The New York Review of Books ran an issue on The Meaning of Vietnam.
The disaster of no fault divorce spread to Australia with the Family Law Act 1975.
Last edition:
The U.S. Embassy in Saigon decided that to signal "Evacuation Day" for Americans, the Defense Attaché Office (DAO) radio station would broadcast the phrase "the temperature is 105 degrees and rising" followed by playing Bing Crosby's recording of the song "White Christmas".
The last Australians, including their ambassador, were evacuated by the RAAF.
91.7% of eligible Portuguese voters turned out for the first multiparty election in the country in nearly fifty years. The Socialist Party won 116 of the 250 seats, Social Democrats won 81 and the Portuguese Communist Party 30 seats.
There had been real fears the Communist Party would win.
The Liga Comunista 23 de Septiembre raided a branch of the Banco de Comercio at Villa Coapa, Mexico City, killing six police who were guarding the bank. They killed two more policemen and two bystanders in their escape.
Last edition
With fighting having resumed in 1974, and the North Vietnamese Army having taken Dong Xoai on December 26, the NVA took Phuoc Long city and the surrounding province.
While a violation of the Paris Peace Accord, the US did nothing, which was not a surprise.
We probably need to expand on this a bit.
As the longtime readers of this blog know, we started tracking daily events of the past with the centennial of the Villista raid of Columbus, New Mexico, in 1916. That fit right into the ostensible purpose of the blog. We kept on keeping on with that, and now we're nearly a decade into centennial posts, given that we are now posting on daily events of 1925, when they see worth posting about.
Events fifty years in the past really got rolling here with 1968, an American Annus horribilius, and we've kept that up since then. There are, for example, eight posts to date that reference 1967, but sixty-six that reference 1968.
After 68, we dept tracking important events that were fifty years in the past, although they dropped way off, after 1968, up until 1973, when there were 110. For 74, there were only seventy one. There would have been more, if we'd more closely tracked the Vietnam War, which we should have done.
The Paris Peace Accords were signed on January 27, 1973. The last US troops were gone by March 29, 1973. The highly valued South Korean troops also left in March, 1973. The last Australian troops were six embassy guards, who left, tellingly, on June 30, 1973 a telling withdrawal. By January 4, 1974, the fighting had ramped back up to such an extent that South Vietnam declared them breached and the war ongoing, a declaration that fully reflected reality.
March 1973 saw the end of a process that had begun in 1969, that of drawing down foreign troops in Vietnam. It left the Army of the Republic of Vietnam without foreign troops in support of it in some fashion for the first time.* North Vietnam and South Vietnam had come about due to the peace treaty that ended the French Indochinese War, but the election that was to have taken place in 1955 never occurred. The ARVN theoretically dated to that year, but in reality it dated to 1949 when the French established the Vietnamese National Army for the State of Vietnam, which it created that same year and which had international recognition as part of the French Union at first, and then as an independent state starting in 1954. In reality, therefore, the ARVN had never lacked foreign support dating all the way back to 1949.
US support for the State of Vietnam's successor state, the Republic of Vietnam, was somewhat halting at first, and looking back its amazing to realize that the US was ever in Vietnam. The US had supplied reluctant support to the French in Indochina and carried that on with the State of Vietnam and the Republic of Vietnam, but it was reluctant. The Eisenhower Administration was only halfheartedly a backer of the Republic of Vietnam, not accepting that its status was vital to US interest and also not supporting latent colonial efforts of France and the United Kingdom everywhere. Indeed, Eisenhower proved to be against the much currently discussed "forever wars" more than any President after the Second World War, not being too keen on the French effort in Algeria, and opposed to the French, British and Israeli intervention over the Suez Canal.
Moreover, Eisenhower clashed with the personality of South Vietnamese President Ngô Đình Diệm. Diệm was an anti communist, but he was not really a democrat, being a person who, for lack of a better way to put it, was an early example of a National Conservative (J. D. Vance, R. R. Reno and Rod Dreher would have loved him). He was a Catholic in a majority Buddhist country, albeit one were the influence of Buddhism was waning, and didn't really view Vietnam as a country that was subject to democratic rule, at least at the time.
