Episode 21 - 1963 Part I: New Frontiers

This episode begins with a brief overview of changes to the American religious landscape during the early 1960s, as highly conservative believers were shaken by the Supreme Court's decision against school prayer, and Catholics had a divided reaction to the "Vatican II" reforms to the traditional liturgy. During the Kennedy Administration, the Space Race entered high gear as the USA struggled to match Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin's achievement as the first man in outer space. However, by 1962, Mercury program astronauts John Glenn and Scott Carpenter were helping the American government attain its own impressive astronomical achievements. In June 1963, President John F. Kennedy visited divided Germany after the Soviet construction of the infamous Berlin Wall, and he encouraged the population of West Berlin with his legendary "ich bin ein Berliner" speech. Southeast Asia was a more difficult region for American foreign policy, because the pro-Communist members of the Viet Cong were increasingly making inroads into rural areas of South Vietnam, despite the efforts of US Green Berets in training the South Vietnamese army to defeat this elusive enemy. Buddhist protests finally led the Kennedy Administration to abandon Ngo Dinh Diem, the corrupt & venal president of the Republic of South Vietnam. However, Diem's removal & assassination failed to improve matters much, and South Vietnam became a dysfunctional puppet regime of an American government that was increasingly exasperated by its inability to control events in a small Asian country that had gained symbolic importance as a front line in the Cold War. Despite some encouraging steps toward detente with the Soviets, the US government remained concerned about the spread of Communism at the end of 1963.

Transcript

From Boomers to Millennials provides a fresh look at the modern United States history that shaped current generations, from the dawn of the Cold War to the present. Welcome to the first of two episodes about the year 1963. This is Episode 21 of our podcast, entitled “New Frontiers.” We now return to our regularly scheduled episodes after releasing a lengthy interview episode. We plan to conduct additional interesting interviews during 2025, so look for those on our podcast feed in the future. Of course, once again, my efforts to limit my coverage of one year to a single episode have been foiled by the sheer breadth of the events that took place during the 1960s. This first ’63 episode will primarily cover the Kennedy Administration’s approach to the Space Race & to its management of foreign affairs in the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis, with a particular emphasis on the state of the Vietnam War up until the end of JFK’s presidency. At the end of the summer, we will release the fifth episode in our mini-series “The Kennedys as Boomer Icons,” which will go behind the scenes to reveal the grit behind the glamour of a presidency often idealized as “Camelot.” After that, we will release Episode 22, Part II of 1963, which will cover the year’s monumental civil rights struggles & the tragic assassination of Pres. Kennedy. We also anticipate releasing additional supplemental episodes, such as biographical profiles & author interviews, during the year 2025.

As the presidential term of John F. Kennedy proceeded, it became clear to the American public that the Sixties would involve a more rapid pace of social change than was typical during the Fifties. In his book Grand Expectations, historian James T. Patterson recounts that (quote) “the [US] Supreme Court shocked conservatives – and others – in 1962” by finding that schools could not require students to recite a Christian prayer in class, because that violated the US Constitution’s prohibition on the public establishment of religion. This decision, known as Engel v. Vitale, was somewhat shocking to many people because it had been less than 10 years since the US government had added “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance & had also mandated that all US coins be stamped with the motto “In God We Trust.” Nevertheless, Engel v. Vitale was part of a larger pattern by the courts – we mentioned in Episode 13 that the Supreme Court led by liberal Chief Justice Earl Warren was moving boldly to protect the individual civil liberties of American citizens – even unpopular minorities, such as political & religious dissidents. The Supreme Court’s school prayer decision led some ultra-conservatives to allege that the Warren court was trying to suppress religion out of “Communistic” motives. The paranoid anti-Communist organization known as the John Birch Society (which we also introduced in Episode 13) began putting up billboards across the United States that encouraged Congress to (quote) “Impeach Earl Warren!” This sentiment appealed to the religiously devout who wanted prayer back in schools. However, many people, especially in the South, also embraced the slogan advocating Warren’s impeachment because they were also angry over the court’s past decisions in favor of civil rights for Black Americans (for details on those, see Episode 8).

