Max Hastings and the Vietnam war

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Christopher Goscha for comments on an earlier draft of this article

Notes

1. Martini, Invisible Enemies, 239.

2. Robert Fox, ‘Vietnam by Max Hastings – review: Less epic tragedy, more epic folly – the Vietnam Conflict,’ The Evening Standard 20 September 2018.

3. Bernard Fall viewed the French debacle before 1954 in similar ‘tragic’ terms.) Fall, Street Without Joy, 17.

4. Howard, “When are Wars Decisive?,” 134.

5. For details see Pribbenow, “General Vo Nguyen Giap and the Mysterious Evolution of the Plan,” 16.

6. Ho Tai, Radicalism and the Origins of the Vietnamese Revolution. This work is not cited by Hastings .

7. Kissinger, Diplomacy, 641. Fir the failed application of modernisation theory to Vietnam see Fisher, “The Illusion of Progress,” 25–61.

8. Kolko, Vietnam, 100.

9. Herr, Dispatches, 96.

10. Moore, We Were Soldiers Once … and Young.

11. Major Harry D Bloomer, ‘An Analysis of the French Defeat t Dien Bien Phu,’ 1991, www.globalSecurity.org. Accessed 18 May 2019.