Hello, and welcome to today's history lesson.

My name is Mr. Merrett, and I'll be guiding you through today's lesson.

So let's get started.

By the end of the lesson today, you are gonna be able to describe the aims and methods of the Vietcong.

And in order to do that, we need to use some keywords.

So our key words to today are regime, hamlet, Vietcong, and guerilla.

Regime is a government, especially an authoritarian one, which enforces strict obedience at the expense of personal freedom.

A hamlet is a small settlement, which is generally smaller than a village.

The Vietcong were the communist guerilla group who opposed the South Vietnam army, the ARVN or the ARVN, and US forces with the help of North Vietnam.

And a guerilla is a member of a small, loosely-organized army that fights a larger, stronger force and uses surprise tactics.

So now we understand those.

Let's get started on the lesson itself.

So our lesson is gonna consist of three learning cycles, and our first learning cycle is South Vietnam under Diem.

So Ngo Dinh Diem ruled in South Vietnam was unpopular from the very starts.

Although South Vietnam was supposed to be a democratic country, in reality, it was corruption that kept Diem in power.

Diem refused to allow the election in 1956 that would've unified the country as he feared that he would've lost.

In 1954 at the Geneva Conference, it had been agreed that Vietnam would be separated into North and South Vietnam for two years.

And then in 1956, there'd be elections held to unify the country under either a communist government or a democratic government, whatever the people decided.

But Diem feared that he would lose so he just refused to allow the elections.

He did allow some elections to take place in South Vietnam.

It's probably worth pointing that out.

But he won those by counting fake ballots.

And a good example of that, in October, 1954, there was an election, and Diem won the election by achieving more than 600,000 votes in Saigon.

However, in Saigon, there were only 450,000 people registered to vote.

So clearly some dodgy dealings going on there.

Diem was a Catholic in a Buddhist majority country, and Diem made life increasingly difficult for his Buddhist subjects.

He made life very easy for his Catholic subjects.

A lot of them were given really good jobs.

A lot of people, or many people became Catholic purely for the reason that they would actually advance themselves in their careers if they did so.

But for the vast majority of people, they kept hold of their Buddhist traditions and they were effectively punished for it as a result.

Repression of the Buddhist majority resulted in protests, which were led by Buddhist monks, and they were violently put down by Diem's forces.

On the 11th of June, 1963, a respected Buddhist monk, Quang Duc, set himself on fire in the middle of a busy street in Saigon in an act of protest against Diem's repressive regime.

Now, the image on the screen is pretty graphic.

It's also incredibly famous.

It appeared in magazines all around the world.

And understandably, it was incredibly shocking for the people of the world to see that this is what life was like in South Vietnam, where people would quite literally prefer to set themselves on fire and die as a result, he's not getting back from that one, than live in Diem's regime.

So from an American perspective, Quang Duc's self emulation, that's the key.

That's the term for setting yourself on fire, self-emulation.

It was an absolute public relations nightmare.

How could they claim to be supporting a country that was happy to be free of communism when people were so unhappy that they were literally setting themselves on fire? So a pretty awful time for everybody involved, certainly for the South Vietnamese people.

But from an American perspective, it was difficult as well to marry up this whole idea that they are the good guys preventing South Vietnam from foreign to communism, when the reality is, is that the guy that they are supporting is deeply, deeply unpopular.

So a quick knowledge check now then.

Which religious majority group of Vietnamese people did Diem persecute? Was it the Buddhists, Hindus, or Muslims? Make your choice now.

All right then.

If you chose Buddhist, then congratulations, that is correct.

So 1962, the Strategic Hamlets Programme was introduced and the government could see that villagers were supporting the Vietcong.

And to stop this, villagers were moved to fortified locations which were under government control.

That was a completely utter failure.

There was nothing particularly good about the Strategic Hamlets Programme, and we'll go into that in more detail now.

So villagers were often forcibly removed from villages where their families have lived for generations.

And these villages were then set on fire as well to prevent the people from returning.

And frequently, the people could watch their village, their homes being destroyed by the ARVN, by the South Vietnamese army and the American troops as well, which again, is not gonna make anybody particularly happy with the South Vietnamese army or the US troops.

But not only that, though, the Vietnamese Buddhist practised a form of ancestor worship whereby they paid a great deal of respect to the graves of their ancestors.

And they visited them frequently and they attended to those graves.

And you can't really do that if you've been moved miles away.