Some religious organizations were reforming themselves in a more modern & liberal direction by the early 1960s, including one of the oldest organizations in the Western world, the Roman Catholic Church. Patterson reports that (quote) “the Vatican Ecumenical Council, under the reformist leadership of Pope John XXIII, agreed to authorize use of the vernacular [language, instead of Latin] in [many] parts of the Catholic mass. [Some] traditionalist [believers] were amazed and appalled” by such changes (close quote). These reforms became popularly remembered as “Vatican II” (short for the 2nd Vatican Council). Journalist Sylvia Poggioli of NPR reports that (quote) “As a result of Vatican II, the Catholic Church opened its windows onto the modern world, updated the liturgy, gave a larger role to laypeople, introduced the concept of religious freedom, and started a dialogue with other religions” (close quote). Many Catholic parishioners around the world celebrated being able to experience Mass in their own native languages for the first time. However, Poggioli notes that a “conservative backlash” followed within the church, and subsequent popes such as John Paul II and Benedict XVI attempted to scale back a few of the changes. However, most of the Vatican II reforms remain intact, much to the chagrin of highly conservative Catholics, including some in the USA, who to this day choose to attend one of the small minority of churches that still conduct Mass in the original Latin.

                  The early Sixties was a time of major scientific changes as well, as the Soviets & the Americans were literally reaching for the stars by making advancements toward human space travel. The United States of America founded NASA (or the National Aeronautics and Space Administration) in the aftermath of the Sputnik incident in 1957, when the Soviet Union shocked the Americans by becoming the first nation to launch a satellite into orbital space (see Episode 12). NASA announced its Mercury program in 1959, which involved the selection of a group of astronauts that it eventually hoped to send up into space. According to biographer Robert Dallek, when JFK first announced during 1961 a goal of beating the Soviets to the moon by the end of the decade, he (quote) “faced substantial opposition – both among the general public and within the government,” with many critics raising concerns about spending considerable money & resources on a program with uncertain results. Nevertheless, Dallek states that the project of space exploration (quote) “resonated with Kennedy’s affinity for heroic causes and the whole spirit of the New Frontier” (close quote). The ‘New Frontier’ was the ‘branding’ JFK had given to his administration’s policy agenda. Proponents of the government’s space program noted that research conducted in a zero-gravity environment could yield long-term technological advantages. NASA boosters also touted the economic benefit of providing government jobs at newly-built high-tech facilities, many of them located in the Southern and Western regions of the USA. 

                  Still, at the beginning of Kennedy’s presidency, it was by no means clear that the Americans could outpace the Soviets’ astronomical accomplishments. In 1960, the USSR announced the selection of its own group of “cosmonauts” that it intended to send into outer space before the Americans had a chance to launch any astronauts beyond the Earth’s atmosphere. As mentioned in Episode 12, a dog named Laika was sent into space by the Soviets during 1958, but it did not survive the voyage. The next attempt to send animals into space was more successful - in August 1960, the Soviet Union launched 2 dogs, known as Belka and Strelka, into orbit, and their spacecraft reentered the Earth’s atmosphere & landed without incident. The dogs were recovered, and one year later, Strelka had a litter of puppies. The Soviet Union attempted to send one of the puppies, named Pushinka, to First Lady Jackie Kennedy as a gift during 1961. Pushinka was accepted into the White House kennel only after being inspected & X-rayed by the CIA to make sure that the dog did not contain any listening devices that could be used to spy on the American president’s family.

During January 1961, the USA sent its first primate on a suborbital space flight, namely a chimpanzee called Ham. With Ham’s successful recovery by NASA, it now seemed clear that sending a human being into outer space and back was possible. The Soviets did it first, in April 1961, when cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human being to travel into space. Gagarin completed one full orbit of the Earth in a 108-minute flight. The United States then tried to catch up in the Space Race by launching astronaut Alan Shephard on a suborbital flight just one month later. Dallek reports that Pres. Kennedy was initially reluctant to bring too much media attention to Shephard’s imminent flight, in case it failed. However, when the president saw the media adulation that Shephard received in the successful mission’s aftermath, he realized that NASA should open itself up to more press coverage, because such publicity would likely increase public support for the Space Race. In July 1961, Gus Grissom became the second American astronaut in space; like Shepard, he completed a brief suborbital flight.

