THE THREATENING SKY

[Music] The film that you are about to see depicts the situation that has arisen in Vietnam as a result, a somewhat distant and unexpected result of the defeat of the French in that region in 1954. The whole region did belong to the to the French but they were defeated and it was necessary to have a new congress which was held at Geneva. South and North Vietnam were to be independent. They were to have the right to unification and they were to be entirely free from foreign interference. Everybody agreed to this and the Americans also agreed but their agreement was based on a tacit presupposition that they would not observe its consequences. The Americans have been ever since endeavoring to conquer South Vietnam. A small non-industrial people have been assaulted by an industrial and military colossus. Apart from anything else, the vast bombardment by the United States Air Force with its unimaginable tonnages of this agrarian country is the most supreme atrocity. But it is far worse worse than this. It is solicitous of your sensibilities too much so do the napam transforms people into a bub of the family and village of the victim. Chemicals cause paralysis, convulsions, bloody vomiting and evacuation for months ending in a death of agony. Gas explodes the pupils of the eye, perforates the lungs and slowly esphyxiates. This is a war of obliteration and of experiment. The United States and its military is testing weapons which it has already begun to use in Peru, Congo, Malaya, and Guatemala. Let us consider why President Eisenhower stated in 1953 while the French were still in Vietnam fighting with American backing and I quote, "Now let us assume we lost Indochina. If Indochina goes, the tin and tungsten we so greatly value would cease coming. We are after the cheapest way to prevent the occurrence of something terrible, the loss of our ability to get what we want from the riches of the Indo-Chinese territory and from Southeast Asia. This then is the issue and it could not be put more clearly. The hungry and oppressed, the downtrodden of the world are in revolt. The exploer, oppressor, and invader is using every fish device to maim and destroy. All of us must decide where we stand. The people of Vietnam ought to be regarded as our brothers. It rests with us to stop our rulers from degrading our nation as Hitler degraded Germany. I believe this film is a beginning no more towards understanding vividly what is at stake. [Music] On the 7th of February 1965, United States aircraft flew across the 17th parallel and attacked the Democratic Republic. Republic of North Vietnam. A new phase of the attempts by the United States government to impose its own solution in Vietnam had begun. The fighting in the South was going badly for the Americans. This was their justification for carrying the war into the north. In spite of the massive buildup of their forces, over 3/4 of South Vietnam, 10 million people had been freed from the control of the various puppet regimes supported by the United States. [Music] Recently arrived first cavalry airmobile division for all its helicopters and general ship is learning the lesson many have learned before. Yet common gorillas do not stand and fight unless it is advantageous for them to do so. [Music] Pilots are briefed for attacks on North Vietnam, from aircraft carriers, from Guam, from bases in the south. Punitive raids against the north might be used as a bargaining counter against the liberation front in the south. The main defense against these air raids was rifle and machine gun fire. And more important than weapons, the determination of the people. [Music] [Music] Londoners who remember the Blitz can appreciate the absence of fear in the streets of Hanoi as the people prepare to protect their capital city under the constant threat of American bombing. They've won their first victory, the victory over fear. [Music] [Music] They're more concerned with the news from the fighting fronts in the south and from the other parts of their country which are being bombed. They're taught how to bring down aircraft by rifle fire. People who are not afraid, who face the hostile planes as they sweep into attack, fight back even with rifles. In the countryside, there's the same calm and determination. [Music] [Applause] [Music] As bridges are bombed, they're replaced by feries. Children and old people are evacuated. There's no panic or confusion. These people have been at war for 25 years. Talking with leaders of the liberation forces in the south or with an underground trade unionist in Saigon itself, one gets the same impression of an obstinate determination to free Vietnam from all foreign interference. It's this determination which has brought together peasants and workers, students and professional men, representatives of all political parties and all religions in the National Liberation Front. This was formed in 1960 to end the United States intervention and establish an all party government based on neutrality as a first step to the reunification of Vietnam. Vietnam. The struggle against the French colonialists which ended in the victory of Dian