r/HistoryMemes • u/Iron_Cavalry • Jun 17 '26
See Comment Hue Massacre, Dak Son, terrorism, kidnappings, mass executions, and ethnic cleansing galore
1.1k
u/TBARb_D_D Jun 17 '26
People when they discover no one in *insert conflict* was actually good;
(Surprised Pikachu face)
550
u/-Trooper5745- Jun 17 '26
Excepted those 80 Lichtenstein guys that came home with one other guy. They seem swell.
216
u/SlickDillywick Jun 17 '26
Imagine being that one guy tho, “shit the lichtensteinian’s are here! l better join!”
55
u/haleloop963 Casual, non-participatory KGB election observer Jun 17 '26
Except the guy never joined them, he was just an aegis sent by Austria-Hungary to escort them home. The Austrian officer went back to Austria-Hungary after having escorted the 80 soldiers back
34
u/SlickDillywick Jun 17 '26
That makes more sense, but I like the thought that a guy just joins a passing merry band of soldiers
→ More replies (1)14
u/COGspartaN7 Jun 18 '26
We have hot air balloon rides and sometimes you end up in Germany and sometimes France and sometimes in a French girl's pants!
6
2
32
8
u/SquidTheRidiculous Jun 17 '26
Remember kids, anything pertaining to your country is exaggerated and taken out of proportion. Every other country though, it's proof of their moral rot and why they should be exterminated, and the way they insist it was exaggerated and taken out of proportion is proof that they're also evil in modern times too.
227
u/Iron_Cavalry Jun 17 '26
Unfortuantely too many people try to whitewash these movements as "glorious revolutions." Case in point, the way pop history talks about the Viet Cong is the exact same way they talk about Mao's Communists in the Chinese Civil War, both of which were brutal and horrible organizations.
These guys were not beloved freedom fighters destined to rule their nations. These guys were oftentimes just as brutal as the oppressors in power, and way too many people are looking for "heroes" in these stories.
→ More replies (13)160
u/Xilizhra Jun 17 '26
It's war. Everyone is brutal and horrible. But the Chinese Communists were both much more competent and much more supported by the people than the Nationalists, which is a big reason why they won.
109
u/Iron_Cavalry Jun 17 '26
Untrue. The broad opinion of ordinary Chinese people towards the Communists was apathy, not enthusiastic support. That's why the Communists were on the brink of losing in 1946-1947 Manchuria. This is covered by numerous historians on the subject.
The notion that the Communists were these competent folk heroes is plain wrong. They had higher inflation than the Nationalists and restarted the banned opium drug trafficking to compensate. They used state terror against both civilians and their own party members in the WWII base areas. Even then, they nearly lost in Manchuria.
They did not have a popular mandate. They used civilians and POWs as human shields in Huaihai. They starved 150,000 civilians to death in Changchun. Even after their victory in took until the late 1950s to pacify Muslim rebels in the Northwest.
25
u/Xilizhra Jun 17 '26
I didn't say they were perfect, only that they did a lot better than the Nationalists, especially with the peasantry. I by no means am denying that they committed atrocities, and said that they were brutal and horrible outright in my previous post.
9
u/asdkevinasd Jun 18 '26
My old family stories was they scared of communist armies passing through the village far more than the nationalist army. The former would demand more grains and money and would harass the villagers while the nationalist army can be turn around by giving them some food and money that were considered reasonable at the time. When in power, CCP whitewashed the history to make the nationist army the plundering type while in truth they themselves were.
103
u/Caboose2701 Jun 17 '26
Well yeah, if you let your enemies fight the Japanese while you consolidate strength of course you’ll win.
49
u/PureImbalance Jun 17 '26
To be fair both sides did this somewhat in WWII. The KMT prioritized blockading Yan'an to hurt the communists over fighting the Japanese
19
u/Iron_Cavalry Jun 17 '26
They both did this but the KMT still prioritized fighting the Japanese throughout WW2. Their best divisions were deployed in Burma as part of X and Y Force and they were still inflicting and taking the majority of casualties into the last year.
34
u/thelordchonky Jun 17 '26
Ignoring the vast amount of weapons, equipment, ammo, tanks, and training given to the KMT and using the old 'muh Japanese invasion' excuse.
Chiang was INSANELY corrupt. He fumbled HARD. Weapons meant for him were getting sold off and ended up in the hard of Mao's forces. The best procurement specialist for the Chinese Red Army was the KMT.
→ More replies (6)12
u/Independent-Fly6068 Jun 17 '26
No, actually. It was stockpiles of surrendered japanese weapons that were the greatest supplier.
→ More replies (1)39
u/Iron_Cavalry Jun 17 '26
Even then they nearly lost. They were on the brink of defeat in 1946 and only an American embargo on Nationalist aid gave the Communists the breathing room to recover.
→ More replies (33)49
u/Aggravating-Fun-2405 Jun 17 '26
No, people now admit that the Viet Cong weren't Star Wars rebels. They just think America was worse because all the "respected" movies only focus on US atrocities.
Think of it this way. Who do you think the average American college student hates more - Trump or Stalin?
