The Presidents: The Vietnam War Edition

[Nathan Madien]

El Pip: "The Jackrabbit" is a TTL mixture of "The Manchurian Candidate" and "JFK". Since neither of those movies will get made TTL (no Korean War and no JFK Assassination), I came up with "The Jackrabbit" - a title that literally just popped into my head one day - to fill the void of political thrillers.

George W. Romney's infamous TTL mind control comment was inspired by his infamous OTL brainwashing comment. When he was seeking the GOP Presidential nomination in 1968, Romney claimed he had been brainwashed by the military into supporting the Vietnam War. It generated a public backlash from which his campaign never recovered.

It is pretty cool actually.

Unfortunately for the Philippines, they are still in for a bad time.

One of the major plot lines for this AAR is an eventual military conflict between China and the West. I have been building up towards that for years, and the Luzon Strait Incident takes us one step closer towards that conflict.

While you have those within China who wish to avoid going to war with the West, the Chinese government feels that war is necessary. In their view, they have goals to achieve which can only be done by taking military action.
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The Summer of Decision: Part One

(During the summer of 1965, “I Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch)” by the Four Tops spent two non-consecutive weeks at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 – sandwiching “Mr. Tambourine Man” by the Byrds)

In the summer of 1965:

• Following the end of its’ fifth season, “The Andy Griffith Show” (CBS) announced that star Don Knotts would not be returning to the show next season. Knotts, who played the well-meaning but inept Deputy Barney Fife, had decided to leave the show to pursue a film career. Jerry Van Dyke, whose brother Dick had his own CBS sitcom, would join the cast as the new banjo-playing Deputy of Mayberry, North Carolina at the beginning of the sixth season (which would also see the show go from black-and-white to color).
• While conducting a docking test with an unmanned spacecraft in Earth’s orbit, Gemini 8 (Neil Armstrong and David Scott) experienced NASA’s first in-space emergency when it began spinning rapidly due to a thruster malfunction. It took all of Armstrong’s skill as a pilot to stop the spinning and safely abort the flight.
• In the midst of the British Invasion, the Rolling Stones scored their first #1 hit in the United States with “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction”, which spent four consecutive weeks at the top of the Billboard Hot 100.
• Five days after releasing his latest single “Like a Rolling Stone”, Bob Dylan performed at the Newport Folk Festival in Rhode Island. During his performance, Dylan outraged folk purists by playing an electric guitar instead of the traditional acoustic guitar.
• Jefferson Airplane made its’ debut at the Matrix nightclub in San Francisco, California.
• After releasing their fifth studio album “Help!”, the Beatles opened their second North American tour with a first-of-its-kind performance at Shea Stadium in New York City. The roar of 55,600 screaming fans was so loud and deafening that no one, even the band members, could actually hear what they were playing.

The beginning of that summer found the Americans planning their next move in Vietnam. Throughout the spring, American soldiers and their allies had been fighting North Vietnamese soldiers and their allies in a series of bloody battles. The Americans had stopped their invasion of South Vietnam and had pushed them back to Saravane and Da Nang. The momentum of war, which had been swinging back and forth between the two sides, appeared to be swinging back towards the Americans, but at a price. Both sides had endured heavy casualties, with the Americans losing over 100 men per week. This inflamed the anti-war movement back home, which fervently believed that no victory was worth the cost in lives. Many Americans though were willing to accept the losses in the belief that the United States would ultimately triumph in the Vietnam War; therefore, they just had to be patient and let the war take its’ course. Studying the map, General Maxwell Taylor, the commander of US forces in Vietnam, had to decide which way that course would go. Should he:

• Go after Saravane first?
• Go after Da Nang first?

On his side there was a combined total of 36 divisions: 19 in Quang Tin and 17 in Kontum. According to his intelligence, there were 10 enemy divisions in Saravane and at least 5 divisions in Da Nang. Saravane, the main base for the Viet Cong, was a well-defended mountainous position; it would be tough to take. Da Nang on the other hand was more lightly defended, which would make it an easier target. Da Nang was also home to a small port; capturing it would give the Americans a much closer port in which to bring in reinforcements and supplies (at that point, the nearest port was located behind their lines in Qui Non). Taking Da Nang first would also allow the Americans to outflank Saravane and put Hue within their range. That might make attacking Saravane easier. Then again, if the Americans captured Saravane first and then advanced on Hue, they would cut off Da Nang. Any enemy divisions defending Da Nang would have no avenue of retreat and therefore could be destroyed. If Da Nang was attacked first, her defenders could simply retreat to either Saravane or Hue, adding to their defense.

After weighing the pros and cons both options offered him, Taylor made his decision on June 5th. He ordered General Alexander Haig to attack Saravane, aided by Boeing B-52 Stratofortress bombings of enemy positions. The enemy, which included Soviet and Chinese forces, put up a tough resistance, making the American and the South Vietnamese forces fight for every square yard. The Battle of Saravane lasted nearly two weeks; it wasn’t until June 17th that the South Vietnamese flag was securely raised over Saravane. With the loss of their main base of operations, the shattered Viet Cong withdrew to their last base at Phu Tho in North Vietnam. The Viet Cong, which once frustrated the Americans by launching surprise attacks across South Vietnam at will, was now just a shell of its’ former self. The guerrillas had been decimated as a fighting force by both the loss of Saravane and their major defeat earlier in the year in the Mekong Delta. According to intelligence, in the immediate wake of the Battle of Saravane, there were 4 enemy divisions in Hue and at least 10 in Da Nang. Having captured Saravane, Taylor turned his attention north to Hue.

(Captured members of the Viet Cong following the Battle of Saravane)
On June 20th, while Taylor allowed his men to get much-needed rest in preparation for an assault on Hue, 35,000 anti-war protesters arrived outside the Pentagon. Built in the early 1940s at a cost of $83 million, the massive five-sided office building is the headquarters of the Department of Defense. As the office of both the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Pentagon was a natural place in which to protest the Vietnam War. In fact, more people showed up for what was dubbed “The March on the Pentagon” than showed up for the Washington, D.C. protest two months earlier. The protestors wanted to demonstrate to those in power that their numbers were getting bigger. Facing them were 2,500 armed soldiers, assigned the task of defending the building. From his office window, Secretary of Defense Paul Nitze saw protestors waving signs and shouting anti-war slogans. He was on the phone with the President at his desk, describing the peaceful protest when one of his secretaries suddenly screamed in horror. When a startled Nitze asked what had happened, his horrified secretary pointed at the window. The Defense Secretary saw what she was pointing at and grew visibly shocked. Norman Morrison, a 31-year-old Quaker from Baltimore, Maryland, devoutly believed that the Vietnam War was immoral and attended the March on the Pentagon with his baby daughter Emily. However, he wasn’t content with expressing his opposition to the war simply with words and signs. Standing within clear view of Nitze’s office, Morrison handed Emily off to a nearby person. He then doused himself in gasoline and set himself on fire. Watching Morrison burn himself to death, Nitze couldn’t believe what he was seeing. “We had so many people opposing the war at the time,” he later recalled, “And here we had these gentlemen who were more than willing to sacrifice themselves in the name of opposing the war.”
In addition to Morrison, Nitze was also referring to Roger Allen LaPorte, a 21-year-old member of the social justice Catholic Worker Movement. Sharing Morrison’s opposition to the Vietnam War on religious grounds, LaPorte was inspired by him to make the ultimate sacrifice for their cause. Four days after the March on the Pentagon, the former seminarian from Geneva, New York doused himself in gasoline in front of the south gates of the White House and set himself on fire. LaPorte died the next day at George Washington University Hospital from severe burns covering 95% of his body, calmly telling people “I’m a Catholic Worker. I’m against war, all wars. I did this as a religious action against all the hatred of the world.”
LaPorte’s death, coming on the heels of Morrison’s death, stunned President Malcolm Forbes. If people were willing to engage in acts of self-immolation to protest the war, how much further were they willing to go?

(Norman Morrison)
On the same day LaPorte set himself on fire, the Americans finally launched their assault on Hue. An ancient city, Hue was the former imperial capital of Vietnam and as such had many old stone buildings. In March 1964, the North Vietnamese captured Hue and had been occupying the city ever since. For the Americans, the Second Battle of Hue was a complicated military operation because it required them to engage in house-to-house fighting in an urban environment. It wasn’t until July 2nd that the enemy had been fully cleared from Hue and the stately city was declared secure. Hue had suffered extensive damages as the two sides intensely fought over it building-by-building. With the liberation of Hue, 6 enemy divisions became trapped in Da Nang. Moving quickly, Taylor ordered General Harold K. Johnson to open up the battle for Da Nang on July 3rd. Facing attacks from multiple directions, the enemy was overwhelmed and destroyed in short order. Da Nang was retaken on July 6th.

(American soldiers taking cover behind a brick wall during the Second Battle of Hue)
With the fall of Da Nang, there wasn’t a single enemy soldier anywhere in South Vietnam. In Hanoi, panic amongst government and military officials set in. Having been driven completely out of South Vietnam, the North Vietnamese believed that the tables were about to turn, and their country was the one that was about to be invaded. On July 11th, North Vietnamese President Ho Chi Minh sent an emergency appeal to the Soviet Union and the Republic of China for additional help. Moscow and Nanjing, sharing Hanoi’s belief that the United States was about to invade North Vietnam, agreed to increase their support of their ally. Reinforcements and military supplies from the two countries were dispatched to North Vietnam at once. The new plan was to make North Vietnam so strong and make an invasion so costly to the Americans that they would be compelled to abandon it. By July 14th, there were 270,000 American soldiers in South Vietnam; the bulk of them were stationed in Hue. This heavy placement of troops near the Demilitarized Zone separating the two Vietnams meant only one thing to the enemy: an invasion was imminent.

(Chinese soldiers during the 1960s, their helmets a relic of the Sino-German military cooperation back in the 1930s)
Soldiers defending Quang Binh braced themselves for the Americans to cross the DMZ and attack them. They waited…and waited…and waited...for an attack that didn’t come. Instead of launching their offensive as expected, the Americans in Hue stayed put, getting much-needed rest after constant tough fighting and awaiting their orders. It was unclear to them at that point what exactly those orders would be. The recapture of Da Nang had triggered a strong debate within the Forbes Administration over what to do next. The Joint Chiefs of Staff urged the President to order a full-scale invasion of North Vietnam. With momentum clearly on America’s side, they contended that this was the perfect time to take the war to the North and capture Hanoi. They could then destroy Communism in Indochina once and for all, unifying the two Vietnams into one aligned with the US. Nitze and Secretary of State Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. opposed this all-in approach. They pointedly reminded the Chiefs that an invasion of North Vietnam was never part of the plan. The plan had always been for the US to defeat the Viet Cong and secure South Vietnam. Having achieved both of those aims, they countered-argued that this was the time to open peace negotiations with North Vietnam and end the war. Nitze furthered warned that an invasion of North Vietnam was likely to elicit a stronger response from China (he had no idea at the time that Nanjing was already sending additional forces to their southern neighbor). “The Chinese are not going to tolerate having a lot of our men near their border.”
He envisioned a worse-case scenario in which the Chinese used an US invasion of North Vietnam as justification to flood Indochina with their troops. “The Chinese have a lot more men available and can get them onto the battlefield a lot quicker than we can.”
He could just imagine wave after wave of Chinese soldiers fighting and overwhelming the American defenders. It was better, he thought, to seek peace now than to push the envelope too far and turn the verge of victory into near-certain defeat.

(Paul Nitze, Secretary of Defense since January 1961)
“But have we really achieved our stated objectives in Vietnam?”
That question was posed by Vice President Everett Dirksen. Dirksen, a World War One veteran who had participated in the September 1918 Battle of Saint-Mihiel (the first large offensive conducted primarily by the American Expeditionary Forces), disagreed with Lodge and Nitze’s assertion that the war at this point had been won. He pointed out that the Viet Cong, while down, wasn’t out. They still had a base of operations in Phu Tho. If the United States sought peace now, it would leave the Viet Cong remaining in the field to rebuild itself to the point that it could once again pose a threat to South Vietnam. “If we do not destroy them before we seek peace, what will have been the point of the war in the first place?”
Destroying the Viet Cong of course would mean invading North Vietnam, since Phu Tho was located above the DMZ. The Joint Chiefs quickly jumped on this fact to support their case. During the course of the invasion versus peace debate, Forbes had said very little. He preferred to let his subordinates hash out their arguments without much input from him. When Chairman of the Joint Chiefs David L. McDonald finally asked the President what he thought, he didn’t really have much of an answer. Forbes recognized that the decision facing him of whether to order an invasion of North Vietnam or seek a peace deal with the enemy would most likely be the most important one of his Presidency. He felt that a decision of this magnitude shouldn’t be made in a rushed manner after a heated debate. Instead, Forbes chose to leave the White House on Friday, July 23rd to spend the weekend at Camp Ewing. Nestled in the wooded hills of Catoctin Mountain Park in Maryland, Camp Ewing provided the President a quiet seclusion in which to make his momentous decision about war and peace in Vietnam.
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What will Forbes decide to do? Find out...after we go to Europe for his previously mentioned summit with Khrushchev.

