Vietnam at War: The History, 1946-1975

This war was doomed from the beginning. Donaldson takes us back to the period before WW II when France tried to colonize and rule a farflung oriental possession. The Chinese failed, then the French, then the Japanese, then the French again, and finally the US. I've read this book twice. Once from a historian's perspective, and the second time from a military leader's perspective. Davidson is not a historian, but he is a knowledgable military leader who saw the war from inside, close up and from the perspectives of the civilian leadership decisionmaking (or lack thereof). Make no mistake, as you can imagine as a military leader, he comes down hard on the civilian leadership during the war, and rightfully so. As he said in the book, we needed a leader as president during that time and a president who would talk to the American people about the war and what was going on. We got neither. Both Johnson and later Nixon were probably the worst at keeping us informed on decisions and the course of the war. Instead we got slanted views from the media and were led to distrust what was coming from our military leadership during that time. We won the war militarily, no doubt, especially from 1965-1969. The US armed forces were superb on the battlefield. However, we lost the war in the court of public opinion and on the evening news through biased reporting and overemphasis on "body counts". Donaldson's descriptions and examples of such key battles or operations as Tet, Rolling Thunder, and Khe Sanh from the American involvement, and Dien Bien Phu and other French debacles are poignant and accurate. We tried to defend a land and people who had never had to stand up for themselves. We have paid for it ever since. We will do it again somewhere else. Read this book with Stanley Karnow's "Vietnam a History" for a combined perspective on military aspects and a historians view.

General Davidson had the inside track on the Vietnam War, at least from the American side, and for the American portion of the war. As he rightly notes, the war was a Vietnamese war, first against the French (with some Vietnamese fighting with the French), then against the Americans (with many Vietnamese fighting with the Americans, including the majority in the South), and finally a purely fratricidal war with the stalwart Soviets and Chinese Communists backing the North while the feckless Americans backed (and ultimately failed to back) the South. No one was in a better position to understand the American piece of the 30-year war than General Davidson. The primary value of this history is seeing the story through the eyes of a central participant. Davidson researched the French part of the war, and he kept up with the final struggle between the two Vietnams through American reporting and, later, through selected documents obtained from North Vietnamese sources. The core of the book, and the best part, is the central American war that Davidson participated in. Davidson properly thought it important to add the two other parts to present a full history of the Vietnamese struggle. One could question whether or not General Giap deserved the heightened status that Davidson accords him. Davidson needed some way to tie all the pieces together, and he lit upon Giap as a qualified foil. He was qualified, but probably not the best qualified. There were a number of other Vietnamese, both North and South, who might have been chosen as well. Certainly Ho Chi Minh was the driving force in the North. The problem with picking him was that he died well before the war ended (while Giap survived the war). In the South there was the dominant figure of Ngo Dinh Diem, the one patriot who might have carried off the defense of the South against Ho Chi Minh's aggressive ambitions, but who was, of course, taken out by the blind machinations of Averill Harriman and Henry Cabot Lodge. Other candidates for the central role in the South were ultimately vanquished by the North, and thus disqualified by being absent at the finish. Still, the two striking figures were Ho Chi Minh in the North and Ngo Dinh Diem in the South, although neither lived to see the end of the war. Davidson's book is superior to any other history written by the time he wrote his book. Subsequent historians, with access to larger documentation and historical pools of information, may well achieve a more definitive historical grasp. And, indeed, Davidson does not seek to put the war into any larger historical context. But all subsequent historians will draw on the special first-hand knowledge, and sense of the war, that Davidson employs in this essential work.

The book opens with an in-depth description of the little known historical figure who directed the Vietnam wars for 30 years--North Vietnamese Senior General Vo Nguyen Giap. In Giap's background and personality we first see the seeds of determination that led ultimately to the defeat of three major armies: the French, the Americans, and the Army of South Vietnam.The wars are presented from a factual, and thoroughly researched, perspective. Davidson analyses both sides of each major strategy, and each key battle. A reader wanting to know what really took place in the Vietnam wars (ours and theirs), from a military perspective, will find the answers here. And the answers are sometimes surprising when compared to the newspaper and televison accounts which were published at that time.

This work encompasses all that Vietnam was - the political struggle, the military entanglement, and the general idea of how Vietnam was a gaping sinkhole.

The author seems too obsessed with the appearances of the generals involved.