Benfu gave the Vietnamese people an independent country but one which was divided in two in order to facilitate the French withdrawal. By the terms of the Geneva agreements, free elections should have reunited the country within two years. But the DM regime installed and supported in the south by the United States broke the agreements, refused to hold elections, and began a new war. Organized in guerilla units, the resistance fought back, bringing down one puppet regime after another and forcing the Americans to raise the number of their troops to a 100,000, to a quarter of a million, but to no avail. The Americans no longer tried to occupy the countryside. They bombard it. [Music] The war is mainly waged at a distance by plane. The daily average tonnage of bombs dropped on this small country exceeds that of the Second World War. For the Vietnamese people, North and South, the sky is an enemy. [Music] In the north, the only sign of the Americans is the roar of planes overhead and the bursting of bombs on the ground. But the people know that invasion is possible. They're ready for it. To understand their feelings, we must remember Britain in 1940 when Nazi planes were the forerunners of an invading force poised on the other side of the channel. [Music] Each village has its own defense core, its home guard against a local attack by parachutists. But if necessary, they can be grouped into an army trained for guerrilla warfare. [Music] McBth was assured by the witches that his life and the throne he had won by crime was safe until the forest began to move against his fortress. In Vietnam, as camouflage for the guerilla troops, the forest is on the move. [Music] [Music] Vietnam peasants have become soldiers. Their tools have become weapons. Their rice fields are battlefields. [Music] Before division, the southern part of the country supplied most of the food for Vietnam, mainly rice, and the coal mines and mineral wealth were in the north. By splitting the country permanently in two against the terms of the Geneva agreements, it was hoped to the country and weaken its resistance. Up to 1954, the Vietnamese had to import even nails and sewing needles from France. After the United States imposed a blockade, the Democratic Republic had to make everything for itself. With only a few factory buildings, only a few machines without spare parts, only a few trained technicians, they had to build up their industry almost from nothing. Now there are two fronts in the north, the war and the economy. [Music] Continuous [Music] [Music] air raids have changed the whole pattern of life. The days are used for the work of defense, the nights for the work of production. At harvest time, the work of getting in the crops and watering the new rice plants never stops. Not even for air raid alerts. [Music] Alerts are part of daily life. Taking cover while the planes are overhead. Returning to work again at the all clear. This has become the rhythm of life. [Music] [Applause] [Music] You know, [Music] I'm doing this. [Music] [Music] [Music] This is a war waged by a people, by every man, woman, and child with whatever weapons they can find. It's the kind of war that defeated Napoleon in Spain and Russia, that helped to defeat Nazi Germany in occupied Europe. [Music] We've done Among the young men volunteering to fight with the liberation front, at least one in 10 has lost his father or seen his mother tortured. They were born into war, brought up during war, matured by war. They belong to a generation that has never known peace. [Applause] Luan Hutoau is a lawyer educated in France. He is chairman of the liberation front. He was imprisoned by the DM regime and released by liberation forces. The strategic command of the front is in the middle of the jungle, safe from attack by helicopters or bombers. From this mobile headquarters, the liberated area making up over 4-fifths of the country is administered. In the liberated areas, the fields belong to those who work them. Most of the equipment of the liberation front was made in America. United States authorities themselves admit that over 80% of the arms used by the front have been captured from American and puppet troops. Food is one bowl of rice for each soldier a day. They travel light, strike swiftly, and when some massive concentration of American forces has been ponderously moved into position in a particular area, the guerilla fighters are always somewhere else. Letters from friends and family separated for over 10 years by the illegal division of the country often take 6 months to arrive. They are reread to comrades, commented upon, and sometimes edited and published. Vietnam is a country famous for love letters. The making of traps is a traditional activity of the Vietnamese. They've always had to defend their villages from the attacks of wild animals. Over 30 different kinds of traps using sharpened stakes have been devised and the manufacturer of bamboo stakes is practically a national industry. Stuck a slant in the ground, they've made vast areas unusable by helicopters. As Ho Chi Men explains, for 20 years, the whole of Vietnam has been a vast trap. Two