ATucker21 --
The number of soldiers killed in action in Vietnam during 1969
actually declined from the peak of 14,589 in 1968. However, 1969 was
the second most-deadly of the war for American military, with 9,414 of
the more than 46,000 killed during the war.
Given the situation in 1969 -- President Richard Nixon coming to
office as a strong pro-war advocate; Nixon's secret invasion of Laos
and Cambodia; and a peaking of U.S. forces at 543,400 -- an equally
relevant question could be "Why did 1969 see a decline in U.S. combat
deaths?"
There is quite a bit of information available on the Internet about
the Vietnam War, with some excellent general sites, though sometimes
the source material isn't well documented.
For an excellent source that is widely available in libraries, I might
suggest this book and the best single reference to the war:
Amazon.com
"The Columbia Guide to the Vietnam War" (Anderson, 2002)
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0231114931/qid=1083256710/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/103-5148680-6060644?v=glance&s=books#product-details
U.S. DEATHS IN VIETNAM
======================
Reports and studies from the Vietnam War contain a great deal of
detail but can still be confusing. U.S. casualties from January, 1961
through January, 1973 included:
Killed in action: 45,941
Wounded: 300,635
Missing: 2,330
Died (non-combat): 10,420
Of course most of the missing are "presumed dead".
To illustrate the confusion: the above is taken from the Columbia
Guide, with 3 citations for the data. The Columbia Guide's yearly KIA
summary comes from "Advice and Support: The Final Years," published by
the Government Printing Office in 1988.
Amazon.com
"Advice and Support" (Clark, 1988)
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0160323584/103-5148680-6060644?v=glance#product-details
Here are the numbers of Americans killed in action for 1966-1970, the
peak years in American losses:
1966: 5,008
1967: 9,377
1968: 14,589
1969: 9,414
1970: 4,221
Note that they don't come close to matching the monthly casualty
numbers from this web page, an indication that one has to be careful
with web (and even print) resources:
The American War Library
"Vietnam War Deaths by Month, 1966-1971"
http://members.aol.com/forcountry/kiamonth.htm
Though it's pretty much outside the scope of your question, the South
Vietnamese Army suffered far larger casualties, even as U.S. deaths
declined. Also, note that soldiers from Australian, New Zealand and
Thailand were also killed.
To understand why American combat deaths were down in 1969 from 1968
-- and why it was still the 2nd most-deadly year of the war, it's
important to understand some key events of both years.
EVENTS OF 1969
==============
THE PRELUDE
------------
The 1968 battles caused the peaking of American casualties, in large
part because of the Tet Offensive in January, 1968. Engineered by
North Vietnamese General Vo Nguyen Gap, it involved simultaneous
assaults at Khe Sanh (near the North Vietnamese border) and the major
South Vietnamese cities. Fighting as irregulars enabled the North
Vietnamese to infiltrate the cities.
An excellent web source is:
Vets With a Mission
"The Tet Offensive 1968"
http://www.vwam.com/vets/tet/tet.html
The offensive cost the U.S. and its allies about 4,500 dead and
another 1,000 missing. Even at the time, Tad Szulc of the New York
Times reported that the military estimated that North Vietnam may have
lost 40,000 dead in the attacks. Szulc did a revealing interview with
Gen. Giap in the New York Times that puts 1968-1969 in perspective.
In it, William P. Rogers indicates that infiltration from the north
had tapered off some 60 percent from 1968 -- and that the U.S.
believed the North Vietnamese were having trouble recruiting soldiers.
The article is available on the New York Times site for a fee but is
also widely available at many libraries via Proquest Historical
newspapers:
The New York Times
"Giap Indicates Hanoi Will Stress Small, Well-Armed Mobile Units"
(Szulc, Dec. 28, 1969)
The Tet Offensive is important for several reasons:
? it occurred during an American election year and is widely credited
with Pres. Lyndon Johnson's decision not to seek office
? it brought requests from U.S. Army General Willliam Westmoreland for
206,000 more troops
? it prompted Central Intelligence Agency analyses that noted that the
U.S. had continually underestimated North Vietnamese strength
EVENTS OF 1969
=================
In January, 1969 two events would set in motion activities in
Southeast Asia that would lead to the fall of South Vietnam on April
30, 1975 -- and later to Laos being taken over by the Pathet Lao.
On Jan. 22, the strongly pro-war Richard Nixon was inaugurated as
president of the United States. Three days later the Paris Peace
Talks are finally expanded officially to include the Democratic
Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam), who had been unofficial
"observers" to that point.
