Vietnam Delusions: No Significant Communist Superpower Aid

[Note: This is a subpost linked to by Vietnam, Israel and the Left’s Delusional Narratives. Feel free to comment but the post might not make much sense without the parent post’s context.]

Delusion: The war was fought on the Vietnamese side by militarily outmatched but plucky and determined peasant soldiers who fought with no significant support or direction from the communist superpowers.

Realty: The fighting in the last 7 years of the war post-Tet was carried out by large-scale, highly trained, regular North Vietnamese army units. The involvement of communist superpowers was massive in terms of money, materiel and personnel. In 1969 the Soviet Union had an estimated 65,000 troops in North Vietnam and Mao had 160,000-180,000. The Chinese troops served as Ho Chi Min’s internal security force to prevent internal revolt. It would turn out that Soviet personnel had manned almost all the anti-aircraft missile defenses that shot down American planes.

The North Vietnamese army was well equipped with state-of-the-art communist tanks, artillery, planes and anti-aircraft defenses but North Vietnam had zero industrial base to build anything. It is doubtful they could even feed themselves. North Vietnam supplied nothing but cannon fodder.

Without the massive and continuous support of the communist super powers the communist Vietnamese would never have come into power, stayed in power or been able to launch the invasions of the South.