Opposition to war

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The Pentagon Papers were a secret Defense Department history of US involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967. They were leaked by Daniel Ellsberg and published by the New York Times in June 1971, and they showed that successive presidents had misled the American people about the war.

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Source A criticises Nixon because the song names him and links him directly to the shootings. The line 'tin soldiers and Nixon coming' puts the President alongside the National Guardsmen who killed four students at Kent State on 4 May 1970, as if he had led them, and calling the Guard 'tin soldiers' suggests they were toy soldiers carrying out the government's orders without thinking. This criticism made sense to many students because the protests at Kent State had been caused by Nixon's own announcement on 30 April that US troops had invaded Cambodia, and Nixon had called student protesters 'bums'. The White House's first response, that 'when dissent turns to violence it invites tragedy', seemed to blame the dead students. The repeated line 'four dead in Ohio' and the question about how you would feel if you had known one of them keep the victims at the centre and invite listeners to be angry. The provenance supports this: Young wrote it after seeing the photographs of the shootings, it was released within weeks while the anger was still fresh, and some radio stations refused to play it because it attacked the President by name.

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Source B is useful for studying the human cost of the shootings and why they shocked America. It shows a young man lying dead on the ground and a teenage girl screaming over his body, with other young people standing around in shock. From my knowledge, the dead man was Jeffrey Miller, one of four students killed by the Ohio National Guard on 4 May 1970, with nine others wounded. The provenance makes it valuable: it was taken at the scene by a student photographer seconds after the firing, so it is authentic evidence of the aftermath rather than a posed picture. Because it was printed across the USA and won the Pulitzer Prize, it is also very useful for explaining the impact of the shootings: images like this turned Kent State into a national symbol, helping to spark a student strike that closed or disrupted more than 450 campuses. However, it is limited. It shows a single moment after the shooting, not the Guardsmen or what made them fire, and the photographer chose the most emotional image; the girl was in fact a 14-year-old runaway, not a Kent student.

Source C is useful in a different way, because it shows the atmosphere created by the authorities before the shootings. Rhodes called the protesters 'worse than the brownshirts' and the communists, and 'the worst type of people that we harbor in America'. This was the day after the ROTC building was burned and two days after windows were smashed in the town, and it helps to explain why the Guardsmen, who had been sent by Rhodes, saw the students as dangerous enemies rather than citizens to be protected. Nixon had also called campus protesters 'bums', so Rhodes's language reflects the government's attitude. The provenance must be considered carefully: Rhodes was campaigning in a Republican primary election for the US Senate held on 5 May, so he had a strong reason to look tough on 'law and order' and may have exaggerated the danger. This makes the source less reliable about the students, but more useful as evidence of the politicians' attitudes that raised tension.

Overall, the two sources are most useful when used together. Source C helps an historian understand the causes of the shootings and the hostile mood of the authorities, while Source B shows their tragic result and explains why the event had such an impact on public opinion. Neither, however, explains exactly why the Guardsmen opened fire, so an historian would need other evidence, such as the findings of the Scranton Commission, which in September 1970 called the shootings 'unnecessary, unwarranted, and inexcusable'.

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There is a strong case that Watergate was the main reason why the USA did not help South Vietnam in 1975. When the Paris Peace Accords were signed in January 1973, President Thieu agreed only after Nixon had secretly promised him 'swift and severe' retaliation if North Vietnam broke the agreement. Nixon had shown he was willing to use force, with the Christmas bombing of December 1972. But Watergate destroyed his authority. From May 1973 the Senate hearings were televised, in July the White House tapes were revealed, and after the 'Saturday Night Massacre' in October 1973 there was open talk of impeachment. A weakened Nixon could not stop Congress passing the Case-Church Amendment in June 1973, which banned any US military action in Indochina after 15 August, or the War Powers Act in November 1973, which was passed over his veto. When he resigned in August 1974, the man who had made the promises to Thieu was gone. His successor, Gerald Ford, had never been elected, lost support by pardoning Nixon, and faced a Congress with an even larger Democratic majority after the November 1974 elections. North Vietnam's leaders noticed: in January 1975 they captured Phuoc Long province to test the American response, and when none came they launched their final offensive.

However, Watergate was not the only reason. Most importantly, the American people were tired of the war. About 58,000 Americans had died, most Americans had believed for years that the war was a mistake, and once the prisoners of war came home in 1973 there was no public support for going back. Even a Nixon without Watergate would have found it very hard to persuade Congress and the public to renew the bombing. Congress's determination to limit the President's war powers also began before Watergate: the Senate voted to repeal the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in 1970, and opposition in Congress had grown with Kent State and the Pentagon Papers.

Other factors also played a part. The Paris Peace Accords themselves left South Vietnam in a weak position, because they allowed North Vietnamese troops to stay in the South. Economic problems mattered too: the oil crisis of 1973 caused inflation in America, and Congress was unwilling to spend billions on a lost cause, cutting military aid to South Vietnam from about 2.3 billion dollars in 1973 to about 1 billion in 1974. Détente with China and the Soviet Union meant that Vietnam no longer seemed so important in the Cold War. Finally, many Americans believed that Thieu's government was corrupt and that South Vietnam could not survive even with American help; the speed of the collapse in March and April 1975, after the disastrous retreat from the Central Highlands, seemed to confirm this. When Ford asked Congress for about 722 million dollars of emergency aid in April 1975, it refused, and on 23 April he said the war was 'finished as far as America is concerned'.

Overall, I agree to some extent. Watergate was important because it removed the only President who was committed to intervening and gave Congress the opportunity to tie the President's hands. But the deeper reason was the war-weariness of the American people and their representatives, which existed before Watergate and would have made intervention very unlikely in any case. Watergate decided how and when America abandoned South Vietnam, but the decision to leave Vietnam for good had already been made by American public opinion.