                  According to Dallek, at the beginning of 1962, (quote) “NASA had still not matched cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin’s orbital success the previous April” (close quote). This was because Shepard and Grissom had each been launched into space for only around 15 minutes, and their spacecraft did not fully enter an orbit around the Earth, so they had not matched the extent of Gagarin’s achievement. It was still unclear that the Americans could equal the Soviets when it came to engineering spacecraft; several US launches had been aborted due to technological problems during the early 60s. However, the American space program finally made progress with a successful mission in February 1962. Dallek writes that US astronaut John Glenn (quote) “orbited the Earth 3 times in just under 5 hours before [making] a pinpoint landing in the Atlantic near Bermuda, where helicopters from a nearby US cruiser waited to lift Glenn & his capsule from the ocean. The White House was jubilant” (close quote). As a quick aside, astronaut John Glenn would make American news headlines for decades, because he later was elected to multiple terms in the United States Senate as a Democrat representing the state of Ohio. Anyway, in May 1962, there was another successful American space flight, this one by astronaut Scott Carpenter. That nationally televised 5-hour flight was another PR success for the Kennedy Administration. Carpenter conducted scientific experiments while in orbit; there was hope, which was later validated, that these voyages into space would serve not only as government propaganda achievements, but they also could yield scientific discoveries & accomplishments that could be useful for ordinary Earthbound humanity.

                  Vice-President Lyndon B. Johnson was the chair of the National Space Council during the Kennedy Administration, and he agreed with JFK about the vital importance of the Space Race. Dallek reports that when Johnson was once questioned over the cost of NASA’s budget by a Texan constituent, he replied (quote) “would you rather have us be a second-rate nation, or should we spend a little money?” However, President Kennedy had concerns about LBJ’s administration of the space program, due to rumors that he was showing favoritism towards political allies & financial backers from Texas and other Southern states. According to Dallek, (quote) “in 1962, lobbyists & Congressmen from outside the South began complaining about a southwestern monopoly on NASA contracts,” & the president feared his administration might face a scandal due to the exposure of corrupt (quote) “sweetheart deals arranged by Johnson.” Dallek indicates that JFK appointed one of his political cronies as a top aide to NASA chief administrator & present-day telescope namesake James E. Webb. This Kennedy crony was to report back to the president about the situation in the space program, & he was encouraged to try to (quote) “rein in Johnson’s influence” to “ensure a more geographically diverse distribution of contracts.” However, JFK’s spy within NASA found no smoking gun. Dallek reports that when the Kennedys investigated the matter, they could find no specific proof of wrongdoing on the part of the Vice-President.

                  The Space Race would influence American popular culture during the Sixties. As we mentioned back in Episode 10 of this podcast, the popularity of Westerns during the 1950s, which were set in 19th Century frontier settlements during the “Wild West” days of American expansion, helped to inspire JFK’s “New Frontier” slogan. By the early 20th Century, many US historians came to believe that the frontier experience had marked the national character of Americans, shaping them into a people who were determined to expand to the edge of known geographic & scientific boundaries. Kennedy specifically invoked such ideas in relation to his investment in space exploration during a speech he gave at Rice University in Houston during September 1962. The president told the people of Texas that (quote) “What was once the furthest outpost on the old frontier of the West will be the furthest outpost on the new frontier of science and space” (close quote). In 1964, the year after John F. Kennedy’s death, a former screenwriter for television Westerns named Gene Roddenberry would begin working on the concept for a new science-fiction series called “Star Trek,” which would debut in 1966. Each episode of the series began with a speech that echoed Kennedy’s words, declaring that outer space was (quote) “the final frontier.” During the 1960s and 70s, Westerns would decline in pop-cultural popularity, and many science-fiction works (such as the “Star Trek” series & its subsequent film spin-offs) would gain a large following. In this way, the imagined future began to displace the idealized past as the setting for American adventure stories.

