Original subtitles

♪ When logic and proportion ♪

♪ Have fallen sloppy dead ♪

♪ And the White Knight is talking backwards ♪

♪ And the Red Queen's off with her head ♪

♪ Remember what the dormouse said ♪

♪ Feed your head ♪

♪ Feed your head ♪

(helicopter blades whirring)

(explosion)

♪ War, huh, yeah ♪

♪ What is it good for ♪

♪ Absolutely nothing ♪

♪ Uh ha haa ha ♪

- [Narrator] The fear of encroaching Communism drew America

into the conflict of the Vietnam war.

♪ War, huh, yeah ♪

- Fear scares the hell out of everybody,

and who pays for it?

- If they were so gung ho about attacking

the North Vietnamese, they made some serious mistakes.

♪ I said war, huh, yeah ♪

- [Narrator] At first, the 400 special forces were just sent

as advisors to the Vietnamese,

but these numbers was soon to escalate.

- The word adviser needs to be taken with a grain of salt.

Pilots were flying missions, helicopters,

large amounts of military equipment were being supplied

by the United States.

- We did the only anti-coverage in America going on then.

You couldn't come out against the war.

Kids were beaten up by cops in every town and city

in America for coming out against the war.

♪ The thought of war blows my mind ♪

- [Narrator] Public opinion, which had supported the war

at first, turned when endless battles were shown

nightly on television without any sign of success.

- Because of the exposure,

the American public became suddenly aware

of how self-destructive this war was.

- I was aghast at the number of people who really had

no concept at all of what the war was about

in a fighting sense.

♪ It ain't nothing but a heartbreaker ♪

- [Narrator] The age of Aquarius brings civil descent,

peace marches, the death of a president,

and a North Vietnamese leader who is playing a patient game.

- When you put young men in harm's way, they do bad things.

- Were there any Americans who thought

the Americans were gonna win the war?

So what are you doing in the jungle?

♪ Good God y'all ♪

(explosion)

♪ What is it good for ♪

♪ Say it, say it, say it, say it ♪

♪ War, good God y'all ♪

(weapons firing)

♪ What is it good for ♪

- From Dallas, Texas, the flash apparently official,

President Kennedy died at 1:00 PM Central Standard Time.

Vice President Lyndon Johnson has left the hospital

in Dallas, but we do not know to where he has proceeded.

Presumably he will be taking the oath of office shortly,

and become the 36th president of the United States.

- [Narrator] Lyndon Johnson has made his way

to the presidential plane.

There, he takes the oath of office,

ensuring that presidential power is unbroken.

♪ This is the end ♪

The first milestone of his presidency was the signing

of the new Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law.

The Gulf of Tonkin incident is used

by Johnson to launch into the war.

He has kept things low key till now,

in order to be reelected.

As an ex-Navy man, he is keen to take up the challenge

to finish the war, and retaliates with air attacks.

(jet engine roaring)

- The determination of all Americans to carry out

our full commitment to the people and to the government

of South Vietnam will be redoubled by this outrage.

- [Narrator] America has misinterpreted

Hồ Chí Minh's intentions, and instead of supporting him

earlier against the French, they opposed him.

Hồ Chí Minh was a nationalist, but with no other support,

he had to turn to the Russians,

into the arms of the Communists.

- He wasn't a screaming, nationalist fanatic,

didn't come across as a fanatic at all.

- He wasn't a communist.

He was a nationalist.

I mean, he was a great hero to his country, you know?

- I mean, they called him Uncle Hồ, and he looked

like your uncle, and it was, he was smiling,

and he looked like a lovely guy.

- [Johnson] The vast Mekong River can provide food,

and water, and power on a scale to dwarf even our own TVA.

- [Narrator] Johnson was in the mindset that if he went

in with force, Hồ Chí Minh would capitulate.

Johnson offers Hồ Chí Minh a vast development program

for Vietnam if they pull back.