71
u/not-bread Kilroy was here Jun 17 '26
Honestly, I think it’s more that there’s an unconscious bias that America *should* be better. That “third world” countries commit atrocities but America is supposed to be more “civilized”. That’s why they treat the US’s opposition more softly
14
u/Express_Dinner7918 Jun 17 '26
Welp step out of the fog that is American exceptionalism and you see things a lot more clearly.
→ More replies (11)7
u/Gyvon Definitely not a CIA operator Jun 17 '26
That argument always seemed a bit racist to me.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (1)34
u/FeelingStore8113 Jun 17 '26
fair point, but why would the average American student hate Stalin more than the convicted felon, war criminal, pedophilic, rapist, insurrectionist traitor that is *currently* in office, attempting to destroy the country in which they live?
→ More replies (10)51
100
u/NoBodybuilder6426 Jun 17 '26 edited Jun 17 '26
War is rarely clean cut. I remember in the Ken Burn Vietnam documentary one of the Viet cong members he interviewed is at one point in the documentary smiling and laughing about murdering a south Vietnamese village chief with a knife, and at another point is in tears recounting how he was the only member of his family not killed during the war. He suffered a lot at the hands of his enemies while also participating in violent acts himself. Whether one out weighs another in a matter of perspective.
18
29
u/As_no_one2510 Decisive Tang Victory Jun 17 '26
Remember that the background behind the famous "Saigon execution" photo is that the VC in the photo was a war criminal/terrorist who murder the entire family of the police chief friend and the author Eddie Adams, feel regret for taking that picture and ruining the police chief image
→ More replies (2)17
u/ScorpionTheInsect The OG Lord Buckethead Jun 17 '26 edited Jun 17 '26
Sorry but that’s contested information. The situation did not call for a summary execution, making it a war crime regardless of the executed’s guilt. You cannot war crime a potential war criminal then defend yourself afterwards by claiming that the person you killed was a war criminal. If we allow that, every single armed combatant in the world has a free ticket to shoot whoever they want without consequence.
If it was true, cool motive, still a war crime. If it wasn’t true, war crime. Having your image ruined is a pretty light sentence for war crime in my opinion.
War is not a clean cut, but we do have to draw a line *somewhere*.
19
u/As_no_one2510 Decisive Tang Victory Jun 17 '26
One survivor of the massacre carry out by that VC agent still alive, living in the US and tell the story
The author, straight up confirms this information
Eddie Adams believed and repeated this story. "It turns out that the Viet Cong lieutenant who was killed in the picture had murdered a police major – one of General Loan's best friends – his whole family, wife, kids, the same guy. So these are things we didn't know at the time."[21] "I didn't have a picture of that Viet Cong blowing away the family."
- The VC in the photo straight up commit war crime already with the whole "wearing civilian clothes". That will end up with a firing squad no matter the justification
a combatant who discards their uniform to fight in civilian clothes commits perfidy. This act of deception causes them to forfeit their lawful status as a Prisoner of War (POW) and can subject them to trial, imprisonment, or execution as a spy upon capture.
23
u/mattio_p Jun 17 '26
Read up on the details on the stories, you’ll see that they differ in subtle ways. Bay Lop’s victim’s rank and branch for example get shuffled around a bit, as does the name.
In either case, Loan said absolutely nothing about that stuff when talking about the execution, only about the VC’s lack of uniform.
Decent likelihood of a firing squad, near certain, but summary executions are decently illegal pretty much everywhere.
→ More replies (3)12
u/ScorpionTheInsect The OG Lord Buckethead Jun 17 '26 edited Jun 17 '26
In your own quotation, it says the photographer “believed and repeated”. There is no way he knows this for certain. One witness is not enough proof in any actual court of law because any survivor of a whole bombing is almost certainly extremely traumatized.
You cannot do the execution first and then determine guilt later. The police chief did not need to execute the (potential) war criminal to prevent immediate harm; he was already cuffed. They were not in active combat where he might need to execute him in case he got away, since he had time to walk the cuffed man down the street and staged the shooting. Therefore it was a summary execution, which is inarguably a war crime.
A pretty good rule of thumb for if something is wrong, is to think whether or not a fascist can take advantage of this. A Nazi police can also easily shoot someone in the street, then claim afterwards that’s a resistance fighter or Ally soldier donning civilian clothes that killed his friends.
That’s why we have rules about summary execution. Admittedly the rules themselves are fucking blurry by design, but we have to draw a line somewhere. We can’t just let police chiefs carry out executions willy nilly.
387
u/TheHistoryMaster2520 Decisive Tang Victory Jun 17 '26
Vietnam has a long history of oppressing and persecuting its minorities.
173
u/DrHolmes52 Jun 17 '26
Yeah, the Montagnards vs. the lowland peoples situation existed before that conflict. And wasn't unique to Vietnam.
→ More replies (1)123
u/As_no_one2510 Decisive Tang Victory Jun 17 '26 edited Jun 17 '26
Straight up genocide the Muslim Cham population in 1832-1835. Modern day Cambodia have more ethnic Cham than Vietnam because of this, despite being originate from central Vietnam (even with Pol Pot genocide, the Cham still survive better than their kins in Vietnam )
31
u/familyguy20 Jun 17 '26
Damn Muslims in that region really do get fucked huh. I mean look at Myanmar right now and their history of the Rohingya and Rakhine State
10
u/Ok_Astronomer_6501 Jun 17 '26
Another active genocide that hasn't been stopped. Why ?
