History 485A

Devine

Fall 2011

 

Study Questions for Truong Nhu Tang, A Viet Cong Memoir

 

 

  1. How did Tang’s upbringing shape his vision of what the revolution would be like and what the future of Vietnam would be like?  How did his upbringing fortify him against becoming a dogmatic Communist?

 

 

  1. Once he arrived in Paris, what factors led to Tang’s political awakening?  Why would the scion of a wealthy family be drawn to revolution?

 

 

  1. What role did Ho Chi Minh himself play in attracting Tang and other young southern Vietnamese into the revolutionary movement?

 

 

  1. How does the story of “master spy” Albert Thao demonstrate that U.S. backing of the regime in Saigon was bound to end badly? 

 

 

  1. How did the actions of the South Vietnamese government, particularly under Diem, almost insure that the NLF would gain support?

 

 

  1. How did the American military escalation after 1965 affect the NLF? 

 

 

  1. How did the non-communist members of the Alliance differ from the Communists?  Why did they hesitate to work with the Communists in the NLF even though they shared some of their goals?

 

 

  1. How does the author explain the nationalists’ decision to ally with the Communists?  If not commitment to ideology, what then brought them into the Alliance and the NLF?

 

 

  1. What contributions did the NLF and the Alliance make to the revolution?  Why did the Communists need them?

 

 

  1. What was the PRG?  What was its purpose?  To what extent was it merely a diversion set up to keep non-communist southern nationalists allied with the North?

 

  1. Why did NLF revolutionaries like Tang find it impossible to break with the Communists even as they began to realize the Party was just using them to gain power?

 

 

  1. How did the non-communists in the Alliance and the PRG respond to the Communists’ attempt to enforce ideological purity on the revolution? 

 

 

  1. How does Tang assess Henry Kissinger? Why does he believe that Kissinger’s failures regarding Vietnam typified those of most American officials and diplomats?

 

 

  1. According to Tang, why was it “irrelevant” that US military forces never lost on the battlefield in Vietnam?

 

 

  1. What is Tang’s central criticism of how the US waged war in Vietnam?  How does the fact that the Vietnamese and the US saw the war in entirely different terms help to explain what Tang sees as Washington’s errors?

 

 

  1. As peace talks continued, why did Le Duc Tho begin to move away from his prior demand for a coalition government in the South?  Why, according to Tang, was the prospect of such a government not desirable for the northern Communists?

 

 

  1. What arguments did Tang and the PRG make in favor of “reconciliation”?  Why did the Communists and even some noncommunist southerners oppose this policy?   

 

 

  1. What became of the PRG and the Alliance after 1975?  Why did events unfold this way?

 

 

  1. Tang ultimately concludes that the Communists had “used” the PRG.  In what ways did the DRV and the Party use the PRG? Why did the members of the PRG fail to see what was going on?

 

 

  1. How did the Communist takeover in Saigon affect daily life in the city?

 

 

  1. Why did Tang become disillusioned with the revolution?  Had he been naïve to believe things would turn out differently?

 

 

  1. What made the Communists so brutal and fanatical – their ideology or the context in which many of the Vietnamese Communists had come of age?  Or did the ideology channel their behavior in the worst possible directions?