- [Johnson] And we remain ready with this purpose

for unconditional discussions.

(audience applause)

- [Narrator] Hồ Chí Minh calculates that he

and General Giáp will eventually rid Vietnam

of this American influence in the south.

- President Johnson, for all his great virtues,

wasn't very strong foreign policy.

He believed that overwhelming force worked.

He was a great Texan wheeler dealer.

He figured that have he waved the big stick,

he could negotiate with Hồ Chí Minh.

Hồ Chí Minh didn't want to negotiate with anyone.

- In my view, on reflection of course, is that

we may have picked her on the side when it came

to Hồ Chí Minh in particular, and General Giáp.

We were stuck with it,

and then all these murderous bombing runs began.

- [Narrator] Johnson retaliates

with Operation Rolling Thunder.

(explosions)

- The Americans, not being able politically to invade

North Vietnam, tried to bomb it into a car park.

♪ All the leaves are brown ♪

♪ And the sky is gray ♪

- [Narrator] President Johnson is advised that

the U.S. air field at Da Nang is vulnerable to attack

from the North Vietnamese,

and the South Vietnamese army lacks

the strength to defend it.

♪ I'd be safe and warm ♪

- [Johnson] I have asked the commanding general,

General Westmoreland, what more he needs to meet

this mounting aggression.

♪ On such a winter's day ♪

♪ Stopped into a church ♪

- [Narrator] General Westmoreland requests

a few battalions to protect the air field.

This is the first of many requests for further troops,

and by the end of the year,

numbers of us troops would rise to 200,000.

♪ I began to pray ♪

- It escalated and escalated.

LBJ escalated, and then everybody was escalating, you know?

- Suddenly, everyone in America is affected.

- [Narrator] The bombing campaign

and increasing troops does little to stop

the North Vietnamese army moving personnel and supplies

through Laos and into South Vietnam.

American B-52 planes are sent in to bomb

North Vietnam for the first time.

These continuous, devastating, air raids would last

for three years, and include

the heavy deployments of agent orange.

- Agent orange was actually used on American highways

to keep the weeds down off the side of the expressways,

but it was used in massive amounts in Vietnam,

and it was dioxin, which causes cancer and birth defects.

♪ And the sky is gray ♪

- [Narrator] As more and more U.S. troops are sent

to Vietnam, the stark reality of the war hits

home in America.

- [Reporter] Anti-war demonstrators protest

U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.

- [Narrator] Public support for the war begins to slide,

as anti-war demonstrations increase in the U.S.

- [Reporter] The estimated 125,000 Manhattan marchers

include students, housewives, beatnik poets, doctors,

businessmen, teachers, priests, and nuns.

Make up and costumes where bizarre.

- [Narrator] In a major war effort,

the ground offensive, Operation Cedar Falls begins.

30,000 U.S. and South Vietnamese troops are sent to destroy

Viet Cong operations, and supply sites near Saigon.

Protests, rallies, and marches against the war

in Vietnam continued to increase.

Veterans from World War I, World War II, and Korea stage

a protest in New York City.

Muhammad Ali was world champion from 1964 until 1967,

when he was stripped of his titles.

He caused a sensation when he refused to be inducted

into the Army.

- You my enemy.

My enemies are white people, not Viet Congs,

or Chinese, or Japanese.

That's all, no comment on boxing, religion, induction,

no comments on the weather or nothing.

- He refused to step forward.

He was sentenced to five years in jail.

They took, they stripped his title.

While he was waiting for the Supreme Court to decide

his fate, he spent his time going to colleges,

talking to all over the country.

He gave young people the guts to come out against the war.

♪ You know I caught my old lady messin' 'round town ♪

- [Narrator] Other artist activists, such as Joan Baez,

Pete Seeger, and Bob Dylan had joined what was to become

an international movement against the Vietnam War.

In April, 1967, Martin Luther King Jr. makes

a powerful speech.