 

[Kurt_Steiner]

To destroy good ol' Charlie, you have to finish North Vietnam first, methinks.

 

[El Pip]

Norman Morrison

What an incredibly selfish man. I just can't help but feel sorry for his poor family having to witness that, his daughters knowing their father thought throwing his life away in a pointlessly narcissistic gesture was more important than his duty to them and that he loved them less than his own ego. It's easy to say they were better off without him, and it's probably true, but I still feel incredibly bad for them.

What will Forbes decide to do? Find out...after we go to Europe for his previously mentioned summit with Khrushchev.

Ohh you big tease. That said clearing the decks with the Soviets is probably quite important, if you are going to go into North Vietnam and do it properly its' going to take focus and more manpower, the US can't commit to that if the Soviets are playing up.

My guess on this is similar to Kurties, you can't take out Charlie until you've taken down North Vietnam. They will always have a 'safe' base to operate out of as long as the Hanoi regime stands. While I'm sure they could hold the DMZ against conventional forces, infiltrators will easily get through, or just go round through Laos and Cambodia, so if the US wants to say it has 'won' and achieved it's war aims, they have to go north.

 

[Nathan Madien]

Kurt_Steiner: The Vietnam War, which historically turned into a quagmire for the Americans, is looking more like the OTL Korean War with the question of whether to carry the war north.

El Pip: I was surprised when I read about Norman Morrison. I didn't know some Vietnam War protestors actually set themselves on fire. I decided to incorporate that into the update.

I almost ended the update with King Haakon-style teasing, in which the update ends with a bunch of questions that may or may not be answered next time.

There is certainly logic to invading North Vietnam. However, some people who have the President's ear don't want to follow that logic.
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Getting the European Perspective
“Mr. President, I agree with you on the need to take a firm stand against China. However, I do not believe Vietnam is the right place to do it.”
British Prime Minister Richard Austen “Rab” Butler then deliberately paused to take a sip from his teacup, waiting for the expected reaction to come. Having spent most of his life as a Member of Parliament and having served in multiple ministerial positions, the 62-year-old Butler spoke with the air of a wise elder. It was June 2nd, 1965. American President Malcom Forbes was in London for the first stop on his state visit to Europe. This was his second time to the continent as President; the first had been at the beginning of the year to attend the state funeral of former Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Meeting with Butler at 10 Downing Street, Forbes found the issue of China dominating their discussion. Like the Americans, the British were watching the Chinese with weary eyes. Tensions between London and Nanjing were running high over Hong Kong, which the Chinese were pressing territorial claims on and which the British steadfastly refused to surrender control of. Distrusted in some quarters for his staunch pro-appeasement approach to Nazi Germany back in the 1930s, Butler was determined as Prime Minister to take a hard line against the Republic of China and show everybody that he wouldn’t repeat his past appeasement. However, he had a very different idea from his American guest of where the line in the sand should be drawn in regard to the mighty Chinese Dragon.
“Why?”
Forbes had been trying to persuade Butler to commit British combat troops to South Vietnam. When the Prime Minister declined to do so and expressed his belief that Vietnam wasn’t the right place to take a stand, the President asked the natural question.
“Because South Vietnam cannot hold.”
The Prime Minister answered the question matter-of-factly while putting his teacup down on the table. It was no secret to the international community that South Vietnam had serious military and political problems. The South Vietnamese Army had proven itself unable to stand up to the North Vietnamese Army and Saigon was wracked by political turmoil due to the Generals in charge constantly scheming against each other. Whereas the Americans believed those problems could be overcome eventually, Butler regarded those problems as dooming South Vietnam in the long run. “You cannot save a country that cannot stand on its’ own two feet.”
To him, American military successes in the Vietnam War was doing nothing to address South Vietnam’s internal weaknesses. Furthermore, the country was geographically vulnerable:

• North Vietnam wanted to conquer her
• Laos was a Chinese puppet state
• Cambodia was aligned with the US but just barely

If the Americans lost their tenuous foothold in Cambodia, then South Vietnam would be completely surrounded by her enemies. Even if the United States won the Vietnam War and stopped North Vietnam from taking over the country militarily, it was Butler’s view that it would only delay the inevitable. He predicted that South Vietnam’s deeply-rooted problems would sooner or later cause the government – which was widely unpopular with her own citizens due to her utter incompetence – to collapse and leave the door wide-open to a Communist take-over. “There is a much better place in which to draw the line than Vietnam.”
When the President asked where, the Prime Minister answered simply: “Thailand.”
The British, who had experience in Southeast Asia quelling a Communist insurgency in Malaya during the 1950s, thought that Thailand possessed advantages that South Vietnam sorely lacked:

• It was more robust internally
• It was more defensible
• The Thai military could stand up on its’ own without being reliant on American military power

The British therefore believed the Americans would be much better off drawing the line against the Chinese in Thailand than they were placing all their eggs in the dysfunctional basket of South Vietnam.

After London came Paris. Before departing for France, Forbes had been warned by Butler not to expect to receive a warm reception from French President Charles de Gaulle. To say that de Gaulle gave the American President an icy reception might be putting it mildly. Having been completely ignored during the Jackson Administration, the temperamental de Gaulle was in no mood for Forbes’ efforts to reach out to him in an effort to improve diplomatic ties between their two nations. The French President had a condescending attitude, berating his American counterpart for what he regarded as America’s longstanding disrespect of France. “We are not Britain! You cannot treat us like we are one of your stooges!”
Ever since the Willkie Administration had tried in vain not to recognize de Gaulle as the leader of Free France during World War Two (preferring to recognize Henri Giraud instead), there had been bad blood between him and the Americans. Henry M. Jackson was so offended by de Gaulle’s unbridled arrogance and rabid nationalism when he met him as Vice President in 1959 that he stubbornly refused to have anything to do with him after he became President two years later. Now bearing the brunt of the French leader’s blatant contempt, Forbes was privately regretting meeting him in the first place. De Gaulle was highly critical of America’s handling of Vietnam, believing she was too militant to resolve a problem that in his view required a deft understanding of political nuance. He sharply contrasted his diplomatic handling of the Algerian War – a 1950s military conflict which led to Algeria acquiring her independence from France in 1962 – to America’s overreliance on her military power to find a resolution to the Vietnam War. De Gaulle further blamed the Americans, and by extension the British, for the growing tension with China. “You, sir, do not understand Asia.”
The French President claimed that China had the right to assert herself as a strong power, given her history of being at the mercy of other powers, and that the Anglo-American effort to contain China was pushing the Asian continent towards the brink of an unnecessary military confrontation. He warned Forbes that “you are backing China into a corner” and that if war with her broke out, “it will have been entirely your fault.”
Noting that Paris still maintained diplomatic and economic ties with Nanjing despite Washington and London breaking off theirs, de Gaulle strongly urged Forbes to “stop your reckless militancy” before it was too late and to seek a diplomatic resolution. Whereas the Americans and the British were doing everything they could to oppose the rise of China as the leading nation in Asia, the French were more willing to accept it. As de Gaulle put it, “the weight of evidence and reason” made such a rise unavoidable and that it was better to accommodate the Chinese than to stand against them.

(Charles de Gaulle, President of France since January 1959)
Discussions about the Vietnam War and China dominated Forbes’ visits to the United Kingdom and France. They didn’t come up at all during his next two stops: the Federal Republic of Germany and the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Bordering the Iron Curtain which divided Europe into Democratic and Communist halves, German and Yugoslav leaders were more concerned about the Soviets than they were about the Chinese. While in Germany, the President visited the Oder River. Forming a natural border between the FRG and the Polish People’s Republic, the Oder had by 1965 become the most visual symbol of the Iron Curtain. Trees on both sides of the river had been cleared away, replaced by a heavily fortified system of barb-wire fences, guard towers, and concrete bunkers. Soldiers manning the defenses on both sides of the Oder stood watch, eyeing each other across this watery no-man’s-land. It was a far cry from the scene which played out in July 1944, when American G.I.s and Red Army troops linked up at the Oder and joyously celebrated the collapse of the once-seemingly unstoppable Third Reich which they brought about. Within days of American and Soviet soldiers hugging each other, the Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler was killed in a military coup and Nazi Germany surrendered to the Allies. One man who wasn’t happy at the end of World War Two in Europe was Joseph Stalin. The Soviet General Secretary had ordered General Georgy Zhukov, one of his top Generals, to cross the Oder and capture Berlin before the Americans got there first. Encountering stiff German resistance during his advance across Poland, Zhukov only got as far as the eastern bank of the Oder before encountering the Americans. Furious that Zhukov had lost the race to Berlin (which also denied the Soviets a presence in postwar Germany), Stalin then ordered him to Siberia to organize Red Army forces for an invasion of Manchukuo. While enroute to Vladivostok to take command, Zhukov died under “mysterious circumstances”.

(General Georgy Zhukov, seen here in the late 1930s during his more successful days fighting the Japanese in their border war with the Soviets. Like Darth Vader, Joseph Stalin didn’t allow Zhukov to fail him and live to talk about it)
Forbes enjoyed a warm reception in Germany, but it paled in comparison to the reception he received in Yugoslavia. Grateful to the Americans for the critical role they played in helping his royalist forces defeat a Communist insurgency during the Yugoslav Civil War of the 1950s, King Peter II (1923-1980) went all-out in welcoming the American President to his country. During the motorcade procession through the packed streets of Belgrade, Forbes was greeted by the sight of young women tossing flowers onto the road while children waved small American flags. At the elegant state dinner held in his honor, the King presented the President with a ceremonial sword that was encrusted with valuable jewels. Impressed by the extravagant reception he had received, Forbes said half-jokingly half-seriously afterwards that “Before I leave office, I will tell my successor that if he ever feels sad, just go to Yugoslavia. It will cheer him up.”
After Yugoslavia came the President’s final stop on his European visit: Geneva, Switzerland. Here he had a summit meeting with Soviet General Secretary Nikita Khrushchev. Unlike the rest of the European trip, which had been planned in advance, the Geneva Summit had come about almost at the last minute. A few weeks prior to the trip, Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin met with Forbes in the Oval Office. Discussing the President’s upcoming trip to Europe, Dobrynin informed him that Khrushchev was open to meeting with him on neutral ground “for an exchange of views” which could “improve the relationship between our two countries.”
At the time, relations between the two superpowers were very tense. Earlier in the year, the Soviets had shot down a Boeing B-47 Stratojet over the Barents Sea and imprisoned survivors Stuart McKeon and Harry Phillips. The Forbes Administration had demanded their immediate release, insisting that they had merely been performing weather reconnaissance in international airspace near the Kola Peninsula. Khrushchev had refused to release them, angrily accusing the Americans of spying on them in Soviet airspace. He then counter-demanded that the Americans admit and apologize for their routine aerial reconnaissance flights over his country; they refused to do so. Despite the subsequent Cold War stand-off between Washington and Moscow over the Barents Sea Incident, Khrushchev had left the door open to a possible summit meeting with Forbes. Eager to resolve the stand-off and pursue a policy of détente with the Soviet Union, Forbes told Dobrynin that he was more than willing to hold talks with the Soviet leader.

(Anatoly Dobrynin, who served as the Soviet Ambassador to the United States from January 1962 to May 1986)
A meeting between the two leaders was hastily arranged, with Geneva being chosen as the host. On June 3rd, a week before they were due to meet, Khrushchev sprang a surprise. While he and his wife Roberta were dining with Queen Elizabeth II (then in the 13th year of her 70-year reign) and her husband Prince Philip at Buckingham Palace, Forbes was slipped a hand-written note by Secretary of State Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. Opening up the note, the President read a short hastily scribbled sentence:
“K released our pilots.”
In Moscow, Khrushchev had just announced that he had ordered the immediate release of McKeon and Phillips. Having spent the past few months refusing to release them from Lubyanka prison until the United States apologized for spying on his country, the Soviet leader explained his sudden reversal by stating that he had done so to “remove this obstacle to having serious conversations that can build trust and understanding between our two countries.”
Pleased that these two imprisoned pilots were finally free to return home, the President directed that Vice President Everett Dirksen be on hand to welcome McKeon and Phillips upon their return to the United States. When Forbes informed Butler about this unexpected development, the experienced British Prime Minister warned him not to let his guard down. “Khrushchev is trying to soften you up by making this conciliatory gesture. He is a tough man, and he will try to rattle you. He will be nice to you at first but will then try to intimidate you. That is how he operates.”
Lodge, who had escorted Khrushchev around the US as his former rival President John Sparkman’s personal representative during his 13-day state visit in 1960 (which famously included spending a day at Disneyland), echoed a similar warning. “Khrushchev comes from a peasant background. He is constantly aware of that, and tries to compensate for it by being bombastic, being the most aggressive person in the room. He will attack you and see if he can get away with it. Be firm with him.”