Things changed with the Kennedy Administration, at least at first, which was much more willing to become involved spats around the world than the Eisenhower Administration was. Kennedy caused the formation of a U.S. military unit, the Special Forced, specifically for this purpose. With Kennedy, in spite of advice to the contrary from Eisenhower, the American involvement in Vietnam became more direct and deeper, with the US giving advice on major tactical oeprations for the first time. The Army of the Republic of Vietnam, however, was not thrilled by the advice it was receiving, viewing its combat history as supporting the proposition that small unit actions in a low grade war, rather than material rich operations, were what best suited its operational environment. It would ultimately be proven to be correct, but much too late.
Kenndy's administration saw Diệm assassinated in a manner which has been remembered much like Chile's Allende episode, which is to say inaccurately. The US was less involved than imagined, but aware enough that it could have taken steps to prevent it and the men on the ground basically knew it was likely to occur and vaguely indicated that the US wouldn't stanad in the way when the South Vietnamese military became discontent with Diệm and hinted that it could overthrow him. So it did, and Diệm was murdered in the resulting coup, something that hadn't been anticipated.
Diệm was killed on November 2, 1963 and Kennedy twenty days later. Kennedy was horrified by Diệm's murder but his administration had been reckless in regard to Diệm, foreign policy, and Vietnam. It seems that Kennedy was at the point where he was inclined to reduce US support for the nation, which was frankly unnatural as it was, but failed to convey this to Lyndon Johnson who felt honor bound to carry on what Kennedy had started.
The increased US participation in Vietnam at the time was due to the urging of Australia, which has largely conveniently forgotten that it was the single most important factor to the US becoming involved. France resented US involvement and hadn't really wished for it to occur. But Australia was so desperate for it to occur that it seriously considered taking on the project for its own.
Australia, with its location on the globe, and its small population, had always depended on another Western power for its protecdtion. It still does. Prior to 1941, that foreign power had been the United Kingdom, and it had been a loyal, if grumpy, member of the British Empire. It had sent troops to the Boer War and World War One, and of course to the effort in World War Two when it came.
For that reason, when the Japanese attacked in the Pacific on December 7 & 8, 1941, Australia was ill prepared to face the crisis. It's troops were fighting in North Africa. It asked for them back, and the British declined. The British, for that matter, soon proved to be totally unable to face the new Japanese threat and began to lose ground everywhere in the Far East. Soon the crown jewel of the British Empire, India, was itself in jeopardy, with Japanese troops advancing into Thailand from Vietnam, which it had taken over after the French defeat in 1940, although not right away, and then on into Brurma.
As the war closed out, Franklin Roosevelt took a dim view of France and the United Kingdom returning to their empires. Roosevelt was an anti colonial. The British and the French were well aware of this, but the British had a massive military force in the field. The US forces in the war had not exceeded the number of British forces in action until late 1944, and in spite of losing a massive amount of ground to the Japanese in 1942, but 1943 it was back in action in a major way. The French situation was distinctly different, however, as its army had been reconstituted during the war, and in North Africa and Europe, and frankly was badly stressed in its makeup between conservative French republicans, French communists, and French North Africans. Roosevelt frankly hadn't planned on helping the French after the war at all.
On March 9, 1945 Japan launched a coup d'etat against what was left of French independence in Vietnam out of fear that French forces would rise up and displace the Japanese, as had happened in North Africa. Roosevelt made it clear that the French were not to reacquire Vietnam, showing a fare amount of naiveity about who woudl come out in the region, and about the communists in general. He died, however on April 12, 1945.
Like Kennedy, Roosevelt had very little contact with his Vice President and Truman came into office without really knowing that Roosevelt had wanted to do. Unlike Johnson, however, Truman didn't really worry about that and made up his own mind on things. He very rapidly came under the influence of the British and French and didn't take the anti colonial view that Roosevelt had. So France, after a brief period of British occupation, in which Japanese troops were used for garrison duties, came back to Indochina.
Ho Chi Minh, the communist leader of the Viet Minh, persuaded French backed Emperor Bảo Đại to abdicate in his favour, on September 2, 1945. Follong theis, Ho Chi Minh declared independence for the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, with hit having to be taken for granted that "Democratic", in the communist context, was a fraud. Vientamese communistm would indeed prove to be just as bloody as communism anywhere else had been. British, Free French, and impressed Japanese troops soon restored French control. Ho Chi Minh agreed to negotiate, but the negotiations failed.