Nixon's support for the war was so strong that he was the first
president to invoke pre-publication censorship when the New York Times
moved in 1971 to publish a history of the war done by the Pentagon and
Rand Corporation. Nixon also arranged the burglary of the author's
psychiatrist office in order to slander Daniel Ellsberg:
National Security Archive/GWU
"The Pentagon Papers"
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB48/
Prof. Brian Martin, University of Woollongong
"The Legacy of the Pentagon Papers" (Martin, July 2003)
http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/pubs/03BRwhistle07.html
Nixon's election led directly to "Operation Menu" or expansion of the
war into Laos and Cambodia. Both countries had been used by
infiltrating North Vietnamese regulars as a refuge, but Congress had
forbidden expansion of the war outside the North and South Vietnam
fearing a widening of the war and potential conflict with China. The
war by this time was costing more than $26 billion per year, according
to the Senate Appropriations Committee, and thousands of American
deaths:
Vietnam-War.info
"Operation Menu"
http://www.vietnam-war.info/battles/operation_menu.php
Almost simultaneously, Pres. Nixon announced that responsibility for
the war would gradually be turned over to the Vietnamese. Still, U.S.
troop count increased to its peak of 543,300 at the end of April. It
would be June before there was any decrease in troops, with the U.S.
announcing on June 8 that 25,000 being removed.
During this entire time Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was
conducting secret peace talks with the North Vietnamese. And military
operations were continuing.
Several web pages have good summaries of the events during the year.
Some provide specific combat operations, especially this chronology of
the year's military operations:
The American War Library
"Interactive Wartime Chronology 1969"
http://members.aol.com/warlib/chron/v1969.htm
An excellent Google search strategy for determining how many were
killed or wounded during each battle is to use the operation or battle
names. Sometimes they have several names, such as the well-known Ap
Bia Mountain battle -- renamed "Hamburger Hill." This battle, near
the Cambodian and Laos borders ended with 70 U.S. dead and 372 wounded
but is well chronicled in film and print:
Amazon.com
"Hamburger Hill"
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0891417060/ref=ase_onwarcom-20/103-5148680-6060644?v=glance&s=books#product-details
See also this very detailed account:
http://www.historyinfilm.com/hamhill/real.htm
http://www.historyinfilm.com/hamhill/real2.htm
http://www.historyinfilm.com/hamhill/real3.htm
http://www.historyinfilm.com/hamhill/real4.htm
http://www.historyinfilm.com/hamhill/real5.htm
http://www.historyinfilm.com/hamhill/real6.htm
http://www.historyinfilm.com/hamhill/real7.htm
From the North Vietnamese side, Guenter Lewy's book, "America in
Vietnam" (Oxford University Press, 1978) makes it clear that combat
soldiers were still readily available -- and that the CIA studies done
at the end of the Johnson Administration were correct about continual
under-estimates of troop strength.
Combined Vietcong (guerrillas in the South) and North Vietnamese Army
strength was 250,300 in 1968 and 236,800 in 1969 -- only a slight drop
despite losses in the 1968 Tet Offensive.
Amazon.com
"America in Vietnam" (Lewy, 1978)
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0195027329/qid=1083263840/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/103-5148680-6060644?v=glance&s=books&n=507846#product-details
You may also find interesting reading what was happening
simultaneously in the closed-door Paris Peace Talks. Specifics on
activities in Paris Peace Treaty and discussion, done with a 25-year
retrospective:
The Nixon Center
"THE PARIS AGREEMENT ON VIETNAM: TWENTY-FIVE YEARS LATER" (April 1998)
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/paris.htm
Some of the major offensives can be tracked using information from
this site. Note that, while much of the statistic on this site has no
reference, the information matches that from the April, 1997 "VFW
Magazine":
My Vietnam Experience -- Cecil Martin
"Vietnam War Statistics"
http://www.eiis.net/cmart/vietwarstats.html
And a last timeline: PBS has a timeline with some additional
information on activities in 1969. The PBS American Experience site
has a huge number of maps, transcripts and original material:
PBS
"The American Experience, Vietnam 1969-73"
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/vietnam/time/timeline4.html
"The American Experience -- Vietnam"
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/vietnam/index.html
MAJOR VIETNAM WAR WEBSITES
=============================
Mt. Holyoke University, which has the Paris Peace Treaty review linked
above, has a huge number of documents related to the war at its