(Nikita Khrushchev upon his arrival in Geneva)
At 12:45 PM on Thursday, June 10th, Forbes and Khrushchev met in Geneva for the first time. The 71-year-old Soviet leader was jovial, happily shaking Forbes’ hands in front of the international media. The 45-year-old American leader was visibly in a good mood, having just arrived in Switzerland from his incredible reception in Yugoslavia. When Khrushchev spotted Lodge in the crowd, he went over and hugged his one-time host, even cracking a joke about his 1960 visit to the US. It was a warm, upbeat atmosphere for the beginning of the Geneva Summit. After photographers captured the first encounter of the slim, black-haired American leader with the rather chubby, bald Soviet leader, the two men took their seats around a large table to begin their formal talks. As if a switch had been flipped, the previously friendly Khrushchev immediately became hostile and went on the attack. He accused Forbes of waging the Vietnam War for imperialistic reasons. “We will never permit you to take over North Vietnam!”
Forbes responded by denying the accusation, explaining that the United States “has no desire to overthrow the Hanoi government” and was content to leave the Communist regime of Ho Chi Minh alone. All the Americans wanted was for Ho to leave South Vietnam alone and not try to conquer her. “That is bullshit!” Khrushchev yelled out, slamming his fist down on the table with such force that their glasses of water shook. Since America had no problem overthrowing other governments at whim, he regarded the Vietnam War as her effort to militarily unite the two Vietnams into a puppet regime…despite Forbes’ protests to the contrary. “Besides, everyone knows that the people of South Vietnam hate their government. The only reason they are living under it is because you Americans imposed it on them!”
Whereas Forbes saw North Vietnam as trying to conquer South Vietnam in the name of Communism, Khrushchev saw North Vietnam as waging a war of liberation against the American-imposed puppet regime in South Vietnam. “We stand shoulder-to-shoulder with North Vietnam, and we will continue to give her all the aid she needs to win this war for the sake of the Vietnamese people.”
When it was pointed out to him that North Vietnamese forces, which included Soviet divisions, were presently being pushed back in South Vietnam, he was seemingly unbothered by it. “Not for much longer.”
After hearing this through his interpreter, Forbes became uncertain. Was Khrushchev simply bluffing? Or did he really have a plan to dramatically turn the course of the war around? When Forbes inquired what he meant by that, Khrushchev refused to answer the question. Instead, he immediately changed topics. He disclosed to the confused President that one of his geologists, Farman Salmanov, had just struck oil in Siberia (Moscow would officially announce the discovery on June 13th). Salmanov’s discovery of vast oil fields in Siberia was a game-changer for the Soviets, as Siberian oil soon became a major export which helped lift their economy. Khrushchev claimed that his country was poised “to produce more oil than your country” and that the Soviet Union would one day eclipse the United States economically.

(For finding oil in Siberia, Farman Salmanov was awarded the Hero of Socialist Labour, the highest award you could achieve for contributions to the Soviet economy and culture)
Just as the President had been warned, the General Secretary was belligerent at the start of their summit meeting. It was Khrushchev’s intent to beat Forbes up, wanting to see how he would handle it. Whereas Scoop Jackson, Forbes’ predecessor, had been able to parry Khrushchev’s attacks, Forbes came across flustered and defensive. “I had been told ahead of time,” he later reflected, “Of what to expect when I talked to Khrushchev. But that did not prepare me to endure the degree of his aggressiveness. He was unrelenting.”
During a late lunch, Khrushchev seamlessly reverted back to his friendly self. Showing off his WW2 medals he wore on his jacket, he said to Forbes, “I understand you fought in the war.”
“I did,” Forbes replied proudly. The two men from completely different backgrounds, who had the fact that they were both World War Two veterans in common, proceeded to share some of their experiences fighting in the biggest war the world had ever seen. After the lunch break was over and talks resumed, pleasant Khrushchev went away and combative Khrushchev returned. When Forbes brought up the issue of arms control, the Soviet leader contemptuously dismissed it as a non-starter. He said he couldn’t trust the Americans to negotiate in good faith when they had been caught spying on the Soviets and had so far refused to apologize for it. “How can I trust you Americans to agree to your end of the bargain? You will just cheat.”
The American leader tried to reassure him that his country was genuinely committed to arms control and would agree to negotiating a system of mutual verification with the Soviets “that can give confidence to your side as well as ours that both our countries are faithfully abiding by the terms that we agree to.”
“Are you really willing to get rid of your stockpile [of nuclear weapons]?”
When Forbes gave an affirmative reply, followed by a conditional “as long as it is done in a mutual manner,” Khrushchev shook an angry finger at him. “That, sir, is unacceptable!”
For all of his tough guy bluster about “burying” the United States, Khrushchev was acutely aware that the Americans held the upper hand in the Cold War arms race. The USA possessed more missiles, more nuclear submarines, more nuclear weapons, and more strategic bombers than the USSR did and had a greater ability to field those weapons than the Soviets did. The United States had ringed the Soviet Union with bases from which to launch strikes deep into the country. The Soviet Union on the other hand couldn’t set up a base anywhere in the Western Hemisphere from which they could directly strike the United States. For Khrushchev, agreeing to a mutual reduction in nuclear armaments at this point was unacceptable because the Americans would still have the upper hand. When Forbes, whom the Soviets had been stonewalling for months on the idea of starting arms control talks, asked with some exasperation about what it would take to get the Soviets to come to the negotiating table, Khrushchev replied that if the United States made unilateral cuts first, “then we will be willing to talk.”
Now it was Forbes’ turn to tell Khrushchev that was unacceptable. He was completely opposed to making unilateral cuts, believing that making such a concession to the Soviets would throw away America’s advantage in the arms race. “We will make no agreement then,” Khrushchev shot back after being rebuffed.

The first day of the summit produced plenty of sparring and antagonism, but no breakthroughs on any issue. Whereas he had respected Scoop for being able to go toe-to-toe with him, Khrushchev had little respect for Forbes. He didn't even look tough to him, looking more like a nerdy accountant. Khrushchev told his comrades that he was amazed that the United States could elect as their President “such a weak man.”
As for his American counterpart, Forbes expressed his disappointment to Lodge that night that he hadn’t made any headway with Khrushchev. “I don’t think he came here to negotiate,” he lamented. The Secretary of State, who was dubious that a summit meeting with the General Secretary would make any difference, resisted telling his boss “I told you so.”
Feeling overwhelmed after the first day, Forbes went into the second and final day of the Geneva Summit wondering how he could make the day go better. He found Khrushchev still determined to give his young opponent a long and tense experience. Khrushchev continued to argue that the Soviet Union was superior over the United States, forcing Forbes to try to counter him as best he could. Then Khrushchev brought up China, whom he boasted “is the most valuable ally in the world, far more valuable than any of yours.”
He treated Chinese President Chiang Kai-shek as his best friend, boasting that “He stands by me and I stand by him!”
Like de Gaulle, Khrushchev blamed the growing tensions in Asia and the Western Pacific on the United States. He thought it hypocritical for the Americans to try to stop the Chinese from flexing their muscles on the international stage when the Americans did it all the time. He then issued a stern warning:
“If you go to war with China, we will not hesitate to come to the defense of our ally. If you attack China, we will attack you. If you use nuclear weapons against China, we will use nuclear weapons against you. Whatever you do to China, we will do to you.”
Khrushchev stared straight into Forbes’ bespectacled eyes, trying to scare him with the prospect of a Sino-American war immediately escalating into World War Three. Lodge, who stood in the background, noticed that the Soviet officials who were also standing in the background all had the same stunned expression on their faces following the General Secretary’s warning. He thought to himself, “It looks like they are surprised by what he said.”
They were. Khrushchev had decided on Soviet military intervention in the event of a Sino-American war without consulting anybody. He was so committed in his relationship with Chiang that he was willing to go to war with the United States on his behalf. When news of the warning reached Moscow, it set off alarm bells in the Kremlin. For Leonid Brezhnev and other high-ranking Soviet officials, this was a surprising and reckless abandonment of the Soviet Union’s long-standing policy of avoiding a direct military confrontation with the United States. And for what? Unlike Khrushchev, Brezhnev and others didn’t trust Chiang at all. They viewed him as being nothing more than an opportunist who was using the Soviet Union for his own gain. They objected to the fact that under Khrushchev, their country was spending 7% of its national income a year on improving the ROC. It was completely unacceptable to them that Khrushchev would be so willing to plunge the Soviet Union into a world war in which she had nothing to gain and everything to lose from it. “[Khrushchev] is steering us towards a dangerous place,” Brezhnev warned his like-minded comrades, “We need to be willing to move against him in order to save the country from the ruination he is seeking.”
While remaining outwardly loyal to Khrushchev, Brezhnev (below) began to secretly organize a plot to remove him from power. As one of the highest-ranking officials in the Soviet Union, the 58-year-old saw it as his patriotic duty to make preparations to oust Khrushchev in the event that he was about to throw the country into an unnecessary war that nobody else wanted.

The Geneva Summit of 1965 ended the way it began: with the two superpowers deadlocked. Forbes had gone into it with the belief that talking directly to Khrushchev would help ease Cold War tensions and even lead to an agreement. After two days of talks in neutral Switzerland, the President grimly left the country with nothing to show for it. Unlike General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, who went to Geneva as well for his first summit meeting with President George H.W. Bush in November 1985, Khrushchev had no interest in having productive talks with Forbes. His sole aim was to beat him up…which he succeeded in doing. Flying back to the United States aboard Air Force One, the President felt emotionally drained by the experience. Speaker of the House Gerald Ford, who attended a candid White House briefing of Congressional leaders on the European trip following Forbes’ return to Washington on June 12th, thought he looked “rather roughed up.”
In addition, the President also felt frustrated. Having made no progress at Geneva, he saw his détente policy hitting a brick wall. Without negotiations over arms control, he didn’t believe it was possible to achieve the rest of détente with the Soviet Union. The Geneva Summit was a diplomatic failure which left Forbes disillusioned that he could deal with Khrushchev in a reasonable manner. As for Khrushchev, he left Geneva feeling victorious. He felt that he had won his physiological battle with the much younger and inexperienced President of the United States and that it would increase his prestige both at home and on the international stage. While he had scored points against his Cold War adversary, the General Secretary had also sowed the seeds of his own political demise. His ironclad pledge to join a Sino-American war on China’s side had provoked his opponents in the Kremlin into scheming to get rid of him. Khrushchev’s effort to scare Forbes with the prospect of launching World War Three over China would have unintended consequences.

 

[DensleyBlair]

Just catching up with the last few updates. Luzon Strait first – and a very enjoyable chapter it was!

Journalist Jack Germond, who was used to Romney clarifying his gaffe-prone statements, joked about adding a single key on his typewriter that would print “Romney later explained.”

Ah, Jack Germond. Latterly of The McLaughlin Group, if I’m remembering correctly? That’s a very funny detail about the typewriter key.

Noting that his youngest child Mitt was getting ready to graduate from high school and head off to Stanford University in the fall

Hearing Mitt mentioned brings to mind a stat I saw the other day, where apparently something like 2% of the electorate in 2012 thought his full name was “Mittens”…

Portuguese for “Beautiful Island,” Formosa had been fought over by a number of powers until the Japanese took over it in 1895.

Just out of curiosity – why Formosa still and not Taiwan?

Curtis Lemay, the aggressive cigar-chomping Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force, proposed launching retaliatory air strikes against China.

Oh boy… Lemay’s gunna Lemay I suppose.

After all:

• The United States didn’t go to war with Germany after she sank the Cunard liner RMS Lusitania in May 1915, in which 123 Americans lost their lives
• The United States didn’t go to war with Japan after she sank the river gunboat USS Panay in April 1938, in which 3 people were killed and 43 were wounded

Why should the United States, he reasoned, go to war with China over their attack on the USS Turner Joy when the ship wasn’t hit, and nobody got hurt?

Crazy to think of a timeline in which an American President essentially advocates for a diplomatic doctrine according to which other nations can attack US ships with impunity.

it was largely because of this high-profile criticism that Democratic Governor George Wallace of Alabama chose him to be his running mate when he made his second third party bid for the Presidency in 1968.

Hahaha… Lord help us all!

 

[DensleyBlair]

…and now I’m right up to date!

Fascinating developments on the European tour. Interesting to see Forbes so ambivalently received in the Old World. Butler plays the eager understudy well, having been well practised in the role over the course of his career, but he does at least spare himself from Blair levels of obsequiousness with some pushback over Vietnam. De Gaulle meanwhile is… De Gaulle. And that’s a very interesting interpretation of Nicky K. His hot/cold quixotic streak is a rich source of alt-historical possibility (I’ve always thought, anyway) and I think your version of him – more intentionally ‘hot’ during talks, ‘cold’ during downtime – is quite novel. Funny to see him as something of a hard man. I enjoyed it – even if I’m with Malcolm in hoping for détente.

Discussing the President’s upcoming trip to Europe, Dobrynin informed him that Khrushchev was open to meeting with him on neutral ground “for an exchange of views” which could “improve the relationship between our two countries.”

When I first read this, I was intrigued to see whether we were going to get a sort of reverse-Nixonian Soviet–American détente to freeze out the Chinese. What we got instead was equally fascinating, if much less heartening.

It’s interesting, incidentally, to see Forbes being so roundly dominated by the older men in charge in Europe. Quite uncanny.