Fighting soon broke out. In 1948 France recognized Indochinese independence with a new State of Vietnam created and Emperor Bảo Đại restored to power. Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia became associated states of the French Union and were granted more autonomy. The communist war against the situation continued on, with the communist being unable to accept any rule other than their own.
The French Indochinese War was fought hte way that Donald Trump would have Ukraine fight, with a poverty of resources. The US did help France, but not to the degree the French would have liked and not to the degree that the French were ever more than fighting the Viet Minh on a more or less equal footing. The French defeat at Dien Bien Phu was only part of a string of such slow losses that doomed their efforts in the region.
As noted, a new political reality that nobody woudl really adhere to emerged in 1954. South Vietnam came about as a republic but not a really well functioning one. North Vietnam became a communist dictatorship bent on taking over the south. The war that had commenced during hte Japanese occupation of the country never really ceased.
It was a low grade war, for the most part, however. Be that as it may, it was serious enough to worry Australia, which saw South Vietnam falling to the North and a new communist nation emerging to its north. Australia, for its part, had its own problems after the war in spite of being a stalwart western ally. Communism in Australia had been strong in the 1930s and emerged strong from World War Two. Conservative forces in Australia came to rely heavily on the Catholic Church and the Irish Catholic population to hold off what was a very real slide on the continent into the far left. Australian communists nearly took the nation into the Soviet bloc.
While that was occurring the Australian government sided with the United Kingdom in regional conflicts against Communist forces, the most notable being the Malaysian Emergency in which Australian troops served. Very successfully waged on a military and political basis, it, along with the early post World War Two American efforts against the Huk Rebellion showed what could be done.
Australia looked at the post Indochinese War sitaution with gravec concern. Indochina seemed to be to Australia what the Japanese expansion of 1942 had been, a stepping stone into Australia itself, where it already was dealing with an extreme left wing movement as it was. World War Two had taught Australia that the United Kingdom was no longer a dependable world power, and duiring hte war it had switched its dependency upon the United States. Accordingly, it agitated iwth the US to become involved, which the Eisenhower Adminisration did on a small scale, and the Kennedy Administration did on a larger one.
By the time of Kennedy's death in 1963 the US was chaning its mind. The ARVN was reluctant in its acceptance of US advice, seening small scale actions with limited recources, like those it had fought with the French, as being what better suited its needs. It was planning for a long police action, in essence, rather than a definitive victory in the field. However, as France could no longer supply the ARVN's needs, which ironially had always depended on US aid in any event, it had little choice.
The US came, Diệm fell, and the war expanded.
As the US tends to do, when the US entered the war, as odd as it was for the US, it did so with great enthusiasm, but a few years later was tired of it. In the mean time, the US commitment to the war had become massive. The level of US participation was in fact destroying the communist effort, proving, in a way, that American advisors had been right. The Tet Offensive of 1968 was a communist last gasp that destroyed the South Vietnamese communist militia, the Viet Cong, and ruined the North Vietnamese Army. Nonetheless, it was a massive propaganda victory for North Vietnam, to its huge surprise, and helped commit the US to a withdrawal from then unpopular war.
In reality, the Nixon Administration had calculated that South Vietnam was doomed and basically forced the Republic of Vietnam into the peace that the Paris Peace Accords produced. The plan was to give the US enough time to leave the country before what Nixon thought would be an ultimate South Vietnamese collapse to provide plausible deniability to the US for the South Vietnamese defeat.
The peace never really broke out, which resulted in the South Vietnamese negotiator to refuse to accept the Nobel Peace Prize that Kissinger accepted. By 1974 a North Vietnamese offensive, although slow moving, was back on, showing the willingness of Communist regimes to kill their population readily. Things were beginning, as today's entry shows, to pick up speed.
Wheel of Fortune, hosted by Chuck Woolery and Susan Stafford, premiered.
Last edition:
*Some French support remained until 1956 by which time US support had already started.
The Republic of Mali invaded the Republic of Upper Volta (Burkina Faso) in a border conflict over water rights.
