“Is there a difference between the NVA and the Viet Cong?”
NVA = North Vietnamese Army. They were regular, standing forces raised, trained, armed and supported from North Vietnam, albeit just about completely bankrolled and equipped by Communist patron states, the Soviets and Red China in particular.
Viet Cong were irregular forces, often raised and trained (to the extent they were) within South Vietnam. They were armed with whatever came to hand, and often masqueraded as neutral or friendly civilians.
The NVA were regulars, the Viet Cong were guerrillas, but certainly collaborated in the field, with the Viet Cong essentially already infiltrated into position.
More information on the VC and PAVN. First, see the two books by Douglas Pike on “The Viet Cong” and “The PAVN: Peoples Army of Vietnam Nam”.
Then see Prof. Robert Turner’s massive tome on the history of the Communist Party of Indochina and Ho Chi Minh, a Hoover Institution book.
The VC was the armed arm of the NLF (National Liberation Front), Hanoi’s political front group in South Vietnam, set up in 1961 to wage a “war of liberation” and unification with the North. The VC were native southern communists and a few nationalists (who didn’t last long). They were trained in So. Vietnam, No. Vietnam, and Cambodia (Parrot’s Beak and Fish Hook areas along the SVN border).
After the devastating losses of Tet 68, the Second Spring Offensive 68, the Spring Offensive 69, and the Fall Offensive 69 (timed to coincide with the Anti-Vietnam protests of New Mobe), the VC as a fighting force was permanently crippled. Hanoi began to send their regular PAVN forces to join and rebuild VC units to the point that they often were more than 80% of those troops.
VC defections hit an all-time high between 1968-70, well over 200,000 “Chieu Hoi” or “Hoi Chans” (i.e. “ralliers). I interviewed several in SVN in the Fall, 1970, as well as senior PAVN officers. They knew that Hanoi was losing the war which is why they defected at great risk to themselves.
In Cambodia, some VC acted as guides for PAVN regular forces (1st, 3rd, 5th, 7th & 9th Divisions, along with the 6th Division in 1970) Again I interviewed PAVN POWS in Cambodia from the 6th Division. These kids didn’t even know what country they had fought in and that they were captured by Cambodian forces, not Americans.
The VC Infrastructre, a vast and skilled underground political system, began to crack apart after Tet, when they lost tens of thousands of troops and operatives who had surfaced then, only to be wiped out by the very people whom they had come to “liberate”. After that, more VCI agents were captured, their network and locations disrupted or destroyed. This in turn, led to more defections. There is a highly critical book about our efforts to destroy the VCI (Oren DeForest, “Slow Burn”) but it is worth reading because he described how the VCI worked, and how he had developed some very successful methods to dismantle it.
Others disagree with some of what DeForest wrote, but I think both of them agreed that the VCI was in serious trouble and had lost tremendous underground political strength, esp. in the Mekong Delta, their stronghold.
Kissinger didn’t end the war in Vietnam. This is some CBS ignoramous regurgitating the leftist and administration line on the war in Jan. 1973. The No. Vietnamese continued the war for two more years, killing hundreds of thousands of SVN in the process, before they conquered a literally disarmed ARVN/VNAF (thanks, in part, to the Hanoi Lobby of Jane Fonda/Tom Hayden, Don Luce, and Tom Harkin, as well as the liberal media who refused to tell the truth about No. Vietnamese aggression, along with editorials which were often worst than the news stories).
Very soon after the fall of So. Vietnam, the NLF/VC began to be dismantled by Hanoi (the Lao Dong Party), and soon they were not a factor in Communist Vietnam’s dictatorship. Some VC leaders even defected to the US and told Congress, in 1977, how they had been betrayed by Ho and Hanoi (Ho died in 1969 but his policies, under Le Duan, etc. continued on). Ho was great at betraying non-communist nationalists to the French and Japanese. Well worth reading about in Turner’s book.
I’m glad that some of the FR posters know what really happened in Vietnam and are sharing it with you. PASS THIS INFORMATION ON TO YOUR FRIENDS, KIDS, COLLEAGUES and even in letters to the editor, on talk radio shows, etc.
Don’t let the Hanoi Lobby and the liberal media get away with their disinformation, misinformation, and ignorance. Too much of that shows up in our schools and you know how uniformed or misinformed our children are today.
This discussion is one reason why FR must survive. It is a repository of the truth and of history.