“[Khrushchev] is steering us towards a dangerous place,” Brezhnev warned his like-minded comrades, “We need to be willing to move against him in order to save the country from the ruination he is seeking.”

Ah, that old faithful: Khrushchev will always somehow talk himself into being toppled by Brezhnev and his grey-faced companions. I wonder what hell they will unleash upon the Soviet bloc this time around…

Excellent stuff, @Nathan Madien! Looking forward to seeing how recent developments in Europe end up impacting the east Asian theatre.

 

[El Pip]

I almost ended the update with King Haakon-style teasing, in which the update ends with a bunch of questions that may or may not be answered next time.

More authors should do that.

When the President asked where, the Prime Minister answered simply: “Thailand.”
The British, who had experience in Southeast Asia quelling a Communist insurgency in Malaya during the 1950s, thought that Thailand possessed advantages that South Vietnam sorely lacked:

I must disagree with my friend DB on this, I think Butler is just being friendly and giving some firm but well meant advice. But then Densley always does think the worst of anyone marginally to the right of Tony Benn so Butler was always going to struggle to get a fair hearing from him. In any event the advice is sound and as noted comes from a source that has actually won the sort of conflict America is involved with so really should be heeded. Though I accept it is easier to advise leaving Saigon to it's fate than to actually do it.

De Gaulle was highly critical of America’s handling of Vietnam, believing she was too militant to resolve a problem that in his view required a deft understanding of political nuance. He sharply contrasted his diplomatic handling of the Algerian War – a 1950s military conflict which led to Algeria acquiring her independence from France in 1962

My word. To hold up the Algerian War as an example of what to do. Sure Vietnam was worse, but only because it lasted over twice as long and the country had a higher population to start with. Per Capita Algeria was bloodier and displaced far more people. De Gaulle continues to find new depths to sink to.

As de Gaulle put it, “the weight of evidence and reason” made such a rise unavoidable and that it was better to accommodate the Chinese than to stand against them.

South Vietnam is surely the last territorial ambition the Chinese have in South Asia. Surely it is reasonable to follow De Gaulle's advice and appease that demand? As was said of the Bourbons, De Gaulle has learnt nothing and forgotten nothing


And finally to Kruschev. An interesting character and I like what you have done with him, disappointed the shoe and "we will bury you" didn't make an appearance, though I suppose they are somewhat cliched at this point and he certainly conveyed a similar message even if not with the same words. He was very mercurial and that certainly helped him get the better of the inexperienced Forbes, but it seems his tongue has also dug his grave for him, well perhaps not grave but certainly built him a comfortable Dacha, far from Moscow, far from power and with plenty of KGB minders.

That said he is not out of it yet and while the OTL Kruschev accepted it with grace he could have fought it. Perhaps not literally, I doubt there will be a Civil War, but he politically and within the party he could of and perhaps may still do.

 

[DensleyBlair]

I must disagree with my friend DB on this, I think Butler is just being friendly and giving some firm but well meant advice. But then Densley always does think the worst of anyone marginally to the right of Tony Benn so Butler was always going to struggle to get a fair hearing from him.

And here I was thinking I had been perfectly reasonable about old Rab…

What I meant to say, I suppose, is that – in common with pretty much any plausibly conceivable candidate for the PM job at the time – Butler is obviously the keenest of the European leaders to keep the US friendly. But (to his credit) he does not stoop to Blair levels of grovelling to do so.

I actually don’t mind Butler (even if my reading of him on these boards is always tainted by @Le Jones ’s chilling interpretation in KFM…). Him over boring old Douglas-Home any day of the week.

That said he is not out of it yet and while the OTL Kruschev accepted it with grace he could have fought it. Perhaps not literally, I doubt there will be a Civil War, but he politically and within the party he could of and perhaps may still do.

It would be interesting if he applies some of the steeliness Nathan has given him to his internal battles. Who among us wouldn’t take some joy out of seeing him promise to dig Brezhnev’s grave?

 

[El Pip]

And here I was thinking I had been perfectly reasonable about old Rab…

What I meant to say, I suppose, is that – in common with pretty much any plausibly conceivable candidate for the PM job at the time – Butler is obviously the keenest of the European leaders to keep the US friendly. But (to his credit) he does not stoop to Blair levels of grovelling to do so.

I actually don’t mind Butler (even if my reading of him on these boards is always tainted by @Le Jones ’s chilling interpretation in KFM…). Him over boring old Douglas-Home any day of the week.

That is indeed far more reasonable view of him. I have something of a soft spot for Douglas-Home just because of the ridiculous kidnapping attempt, though I would certainly he agree he doesn't not seem like particularly thrilling or inspiring company.

It would be interesting if he applies some of the steeliness Nathan has given him to his internal battles. Who among us wouldn’t take some joy out of seeing him promise to dig Brezhnev’s grave?

I for one would take considerable joy from it, what a marvellous scene it would be.

 

[Nathan Madien]

DensleyBlair: Thank you. I am glad you enjoyed the Luzon Strait update. I wanted to have an incident between China and America to show that tensions between the two naval powers are growing and the Luzon Strait gave me a likely place for it to happen.

When I was researching George W. Romney's historic "brainwash" gaffe for my TTL "mind control" gaffe, I came across the detail about Jack Germond and his typewriter. I decided to include it for some humor in an otherwise serious update.

That is hilarious. Barack Obama versus Mittens Romney.

To me, Taiwan means the ROC government which evacuated to the island after the Communist Chinese kicked them off the mainland. Formosa on the other hand means to me a large island off the coast of Mainland China. Since Mainland China TTL is still controlled by the ROC government, I decided to use "Formosa" instead of "Taiwan" to show that the island in this alternate timeline is different from the island we know in our real history. Instead of being home to the ROC government, the island is being used by the ROC government as an unsinkable carrier in the Pacific.

When Lemay proposed to JFK during the Cuban Missile Crisis that the US should just bomb the Soviet missile sites instead of establishing a naval blockade, Kennedy said something to the effect of "Lemay has an advantage over us. If we do what he wants us to do, none of us are going to be around to tell him that he was wrong."

"One war at a time." That was President Abraham Lincoln's approach when he was working to prevent the Trent Affair from leading to war with England at the same time the American Civil War was raging. Forbes knows he is going to have to deal with China militarily sooner or later; he just prefers to do it later after the Vietnam War is over. If that means doing nothing about the Luzon Strait incident which would escalate matters further, than that is what he is willing to do in order to delay war with China while the war in Vietnam is ongoing. He wouldn't be the first President to refrain from taking military action.

1968: Forbes versus Humphrey versus Wallace. Something to look forward to.

DensleyBlair: Welcome to being up to date! It's such a great feeling to being all caught up!

Butler disagrees with Forbes on Vietnam, de Gaulle doesn't like Forbes, and Khrushchev just wants to beat up Forbes. Not a great way to visit Europe if you are the American President...unless you go to Yugoslavia. Then you get some real love. Other than that...

When I was writing about Butler and how he dealt with Forbes, the image of Obi-Wan Kenobi teaching Luke Skywalker about the Force in the original Star Wars film came to mind. Like you said, de Gaulle is well...de Gaulle. As for Khrushchev, he really could be the nicest guy in the room one moment and the angriest guy in the room the next. He would want to bury the United States one day and then want to visit Disneyland and meet Mickey Mouse the next day. Given his personality, he does offer a lot of room for alternate history creativity. As for being more intentionally ‘hot’ during talks and ‘cold’ during the downtime, that's really how he was during his historic Vienna Summit meeting with JFK in 1961. Kennedy had trouble dealing with Khrushchev's tendency to change his attitude at any given moment.

As it turns out, Khrushchev just wanted to lure Forbes into a summit meeting so he could beat him up.

Forbes is this 45-year-old young man, relatively new to the international stage, dealing with much older men who have a lot more experience. Forbes is very much like a student, learning the ways of the world from the masters.

I have a few ideas once Khrushchev falls for a reason that is entirely different from his historic downfall. Historically Brezhnev ousted him from power in October 1964. I decided to keep Khrushchev in power longer for story reasons.

I am glad you enjoyed my updates, DensleyBlair. I felt it was important to go to Europe first before I continued my coverage of the Vietnam War because what happened on that continent will influence what happens in Asia both in the short term and the long term.

El Pip: That's one of the things I remember about the King Haakon AAR. Good times.

To be honest, if it wasn't for DensleyBlair's excellent work, I wouldn't even know who Tony Benn is...or that there is more to Oswald Moseley than just the pictures where he looks ridiculous...or know anything at all about "Yes Minister". The latter is probably a crime in some places, but I am an American so I can plead ignorance.

True. It's a lot easier to say that you shouldn't be involved in South Vietnam when you aren't involved in South Vietnam.

It's de Gaulle. What do you expect? "I can do anything better than you can because I am Charles de Gaulle!"

Anything the Americans do is wrong; anything de Gaulle does is right. That is how the French leader sees things.

I have already done the infamous shoe incident and the "We will bury you" comment is something I referenced to in the update.

Having murdered his predecessors Stalin and Molotov, I see no reason why Khrushchev should suffer the same fate. I think it would be in Brezhnev's best interest to make his getting rid of Khrushchev look completely natural and not pre-planned. He doesn't want to kill Khrushchev; he just wants him out of power. How Khrushchev responds to it will be seen when the time comes.

DensleyBlair: I wasn't sure what you meant at first by "eager understudy" or "Blair levels of obsequiousness".

I think I understand now. I remember during the Bush 43 Administration seeing Blair get depicted in the media as a little dog loyally following Bush around.

After I gave Eden a much better and longer-lasting Premiership, it was actually a reader who suggested to me that Butler succeed Eden as Prime Minister instead of Macmillan. He laid out an entire scenario in which it could be plausibly done, which is what I decided to do.

It would be joyful to watch. Then again, Brezhnev might be ready to counter whatever Khrushchev verbally throws at him. As I write this, Pokémon is popping up in my head. "BREZHNEV USES COUNTER! IT IS SUPER EFFFECTIVE! KHRUSHCHEV FAINTS!"

El Pip: Based on what I read about Douglas-Home, it is no wonder Wilson succeeded him as Prime Minister.

Can Khrushchev beat Brezhnev's effort to oust him from power TTL? Stay tuned and find out...eventually.
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The Summer of Decision: Part Two
“Well, gentlemen, what do you think?”
Three of the top members of the Forbes Administration exchanged looks. They had just heard the President make one of his most important decisions and they weren’t sure who should reply to his question first. It was Monday, July 26th, 1965. In the Oval Office, Vice President Everett Dirksen, Secretary of State Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., and Secretary of Defense Paul Nitze all sat in chairs which were lined up in front of the President’s desk. President Malcolm Forbes had just spent the weekend in quiet seclusion at Camp Ewing, carefully considering what to do next in Vietnam. With the recapture of Da Nang, there were no more North Vietnamese or Viet Cong forces left in South Vietnam. Throwing the enemy out of the country had then set off a strong debate within the Administration over whether to invade North Vietnam or to seek peace with them. The President retreated to Maryland to weigh the arguments of each side; once he had made up his mind, Forbes returned to the White House and summoned the three men to his office to announce his decision. For them, it must have felt like sitting in the principal’s office. After seconds that felt like hours, Lodge cleared his throat and spoke first.
“Well, Mr. President, this is the decision you have reached and one only you can make. Having given you our advice, it is now up to Paul and I to implement your decision.”
Nitze nodded his head in agreement at Lodge’s diplomatic choice of words. Both of them had argued for seeking peace with North Vietnam, contending that the United States had achieved her stated aims in the Vietnam War by defeating the Viet Cong in South Vietnam and securing the country. This was the point now to negotiate an end to the war and begin the gradual process of withdrawing the bulk of US forces from Vietnam. Lodge and Nitze were relieved to hear that Forbes had rejected the Joint Chiefs of Staff’s call for a full-scale invasion of North Vietnam. Overthrowing the Communist regime led by President Ho Chi Minh was never part of the plan and Forbes expressed his worry that trying to capture Hanoi and reunify the two Vietnams would lead to a much broader war with the Republic of China and the Soviet Union. As Nitze had sternly warned during the debate:
“The Chinese are not going to tolerate having a lot of our men near their border.”

