what are some good primary sources about the vietnam war?

Question

one that i found was nixon's speech about the war

Answer 1

Seven good primary sources on the Vietnam War are:

'The Ten-Thousand Day War' - Michael MacLear
'Vietnam: Anatomy of a War' - Gabriel Kolko
'In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam' - Robert S. McNamara (w/ Brian VanDeMark)
'The 25-Year War: America's Military Role in Vietnam' - Gen. Bruce Palmer, Jr.
'Our Vietnam: the War 1954-1975' - A.J. Langguth

'The Pentagon Papers'

Answer 2

The book to read is The Pentagon Papers if you can find it. It gives the facts and pictures on When and how the War started way back in 1946 and tells about the secret meeting of Ho Chi Min and President Eisenhower in 1954

Answer 3

The Vietnam War, also known as the Second Indochina War, and in Vietnam as the American War, occurred from 1965 to April 30, 1975. The Vietnam Conflict is often used normally to include what occurred from 1959 to April 30, 1975. The last American troops left Vietnam on April 30, 1975.[5] It concluded with a North Vietnamese military victory after more than 15 years of conflict.[6][7]The war was fought between the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) and the United States-supported Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam). Debate over the war back home in the United States was a major domestic issue. The war ended with the defeat of the United States and South Vietnam, resulting in the unification of Vietnam under the communist government of the North.[8]

"If we use conventional military criteria, the Americans should have been victorious. They used 15 million tons of munitions (as much as they employed in World War Two), had a vast military superiority over their enemies by any standard one employs, and still they were defeated."[9] Edward N. Luttwak of Time magazine said, "The customary reward of defeat, if one can survive it, is in the lessons thereby learned, which may yield victory in the next war. But the circumstances of our defeat in Vietnam were sufficiently ambiguous to deny the nation (that) benefit." "[10]Richard Nixon said in 1985, "No event in American history is more misunderstood than the Vietnam War. It was misreported then, and it is misremembered now."[11]

Over 1.4 million military personnel were killed in the war (approximately 6% were members of the United States armed forces), while estimates of civilian fatalities range from 2 to 5.1 million. On April 30, 1975, the capital of South Vietnam, Saigon fell to the communist forces of North Vietnam, effectively ending the Vietnam War

Answer 4

vietnam vets are a GREAT primary source - but you've got to find them and interview them.
Here's a list of primary sources from PBS:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/vietnam/psources/index.html

lots more here, but you have to pay for full access:
http://www.enotes.com/vietnam-war-primary-sources

another great free site:
http://www.humanities.mcmaster.ca/~history/links/amhist/Foreign%20Relations%20Pages/for%20rel%20primary%20vietnam%20page.html

Answer 5

my grandfather was in the war, but no good