General Westmoreland: An Unfulfilled Hero Who Was Turned into a Scapegoat

Authors

  • Jarema Słowiak Jagiellonian University, Poland

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.12797/AdAmericam.16.2014.16.05

Abstract

This article is dedicated to the most prominent American commander of the Vietnam War, or to be more precise, to the treatment of General William C. Westmoreland in modern American historiography. Ridiculed and accused of lying to the American public during his lifetime, General Westmoreland still remains one of the ‘villains’ of the Vietnam War. In recent years it has changed slightly, and now on the publishing market we can find books both attacking and defending the MACV commander and his decisions. However, mainstream historiography continues to judge him through the prism of the American trauma caused by the Vietnam War, and not his real merit and achievements. This article aims to dispel at least a few myths persisting both about General Westmoreland and his strategy to win ‘an unwinnable conflict.’

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Author Biography

  • Jarema Słowiak, Jagiellonian University, Poland

    is a Ph.D. student in the Faculty of History at the Jagiellonian University. His main research interests are the Vietnam War, military history and Polish foreign policy in Southeast Asia. He is currently working on his Ph.D. thesis on the Polish Delegation in the International Commission for Supervision and Control in Vietnam, and a book about the battle of Khe Sanh.

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Published

30-12-2015

Issue

Vol. 16 (2015)

Section

Articles

License

Copyright (c) 2015 Jarema Słowiak

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

How to Cite

Słowiak, Jarema. “General Westmoreland: An Unfulfilled Hero Who Was Turned into a Scapegoat”. Ad Americam, vol. 16, Dec. 2015, pp. 59-68, https://doi.org/10.12797/AdAmericam.16.2014.16.05.