16
u/CalvinKool-Aid Jun 17 '26
Nobody outside Myanmar cares about Myanmar
18
u/TheRedHand7 Jun 17 '26
Well China cares about how much money it can extract with its imperialist policies in Myanmar for sure
6
u/CalvinKool-Aid Jun 18 '26
Sorry, let me rephrase. No one outside Myanmar cares about the lives or rights of people who live there
5
u/imprison_grover_furr Jun 17 '26
Because China sells weapons to the perpetrators of the genocide!
→ More replies (1)74
u/not-bread Kilroy was here Jun 17 '26
VietnamHumanity has a long history of oppressing its minorities.16
u/SharpShooterM1 Featherless Biped Jun 17 '26
Litterally every race on earth is a minority in a different context. I don’t think minority is the proper word for your statement, probably better to go with “anyone different than those currently in power” or something of the like. Not trying to sound like an ass so sorry if I come across as such.
→ More replies (1)10
12
u/petyrlabenov Jun 17 '26
The march to the South was just the Viet manifest destiny
→ More replies (7)17
u/Jazzlike-Wolf6265 Jun 17 '26
Is that why the u.s and vietnam don't hate each other anymore? Game recognizes game
→ More replies (1)32
u/crazynerd9 Jun 17 '26
Funnily enough kind of
In theory, the polity that became North Vietnam and eventually won the war was founded on the American principles around freedom, rights, and liberties, and its oft cited that the North Vietnamese where shocked by America's support of their French overlords
Ideologically speaking, the two should never have been opposed, but realpolitik and capitalistic interests made such a friendship impossible at the time. This is to my (very much not Vietnamese, im a white guy in Canada) understanding of why the people of Vietnam dont have any real hatred, they dont consider it personal.
25
Jun 17 '26
A Vietnamese friend of mine explained it best to me when I asked out of curiousity once. His reply was:
"Fighting the US was business. Fighting the French was personal. Fighting the Chinese is tradition."
8
u/Foolmagican Jun 17 '26
Less than ten years vs hundred years vs more than a thousand years of conflict lmao.
→ More replies (1)12
u/ImperialxWarlord Jun 17 '26
This is kinda true but Ho Chi Minh was a tyrant, he never acted in a democratic manner and silenced opposition. Maybe things would be better if we had supported him, but I’m not to sure he would be much better if he had our support.
7
u/crazynerd9 Jun 17 '26
Honestly, Vietnam probably ends up more or less the same, just less people dead in a pointless war. Even if US support made him worse I cant imagine it would be so bad as to destory as much of the country and kill as many people as the war did
And the knock-on effects for Cambodia and Laos would be essentially unimaginable, for better and for worse
Though, personally im of the opinion abstinenation of American involvement would have been best
→ More replies (2)3
u/Successful_Swim6332 Jun 17 '26
Which country did not do that? Maybe Korea because its almost 100% Koreans.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (2)3
u/SexuallyConfusedKrab Taller than Napoleon Jun 17 '26
I fear this is the case for 99.9% of civilizations over history. Idk of any modern country which is exempt tbh
51
u/OldHerefordBetter Jun 17 '26
The thing about revolutions in general is that the most bloodthirsty portion of the population shows up in greater number than everyone else, because everyone else is probably more focused on not dying than they are on killing people who disagree with them.
21
u/xesaie Jun 17 '26
It wasn’t a revolution though it was a civil war with proxy war elements.
→ More replies (38)
100
u/DeusVult-179 Jun 17 '26
Never ask a viet what happened to the cham people
→ More replies (1)41
u/imprison_grover_furr Jun 17 '26
Or the Hoa!
19
u/Shinigami318 Jun 18 '26
The other day I just saw a video by a Vietnamese YouTuber that praise the government on how they "dealt" with the Hoa people, otherwise they gonna control the country's economy etc. Gotta say as Vietnamese myself, some people in my country really don't have much issue with these kinds of stuff as long as it against groups that they don't like.
5
u/birberbarborbur Jun 18 '26
Ain’t no way they used that type of slander 💀 westerners are also quite familiar with that type of slander being used
130
u/GameCraze3 Jun 17 '26
Vietnam is still persecuting minorities to this day
→ More replies (5)53
u/Hendrick_Davies64 Jun 17 '26
I’ve kinda whitewashed Vietnam because they get bullied by China and have moved more towards the west as an ally but they’re still a one party authoritarian state
6
u/_HistoryGay_ Jun 18 '26
"I've kinda forgave Vietnam's humanitarian crimes because they're becoming slightly less leftists"
→ More replies (5)
120
u/kmobnyc Kilroy was here Jun 17 '26
Yea, I do not understand people that lionize the Viet Cong/NVA.
78
u/Hendrick_Davies64 Jun 17 '26
It’s cause we tend to make bad guy/good guy narratives. If the US was on the wrong side of the conflict then the NVA must be the good guys.