Previously, he had not been vocal about Vietnam

in order not to upset President Johnson,

as the civil rights legislation was going through

during his presidency.

He speaks out against U.S. policy in Vietnam,

calling America the greatest purveyor

of violence in the world.

He publicly denounces their military presence in Vietnam,

and proposes a merger of the anti-war

and civil rights movement.

- The promises of the great society have been shot down

on the battle field of Vietnam.

The pursuit of this widened wall has narrowed

the promised dimensions of its domestic welfare programs,

making the poor white and Negro bear the heaviest burdens,

both at the front and at home.

♪ Hey Joe, where you goin' with that gun in your hand ♪

- [Narrator] In June, 1967,

the first Monterey Pop Festival takes place,

showcasing many artists who've been expressing

their anti-Vietnam feelings.

When Jimmy Hendrix takes to the stage,

many young men in the audience already have

their draft papers.

♪ You know I caught her messin' 'round with another man ♪

- You had Ravi Shankar on one side,

and then you have The Who smashing up guitars on the other,

and Jimi Hendrix, somewhere in the middle.

And that would certainly have been a kind of rallying cry

for, you know, increasing anti-Vietnam sentiment.

- [Narrator] There had been various incidents

of burning draft cards, but this was brought

into intense focus when it was acted out

in the musical Hair in New York, in October, 1967.

- People in colleges were pretty well organized

by this time, because they'd been fighting for civil rights,

so they knew how to protest,

and this essentially divides the country,

that the younger generation know how to cause trouble,

know how to, if necessary, avoid the draft,

and flee to Canada, whereas the older people remember

World War II, and remember being right.

- [Narrator] 1967, the summer of love, had

a bloody underbelly.

Young American boys are sent to fight

their counterparts in Vietnam.

This will be brought to a terrifying conflagration

with the shock of the Tet Offensive

(explosion)

♪ Tell me what's goin' on ♪

♪ What's goin' on ♪

Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, visits

General Westmoreland to assess the situation on the ground.

Their advice to President Johnson is taken up,

and troop numbers are eventually increased

to more than 500,000.

(explosion)

As more and more U.S. troops enter Vietnam,

the siege of Khe Sanh begins, and the Marines are cut off.

(explosion)

- The United States have begun to suspect

that the North Vietnamese strategy was to lure

the Americans into a remote outpost.

The Americans thought that they could win there

if they built up enough forces,

and win a conventional battle against the North Vietnamese,

and so they built up the large base of Khe Sanh.

They expected that the attack would come there,

and indeed it built up all through December and January.

(explosions)

- [Narrator] However, this was a distraction

from the main event.

On the night of January 30th, the Vietnamese new year,

some 80,000 Viet Cong attack 36 capitals, 64 towns,

and four American bases.

Around 4,000 Viet Cong attack Saigon,

occupy the grounds of the U.S. embassy,

and hit General Westmoreland's headquarters.

This was known as the Tet Offensive.

Americans have to engage intense force to recover

from the sudden onslaught.

(weapons firing)

- The Americans think they're in control of the country.

Then comes the Tet Offensive.

Tet is the Vietnamese lunar new year.

The Americans say that there's no chance

that Viet Congs will attack them during the Tet.

It would be like starting the offensive on Christmas day.

It wouldn't happen.

However, again, nobody read the Vietnamese history books.

The Vietnamese won one of the greatest victories

against the Chinese attacking on Tet.

- The Tet Offensive was essentially led

by the Southern Vietnamese communists,

the Viet Cong, backed by the North Vietnamese,

but it was a Viet Cong-inspired uprising.

- Dozens and dozens of cities came

under near simultaneous attack

by mostly NLF Southern guerillas who had been moved

into position, largely unknown to the U.S. forces.

- Suddenly, in every town and city in South Vietnam,

there are explosions going off.

There's gunfire.

