History 485A

Devine

Fall 2011

Study Questions: December 7^th

Brigham, “Revolutionary Heroism”

1. What is “revolutionary heroism” and how was the Vietnamese Communist Party able to use this concept to link Vietnam’s past with its present and future? To what extent did the concept help the Party to sustain its legitimacy?

2. What challenges did the Party face due to the sudden end of the war in 1975?

3. Why did the Party embrace a “collective leadership” strategy? What kind of leadership emerged as a result? What unintended negative consequences did this strategy produce?

4. What foreign and domestic problems confronted the new Communist government in the years after 1975?

5. What was the “southern wind” (97)? To what extent was the Party willing to implement fundamental reforms in the 1980s?

6. How did the Party’s constant evocations of the past during the 1980s and 1990s mask its own weakness?

7. Why has the Party begun to lose the favor of the people? What Vietnamese groups have challenged the Party’s legitimacy? How have they done so and how has the Party responded?

Neu, “The Vietnam War and the Transformation of America”

1. How did the Vietnam war affect the subsequent conduct of American foreign policy? What individuals or institutions gained power? Which lost power?

2. How did the Cold War, and especially the Vietnam war challenge the “heroic” American narrative?

3. Why, initially, was US intervention in Vietnam so appealing to many Americans?

4. What is the “disease of victory”? How do we know US military officials and many average Americans suffered from it in the early 1960s?

5. What were the major ways in which the Vietnamese conflict differed from previous American wars?

6. How did the Vietnam war change the image of the American soldier? Why did the war transform the behavior of many American soldiers?

7. What were some of the conflicting “lessons” Americans drew from the Vietnam war? What evidence did they cite to support their conflicting points of view?

8. To what extent are American officials and Vietnamese officials facing the same challenge of sustaining “heroism”? Why have both governments tried to sustain this concept? Is it worth sustaining?

Arnold B. Isaacs, “Competing Memories”

1. What messages does the Vietnam War Memorial convey? Why do some believe it is “exactly the right memorial for that war” while, initially, others found it offensive?

2. Why has Vietnam become less a historical event than a powerful and lasting metaphor? By its becoming a metaphor, has the war as a historical event been distorted?

3. How did the “life lessons” that World War II and the Vietnam War conveyed differ? Is either world view correct?