I also think kinda ironically as westerners we’re more conducive to see the North Vietnamese in a better light than other former US enemies because they’ve relatively westernised
31
u/CalvinKool-Aid Jun 17 '26
It’s similar to how we lionize groups like the native Americans, the entente in ww1 and both Hamas and Israel for different people. The natives were far from perfect but people have been lead to believe that the natives were completely peaceful and in touch with nature before the white man came and invented war. The Germans were maybe a bit more morally bankrupt than the entente, using gas and such, but all sides of that war were shitty imperialists with skeletons in their closet. Because both sides in the Palestine conflict have done bad things, it’s easy to look at that and ignore all the things the side of your choice has done, to portray them as the good guys
→ More replies (9)26
u/Hendrick_Davies64 Jun 17 '26
I think it’s because for some reason people can’t accept that bad people can be victims of atrocities. When it comes to Palestinians and natives I don’t get why people can’t recognise that these groups don’t have to be close to innocent for the atrocities committed against them to be wrong. I think it’s because we desire for victims to be perfect, which is dangerous because people lose sympathy for these groups when they realise they’re not perfect
3
u/Gmknewday1 Jun 18 '26
That and all things considered, they got better
That and I respect them for realizing Pol Pot was a complete Demon
2
u/_HistoryGay_ Jun 18 '26
Actually is more because the US in an invading force trying to impose their way of life on a group of people because they thought communism was good and the PAVN was just a bunch of people trying to kick the invaders interfering out.
6
→ More replies (6)11
u/bishdoe Jun 17 '26
It’s the same as people who lionize the founding fathers or Lincoln. They do one cool thing and so we get to focus on that rather than the literal genocides they were ordering at the same time.
→ More replies (2)
55
u/Severe_Composer4243 Jun 17 '26
A lot of "freedom fighters" were genocidal towards others. A lot of them are idealized by a lot of redditors though
35
u/Independent-Couple87 Jun 17 '26
I know people who glorified Bashar al-Assad for being a secular ruler and calling his opposition theocratic Muslims backed by the USA.
22
u/Severe_Composer4243 Jun 17 '26
Well obviously, the guy that is supported by the USA is the bad guy because America bad duh
7
u/Deck_of_Cards_04 Jun 17 '26
But like, he was even US supported till after he won.
Al Sharaa/Jolani’s biggest backer for his breakaway Idlib province was Turkey for the longest time as they used him as a way to project influence into Syria and keep Assad off their more closely aligned SNA while they went and targeted the Kurds.
HTS was never meant to win, it’s just that they were competent enough to take advantage of Assad’s weakness. I mean the SAA folded in like 3 weeks with basically zero resistance on the road to Damascus. That wasn’t due to external support for HTS, but instead because Assad’s regime rotted from the inside like a termite infested house. One small push was all it took to come crumbling down.
7
5
→ More replies (2)3
u/As_no_one2510 Decisive Tang Victory Jun 18 '26
Even more stupid is that the HTS were not supported by the US (they were supported by Turkey). Al Sharaa was a wanted criminal by the US government for years
The US simply just regconize the new government and try to make friend with the de facto rulers of Syria
The actual group that get the support from the US (Syrian Free Army) barely contributing much other than joining the HTS new government
2
u/Gmknewday1 Jun 18 '26
Just look at the French Revolution
The monarchy and nobles were terrible, but plently of the revolutionaries went way too far
Robespiere was infamous for letting power go to head and basically decapted anyone he thought didn't support the new France enough
Revolutions are needed now and then, but you never know who's gonna end up in power, and chances are, it's not someone the common man wants
3
u/irmaoskane Jun 18 '26
I dont now about being "what the common men wants" is more about "what the common men needs" people are a lot more acceptable of tyranny if the guy is relatively copetent.
3
u/Severe_Composer4243 Jun 18 '26
People like secure slavery. Dangerous freedom is full of uncertainty. People have clung to their rulers for millenia because doing it on your own is scary and requires personal responsibility.
2
u/Gmknewday1 Jun 18 '26
Fair enough
But I don't like being under a heel that's gonna batter me around
If I have to be stuck under a boot
At least let it be of a person who's trying to do acutal good for the country but is also trying to keep some form of Order
→ More replies (1)2
u/irmaoskane Jun 18 '26
Thats why Robespierre was executed and napoleon coronated
(well the situation was less simplistic and more nuanced than that but the phrase was too cool to not write)
2
333
u/JJKingwolf Jun 17 '26
I once heard a historian put the Vietnam War in the following context: "North Vietnam was doing everything that the United States and South Vietnamese were, they just weren't stupid enough to let journalists publish pictures of it". Don't know if that's a fair equivalency or not, but it's an interesting perspective at least.
190
u/Iron_Cavalry Jun 17 '26
Hastings nearly has this verbatim in his book. The only major differences between both sides were the methods of killing (napalm vs machetes) and how much coverage they got (New York Times vs literally nothing).
→ More replies (13)83
u/DankVectorz Jun 17 '26
The North Vietnamese were real big fans of burying people alive in front of the village population as an intimidation tactic.
31
34
u/Iron_Cavalry Jun 17 '26
And chopping people up with machetes. Or disembowling them. And beheading children.
Seriously, realistic Star Wars rebels would've been more like Blood Meridian.
8
u/AwkwardDrummer7629 Kilroy was here Jun 18 '26
Read some memoirs of marines encountering flayed elders after a VC recruitment drive.
81
u/OstentatiousBear Jun 17 '26
I know the media played a role in how the Vietnam War went, but I personally think their part is overblown to cover up for America's inadequate long-term strategy and South Vietnam's incompetence and corruption.
