The Vietnam War has been subject of considerable research, both immediately after its conclusion and in more recent times in light of the new prolonged conflicts involving the United States armed forces. Yet, despite the considerable amount of published and unpublished material several assumptions have been accepted without the necessary criticism. One of these assumption is the fact that the US Army under General William C. Westmoreland was a static and unimaginative organization while the US Marine Corps had found the key to defeat the communist insurgency in Vietnam. The aim of this thesis is to examine this assumption in the context of the two services development before 1965 and of the conduct of their operations during the actual war. Examining the development of US counterinsurgency doctrine demonstrates that the US Army was not a passive spectator but took an active lead in the process. Furthermore there is no evidence that the US Marine Corps (USMC) was able to craft a war winning strategy in Vietnam and that its inability to operate in a combined arms and combined services environment damaged the overall effectiveness of the American war effort. These differences emerge from the fact that, contrarily to the common opinion, the USMC was the less flexible organization dominated by a close group of infantry officers while the Army, owing to its more complex make up, was able to operate with flexibility and efficiency crafting an effective method to fight in Vietnam.

My Khe 4 was the name given by the Americans to a sub-hamlet in the village of Son My in South Vietnam. According to the Vietnamese, American soldiers killed over ninety civilians there on 16 March 1968, the day that, less than two miles away, another unit was massacring the inhabitants of My Lai 4. The Americans did not respond to allegations that civilians had been killed at My Khe 4 until December 1969 and although the leader of the platoon which had assaulted the sub-hamlet was charged with murder and investigators identified a member of his platoon as the killer of a child, neither of the men had to face trial.American reporters, their attention fixed on the events at My Lai 4, rarely took the trouble to familiarise themselves with what was alleged to have happened at My Khe 4 and those historians who have mentioned the 'other' massacre in Son My have usually presented it as a strand in the story of My Lai. Careless research has led some to argue that the massacres were the result of an order to destroy Son My and its people and the US Army has also been accused of trying to obscure what its investigators had discovered about the killings at My Khe 4 and of ensuring, with the encouragement of the Nixon administration, that no one would be tried for them. Whilst the story of My Khe 4 reveals many of the Army's weaknesses, however, it does not supply evidence of conspiracy. The massacre at My Khe 4 and its consequences are significant because they reflect, probably more accurately than what is now referred to as the My Lai Massacre, the nature of America's war in Vietnam.

The thesis looks at Robert S. McNamaraʼs support for withdrawal from Vietnam between 1962 and 1964, during the John F. Kennedy administration and during the transition to the Lyndon B. Johnson presidency. It offers a reassessment of McNamaraʼs role as one of the primary architects of the Vietnam War. From a methodological point of view, it approaches McNamaraʼs recommendations on Vietnam from the bureaucratic perspective of the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD), explaining the evolution of the office and the balance of civil-military relations during his tenure. Through a bureaucratic lens, McNamaraʼs support for a policy aimed at disengagement from Vietnam is logical. First, the withdrawal plans – the Comprehensive Plan for South Vietnam (CPSVN) – supported a strategy informed by the counterinsurgency thinking of the Kennedy administration. McNamaraʼs changes at the OSD were designed to align defense tools to civilian strategy. As a result, as Kennedy and McNamaraʼs counterinsurgency advisers suggested, the CPSVN put the onus on self-help (i.e. the South Vietnamese doing the fighting themselves), clear-and-hold strategies and the strategic hamlet program that was buttressed by paramilitary, rather than traditional military, forces. Secondly, the CPSVN dovetailed with McNamaraʼs economic priorities for the OSD, both mitigating the departmentʼs impact on the nagging balance of payments deficit and, in the nearer term, the impact of South Vietnamese operations on the Military Assistance Program.

The American South’s cultural distinctiveness has been a central historiographical issue debated by scholars since the first decades of the country’s inception. Implicitly or explicitly, this debate centres largely on one question – why has the South retained its distinct identity for cultural, social, political and economic exclusivity? This thesis examines southern distinctiveness with specific reference to America’s military involvement in Vietnam during the 1960s and 1970s, providing new insights upon an old question. Although a national effort, which encompassed the service over three million men, America’s 16 year involvement in their war against the communist-backed North Vietnamese Army (NVA) and Viet Minh/Vietcong (VC) forces was shaped by distinct southern influences attributed to the region’s history and culture. This thesis demonstrates that the southern influence over America’s political, economic and military theatres profoundly shaped the direction and administration of the Vietnam War. Southerners occupied crucial leadership roles throughout the Vietnam war era, including the presidency and Secretary of State, while both the Senate and the House of Representatives were led by men from South of the Mason-Dixon Line.

