MicrosoftWordDocument.docVIP

The War at Home Peter Filene Introduction: The American experience in the Vietnam War during 1961 to 1973 was bloody, bitter, and ultimately devastating. This was, after all, Americans’ only defeat (unless you count the defeat of the Southern Confederacy). But the war at home proved to be even more devastating than the war in Vietnam. It divided Americans against each other: dove against hawk; middle class against working class; young against old. At home Americans engaged in a civil war about Vietnam. Two wars: This was a very different kind of war from the one that Americans had recently fought against Germany, Italy and Japan. World War II was a total war. Overseas, in Europe and the Pacific battlefields, seven times as many American servicemen died as in Vietnam. At home, most young men were in uniform. Civilians underwent geographic dislocation and dealt with rationing of everything from cars to nylons. Most important, it was a patriotic war, and a war that ended in victory. Vietnam was a limited war. Overseas, 58,000 American dead (and let’s not forget the several million dead Vietnamese, military and civilian). At home, only 40 percent of draft-age men served, and only 10 percent went to Vietnam; There was no dislocation and no rationing. Nevertheless, it became an increasingly unpopular war, and ended in a defeat. Let me draw the contrast in different terms. Think of each war as a story-line. WWII involved distinct, dramatic signposts: Pearl Harbor, D-Day, V-E Day, V-J Day. Americans could think of it as a narrative that began with hardship and ended with triumph. Vietnam had no signposts. When did it begin? When was the turning-point? As one historian has remarked: What marked the era was a seeming loss of the defining moment and therefore of a well-anchored, widely shared sense of history itself. 1965-67 During the Kennedy years, most Americans were unaware of Vietnam. In 1964, Lyndon Johnson won a landslide victory.