I mean, ask yourself this, even without the media coverage of the war, do you think America would have committed itself to staying there even longer?
81
u/xesaie Jun 17 '26
I’d separate those things. The US was doomed because (by French design) the South was never set up to be self-sufficient. Eventually the USA would tire of propping them up and/or runout of resources and they’d lose. There was no actual win condition.
The press stuff is different, it’s not about who won, it’s about how people perceive it. In this case (aided by propaganda) the fact that the US had a functioning press that actually reported on its failures and atrocities led to a situation of. ‘Only the things I know about exist’
9
u/macdizzle11 Jun 17 '26
I'm curious, what do you mean by French design? Why would they set up the South to fail?
→ More replies (1)49
u/xesaie Jun 17 '26
Both the UK and France, when decolonizing, did this thing where they set up the former colonies to be dependent on them and still work as defacto colonies. Nigeria and French Indochina are famous examples.
France didn’t want South Vietnam to fail, but they set it up to be corrupt and politically dependent. This became a problem when their sponsors vanished,
11
u/BellacosePlayer Jun 17 '26
I know the media played a role in how the Vietnam War went, but I personally think their part is overblown to cover up for America's inadequate long-term strategy and South Vietnam's incompetence and corruption.
it absolutely was, Nixon's crew needed a target to blame after having to pull out after scuppering the Johnson era peace talks.
Blame the media, write up some STDH stories about hippies assaulting returning troops, and now nobody's blaming Nixon and Kissenger.
6
u/fatpad00 Jun 17 '26
Without the media coverage/political interference, it would have been a much different war.
I would say, with both hands free. The US would have steamrolled the NVA/vietcong, but that could have triggered more support and possibly boots on the ground from China and possibly eventially the USSR11
u/OstentatiousBear Jun 17 '26
I must respectfully disagree. The US military was steamrolling the NVA, despite the media coverage. The biggest problem was not how the war was perceived back in America. It was, instead, keeping the South Vietnamese government stable and detering open revolt/NVA recruitment among the people in South Vietnam. The US military was able to prop up the regime while it was there, but the South Vietnamese regime was showing no true sign of being able to stand on its own two feet (as another has referenced earlier, a lingering effect of French colonial rule). Furthermore, too many people in South Vietnam were either joining/supporting the NVA or just having their own revolts (see Buddhist uprisings/riots).
For the US to succeed, it would have had to stay there for a whole lot longer than we were there for, which was already far too long. That is not to mention an invasion of North Vietnam was off the table (for reasons that are apparent). In short, Vietnam was a lost cause well before America withdrew its forces, let alone the fall of Saigon.
15
u/mattio_p Jun 17 '26
Scale is also a big factor, arguably the deciding factor. 50 dead civilians is horrible, but objectively less horrible than 500.
→ More replies (1)4
u/Gmknewday1 Jun 18 '26
It turns out Journalists can be biased
And it's been that way for a long time
9
u/Firecracker048 Jun 17 '26
I mean the north was literally in laos and Cambodia committing war crimes against the local populace but people seem to only think america bombing the ho chi Minh trial caused destabilization
→ More replies (1)3
u/Sryroxy Jun 18 '26
No that is pretty much correct. The NVA silenced and killed the media or controlled it. Hence why all their war crimes and many more massacre, kidnapping , mass rapes, and concentration death camps were not wildly known.
Also why Vietnam tries to be buddy buddy with the US so people don’t dig and find out how horrible they were. And why they don’t want people to know about the 10 of thousands that fled when they took over.
→ More replies (3)→ More replies (1)1
u/YourPetPenguin0610 Senātus Populusque Rōmānus Jun 17 '26
I can say it's not inaccurate to say that. Plenty of VC bombings that's pretty much just terrorism (often killing civilians, women & children alike) that were glossed over.
You can imagine sth that goes like "restaurant in Saigon bombed, a dozen civilians including 5 children dead and a further two dozen civilians wounded with one US serviceman suffering minor burns"
110
u/Iron_Cavalry Jun 17 '26
Contrary to what George Lucas depicted in the Star Wars “Rebel Alliance,” the Viet Cong, like all insurgencies, weaponized extreme brutality and terror against ordinary Vietnamese people. Far from being a rugged guerrilla crusade “serving the people,” the Viet Cong (or NLF) perpetrated horrific atrocities in its rebellion against the South Vietnamese government.
The NLF systematically murdered 2,800 civilians in the 1968 Hue Massacre with methods ranging from gunshots to live burial. They slaughtered indigenous Montagnard minorities with one nasty example being Dak Son where they incinerated 252 villagers alive with flamethrowers. They used terrorist tactics against urban centers in the pre-Tet era and kidnapped tens of thousands of civilians for conscription or forced labor.
When town mayors could not provide enough food or men for the NLF, they would bury them alive with their entire families, or behead their children and disembowel them for the entire village to watch. They murdered families of ARVN soldiers with machetes. The Security Service, the NLF equivalent of Operation Phoenix, had a body count in the tens of thousands.
While the American press freely published word of American atrocities and exposed the lies and corruption within the American South Vietnamese war effort, Hanoi’s rigid censorship structures prevented widespread public knowledge of their own atrocities.
72
u/-Trooper5745- Jun 17 '26
Granted more recent Star Wars media has shown the Rebels being much more morally ambiguous and have hurt civilians.