The Viet Cong even send a suicide squad

into the American embassy, and they hold it for hours.

This is on American television.

The Americans see their own embassy occupied by the enemy.

- The fact that the Viet Cong had entered

the American embassy in Saigon, and caused a great deal

of damage, shattered public opinion and American faith

in winning the war, if the war was ever winnable.

- Well, they can't believe what they're seeing.

They're being told that they're winning this war,

and it doesn't seem that they are.

(explosion)

- [Narrator] The battle for Huế was the response to Tet,

to endeavor to take back the territory

that had been lost to the Viet Cong.

It's regarded as one of the bloodiest and longest battles

of the Vietnam War, ending in March, 1968.

- [Reporter] Fighting is violent,

and if ever a Marine had to rely on his own quickness

and toughness, this was it.

(weapon firing)

House to house, street to street, for three long weeks.

(weapons firing)

- Massive retaliation was taken,

and the Viet Cong were swept out of the cities,

and largely annihilated.

And this is again, was part of Hồ Chí Minh's strategy,

because he realized that

eventually he was going to win the war,

and he didn't want these annoying southerners,

many of whom were,

the Viet Cong weren't necessarily Communists,

they were just nationalists.

He wanted to get rid of them,

and this was a wonderful way to do it.

- This meant that the North Vietnamese forces,

which had not even appeared in many parts of the south,

for instance, the Mekong Delta by that time,

now began to play a much bigger role in the war,

and it became necessary for the Communist forces to have

North Vietnamese reinforcements to keep up

their level of activity.

(weapons exploding)

- [Reporter] After the first day,

Marines own just two blocks of the city,

two blocks, and the price is dear.

- Militarily, it was a defeat for them,

but in political and public relations terms,

it was a huge success, and badly damaged American morale,

particularly at home, and the tide of war changed.

- [Reporter] On the north side of the river,

the enemy's position begins to crumble.

Marines, along with the South Vietnamese army marine

and ranger units, move into the Imperial Palace.

(weapons firing)

- The great strategist was Hồ Chí Minh,

because he realized fighting Americans,

it wasn't about what actually happened in Vietnam.

It was what happened on the television sets

in the United States.

So if he could get the war on the news every night,

he knew that America would tire of it sooner or later,

and he'd get his way.

(weapons exploding)

- [Reporter] Finally, the job is finished,

25 days of heavy fighting, enemy losses in the thousands,

and each Marine knows he's been a part

of a historic battle, knows he rates

the traditional, "Well done."

- [Narrator] Although America did win back their territory,

this was a huge turning point in the war,

as America loses its appearance of invincibility.

- Vietnam was the first television war.

It was on the nightly news in America,

and it was on the news here in the UK,

and so had a phenomenal impact.

- It was in American living rooms every evening.

♪ It's getting near dawn ♪

- Now CIA men and MPS have gone into the embassy,

and are trying to get the snipers out.

- This is the main Vietnamese language radio station

in Saigon, and right now-

- It went on and on and on,

and of course the people in America knew

that their sons were going,

and there were shots of the body bags coming home,

and it's terribly demoralizing.

America has this great sort of culture of winning,

and they believed that with their wealth,

their technical expertise, and their manpower,

that they could do anything.

- [Reporter] The smoke turned on us again,

and out of it, in the briefest lull in the crossfire,

soldiers came running out, carrying children.

- Every time you went around the corner,

you see a palm leaf move,

and you think, "Christ, it's an ambush."

Every time you see a junk, you think,

"Oh, it's full of explosives."

I mean,

this is how American television had weaned me in to Vietnam.

(weapons firing)

So I went out there convinced

I was either gonna be killed,

or I was gonna fail in the story.

My very first story of Vietnam, Apocalypse Now,

the scene where they're on that little boat,

big machine gun up there.

Well, that was my first story,

River Marine Patrol, it was called,

and I was absolutely terrified,

I mean, really quite terrified.