(Secretary of State Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., who also served as the first Director of the CIA during the Dewey Administration and was the 1956 Republican Presidential nominee)
Forbes told the three men sitting before him (at the age of 45, he was the youngest man in the room while Dirksen was the oldest at 69) that he was leaning towards seeking peace. However, the President was unwilling at this point to declare “Mission Accomplished” in Vietnam. “Ev made a very good point.”
During the vigorous debate, the Vice President had questioned the assertion that the United States had achieved her stated objectives in Vietnam. He pointed out that the Viet Cong, while down, wasn’t out. They still had a base of operations in Phu Tho, which was located in North Vietnam. If the United States sought peace now, it would leave the Viet Cong remaining in the field to rebuild itself to the point that it could once again pose a threat to South Vietnam. “If we do not destroy them before we seek peace,” Dirksen had asked, “What will have been the point of the war in the first place?”
“We haven’t really destroyed the Viet Cong,” Forbes acknowledged, “And they will not be destroyed until we have captured their last stronghold.”
Since capturing Phu Tho meant invading North Vietnam, which wasn’t his first choice, Forbes had decided on a compromise. He would give peace a chance first, sending out a peace feeler to see if North Vietnam was interested in ending hostilities. If Hanoi rejected the peace feeler outright or offered Washington peace terms that were unacceptable, then the President would order a limited invasion of North Vietnam. The Americans would advance across the Demilitarized Zone and fight their way towards Phu Tho. Once Phu Tho fell and the Viet Cong were eliminated once and for all, the Americans would withdraw back to below the DMZ. If the United States invaded North Vietnam, it will only have been because the peace effort had failed and not because the United States wanted to conquer North Vietnam. At least that is how Forbes saw it. Lodge and Nitze weren’t very keen on an invasion but accepted the President’s decision to order a limited invasion only in the event that a peace deal wasn’t reached first. Who knows? Conducting such a move might scare the North Vietnamese into rushing to the negotiation table. After hearing Lodge’s aforementioned reply, Forbes turned to Dirksen, who thus far hadn’t given any verbal or nonverbal reaction.
“What do you think, Ev?”
Dirksen, the former Republican Senate leader, answered that he thought the decision was a reasonable one. He naturally understood the importance of compromise, of giving both sides something they wanted in order to get things done. Unlike previous Vice Presidents who didn't have much of a voice in administration deliberations, Dirksen was an active participant in these discussions. After announcing his decision on what to do next in Vietnam, Forbes revealed another decision he had made while at Camp Ewing. At the time, there were 270,000 American soldiers stationed in South Vietnam and the Pentagon was preparing to deploy another 30,000. He decided that he was going to cap the US troop level in Vietnam at 300,000. “The President was looking towards ending the Vietnam War,” Nitze later recalled, “He saw no need to have more men in Vietnam once we had 300,000 there, which was in the summer of ‘65. By then the bulk of the fighting had been done and he didn’t want to keep sending men over there when he didn’t think it was necessary.”

(In the summer of 1965, these fresh American soldiers were among the last to be deployed to South Vietnam)
Following the recapture of Da Nang and the liberation of Hue from North Vietnamese occupation, the Vietnam War saw a lull in the fighting. Soldiers on both sides got much needed rest as diplomacy came to the forefront. At Lodge’s suggestion, Forbes wrote a letter to Ho outlining his interest in seeking terms for negotiations. The Secretary of State believed that it was important for North Vietnam’s leader to personally see that America’s desire for peace came from the very top of her political leadership. Once the letter reached Hanoi through diplomatic channels, the Forbes Administration waited patiently for a response. The letter was received by a North Vietnamese government that was just as divided over what to do next as the American government was. The hawks demanded that North Vietnam, being strongly reinforced by her Chinese and Soviet allies, continue the war and kill as many enemy soldiers as they could. Regarding an American invasion of their country as being inevitable, the hawks wanted to turn the invasion into a bloodbath reminiscent of the US invasion of the Japanese home islands during World War Two. The doves in sharp contrast were appalled by the notion of fighting to the bitter end. Having failed to conquer South Vietnam militarily, the doves saw that the tables had turned, and that North Vietnam was now the one who faced the prospect of military conquest. They tried to remind the defiant hawks that despite suffering heavy casualties, the Americans succeeded in fully occupying the Japanese home islands. To them, an American invasion of North Vietnam would lead only to the total destruction of the Communist regime. They wanted to use Forbes’ letter as the foundation of what one historian would call “a face-saving settlement that would get them out of the war and safeguard the independence of the North Vietnamese state.”
That the Vietnam War was a lost cause, that achieving reunification of the two Vietnams through military force was now out of their reach, seemed to be accepted by both sides in North Vietnam. Their debate therefore was over whether to fight on or to seek peace. With additional Chinese and Soviet forces pouring into North Vietnam, the hawks saw their position strengthened. Believing that it was in the best interest of their country to keep the war going and make the Americans pay dearly for their invasion, the hawks prevailed over the doves’ effort to stop the invasion before it was too late. On August 6th (which coincidentally was also the 20th anniversary of the dual US invasion of Japan and the Korean Peninsula), Forbes received Ho’s fateful reply rejecting a cessation of hostilities. The North Vietnamese would fight on, he wrote, defending their country to the utmost.

(North Vietnamese soldiers posing in front of a Soviet-built radar-guided surface-to-air missile. Armed with SAMs, the North Vietnamese were able to shoot down US warplanes during the course of Operation Rolling Thunder)
After Hanoi had shot down his peace effort, the President called for an emergency meeting of his national security team. Passing around Ho’s letter so everyone could read it for themselves, Forbes called it “regrettable” that the North Vietnamese weren’t willing to even come to the negotiation table. “That leaves us with no other choice.”
He officially announced that he would order General Maxwell Taylor to move his men across the DMZ and engage the enemy on their own territory at Quang Binh. The attack would begin in four days. From Quang Binh, Taylor would then advance on Vinh and then Phu Tho. Following the capture of Phu Tho and the final elimination of the Viet Cong, Taylor would withdraw his forces back down to Hue. This last part drew opposition from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who favored total victory in Vietnam. They urged the President to keep going and attack Hanoi. American forces after all would be within range of the North Vietnamese capital. This would be their golden opportunity to capture Hanoi and strike a fatal blow against the Communist regime. Not to do so, they contended, would be a violation of standard military practice to take your enemy’s capital and force their government to flee. The President listened to his military chiefs make their arguments…and rejected them once again. “We are not invading North Vietnam to capture Hanoi. We are invading North Vietnam to destroy the Viet Cong – and that’s all.”
The Joint Chiefs grumbled over the limited nature of the invasion of North Vietnam but had no choice but to accept it. Forbes after all was the Commander-in-Chief; he had the last word on military matters. Joint Chiefs Chairman David L. McDonald may not have liked the decision, but he was no James M. Scott (the scheming Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the 1964 political thriller “Seven Days in May”; played by Burt Lancaster, Scott tried and failed to organize a military coup against the President of the United States). Far more supportive of the President’s order was General Taylor. As the architect of America’s military involvement in Vietnam, Taylor’s primary focus had always been on going after the Viet Cong. Since they had set up shop in North Vietnam, Taylor favored invading the country just long enough to get at them. On the morning of Tuesday, August 10th, the final offensive against the Communist guerillas was launched.

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The next update, which will take us through to the end of 1965, will cover the US invasion of North Vietnam (which never happened in the historical Vietnam War).

 

[El Pip]

My word that was surprisingly tense. For a brief moment I wondered if you might actually have a peaceful resolution to the war and end up with a North and South Vietnam staring at each other across a border while repeatedly annoying Cambodia and Laos by trying to drag them in.

But it was not to be and I suppose from a Hanoi perspective I can sort of see why the hawks won out even if I think it might prove a mistake. A pitched battle is absolutely what the US wants to fight, it's good at that and no amount of Soviet and Chinese support will change that. I don't think this will go well for Ho and Co.

In contrast Forbes is a fairly strong position, certainly domestically. He's tried to make peace and he's being limited and reasonable in the aims. That will buy him quite a lot of cover, though I fear he may need all of that and more before the end.

 

[Nathan Madien]

El Pip: Could we see a divided Vietnam in TTL 2022? It would certainly be an interesting departure from real history.

The hawks in Hanoi want to fight the Americans on their own soil. "Be careful what you ask for" is clearly not going through their minds.

When Forbes announces to the public that he has ordered a limited invasion of North Vietnam, the public reaction is going to be quite mixed.
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The Invasion of North Vietnam
For General Nguyen Binh (below), it was another quiet morning. Maybe too quiet. It was August 10th, 1965, and General Binh was at his headquarters in Quang Binh. Located north of the Demilitarized Zone separating the two Vietnams, Binh had spent the past few weeks preparing the defenses of this major North Vietnamese position. Ever since they lost Da Nang the month before, the North Vietnamese believed that the American forces gathering in Hue were preparing to invade their country. Binh had been ordered by his superiors in Hanoi to be ready for an American attack, which could come at any time. He shouldn’t let his guard down just because there was a lull in the fighting. The General therefore kept a close eye on the DMZ, looking for any sign of enemy movement towards the north. With 13 well-armed divisions under his command, he was dug in, ready to repulse an enemy attack that everyone in North Vietnam was expecting. It was just a question of when the Americans would strike.

Second-in-command to General Vo Nguyen Giap, who was the head of the North Vietnamese Army, Binh was described by his contemporaries as being cruel and indefatigable. Given his senior leadership position, Binh was assigned the critical task of defending Quang Binh. He had just sat down for breakfast that Tuesday morning when the anti-aircraft batteries suddenly opened fire. American warplanes descended on Quang Binh like a hoard of angry hornets, bombing and strafing their positions. Donning his helmet, the General knew from experience that the enemy was trying to soften his forces up first ahead of a ground attack. Sure enough, reports quickly reached him that the enemy was advancing across the DMZ and engaging his forces in firefights. “This is it!” he shouted to his subordinates in authoritarian coldness, “We must fight the enemy! We must kill them! We must be willing to die!”
On the other end of the battlefield, American General Alexander Haig was closely monitoring the progress of his forces. As General Maxwell Taylor’s second-in-command, Haig had been chosen to lead the invasion of North Vietnam. As one of the first US Generals to arrive in South Vietnam, Haig had accumulated a lot of experience over the past few years fighting the North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong from one end of Vietnam to the other. He enjoyed being where the action was, to be in the thick of the fight. “It was his nature,” one of his aides later recalled, “To go wherever he knew something was happening. Al would rather be shot at by the enemy than hide safely in a bunker.”
When Haig learned that one of his subordinate commanders had been pinned down by enemy fire and wasn’t able to advance his forces any further, he quickly boarded a helicopter and flew to the scene. Landing at the battle zone amid a hail of gun fire, Haig personally took charge. He skillfully directed artillery and air support, which successfully suppressed enemy fire and enabled his subordinate to get his men moving again. Asked why he was constantly willing to put himself in danger, Haig replied that he wanted to show people that “I am in control here.”
After 6 days of intense fighting, Quang Binh fell. With the capture of this position, the Americans and their allies established a military presence on enemy soil. Next stop was Vinh. It was in the aftermath of the Battle of Quang Binh that a decades-long mystery emerged: what happened to General Binh? During the course of the battle, Binh left his headquarters in a hurry to see to it personally that his men held firm in the face of the enemy attack. He promptly disappeared without a trace. It was assumed that he had been killed in action, but his body was never found. The lingering mystery over Binh’s fate was finally solved in 2000, when human remains were discovered in the jungles surrounding Quang Binh. A DNA test revealed that the remains belonged to that of the missing General. Apparently, he had been blown to bits by an American bomb during the course of the battle.

(General Alexander Haig during the Vietnam War)
As the Battle of Quang Binh got underway, President Malcolm Forbes addressed the nation from the Oval Office. He used his primetime speech to review the course of the Vietnam War in the seven months since he took office. Forbes disclosed to the public his Administration’s recent effort to open peace talks with North Vietnam, “which, regrettably, they have rejected outright in favor of a continuation of the war.”
This part of the speech, in which the President criticized Hanoi for refusing to come to the negotiation table, would be overshadowed in the court of public opinion by what came next. Reminding his audience that one of the clearly stated goals of the Vietnam War was to eliminate the Viet Cong, Forbes announced that he had authorized “a limited military incursion into North Vietnam” in order to “destroy bases that the Viet Cong guerillas are presently using to carry out their attacks against South Vietnam.”
He insisted that “this is not an invasion of North Vietnam in which we are seeking to put an end to their sovereignty. Rather, we are undertaking this course of action in order to protect the sovereignty of South Vietnam.”
“The United States,” he added, “Is willing to accept a division of Vietnam into two separate states. What the United States will not accept is an effort by the Communist North to take over the democratic South through the use of military force.”
The next morning, readers of “The New York Times” were greeted with this black bold front-page headline:
“FORBES ORDERS INVASION OF NORTH VIETNAM”
Across the country, everyone was talking about and debating the fact that for the first time in this war, American soldiers were crossing into enemy territory.

