Vietnam war demonstrations begin

While demonstrations began almost from the start of the intervention (as shown in this photograph from 1967, Wichita, Kansas, 1967. U.S. archives) 1968 was when finally the movements against the Vietnam War began to become mainstream.

Paradoxically, a victory like this made it clear to Americans that the rebels could not only give a scare to their soldiers, but could attack anywhere in South Vietnam, entering the embassy and violating its territory. So many bombings had proved futile, three years of fighting with heavy casualties, the flood of millions and the multitude of demonstrations and counter demonstrations were all futile.

This produced what some have called “The collapse of morality.” Many messages of victory were little more than a hoax. The press reported little on the high rate of casualties inflicted by the Viet Cong and EVN, the resistance showed the ARVN or the findings of the “Massacre of Hue”.

Protests multiplied. Even more so when in 1969 the events at My Lai were made public. The discovery that the atrocities committed by the Nazis during World War II could be repeated in Vietnam was a spur that left few indifferent. Especially when it was found that the system of measuring achievement of the objectives by acts like My Lai could have been the tip of the iceberg.

This is another characteristic of the Vietnam War: the integration problems suffered by many veterans on their return. Having risked their life in an untamed jungle, against a population always suspicious or even hostile, toiling in strenuous hikes between traps and risks of attacks, all for a country which, in turn, far from thanking them or even despising them, they were accused of killings and similar atrocities (regardless of whether they had participated in them or not). It was certainly not the whole population, but only the fact that an increasingly large part of it had this feeling very much affected by combatants.