                  We now move on to the topic of foreign affairs for the remainder of this episode. Historian Robert Dallek, in his JFK biography entitled An Unfinished Life, writes that the president had promised to visit Europe during 1963 in order to (quote) “provide reassurance of US determination to defend NATO allies against Soviet aggression” (close quote). During Episode 18, we discussed how the USSR had finally ‘resolved’ the Berlin crisis in 1961 by building a wall between West Berlin & East Berlin that kept East Germans from escaping into the freer & more prosperous West. In June of 1963, Kennedy visited West Berlin, the democratic enclave located behind the Iron Curtain, to help keep morale strong among the politically isolated population of that city. During his visit, JFK met with Willy Brandt, who was West Berlin’s 49-year-old “Governing Mayor.” In a display of solidarity, Kennedy and Brandt rode together in an open motorcade through the city, to the delight of cheering onlookers.

Willy Brandt was a committed Social Democrat and anti-fascist who had fled Germany during the Nazi era before returning to Berlin in 1946 – giving him a much cleaner World War II track record than most West German politicians of the time. We will eventually talk more about Brandt’s important role in modern European history, as he would become an influential Chancellor of West Germany during the 1970s. Brandt would be more assertive in forcing the German people to come to terms with the crimes of the Nazi regime than West Germany’s first Chancellor, Konrad Adenauer, had been since coming to power in 1949. Adenauer, who JFK also met with during his visit to Berlin, had been a member of the Catholic-dominated Center Party and was Mayor of the city of Cologne (or Köln) during the 1930s. He lost his office when the Nazis took over the German government & eliminated rival political parties, and Adenauer steered clear of politics during the war years (although he did not actively resist the regime or leave the country like Brandt had done). After the war, Adenauer was elected the Chancellor of the newly-created Federal Republic of [West] Germany as a member of the center-right Christian Democratic Union (or CDU Party), which we discussed during Episode 20B, our special episode on German politics. In 1949, Adenauer brought an end to the “denazification” programs that had been pushed upon Germany by the Allied countries after the war; he granted amnesty to Nazi Party members, claiming it was necessary to move on from the Third Reich and focus on uniting the West German people in opposition to Communism during the Cold War. 

The Americans had accepted this transition, as they also wanted the West German people to serve as a united bulwark against the Communist regime that had been established in East Germany. It was Germany’s status as the front line of the Cold War in Europe that led to JFK’s 1963 visit to divided Berlin. Its most remembered moment occurred when Kennedy stood in front of a cheering crowd, in a city on the very frontier of capitalist democracy, near the newly-built wall that restricted freedom of movement for the residents of Communist East Berlin. There, the president declared to the people of West Berlin (quote) “All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words ‘Ich bin ein Berliner!’” Kennedy used this German phrase, understanding it to mean, “I am a citizen of Berlin.” Now, in some parts of the world, including in some parts of West Germany, “berliner” is the name used for a type of donut, and as a result, rumors have long held that the crowd laughed at JFK because he used the incorrect word for a resident of Berlin. These rumors are false – the term ‘Berliner’ can be used to refer to someone or something from Berlin, and the people of Berlin had a different word they used for donut. Berlin residents typically left off the indefinite article “ein” and would say “Ich bin Berliner” to identify themselves as being from Berlin, but they completely understood the president’s meaning in saying “ich bin ein Berliner.” After all, the crowd responded with loud cheers, and none of them were under the impression that the President of the United States was publicly declaring himself to be a jelly donut.

