America's involvement in Vietnam began covertly in 1954, soon after the Viet Minh, a nationalist, communist guerrilla group, terminated French colonial rule and Vietnam was cleaved in two. It grew into a war that killed almost 60,000 American soldiers and over 3m Vietnamese civilians and soldiers. The war ended on April 30th 1975 with the fall of Saigon, when North Vietnamese soldiers rolled into the city in tanks, sacked the United States embassy and raised their flag over the presidential palace.
In 1960 America had 700 military "advisers" helping the pro-Western government of South Vietnam; by the end of 1964 that number had grown to 23,000. In early 1965 McGeorge Bundy, the national security adviser, told President Lyndon Johnson that America could either negotiate a settlement or increase military pressure on the north. Johnson secretly authorised systematic bombings of the north and sent two Marine battalions to guard the air bases.
In 1971 the Pentagon Papers, high-level government reports on the war, were leaked, revealing the depth of officials' dishonesty about their motives and efficacy in Vietnam. A poll taken that year showed that 71% of Americans believed the war had been a "mistake".
America's performance in the two world wars had allowed the country to think of itself as benevolent and invincible. Vietnam put that myth to rest. The war permanently altered American film, music and television—and, most importantly, Americans' relationship to their government.
Protest music emerged early: in 1963 Bob Dylan condemned the "Masters of War", and in 1967 Nina Simone complained about a government that would "send my son to Vietnam". These protest songs were the start of what came to be known as "alternative music"—styles with strong niche appeal and strong political messages, standing apart from mainstream pop. Hip-hop and punk were the inheritors of that legacy.
New technology, in particular lightweight cameras and sound equipment, enabled journalists to go into the field and show combat footage on television without sanitisation, permanently changing the media's wartime role. In later conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, the army let journalists "embed" themselves with combat units.
Vietnam-era films were unsparing: "The Deer Hunter" (1978) showed the war's effects on three friends from a steel town in Pennsylvania; Francis Ford Coppola's "Apocalypse Now" (1979) portrayed the corrosive insanity of senseless violence; Stanley Kubrick's "Full Metal Jacket" (1987) depicted war as a charnel house. American cinema has largely eschewed the tidy morality of pre-Vietnam war movies ever since.
Polls taken in 1958 showed that 73% of Americans trusted their government to do the right thing. By 1974 barely more than one-third did. Aside from a brief post-September 11th spike, America's government has never regained the trust of a majority of its citizens. As of 2025 only 22% trust it.
Tom Dooley, an American naval medic who worked in Vietnam, wrote a popular book called "Deliver Us From Evil" (1956), casting American capitalism and compassion as the only things that could save Vietnamese from communist brutality. After Dooley's early death from cancer in 1961, it emerged that he had worked with the CIA and fabricated his stories of communist atrocities.
I don't mind arguing with myself. It's when I lose that it bothers me.