A Time for War: The United States and Vietnam, 1941-1975

Amazon.com
Taking a more extensive view of the American war in Indochina than have many other historians, Robert Schulzinger begins his well-crafted account at the end of World War II. The collapsing Japanese and French empires had created a political vacuum that could be filled only by a nationalist movement--one that, in Vietnam's case, was also communist. American involvement, he writes, was questionable from the start. He quotes Dean Rusk, an architect of Kennedy and Johnson administration war policies, as saying that his greatest mistake was overestimating the patience of the American people and underestimating that of the Vietnamese. That was but one in a long series of miscalculations over three decades, and Schulzinger's book admirably relates the sad history of that conflict.


From Library Journal
Schulzinger (Henry Kissinger, Columbia Univ., 1989) has provided the most authoritative, scholarly, exhaustive survey of the political, social, and military aspects of the Vietnam War since William Prochnau's One Upon a Distant War (LJ 11/15/95). While he views the war as a whole, his work will prove most useful for his reporting on the protracted debate within the U.S. political establishment concerning the war. The structure is the usual survey approach, beginning with the early stages of Vietnamese resistance against the French and proceeding with the inevitable U.S. intervention. An exceptional study that should be the benchmark for further surveys; for strong Vietnam War collections.?John R. Vallely, Siena Coll. Lib., Loudonville, N.Y.Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
From OSS intrigues through the ignominious evacuation of Saigon, Schulzinger narrates the complicated saga of U.S. involvement in Vietnam. On a subject plagued with categorical judgments, Schulzinger stands forth as an informed and objective analyst. He shows that at every point where the choice was between sending more aid and letting the South fend for itself, American leaders sent more aid; they held that the fallout of the South going Communist was unbearable in the cold war context. The consequence of incrementalism was that the Americans, Schulzinger argues, were pressed by time, hoping for a decisive result after one more infusion of money and arms. The Communist forces were infinitely patient--and willing to accept gigantic casualties. This book's strongest impact might be on those with no personal memory of the war, to whom the conflict might appear as one undifferentiated mistake. The mistake was rather a cumulative one, which this historian ably breaks into its tragic parts. Gilbert Taylor


From Kirkus Reviews
A sober, objective, detailed recounting and analysis of the American war in Vietnam, told almost exclusively from the American perspective. Schulzinger (History/Univ. of Colorado, Boulder) offers no new theory on why the US fought in Vietnam nor why this country came out on the losing end. But he has a different objective: offering a ``compendium of the current state of scholarship on the Vietnam War.'' Leaning heavily on State Department cables, White House memoranda, and other primary sources, Schulzinger offers a strongly researched, cleanly written, chronological look at Vietnam and an analysis of why the war effort failed. In the main, he agrees with the assessment of former secretary of state Dean Rusk, who believed that the Vietnamese communists prevailed because American policymakers underestimated the will of the North Vietnamese and overestimated the patience of the American people. Schulzinger also believes that, given the tenacity of the enemy and the severe political and military shortcomings of our South Vietnamese ally, the war was unwinnable for America. Schulzinger asks rhetorically what the US could have done to win, given the realities of the time. The answer: ``Nothing.'' Among the book's many strong points is Schulzinger's dispassionate analysis of the antiwar movement, in which he addresses the still hotly debated question of whether the protests helped end the war or prolonged it by comforting the enemy. The antiwar movement ``did not end the war in Vietnam, but it did alter, almost irrevocably, the perceptions of ordinary citizens of their society and their government; it also altered the perceptions of leaders toward the public.'' The first of a projected two-volume set; volume II will cover the Vietnam War's political, economic, social, and cultural legacies. (illustrations, not seen) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


Book Description
Even after two decades, the memory of the Vietnam War seems to haunt our culture. From Forrest Gump to Miss Saigon, from Tim O'Brien's Pulitzer Prize-winning Going After Cacciato to Robert McNamara's controversial memoir In Retrospect, Americans are drawn again and again to ponder our long, tragic involvement in Southeast Asia. Now eminent historian Robert D. Schulzinger has combed the newly available documentary evidence, both in public and private archives, to produce an ambitious, masterful account of three decades of war in Vietnam--the first major full-length history of the conflict to be based on primary sources. In A Time for War, Schulzinger paints a vast yet intricate canvas of more than three decades of conflict in Vietnam, from the first rumblings of rebellion against the French colonialists to the American intervention and eventual withdrawal. His comprehensive narrative incorporates every aspect of the war--from the military (as seen in his brisk account of the French failure at Dienbienphu) to the economic (such as the wage increase sparked by the draft in the United States) to the political. Drawing on massive research, he offers a vivid and insightful portrait of the changes in Vietnamese politics and society, from the rise of Ho Chi Minh, to the division of the country, to the struggles between South Vietnamese president Diem and heavily armed religious sects, to the infighting and corruption that plagued Saigon. Schulzinger reveals precisely how outside powers--first the French, then the Americans--committed themselves to war in Indochina, even against their own better judgment. Roosevelt, for example, derided the French efforts to reassert their colonial control after World War II, yet Truman, Eisenhower, and their advisers gradually came to believe that Vietnam was central to American interests. The author's account of Johnson is particularly telling and tragic, describing how president would voice clear headed, even prescient warnings about the dangers of intervention--then change his mind, committing America's prestige and military might to supporting a corrupt, unpopular regime. Schulzinger offers sharp criticism of the American military effort, and offers a fascinating look inside the Nixon White House, showing how the Republican president dragged out the war long past the point when he realized that the United States could not win. Finally, Schulzinger paints a brilliant political and social portrait of the times, illuminating the impact of the war on the lives of ordinary Americans and Vietnamese. Schulzinger shows what it was like to participate in the war--as a common soldier, an American nurse, a navy flyer, a conscript in the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, a Vietcong fighter, or an antiwar protester. In a field crowded with fiction, memoirs, and popular tracts, A Time for War will stand as the landmark history of America's longest war. Based on extensive archival research, it will be the first place readers will turn in an effort to understand this tragic, divisive conflict.


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