The United States Senate unanimously (93 to 0) ratified the Geneva Protocol, the "Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use in War of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or other Gases, and of Bacteriological Methods of Warfare", almost 50 years after it had first been signed signed in Switzerland on June 17, 1925, and became effective on February 28, 1928.
Hmmm. . . .
The Safe Drinking Water Act was signed into law.
Probably wouldn't happen today.
ANZUK, a military unit created in 1971 by agreement of Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, was disbanded after slightly more than two years of having been in existence.
No surprise, given the Vietnam War and the "winds of change".
The Towering Inferno premiered. I recall seeing it in the theaters with a friend on a Saturday afternoon, even though I was 11 years old. It was awful.
Frankly, they shouldn't have let us in the movie at all. I'm sure we walked down and watched it, but it features a totally stupid 1970s example of full frontal that serves no purpose other than to be a toss out to the Playboy ethos of the era, which no 11 year old, or 21 year old, or 61 year old, should have to put up with.
It also, fwiw, runs down the National Guard, in the 1970s post Vietnam War style.
And the plot is moronic. One of the 1970s scare movies.
Last edition:
The Weimar Republic announced the first balanced German budget since the end of World War One.
The Soviet Union produced its first domestically manufactured motor vehicle, the AMO-15 truck.
The Alvarado Hot Springs was created when a natural gas exploratory well taped into a geothermal pool in Los Angeles County. It was operated commercially as a hot springs facility until at least 1961, following which it seem to have disappeared from history.
2BE began operating commercially, broadcasting twice a week, in Sydney. Australia's first commercial radio station would close in 1929.
Last edition:
French resistance members began attacks on German troops in Paris.
The uprising forced an Allied reassessment of the line of advance. While French forces very much wanted to take Paris, and probably would have advanced on it no matter what they were told, Eisenhower did not want to as he did not regard the city as strategic and its large civilian population would instantly become a burden Allied supplies.
Unlike the Soviets, however, the Western Allies were not willing to simply let the Germans do what they will with an uprising in a city.
The Battle for Mont Ormel ridge as a final part of the Falaise operation, featuring Polish troops taking on the Germans at Hill 262.
Operation Bagration concluded in a Soviet victory.
American submarines sank troopship Teia Maru (formerly the French ocean liner Aramis), the landing craft depot ship Tamatsu Maru and fleet oiler Hayasui.
German submarines U-123 and U-466 were scuttled.
A referendum to grant the Australian government additional powers over a five year period failed.
Field Marshal Günther von Kluge, age 61, who had fallen under suspicion due to the July 20 plot ,and who had been relieved the day prior, killed himself.
Last edition:
Congress overrode President Coolidge's veto of the World War Adjusted Compensation Act.
I can't say that act was a big surprise.
An image was transmitted by telephone line for the first time. Over two hours, 15 photographic images were transmitted by AT&T from Cleveland to New York City.
Korean nationalist tried, but failed, to assassinate Japanese Governor General of Korea Makoto Saito. The attempt was a clumsy one, involving firing on Saito's boat from the Chinese side of the Yalu.
Dr. Roscoe R. Spencer, after giving himself some time prior his own vaccine for Rocky Mountain Tick Fever, injected himself with "a large does of mashed wood ticks" and did not die, proving that the vaccine worked.
Today it would inspire a bunch of countervailing extreme theories.
Turkey and the United Kingdom failed to reach an accord on the Mosul Question, i.e., who owned the region.
The Royal Australian Air Force completed the first aerial circumnavigation of the continent with a Fairey IIID.
Last prior edition:
Aiden de Brune became the first person to walk all he way around Australia. His return to Melbourne was the completion of a journey he began on September 21, 1921.
A 7.1 magnitude earthquake in Costa Rica resulted in the death of 70 people.
Last prior:
On this day, the Soviets announced the end of the Siege of Leningrad.
Tenuous ground communication with the city had happened prior, but now the relief was solid, and the two year, four months, and five day siege was broken.
The battle was one of the most horrific in human history.
The 34th Infantry Division captured Monte Maiola and Caira.
The Marines expanded the Cape Gloucester beachhead on New Britain.
The governments of Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States protested Japan's treatment of POW's setting the ground for war crime prosecution.
