Spring Term, 2014
Prof. Edwin E. Moise
Office: Hardin 102
Cell: 650-8845
e-mail: eemoise@clemson.edu
Messages can be left in my mailbox in Hardin 126, or in the box on my office door.
Office Hours
Monday 2:30-3:20
Tuesday 11:00-12:00, 2:00-3:15
Wednesday 10:10-11:00
Thursday (none)
Friday 10:10-11:00
I do not emphasize trivial factual details in this course. On tests and quizzes I will NOT ask you to tell me the date of the Battle of "Hamburger Hill", or to name the American units that fought in it. There are some facts you need to know, but they are more important things than dates. On the other hand, I will expect you to get an idea of the sequence of events, what came first and what came later.
The most important single part of your grade will be the course paper. You can write it on whatever topic you please, within the limit of the subject matter of this course. The actual text of your paper, not counting title page, bibliography, maps, and illustrations, should be about ten pages long, typed double spaced (if you are signed up for History 6360, fifteen to twenty pages). Longer papers are acceptable.
When you are trying to decide what sources to use for your term paper, or if you are just curious about something that has come up in the course, I suggest you consult Bibliography of the Vietnam War on the Web. But bear in mind that when you see a book listed in this bibliography, this does not necessarily mean you will actually be able to find a copy of that book, in or near Clemson.
A lot of things that have been written about the Vietnam War are not true. As you do your research, you should be thinking actively about whether you believe the things your sources are saying. I will not flunk you for guessing wrong, but you should make an effort to judge who is telling the truth and who is not; don't just take things on faith. Don't dodge the problem by sticking to questions on which you believe everything you read, either. Explaining why you think a particular source was wrong about a particular fact will tend to have a good influence on your grade.
For more detailed guidelines on the term paper, see Writing a Term Paper in Military History.
The paper is due Wednesday, April 24. I request that you turn it in electronically through Blackboard, which records the date you submitted it. If Blackboard says it was turned in on April 23 (in other words, if it got in before midnight), it will be considered on time. There will be a five point penalty if the paper is submitted on April 24 or 25. The penalty will be fifteen points if it is not in by midnight April 25.
You can have a pretty free choice of topics for this paper, within the limits of the subject matter of this course. You must come in and talk to me about your paper, and discuss the sources you will be using. It is not enough to say to me as we are walking out of the classroom one morning "Professor Moise, is it OK if I write about the U.S. bombing of the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos?" You will need to talk things over with me for ten or fifteen minutes, not just a few seconds. After we have talked, you must give me a written statement of your topic, with a list of the main sources you plan to use. There will be a five point penalty if you have not given this to me by March 10, and an additional five points if it is not in by March 24. If it still is not in by March 31, I will either give you yet another five-point penalty, or else simply hand you a sheet of paper telling you what topic you must write on, and what sources you must use.
If you give me a preliminary draft of your paper (preferably as an e-mail attachment) by April 17, I will look it over and give you suggestions about how you could improve it.
The paper is worth 150 points. The other written work will be:
--Two
short papers on assigned topics (three for History 6360), worth 40 points each.
--One essay quiz (20 points).
--The midterm test (70 points)
and the final exam (120 points), which will be mostly essay questions.
This adds up to 440 points for undergraduates, 480 for graduate students.
The basic grade scale is that 90% (396 points for undergraduates) is the bottom of the
A range, 80% (352 points for undergraduates) is the bottom of the B range, and so on. Sometimes
I alter the scale in the students' favor, never against them.
Thus 396 points (90% of 440) is a guaranteed A for an
undergraduate; 394 or 390 points might be an A, depending on how the rest of the class does.
Academic integrity requires that we not try to pass other people's work off as our own. The ways students have gotten into problems of academic dishonesty in courses I have taught that were similar to this one, in past years, have been:
Large portions of a term paper copied from a few books or web sites, or even just one, without any indication that the material was copied. Typically this involves both large amounts of material quoted word-for-word, without quotation marks, and also a serious shortage of source notes pointing to the book from which the material came. Often there are misleading source notes claiming the material came from sources other than the ones from which it was actually copied word-for-word. These false source notes are especially strong evidence that the copying was dishonesty and not just carelessness.
Whole term paper obtained from some source (a commercial term paper service, or the Internet, or the collection of term papers that one of the fraternities used to have, and may still have).