A lively crowd of around 120,000 people responded to President Kennedy’s 1963 Berlin speech with wild enthusiasm. According to Dallek, the technocratic Chancellor Adenauer, who had accompanied the American delegation to the city, viewed the audience’s emotional response to JFK as so disturbing that he turned to US Secretary of State Dean Rusk and said, (quote) “Does this [display] mean Germany can one day have another Hitler?” It seems unlikely that the West Berliners were eager to bring back the Third Reich, but such German skepticism of melodramatic mass political rallies was understandable, given their recent history. JFK also was overwhelmed by the energy of the crowd, but he found it less ominous; after his speech, Kennedy crowed to a military aide that he felt (quote) “If I had told them to go tear down the Berlin Wall, they would do it” (close quote). The speech’s international audience also viewed Kennedy’s visit to Berlin as a triumph; NATO allies seemed reassured that the Americans were committed to defending the freedom of European democracies from potential Communist incursions. 

Future presidents of the United States would repeat Kennedy’s triumphant feat of a big Berlin speech – in 1987, Ronald Reagan would visit Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate to give his famous “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” speech, & in 2008, Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama was met by an enthusiastic crowd of over 200,000 people in the reunited German capital. John F. Kennedy viewed the June 1963 Berlin visit as a highlight of his presidency; Dallek reports that he (quote) “departed Germany with a sense of exhilaration,” & he told his speech’s author (Ted Sorensen, his most trusted speechwriter) that (quote) “We’ll never have another day like this one as long as we live.” Sadly, that ended up being literally true, due to Kennedy’s unnaturally brief presidency. However, toward the end of his term, JFK wrestled with other Cold War foreign policy problems that were even more challenging than those in Central Europe.

                  The Vietnam War was the foreign policy arena where the Kennedy Administration’s overconfidence most clearly led to folly. Just as a refresher – in 1954, the Geneva Accords split formerly French Indochina into communist North Vietnam and capitalist South Vietnam. Promised elections to unify Vietnam never took place, out of fear that communist leader Ho Chi Minh might prevail in them, and the Americans (determined to stop the spread of communism during the Cold War) spent hundreds of millions to prop up South Vietnam’s autocratic “president” Ngo Dinh Diem and his government based in the city of Saigon (see Episode 15). At the end of the 50s, the North Vietnamese worked with its sympathizers in the south to create the so-called National Liberation Front, or NLF, an armed guerilla movement with the goal of uniting all of Vietnam into one state under the control of the Communist government in Hanoi. The NLF would become better-known to Westerners as the Viet Cong, a nickname given to them by the South Vietnamese public that roughly translates as the “Vietnamese Commies.” The Viet Cong benefitted from some aid from Mao Zedong’s Chinese regime, but they still were overall a very low-tech operation. They used their familiarity with the terrain & culture to surreptitiously gain more & more support in rural South Vietnam during the early 60s.

According to JFK biographer Robert Dallek, (quote) “American assumptions that the United States would do better than the French in defeating Vietnamese aspirations for a unified independent country rested on the arrogance of a modern superpower battling a so-called ‘backward’ people” (close quote). The Americans used heavy-handed military policies that they likely would have been reluctant to use in a First World country. For instance, to better expose the presence of a Viet Cong enemy that was masterful at hiding in the tropical foliage, historian James T. Patterson writes that the US military used chemicals such as (quote) “napalm and Agent Orange, a powerful & toxic defoliant . . . to flush out [the] opposition (close quote). The use of such chemicals would later have tragic long-term health effects for American military veterans, and these tactics were devastating for South Vietnam’s environment & native population. 

Another wrongheaded policy was the “strategic hamlet” program, an effort to supposedly “protect” rural villages from Communist infiltration. Patterson observes that (quote) “the program required the uprooting . . . of people from their villages so that they would be safe in the hamlets” (close quote). The residents of the hamlets received some economic assistance in exchange for this inconvenience. Still, one can imagine how poorly received a government program would be in (for instance) the rural United States if it kicked people off of their farmland & required them to relocate within fortified areas. Patterson opines that while some South Vietnamese villagers distrusted the Viet Cong, which (quote) “was frequently brutal, they had little reason to support the corrupt & dictatorial government of [President] Diem in Saigon. Most of them probably wanted above all to be left alone” (close quote).

