was ken burns in vietnam

Full Answer

What are facts about the Vietnam War?

• The Viet Cong were Vietnamese rebels in the South who fought against the Southern Vietnam government and the United States.
• North and South Vietnam were divided at the 17th parallel.
• Ho Chi Minh died during the war in 1969. ...
• The US chosen president of the South Vietnam, Ngo Dinh Diem, was not a good leader. ...
• 58,220 US soldiers died in the Vietnam War. ...

What was life like in the Vietnam War?

What was life like during the Vietnam War? For a large majority of the troops, it was doing a job 5 - 7 days a week wearing unfashionable clothing, eating institutional food, but with the chance of a rocket attack, and dealing with supervisors who might be (in the words of “An Officer and a Gentleman”) the world’s tightest assholes.

Who finally won the Vietnam War?

Through negotiations they will finally be in a position to take over Afghanistan - just as the North Vietnamese finally won the Vietnam War thanks to their private negotiations with Henry Kissinger – when there were no South Vietnamese present to prevent him from selling them out.

Did the Vietnam War hurt or help Vietnam?

Well, of course the Vietnam War was very devastating to the country of Vietnam. Both the North and South were hurt badly. In the North, there was a lot of bombing by American planes. There were...

See more

Did Ken Burns do a documentary on The Vietnam War?

The first episode premiered on PBS on September 17, 2017. The script is by Geoffrey Ward, and the series is narrated by Peter Coyote....The Vietnam War (TV series)The Vietnam WarGenreDocumentaryWritten byGeoffrey C. WardDirected byKen Burns Lynn NovickNarrated byPeter Coyote16 more rows

When was Ken Burns Vietnam?

Brooklyn, New York, U.S. His widely known documentary series include The Civil War (1990), Baseball (1994), Jazz (2001), The War (2007), The National Parks: America's Best Idea (2009), Prohibition (2011), The Roosevelts (2014), The Vietnam War (2017), and Country Music (2019).

How long is Ken Burns Vietnam?

18 hoursAnyway, this is a lot of throat clearing to tell you that Ken Burns and Lynn Novick's very ambitious (and very long—10 parts, spanning 18 hours) documentary, The Vietnam War, is worth the investment.

What is the best Vietnam War documentary?

Here is our top five list:In the Year of the Pig (1968) This documentary has long been touted as one of the best documentaries about the Vietnam War by film critics. ... Vietnam: The Ten Thousand Day War (1980) ... The War at Home (1979) ... Hearts and Minds (1974) ... The Vietnam War (2017)

Did Netflix remove The Vietnam War documentary?

“Following a written legal demand from the Vietnamese regulator, we have removed the licensed series, Pine Gap, from Netflix in Vietnam, to comply with local law,” Netflix said in an emailed statement.

Why did the French colonize Vietnam?

The decision to invade Vietnam was made by Napoleon III in July 1857. It was the result not only of missionary propaganda but also, after 1850, of the upsurge of French capitalism, which generated the need for overseas markets and the desire for a larger French share of the Asian territories conquered by the West.

How long did China rule Vietnam?

For over thousands of years, China ruled over Vietnam from 111 B.C. — 980 A.D. During the period, many Chinese culture wonders influenced the small country of the world. One of its influence was the classical Chinese writing.

Why did The Vietnam War start?

The United States entered Vietnam with the principal purpose of preventing a communist takeover of the region. In that respect, it failed: the two Vietnams were united under a communist banner in July 1976. Neighbouring Laos and Cambodia similarly fell to communists.

Who was Vietnam colonized by?

FrenchVietnam became a French colony in 1877 with the founding of French Indochina, which included Tonkin, Annam, Cochin China and Cambodia. (Laos was added in 1893.) The French lost control of their colony briefly during World War II, when Japanese troops occupied Vietnam.

How many US soldiers died in Vietnam?

58,220 U.S.The Vietnam Conflict Extract Data File of the Defense Casualty Analysis System (DCAS) Extract Files contains records of 58,220 U.S. military fatal casualties of the Vietnam War.