One student copies another student's 40-point research exercise, maybe changing a few words and substituting synonyms, but leaving the two papers still so similar that it is obvious the resemblance could not be coincidence. I would be likely to bring charges both against the student who copied and the student who allowed his or her paper to be copied.
There are some ways in which it is all right for students to help each other. If two students want to study together getting ready for a test, that is perfectly OK. Only after I have handed out the questions does help on a test become improper. But if two people work together on a newspaper research exercise, and turn in papers that are very similar because each has been getting a lot of help from the other in writing it, both will be in deep trouble. If one of your fellow students asks to look at your paper, to get a better idea of how the assignment was to be done, please say no. They should come to me to ask for further explanations of the assignment, rather than looking at a completed paper to give them their clues. If two papers are so similar it is obvious the author of one must have seen the other, I will file charges.
In furtherance of its Academic Integrity policy, Clemson University has a license agreement with Turnitin.com, a service that helps prevent plagiarism in student assignments. I will request that you submit your research papers, at the end of the semester, to Turnitin through Blackboard. You will have the right to refuse to do this, if you wish. Turnitin will provide me with an originality rating and notation of possible text or contextual matches with other source documents. Turnitin does not make any determination of plagiarism. Rather, it identifies parts of an assignment that may have significant matches with other source documents found on the Internet, in the Turnitin database, or from other sources. If matches are identified and indicate the possibility of inclusion of material that is not properly cited, I will discuss this information with you before reaching any judgment or decision.
There will also be reading assignments that I will make available online.
The following course outline is tentative. It may be modified slightly by class request or as a result of shifts in what I find practical to place online, or as a result of unforseen events. Each day, items marked >>> are required reading; items marked --- are optional reading. Most optional items are simply books that you can look for in the library.
January 8: Introduction to the course.
January 10: Background to Vietnam. Vietnamese civilization began in
the Red River Delta of what is today northern Vietnam, slightly
more than 2,000 years ago. It spread southward gradually. The French conquered Vietnam, in chunks, in the late 19th century.
Vietnamese could not effectively defy French power.
>>> Read Moise, The
Vietnam Wars all the way through, to give you an idea of the overall pattern of
events we will be seeing in this course, and to allow you to get started thinking of
what topic you might want to choose for your term paper.
January 13: Ho Chi Minh founded the Vietnamese Communist movement, and
the Second World War gave the Communists their chance to try to make Vietnam an independent country.
In 1945 the Communists established the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.
>>> Sheehan, pp. 144-166.
>>> Herring, pp. 3-11.
Questions for discussion: Ho Chi Minh was the founder of the Indochinese Communist Party. What
was the significance of this? In other words, what sort of organization was the Indochinese Communist Party?
What was US policy toward Vietnam, in the period up to 1946?
January 15: Continue discussion of those events, particularly looking at a Communist viewpoint on them.
>>> Truong Chinh,
The August Revolution (Hanoi: Foreign Languages Publishing House,
1958), pp. 1-40. The story of the Viet Minh siezure of power in 1945. Truong Chinh was General
Secretary of the Indochinese Communist Party at that time; he published the Vietnamese original
of this work in Su That in 1946. By the time this translation was published in
Hanoi as a book, Truong Chinh had been demoted as punishment for his errors in the Land
Reform campaign of 1953-1956. The text has been placed on-line
in the Virtual Vietnam Archive of the Vietnam Project
at Texas Tech University, in two parts. I am asking that you read only the first part, up to page 40.
Questions for discussion: What was Truong Chinh's picture of the international situation?
Of French policy, in particular?
How did he say the
Communists had gotten power? Notice the contrast in some
places (for example pp. 31-32) between statements that "The whole people rose up" in support of the
revolution, and discussion of people who were against the revolution. Is this attitude toward defining
"the people" a common one? What picture did Truong Chinh
give of the Communist Party, and the nature of Communism? How dictatorial does he make Communism look? I am not asking
what you believe about the nature of Communism; I am asking what Truong Chinh believed, or pretended to believe.
January 17: All-out war between Vietnam and France broke out in 1946.
It was a classic guerrilla War. Meanwhile, the Cold War was deepening.
>>> Sheehan, pp. 166-172
>>> Herring, pp. 11-14.
>>> The Pentagon Papers, Senator Gravel Edition,
Chapter 1. "Background
to the Conflict, 1940-1950." pp. 42-52. U.S. views of the Viet Minh and Ho Chi Minh.