Now, President Kennedy was generally reluctant to send regular US Army infantry units to fight in Vietnam, but he hoped that American Special Forces units, trained in counter-insurgency tactics, would make a key difference in the war. Despite the efforts of these groups, such as the Green Berets, Patterson writes that American (quote) “counter-insurgency [policies] grew increasingly unpopular with South Vietnamese people in rural areas, where the [Viet Cong] made rapid inroads” in the early 60s (close quote). The Green Berets & other American military advisers attempted to train the South Vietnamese military regulars, who were doing the bulk of the fighting, to be more effective at mobilizing the local population against the enemy. However, many of the soldiers of Diem’s regime were corrupt, unmotivated, & stubborn, in part because they lacked the ideological zeal of their Communist opponents; as a result, the troops of the Republic of South Vietnam were often seen as an oppressive force by the rural peasantry of their own nation. On the other hand, at least some peasants viewed the Viet Cong guerillas as potential liberators. In his book From Colony to Superpower, historian George C. Herring notes that such forces (quote) “were difficult to locate & fought only when they had the upper hand. Skillfully blending intimidation with inducements such as land reform, they expanded their control of the South Vietnamese countryside” (close quote).

Why did the Americans invest so much money & effort in South Vietnam, a small country on the other side of the world, during the Kennedy years? Well, many Cold Warriors in the White House came to see Vietnam as part of the administration’s “New Frontier” project. They believed the United States had to engage in an existential struggle against authoritarian Communism, even in distant Third World frontiers. However, Americans engaged in this struggle sometimes brought with them the darker side of the nation’s past conquests of frontiers – in particular, the tradition of dehumanizing local indigenous populations. Scholar David Epsey has noted that (quote) “the United States often thought of Vietnam in images of the American West and cast the Vietnamese in the role of Indians” (close quote). American soldiers during the Vietnam War often referred to enemy territory as (quote-unquote) “Indian country.” 

The fact that the Viet Cong also stealthily roamed the countryside & made raids on established settlements made it easy for US troops to cast them in the role that Native Americans had played in the Westerns they had often grown up watching. While US special forces may have been less corrupt & more motivated than the South Vietnamese troops they were “advising,” they had a different problem – the people they were trying to protect were culturally alien to them, & they sometimes perceived them as racial inferiors. Lack of cultural context caused American soldiers to sometimes blur the line between northern Communists & southern anti-Communists, as well as the distinction between civilian & combatant. Many Westerners fell into the trap of seeing Southeast Asian people as an undifferentiated mass. Referring to the Vietnamese using racial slurs became common among American troops. Such dehumanization of the local population set the stage for infamous instances of war crimes, which would take place later on in the conflict.

                  John F. Kennedy had mixed feelings about getting the USA more tied up in the Vietnam War, but he nonetheless was pressured into increasing American involvement. Historian James T. Patterson notes that (quote) “When Kennedy entered the White House, there were some 1,000 American military advisers in Vietnam. In October 1963, there were 16,732” (close quote). After the president had agreed in 1961 to increase the number of US soldiers there (serving in a role as so-called ‘military advisers’), some of them had predictably been drawn into combat (see Episode 18). After an American soldier was killed by the Viet Cong during 1962, the news media suspected that US military involvement in Southeast Asia was growing. According to biographer Robert Dallek, Kennedy fibbed during a 1962 press conference, flatly denying that any US troops had been in combat in Vietnam. Dallek normally paints a fairly sympathetic picture of JFK, but he offers a reasonable criticism of the Kennedy Administration’s lack of candor regarding the situation in Vietnam: (quote) “Kennedy’s desire to limit US involvement in the conflict by keeping it off the front pages made a certain amount of sense . . . But would it not have been better for the administration to acknowledge its ambivalence about involving US ground forces in Vietnam, and [to] encourage public debate?” (close quote). JFK’s successor Lyndon B. Johnson would follow the same pattern of trying to fool the American people by giving them an unrealistically optimistic view of how well the Vietnam War was going. I agree with Dallek that a more honest approach would have been better for the country, given that these presidents’ efforts to paint a rosy picture only undermined the US government’s overall credibility with the public in the long run.