It makes life extremely difficult in that respect.

So again, it's another reason why this was not a particularly popular or a particularly clever move from that respect.

Not only that, the strategic hamlets, which the Vietnamese people would then move to, generally speaking, had to be built by the villagers themselves at their own cost as well.

So the US did provide financial backing to pay for the villagers for this, but corrupt officials frequently just kept the money for themselves.

So they have to watch their homes be destroyed.

They took a move to completely new area.

They have to rebuild that village by themselves using their own money.

So again, it's a really unpopular move, the Strategic Hamlets Programme.

Having said that, by September 1962, roughly 4.

3 million South Vietnamese peasants were living in strategic hamlets, many of them, of course, against their will.

So even though it was deeply unpopular, it received a lot of backing from the US and the South Vietnamese government.

They really pushed hard on this particular programme with very, very limited success.

So quick knowledge check now then.

What were strategic hamlets? Were they large towns which were important for production? Were they small towns placed along the important supply routes? Or were they fortified villages under government control? Make your choice now.

Okay, if you chose C, fortified villages under government control, then congratulations, you are correct.

Okay, let's go for our first task of the day then.

So I've got a source up on the screen here in front of you.

And what I'd like you to do is I want you to think, what can we learn about the Strategic Hamlets Programme from the content of this source? Now, the content in this case is the photograph.

There's a second part to the source, which is the provenance, and that is now on the screen in front of you as well.

However, for this particular question, I don't want you to use the provenance.

I don't want you to use that blurb off to the side there.

I just want you to think about what you can see in the photograph and what it can tell you about the Strategic Hamlets Programme.

So what I'd like you to do now is pause the video.

I want have a go at that task, and I'll see you in just a moment.

Okay, welcome back.

So here's what you may have written or something along the lines of what you may have written in your particular answer.

So I can see from the source that the village was very well protected with three or four lines of fences.

This suggests that it would've been easy to guard.

There are no fields around the village, so the villagers likely had to travel some distance to their farmland.

It's worth pointing out again, in case you may not remember, that the vast majority of Vietnamese people at this point in time, they were subsistence farmers.

So there were effectively.

They were growing enough food to feed themselves and their families.

Before the Vietnam War, before the second World War in fact, Vietnam had been a major rice producer.

So they'd been exporting rice for years and years and years.

During the war, however, the amount of rice production drastically reduced and many people now were forced just to buy or just to grow enough food to feed themselves and keep their families going.

However, in this particular fortified village, the strategic hamlet that we can see, there are no farmlands around.

So these people would've had to travel, who knows how far in order to do their daily chores on their farmland.

Okay, next task is, again, very, very similar to the first one we've done.

This time, however, I want you to think about what can we learn about the Strategic Hamlets Programme from the provenance of this source.

So that written blurb to the side of the photograph, I want you to use the information from that and think about what it can tell you about the Strategic Hamlets Programme.

It's worth pointing out that the written blurb, the provenance that we've got here is the same as the writing underneath the photo.

So please strain yourself if you're trying to read underneath that photograph there.

The vast majority of it is just written to the side and the provenance there.

So just use that to answer this question.

So have a go at this question and I'll see you again in just a few moments.

Okay.

Welcome back.

Hopefully you got on fine with that task.

And let's think about the sort of answer that you could have provided.

So you could have said, the providence tells me that the photo was taken in 1963 when the programme was already well established.

Roughly 4.

3 million South Vietnamese were living in strategic hamlets by this time.

The provenance states the reason for these villages was to protect the people from the Vietcong.

This implies that the Vietcong were a significant threat as millions of people were forced to leave their homes.

So hopefully you had something similar to my answer on the screen there.

Let's move on now then to our second learning cycle for today, which is who were the Vietcong? Now, it's probably worth pointing out at this point in time that Vietcong can be spelled in a couple of different ways.

It can be spelt as I've got it on the screen in front of you there as all one word.

You can also separate Viet and cong into two separate words, and either is absolutely fine.

So you might see it as one word as I've got in the screen.

Now you might see it as two words.

They're both the same group, and you are free to use either one, whatever's good for you.

So the Vietcong were officially formed in December 1962, but they're best thought of as a continuation of the Vietminh who fought the French in the 1950s.

And again, if you remember, the Vietminh were a really effective guerilla group, and the Vietcong employed the vast majority of the same principles as the Vietminh did as well.