No Class January 20
January 22, 24: From 1950 onward, the war in Indochina was much more entangled in the Cold War.
By 1954 the Viet Minh were winning.
>>> Herring, pp. 14-33.
>>> The Pentagon Papers, Senator Gravel Edition,
Chapter 2. "U.S.
Involvement in the Franco-Viet Minh War, 1950-1954." pp. 53-75.
Questions for discussion: What was Bao Dai like? What was his government, the State of
Vietnam, like? What was US policy toward the State of Vietnam? Did the US have a choice, in deciding its policy?
January 27: In 1954, The United States didn't quite jump
openly into the war when France got in bad trouble in the Battle of Dien Bien Phu.
>>> Herring pp. 33-45
>>> Bernard Fall, "Indochina--The Last Year of the War,"
Military Review, XXXVI:7
(October 1956), pp. 3-11.
Questions for discussion: What was the importance of Dien Bien Phu? When an American official
said "One cannot go over Niagara Falls in a barrel only slightly" (quoted in Herring, p. 39), did this
comparison make sense? Why did the United States not intervene directly at Dien Bien Phu?
Newspaper research exercise due January 29: Check to see what one or two newspapers and/or newsmagazines were saying in April and/or May 1954 about the struggle in Indochina, and/or the question of what the United States should be doing about it. Write an essay of about two pages (typed double spaced), or more, about what you found. Say what there was in the articles that you found interesting or surprising. I want to see one essay based on several articles, not a string of essentially separate mini-essays, each based on a single article. Try to select articles that will allow you to have some unifying themes in your essay.
Evaluate the attitudes
of the authors. Is there anything that leads you to distrust them, or to think that the facts may
be being distorted to fit the author's viewpoint? What assumptions is the author making? Notice
the source; did the reporter say that something was true, or only that somebody else had
said it was true? If you say there is bias, please make it clear exactly what was said,
that you consider biased. What kind of bias was it (false statements, or use of emotionally
loaded language, or just careful selection of facts so that only
facts favorable to one side get mentioned)? Notice what you are reading:
--A news article is not supposed to have too much of the reporter's own opinions in it, but
there is nothing inherently wrong with the reporter quoting the opinions of other people. If a reporter is
quoting some very opinionated person, try to judge whether the reporter agrees with the person's opinions.
--An editorial is supposed to present the opinions of the newspaper; there is
nothing inherently wrong about it being opinionated. But you can still complain about bias if the
editorial is illogical or deceptive in the way it pushes that opinion.
--The same applies to an opinion piece written by someone who does not represent the newspaper.
There is no requirement that you use The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, or The Times of London, but those papers have the advantage that you can access them online through the Clemson Library's Databases Page. If you want to use newspapers other than those, you you use some other online repository of old newspapers, such as Google News, or read them on microfilm. Most of the Clemson University Library's microfilms are in storage, so you will probably have to request them the day before you are going to be reading them. The microfilm readers are on level 4 of the library. If you want to use weekly newsmagazines, the easiest way is to use the ones that have been bound into volumes, on the shelves on level 1 of the library. Some are also on microfim.
Please give source notes. Source notes must give page numbers, if the source had numbered pages. I want to be able to tell in each section of your paper which article or articles you are discussing in that section. It is not enough to have a list at the end, if I can’t tell as I read the paper which article you are discussing where. It isn't even enough to have a link to the article, if you are turning the paper in electronically. I don’t care about the format of source notes as long as they tell me what I need to know. Any format that allows me easily to discern the name of the author if it was given, the title of the article, the title of the publication, and the date and page, is OK. If you found the articles on the Internet, say so, and say where.
January 31, February 3: Vietnam was split in half in 1954, and for a couple of years
there was comparative peace. Ngo Dinh Diem became president of the Republic of
Vietnam, in South Vietnam.
>>> Herring pp. 45-80
>>> Sheehan pp. 127-144, 172-200
--- You also might like to look at my book
Land Reform in China and North Vietnam
Questions for discussion: What were the main provisions of the Geneva Accords of 1954? What
was the United States' attitude to the Accords? Comment on Senator Knowland's statement, quoted in Herring,
p. 50, that the Geneva Acccords were "the greatest victory the communists have won in twenty years." What was
Ngo Dinh Diem's government like in 1954? What was it like in 1956?
Quiz February 3
February 5: The war began again in 1959-60, both in South Vietnam and in Laos
The guerrillas did pretty well. War also started in Laos.