                  In public statements, the US government maintained that it was simultaneously fully committed to defending South Vietnam from Communist insurgents, & that it would be unnecessary to sacrifice American lives in order to do so. However, behind the scenes, there was uncertainty & debate over what approach to take to the conflict (in Episode 20C, we discussed Undersecretary of State George Ball’s advocacy for pulling the US troops out of Vietnam). Even though President Kennedy rejected large-scale US military intervention, preferring to generally delegate the fight to the South Vietnamese army, he thought it unacceptable to allow the Republic of South Vietnam to go Red. Patterson describes Kennedy as a believer in the “domino theory” (previously articulated by Pres. Eisenhower) that Communism would spread like a disease if allowed to take over additional countries, and he suggests that JFK, (quote) “like most American political leaders at the time . . . was convinced that the Soviets & the Chinese were behind the efforts of Ho Chi Minh’s war” (close quote). In reality, although North Vietnam & its Viet Cong guerillas accepted some assistance from the other Communist powers, Ho Chi Minh was nobody’s puppet, & he was fighting to liberate his nation from external control, rather than pursuing some agenda of global revolution at the behest of commissars in Moscow or Beijing.

According to Dallek, John F. Kennedy stayed determined to defeat the Viet Cong insurgency because he (quote) “believed that allowing [South] Vietnam to collapse was too politically injurious to America’s international standing & too likely to provoke destructive domestic opposition like that [which had occurred] over China after Chiang [Kai-shek]’s defeat [by Mao Zedong’s Communists] in 1949” (close quote). In Episode 6 of this podcast, we discussed the political demagoguery of Joe McCarthy, who made accusations that the Truman Administration had (quote-unquote) “lost China” to the Communists. Remembering that difficult political period for Democrats, Kennedy certainly did not want to be remembered as the president who had “lost Vietnam.” Dallek notes JFK (quote) “believed it essential to prepare public opinion to accept possible [further] US intervention – [he said that] ‘otherwise any military action we might take against Northern Vietnam will seem like aggression on our part’” (close quote). James T. Patterson states that Kennedy rejected plans by diplomats Chester Bowles & Averell Harriman to negotiate a ceasefire with the Viet Cong that would result in (quote) “elections that would reunite the nation.” JFK feared that the ceasefire would not be honored, & that even if it was, the subsequent elections would not guarantee a non-Communist Vietnamese government.

                  Patterson notes that South Vietnamese president Ngo Dinh Diem (quote) “continued to enjoy significant political support in the United States, especially from conservative Catholics & determined Cold Warriors” (close quote). However, as the years went by, & the South Vietnamese military position continued to deteriorate, some of JFK’s top advisors told him that the war could not be won if the selfish & autocratic Diem remained in power. Historian George Herring writes that Diem ignored internal critics & American pressures to reform his regime, and he increasingly (quote) “isolated himself in the presidential palace” (close quote). Kennedy Administration attempts to pressure Diem into taking actions that might win him more popular legitimacy continued to fail. Dallek argues that (quote) “the South Vietnamese ruler felt that repression of dissenting opinion[s] would save his political future better than democratization” (close quote). In particular, the South Vietnamese dictator faced increasing criticism due to his government’s preferential treatment of his fellow Catholics, at the expense of the nation’s Buddhist majority population. In June 1963, a Buddhist monk set himself on fire in protest of the government’s religious discrimination. Photographs of the incident shocked the world, and other Buddhist monks engaged in copycat self-immolations in the months that followed. President Diem responded not by liberalizing his policies, but rather by cracking down on protesters & critics. Patterson states that Diem’s goons (quote) “jailed hundreds of protesters and raided Buddhist pagodas. In August, they staged a major sweep of opponents and arrested 1400 people” (close quote).