So the Vietcong were the military branch of the National Liberation Front, the NLF, which is a communist and nationalist group dedicated to overthrow Diem's governments and reuniting Vietnam.

They were directed and funded by the government in North Vietnam.

However, they were a South Vietnamese group, but they were supported, they were directed, they were funded by North Vietnam.

And the ties between North Vietnam and the NLF and the Vietcong were so strong that the North Vietnamese army effectively viewed the Vietcong as a separate branch of their own army.

And it's not a bad way to think about them actually, because they worked together incredibly well.

So that's a good way to think about it.

The guerilla tactics of the Vietcong were a serious thorn in the side of Diem's regime, and of course, later the US as well, as it proved so difficult to fight against.

Working in small groups and usually wearing civilian clothing, the Vietcong were able to attack and then hide amongst the general population with ease.

They looked just like anybody else.

There wasn't any kind of special military clothing.

The vast majority of them wore.

They just wore ordinary clothes.

So once they've made their attack, if they've got weapons, they can ditch them.

If they don't have it, for instance, that they set up a bomb, they can just mingle with the crowd and you just don't know who's Vietcong and who's a civilian.

So it's really, really difficult to fight against that kind of an army.

In the countryside, the Vietminh.

Sorry, the Vietcong were able to win support from peasant farmers by offering them help with their work and promises of support once Vietnam was unified.

So that's one way in which they managed to win over the peasants in the countryside.

The Strategic Hamlets Programme was created to try and remove support for the Vietcong, but in reality, the Vietcong were easily able to infiltrate and destroy the hamlets for several reasons.

Strategic hamlets were often placed in isolated Vietcong controlled regions, which ensured that they were easy targets.

The man in charge of organising the programme was a North Vietnamese spy, which obviously helped the Vietcong too.

On the outside, he looked like he was a really, really dedicated official because he had targets that he wanted to meet, and he pushed really, really hard to meet those targets about how many strategic hamlets can we set up in a month and so on and so forth.

But the reality is, is that he deliberately pushed the programme forward too fast so that there just wasn't enough structure around the building of each village.

There wasn't enough support around the building of each village, and he effectively just ran it into the ground.

He deliberately pushed the programme too fast and too hard knowing that as a result, it would fail.

North Vietnam further aided the Vietcong by providing them with weapons and supplies along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, which is a series of pass through the jungle of neighbouring Lao and Cambodia.

Okay, so a quick knowledge check now then.

So true or false? The Vietcong used guerilla tactics in their fight against Diem's regime.

Is that true or is that a false? Make your choice now.

Okay, if you chose true, then very well done.

You are correct.

That's indeed what they did.

But let's justify this answer now.

So is it true because the Vietcong would attack and then disappear among the population, or is it true because they fortify villages and use them as bases for attacks? So make your choice now.

All right, if you chose A, then very well done.

That is indeed correct as well.

Right, I just wanna go through very quickly just some of the reasons why the South Vietnamese supported the Vietcongs.

I think it's important for you to understand as to why the Vietcong receives such huge amounts of support from the South Vietnamese people.

Obviously, it's important to remember that the reason I'm gonna show you, not necessarily every single person agree with every single one of these reasons, but a lot of people agree with at least one of these reasons, and that was enough for them to offer their support for the Vietcong, or sometimes, of course, even join the Vietcong.

So firstly, the Vietcong helped farmers with their works.

That's gonna win over quite a few of the people living in the countryside.

The Vietcong also promised farmers land as well.

This is exactly what North Vietnam had done.

So the North Vietnamese government had done in North Vietnam.

It wasn't smooth, it wasn't easy, but a lot of the regular people, a lot of the peasant farmers in North Vietnam now had more land than what they had before the Vietnam War.

So the Vietcong were able to offer the South Vietnamese peasants a similar sort of deal that the North Vietnamese peasants had.

Family and friends was members of the Vietcong as well.

So that might be a reason why some people support the Vietcong, because they knew people who were already inside the organisation.

People were afraid of refusing the Vietcong.

In some cases, the Vietcong, at the moment, I think I'm probably painting as being quite nice people, but the reality is, is they had a vicious side as well.

And if you as a peasant farmer refuse to support the Vietcong, then you might have your home destroyed.

You might have your crops burned, you might have your family and yourself killed as well.

So they weren't necessarily always nicey-nicey.

They could be quite mean, quite vicious as well.

And that fear of the Vietcong is what won some people over it too.

People hated the corruption of Diem's regime, and that's certainly a reason why many people turned against Diem and his regime.