For those in the middle of the political spectrum, there was general acceptance of the invasion. So-called “Middle America” supported the Vietnam War and were willing to tolerate the growing number of casualties if it meant victory in the end. They trusted the President, who had thus far been open and upfront with them about what was going on in Southeast Asia. George C. Scott may have summed up the attitude of Middle America best when he declared in the opening scene of “Patton”, the 1970 Oscar-winning film in which he played the colorful and controversial World War Two US General, that:
“Americans, traditionally, love to fight. All real Americans love the sting of battle.
When you were kids, you all admired the champion marble shooter, the fastest runner, the big-league ball players, the toughest boxers. Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser. Americans play to win all the time. Now, I wouldn’t give a hoot in Hell for a man who lost and laughed. That’s why Americans have never lost and will never lose a war. Because the very thought of losing is hateful to Americans.”
It was on the Left and Right sides of the political spectrum that Forbes ran into opposition. Conservatives didn’t have a problem with invading North Vietnam; their problem was that Forbes was unwilling to send troops all the way to Hanoi. As they saw it, if the United States was going to go into North Vietnam, she should go all-in and:

• Topple the Communist regime led by Ho Chi Minh
• Bring about a pro-US reunification of Vietnam
• Use that country as a bulwark against Chinese expansion into the region

Liberals on the other hand were against the invasion. To them, there was no need to go into North Vietnam. Doing so was only expanding a war that they didn’t think America should be fighting in the first place. In some quarters, the President’s speech reinforced their perception of the Vietnam War as one that was being waged in the name of what they called “American Imperialism.”
The number of anti-war protests increased sharply in the wake of the invasion announcement. On August 16th, 15,000 anti-war demonstrators marched up Fifth Avenue
in New York City, voicing their opposition to America’s incursion into North Vietnam. Some of the young women who participated in the march couldn’t voice anything though, having spent the previous night screaming their heads off at the Beatles’ deafening Shea Stadium concert. An anti-war rally in Washington, D.C. attracted 30,000 people, who heard speakers including Coretta Scott King and famed pediatrician Benjamin Spock denounce the invasion. On college campuses across the country, outraged students hung and burned the President in effigy. When anti-war students at Stanford University tried to hang Forbes in effigy, they were forcibly stopped by a group of students who supported him (one of those students was a freshman from Detroit, Michigan named Mitt Romney). On Capitol Hill, 1964 Democratic Presidential nominee George McGovern, whose strident anti-war campaign had been soundly rejected by the general electorate the previous November, demanded the immediate repeal of the Southeast Asia Resolution, which Congress passed in August 1964 to authorize the Vietnam War. Speaking at a joint press conference afterwards, Speaker of the House Gerald Ford and Senate Majority Leader Frederick F. Houser made it crystal-clear that wasn’t going to happen. “The President is conducting the war in a responsible manner,” Ford stated in his plain-speaking Midwestern style, “And we are not going to do anything that would be irresponsible.”
Although some Congressional Republicans voiced their unhappiness with the invasion being limited in scope, the GOP Congressional leadership stood firmly behind the President. In response, “The Washington Post” published an editorial cartoon by Herbert Block which depicted Ford and Houser as identically dressed vaudeville song-and-dance men who were praising Forbes’ handling of Vietnam in unison. Block titled his latest cartoon “The Jerry and Fred Show”.

Emotions in the country were running high as summer faded into fall, leading to one of the most shocking events of the 1960s. Friday, September 3rd, found the President in Los Angeles, California. The week before, a race riot had engulfed the predominantly black South LA neighborhood of Watts. Against the advice of some, Forbes flew to the City of Angels so he could see for himself the destruction the rioting had wrought and to speak to some of the residents of Watts to find out what his Administration could do to help. Having just signed the Civil Rights Act of 1965 into law and currently in the process of passing welfare reform, Forbes wanted to show African-Americans that he genuinely cared about their problems. Just after 11:00 AM Pacific Standard Time, the President and California Governor William Knowland emerged from the entrance of the luxurious Biltmore Hotel. Opened in 1923, it was the largest hotel west of the Mississippi River. Across the street, there was a large crowd of people waiting to see them. As the two men approached the awaiting Presidential limousine, a heavily protected 1961 Lincoln Continental which weighed 9,800 pounds, Knowland raised his right arm to wave at the crowd. Forbes, who was walking to his left, was just about to raise his left arm to wave as well when suddenly a gunshot rang out. Knowland immediately went down. Reacting instinctively, one of the President’s Secret Service agents grabbed the back of his suit jacket and basically hurled him into the back seat of the limousine. While shutting the car door behind him, the agent shouted at the driver to get them out of there. The car sped away from the Biltmore Hotel, leaving behind a scene of total chaos. Knowland had been shot and was laying on the sidewalk, panicked people were running away from the scene, and Secret Service agents and LA police officers were descending on the gunman who had managed to fire off two more shots before being wrestled to the ground by nearby bystanders. When asked later what was going through his mind during the attempt on his life, Forbes would answer:
“I didn’t have time to think about what was happening. The Secret Service doesn’t give you any time to think. As soon as they see that someone is trying to kill you, they get you out of there.”

(The 1961 Lincoln Continental, used by Presidents Henry M. Jackson and Malcolm Forbes, on display at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan)
The first bullet struck Knowland in the head, the second bullet hit a bulletproof car window, and the third bullet smashed into the hotel’s façade. The President wasn’t hit by the gunfire, although no one knew that for sure right away. This uncertainty about whether the President had been hit or not was reflected in the initial news reports. CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite broke the news to the nation first, abruptly interrupting early afternoon programming (there is a three-hour time difference between Los Angeles and New York City) to report:
“In Los Angeles, California, three shots were fired at President Forbes and Governor Knowland as they left the Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles. The first reports say that Governor Knowland has been seriously wounded by this shooting. They do not say whether President Forbes has been wounded as well.”
On ABC and NBC, it was the same thing; no one knew the President’s status. When the news reached Washington, the Secret Service sprang into action. Not knowing whether this was an isolated incident or part of a much larger attack on the US government, Secret Service agents surrounded and escorted Vice President Everett Dirksen to a secure location. They also got in touch with the Secret Service agents in LA to find out exactly what the status of the President was. Upon leaving the hotel, the limousine rushed down the street to the California Hospital Medical Center. The President was hurried inside, where doctors examined him to see if he had been wounded or not. Dirksen breathed a sigh of relief when he was informed by the Secret Service that there were no signs a bullet had struck Forbes. “We have just received a confirmed report from Los Angeles,” Cronkite informed an anxious nation, “That President Forbes was not shot by a would-be assassin as he left the Biltmore Hotel over an hour ago. I repeat: we have a confirmed report that President Forbes has not been shot.”
While there was good news from the hospital, there was also bad news: Knowland was dead. When the ambulance carrying his body arrived at the same hospital that Forbes had been taken to, he was declared “Dead on Arrival” from a fatal gunshot wound to the head. William Knowland, Governor of California since January 1959 and the 1960 Republican Presidential nominee, was 57 years old.

(William Fife Knowland: June 26th, 1908 – September 3rd, 1965)
Following Knowland’s death, Lieutenant Governor Harold J. Powers was sworn in as the new Governor. While California went into mourning, the rest of the country was in shock. This was the first attempt on the life of the President since President Adlai Stevenson was assassinated by Puerto Rican nationalists in March 1954. Now that someone had tried to kill President Forbes and, in the process, killed Governor Knowland, the American people wanted to know who did it and why. When the LA police publicly revealed the identity of the shooter they had in custody, the public grew even more shocked. The shooter was identified as Sally Morgan, a young college student at the University of California, Los Angeles. During her police interrogation, Morgan tearfully explained that she had been informed a few months ago that her twin brother, who had been drafted to fight in Vietnam, had been killed in action. Overcome with grief at the loss of her beloved brother, she blamed the President for it. After hearing that Forbes was coming to the city, she decided to shoot him in revenge. Morgan stole her father’s handgun and joined the crowd outside the Biltmore Hotel, waiting for the President to emerge. “I was very nervous while I was waiting for him to come out,” she told the police, “I never fired a gun before. This was the first time I had even held a gun in my hand.”
The moment she saw Forbes and Knowland walk out of the hotel, a visibly shaking Morgan took out her concealed handgun. She aimed it towards them, and as soon as Knowland raised his right arm to wave, she pulled the trigger. Partly because of her inexperience with guns, partly because her hand was shaking, Morgan’s aim was off. The shot meant for the President struck the Governor instead. She next took aim at the car itself, shooting the bulletproof window. At that point, a person standing next to her realized what she was doing and grabbed hold of her arm, pointing it upwards. As the third and final shot headed towards the building, Morgan was overwhelmed and pinned to the ground. The police then got to her, handcuffing her and hauling her off to the police station. To avoid a murder trial, which carried with it the possibility of getting the death penalty, Morgan entered into a plea deal with prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi (who would later prosecute Charles Manson and several members of his “family” for committing a series of heinous murders). In exchange for pleading guilty to killing Knowland and attempting to kill Forbes, Morgan was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 30 years. After spending 32 years behind bars, she was released from prison on parole in December 1997. When asked about his would-be assassin in a 1985 interview, Forbes replied that he thought Sally Morgan “was a young woman who let her emotions get the best of her.”

(Sally Morgan at the time of her high school graduation. In 2006, Natalie Portman portrayed her in the film “Sally”, which depicted her close relationship with her brother, her emotional tailspin stemming from his death in Vietnam, and her decision to carry out the Biltmore Hotel shooting. Portman’s portrayal of the troubled young woman earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. She didn’t win; at the 79th Academy Awards, Helen Mirren took home the Best Actress Oscar instead for her portrayal of Queen Elizabeth II in “The Queen”)
Meanwhile, the invasion of North Vietnam continued. On August 21st, Haig opened his attack on the 13 divisions defending Vinh. A bloody battle lasting 11 days followed, as the enemy was determined to make the Americans and her allies pay dearly for every square yard of North Vietnamese soil they occupied. Vinh was finally declared secure on September 1st, putting the Americans directly within reach of the final Viet Cong base at Phu Tho and the North Vietnamese capital Hanoi. According to intelligence, there were just 3 divisions defending the former while the latter was defended by at least 20 divisions. The Americans had 15 divisions in Vinh, with the remainder staying behind in Quang Binh. At this point, all Haig had to do was capture Phu Tho and the Americans would have accomplished their sole objective in North Vietnam. The last battle of the Vietnam War against the Viet Cong began on September 2nd, the day before the Biltmore Hotel shooting. When the 3 divisions defending Phu Tho were quickly overwhelmed, General Van Tien Dung – who became Giap’s second-in-command following the Battle of Quang Binh – rushed there from Hanoi with 7 fresh divisions to try to stop the American advance. They, too, were defeated and forced to retreat. Faced with the looming loss of Phu Tho, Hanoi was thrown into a state of panic. Residents began to flee the city, believing that the enemy was coming. On September 7th, Ho and other top government officials were evacuated to Haiphong. Giap personally took charge of Hanoi’s defenses, vowing to defend his capital with “an impenetrable wall of iron-willed men.”
On September 8th, the Americans occupied Phu Tho. With their final base of operations gone, the Viet Cong officially ceased to exist as a fighting force. When General Taylor originally planned US military involvement in Vietnam, he confidently believed that the Viet Cong would be eliminated as a threat to South Vietnam by the end of 1965. Although at times that looked unlikely, it ultimately came to pass. After a series of tough battles, in a war that swung back and forth several times, the Americans had achieved what they had set out to do in Vietnam. The Viet Cong were no more.

Winning the Battle of Phu Tho had left the Americans exhausted though. Of the 15 divisions that engaged the enemy at the beginning of the battle, only 6 actually made it to Phu Tho. With his tired men in poor fighting shape, Haig made the command decision to stay in Phu Tho just long enough for the 6 divisions to fully recover their fighting strength before making the strategic withdrawal back to Vinh. By September 21st, intelligence was showing that at least 25 divisions were dug-in in Hanoi. Taylor had no plans to try to crack that tough nut; of course, no one told Giap that. Since the North Vietnamese firmly believed that the Americans were going to attack Hanoi, Giap thought Haig’s forces in Phu Tho were only resting in preparation for the impending attack. He therefore gave the order for a counterattack against Phu Tho in an effort to disrupt the enemy’s supposed plan. On September 22nd, with 9 divisions under his personal command, Giap struck back at Phu Tho. The Americans, who were preparing to leave the mountainous position, were caught completely off guard. They thought the North Vietnamese forces would remain behind their defensive positions in Hanoi, allowing them to make their withdrawal undisturbed. For the first time during the entire course of the Vietnam War, the North Vietnamese defeated the Americans in battle. Haig’s men were forced to retreat to Vinh.

The North Vietnamese reoccupied Phu Tho on September 29th. By then, Taylor had a combined total of 43 divisions in Vinh. Intelligence showed that there were at least 15 enemy divisions in Phu Tho and at least 5 remaining in Hanoi…although Taylor believed that the number was much higher than that. Once Haig’s defeated forces were safely back in Vinh, the commanding US General gave the order for a complete evacuation of all his soldiers from North Vietnam. American soldiers began trekking back through the jungle to Hue. Not joining them in the evacuation were the South Vietnamese forces. With 14 of her divisions still remaining in Vinh and 2 in Quang Binh, Saigon persisted in continuing the invasion of North Vietnam even as the Americans were exiting the country. On October 6th, the South Vietnamese launched an all-out attack on Hanoi. The attack proved to be downright foolish and costly, as they were unable to penetrate Hanoi’s formidable defenses. “The South Vietnamese have lost a lot of their men,” Taylor cabled Washington afterwards, “Fighting a symbolic battle that in wise prudence they should never have fought.”
With the Battle of Hanoi ending in a humiliating defeat for the South Vietnamese, the North Vietnamese launched their counterattack against Vinh on October 11th. Severely weakened from their ill-advised attack, the South Vietnamese defenders were quickly routed. Vinh was retaken on October 19th; this was immediately followed up with an attack on Quang Binh. The Second Battle of Quang Binh went back and forth between the two sides before the North Vietnamese ultimately recaptured it on November 10th. After that, the Vietnam War settled into a stalemate. The Americans, having achieved their main purpose of destroying the Viet Cong, wanted to bring the war to a close. The South Vietnamese were licking their wounds, their attempt to capture Hanoi on their own having been an embarrassing – and entirely avoidable – disaster. The North Vietnamese were completely divided. The hawks were congratulating themselves on driving the enemy out of their country and were mulling over attacking Hue again despite the heavy presence of US troops there. The doves meanwhile were doubling down on their demands for peace. As Christmas approached, it wasn’t at all clear to Forbes how he could end the Vietnam War. Then on December 15th, he got a visit from British Ambassador David Ormsby-Gore.
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Since the next Vietnam War update will take us into 1966, I will wrap up 1965 first before I get to it. The next update will cover TTL's version of the Watts Riot.