                  Herring reports that (quote) “Diem’s refusal to conciliate the Buddhists drove a bitterly divided administration to [finally agree upon] a fateful decision: He must go” (close quote). Many foreign policy officials urged Kennedy to completely abandon support for Diem. Among them were Undersecretary of St. George Ball (profiled in Episode 20C) & US Amb. to S. Vietnam Henry Cabot Lodge Junior (profiled in Episode 17B). Both came to believe that regime change was the only way to salvage South Vietnam as a political entity. Pres. Kennedy became persuaded that a coup would be necessary, & he gave the green light for American officials in Saigon to begin plotting one. Patterson writes, (quote) the “Kennedy Administration further indicated its displeasure with Diem – & its willingness to see him removed – by cutting back aid [to his government] in October [1963]. [Behind the scenes,] CIA officials developed close contacts with anti-Diem generals” (close quote).

                  On November 1, 1963, Ngo Dinh Diem was killed in a US-backed military coup. Although the administration had hoped that a leadership change would improve the efficacy of the South Vietnamese government, Patterson suggests that the assassination left it (quote) “even more disorganized & demoralized” than it had been under Diem. Pres. Kennedy of course knew that Diem would be overthrown, but he was quite distressed when he learned that his fellow head of state had also been assassinated by his generals, following his arrest & removal from power. Historian George C. Herring contends that (quote) “With the coup, the United States assumed [more] direct responsibility for the Saigon government,” and would become even more involved & intertangled with what increasingly became a dysfunctional puppet regime. According to Herring, (quote) “More depressed than at any time since the Bay of Pigs, [John F. Kennedy] realized [after the coup] that Vietnam had been his greatest foreign policy failure” (close quote).

                  Historian James T. Patterson notes that some Kennedy defenders have consistently claimed that JFK had plans to end the war & that he would have removed most or all US military personnel from Vietnam if he had prevailed in the 1964 presidential election. Yet Patterson finds it doubtful that Kennedy would have terminated US involvement in the Vietnam War (had he lived on into 1964). I am inclined to concur with Patterson on this point, although I believe it is unlikely that he would have escalated US involvement to the same level that LBJ went on to do in 1965. Patterson notes that several former Kennedy Administration officials expressed their belief that the president would not have withdrawn US military personnel unless (quote) “he could be certain that the South Vietnamese could safely defend themselves” from their Communist opponents (close quote). George C. Herring states that while Kennedy “had demonstrated flexibility” on multiple issues & “had grown demonstrably in office,” (quote) “there is no persuasive evidence that he was committed to withdrawal” of troops, since “he had resisted [diplomatic] negotiations [just] as firmly as he had opposed [placing many more US] combat troops” in South Vietnam. (Quote) “Whatever his misgivings and ultimate intentions, JFK bequeathed to his successor a problem [in Southeast Asia that was] eminently more dangerous than the one he had inherited,” Herring concludes.

Most historians recognize that there were serious foreign policy achievements during the Kennedy Administration. Patterson states that JFK deserves credit for his steady handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis. In its aftermath, the administration developed a better relationship with the Soviets, establishing (quote) “an uneasy but promising détente” (in other words, a relaxation in tensions between the 2 countries). Examples of this emerging détente include the establishment of a telephone “hotline” allowing for fast & direct communication between the superpowers, and also the signing of a Partial Atomic Test Ban Treaty in August 1963, which banned atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons (although it did not ban underground tests). Although I certainly give Kennedy credit for these significant successes, I agree with historians Patterson & Herring that Kennedy shares blame with Eisenhower, Johnson, and Nixon for allowing the Vietnam War to become the biggest US foreign policy fiasco of the Cold War era.

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In our next full-length historical narrative episode about 1963, we will discuss the violence against civil rights protesters in Birmingham, Alabama, and the famous March on Washington, which included Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. These events during the summer of ‘63 would finally persuade the Kennedy Administration to support a major civil rights bill – but sadly the president would not live to see its passage. As always, “From Boomers to Millennials” is written by Logan Rogers and co-produced by Erin Rogers & Logan Rogers. You can contact the show via email at boomertomillennial@outlook.com. You can also comment on our social media posts on Instagram and BlueSky. Remember, whether you’re listening while out exploring a new frontier, or while vegging out on your living room couch, we really appreciate your support. Thanks for remaining subscribed & downloading our show, we appreciate all our listeners.