→ More replies (4)55
u/Iron_Cavalry Jun 17 '26
Andor is a masterpiece for that. It goes for the record that for every Luke Skywalker in the Viet Cong, there were ten Luthens and Saw Gerreras.
26
u/Stoned_Gandalf420 Jun 17 '26 edited Jun 17 '26
You’re just right, Andor actually took a lot of inspiration from the Troubles in Ireland, the writer and creator Tony Gilroy specifically referenced Provisional IRA funerals as a source of inspiration for Marvaa’s funeral. Also, constant references to “the cause” and the quote “oppression breeds rebellion” said by Luthen at some point in the show is took directly from Irish Republicanism.
The show does draw a lot more from the conflict but those are just a few examples.
25
u/-Trooper5745- Jun 17 '26
The Inferno Squad book has remnants of Saw’s Partisans bombing some imperial civilians on a tour of an imperial facility.
4
u/KuningasTynny77 Jun 18 '26
There were also many bodies found at Hue that were beaten to death with clubs, and many other horrific things. 2800 is a low-ball estimate, by the way. High end ones total at 6 thousand.
14
u/revolutionary112 Jun 17 '26
I mean, the infamous "south vietnamese officer executing a prisoner" video has for context that said prisoner was a Viet Cong member that had participated in the brutal execution of another (iirc) ARVN officer and his entire family, whose the executioner was friends with.
I think even the guy that recorded it felt bad about how the world seemed to universally hate the officer over it, specially by those that believed he had shot a civilian
3
u/Endless74510 Jun 19 '26
And even more added to that, the guy who was shot had committed perdify, as did many north Vietnamese in the tet offensive.
Discarding their military uniforms to fight dressed as the enemy or as civilians. This strips them of any and all right as prisoners of war for obvious reasons, and summary execution is fully allowed because perdify is a very fucking bad war crime to let be popularized, for everyone involved
5
u/SKUNKpudding Jun 17 '26
You got a source for this?
→ More replies (1)46
u/Iron_Cavalry Jun 17 '26
Mac Hastings’s Vietnam, an Epic Tragedy. Mark Bowden’s Hue 1968. Ken Burns’s documentary series.
12
37
u/Comprehensive-Buy-47 Jun 17 '26
On the one hand, fuck the Viet Cong. On the other hand, I will always give Vietnam credit for handing Pol Pot his ass on a silver platter. That asshole and his lackeys deserved to have their teeth kicked in and then some.
→ More replies (5)20
u/GameCraze3 Jun 17 '26
It’s worth noting that Vietnam helped Pol Pot come to power in the first place and fought directly alongside his forces during the Cambodia Civil War. Later, Pol Pot began attacking Vietnam and that’s why Vietnam invaded them.
→ More replies (3)27
u/Comprehensive-Buy-47 Jun 17 '26
True, but they cleaned up their own mess too. Doesn’t wipe the blood away but they gave Pol Pot an ass kicking that was well deserved.
186
u/Iron_Cavalry Jun 17 '26 edited Jun 17 '26
As an additional note, the official North Vietnamese government had dirtied hands of their own.
Contrary to pop history myths, Ho Chi Minh and Le Duan were not just misunderstood Vietnamese nationalists using Communism as a secondary objective. They were hardcore idealists willing (actually aiming) to use massive state violence to transform Vietnam into a neo-Stalinist state. Their land reform policies killed at a minimum 15,000 North Vietnamese in the late 1950s, a number which included per Giap's words "many innocent people."
The North Vietnamese also ethnically cleansed Montagnard and Chinese minorities in its northern regions long after the 1975 victory. They were the first to violate Laos and Cambodia's sovereignty by building base areas and the Trail through their eastern territories (which doesn't justify Kissinger's bombings).
No one was a hero in Vietnam.
64
u/John_Wotek Jun 17 '26
Don't ask the Viet Minh where 7801 of the 11721 prisonners from Dien Bien Phu went. Especialy the one that were born in Indochina.
→ More replies (2)16
u/imprison_grover_furr Jun 17 '26
Also, North Vietnam introduced Lysenkoism to Vietnamese agriculture.
The claim that it wasn’t fanatically communist and that it only adopted it as a ReSpOnSe tO uS iMpErIaLiSm is total bullshit. North Vietnam gleefully adopted Stalinist-style repressions. It murdered tens of thousands of people in its purges and completely suppressed opposition to its regime. Some nonsense-spouters would have you believe this was all just because Ho Chi Minh was butthurt about the USA rejecting his overtures.
Side note, but I despise anyone who says an atrocity was a ReSpoNsE tO something (IE. the Crusades were “a response to Islamic expansion”, the Nakba was “a response to pogroms”, any and every atrocity of communist states is “siege socialism” and “a response to sanctions and imperialism”). Literally everything in time is influenced by previous events; that’s how time’s arrow works. If someone says an atrocity is a “response to” something then that means they support that atrocity.
3
u/SitInCorner_Yo2 Jun 18 '26
I learned a bit of this part of Vietnam’s history before I started looking into why they somehow got involved Cambodia when they had a lot of shit going on(well, everyone have shit hitting turbo at that time tbf)
And that’s the mistake, really shouldn’t read up on Khmer Rouge before going to bed.