What is the most realistic war movie?

The Most Realistic War FilmsDunkirk (2017) PG-13 | 106 min | Action, Drama, History. ... Saving Private Ryan (1998) R | 169 min | Drama, War. ... Band of Brothers (2001) TV-MA | 594 min | Drama, History, War. ... Downfall (2004) ... Schindler's List (1993) ... Black Hawk Down (2001) ... War Horse (2011) ... The Hurt Locker (2008)More items...

How long was the Vietnam War?

The Vietnam War may have defined 1960s and 1970s America, but it lasted 10 years by the most widely accepted metric (and, officially, it was never a war at all).

What war did Ho Chi Minh end?

01: Déjà Vu (1858-1961) After a long and brutal war, Vietnamese revolutionaries led by Ho Chi Minh end nearly a century of French colonial occupation. With the Cold War intensifying, Vietnam is divided in two at Geneva.

Who began withdrawing American troops from Vietnam?

With morale plummeting in Vietnam, President Nixon begins withdrawing American troops. As news breaks of an unthinkable ma...

Who critiqued Ken Burns and Lynn Novick's documentary The Vietnam War?

In this article based on remarks given at the Institute of World Politics, Mark Moyar critiques Ken Burns and Lynn Novick’s documentary The Vietnam War. This article was originally published in the Winter 2018 issue of Providence ‘s print edition.

How many Communists defected to Vietnam in 1967?

Ultimately, about 200,000 supposedly die-hard Communists defected to South Vietnam.

Why did I start studying the Vietnam War?

The reason I started studying the Vietnam War 25 years ago was due to my belief that the anti-war left unfairly besmirched America’s Vietnam veterans. Although Burns and Novick don’t besmirch veterans as flagrantly, their misrepresentation of the war and its warriors has reopened old wounds. It’s not just Vietnam veterans’ reputations at stake; how we view this war shapes how we view ourselves as Americans. Burns and his interviewees go out of their way to claim that the Vietnam War debunked the notion of American exceptionalism. They seem to want us to believe that the US, the world’s first modern democracy and principal guardian of the world order since 1945, is on a moral par with North Vietnam, a dictatorship that waged several brutal wars in the name of Marxism-Leninism and slaughtered tens of thousands of civilians before deciding that Marxism-Leninism wasn’t such a good idea.

How many battles did Burns and Novick focus on?

Burns and Novick focus on six battles in the episodes covering 1966-67, and in each they go out of their way to highlight errors that the Americans committed as well as American casualties. They produce the impression that this was simply how the war was in 1966-67.

What battle did Burns highlight?

Burns later highlights the Battle of Ap Bac in January 1963, in which the South Vietnamese forces did not perform very well, and then he tries to portray that fight as representative of the South’s abilities under President Ngo Dinh Diem. But, in fact, the South Vietnamese government was victorious in almost every other battle in the year before and after Ap Bac.

When did Vietnam split into two?

When Vietnam was divided into two in 1954, the Vietnamese Communists and French agreed the country would unify and hold an election in 1956. When the documentary says the South Vietnamese government did not go along with plan, it repeats the old insinuation that Saigon opposed the Vietnamese people’s will.

Did Ken Burns go to Vietnam?

We know Burns opposed the war at the time and decided not to go to Vietnam.

What channel is Ken Burns' documentary on?

Ken Burns and Lynn Novick’s documentary on the Vietnam War began airing on PBS last night after much anticipation.

How did Burns and Novick mislead viewers?

Burns and Novick mislead viewers further by showing footage of North Vietnamese migrating to the South fleeing communist terror and interviewing a woman whose family fled while leaving out the fact that the CIA worked to sabotage North Vietnam’s economy, created a fake resistance movement and coerced many Catholics and others to flee by spreading false rumors about Vietminh atrocities and promising them 40 acres and a mule.

What was the training program for the CIA in the 1950s?

