People's Army of Vietnam [Hardcover]

D. Pike (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1986

From the original 34-man Armed Propaganda Team of the 1930s, headed by Vo Nguyen Giap and managed by Ho Chi Minh, the People's Army of Vietnam has grown into the third largest military force in the world, exceeded only by the armies of the USSR and China. When viewed in terms of military capability and success, it is a phenomenon. Since its inception, the PAVN has taken on two major powers - France and the United States - and won decisive victories. It is this phenomenon that Douglas Pike describes in this work. At the same time, there also appears a picture of the use of force in politics, the nature of organizations and the limits of both technology and ideology. The book is aimed at those interested in the inner workings of the army that won the Vietnam War.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Pike, whose scholarly works on the Vietcong (History of Vietnamese Communism, etc.) are widely admired, describes the creation of the People's Army of Vietnam as "probably the most astounding military phenomenon of our lifetime." Since the fall of Saigon in 1975, PAVN has quadrupled in size and is today the third largest military force in the world, bigger than the U.S. Army. In this study, the first major work on the subject, Pike addresses in detail the question of how a small, underdeveloped, poverty-ridden country could create such an impressive military machine. He discusses too how the Vietnamese Communists developed a new kind of war with an underlying strategy "for which there is no known countermeasure." After a thorough analysis of the Vietnamese Communist Party's control of PAVN, Pike concludes with a speculation on the possibility of a military coup d'etat, now that Party influence is waning.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

This expert scholarly analysis has been written as an aid to drawing conclusions from the Vietnam War. It is the story of how a small country, starting with a tiny cadre, has developed, according to Pike, the third largest armed force in the world (he counts not only standing army but a paramilitary force of some 2 million). Pike details the militaristic nature of Vietnamese society, describes the organization and functioning of the military forces, and places them in political context. There is little coverage of specific military events, with the emphasis given to Vietnamese strategic thinking. This is the only respectable book of its kind: judicious, clearly written, and current. For most academic and larger public libraries. Edward Gibson, James Madison Univ. Lib., Harrisonburg, Va.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 408 pages
• Publisher: Pergamon Press (May 1986)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0080336140
• ISBN-13: 978-0080336145
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #10,567,604 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Quite good, June 20, 2006

By 

G. Stelzenmuller - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Pavn: Peoples Army of Vietnam (Hardcover)

This work is quite good, and I recommend it. It was the kind of book which a Vietnam veteran usually picks up with a lot of skepticism. It was probably better than a four-star work, but the chapter on Dau Tranh likely kept me from rating it with five stars. Pike's overall research was masterful, and for the year 1986 when the book was published, was very early on with analysis about not only why we (the U.S.) had to leave, but also why the Vietnamese in the north likely would never give up. Since their old die-hard leaders also wound up dying pretty old, there would have been a long time of misery for everyone.

I smiled at the Dau Tranh chapter, because communist governments and organizations always come up with names and slogans for the rationale of their irrationality, usually after the fact. It also didn't matter, as North Vietnam was run by xenophobes who kept their people away from the outside world, and the spirit of this Dau Tranh thing already existed at their poor infantryman's level all along. The soldiers and local cadre probably called it something else. In a way that we would call benignly perverted, these people were fighting for their independence on their terms, in spite of the xenophobes at the top. Independence makes a man fight hard.

I wish Dr. Pike had lived long enough to publish a sequel to PAVN. Much of what he said in his book turned out quite accurate and thoughtful. He missed on some other things, but so did we all. I suspect he would have been forthcoming about his misses, and very modest where he was right on.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The strategy of the other side, June 24, 2000

By 

Peter J. Schifferle (Leavenworth, Kansas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Pavn: People's Army of Vietnam (A Da Capo paperback) (Paperback)

Douglas Pike performed a valuable service to history by capturing the essence of the North Vietnamese strategy for victory in the Vietnam War. His explanation of the various techniques used to win not only victory on the battlefield, but, more importantly, strategic and political victories over both the American and South Vietnamese opponents, should be mandatory reading for anyone interested in how the United States lost this war. Well written and researched, this book is both enjoyable and disturbing.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Sometimes we learn, November 6, 2003

By 

Peter J. Schifferle (Leavenworth, Kansas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Pavn: Peoples Army of Vietnam (Hardcover)

A few years ago I wrote a positive review of Pike's PAVN. Since then, I have learned a few things about the historian's art, and I would like to ammend my earlier review.
Pike's work is not a well-researched scholarly approach to the Vietnam War, but is instead, a biased, poorly researched, emotion laden diatribe. Dau Tranh is not an established and proven strategy, as Pike would have us believe, but only a dream of old NVA generals, who would have liked to have won the war on their terms. That all of the Vietnamese actually lost the war, and are now enslaved in a Communist totalitarian regime, is the end of the war, not some glorious victory of an all-seeing, all-wise NVA strategy. Pike fails to prove his case, has little actual dcoumentary evidence, and his book should not be accepted as anything other than a diatribe.
The true story of the complex, long, bloody and difficult war in South East Asia remains to be told. However, the historiography of the nearly twenty years since this book was first published has shown that the outcome of the war was much more circumstantial and nuanced than Pike would have us believe. It was not this simple!