Anglican Peter Jasper Akinola was born in Nigeria. He would rise to the position of Anglican Primate for Nigeria, and while he was a Low Church Anglican, he was staunch in his opposition to Anglican accommodations to homosexuality. He is retired.
President Coolidge was visited by members of Delta Theta Phi, a law fraternity.
On the same day, the Supreme Court of the Soviet Union was established.
Germany banned the Communist and Nazi parties. A third party, the Nationalist Party, was also banned.
Gustav Stresemann lost a vote of confidence in the Reichstag and resigned as the Chancellor of Germany.
Australian radio station 2SB went on the air, giving Australia regular radio programming for the first time. It is still on the air as Radio Sydny.
Watergate prosecutor Archibald Cox was dismissed by the Administration, and attorney General Elliot L. Richardson and deputy attorney General William B. Ruckelshaus resigned. Cox was dismissed by Robert Bork, who later became an unsuccessful Supreme Court nominee, but who nonetheless was influential in the philosophy of the current Supreme Court.
The Sydney Opera House was inaugurated and opened by Queen Elizabeth II.
Saudi Arabia and Algeria halted petroleum exports to the U.S., the embargo now becoming a full-blown disaster.
Libya announced that it would completely halt oil exports to the United States. The U.S. Federal Reserve regards this as the beginning of the full Arab Oil Embargo.
President Nixon rejected the Appeals Court decision that he turn over tapes to Federal investigators. Instead, he proposed to have them transcribed, and then reviewed by Democratic Senator John C. Stennis. Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox rejected the offer and resigned the following day.
Solutions for the Yom Kippur War were being discussed on an international level.
Elizabeth II, on a trip to Australian, signed the Royal Styles and Titles Act and assumed the title of "Queen of Australia". She had previously been "Elizabeth the second, by the grace of God, of the United Kingdom, Australia and her other realms and territories, queen, head of the Commonwealth.".
Naples revolved against German occupation in an event which is known as the Quattro giornate di Napoli.
The British 8th Army entered Foggia, Italy. This placed Allied aircraft within easy range of the Balkans, Southern Germany, and Poland.
The Australian Aboriginal and European Benedictine Catholic community of Kalumburu was attacked by the Imperial Japanese Army Air Force, killing five and destroying its buildings.
Professor Sam Ruben, a co-discoverer of Carbon 14, received a lethal dose of phosgene while working on war related processes. He'd die the following day.
John Curtin, Prime Minister of Australia, retained his position as the Australian Labor Party took 49 of 74 seats in the Australian House of Representatives and 19 out of 36 in the Australian Senate.
Australian troops on New Guinea took Komiatum, southwest of Salamaua.
Frankly Roosevelt and McKenzie King announced that U.S. and Canadian forces had retaken Kiska.
The recapture effectively put the continental United States and the Canadian provinces out of reach of Imperial Japanese forces.
Hal Block, Bob Hope, Barney Dean, Frances Langford and Tony Romano met General George S. Patton at a USO show in Sicily at which Patton asked Hope to tell his radio audience “that I love my men", perhaps hoping to counter the bad publicity that the slapping incident had caused.
You didn't see that in Patton.
From Sarah Sundin's blog:
Today in World War II History—August 21, 1943: First “UT” convoy sails from New York, heavily escorted convoys carrying troops to England in build-up for Operation Overlord (D-day).
.jpg)
Sarah Sundon notes, in her blog:
Today in World War II History—June 18, 1943: Allies intensify bombing of Sicily, Sardinia, and Naples . Australian Prime Minister John Curtin declares that the risk of Japanese invasion is over.
The all black 99th Pursuit Squadron, part of the those groups nicknamed the Tuskegee Airmen, flew in action against the Luftwaffe for the first time when six of their P-40s encountered 12 FW 190s over Pantelleria. The 99th was outmatched in terms of what they were flying but suffered no losses.
Churchill removed Field Marshall Sir Archibald Wavell and Gen. Claude Auchinleck from command by promoting them uphill to Viceroy of India and Commander-in-Chief, India.
One of Wavell's first tasks in India was attempting to relieve the Bengal Famine of 1943. Auchinleck would go on to reorganize the Indian Army.