Burns and Novick also leave out some of the sinister aspects of nation building in the late 1950s, such as the police training program led by CIA advisers working under the cover of Michigan State University (MSU) who imported surveillance equipment and built up Diem’s secret police.

Who is Ken Burns?

Novelist Robert Stone once likened the Vietnam War to a piece of shrapnel “embedded in our definition of who we are.” Who better to extract that shrapnel than Ken Burns, America’s preeminent documentary filmmaker ? Ever since his definitive 1990 series, The Civil War, attracted a record 40 million viewers to PBS, Burns has been tackling historical topics ranging from jazz and the national parks to World War II, often in collaboration with director Lynn Novick. Ten years in the making, The Vietnam War, Burns and Novick’s 10-part journey into the most divisive of our 20th-century conflicts, premieres September 17 on PBS. (Read Klay’s interview with Novick at the bottom of this post.)

What is the most interesting thing about Vietnam?

What’s interesting about Vietnam is that sentimentality is just not there, so you’re given kind of a clean access to it in one way. It’s also a war that represents a failure for the United States. Many people came back feeling like they never wanted to talk about it again. And so we developed a national amnesia.

How many presidents were in Vietnam?

PK: Vietnam was carried out under five presidents. Iraq and Afghanistan are on their third. Did this series make you more hopeful about America’s ability to wrap up these conflicts—or less?

When did Marines carry their wounded during firefight?

Marines carrying their wounded during firefight near the DMZ. 1966.

Did the Civil Rights Movement have a disproportionate number of African Americans serving in combat roles?

But as the civil rights movement reached a fever pitch, there was a disproportionate number of African Americans serving in combat roles and therefore being wounded and killed. The military, to their credit, did try to address this.

Was the massacre of civilians after the Tet Offensive Battle of Hue acknowledged by the Vietnamese government?

You see them beginning to cop to stuff; the massacre of civilians after [the Tet Offensive battle of] Hue has never been acknowledged by the Vietnamese government, and we’ve got two of their soldiers describing it as an atrocity.

Who were the heroes in Burns and Novick's Vietnam?

The only heroes in Burns and Novick’s Vietnam are American servicemen and I am thrilled to see them finally recognized for what they went through. We have moving back stories of their homes, their motives for joining, their families waiting for them.

What is the Burns documentary about?

The documentary focuses our compassion on the American pilots who dropped the bombs.

How many Americans were killed in Vietnam?

Vietnamese soldiers killed some 58,000 Americans and wounded a couple of hundred thousand more. Buns and Novick put the number of Vietnamese we killed at 3 million, but most experts say it was more like 4 million and Vietnam says it’s 6 million, with more people continuing to die from unexploded ordinance and Agent Orange. We destroyed 60% of their villages, sprayed 21 million gallons of lethal poisons, imposed free fire zones (a euphemism for genocide) on 75% of South Vietnam. They attacked US military bases in their country and never killed an American on American soil. There are no equivalences here.

What is the central flaw of Burns and Novick's film?

To me, this is the central flaw of Burns and Novick’s film, their failure to deal truthfully and equally with the peace movement. Six million Americans took part in the anti-war effort (only 2.7 million Americans served as soldiers). Everyone I knew in the peace movement honored the veterans and wanted justice for them. They studied books, took part in teach-ins, and watched newsreels. But Burns and Novick, with a couple of notable exceptions, characterize the peace movement as uninformed, chaotic, disrespectful, self absorbed and violent. At one point, they intercut 1969 pictures of kids at Woodstock wallowing in great music with soldiers fighting in Vietnam. What was that supposed to mean?

Why was North Vietnam important to the US?

Our earlier trips to North Vietnam were important, because we were the only Americans to witness the destruction being rained down on North Vietnam. Burns’ documentary shows lots of aerial shots of bombs and napalm going off (Mussolini’s son called them rosebuds blooming in the desert when he attacked Ethiopia) but very few shots of the bomb’s effects on the ground in North Vietnam. We hear talk of precision bombing, but those of us who traveled to North Vietnam observed hospitals, schools, churches, markets, and working class neighborhoods utterly destroyed. And this was ten years before the war ended!

