Study sources D and E
“How useful are these sources as evidence of the public reaction in the USA to the war in Vietnam in the mid 1960’s?”
Source D is useful because it shows how the media influenced the public opinion of America in 1967. the article appeared in a popular American magazine that was very pro-America. However, the utility of this source to show the public reaction is limited because the percentages of people asked do not add up to 100. There is 10% missing and it is not accounted for. This could mean that more people could have been for the war, or against it, or some people may have felt that because it didn’t affect them directly, it didn’t bother them that the war was going on.
Also, the people who the magazine asked is unknown, therefore the results may not have been an accurate view of what the whole American public thought. Only a specific group of people would have been asked.
Source E is useful because it shows an overall public opinion. In a Gallup poll, a more random selection of people are asked and it is therefore more likely to represent the opinion of the whole country. Also, integration and racism are concerns for people and this shows that a wider selection of people were asked because a lot of white people didn’t care about black rights and it is a concern.
Source E is limited, however, as it does not give specific statistics. It does not give percentages of people for whom Vietnam was concern and it also does not state why it was a concern. It could have been because it was costing the American public too much money in taxes, or was it because of the amount of young American men getting injured? Maybe it was a sentimental concern for their sons and husbands and fathers? Or was it because they were genuinely concerned about the spread of communism?
It appears, therefore, that both sources are useful, but have limitations.
Study sources E, F, G and H
“use the evidence of these sources and your own knowledge to explain why public opinion changed between 1967 and 1970”
Public opinion changed dramatically between 1967 and 1970 largely due to the media and television coverage of the events in Vietnam.
Source G is from an article published in Time Magazine. “Time” is widely read by American citizens and is very pro-America. However, this article gave the truth about what was really happening in Vietnam. The writer was a first hand witness to the brutal and needless killing of innocent people and he does not cover up for the American soldiers. This would have had an impact on what “civvie America” would have thought because it would make them angry to see their husband, sons, fathers, brothers, uncles, behaving in that way when they knew how caring they really were. It would sicken people to think the men out there fighting for them were killing innocent teenage girls and children.
Also, this article was written two years after the event- the My Lai Massacre which happened in 1967. This shows the people the Government were covering up what was going on. This would have annoyed the American public and made them angry at the Government for lying to them for so long. Through this article the American public would have discovered that they were fighting the war using dirty tactics.
Source F is a letter written home to a family member or a girlfriend or friend, by a soldier fighting for his country in 1969, telling them about the horrors of war. Because it is written, presumably to someone he trusts, he does not lie and cover up the nasty details. He gives a truthful account. He tells the receiver that the war is a waste of young life and words such as “tragic” evoke feelings of sadness in the reader. The way he writes, “I’m sick of facing everyday a new bunch of kids getting ripped to pieces,” shows the war is futile and they are never going to win.
This letter would change the public opinion because the receiver would tell their friends about what they had been told and they would tell their friends and so on, and the news would spread quickly of the bad things happening to the countries men out in Vietnam. It would also have a bearing on the countries morale- if the soldiers thought they wouldn’t win, why should they?
Source H is a pictorial source, taken by a military photographer during the My Lai Massacre in 1968. It depicts frightened women and children, who would have had no idea what was happening to them. It would have affected public opinion seeing these types of photographs simply because the ordinary American civilians would have seen the terror faced by the ordinary innocent Vietnamese peasants. The Americans would have begun to realise how out of control their soldiers were becoming and they would also have realised that fighting this war was a bad idea because of the innocent people getting hurt.
Source E is a Gallup poll, which gives a country wide view of concerns for the American civilians. This shows how the public opinion changed in the mid 1960’s from integration and racism to the war in Vietnam. However it does not tell us why the opinion changed during this time.
Public opinion also changed due to a man called Walter Cronkite, who famously said during a live news broadcast “What the hell is going on? I thought we were winning this war.” Walter Cronkite represented the average American and many TV viewing citizens greatly respected him. Seeing him loose faith in the war meant that there was no hope and president Johnson said “if I’ve lost Walter, I’ve lost Mr Average Citizen.” A lot of the television footage shown was not edited before it was sent out to the millions of viewers at home. They were shown several minutes of unexplained footage of the war that gave it a very disorganised chaotic look.
Study all the sources
The writer of source I believed that television played an important part in changing peoples attitudes on the Vietnam War.
Use the sources and your own knowledge, to explain whether you agree with this statement.
Television in the 1960s included your average sitcoms, comedies, but then along came a war that would change how people would look at television forever. The Vietnam War was the most dramatic and vivid war ever televised. Dean Rusk, US secretary of State, said that, “This was the first struggle fought on television in everybody’s living room everyday… whether ordinary people can sustain a war effort under that kind of daily hammering is a very large question." Shown to the American public daily, it earned its name as "the living room war." This imagery was so detailed that it shocked and amazed its viewers. Because of the intense detail and graphics, the reaction was strong. While some believe that the use of the television medium was a negative turning point for America, there were others who believed that it gave citizens a new perspective on the war.
The evening news, with Cronkite as it front man, showed the traumatic and horrific details of the Vietnam War and provided the latest updates on what was happening between the North and South Vietnamese armies. Every night in houses across America, families gathered to see what was happening in the war and to see if their loved ones had perished. During the evening news, kitchens and dining rooms were abandoned and dinners were eaten in the living room to provide the convenience of watching the news and eating at the same time. As a result, the war earned its name as "the living room war." Because the Vietnam War was the first war that had ever been broadcast to such an extent on television, people were both enraged and fascinated with what they saw. A large percentage of Americans felt sympathy and gratitude towards the brave soldiers. However, others felt that the war they saw on television was atrocious and unnecessary. One of the infamous events Americans saw were the "Zippo raids" in which American soldiers were filmed as they used their Zippo cigarette lighters to set Viet Cong thatched huts on fire. Reactions to these images caused a large amount of controversy among US viewers.
The writer of source I tells it how it really was. The American viewers wanted to see what was going on but did not want the full reality of it. They wanted to see the war but in a censored down version of the events. They wanted it to be how it was on the cinema screen. What they saw fascinated them and disgusted them at the same time. Television changed the public opinion because they saw what was really happening, they saw the brutality of men getting blown apart by mortars and they saw the devastation that napalm caused.
News reporters and important figures who spoke on television also contributed to the change of opinion. The viewers saw what their superiors and equals thought and began to fell that if that’s how that person feels that they should feel the same as well. One of the most famous and impacting quotes made on television was when Walter Cronkite said on live broadcast “What the hell is going on? I thought we were winning this war.” Mr Average American had lost faith in the war and live on television. The American public saw it and would have begun to loose faith too.
Source D tells us about a public vote that showed how 64% of people who had watched the war on television had said “television made them feel like backing up the boys in Vietnam.” This shows that watching the war changed people attitudes about the conflict for the better and made them want to back up the men fighting for the freedom of the Vietnamese peasants, instead of making them feel that they ought to back up the men fighting simply because it was their husbands and fathers and brothers fighting out there.
Many commentators have said that television lost the Vietnam War for America - as the full horror of conflict was beamed into people's homes public support diminished. The media coverage on television was bold and aggressive and turned the ordinary Americans against the war.
