Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974 (168 page)

4.
Gaddis,
Strategies of Containment
, 248; Kearns,
Lyndon Johnson
, 311. From August 1964 until the end of American involvement in January 1973, the United States suffered 47,356 battlefield deaths in the Vietnam War, compared to 33,629 in the three years of the Korean War. The number wounded was 270,000, compared to 103,284 in Korea. Other war-related American deaths in Vietnam totaled 10,795, and in Korea, 20,617. Greatly improved medical procedures held down the number of American deaths in Vietnam, which were approximately one-half,
per year
, of the number of American deaths in Korea.

5.
By 1970 the total tonnage of bombs dropped by United States planes in Vietnam exceeded the tonnage dropped in all previous wars in human history.

6.
Herring,
America's Longest War
, 146–54.

7.
Later estimates, as reported in the
New York Times
, Nov. 30, 1992, conclude that 1.5 million Vietnamese died in the war between 1964 and 1973, of whom 924,000 were North Vietnamese and their allies from the South, 415,000 were civilians, and 185,000 were South Vietnamese soldiers. Christian Appy,
Working-Class War: America's Combat Soldiers and Vietnam
(Chapel Hill, 1993), 16–17, gives somewhat higher numbers, estimating total Vietnamese deaths, 1961–75, at between 1.5 and 2 million and noting that hundreds of thousands of Cambodians and Laotians were also killed during these years, as were smaller numbers of Australians, New Zealanders, South Koreans (c. 4,000 deaths), Thais, and Filipinos (SEATO allies) who fought alongside the South Vietnamese and the Americans. An oft-cited grand total of deaths, 1961–75, is 3 million.

8.
Robert Divine, "Vietnam Reconsidered,"
Diplomatic History
, 12 (Winter 1988), 79–93. Civilians were 28 percent of all deaths in the Vietnam War, compared to 40 percent in World War II and 70 percent in the Korean War. There was much more bombing of large urban populations in both World War II (as of Dresden, Tokyo, or Hiroshima) and in the Korean War than in the Vietnamese conflict.

9.
New York Times
, Nov. 30, 1992.

10.
Thomas Paterson, "Historical Memory and Illusive Victories: Vietnam and Central America,"
Diplomatic History
, 12 (Winter 1988), 1–18.

11.
Charles Morris, A
Time of Passion: America
, 1960–1980 (New York, 1984), 103, 145.

12.
American soldiers commonly referred to the military side of the NLF derogatorily as the Viet Cong or Vietcong, or VC, shorthand terms for "Vietnamese Communist."

13.
George Herring, "People Quite Apart: Americans, South Vietnamese, and the War in Vietnam,"
Diplomatic History
, 14 (Winter 1990), 9.

14.
Herring,
America's Longest War
, xi, estimated that the war cost the United States $150 billion between 1950, when Truman stepped up aid to South Vietnam, and 1975, when Congress cut back further military aid. Most of this money was spent between 1965 and 1972.

15.
Kearns,
Lyndon Johnson
, 251.

16.
Ibid., 266–67.

17.
Herring,
America's Longest War
, 46–48.

18.
For data and reflections on the draft, see D. Michael Shafer, "The Vietnam Draft: Who Went, Who Didn't, and Why It Matters," in Shafer, ed.,
The Legacy: The Vietnam War in the American Imagination
(Boston, 1990), 57–79; George Flynn,
Lewis B. Hershey, Jr.: Mr. Selective Service
(Chapel Hill, 1985), 166–70; Lawrence Baskir and William Strauss,
Chance and Circumstance
(New York, 1978), 52–53; and Charles Moskos, "From Citizens' Army to Social Laboratory,"
Wilson Quarterly
(Winter 1993), 10–21.

19.
Moskos, "From Citizens' Army," notes that 8 of 10 American men of draft age entered the military during the World War II years and that roughly 50 percent of eligible men had service during the years between 1950, the start of the Korean War, and 1960. Roughly 40 percent served during the Vietnam years. The age of draft registration was 18; of induction, no earlier than 18½. Seventeen-year-olds could enlist in the marines if they had the consent of a guardian. Relatively few 18-year-olds fought in Vietnam. A total of 250,000 women served in the military during the Vietnam era, of whom 6,431 went to Vietnam and nine were killed.

20.
Landon Jones,
Great Expectations: America and the Baby Boom Generation
(New York, 1980), 102.

21.
As noted, American casualties during the conflict in Vietnam were relatively modest. But expectations had been high. Jones,
Great Expectations
, 102, estimates that the also 58,151 Americans who died in Vietnam (from battlefield as well as non-battlefield deaths) were offspring or parents or siblings of 275,000 people and that the 270,000 who were wounded were offspring or parents or siblings of 1.4 million people. Millions more of Americans, of course, were friends of fellow citizens who served in Vietnam.

22.
Michael Beschloss,
The Crisis Years: Kennedy and Khrushchev
, 1960–1963 (New York, 1991), 692–93. This order, however, did not prevent the CIA from continuing to explore ways of assassinating Castro. These explorations continued in 1965.

