Usually the term propaganda refers to the cultivation of ideas, beliefs, ideological loyalties among those people at whom the propaganda is aimed. But propaganda can also consist of measures intended to prevent the target group from having access to information.

The Vietnam War and the "strategic hamlet" plan was just such an effort.

For those who aren't familiar with the story, the short version is this. Vietnam had been a French colony until 1954 when the people of Vietnam rebelled and ousted them (the US actually funded 78% of the cost of the French military effort). The United Nations then divided the country into North and South Vietnam, with the north, under President Ho Chi Minh, being pro-Soviet, and the south governed by what most Vietnamese called a "puppet regime" that was controlled by the US and Europe. The US government, ever fearful of the "spread of communism," that year sent military advisors to help prop up the government of South Vietnam. The American public was told that the South Vietnamese needed our protection. But, in fact, nearly all wanted the country unified under Ho. There was a South Vietnamese army, largely conscripted by force and lacking in morale. And the north had a regular army as well. But there were also the South Vietnamese who were willing to fight with the north for their freedom from outside exploitation. The players in this war were the north and south Vietnamese troops, bands of guerrilla fighters from the south who called themselves the National Liberation Front (NLF) or "Viet Cong" (for Vietnamese Communist). Then there were the American troops. Between 1964 and 1975, nearly a million US infantrymen were sent to battle in Vietnam. Nearly 60,000 died.

Caught in the middle of all this were the peasants in the countryside who generally just lived their quiet, traditional lives. But as the war heated up, more and more of them actively sided with Ho Chi Minh.

So strong was the appeal of the North that the Americans were increasingly engaged in combat with the South Vietnamese NLF who seemed to be able to recruit endless numbers of new fighters.

Propaganda designed to "rally" the South Vietnamese to the American position was largely a failure, even when accompanied by the use of force and threats of torture. So another means had to be found.

Enter the strategic hamlet. It began as a plan put forth by President Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam along with his British advisors. The idea was to relocate peasants to areas in which they could be supervised. This would theoretically prevent sympathetic rural dwellers from giving food, shelter, and other accommodations to Viet Cong fighters. As one historian wrote:

A precursor to the notorious Strategic Hamlets, the so-called “Agroville” program, began in 1958-1959. It was designed to relocate the peasantry in areas where the army could protect them from Viet Cong terror and propaganda, and the Saigon government sought to make it attractive by providing the new communities with schools, medical facilities and electricity. But the peasants deeply resented being forcibly removed from their homes and from the lands which contained the sacred bones of their ancestors. The Agroville program was eventually abandoned, but only after it had spawned tremendous rural discontent with the government. (The Vietnam Wars, by Kevin Ruane, Manchester University Press, 1998.)

In other words, as a propaganda tactic it failed the first time around. The solution - let the Americans try it next.

The fortified hamlet, like the Agroville, was supposed to isolate the peasants from the influences of the NLF whose message simply reflected what they themselves already believed. And in these concentration camp-like facilities, they would become - in the most literal sense of the term - a "captive audience" for US anti-communist propaganda.

Here, guarded as prisoners, they would be unable to join with the Viet Cong to fight or to assist them in any way. Presumably, able-bodied men could also be compelled to join the South Vietnamese forces.

At the start, every attempt was made to relocate the peasants to the hamlets. Hundreds of thousands of leaflets were dropped repeatedly all over the countryside in an attempt to convince this scattered population that they faced a choice between being brutalized by the communists or living "in freedom" with modern, healthy surroundings and plentiful food.

When that failed, more "persuasive" means were used. Crops were destroyed, villages burned to the ground, and people shackled or herded at gunpoint into conveyances that carried them to their new destination. The resentment this aroused was quite the opposite of what the psychological warfare campaign in Vietnam was designed to achieve.

The idea of using censorship as a form of propaganda is far from unique to Vietnam. It happens all the time. But this was an extreme instance. The captive peasants were hardly made immune to the "contagion" of communist ideals, as they almost instinctively chose the North over colonialization. And the animosity created by incarceration only made them more committed to the cause.

In the end, of course, the Americans lost the war. But it wasn't as much a military defeat as a psychological one.

A combat victory, it has been said, is accomplished by taking from an enemy the ability to continue fighting. A psy-war victory, on the other hand, destroys the will of the enemy to fight. And that makes the latter the more devastating loss.

Defeat happened not just in the bloody jungles and impassible terrain or becaise of an enemy that had the ability to ambush and disappear in an instant. It happened as much because the American people turned against the war to such an extent that legislators, in order to be reelected, had to withhold funding for the war.

In highsight, it's obvious that the propaganda offensive in Vietnam was destined to fail. But the cold war "domino effect" program of disinformation at home was, in the beginning, accepted by most Americans. Before long, however, a counter-propaganda resistance movement sprung up that changed everything. But that is a subject for a separate report.