armies, each of half a million men, have been caught in it. First, the French Expeditionary Force and then the Americans and their mercenaries in the south. Ho Chi Min compares the war to a fox hunt. When the two hind pores of the fox are caught by a spring trap, the fox fights like the Americans in the south. He tries to pull himself out. He becomes furious. He strikes at the air with his front paws and catches them in another trap. Saigon, the first period of United States intervention. As soon as the Geneva agreements were signed and the French began to move out, the United States moved in as advisers and specialists to begin with, then more openly in complete defiance of the agreements which prohibited any foreign intervention in the north or in the south. They reorganized the police force and the army. They made and unmade governments. Resistance was crushed. patriots executed. They also modernized the nightclubs and Brussels on the Catinet road. Gradually, all pretense of being in Vietnam simply as advisers slipped away. American domination was a fact. [Music] The second period of intervention, escalation of the war, the launching of incessant bombing raids on mines, roads, factories, and railways in the north. Heavy blows were struck against the new industries of the Democratic Republic and continuous attacks from the air were intended to destroy the morale of the Vietnamese people. This strategy was varied with peace offers based on an acceptance of the permanent division of the country and the right of the United States to continue to occupy the South. Should these offers be refused, plans for even greater escalation of the war were worked out by computer. But there are factors which electronic brains cannot add up. [Music] 4,000 years of legend, 2,000 years of history, an original civilization called Indo-Chinese because it was neither Hindu nor Chinese. 25 years of resistance to colonial domination. At Geneva in 1954, the sovereign independent state of Vietnam was recognized. One people with the same language and the same culture, the same respect for their own leaders who've guided their struggle for so many years. They cannot be divided by computers. Once a year at Christmas, the sky showers upon North Vietnamese children, toys and leaflets, presents from the psychological department of the United States forces. The same sky that for the rest of the year rains down on them napal and high explosive bombs. Each factory, each settlement has its numbered sequence in the mathematical progression of bombardments worked out logistically. This escalation of death is based on the psychological premise that if you kill enough people, a country will stop resisting. The same false psychology that Hitler used against the British people. The stake for the United States government is no longer Vietnam, neither its wealth nor its strategic importance. The object now is to prove once and for all that the peoples of Asia or of Africa or of Latin America cannot resist a country which has the most powerful arms. Vietnam is the laboratory in which the Pentagon is testing its techniques of anti-inssurrectionary war. The Vietnamese people are its guinea pigs. One of the most vaunted of these techniques is the blanket bombing by the giant B-52s and 57s. Originally designed for carrying atomic weapons, these planes are capable of dropping enormous loads of conventional bombs. They plaster a district of two square miles, leveling trees, destroying dikes, leaving nothing in their wake but a pockmark desert like a landscape on the moon. In Washington, the project of bombing the dikes and rivers of the north, spreading flood and famine over a whole land is calmly discussed by generals who enjoy the confidence of their president. But many sections of the American people do not support this war in their name. [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] When an air raid warning sounds, everyone knows what he has to do. Some take the children and the sick into shelters. Others man the anti-aircraft defenses. Others still continue working in spite of the danger. [Music] The work must go on. Men and women side by side working and fighting together. 25 years of war have taught the Vietnamese courage and determination and unity. Their skill and intelligence have been developed in struggle. Everything they have to do is well planned. How to attack, how to defend themselves, how to treat the prisoners who fall into their hands. It is their country and they all have a stake in it. In the areas they've won back, the land is redistributed and a plot is kept for each fighting man. [Music] [Music] Hey, [Music] It is a strange war. A war in which the opposing forces inhabit quite different realms. On the ground working and fighting together the people of Vietnam. In the air, the enemy. Their planes pass overhead at the speed of sound. But when they have gone, the people say, "We are still here on the ground in our own country. [Music] party tonight. [Music] No. The people of Vietnam will live free or die. How long will it take us to understand this? [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music]