(helicopters roaring) (explosions)

Patrols like these in the Mekong Delta are convinced

that they're winning their war against the VC.

They've put a success there, as evidence of their success,

the number of VC dead, and the number of VC defectors,

but they have, nonetheless, the substantial backing

of thousands of well-armed and well-trained troops,

plus barrack ships, helicopters, and gunships,

and the river Marine force.

The problem with TV is that when there was

big things happening in Vietnam,

your bosses wanted daily news.

(weapons firing)

- Television journalists would go to a battlefield,

but they would have to leave the battlefield

by a certain time to get back to Saigon Airport,

and ship their film to Hong Kong.

- There were no satellites, of course.

We're shooting film.

Usually if you're doing a feature story,

you just get it to New York, then they would develop it,

and edit it with your narration.

Now, it's sort of hard. I think for journalists,

TV journalists today to relate to the fact

that we were writing our narrations

without ever having seen the film that we were narrating.

You just watched what you were covering.

You watched what your camera man was filming.

You wrote to what you thought he had filmed,

and then you laid down the narration, and off it went.

- The fire spreads, the people leave, and in no time at all,

that area is charred, and ruined, and destroyed.

You couldn't go too far,

so my area of operations tended to be done

in the Mekong, which, as it turns out,

was a pretty dangerous place to be anyway.

(weapons firing)

- [Reporter] For one moment they panicked, and rightly so.

The mortar hit right in the middle of them down there.

- After six in the evening, there was nothing to do.

That's when we all got into trouble.

And now, I mean, there was nothing like 24 hours news.

And I remember when a satellite first came up,

it was Charles Collingwood who said to me,

"Our glory days are over.

We're gonna have to work for a living now."

- [Narrator] The journalists working

out of Saigon all seemed to have

a huge affection for the city.

It is their retreat from the war,

a short helicopter ride away.

Nothing could be more of a contrast to the war

than their cocktail hour back at the hotels.

- We stayed at a hotel in Lạm Sơn Square,

which is bang next to the Congress Building,

the safest part of town.

That little center seemed to be protected.

Saigon was a fantastic place to be.

- Not a very exciting atmosphere.

Didn't seem to be in great danger at that time.

There were French restaurants.

There were, there was an old French residual community there

who were very attached to Vietnam,

who had Vietnamese wives, a lot of them.

- It was French, you know, the wide streets, the plazas,

the squares, the trees, the flowers, and the restaurants.

You could go to war in the most horrific circumstances,

and see some rather dreadful things,

and then you'd come back and got into Saigon,

cross the road, and have the most superb French meal

with quite excellent French wine.

(weapons exploding)

- [Narrator] The American public has no escape from the war.

General Westmoreland's requests for more troops had required

students to be drafted.

This results in an increase in demonstrations,

as the public feel helpless against this distance struggle.

The Hồ Chí Minh Trail was developed

from earlier footpaths used for trading.

It started just south of Hanoi,

and due to the mountain range Trong Song,

the trail dropped into Laos and Cambodia,

and then into South Vietnam, west of Đà Lạt.

At first, it took several months to reach the south.

However, the volume of traffic expanded gradually,

from carrying loads on soldiers' backs or in carts,

to improvements being made to accommodate heavy trucks.

Dotted along the routes were fuel storage tanks,

and field hospitals.

The trail was covered by the heavy jungle canopy,

and therefore hidden from U.S. bombing raids,

until the bombing became so intense, destroying the jungle,

and using agent orange to defoliate.

Even so, the determination

of the North Vietnamese would just make

another path around to join the trail again.

This trail was supplying several hundred thousand troops

in the south against the U.S.

- My unit was trying to achieve a workable interdiction

of the Hồ Chí Minh Trail where it came into South Vietnam,

north of Saigon.

- They armed Hồ Chí Minh trail with a supply trail

that ramped down through Laos,

and laterally through Cambodia.

