I am going to be looking at how My Lai Massacre impacted on the war in Vietnam. There were many factors that affected the war, but the My Lai Massacre was quite an important one. The My Lai Massacre took place on the 16th of March 1968. Charlie Company was the company that went to attack the village of My Lai. They had been told that there were Viet Cong hiding in the village, but the rumours were false, so the company decided to attack the innocent villagers, as they probably supported the Viet Cong anyway.
The US military methods failed, but still had an effect on the war. The main reason that they failed was because they couldn't find the enemies. The Viet Cong hid in under ground tunnels, in the jungle or in the villages with the normal innocent civilians, so the US couldn't differentiate between them. Napalm failed because it hardly killed any enemies, and burnt many innocent people alive, this made the Vietnamese civilians disapprove of the Americans. So they thought that they would use defoliants to destroy the jungle, they used a defoliant called 'Agent Orange'. But even after they had destroyed the jungle they still couldn't find the enemies, and because Agent Orange got into the water supplies and cause many birth defects this, again annoyed the civilians. Rolling Thunder failed because it was very expensive and would have been useful but they couldn't hit the target. Search and Destroy missions failed because they were always ambushed. Because of all of the methods used by the Americans, the Vietnamese had stopped supporting them and started to support the Viet Cong, this then made it harder for the US to fight the Viet Cong as they had more support. After the My Lai massacre on the 16 March 1968, the US had killed over 347 innocent civilians and raped and mutilated many of them.
The impact of the My Lai massacre on the Viet Cong was quite big, as they weren't in the town to protect their people, this would have made them more determined to get the US out of their country. They also gained the support of the civilians which helped them in the war against the US.
Because of how bad the massacre was the US had tried to cover it up, but a year later it had been leaked back to the US and was all over the news, this greatly changed the US public opinion as they thought they were winning the war, but after seeing footage of the massacre they could see how much they were struggling and how desperate they had become. A woman said "I sent my son off as a good boy, and he came back a monster", so the Americans didn't want to be there, the Vietnamese didn't want them there and they were losing, yet they still continued fighting, but the war was coming to an end.
The Massacre had a great impact on all of the soldiers, but mainly the soldiers who committed the terrible act, because later when they realise what they have done they will be mentally scarred and will never forget what they have done, and because it was televised everyone knows what they have done and they will be ashamed for the rest of their lives. When the other soldiers in the army find out what their team mates have done they will be shocked and disappointed in them.
The Massacre would make North Vietnam more determined in their fight to make Vietnam communist as they see that South Vietnam is getting innocently killed by the Americans, they know that the South Vietnamese civilians are more likely to change their minds and support them and help turn Vietnam into a communist country, although there will still be some South Vietnamese civilians that will not want the communists to take over, it will be much easier to persuade them after this.
Overall, I think that the My Lai Massacre had a big impact on the war. Not because of the effect on the Vietnamese, but that factor does contribute to the overall failure, I think it was important because it made the US public see the reality of the war, seeing that there were losing it, and that their soldiers had been turned into monsters.
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