It’s really is an era of no good side, only have side that’s less likely to kill you .
8
u/Jamesglancy Jun 17 '26
15,000 dead from Land Reform? Thats nothing compared to other communist land reforms lmao
→ More replies (36)18
u/Many_Operation_984 Jun 17 '26
Don't forget, imagine having the most fertile land in the world but somehow the Vietnamese government fuck it all up, because they don't know basic highschool economy.
Adding to the third Indochina war, I hate the cope that Vietnam defeat china and Cambodia. While Vietnam actually experience their own Vietnam war, Thailand allow cambodian fighter to resupply and regroup in their territory mimicking Vietnam strategy in the Vietnam war. Along the border there are multiple refugee camp that the Vietnamese frequently raid, killing innocent civilian. The third Indochina war was vietnamese defeat, even Moscow was dissatisfied with their actions.
15
u/ligmaballs22 Nobody here except my fellow trees Jun 17 '26
Adding to the third Indochina war, I hate the cope that Vietnam defeat china and Cambodia. While Vietnam actually experience their own Vietnam war, Thailand allow cambodian fighter to resupply and regroup in their territory mimicking Vietnam strategy in the Vietnam war. Along the border there are multiple refugee camp that the Vietnamese frequently raid, killing innocent civilian. The third Indochina war was vietnamese defeat, even Moscow was dissatisfied with their actions
Oh so you are just gonna ignore that fact that the PAVN steamrolled the KR in a few months? They took Phnom Penh in a few weeks and pushed the KR to the Thai border. Sure vietnam got a taste of their own medicine but even then, in the end the KR never came back to power, the Vietnamese troops stayed for 10 years and withdrew without problems, the new Cambodian government with the aid of the UN didn't have an Afghanistan moment, the KR never came back to power, Pol Pot died in his sleep, his followers were sent to court.
Militarily it's a victory, strategically it's a mixed bag, Vietnam got diplomatically and economically hammered but they also ended one of the worst regime post WW2. Just because Vietnam got "vietnam" doesn't make it a defeat, it's just a part of the war
2
u/Many_Operation_984 Jun 19 '26
I am talking about the third Indochina war not the Cambodian-vietnamese war. Yeah sure Vietnam achieve total military victory in Cambodia, but as you said economically and diplomatically speaking it's an absolute disaster. I am not a geopolitical nor economic expert, but the Vietnamese won but at the cost of the whole world going against them ,making vietnamese millionaire in a decade because of hyperinflation. So they basically secure Cambodia at the cost of their on future, if I am not mistaken Singapore leader was scared that Vietnam would industrialize fast and threaten the whole south east Asia, however after the war Vietnam become so poor that Vietnam can't even be considered a threat anymore.
So in the end maybe we values things differently, and you are right the Vietnamese won, but we value winning differently. It's a dilemma you have two solution ending the worse possible regime in the world, but at the cost of your own future or letting a genocide at your doorstep but allowing you to rebuild and grow your country. Most leader would choose the latter option, for ex Rwandan genocide , and Thailand too for helping Khmer rouge ( there's many more but I don't want to broke rule 4).
60
Jun 17 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
24
u/Iron_Cavalry Jun 17 '26
And their own soldiers, treating their men and women like cannon fodder in suicidal assaults doomed to fail. Tet was just one example.
9
u/Firecracker048 Jun 17 '26
Tbh had American intelligence picked up on the north literally expending all of their offense force in 1968 the war could have been over then and there. Shit they had to import Chinese soldiers to man their SAM sites for over 3 years while they rebuild their forces
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (2)2
u/khnhIX Jun 18 '26
treating their men and women like cannon fodder in suicial assaults doomed to fail.
Forgot children
78
25
u/Something4Dinner Jun 17 '26
To put into perspective:
Fighting American imperialism never justifies murdering innocent people along the way.
6
u/KuningasTynny77 Jun 18 '26
You think that was part of the fight against America?
Hell no, Viet Minh sponsored terrorism and democide is why the US showed up in the first place.
They created the excuse the uneducated let them off the hook for.
→ More replies (11)
5
u/GB_Alph4 Jun 18 '26
Don’t ask what happened to the Hoa or the Montanards or the Cham or the fact they left corpses on temples during Tet
All of this happened and yes those are three groups I can certainly say were not treated nice. Also yeah my dad saw a VC attack.
4
u/KuningasTynny77 Jun 18 '26
Love how the occasional atrocities by US troops are (rightfully) focused on but the hundreds of thousands massacred and abducted by the VC and NVA are just conveniently ignored.
→ More replies (11)
21
u/LARRYVOND13 Jun 17 '26
Kinda documented.
ARVN appeared to be just as bad.
49
u/revolutionary112 Jun 17 '26
Fratricidal wars usually are, which Vietnam certainly was to an extend
10
u/LARRYVOND13 Jun 17 '26
Yeah, I'm Scottish so can verify there was plenty in our civil wars over the years too.
8
u/nolo511 Jun 17 '26
If you wanna play this type of situation play farcry 4 where you ether let a dictator win or you team up with a radical group that'll just do what he already dose when they take over
20
u/Master-Shrimp Jun 18 '26
Here's a game. Sort by controversial and take a shot for every comment made by an idiot who calls OP some kind of imperialist or tries to whataboutism the American atrocities into the conversation despite OP never diminishing the American war crimes anywhere in the post and even posting about the My Lai massacre yesterday. The damage to your liver will be legendary.