- The Hồ Chí Minh Trail was, in fact, a series of trails,

some of them big enough to take vehicles down

as they carried the stuff.

It was weapons, food, medicine, that sort of thing

for the fighters in the south,

either North Vietnamese or Viet Cong.

(explosion)

So the bulk of the people we fought in firefights were

either North Vietnamese coming down the trail, or Viet Cong.

- The great story of the war, the best story

of the war was never told,

because the best story of the war was the Hồ Chí Minh Trail.

How the guys got from North Vietnam,

from Hanoi, to a large extent, into South Vietnam,

and when they got to South Vietnam,

managed to fight is superhuman.

- A year of my life was spent either ambushing people,

or trying to avoid being ambushed by them.

That was it.

It was ambush warfare,

and that's what the nature of the firefights were.

- The fantasy, the journalistic fantasy was to go

down the trail with the North Vietnamese,

but it never happened.

- [Reporter] For years now,

the Viet Cong have been strong in the Delta.

It's where they've always raised taxes, food, and recruits,

and recently, they've even been enrolling boys

of 14 and 15, but the Americans say

that since the Tet Offensive,

Viet Cong tactics have become much more aggressive.

- Pressure came down from the top levels to inflate

the body count, and sometimes this was done

with false reporting of the number

of Communists killed in particular actions,

but also including civilian casualties in the body count.

- [Reporter] The Americans thought they'd succeeded

in keeping at least the main waterways

of the delta clear of Viet Cong,

but now they find that they are not safe, even there.

- The person who first realized

Hồ Chí Minh's strategy was Robert McNamara,

that the Communists were controlling

the action in the battlefield.

They could attack, and run away at will,

so they could control how many people they were losing,

what their casualties were,

and all they were doing was keeping their casualties

down to below their birth rate,

which meant, essentially, they could fight forever.

And of course the Americans were going to fight forever.

Eventually they'd go home.

- The NLF also were able to keep recruiting

amongst people who were disillusioned,

or disgusted by the distraction and the casualties

inflicted on the Vietnamese rural population.

- It was the kind of place where you had, you know,

brothers fighting for the ARVN, the South Vietnamese army

run by the South Vietnamese American puppets,

and then you had his brother in the Viet Cong,

and the Americans could never understand what was going on.

They didn't understand the language.

They didn't understand the culture.

They didn't understand how that was possible.

I mean, there weren't any, can you imagine

the second world war, you have one a GI,

and his brother is with the Nazis?

Unimaginable,

but this is what was going on through the whole war.

(weapons exploding)

- [Narrator] President Johnson continues

this huge U.S. bombing campaign of Rolling Thunder,

targeting the Hồ Chí Minh Trail in the mainland.

The tonnage of ordnance would surpass

all that was dropped in World War II.

♪ In this dirty old part of the city ♪

- Make no mistake about it, I don't want a man in here

to go back home thinking otherwise.

We are going to win.

♪ You'll be dead before your time is due, I know ♪

- There's another aspect to the war

in Vietnam, which is race.

This for the first time, there was a major commitment

of mixed race units.

A lot of young black Americans wanted to prove their status

in America as a sign of their manhood, if you will.

He wanted to get young black men into the Army,

so they could supply proper medical assistance to them,

give them education, and get them out of the ghettos,

and improve their lot.

As the war started to go badly,

the black guys said, "Well, hold up.

Why are we dying over here,

when the enemies back home in America?"

♪ We gotta get out of this place ♪

♪ If it's the last thing we ever do ♪

- [Narrator] In the early years of the war,

the black and Latino soldiers were professionals

in mostly mixed race units.

By the end of 1968,

draftees account for over 30% of American troops.

Amongst these are many black soldiers who were growing

more and more disaffected in what they call

the white man's war, when there were so many racial issues

to deal with back home.

As the casualty rates increased,

conscription was now to include college students,

who had previously been exempt.

