Vietnam War

It lasted twenty years, split a country in Southeast Asia in two, and turned American living rooms into a nightly window on war. In this hour-long episode of The Wars Of History Podcast, Mike tells the full story of the Vietnam War, from French colonial rule to the last helicopters over Saigon. It's a conversational deep dive that listens to every side: American soldiers and protesters, North and South Vietnamese, the civilians caught in between, the refugees who fled, and the veterans who came home.

Next comes the First Indochina War, Eisenhower's domino theory, General Vo Nguyen Giap and the siege of Dien Bien Phu, the Geneva Accords and the division of Vietnam at the seventeenth parallel. We look at the land reform campaign in the North, Ngo Dinh Diem in the South, the cancelled 1956 elections, the National Liberation Front (the Viet Cong), the Ho Chi Minh Trail, Kennedy's advisers, the Buddhist crisis and the 1963 coup.

Then the escalation under Lyndon Johnson: the Gulf of Tonkin incident and resolution, Operation Rolling Thunder, the Marines landing at Da Nang, the Battle of the Ia Drang Valley, Westmoreland's attrition strategy and the body count, the Cu Chi tunnels, Agent Orange, the draft, and allied troops from South Korea, Australia and New Zealand. We hear Muhammad Ali's refusal and Martin Luther King Jr.'s sermon against the war, alongside the many Americans who supported it.

After that, 1968: the siege of Khe Sanh, the Tet Offensive, the attack on the American Embassy, the battle for Hue, Walter Cronkite's "stalemate" broadcast and Johnson's decision not to run again. We tell the story of My Lai with care, and of Hugh Thompson, the helicopter pilot who stepped in to protect villagers.

Then Nixon's war: Vietnamization, the silent majority, the draft lottery, Cambodia, Kent State and Jackson State, the Pentagon Papers, John Kerry's testimony, the Easter Offensive, the Christmas bombing, the Paris Peace Accords, Operation Homecoming and the Hanoi Hilton prisoners, and Le Duc Tho refusing the Nobel Peace Prize. Finally, the fall of Saigon in 1975, Operation Frequent Wind, re-education camps, the boat people, the Khmer Rouge, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and Maya Lin, and the long road to reconciliation. We close with seven lessons from the war.