website:
"Documents Relating to American Foreign Policy: Vietnam"
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/vietnam.htm
A good compendium of weblinks related to the Vietnam War:
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/vietweb.htm
The History Channel site gives you the ability to look at what
happened today in the Vietnam War:
The History Channel
http://www.historychannel.com/tdih/tdih.jsp?category=vietnamwar
Use the Multieducator site is an excellent multi-media source,
including charts-graphs-pictures. Doing a site search for "1969 +
Vietnam" and it will turn up almost 200 links:
http://www.multied.com/
This website picks up much of the statistics in the April, 1997 VFW
Magazine, including attitudes of veterans:
"Vietnam Warriors: A Statistical Profile" (January 1998)
http://ojc.org/NL/march/warriors.htm
And finally, Edwin Moise is a recognized scholar on the war. His site
has a long list of articles, web sites and other documents on the
Vietnam War:
Clemson University
http://people.clemson.edu/~eemoise/bibliography.html
Note that Moise and many others link to the Vietnam Project at Texas
Tech as one of the richest areas:
http://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/
Google search strategy:
"Tet Offensive"
"Pentagon Papers"
"Vietnam War" + chronology + 1969
"Vietnam War" + deaths
"Vietnam War" + battles + 1969
"Hamburger Hill"
Best regards,
Omnivorous-GA |
Clarification of Answer by
omnivorous-ga
on
30 Apr 2004 11:11 PDT
ATucker21 --
The questions that you ask are relevant ones:
> Was Nixon to blame for these deaths or can their deaths be linked to
Johnson?
>Did Nixon's invasion of Laos and Cambodia lead to the high
number of deaths?
The section of the page on the Tet Offensive titled "After Effects of
Tet" make it clear that both the CIA and Johnson Administration
officials were aware that the tactics and strategies of 1968 were not
working. Pres. Johnson was faced with a request from Gen.
Westmoreland for more than 200,000 additional troops. The general
received about 100,000 additional soldiers, in part because of the
expense and in part because it would have stripped Western Europe of
soldiers in the middle of the Cold War:
Vets With a Mission
"The Tet Offensive 1968"
http://www.vwam.com/vets/tet/tet.html
In the first part of this answer, I'd included the killed-in-action
numbers but not the annual costs of the war, which were at the
following levels, according to Senate Appropriations Committee numbers
cited in Prof. David Anderson's book, "The Columbia Guide to the
Vietnam War":
1967: $20.1 billion
1968: $26.6 billion
1969: $28.8 billion
1970: $23.1 billion
1971: $14.7 billion
But Richard Nixon came to office as a strong pro-war candidate and he
and Vice-president Spiro T. Agnew made constant political attacks on
opponents of the war. His basic strategy is difficult to
differentiate from Johnson's: ensure the longevity of South Vietnam
(not necessarily to seek the capitulation of North Vietnam).
Strategy apart, Pres. Nixon's actions did differ: Pres. Johnson had
carried the war on in the air and sea over North Vietnam; Pres. Nixon
extended it on the ground and in the air into Laos and Cambodia, in
secret and against the limits put down by Congress. Prof. Jeffrey
Kimball does a good job of outlining it here:
History News Network
"Nixon and Kissinger Obfuscations About Vietnam: What the Documents
Show" (Feb. 2, 2004)
http://hnn.us/articles/3073.html
And Nixon himself would never have described the war as "a fiasco."
In his 1985 book, "No More Vietnams," he contended that the U.S.
actually won the war in 1973 -- conveniently ignoring the fall of
South Vietnam in April, 1975:
Pacific University Asian Studies
"Nixon: A Review"
http://mcel.pacificu.edu/as/students/teachviet/nmvbr.html
Nixon's strategy of expanding the war into Laos and Cambodia cost at
least 350 lives by the end of June, 1969. Hamburger Hill and other
operations were increased in the border areas, but war activity was
across the country and I've never seen a detailed analysis or
comparison vs. 1968. Note POW-MIA pages show that there are more than
400 missing in Laos and Cambodia -- a significant percentage of the
1,862 soldiers shown as missing:
All POW-MIA
"Current Statistics" (April 29, 2004)
http://www.aiipowmia.com/stats.html
However, in war it's often difficult to say whether the body count
leads to a better or worse outcome. In fact, the Veterans of Foreign
Wars (VFW) in surveying those who were in "heavy combat" contends that
it 82% of those soldiers "strongly believe the war was lost because of
lack of political will," so presumably they would have argued for a
higher level of military action in 1969.
"Vietnam Warriors: A Statistical Profile" (January 1998)
http://ojc.org/NL/march/warriors.htm
Best regards,
Omnivorous-GA
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