>>> Herring, pp. 80-87
Questions for discussion: Why did the insurgency start in South Vietnam? How did it start?
February 7, 10: The guerrillas gained strength, despite increasing U.S. aid to Diem.
>>> Herring, pp. 89-111
>>> Sheehan 3-125
Questions for discussion: What was John Vann's relationship with Colonel Cao, the
commander of the ARVN 7th Division? what was Colonel Cao like, as a commander? What were the Viet Cong like,
in the northern Mekong Delta (the area of operations of the ARVN 7th Division)?
February 12, 14: By 1963, Diem was in bad trouble.
>>> Herring, pp. 111-114
>>> Sheehan 200-277
Questions for discussion: What was the US/ARVN plan for the Battle of Ap Bac? Was it a
reasonable plan? What went wrong with it?
The Battle of Ap Bac: Plan and Assumed Enemy Situation
The Battle of Ap Bac: Situation About 1400 (2:00 p.m.)
February 17: The Aftermath of Ap Bac
>>> Sheehan 277-334
Questions for discussion: What does Sheehan mean when he says the U.S. Army was suffering
from the "disease of victory"? Do you believe him?
February 19: The U.S. encouraged a coup that overthrew Diem
>>> Sheehan 334-371
>>> Herring, pp. 114-129
Questions for discussion: Why did some U.S. officials decide to back the idea of a coup
against Ngo Dinh Diem? Did those reasons make sense? Why did so many ARVN officers support the coup?
February 21: President Johnson hesitated about expanding the war.
>>> Herring, pp. 131-151
>>> Sheehan 371-86
Questions for discussion: How did Lyndon Johnson deal with the problem of Vietnam
during his first year as President? What factors influenced his approach?
February 26: The war continued to escalate, and the U.S. sent in ground troops.
>>> Herring, pp. 151-169
>>> Sheehan 501-535
Questions for discussion: How useful were the military actions that the U.S. forces were taking?
February 28: Vann and Sheehan react to the new American style of war.
>>> Sheehan, 535-580
Questions for discussion: What was the significance of the Battle of the Ia Drang Valley? Was
the use of heavy American firepower in South Vietnamese villages a bad idea?
March 3, 5: The war was complex and messy
>>> Herring, pp. 179-223
>>> Downs, Section 1
Questions for discussion: Were the training, equipment, and tactics of the American forces appropriate for
the war in South Vietnam? How did the arrival of large numbers of Americans affect South Vietnam?
March 7: Air War.
>>> Herring, pp. 171-179
Questions for discussion: How useful was the technological superiority of the United States?
Newspaper research exercise due March 3: Go to the library, and check to see what one or two newspapers and/or newsmagazines were saying in August and/or September 1967 about U.S. air operations in North Vietnam or South Vietnam or Laos. Use at least four articles (six for graduate students); please have all your articles about U.S. air operations in one of the three areas. Write an essay of about two pages (typed double spaced), or more, about what you found. Say what there was in the articles that you found interesting or surprising. I want to see one essay based on several articles, not a string of essentially separate mini-essays, each based on a single article. Try to select articles that will allow you to have some unifying themes in your essay.
Evaluate the attitudes
of the authors. Is there anything that leads you to distrust them, or to think that the facts may
be being distorted to fit the author's viewpoint? Notice
the source; did the reporter say that something was true, or only that somebody else had
said it was true? If you say there is bias, please make it clear exactly what was said,
that you consider biased. What kind of bias was it (false statements, or use of emotionally
loaded language, or just careful selection of facts so that only
facts favorable to one side get mentioned)? Notice what you are reading:
--A news article is not supposed to have too much of the reporter's own opinions in it, but
there is nothing inherently wrong with the reporter quoting the opinions of other people. If a reporter is
quoting some very opinionated person, try to judge whether the reporter agrees with the person's opinions.
--An editorial is supposed to present the opinions of the newspaper; there is
nothing inherently wrong about it being opinionated. But you can still complain about bias if the
editorial is illogical or deceptive in the way it pushes that opinion.
--The same applies to an opinion piece written by someone who does not represent the newspaper.
There is no requirement that you use The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, or The Times of London, but those papers have the advantage that you can access them online through the Clemson Library's Databases Page. If you want to use newspapers other than those, you you use some other online repository of old newspapers, such as Google News, or read them on microfilm. Most of the Clemson University Library's microfilms are in storage, so you will probably have to request them the day before you are going to be reading them. The microfilm readers are on level 4 of the library. If you want to use weekly newsmagazines, the easiest way is to use the ones that have been bound into volumes, on the shelves on level 1 of the library. Some are also on microfim.