La bataille de Diên Biên Phu est connue pour avoir été une défaite retentissante de la France en 1954. Certains aspects de cette bataille devenue une véritable affaire sont pourtant encore méconnus dans leurs formes et leurs conséquences, notamment ses dimensions humaine, sociale et même judiciaire. Il est tout d’abord intéressant de mieux connaitre les hommes qui ont participé au front comme à l’arrière, à cette bataille. « Ceux de Diên Biên Phu » représentent en effet un groupe social éphémère mais qui a fonctionné dans un contexte bien particulier pendant près de cinq mois et demi. Or, ce groupe présente des caractéristiques qui lui sont propres et qui dépendent à la fois de leur rôle de militaires et du contexte de bataille. Mieux connaitre ces soldats, c’est aussi s’intéresser à leur parcours bien avant la bataille et pour les survivants, bien après celle-ci. Toutefois, en 1954, la société militaire de Diên Biên Phu a connu un quotidien qu’il est possible de diviser en trois grandes périodes le définissant. La vie de l’avant-bataille n’est pas la même que celle menée dans les combats, elle-même différente de la vie de prisonniers de guerre. Diên Biên Phu peut ainsi être vu au prisme du vécu et du ressenti de ses combattants. Enfin, cette bataille a eu des conséquences bien au-delà du 7 mai 1954. Elle prend alors son sens « d’affaire ». Elle est devenue un mythe de l’Armée française mais la recherche des responsabilités qui s’est engagée alors en France met au jour des conflits bien plus anciens et personnels. Cette dernière composante de l’Affaire de Diên Biên Phu s’incarne dans un conflit entre les généraux Navarre et Cogny, anciens hauts responsables militaires en Indochine et parties prenantes de la bataille, qui les a menés jusqu’au tribunal. Des tranchées au prétoire, Diên Biên Phu est bien une grande affaire aux multiples acceptions. Elle n’est pas seulement la bataille de la fin de la guerre d’Indochine. Elle est également, peut-être même avant tout, une affaire de soldats, une affaire d’hommes et une affaire sociale, politique et judiciaire. / Diên Biên Phu is well known as a great French defeat in 1954. Nevertheless some aspects of this real case are still to discover, for example the human, social and legal aspects. At first, it is interesting to know better the men who were soldiers during the battle, those from the front as those stayed in Hanoi or Saigon. All of them represent a real society which worked in a special context during more than five months. This social group as his own characteristics which depend on his military functions and the battle itself. Knowing these men better, is also searching to know who they were before coming in Indochina and what they became even a long time after the battle of Diên Biên Phu. However, in 1954, the Diên Biên Phu’s military society had had three different lives during these five months : before the fights, they naturally had a different life than during the battle, and then, when the survivors became prisoners, they started another new part of their life. Diên Biên Phu can also be studied by the prism of the everyday life and the felt of the fighters. This battle had finally had consequences well beyond May 7th. Then, it becomes the “case”. Diên Biên Phu became one of the great military myth but in the same time, the research of the responsibilities in France has begun. This new case brings to light other older and more personal conflicts. The more important of these conflicts is the one between the two former chief generals in Indochina in charge of the battle, general Navarre and general Cogny. This very important personal and professional conflict led them to the court. From trenches to the court, Diên Biên Phu is an important and more complex case than just a battle camp. It is not just the fight which lid to the end of Indochina War. It is also and maybe more than anything else, a men’s business and a social, political and judicial affair.

Le 13 février 1991, un colloque sur « l’actualité vietnamienne » est organisé au Sénat. Lorsque Georges Boudarel, universitaire à Paris VII et spécialiste du Viêtnam, prend la parole, il est immédiatement interrompu par Jean-Jacques Beucler, ancien secrétaire d’état aux anciens combattants et ancien prisonnier français de la guerre d’Indochine. Ce dernier entend le confondre pour son rôle de commissaire politique dans les camps du Viêt-minh. C’est le début de l’affaire Boudarel qui va opposer durant de longs mois les anciens prisonniers à Georges Boudarel devenu l’incarnation de l’idéologie communiste.Derrière la dimension politique de l’affaire se cachent les souffrances d’une communauté d’anciens combattants de la guerre d’Indochine en mal de reconnaissance. Cette situation a contraint ce groupe mémoriel à s’organiser, à établir des stratégies pour parvenir à une reconnaissance dans l’opinion publique. Cette mémoire « souterraine » va se confronter à l’histoire dans une zone de tension mémorielle, chacune se nourrissant de l’autre. La sociologie pragmatique par son approche du suivi des acteurs nous a permis d’observer l’évolution de cet espace et la manière dont les acteurs-témoins se l’approprient.Dans leurs stratégies, les acteurs témoins ont perçu les avantages qu’ils pourraient tirer de l’utilisation de l’Internet. Cet usage permet une visibilité que n’offraient pas les médias traditionnels. Cette nouvelle donne risque toutefois d’avoir des répercussions sur la discipline historique, notamment en ce qui concerne la prise en compte des traces que génèrent les acteurs-témoins et leur pérennisation. Il apparaît que l’écriture de l’histoire des différents événements contemporains pourrait s’en trouver modifiée / On the 13th February 1991, a colloquium about the « Vietnamese topicality » isorganized at the French Senate. When Georges Boudarel, an academic at Paris VII University and a Vietnam specialist starts to speak, he is immediately interrupted by Jean-Jacques Beucher, former Secretary of State for the Veterans and who is also a former French prisoner of the Indo-China War. The latter wants to confound him for his role as a political commissioner in the Viet-Minh camps. This is the beginning of the Boudarel case confronting former prisoners to Georges Boudarel during long months, and who is now the incarnation of the communist ideology.The sufferings of a community of Indo-China War veterans longing for gratitude are hidden behind the political dimension of this case. The situation compelled this memorial group to organize themselves and to build up strategies in order to get gratitude from the public opinion. This “subterranean” memory is going to face history in a zone of memorial tension, in which each one thrives on each other. The pragmatic sociology thanks to its followed approach of the actors allowed us to see the evolution of this space and how the actors witnesses took over it.In their strategies, the actors- witnesses saw the advantages they could take of the use of Internet. Indeed, it allows a visibility which was impossible with the usual Medias. However, this new order may have repercussions on the historical discipline, especially concerning the traces generated by the actors-witnesses and their perpetuation. It turns out that the writing of history of different contemporary events could be modified.