Transcript My Lai Massacre

The Vietnam War Ends
Ch 17.4
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
• Daily goal:
• Identify the difference between hawks and
doves.
• Understand how the My Lai Massacre and
Pentagon Papers affected the War’s
popularity.
Hawks vs Doves
Think About it…
• America is still at war today, are you a Hawk or
a Dove? Why?
Hawks and Doves
• Hawks supported the War, while Doves
opposed it.
My Lai Massacre March 16, 1968
Army First Lieutenant William Calley, Jr
My Lai was in an area of South Vietnam that
was entrenched with communists. On March
16, 1968 the Charlie Company, 11th Brigade,
under the command of Lieutenant William
Calley, entered the Vietnamese village of My
Lai. Numerous members of Charlie Company
had been maimed or killed in the area during
the preceding weeks.
The company engaged in a search and destroy
mission, and over 300 apparently unarmed
civilians, including women, children, and the
elderly were massacred. Lieutenant Calley
ordered his men to enter the village firing,
though there had been no report of opposing
fire. According to eyewitness reports offered
after the event, several old men were
bayoneted, praying women and children were
shot in the back of the head, and at least one
girl was raped and then killed. For his part,
Calley was said to have rounded up a group of
the villagers, ordered them into a ditch, and
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mowed them down in a fury of machine gun
My Lai was used by the anti-war movement
The anti-war movement attempted to use this event to prove that the
U.S. had no right to be involved in the Vietnam conflict. However, they
were applying an unfortunate double standard.
North Vietnamese atrocities, such as the slaughter of South Vietnamese
civilians in Cai Be and Dak Son in 1967 and the massive live burial of
innocents in Hue in 1968 were virtually ignored in the United States.
After the Tet Offensive the NVA and VC murdered as many as 5,000
South Vietnamese civilians including doctors, teachers, lawyers,
businessmen. The most widespread atrocities happened in the city of
Hue. There alone the Communists killed over 3,000 South Vietnamese.
This was not widely reported by the press, and routinely either ignored
by the anti-war movement.
The United States Army punished its soldiers for wartime atrocities. The
North Vietnamese gave medals to those who buried thousands alive at
Hue.
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My Lai Today: monument to the Massacre
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My Lai Massacre
• Americans learned that a platoon had
massacred a village of possibly more than 200
unarmed South Vietnamese civilians.
Think About it…
• How do you think news of the My Lai
Massacre affected support of the Vietnam
War?
Pentagon Papers
• Leaked documents revealed that the gov’t had
been lying about the Vietnam War.
• The Pentagon Papers hurt public support for
the war.
Examples of Vietnamization
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The War of Public Opinion
• By 1971, over 65% of the Public wanted to
leave Vietnam as soon as possible.
• Nixon reacted by starting the process of
Vietnamization, or transferring defense
responsibilities to the South Vietnamese Army
as American troops began to return home.
The War Ends
• Nixon sent Henry Kissenger to negotiate a
peace with North Vietnamese, but the US
promised to return if South Vietnam was ever
attacked.
Think About it…
• What do you think the North Vietnamese did
when America finally left Vietnam?
Saigon falls and Containment fails
• In 1975 the North Vietnamese rolled into
South Vietnam and defeated them.
• The country was unified under Communist
control and the US never returned.
So what?
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By the time Vietnam ended…
Over 58,000 Americans had died.
Over 300,000 came back severely wounded.
The war cost billions of dollars.
Between 5-8 Million Vietnamese died.