Please give source notes. Source notes must give page numbers, if the source had numbered pages. I want to be able to tell in each section of your paper which article or articles you are discussing in that section. It is not enough to have a list at the end, if I can’t tell as I read the paper which article you are discussing where. It isn't even enough to have a link to the article, if you are turning the paper in electronically. I don’t care about the format of source notes as long as they tell me what I need to know. Any format that allows me easily to discern the name of the author if it was given, the title of the article, the title of the publication, and the date and page, is OK. If you found the articles on the Internet, say so, and say where.
Due date for term paper topic sheets: March 10
March 10: One infantry unit around the end of 1967.
>>> Downs, section 2.
Questions for discussion: How effective was Downs' unit?
March 12, 14: One infantry unit around the end of 1967.
>>> Downs, sections 3 and 4.
Questions for discussion: How effective was Downs' unit? How good an officer was Downs?
Spring Break: No Class March 17-21
March 24, 26: The war grew larger and bloodier,
without producing any decisive results.
>>> Sheehan, 580-659
Questions for discussion: What do you think of Vann's habit of driving on very insecure roads? How much sense did
attrition make, as a policy for the U.S. war in Vietnam? How much sense did pacification make, as a policy for the American
war in Vietnam? How was the fighting in northern I Corps different from the fighting in most other areas?
March 28: Increasing discontent.
>>> Sheehan, 660-693
Question for discussion: Why did Secretary of Defense McNamara lose faith in the war? What options did he have?
March 31, April 2: The Tet Offensive of 1968: a major Communist
offensive, that attained partial surprise. Militarily it cost the
Communists a lot of men, but it produced important political benefits
for them by shaking American confidence that the war could be won.
>>> Herring, pp. 225-268
>>> Sheehan, 693-729
Questions for discussion: What do you think of the Tet Offensive, with hindsight? What would you have thought of it
if you had been considering the question in 1968?
April 4: Laos and Cambodia
April 7: Richard Nixon came into office as President in 1969.
>>> Herring, pp. 271-283.
>>> Sheehan, 729-738.
Questions for discussion: What were President Nixon's goals for the Vietnam War? How
realistic were they?
April 9, 11, 14: In 1969, the U.S. began to pull out of Vietnam. This went on until
U.S. participation in ground combat ceased in 1972. But Laos continued to be a battleground, and
Cambodia became one. U.S. bombing declined in 1971, but increased again in 1972, especially after the
Communists' Easter Offenive began.
>>> Herring, pp. 283-310
>>> Sheehan, 738-790
Questions for discussion: What else could the United States have been doing, other than what it was doing? Was
military victory a realistic possibility, and if so, how could it have been achieved? Was a negotiated settlement of the war
a realistic possibility? Was strengthening the ARVN to the point it would be able to stand on its own a realistic possibility?
April 16: The Paris Peace Agreement
>>> Herring, pp. 310-320
Questions for discussion: What was the significance of the "Christmas Bombing" of 1972? What
was Nixon trying to accomplish by this air campaign? Did he
accomplish it? How did other people see the bombing? What do you think of the Paris Peace Agreement,
signed a few weeks later?
April 18: The War after the Paris Agreement, 1973-1974
>>> Herring, pp. 323-331
--- Isaacs, Without Honor
Questions for discussion: Do you blame the Watergate scandal for the decline in U.S.
aid to the Republic of Vietnam after the Paris Agreement, or would the declining political support
for the war, in the United States, have produced such a decline even without Watergate? What was the impact
on the ARVN of the decline in aid?
April 21: The End, 1975
>>> Herring, pp. 323-340
--- Snepp, Decent Interval
April 23: Submit term papers online through Blackboard
April 23, 25: Aftermath and Legacies of the War; Review
>>> Herring, pp. 340-368
>>> Moise, "Limited War"
Final exam: Friday, May 2, 3:00 p.m.
Other Links
Web site of the Perry-Castaneda Library Map Collection at the University of Texas
Military History Map Library: Vietnam War (U.S. Military Academy, West Point)
President Johnson's Speech, March 31, 1968
Clemson University Academic Success Center, which provides help and tutoring for students encountering academic problems. It does not, however, have tutors specifically for History courses.
Revised February 27, 2014.
