If the Third Reich fought the Vietnam War

Originally posted by xmotex

Originally posted by northwolf
Third Reich did fight the Vietnam war... Majority of the French foreign legion during their indochina campaign 1946-54 were German WW2 veterans from both SS and Wehrmacht.

And they also got their behinds kicked out of Vietnam - a lot worse than we did, even.

The myth of the mighty NAZI supermen is just that, a myth. ...

1. it is also a myth that a MAJORITY of the FFL had been germans.

2. while the Supermensch is a myth as you say, the german military was able to inflict higher casualties on the enemy in most stages of the war; ill prepared against superior western troops in 1939/40; at the height of their power in 42 and even with lacking supply and old men up to the end of 1944. Main reason for this was a fundamentally better tactical doctrine, something none of the allies were able to emulate.

A tactical doctrine that favors in-the-field decisionmaking, and which would have probably led to better long-term results against the North Vietnamese enemy.

Anyway, we have to distinct between the politically motivated Nazi campaigns against the jews, homosexuals etc. and the actual front line conduct of the Wehrmacht, which more often than not did not tow the party line (I´m not saying they were innocent though). While the German Wehrmacht was a heavy-handed oppressor, they were not all-out madmen like the SS; a little known fact is that Germany tried to reach an agreement with the Soviet Union towards a better treatment of each others combatants and adherence of the rules of war. Another interesting bit of trivia is that there is no DOCUMENTED case of a german soldier being heavily punished for refusing to kill unarmed combattants and non-combattants.

So, just because the erroneous popular perception of Nazi Germany might be that of an unreflective monster, one cannot simply say they would have turned Vietnam into a glass plate.

Originally posted by xmotex

Originally posted by northwolf
Third Reich did fight the Vietnam war... Majority of the French foreign legion during their indochina campaign 1946-54 were German WW2 veterans from both SS and Wehrmacht.

And they also got their behinds kicked out of Vietnam - a lot worse than we did, even.

The myth of the mighty NAZI supermen is just that, a myth.

Everyone seems to forget that they received one of the worst beat-downs any country in human history has ever seen: their military was utterly annihilated, their cities reduced to rubble.

Even Supermen are liable to getting beat down by superior numbers and that is what happened to the Troops in Dien Bien Phu and in Germany.

WW2 was for the most part a battle of Attrition from like '42 on and there were more Allies then Axis soldiers.

As for the total Annihiliation that is not entirely True because National Socialist Elements survived. Operation Paperclip, The 'Gehlen Organization' and even the Socialist Reich Party continued into the Post-War era. Check out the 'Fourth Reich' theories of Dave Emory for a good source on all of this.

In the Conspiracy Realm the 'Last Battalions' of Neuschwabenland were activated to operational status and also Point 103 (secret SS base in Northern Canada!) was placed into Black Sun mode.



[edit on 5/14/2009 by Cunnobar the Slayer]

For Nazi Gemany to engage Vietnam, the axis would have needed to win WW2. This would have left Japan in control of Indo-China (Vietnam) post WW2. I am sure once the axis defeated the allies, it would not have been long before Japan and Germany were going at each other. Vietnam would have been a much different place, if it remained occupied by Japan. There would be no north and south Vietnam to start with. The indigenous population, of what is now Vietnam, would have probably embraced their Japanese overlords in the face of German invasion. So, as tough as the U.S. had it when we went in, Germany may have had it even tougher. A united Vietnam under Japanese control.

Originally posted by GradyPhilpott
The United States defeated the Viet Cong during Tet 1968 and by the time of the US withdrawal, the North Vietnamese Army was for all practical purposes defeated.

Hi Grady,

I think it can be argued that the Viet cong were 'defeated' in terms of how many casualties they sustained ( proving unsustainable as it was) but what about the PAVN/NVA? I mean was it not obvious that when the US forces had left the war would escalate until Vietnam was re-united? If the Viet cong were 'defeated' how did the ARVN, who did most of the fighting before, during and after US ground involvement, take around 20 thousand combat deaths in each year from 1969-1971 as US troops numbers were systematically reduced? Why did the 'defeated' NVA manage to launch a massive invasion of South Vietnam in 1972 when there were still more than a hundred thousand American soldiers present?

So, in reality the US won the ground war in Vietnam.

That's like saying that you won the football game in the first half by refusing to count the goals scored against you in the second half when you chose to go home. In pure terms the US could not and did not win the war in vietnam as the ARVN did most of the fighting AND dying taking 1.2 million casualties ( around 250 000 of which are deaths) before the countries were re-unified.

What we did not win was the war at home against the criminals who turned our nations streets and campuses into war zones.

Actually the people who turned those places into war zones where the same drafted US soldiers who got sent to Vietnam& killed four students at Kent State University and two other students at Jackson State University. You can't have war zones without people shooting and the protestors where not shooting anyone.

Will there ever come a time when you will start wondering WHY people all over the US were protesting this war? Why they just could not understand why the US government ( especially after the pentagon papers exposed the decision making processes they employed) wanted to fight this war half way around the world?

The US pulled out our last combat troops in April of 1975. It would be another two years before Saigon finally fell.

It might have fallen in 197-1972 if not for the presence of US troops and the massive air support ( linebacker operations) for which the North had no counter. If the US kept up the massive funding of the earlier years the South would in my opinion have held longer with or without the massive air support but since the US presidents who promised the South that resources were largely thinking of themselves and not South Vietnam they did not keep their aid promises.Saigon fell very soon afterwards in the fall of 1975 only about a year and a half after the last US troops had left not many months after the millions of dollars of aid ceased arriving.

Those Americans who wanted the US to "stop the war" and claimed that their hearts bled for the suffering of the Vietnamese people never blinked an eye or expressed so much as a word of regret when the Communists murdered millions in Southeast Asia following the US withdrawal.

Because the claims of millions murdered are largely fiction dreamed up by the same people who wanted to 'destroy' communism ( which Vietnam wasn't) with the casualties that did happen largely the consequence of the US escalation of the conflict into Cambodia who stands to this day as the most heavily bombed country on Earth. If the US did not secretly , hiding the action from the US congress, bomb&invade Loas and Cambodia the Khmer Rouge would very probably never have gained the power the eventually did. But you will just see this as the rest of the world laying blame on the US which the rest of us condemns for never accepting responsibility for the consequences of it's imperial actions.

I would imagine that if the US were like the Third Reich, war protesters would have been systematically murdered, so things might have turned out differently under those circumstances.

Well at least we can agree on that. Would you have wanted that so that your country could bomb and destroy whichever countries it wanted to? I mean that's how it looks when you wish to defend the actions of the US government that never had a mandate for the war in Vietnam.

Stellar

The third reich would have fire bombed Hanoi and then blitzkrieged overland north from Laos. It was less than 500 miles to the Chinese border, and if history is any guide, the German army could have done that in a couple of weeks (they fought a similar distance across Poland in about 3 weeks).

Ultimately though, the joke would have been on Germany. North Vietnam would simply have been one more welfare state burden added to the long list of welfare states that were created by the German conquest of continental Europe. The German taxpayers would be unable to sustain this financial burden, and Germany's economy would soon fail.

Nations never fall to military conquest. But throughout history, many nations and empires have fallen due to unsustainable government economic policies. Do you think Obama has ever studied history? Based on his economic policies so far, I'd say no.