Why the Vietcong Received Support in South Vietnam in the Years, 1964 to 1968

Explain why the Vietcong was supported in South Vietnam in the years 1964 to 1968 (12 marks)
The Vietcong was supported in the years 1964 to 1968 due to the fact that the Americans had failed to win the hearts and minds of the people. Instead they alienated the people and thought them to be sub-human, destroyed their homes with bombing and unwanted policies such as strategic hamlets.
The Vietcong was presented as both nationalist and a communist movement. This enabled it to have a wide appeal amongst the peasant population. This became particularly significant as the Americans were seen as imperialist invaders who were perpetuating a regime in South Vietnam that was unpopular.
The Americans had failed to win the hearts and minds of the people. Their use of often indiscriminate violence against suspects and those who appeared to be helping them, alienated the people and moved them firmly into the arms of the anti-US Vietcong forces. Most Vietnamese were peasants, usually living in small villages with small houses made of bamboo with roofs of palm leaves or grass that lacked electricity and running water. American soldiers could not conceive of ‘real’ people living like this, and the resultant sense of alien world goes a little way towards explaining why Americans sometimes treated the Vietnamese peasants as sub-human and consequently unable to win many of them over to their side. Many Americans considered the Vietnamese peasants in particular as less than human.
Although the Communists were generally better at winning the hearts and minds of the peasantry, they were ruthless when necessary. During the 1968 Tet offensive, the VC dragged ‘unfriendly’ people out of their houses in Hue and shot them. A judicious mixture of ruthlessness and frequent good behaviour gained the VC the sullen acquiescence or support of the peasants that was vital in guerrilla warfare. Giap’s strategy was to use the Vietcong for incessant guerrilla warfare to wear down Saigon and its American allies, while the PAVN would only fight conventional set-piece battles at times and places when it was sufficiently strong. The emphasis upon guerrilla warfare meant that the Communists needed a great deal of support from South Vietnam’s civilians. Villagers often gave them the food, shelter and hiding places necessary for survival, Greater success in winning peasant hearts and minds or simply peasant acquiescence helps to explain why the communists defeated Washington and Saigon. Vietcong control and ‘popularity’ was partly the product of terror. The rural villages offered easy recruiting grounds for the Vietcong.
The Vietcong actively helped the rural peasantry. It provided aid and support and promise of freedom from imperialism and foreign power. They thereby developed a positive relationship with them, in the contrast to that presented by the US and the South Vietnamese army. The Vietcong acted as a central element of the propaganda campaign to in the hearts and minds of the South Vietnamese peasant population. This is a well-orchestrated and well-planned process.
The actions of both Washington and Saigon frequently antagonised the South Vietnamese peasants, which helps to explain America’s failure in winning the hearts and minds of the people. Life for the South Vietnamese peasantry deteriorated from bad to worse after the Americans arrived. Diem’s strategic hamlets programme and then the American bombing forced many peasants to move away from the homes, crops and ancestral graves which meant so much tot them.
Bombs and chemicals best suited American technological superiority, wealth and reluctance to lose American lives, but they did not win the hearts and minds of people: these methods alienated friendly and neutral Vietnamese. It was very difficult to win the hearts and minds of the people when their military tactics aroused such antagonism.
The growing escalation of the US forces in South Vietnam between 1965 and 1968 was perceived negatively by the South Vietnamese peasantry. The US was seen as an invading army and the Vietcong presented itself as a defence force against this.
Overall, the Vietcong was supported in South Vietnam due the rising unpopularity of the Americans and their policies which did not help win the hearts and minds of the people. Their policies effectively destroyed the people of South Vietnam and gave them a reason to support the growing Vietcong. This is reinforced by the clear Vietcong strategy to use both kindness and terror on the South Vietnamese peasant population.