The Vietnamese people wanted a unified Vietnam.

This is what they've been promised after the War of Independence against the French, and they hadn't yet been delivered.

So this is what they were promised, this is what they wanted in the Vietcong so that they could help achieve that.

Devout Buddhists resented the repression of their faith.

The vast majority of Vietnam were Buddhists.

They didn't like how Diem was treating the Buddhists.

So for many, this was a good enough reason to act against Diem and his regime.

And finally, villagers didn't want to be placed in strategic hamlets.

And again, that's a good enough reason for many people.

If you're gonna burn down my village and force me to leave my home that I've lived in or my family have lived in for generations, then I'm gonna act against you.

That's exactly what many people did, right? Using that knowledge, what I'd like to do now then is explain why many ordinary South Vietnamese people supported the Vietcong.

So I've got two points on the screen here for you.

So what I'd like you to think about is people didn't want to be placed in strategic hamlets and opposition to Diem's corrupt regime.

Those are two points that I chose.

What I want you to think about though, is it's not good enough in an answer just to state those points.

You need to explain those points and how they actually apply to the question.

So the fact that people opposed Diem's corrupt regime, why would that lead to many South Vietnamese people supporting the Vietcong? So you can use the two points I've got on the screen.

You can use different points from that mind map that I showed you.

Regardless though, try and use at least two points and explain them.

If you can get a third one in, that'd be even better as well.

So try and think of a variety of reasons why people, why many ordinary people in South Vietnam supported the Vietcong.

So pause the video now, have a look at that task and I'll see you again in just a few moments.

Okay, welcome back, and hopefully you got on fine with that task.

Let's go through a possible answer that you may have written down right now.

So I said people mainly supported the Vietcong because they didn't like being placed in strategic hamlets by the South Vietnamese government, and the Vietcong promised them more land when Vietnam was unified.

I think it's because no one wants to be forced to move house against their will.

This is bound to make people angry and want to support any group fighting against the Strategic Hamlets Programme.

So that last little bit there, that's my explanation for the point that I provided.

Also, most farmers will be happy to be given more land, as this will mean they can grow more crops, which will make life easier for them.

Diem's corrupt regime was making life very difficult for many South Vietnamese people at this time.

So they would've welcomed anybody who promised to change that.

So again, hopefully you're realising the fact that I am explaining the points that I'm making.

I'm not just stating them.

I'm also explaining them as well.

I'm showing the examiner that I fully understand what it is that I'm trying to say.

Okay, so again, a reminder of the mind map that I showed you.

Hopefully you've got a good explanation of the two points that I had on the screen there.

And hopefully maybe you've included a third point as well and fully explained that.

If you have, then very, very well done.

That's a really, really good way of responding to this particular question.

Right, let's move on then to our third learning cycle for today, which is American response under Kennedy.

So John F.

Kennedy became president of the United States in 1961 and inherited a growing problem in Vietnam.

And that is that supporting Diem was increasingly distasteful as Diem continued to oppress his people, but it was also increasingly necessary as the actions of the Vietcong further weakened South Vietnam and made it more likely that fall to communism.

Effectively, America is caught up in almost in a kind of a doom cycle whereby they're supporting Diem even though they know that he's corrupt, and they're supporting him because his corruption is turning more and more people against him.

But the more support they offer, the more corrupt he can therefore become and the more people would turn against him.

So America's stuck in this horrible doom cycle right now.

Kennedy chose to keep the USA out of the war in Vietnam, and instead he supported Diem's government in suppressing the threat of a communist uprising.

But he did this without committing American troops to actual fighting.

It is important to note that Kennedy did increase the number of troops in South Vietnam.

He increased it to 16,000, but these troops weren't there to fight the Vietcong.

They weren't there to fight North Vietnam.

They were mainly there to train the South Vietnamese army, the ARVN.

They also sent in the Green Berets, which is the US Army's elite force, and they were there to train peasants in the strategic hamlets to defend themselves against the Vietcong.

So the Americans are there training the army, they're training the peasants.

They're there to train and support.

They're not there to fight at this point in time.

Some did, but it's officially not their reason for being there, okay? Kennedy also allowed the use of napalm, which are fire bombs and defoliant chemicals such as Agent Orange to destroy and prevent growth of the forest canopy that allowed the Vietcong to move without being spotted by air reconnaissance.