 

[El Pip]

Another roller coaster of an update. As expected the US Army does a great job in a stand-up conventional fight, it was foolish of the North to try and fight like that. The South Vietnamese over-confidence was convincing as well, of course they'd think 'one hard blow' against Hanoi would see the North crumble and of course it would go wrong. The US actually pulling back might be interesting, certainly if they had tried I'm sure they could have taken Hanoi and that would be quite the massive change. But Forbes thus far has been a measured man of his word, and of course such an action would seriously provoke China. Though I wonder if in the future this might be seen as a missed opportunity?

Domestically the assassination attempt was another surprise, but a well explained one, doubtless made Forbes a bit more reassured in his decision to pull back, a reminder that all of these battles do have a human cost and while we know it is much lower than OTL (and achieving a lot more) nobody in the story can make such a comparison.

Finally we come to Ormsby-Gore, which is quite the name to conjure with, and the less happy prospect of an alt-Watts Riot. I have high hopes for the former and hope that the later, if it can't be avoided, at least has some good result from it.

 

[Nathan Madien]

El Pip: Historically, the US won many battles during the course of the Vietnam War. Those victories however were squandered by the lack of a clearly-defined strategy for winning the Vietnam War. Well-trained men were sent to fight without knowing what the ultimate game plan was. Even supporters of the Vietnam War were stymied by the fact that the political leadership in Washington was unwilling to specifically define "victory".

In TTL, the Vietnam War is waged with a clearly-defined strategy: defeat the Viet Cong, secure South Vietnam against the North, and strengthen the South Vietnamese forces enough that American forces can safely withdraw.

Of course, the Vietnam War TTL is also being fought within the framework of HOI2. The game does the best it can to adapt the Vietnam War to the HOI2 format.

When I was playing the game, I made two save files. The first game file is what I ended up writing. The second game file saw me attack Hanoi to see if I could actually capture it. I couldn't. Even after several assaults, I couldn't crack the nut. Hanoi was just too strongly defended, which made the original strategy of withdrawing from North Vietnam following the elimination of the Viet Cong a prudent one.

If the United States couldn't capture Hanoi, there was no way the South Vietnamese were going to.

Forbes' decision not to press the attack against Hanoi is already prompting second-guessing and I am sure that will continue far into the future.

Historically, the 1960s is known for a series of high-profile assassinations: JFK, Malcolm X, MLK, and RFK. As I was writing this update, I thought, "Well, if there is going to be a Presidential assassination attempt in the 1960s, this is probably the best time to do it." I studied several Presidential assassinations and assassination attempts, drawing elements from them in constructing the attempt on Forbes' life. He was never going to get killed, but I thought it would be a good way to illustrate how emotional the country is at this time.

Poor Knowland though. Historically he committed suicide because his life became such a mess. Here he gets shot in the head by an emotionally troubled young woman. Poor guy can't catch a break in either real or alternate history.

Exactly how many Americans will have died in TTL Vietnam War is something I am still trying to figure out.

Historically the Vietnam Peace Agreement was signed in Paris. Given that Franco-American relations - or more specifically, de Gaulle-American relations - are terrible TTL, I am giving the end of TTL Vietnam War a more British flavor.

As for Watts, it was ugly in real history and it isn't going to be any prettier TTL.

On a side note, since Queen Elizabeth II has passed away, I have gone back to the European tour update and updated her appearance to reflect the fact that her reign lasted 70 years. At the time I wrote that update, the Queen's Platinum Jubilee was going on.
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The Beginning of the Hot Summers
It was a day that shocked America. On May 6th, 1963, a voting rights march in Birmingham, Alabama led by Martin Luther King, Jr. was violently crushed by the city’s staunchly racist Commissioner of Public Safety Bull Connor. Connor, determined to make the marchers’ lives absolute hell, attacked them with high-pressure fire hoses and vicious German Shepherds. Images of peaceful demonstrators being mowed down by fire hoses and being bitten by unrestrained police dogs were shown across the nation in evening news broadcasts and on the front pages of newspapers the next morning. Many Americans were horrified by what they saw. While they had seen attacks on demonstrators before, never before had they seen white police officers use dogs and fire hoses against them. Viewing the graphic images at the White House, a visibly disturbed President Henry M. Jackson, who was pushing the Senate to approve his House-passed bill which would guarantee African-Americans the right to vote, stated that the photographs “are scenes from a nightmare.”
For African-Americans in Birmingham, widely regarded as being the most racist city in the entire South, what Connor did to them was the final straw. On the night of May 7th, a large crowd of angry black males took to the streets. Amidst chants of “Let this whole damn city burn!”, they proceeded to flip cars over, vandalize businesses, and set fires all across a nine-block area of the city. Whatever destructive thing they could think of to do, they did. Hundreds of African-American males were arrested and thrown into jail; 50 of them had to go to the hospital to be treated for wounds they suffered in scuffles with the police force who were sent in to quell the rioting. In retaliation for this race riot, the Ku Klux Klan planted a bomb with the explosive force of 15 sticks of dynamite beneath the front steps of the 16th Street Baptist Church. When the bomb went off on May 12th, the powerful explosion tore through the basement, killing four young African-American girls who were getting ready for Sunday school. Sickened that innocent little children were being deliberately targeted at church, Scoop addressed the nation that evening from the Oval Office. He sternly condemned the church bombing as a barbaric act:
“There is no cause for pride in what happened in Birmingham this morning. There is no cause for self-satisfaction in watching families grieve and bury four young girls who were savagely denied their right to grow up into adulthood simply because they happen to be Negroes.”

While there had been race riots in the country before, the race riot that occurred in Birmingham was a harbinger of things to come in the 1960s. African-Americans nationwide were fed up with being subjected to racism on a daily basis. They were especially sick and tired of the constant racial harassment they were receiving from white police officers. Blacks felt targeted by them, often times being arrested for things that a white person wouldn’t be arrested for. In this atmosphere of sharp resentment, MLK’s message of turning the other cheek against racial violence was falling on deaf ears. Instead, an increasing number of blacks were listening to the confrontational rhetoric of Malcolm X. As one of his followers would later put it:
“I used to hear Malcolm say, ‘If a man slaps me in the face, I am not turning my cheek. If I slap him back, he won’t slap me again.’ That made a lot of sense.”
After Birmingham, the country saw a growing number of confrontations between African-Americans and white police officers transform into full-blown race riots. One of those confrontations took place in July 1964 in New York City’s predominately black neighborhood of Harlem. The trouble started when the superintendent of an apartment building got into a verbal argument with a small group of young black men who were constantly loitering on the front steps of his building. The argument quickly turned physical when one of the young men threw an empty bottle at the superintendent. The superintendent responded by grabbing a nearby hose and spraying them down with water. An off-duty white police Lieutenant who was in a nearby store saw this incident and immediately ran over to intervene. “I’m a police lieutenant,” he yelled, “I order you to stop!”
The superintendent obeyed, throwing down the hose which was still spraying out water. Further words were exchanged as the two sides blamed the other for starting the argument. One of the soaking wet black men then picked up a rock and threw it at the pair of adults. Whether he was aiming it at the officer or the superintendent remains unclear; the rock hit the officer, who standing partially in front of the superintendent. The officer responded by shooting him three times, killing him. Despite the officer’s claim that he had been acting in self-defense, the fact that this white officer had shot a black man to death didn’t sit well for many blacks living in Harlem. They responded by rioting against the police. For an entire week, shouts of “Stop killer cops!” and “End police brutality!” could be heard throughout Harlem as angry blacks attacked police precincts with bottles, bricks, and whatever else could be picked up and thrown. Police officers who tried to quell the rioters were assaulted; one of them was stabbed to death with a knife. Police cars were set on fire. Shots were fired into crowds by police officers in an effort to dispel them. Stores were looted. Harlem descended into chaos as law and order collapsed. New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller had to deploy National Guard units to the neighborhood to help law enforcement restore control. By the time the Harlem Riot was over, 118 people had been injured and 465 had been arrested. As for the police Lieutenant, he was subsequently cleared of any wrongdoing by a grand jury.

Just as peace was being restored in Harlem, rioting broke out in Rochester. Over 32,000 African-Americans called this part of Western New York home. Forced to attend segregated schools, live in dilapidated segregated housing, and were 6 times more likely to be unemployed than whites, the black residents of Rochester were miserable…and mad as Hell. When Rochester police officers tried to arrest an intoxicated black man at a block party, the man became combative and resisted them. His friends and neighbors came to his defense, pelting the police with bottles and bricks. Under attack, law enforcement responded by using police dogs against the crowd – in violation of their own practice of not using them on crowds. The presence of dogs simply inflamed the rioters, whose numbers swelled from 400 to 2,000. Police officers struggled to contain the rioters, who proceeded to loot 204 businesses throughout much of Rochester. Rockefeller once again had to send in National Guard units, who restored peace after three days. The Rochester Riot ended with 4 people dead, 350 injured, and 1,000 arrested. “I know the kids here,” a local politician stated afterwards. “I know the hard ones and the good kids. And it was the good kids who first threw the bricks through the windows. Then the adults stepped in. This community just went insane.”

Over the next few weeks, race riots spread into New Jersey and Pennsylvania like a virus. Jersey City and Elizabeth both experienced rioting. Then at the end of August 1964, it reached the predominantly black neighborhood of North Philadelphia. Of Philadelphia’s 600,000 black residents, 400,000 lived in this part of the City of Brotherly Love. Because of the heavy concentration of African-Americans in North Philadelphia, it was the practice of the Philadelphia Police to send biracial teams to patrol the neighborhood. On the evening of August 28th, one of those black-and-white police teams got into an argument with a black woman who had parked her car illegally and was refusing to move it. As the three of them argued, a large crowd assembled around them. The woman’s boyfriend soon showed up and attempted to rescue his girlfriend by assaulting the pair of police officers. One of the officers reacted by shooting the attacker, injuring him (he later recovered). Not surprisingly, this triggered the crowd into rioting. For the next few days, angry mobs looted and burned 225 businesses while the outnumbered police withdrew from the neighborhood. As in New York, it took the deployment of the Pennsylvania National Guard by Governor William Scranton to end the Philadelphia Riot. No one was killed, but 341 people were injured and 774 were arrested. North Philadelphia economically never recovered from this race riot, as many of the ruined stores never re-opened.

The summer of 1964 was the first of what would become known as the “Hot Summers” of the 1960s. Between the summer of 1964 and the spring of 1968, race riots regularly engulfed cities from coast to coast. With African-Americans growing more confrontational with the police, cities were ticking time bombs, where racial violence was just one incident away from erupting. One of those ticking time bombs was Los Angeles, California. In 1965, 350,000 African-Americans lived in LA, comprising 14% of the city’s population. Due to entrenched housing discrimination, blacks were restricted to living in South Los Angeles neighborhoods like Watts. Predominantly black since World War Two (when African-Americans migrated in vast numbers to industrial cities from the South in order to get jobs in the booming defense industry), Watts was a poor neighborhood in which educational and economic opportunities were hard to come by. What the black residents had plenty of though was police brutality by racist white cops. Officers of the Los Angeles Police Department regarded blacks living in Watts as being nothing more than criminals and treated them as such. The residents of Watts of course deeply resented this racial treatment; by the late summer of 1965, racial tensions in this neighborhood had reached a breaking point. All that was needed now was a spark to set things off.

