War Without Fronts: The USA in Vietnam

Description

A groundbreaking investigation into the true extent of war crimes committed by US troops during the Vietnam War - shocking in its parallels with the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Shortly before 8 am on 16 March 1968, C Company, 1st Battalion, 20th Regiment, 11th Brigade, Americal Division, on a search-and-destroy mission in Quang Ngai Province, South Vietnam, entered the hamlet of My Lai. By noon more than 400 women, children and old men had been systematically murdered.To this day, the My Lai massacre has remained the most shocking episode of the Vietnam War. Yet this infamous incident was not an exception or aberration. Based on extensive research and unprecedented access to US Army archives, and tracing the responsibility for these atrocities all the way up to the White House and the Pentagon, War Without Fronts reveals the true extent of war crimes committed by American troops in Vietnam and how a war to win hearts and minds soon became a war against civilians.

A historian and political scientist, Bernd Greiner is professor at the University of Hamburg and directs the research programme on the theory and history of violence at the Hamburg Institute of Social Research.

This is far more than an account of a historical event... War Without Fronts has far wider implications -- Jonathan Mirsky * Literary Review * Professor Greiner, in this admirable translation by Anne Wyburd and Victoria Fern, scrupulously argued and carefully referenced, explains the failure of what is now known as the moral component of warfare, and therefore exactly how it was that the US lost -- Allan Mallinson * The Times * A well-documented essay...an astonishing final section -- Richard Gott * New Statesman * This comprehensive indictment of the Vietnam war was published first in Germany in 2007. One wonders how long it will be before a similar book can be written about the dehumanising effect on a new generation of American soldiers of the Iraq war, also fought against a guerrilla enemy in a foreign land -- Conor O'Clery * Irish Times * Impressive study. * Contemporary Review *