TheVietnam stab-in-the-back myth asserts that theUnited States' defeat during theVietnam War was caused by various American groups, such as civilian policymakers, the media,antiwar protesters, theUnited States Congress, or politicalliberals.[1][2][3]
Used primarily by right-wingwar hawks, the name "stab-in-the-back" is analogous to the Germanstab-in-the-back myth, which claims that internal forces caused the German defeat duringWorld War I. However, the American claim usually lacks theantisemitic elements, implicit or express, of its German namesake.[4]Jeffrey Kimball wrote that the United States' defeat "produced a powerful myth of betrayal that was analogous to the archetypalDolchstoßlegende of post-World War I Germany."[1]
The myth was a "stronger version of the argument that antiwar protest encouraged the enemy, suggested that the antiwar movement might in the end commit the ultimate act oftreachery, causing the loss of an otherwise winnable war."[5]
Similar accusations have been made throughoutAmerican history. During theWar of 1812, theWar Hawks accused supporters of theFederalist Party inNew England of "near-treasonous activity" for the USfailure to conquer Canada. Right-wing commentators also claimed that PresidentFranklin D. Roosevelt had "sold out"Poland and theRepublic of China with theYalta Agreement and blamed PresidentHarry S. Truman and Secretary of StateDean Acheson for American failures during theKorean War. Casualties mounted slowly during theVietnam War after the 1965 deployment of combat troops and in 1968 surpassed those of the Korean War.[1]
During the war, hearings were held in theUnited States Senate regarding the progress of the war. At hearings of theSenate Preparedness Investigating Subcommittee (SPIS), generals testified that the failure of the war in 1967 had been caused by excessive civilian restraint on target selection during thebombing of North Vietnam, and the subcommittee agreed. Joseph A. Fry contends that theJoint Chiefs of Staff and SPIS, by blaming the media and antiwar protesters for misrepresenting the war, cultivated the stab-in-the-back myth.[6]
Although much of the American public had never supported the war, GeneralWilliam Westmoreland blamed the American media and anti-war protesters for turning the country against the war after the 1968Tet Offensive. That narrative was followed by later writers such asGuenter Lewy,Norman Podhoretz, andMax Boot,[citation needed] as well as other people likeAnn Coulter[7] andAleksandr Solzhenitsyn.[8] One study estimated that until the offensive, American pundits had supported their government's war policy four to one but afterward switched to being two to one against it. Manyhistory textbooks state that the offensive was followed by public opinion turning against the war, and some accounts mention media coverage.[9] Another element of the myth relates to the 1973Paris Peace Accords in which the stab-in-the-back interpretation holds that obstruction in the US Congress prevented the United States from enforcing the accords. According to Lien-Hang T. Nguyen, that interpretation of the accords has "more or less been rejected by most scholars in the field," but it remains alive in popular discourse.[10]
In 1978 and 1979, Nixon and Kissinger respectively published best-selling memoirs that were based on access to still-classified documents, which suppressed thedecent interval theory and "prop[ped] up the Dolchstoßlegende," according to the historianKen Hughes.[11]
In 1982,Harry G. Summers Jr. wrote that the idea that internal forces caused the defeat in Vietnam was "one of the more simplistic explanations for our failure... this evasion is rare among Army officers. A stab-in-the-back syndrome never developed after Vietnam."[12] However, the historianBen Buley has written that Summers' book is actually one of the most significant exponents of the myth, in a subtle form in which the military is criticized, but the primary responsibility for the defeat lies with civilian policymakers.[12]
In his 1998 book,The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam,Jerry Lembcke compared the stab-in-the-back myth with the myth that returning veterans were spat upon by and insulted by antiwar protesters (no spitting incident has ever been proven). According to Lembcke, the stab-in-the-back myth was more popular during the war, and the spitting myth gained prominence only in the 1980s.[13] In his 2001 bookThe Culture of Defeat: On National Trauma, Mourning, and Recovery,Wolfgang Schivelbusch denied the existence of a Vietnam stab-in-the-back myth comparable to the German one. Although he wrote that some US rhetoric was "quite similar to that voiced by right-wing Germans during theWeimar Republic," he argued that the Vietnam War "did not entail national collapse... was not followed by a humiliation like that of theVersailles Treaty... [and] did not polarize the nation or lead tocivil war." ProfessorJeffrey Kimball responded that Schivelbusch "was incorrect on virtually every count."[1] Kimball writes that the stab-in-the-back charge was resurrected in the2004 United States presidential election in which the candidateJohn Kerry wascriticized for opposing the war after his return from Vietnam.[1]
In 2004,Charles Krauthammer wrote inThe New Republic that the broadcasterWalter Cronkite had caused the US to be defeated: "Once said to be lost, it was." In 2017,David Mikics wrote that "the Vietnam stab-in-the-back argument is now largely dead."[4]
Moyar's critique shows that a line of argument that Jeffrey Kimball long ago called the 'stab-in-the-back legend' remains alive and well. The stab-in-the-back legend displays classic characteristics of what psychologists call in-group/out-group bias, in which every action by an in-group is rationalized and justified whereas every action by an out-group is criticized and seen as inspired by perverse motives. Through this pattern of thought, the 'stab-in-the-back' interpretation externalizes blame for U.S. defeat entirely to civilian policymakers. A virtuous and effective military had its hands tied by villainous civilians who, pandering to base political instincts, betrayed the soldiers (and eventually South Vietnam) by failing to allow them to do what was needed to win.
Finally, the Administration suggested a stab-in-the-back theory of the war. This stronger version of the argument that antiwar protest encouraged the enemy, suggested that the antiwar movement might in the end commit the ultimate act of treachery, causing the loss of an otherwise winnable war.
