Vietnam Resources

Resources on the Vietnam Era

Vietnam Memorial

Like any historic event, the Vietnam War—and especially America's role in it—did not occur in a vacuum. Few historians would question the assertion that the Vietnam War was one aspect of the Cold War, and in fact was a product of that protracted conflct. America's connection with Vietnam go back, at least indirectly, to the early part of the 20th century, when Vietnamese nationalists like Hi Chi Minh looked to American leaders, Woodrow Wilson for example, as a source of support for their ideas of self-determinaton.

With the end of World War II America embarked on an anti-Communist crusade of which the Vietnam War became a part. Here are a few documents that define some of the Cold War issues that carried us into Vietnam.

Documents relating to Vietnam:

The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution

President Johnson on Vietnam

Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara on Vietnam

General Vo Nguyen Giap on North Vietnamese Strategy

For additional sites on the Vietnam War, check out the following. (Note: A great deal of material on Vietnam can be found on the Web. Some is good, much is very personal, some is not very useful. Let me know what you find.) Student Darrell Kuhse recommended a site maintained by Sandra Wittman at Oakton Community College in Illinois. The page has links to other interesting Vietnam sites. It also has a good bibliography of books on Vietnam.

ABC-CLIO claims to be the "largest most comprehensive encyclopedia to dateof the Vietnam War."

The LBJ Library at the University of Texas has a "Vietnam War Internet Project" with useful document collections.

Mt. Holyoke College has a collection of foreign policy documents relating to Vietnam.

Web Sites on the Vietnam Era

Note: Please send any good URLs you find and I'll link them here. Email URLs to this address

The Vietnam War Internet Project claims to be “an educational organization dedicated to providing information and documents about the various Indochina Wars... ” It does not intentionally reflect any particular point of view.
The official We Were Soldiers site is an interesting site on the recent film, with comments from the producers and actors about their roles in recreating the drama. Be sure to listen to and watch the interviews with the cast and the real people they portrayed.
Edwin E. Moïse's Vietnam War Bibliography is a well-organized collection of resources on Vietnam hosted on the Clemson University web site.
Here is a link to the PBS Vietnam Web site created to go along with their tv series on Vietnam.
Professor Larry Wheeler at our NVCC Loudoun Campus has interviews with veterans and other information about Vietnam.
Here is a site about the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and many other related topics at the LBJ library at the University of Texas.
The Vietnam Veterans of American Foundation hosts an interesting site.
Another Vietnam Veterans' site talks about issue relating to men and women who served in Vietnam.
Here is a Vietnam War Bibliography site with many resources.
Here is a site that offers information on Vietnam Veteran's Memorials around the world.
The Vietnam Women's Memorial is located near the “Wall” in Washington, D.C.
Canada's University of Victoria has a web page on Vietnam with links to other sites, some of which appear above.
The ABC-CLIO site has "rich resources" on the Vietnam War.
Here is a link to the Vietnam War Resource Guide.
Here is another site run by Vietnam vets called the History of Vietnam and the Vietnam War.
Here is a Great site in the UK site with links to many other sites.
The Vietnam Veteran's Home Page contains much personal information and links about Vietnam experiences.
Here is a link to an On-line Discussion Forum on the History of the War in Vietnam, rather eclectic and scattered but interesting.
Here is a site about the Australian Involvement in Vietnam
A web site devoted to the History of the American Presidency, including those who presided over the Vietnam conflict.
A web site about the Culture and People of Vietnam.
Here are two web sites about women in Vietnam:
- http://userpages.aug.com/captbarb/femvetsnam.html
- http://www.illyria.com/vnwomen.html

The following sites were recommended by Mary Giminez:

The American Experience: Vietnam. Based on the PBS series, it has a good i.d. section.)
Battlefield Vietnam. Also on PBS with more of a military focus, a good timeline, etc.
We Regret to Inform You. Another PBS film on widows both American and Vietnamese, letters from G.I.s, etc.)
An extensive bibliography of books on various aspects of the Vietnam War by Edwin E. Moise at Clemson University. (This will be a useful source for many of you in researching your papers.)

Films about Vietnam

Films about Vietnam are numerous and uneven in quality and accuracy. Many have parts that are historically sound, but few present an accurate view overall. The only two films I recommend with few reservations are“A Bright Shining Lie,” about John Paul Vann, an HBO film starring Bill Paxton and “We Were Soldiers” with Mel Gibson and Madeleine Stowe.. You will probably see parts of one of these in class.
“The Green Berets” with John Wayne can be seen as a period piece reflecting the aspirations of early Cold Warriors who saw Vietnam as a noble cause. Oliver Stone's “Platoon” purports to tell the truth about Vietnam, but there were thousands of platoons in Vietnam and each had its own experience. “Apocalypse Now” is Joseph Conrad's “Heart of Darkness” set in Vietnam. Many other films such as “Full Metal Jacket” and “The Deerhunter” have their moments, but we have yet to see a “Gone with the Wind,” about Vietnam.

Note: If you want to search the web for Vietnam Information, I recommend that you start with the Google search engine. You will get very different results with different search programs, so shop around.

If you place “The Vietnam War” into Google and search you will get over 2 million hits.

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