Why are we reliving the Vietnam War?

We are reliving the Vietnam War because no one was ever really held responsible for its horrors.

What was the lack of accountability in Vietnam?

It’s the lack of accountability, the failure to prosecute those who lied to get us into the war, who encouraged battlefield tactics that resulted in the massacre of women and children, who authorized the indiscriminate bombing of civilian targets, who drenched Vietnam in chemical poisons that will cause birth defects and death for generation.

What conclusions does Burns make in the end?

In the end, Burns offers no conclusions , other than that the war, as Coyote says, was a “tragedy.”

What were the concerns of the VVA documentary?

Without VVA’s input, many of us had concerns that the documentary would paint an unfairly negative picture of the men and women who took part in the war. There also were concerns that the film would denigrate our service by showing only the worst actions of a few troops. And that it would not tell the true story of the war.

How long was the Vietnam War documentary?

Ten years in the making. A reported budget of $30 million. A crew of dozens. That’s what I knew about “The Vietnam War,” the ten-part, eighteen-hour documentary directed by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick that begins airing tomorrow night, September 17, on PBS stations across the country.

Does the Vietnam War denigrate the American military?

Those concerns, I am pleased (and relieved) to report, disappeared after I watched all eighteen hours of the documentary. The good news is that “The Vietnam War” does not do anything whatsoever to demean, demonize, or denigrate the service of the American men and women who served in the war. Many stories are told and all show us doing our jobs in often impossible situations.

Is the Memo to Ken Burns documentary inappropriate?

Also, the documentary focuses almost entirely on those who served in the combat arms. Which is understandable and not inappropriate. However, Burns and company give but a very, ...

Do Vietnam veterans watch it alone?

Vietnam Veterans of America is well aware that these scenes and others may bring back powerful emotional memories among Vietnam War veterans. We urge veterans not to watch it alone.

Is Burns and Company accurate?

As far as the history Burns and company spin out, it is accurate, going back to the Fren ch colonization in 1858 and covering World War II, the French War, and the American War. I found only a few very minor errors and omissions. The narrator, Peter Coyote (whose grave voice, tone, and inflection work very well, by the way), ...

Who wrote the Civil War documentary?

More importantly, when Burns wrote, directed, and produced the Civil War documentary, it was already a century and a quarter, or more in the past. At the time it came out on PBS all of those involved in the tensions, the issues, and the horrors of that profoundly important moment in the history of this country, either as soldiers, or civilians, or politicians were all long gone to their graves. That historical distance, in my opinion, shaped Burns’ ability to simply tell the story from all angles without prejudice.

Is Burns' intentions good?

I think that Burns’ intentions are good. He seems to want to bring about some healing to the nation around the divisions and still open wounds of the Vietnam War through this documentary. If he can break through, or somehow ignore his own prejudices, feelings, and experiences from that time, it might be a good thing.

Did Ken Burns serve in Vietnam?

Here’s why I think that. Ken Burns is of the Vietnam War generation. He did not serve. Indeed, he was not supportive of the war like so many of his fellow college age students at the time. We all know that the opinions held by both sides of the issue in this country were not just casual opinions expressed at dinner parties. They were passionately held and often expressed with open hostility. The documentary has been written about extensively in the media in such organs as Mother Jones and the Los Angeles Times. And much of the promo ads I’ve seen have been a factor in some of my thinking on it.

Is the Vietnam War still alive?

There are still millions alive today who lived it, both as soldiers, or as protesters. The “opinions,” the experiences, the physical and emotional after effects, and the memories are still very much alive in all of these. There is no grace of historical distance, as there was when Burns did the Civil War documentary. The Vietnam War is still alive in the hearts and souls of those who fought it in uniform and those who fought against it. I fear that because of this, there is a real danger that the still festering wounds, of both the veteran and the protester communities will be opened up again and that this will simply crack open again the political, emotional, social fault lines that cause so much division in those of the Vietnam War generation.