This meant that although the majority of us soldiers were

still volunteers, their numbers now included

middle-class white Americans who were forced to defer

their university education.

♪ We gotta get out of this place ♪

♪ If it's the last thing we ever do ♪

- When I first went out there in '68,

the majority of the infantry men,

they were all working class Americans,

but when the Americans abandon this avoidance of the draft,

and suddenly in Vietnam we saw the arrival,

not of the officer class,

but of white, middle-class kids in the ranks.

- These are young men who have to go and fight,

and the draft comes here to say

you may have to fight against your will,

and then the whole idea of the draft dodger comes in.

- Well, it wasn't the fact so much

that they were university students.

It was the middle class.

The middle class was getting drafted,

not a chance, forget it,

which is why there hasn't been a draft since then.

World Aar II draft was, I mean,

everybody believed in the war.

- You suddenly had middle-class kids being drafted in

to do the same job, and they were writing letters home,

and their parents were appealing to their congressmen,

and that's when it all started to change.

♪ Watched his hair been turnin' grey, yeah ♪

- Giant protests were not only,

not even so much the soldiers as their mothers,

because, "What the hell is my boy doing in Vietnam?

He should be doing his graduate work now."

Well, you could get a student deferment for awhile,

but the middle class was getting drafted,

which you can make a coherent theory saying

that that's why we lost the war.

♪ If it's the last thing we ever do ♪

- They're only going there for a year tour,

whereas the Vietnamese fighters are there all the time.

So every time you send a fresh young guy who's just come

out of college, they have to start again

with a new guy, who knows nothing.

- All the challenges have been met.

The enemy is not beaten, but he knows that he has met

his master in the field.

- [Narrator] President Johnson was under tremendous pressure

over the lack of victory in Vietnam.

The battle of Huế had been the response

to the Tet Offensive, as U.S. forces managed to regain

the territories that had been lost,

but all their claims of victory were like dust in the hand,

because this amounted to only a stalemate.

In addition, at home, despite all his efforts to pass

the Civil Rights Act through Congress to become law,

the lack of improvement for the black situation caused

the black power movement to be active against him.

The democratic party splits into many factions.

Johnson does badly in the New Hampshire primary,

and ends his bid for reelection.

The nation is stunned.

- With America's sons in the fields far away,

with America's future under challenge right here at home,

with our hopes, and the world's hopes

for peace in the balance every day,

I do not believe that I should devote an hour or a day

of my time to any personal partisan causes,

or to any duties other than the awesome duties

of this office, the presidency of your country.

Accordingly, I shall not seek,

and I will not accept the nomination of my party

for another term as your president.

- The famous CBS anchor, Walter Cronkite,

he hadn't been in Vietnam since 1965.

He went back, saw what he had to see,

and said on American television,

"We're not winning.

We can't win."

And at this point, President Johnson says,

"If I've lost Walter, I've lost the American public,"

and he resigned.

- [Narrator] A strike in Memphis causes

Martin Luther king Jr. to return to his home town.

After his March had been interrupted with civil unrest,

he gave his "I came to the mountaintop" speech.

- I've looked over,

and I've seen the promised land.

I may not get there with you,

but I want you to know tonight

that we as a people will get to the promised land.

(crowd cheering)

So I'm happy tonight.

I'm not worried about anything.

I'm not fearing any man.

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.

- [Narrator] At his motel the next day,

preparing to leave for another meeting,

Martin Luther king Jr. is shot in the head, and dies.

That April sees the beginning of riots in many U.S. cities.

♪ Like a bird on a wire ♪

♪ Like a drunk in a midnight choir ♪

For Hồ Chí Minh and General Giáp,

unification of Vietnam was non-negotiable.

Peace talks were just another tactic to slow down the war.

In 1966, Hồ Chí Minh stated

that North Vietnam was willing to make war

for the next 20 years,

but if the Americans want to make peace,

we shall make peace, and invite them to afternoon tea.