23.
Herring,
America's Longest War
, 118.

24.
Gaddis,
Strategies of Containment
, 258.

25.
William Leuchtenburg,
In the Shadow of FDR: From Harry Truman to Ronald Reagan
(Ithaca, 1983); Vaughn Bornet,
The Presidency of Lyndon Johnson
(Lawrence, 1983), 75.

26.
Herring,
America's Longest War
, 110.

27.
Kearns,
Lyndon Johnson
, 251–57; Gaddis,
Strategies of Containment
, 248.

28.
Kearns,
Lyndon Johnson
, 253.

29.
Herring,
America's Longest War
, 116–20; Ambrose,
Rise to Globalism
, 212–13.

30.
Robert Collins, "Growth Liberalism in the Sixties: Great Societies at Home and Grand Designs Aboard," in David Farber, ed.,
The Sixties: From Memory to History
(Chapel Hill, 1994), 11–44.

31.
John Hart Ely,
War and Responsibility: Constitutional Lessons of Vietnam and Its Aftermath
(Princeton, 1993); David Barrett,
Uncertain Warriors: Lyndon Johnson and His Vietnam Advisers
(Lawrence, 1993).

32.
George Herring, "The War in Vietnam," in Robert Divine, ed.,
Exploring the Johnson Years
(Austin, 1981), 27–62; Gary Hess, "The Unending Debate: Historians and the Vietnam War,"
Diplomatic History
, 18 (Spring 1994), 239–64; Berman,
Lyndon Johnson's War
, 12.

33.
Paterson, "Historical Memory," 5.

34.
Arguments well summarized by Paterson, "Historical Memory"; Herring, "War in Vietnam"; and Divine, "Vietnam Reconsidered." See also Harry Summers, Jr.,
On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War
(Novato, Calif., 1982).

35.
Herring,
America's Longest War
, 157–59.

36.
Paterson, "Historical Memory."

37.
Sheehan,
Bright Shining Lie
.

38.
Harry Summers, Jr., "The Vietnam Syndrome and the American People,"
Journal of American Culture
, 17 (Spring 1994), 53–58.

39.
Robert Zieger,
American Workers, American Unions, 1920–1985
(Baltimore, 1986), 171–72.

40.
Herring, "War in Vietnam," 39–40; Kearns,
Lyndon Johnson
, 324–27.

41.
Herring,
America's Longest War
, 142.

42.
For works dealing with cultural misunderstanding, see FitzGerald,
Fire in the Lake;
Loren Baritz,
Backfire: A History of How American Culture Led Us to Vietnam and Made Us Fight the Way We Did
(New York, 1985); and John Hellman,
American Myth and the Legacy of Vietnam
(New York, 1986).

43.
Gaddis,
Strategies of Containment
, 240.

44.
Hodgson,
America's in Our Time
, 237–38.

45.
Herring, "War in Vietnam," 41–42.

46.
Herring,
America's Longest War
, 126–28.

47.
Ambrose,
Rise to Globalism
, 217–18.

48.
Walter LaFeber, "Latin American Policy," in Divine, ed.,
Exploring the Johnson Years
, 63–90; Ambrose,
Rise to Globalism
, 219–21; John Blum,
Years of Discord: American Politics and Society, 1961–1974
(New York, 1991), 222–25.

49.
Berman,
Lyndon Johnson's War
, 17–18, 79.

50.
Herring, "War in Vietnam," 3.

51.
Kearns,
Lyndon Johnson
, 281–83; Herring,
America's Longest War
, 138–40; Gaddis,
Strategies of Containment
, 242.

52.
Berman,
Lyndon Johnson's War
, 12.

53.
Deborah Shapley,
Promise and Power: The Life and Times of Robert McNamara
(Boston, 1993); Halberstam,
Best and Brightest
, 642–45; Robert McNamara,
In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam
(New York, 1995).

54.
Gaddis,
Strategies of Containment
, 259.

55.
Herring,
America's Longest War
, 165–66, 168–69.

56.
John Guilmartin, Jr., "America in Vietnam: A Working-Class War?"
Reviews in American History
, 22 (June 1994), 322–27.

57.
Appy,
Working-Class War
, 6–35. First-hand accounts that capture some of the terror of soldiers include Philip Caputo, A
Rumor of War
(New York, 1978); Michael Herr,
Dispatches
(New York, 1977); and Tim O'Brien,
Things They Carried: A Work of Fiction
(Boston, 1990).

58.
D. Michael Shafer, "The Vietnam Combat Experience: The Human Legacy," in Shafer, ed.,
Legacy
, 80–103.

59.
Wallace Terry,
Bloods: An Oral History of the Vietnam War by Black Veterans
(New York, 1984); Peter Levy, "Blacks and the Vietnam War," in Shafer, ed.,
Legacy
, 209–32.

60.
Jones,
Great Expectations
, 96.

61.
Blacks ultimately were 13.7 percent of all American casualties in Vietnam, a figure that was 30 percent higher than would have been the case in a color-blind situation. Shafer, "Vietnam Era Draft. "Appy,
Working-Class War
, 19–21, offers slightly different figures.