And this caused enormous damage to plants, wildlife, and people, of course, who were unfortunate enough to be in the area.

It's pretty devastating the kind of damage that Napalm in particular can do.

Napalmas, they're fire bombs, but it is more than that.

It's like a sticky jelly substance that is on fire.

And if it sticks to anything, including flesh, including human flesh, it doesn't come off, even if underwater, it continues to burn.

So it's caused horrific damage to anybody who was caught up in Napalm.

Agent Orange, there was more than just Agent Orange.

There's also things like Agent Blue as well, which is designed to destroy crops, all these different chemical defoliants.

They also caused enormous damage to people who ingested any of that.

If that got into the ground, and then if crops managed to grow in those ground, or more realistically, if it got into the waterways and people drunk that water, it's caused serious, serious damage to people for years, for years and years after the war.

Even today, people are still being affected by Agent Orange and Agent Blue and other agents as well.

By late 1963, the actions of the Vietcong and the protest movement led by the Buddhist monks had made Diem's position effectively impossible.

Diem's generals had also turned against him, and with the quiet backing of the US, assassinated him on the 2nd of November, 1963.

Diem's disastrous Strategic Hamlets Programme ended with him.

But how Kennedy would've responded to these developments remains a mystery.

And the reason being is that he was assassinated himself just three weeks later.

So, quick knowledge check right now then.

So true or false? Diem was assassinated by members of the US Army's elite forces, the Green Berets.

Is that true or is that false? Okay, if you chose false, then very well done.

That is indeed correct.

But let's justify this answer now then.

So is it false because Diem was assassinated by members of ARVN with US knowledge and approval, or is it false because Diem was assassinated by the Vietcong whilst the US were trying to defend him.

Make your choice now.

Right, if you chose A, then congratulations, that is indeed correct.

Right, our final task for today, I want you to read Alex's interpretation, it's up on the board there, of the assassination of Diem.

So Alex says, "I don't think the US was right to support the assassination of Diem, but I also don't think the US was right to support the regime of Diem." So in your opinion, was the US right to support the assassination of Diem? I want to explain your answer, and I want to share that you consider both sides.

So have a go at this task, pause the video and I'll see you once you're finished.

Okay, welcome back.

So hopefully you got on fine with that task.

Let's have a go and think about an answer that you could have provided, which I've got on the screen here in front of you.

So you could have said, I agree with the statements.

Diem introduced terrible policies that significantly hurt the people of South Vietnam, such as the Strategic Hamlets Programme.

Diem being anti-communist was not a good enough reason for the USA to support such a cruel man.

But having chosen to support him, the US should have done more to help guide him to be a better leader and not simply allowed him to be killed when he wasn't useful anymore.

So that's an answer that you could have provided.

In the interest of fairness, I probably should point out right now that America did try and support Diem in terms of making life better for the South Vietnamese people.

A lot of the military support that they gave him came with a caveat that Diem would make land reforms, which means that he would give the South Vietnamese peasants more lands, which they could then farm.

And Diem agreed to all of these, but very rarely actually enacted them until the Strategic Hamlets Programme, when arguably by that point, it was too little, too late.

And I say too little, it was an own goal to a great extent, but there was at least an attempt to make land reforms there, even if it was misguided.

But prior to this Strategic Hamlets Programme, Diem had promised to make land reforms and just hadn't.

And this was a growing frustration for the American establishment.

And Kennedy himself came out and was quite vocal in how frustrating it was that Diem just wasn't doing enough to help his people.

So having also said that as well, the Americans did know that the ARVN generals were planning to assassinate Diem.

They did give Diem a warning as such.

They offered to get him out of the country to get him to safety.

Diem refused that warning and at that point, it was effectively.

From the American perspective, it was too late for Diem as well.

So although the interpretation on the screen there is that the Americans didn't do enough, they did do something, but it's arguably fair to say that they didn't do enough in ensuring that Diem was trying to help his people more than what he actually did.

All right, so just to summarise then.

So the Vietcong were a guerilla group opposed to Diem's government in South Vietnam.

The Strategic Hamlets Programme was created by Diem's government to combat the Vietcong.

The US President, John F.

Kennedy, increased America's level of involvement in Vietnam, and Diem was assassinated because of his repressive policies, which includes things such as the Strategic Hamlets Programme.

Thank you very much for joining me today.

Hopefully you've enjoyed yourself.

Hopefully you've learned a lot, and hopefully again, I'll see you next time.

Bye-bye.