggests that Americans voted for Nixon just for the reason that he was promising peace in Vietnam.
Source P suggests different reasons for the war ending in Vietnam. It is an extract from a history book published in 1979. This source is secondary but it has the advantage of recent hindsight as it as written only a few years after the US troops were withdrawn from Vietnam. It discusses other reasons into why the US’ involvement in Vietnam came to an end, such as inflation, drug addiction and the loss of many men.
These sources all give different reasons for the war ending. Source N (i) suggests that the Peace Movement encouraged the troops to be removed from Vietnam, in Source N (ii) the writer believes that the election of the new president Nixon was the main factor in ending the war. Source P states that the effects that the war was having on resources and families back in the States such as drug addiction, inflation and family bereavement led to the American involvement in the war being abolished. The soldiers began taking drugs to help them cope with the stress in Vietnam. The majority of soldiers taking these drugs became addicted and returned to America, bringing major drugs problems home with them.
To pay off their huge debts acquired during the war, price in the states soared. This angered the American civilians further, they were being punished by their government for a war, which the majority of the country did not even want to be involved in. Many men were killed in Vietnam and families all over America lost sons, fathers or husbands. Many of the reasons explained in Source P encouraged more people to support the idea that Nixon’s election was the main cause of the end of the war. Both sources could be biased, both are secondary and both are written by people who support Nixon and disagree with Johnson’s decisions and methods in war.
I believe that these sources differ so greatly as they were produced for different reasons and in different decades. The entire contents of Source N are written for a school textbook, they state basic facts and the illustration is a simple artists impression. However although simplified, the source does successfully put across the fact that the anti-war protests raised awareness of the civilians dislike towards the Vietnam war, and this was a factor that did eventually convince the US government to withdraw its troops.
Source P is taken from a history textbook written shortly after the end of the war, at a time that most of the long term after effects of the US’ involvement in the war were still visible. The author of this source feels that there were other reasons that the war came to an end, reasons I feel may have been drawn from first hand experience or other forms of evidence.
F) Study all the Sources
Is there enough evidence in these sources to understand why a superpower like the USA failed to defeat the Vietcong?
From scrutinizing these sources carefully we find out many of the tactics and equipment used by the Americans in an attempt to win the war in Vietnam. When we look at the information provided in these sources, the Americans were by far the better equipped. They used napalm and Agent Orange, chemical weapons that could kill thousands of people in a short amount of time; the Vietcong did not have the resources to match any destruction on this scale. They had thousands of men posted in Vietnam and thousands more in America, with the facilities to bring these reserves into conflict at any time. However in these sources, we are also informed of the type of war the Americans were fighting, a war totally different to any they had fought before. The American troops were not trained for this type of warfare. Their enemy hid in jungles, unfamiliar to the US troops, and they used tactics, which did not involve face-to-face conflict. America’s troops were excellently equipped to cope in confrontational conflict but they were no better equipped than any peasant walking through the forest when it came to detecting booby traps, a hidden enemy or a trip wire bomb. The American troops also felt uncomfortable fighting a war, which they did not morally agree with. Their families at home disagreed with the tactics used by their sons, fathers or husbands and this made troops feel guilty about what they were doing. The public at home were publicly demonstrating that they disagreed with the Vietnam War and most of the troops were not comfortable whilst performing their duties. We can tell from these sources that the troops moral was low because they knew that some of the things they were doing were upsetting a great many people.
The sources however do not tell us some of the other major factors, which contributed to America losing the war. The US troops were not trained for this type of conflict; many soldiers were very young with no experience of fighting in a real war. They were fighting an invisible enemy, and the pressure caused many problems, some of which highlighted in the sources briefly.
These sources provide us with skeletal structure of the war fought in Vietnam but there is not enough information here to provide us with a full and in depth description of why the USA felt they had to withdraw from a war, which should have been a quick and easy victory for a country of such power and influence.