Quoted By:
Stalin showed that National Socialism could be used effectively against another National Socialist, but it took Ho Chi Minh's regime and its Southern extension to demonstrate that National Socialism could even defeat the Great Republic (the United States). That Ho Chi Minh was a Socialist is hardly now disputable and it is also clear that he had Vietnamese Nationalism working for him in his fight against the American interventionists. Their foreignness made this easy to do. Note that the Viet Cong were formally known as the National Liberation Front. Their primary ostensible appeal was in fact national, though their Socialism was of course never seriously in doubt. So the Nationalism of Ho Chi Minh's regime gave it widespread support or at least co-operation in the South as well as in the North. Ho thus stole the emotional clothes of the conservatives as effectively as Hitler did and the magic mix of Nationalism and Socialism was once again shown to be capable of generating enormous military effectiveness against apparently forbidding odds.
So the simple explanation that works to explain Hitler's amazing challenge to the world also works to explain the equally amazing defeat of the world's mightiest military power by an relatively insignificant Third World Nation. A national-socialistic regime has such a strong emotional appeal that it galvanizes its subject population to Herculean efforts in a way that few other (if any) regimes can. It sounds about as crazy as you get to claim that it was "Nazis" that defeated the U.S. in Vietnam but this once again shows how National Socialism has been misunderstood and consequently underrated.