(Downtown Los Angeles in 1965. The circled building is the Biltmore Hotel)
On the evening of Friday, August 27th, a pair of young black brothers were driving a 1955 Buick through Watts. They were on their way to a party at a friend’s house when they were pulled over by a police car. The white police officer approached the car and ordered the two men to get out. After the driver got out, the police officer immediately handcuffed him and announced that he was under arrest. “What for?!” he shouted in disbelief. When the officer answered that he was being arrested for stealing the car, the driver shouted, “I didn’t steal no car, man! This is my car!”
A car matching the description of the one they were driving had been reported stolen and the police officer assumed that this was the stolen car in question. Because of the shouting, people popped their heads out of nearby homes to see what the commotion was all about. They watched as the police officer shoved the driver into the backseat of his police car, who was protesting his innocence the whole time. “Hey! What’s going on here?!” a balding middle-aged black man asked as he approached the scene. Recognizing the man, the passenger ran up to him and shouted “This guy is trying to arrest us!”
When the man inquired why, the police officer repeated that this car had been stolen. “You have the wrong car, officer,” the man stated matter-of-factly, “This wasn’t stolen.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because this car used to be mine. I sold it to this gentleman two weeks ago.”
It was true. In fact, the stolen car in question wasn’t in Watts at all. It would be found sitting abandoned in a parking lot on the other side of the city. The police officer, not knowing this, had arrested the wrong man. Not believing the original owner, the police officer brushed him aside and opened the driver side door of his police car to get in. The man immediately shut it. “Like I said, officer, you have the wrong car.”
For standing up to the mistaken police officer, the man was struck square in the face with a police baton. He stumbled backwards, blood now running out of his nose. “If you want to pinpoint the precise moment the Watts Riot began,” an African-American scholar would later claim, “This would be it.”
Unable to control his anger any longer, the passenger lunged forward and shoved the police officer. He reacted instinctively by pulling out his gun and shooting his assailant in the chest. The passenger crumbled to the asphalt, bleeding profusely (he later died). The crowd, which had grown in size during the exchange, angrily began to yell and throw rocks at the police officer. Getting back into his car, he attempted to drive away but was prevented from doing so when the crowd surrounded him completely. He quickly called for backup. Once additional police officers arrived on the scene, they were able to open a corridor in the crowd. The trapped police officer abandoned his car and ran through the corridor as fast as he could. While some in the crowd rushed to the back of the police car to rescue the handcuffed driver and tend to his bleeding brother, others pelted the newly-arrived police officers with rocks and bricks.

(The scene of the fatal encounter a year later)
As word of this incident spread throughout Watts, outraged people took to the streets. Deciding that this was the final straw, they clashed with police officers wherever they saw them. Looting and arson broke out everywhere. Overnight, 46 square miles of South Los Angeles were transformed into a war zone. When it became clear to longtime LAPD Police Chief William H. Parker on the afternoon of Saturday, August 28th, that the rioting in Watts was intensifying beyond what his police force could handle, he called Governor William Knowland. Using overtly racist language, Parker told Knowland that the black rioters in Watts were “behaving like monkeys in a zoo” and that California National Guard units were needed desperately to bring them back into line. “They need to get here quickly, Governor. Otherwise, God help us.”
Declaring martial law, Knowland ordered National Guard units to travel to Watts. They began arriving in the embattled neighborhood on the morning of Sunday, August 29th. One of the 2,500 National Guardsmen who arrived first to restore order later recalled:
“The streets of Watts resembled an all-out war zone in some far-off foreign country. It bore no resemblance to the United States of America.”
There were several shootouts as beefed-up law enforcement took on rioters who were also armed with guns. By nightfall on Sunday, a total of 16,000 National Guardsmen had arrived in Watts and were patrolling the streets. Blockades were established, and warning signs were posted throughout the neighborhood threatening the use of deadly force. In response, rioters hurled chunks of the sidewalks and bricks at law enforcement. They even blocked firefighters from extinguishing the multiple fires which were raging across the neighborhood. The black rioters beat up whatever white person they were able to get their angry hands on, and stole whatever they could carry.

That night, an 8:00 PM curfew was declared for Watts and surrounding neighborhoods. Law enforcement, which included 934 LAPD officers and 718 officers from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, began conducting mass arrests. Their goal was to get everybody off the street as quickly as possible. This aggressive use of handcuffs produced the desired effect. The rioting started to subside the next day and on Tuesday, August 31st, it was officially declared to be over. The statistics of the five-day Watts Riot were stunning:

• 34 people had been killed
• 1,032 people had been injured
• 3,438 people had been arrested

The property damage totaled a staggering $40 million. Whereas whites were shocked by the extent of the Watts Riot, many blacks regarded it as a justified uprising against an oppressive judicial system. The vast majority of those arrested didn’t even have a prior criminal record. They were simply fed up with the way they were being treated by the police and had decided to unleash their pent-up anger.

Two days after the riot, President Malcolm Forbes arrived in LA. Against the advice of those who felt that Watts was still too dangerous for him to visit, the President insisted on seeing for himself the devastation five days of civil unrest had wrought. He also wanted to speak directly with the residents of the smoldering neighborhood to see what his Administration could do to deal with these race riots. Forbes tragically never made it to Watts. While leaving the Biltmore Hotel on September 3rd with Knowland by his side, the President was shot at by an emotionally troubled young woman over losing her brother in Vietnam. He wasn't wounded, but Knowland was killed by a fatal shot to the head. In the wake of the assassination attempt, the Secret Service decided to cut the trip short and return the President to Air Force One. Following the Hot Summer of 1966, which saw race riots hit cities like Chicago and Cleveland, Forbes signed an Executive Order establishing the Scranton Commission to investigate the causes of race riots and to “provide us with recommendations about how to best deal with them.”
As terrible as the Watts Riot was for Los Angeles in 1965, continuing tensions between African-Americans and the police in LA would lead to a far more devastating sequel. In April 1992, four white LAPD officers were acquitted by a mostly white jury of beating up an unarmed black motorist who had tried to evade arrest for driving while intoxicated. The beating had been filmed by an eyewitness using his camcorder and broadcast nationwide. The public was outraged over the acquittals, which they viewed as being a blatant miscarriage of justice. Amidst shouts of "Guilty!", rioters took to the streets. The subsequent LA Riot lasted for six days and saw massive looting and arson. 3,600 fires were set, which destroyed 1,100 buildings. The rioting resulted in 63 people being killed, 2,383 injured, and 12,111 arrested. Property damage dwarfed that of Watts, totaling over $1 billion. While some defended the rioters as engaging in a "rebellion" against police brutality and institutional racism, others condemned them as criminals who used the acquittals as an excuse to go on a rampage.

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Historically the Watts Riot was triggered by the arrest of a black driver for drunk driving, which quickly escalated into a full-blown race riot. Here it is triggered by the arrest of a black driver who was mistaken for having stolen a car. Different beginnings, same results. As we have seen time and again, all it takes is one bad incident between African-Americans and white cops to set things off.

I have one more update left for 1965 and we will move into 1966.

 

[DensleyBlair]

Caught up again, and lots to take in! Between the abortive withdrawal from North Vietnam, the attempted assassination of the President and the continued plague of police brutality, America has been in for a rough time of things over the course of ‘65. All very believable, too.

With Vietnam less of an overt issue and the race-rights struggles more to the fore, I wonder what the reaction of liberal white youth will be a few years down the line. Somehow I can’t quite see the hippies emerging exactly as they did historically – or not being quite so prominent, anyway. Perhaps the New Left will play a bit more of a leading role in the white counterculture? Seems a little more robust as an ally to the Civil Rights movement, rather than the sort of drop-out anti-war hippie tradition.

Excellent work as ever, Nathan!

 

[El Pip]

Well that was all believably grim. The foreshadowing of the 92 riots is a particularly sad note as it means nothing much changes on that front, which is probably very realistic but still a bit of a shame.

Perhaps the New Left will play a bit more of a leading role in the white counterculture? Seems a little more robust as an ally to the Civil Rights movement, rather than the sort of drop-out anti-war hippie tradition.

The New Left being more prominent in the counterculture I can see, but I'm not sure about how that relates to Civil Rights. A Republican president has just passed a solid looking Civil Rights Act, that's a big change. It's not that hard to see the Republicans carrying on being the party of Lincoln after this and not doing the OTL Southern Strategy (after all their current approach is getting them elected, so why change?) and that means a very different Civil Rights movement. Will the New Left be so enthusiastic for that sort of movement?

In the wider culture there's also the fact that it looks a lot like Vietnam will be a 'win', or at least nothing like the OTL long dragged out defeat, so a lot of the draft reaction takes on a different flavour - it's one thing to draft dodge a miserable pointless defeat, quite another to do so from a win. I'm curious how that plays out.

 

[DensleyBlair]

The New Left being more prominent in the counterculture I can see, but I'm not sure about how that relates to Civil Rights. A Republican president has just passed a solid looking Civil Rights Act, that's a big change. It's not that hard to see the Republicans carrying on being the party of Lincoln after this and not doing the OTL Southern Strategy (after all their current approach is getting them elected, so why change?) and that means a very different Civil Rights movement. Will the New Left be so enthusiastic for that sort of movement?

When I say ‘Civil Rights movement’, I of course in no way mean the government response (which is not a movement) but rather the actual on-the-ground campaign for Black rights. With a pro-civil-rights President (and to me it matters very little whether they’re red or blue) and a less prominent MLK, the popular focus of the general movement is very different – arguably even further from the hippyish love-in ‘tactics’, which even OTL had very little of use to say to the work of Black activists. (And it’s worth remembering that the even view of ‘MLK=peaceful, Malcolm=violent’ is largely a modern one; MLK’s ‘non-violent’ tactics were just as horrifying to white America at the time, hence… well, everything that happened to him.) My point is that a politically engaged white counterculture, moulded not by the mass anti-war movement but by a so-called violent movement for Black rights, would presumably have to be more hardcore itself. Certainly no tuning in and dropping out.

The ways in which Republican strategy will change after all this are interesting in their own right, of course, but that to me is a different question.

In the wider culture there's also the fact that it looks a lot like Vietnam will be a 'win', or at least nothing like the OTL long dragged out defeat, so a lot of the draft reaction takes on a different flavour - it's one thing to draft dodge a miserable pointless defeat, quite another to do so from a win. I'm curious how that plays out.

Yes, this is sort of what I’m getting at. The entry point to opposition is higher, so the counterculture should in their be more radical. Will it be as widespread? Will it bleed over into popular culture with the same strength? There are still a thousand very valid reasons to oppose what’s happening in Vietnam, but they are arguably more nuanced than OTL. Can they have the same pull as simple opposition to the draft?

 

[El Pip]

My point is that a politically engaged white counterculture, moulded not by the mass anti-war movement but by a so-called violent movement for Black rights, would presumably have to be more hardcore itself. Certainly no tuning in and dropping out.

The ways in which Republican strategy will change after all this are interesting in their own right, of course, but that to me is a different question.

I think they are related, the different political situation will have an impact on the politics of the counterculture and the numbers who join; the more it looks like the regular political process is working, if slowly, the fewer people will join and so the more the hardcore types will dominate. I also think there is a feedback loop between how the politically engaged counterculture develops, particularly if it never becomes a mass movement, and how politicians then react to that. But yes I concede they are two different questions, even if related.

Overall I think we are probably agreeing, I just appreciate the irony that one of the consequences of faster progress on civil rights might be a more hardcore and extreme group focused on civil rights.

Yes, this is sort of what I’m getting at. The entry point to opposition is higher, so the counterculture should in their be more radical. Will it be as widespread? Will it bleed over into popular culture with the same strength? There are still a thousand very valid reasons to oppose what’s happening in Vietnam, but they are arguably more nuanced than OTL. Can they have the same pull as simple opposition to the draft?

All good questions, I hope they get explored.

One thing I wonder is could there be a much sharper divide between the hippie/easy rider type counterculture and the more radical and politically conscious groups. Very much not my area of expertise but I'm assuming such divides did exist, if only because no group is monolithic, but could those differences become even more pronounced without a big unifying cause?

 

[DensleyBlair]

Overall I think we are probably agreeing, I just appreciate the irony that one of the consequences of faster progress on civil rights might be a more hardcore and extreme group focused on civil rights.

Yes, I’d agree we’re agreeing.

One thing I wonder is could there be a much sharper divide between the hippie/easy rider type counterculture and the more radical and politically conscious groups. Very much not my area of expertise but I'm assuming such divides did exist, if only because no group is monolithic, but could those differences become even more pronounced without a big unifying cause?

I think there will be a sharper divide, yes. Any hippy movement will have a hard time claiming any sort of positive political impetus, imo; any drop-out culture would be (even more) strongly critiqued by the hardcore political counterculture as a damaging abdication of responsibility. Which if memory serves was an argument had IOTL, but the American situation is not necessarily my strong point.

The Yippies are probably a good case study as (to my mind) the most prominent OTL fusion of free love and New Left radicalism. They were committed politically, but disdained by the Old Left as a group of pranksters. I’d argue in the (likely) absence of a widespread peace and love movement that there’s room for their own critique of mid-century consumer culture to reach greater prominence.

 

[El Pip]

The Yippies are probably a good case study as (to my mind) the most prominent OTL fusion of free love and New Left radicalism. They were committed politically, but disdained by the Old Left as a group of pranksters. I’d argue in the (likely) absence of a widespread peace and love movement that there’s room for their own critique of mid-century consumer culture to reach greater prominence.

I'd not heard of them before now and they do seem an interesting group. I think on balance I agree with you, all the energy (for want of a better word) that went into peace and love and anti-draft and so on isn't going to vanish. Wherever it goes is not going to be mainstream standard culture, so the Yippie sort of ideas could well be the beneficiary.

And to loop back around to the notional title of this AAR, one of the problems with LBJ's Great Society was that even the US couldn't pay for that and Vietnam. But if there is no Vietnam then the next Democrat president will have options and perhaps a bit more grass roots support. Lots of options and ideas bubbling away under the surface