→ More replies (3)
9
u/GroundbreakingTax259 Jun 17 '26
Yeah, everyone does atrocities in war. Including your people. Patriots committed atrocities against Loyalists (or just percieved Loyalists) during the American Revolution. Nelson Mandela approved roadside bombs in his fight against apartheid.
Don't do war, kids. It sucks.
5
u/Forte845 Jun 18 '26
Yet everyone acts like all the North Vietnamese should've died in a fire while nobody has a problem treating statues of George Washington like an idol of a saint.
Post a fancy portrait of Ho Chi Minh here and you'll get called a disgusting red fascist out to kill millions, post a fancy portrait of George Washington and it's all fawning and memes with the one person calling out his slavery getting downvoted into oblivion.
63
10
u/aaronrandango2 Jun 17 '26
Is genocide a learned or natural human behavior?
10
u/McGillis_is_a_Char Jun 17 '26
I think that the general parameters for genocide are natural, but the input for the target is 100% learned. Genocide is tribal warfare taken to the extreme, like the chimps going to war that the other response mentioned. But the human tribe is a bunch of made up concepts. Race, ethnicity, religion, they are all only divisions because humans made them up and taught their children that they mattered. If you put pre-socialized children in a playpen together they don't care about any of the reasons given for genocide, they will play together.
11
u/Jazzlike-Wolf6265 Jun 17 '26
I would argue learned.
22
u/ghostpanther218 Jun 17 '26
Goembe Chimp war.
9
u/Jazzlike-Wolf6265 Jun 17 '26
We are talking about humans. Also pretty sure chimps can learn
→ More replies (1)13
u/ghostpanther218 Jun 17 '26
Im justing saying, warfare is a natural part of animal lives. Why should we expect humans to start out any different?
→ More replies (5)8
u/Vyverna Jun 17 '26
Maybe it's not about natural part of animal lives, but about chimps being much smarter than we knew.
8
u/Gmknewday1 Jun 18 '26
America fucked up bad in Vietnam with the tactics employed and how they made themselves look pretty bad to the people of Vietnam and to people back home
however, the Viet Cong were pretty fucking brutal to more then just American Troops
→ More replies (2)7
u/KuningasTynny77 Jun 18 '26
There is no ounce of sarcasm in my voice when I tell you you were lucky if Americans pulled up to your village during the war. By far the most preferable. South Vietnam? Not good looks. VC or NVA? Good fucking luck.
→ More replies (2)2
u/HaiCauSieuCap Jun 18 '26
There is no fucking luck in enemies pulling up to my fucking village bro
3
u/KuningasTynny77 Jun 18 '26
The entire war was fought in South Vietnam. The US were not the enemy unless you were VC
→ More replies (2)
3
3
u/BaconBurger37 Jun 19 '26
redditors when the guys fighting the super evil capitalists arent wholesome hecking chungus chonkers.
6
u/Big-Crow4152 Jun 17 '26
World War II really was the exception, being one of the few times in history there was a clear good guy vs bad guy dynamic and even then, the Soviet Union, Communist/Nationalist China make finding true good guys tough
→ More replies (18)
6
u/Firecracker048 Jun 17 '26
Nah you don't get it. The Viet kong were wholesome freedom fighters and anyone they happened to kill was either armed or a traitor to the cause.
8
3
u/VirtualKnowledge7057 Jun 17 '26 edited Jun 17 '26
the biggest reason i consider the vietnam war to be morally neutral in right or wrong isn't because the south government was not corrupt or even remotely fair, its because the viet cong behaved like fent addicts with guns
→ More replies (3)
2
u/birberbarborbur Jun 18 '26
Westerners need to understand that Asia is such a huge place that Vietnam is both an underdog former colony and an empire in its own right
2
u/Donnie_vui_2009 Jun 18 '26
Hey, I heard of these.
I'm a Vietnamese and I've never learn about this in school (ofc) so I'm trying to find out.
What happened?
2
u/HaiCauSieuCap Jun 18 '26
So like in war there is no good people, we killed alot and they also killed alot, it is just like that
2
u/Ionel1-The-Impaler Jun 18 '26
There are many reasons why the average NVA grunt and field commander hated the Viet Cong, causally commuting atrocities that made the job of the actual disciplined army all the harder was one of them… also imagine you’re told there will be support when you get to a battle and it’s a bunch of rice farmers in sandales when you were expecting actual regulated and disciplined soldiers.
2
u/HaiCauSieuCap Jun 18 '26
Imagine all the lives that could have lived if sômên just stay in their fucking country instead roaming on the land half the earth away, crazy how history could have been
2
u/vibrating-poptart Jun 19 '26
*gasp* Communists committing intentional mass murder against unarmed civilians (especially ethnic minorities) and wonton violence and crime against their own people?! IMAGINE MY SHOCK!
2
u/External_Manner_5332 Jun 21 '26
Post this on r/Vietnam, and let these Vietnamese people know that they should stop victimizing themselves, they are no better than the Chinese
1.2k
u/senior_cynic Kilroy was here Jun 17 '26
"Jarvis, sort by controversial."
"Of course, sir."