In May, 1968, the first peace talks begin in Paris,

but end in stalemate.

This process of meeting in peace talks would continue

for more than four years.

Now that President Johnson's not in the running

for reelection, Robert Kennedy is

the most promising candidate

for the democratic presidential nomination.

On June 5th, Robert Kennedy wins the California primary

at the Ambassador Hotel, Los Angeles.

- My thanks to all of you,

and now it's on to Chicago, and let's win there.

(crowd cheering)

- [Narrator] Leaving the hotel through the kitchen,

he is shot three times, and dies later in hospital.

♪ And if I ever been unkind ♪

- Robert Kennedy was the great white liberal hope,

and he turned against the war in Vietnam,

and as his brother had got them in there

in the first place, it only seemed apt.

- He was a threat to Lyndon Johnson,

but Lyndon Johnson about that time decided

that he would not run in November,

and Hubert Humphrey then had to run

for president of the democratic party,

and of course, Nixon's against him.

- Let me tell you what those four years have done

to America, the longest war that America has ever had

in it's history, the worst crime wave we've ever had

in our history, the highest taxes we've ever had

in our history, the highest rate in the cost of living

that we've had in a generation, and the lowest respect

for the United States of America in our history.

(crowd cheering)

- [Narrator] As the squabbling

for the presidential election continues,

violent conflict breaks out,

particularly in Newark and Detroit.

In Chicago, a huge anti-war protest

outside the Democratic National Convention leads

to ugly clashes with police.

(crowd clamoring)

Hubert Humphrey gains the democratic nomination,

but loses to Nixon by a majority vote of less than 1%.

- Along comes President Nixon,

who promises peace with honor,

and to get the boys out of there.

Everything's gonna be all night.

- I decided in my mind, I was in Vietnam at the time,

that I would vote for Nixon,

because he, rather than Hubert Humphrey would end the war,

and he would find some way to extricate

the United States out of that mess.

- Unfortunately, that's not what he gave America.

He pulled some of the people out.

He expanded the war into Cambodia and Laos.

- However, less than two months into office,

President Nixon orders the secret bombing of Cambodia,

ostensibly to destroy the Hồ Chí Minh Trail,

and the supply enclaves just over the border.

This covert bombing of over half a million tons

of ordnance would actually stretch across the whole

of Cambodia, and was carried out without the knowledge

of Congress, or the U.S. public.

- We will aid Cambodia.

Cambodia is the Nixon doctrine in its purest form.

In Cambodia, what we are doing is helping

the Cambodians to help themselves.

♪ All along the watchtower ♪

♪ Princes kept the view ♪

- As part of Nixon's strategy of reducing soldiers

on the ground, and attacking the Vietnamese Communists,

while trying to negotiate peace in Paris,

he launched an illegal bombing

against the Viet Cong camps in Cambodia,

and even followed up with an illegal invasion.

- Richard Nixon gave the order for the strategic bombing

of Cambodia, using U.S. B-52,

high altitude bombing aircraft,

and the escalation of the bombing of Cambodia occurred

from March, 1969.

- The war then spilled over from South Vietnam.

We'd learned later there had been

secret American bombing going on,

with the South Vietnamese forces,

and Americans moved into Cambodia to try and wipe out

the Vietnamese Communist sanctuary areas

in the eastern part of Cambodia,

which bordered on South Vietnam.

(weapons exploding)

- [Narrator] Hồ Chí Minh dies.

General Giáp carries on the strategy of the war.

The age of Aquarius ends with students being shot down

by the Ohio National Guard.

South Vietnam has lost its U.S. support,

and fights a desperate war alone against the norm.

Nixon's secret war crimes are brought to light

in the Pentagon Papers, in the Washington Post,

with the New York Times.

General Giáp still stands strong for the north,

as the war in Vietnam rages on

(Jimi Hendrix All Along the Watchtower continues to play)