In the Shadows of Utopia: The Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian Nightmare

In April 1970, bodies began drifting down the Mekong into South Vietnam. They were ethnic Vietnamese civilians, killed by the forces of a Cambodian government that had held power for a matter of weeks. The new regime had declared war on an army it could not fight, and turned on the people it could reach instead.

Time Period Covered: April 1970

What was the crisis facing the new Cambodian government in April 1970? Why were the Vietnamese communities subjected to massacres? What circumstances led to a US invasion of Cambodia?

In this episode Lachlan explores the horrible aftermath of the coup against Sihanouk, as a panicked new regime produces a pogrom against an innocent group of civilians. The communist Vietnamese armies take much of the countryside. Journalists disappear as they report on a Vietnam War that has spilled over the border. The Nixon White House faces a decision.

Sources

Chandler “Tragedy of Cambodian History”
Short “Pol Pot”
Shawcross “Sideshow”
Kamm “Report from a Stricken Land”
Sak Satsukhan “The Khmer Republic at War”
Wilfred Deac “Road to the Killing Fields”
Walter Isaacson “Kissinger”
Kiernan “How Pol Pot Came to Power”
Etcheson “Rise and Demise of Democratic Kampuchea”

Season Two covers fifteen years and more than thirty hours, from a newly independent Cambodia in 1955 to the coup that ends Sihanouk's rule in March 1970. This episode is the whole arc in one sitting.

Time Period Covered: 1955 to 1970

How does the Communist Party of Kampuchea form, and how does a schoolteacher named Saloth Sar end up leading it?

What happened to Tou Samouth?

Why did the Khmer Rouge want a 'super great leap forward', and what did the original one do to China?

What does Theravada Buddhism have to do with communist ideology?

Why did Sihanouk cut off the United States, and why did he change his mind?

How did the Vietnam War begin, and how did Cambodia get pulled into it?

What was the Samlaut Rebellion, and who actually started it?

How does a communist movement with almost no weapons decide to start a war?

What happened at Hue and My Lai in 1968?

Why did Nixon bomb a neutral country in secret?

Were the CIA behind the coup against Sihanouk?

This recap is for anyone who wants a refresher before Season Three, or a way into the series without listening to fifteen years of history in full. It covers the formation and slow growth of the Cambodian communist movement, the ideological currents reaching Cambodia from Moscow and Beijing, the collapse of the American position in Vietnam and its spread across the border, and the political unravelling that ends with Sihanouk deposed and the country at war with itself.

On March 18th, 1970, while Norodom Sihanouk was abroad, the Cambodian National Assembly voted unanimously to remove him from power. The men behind it expected to stabilise the country. Within weeks Sihanouk had joined a resistance front alongside the communists he had spent years hunting, and Cambodia was in a civil war it would not survive intact.

Time Period Covered: 1969 to 1970

Were the CIA responsible for the coup against Sihanouk? Why did Lon Nol and Sirik Matak finally make a move against the prince? What did Sihanouk's removal from power mean for the Khmer Rouge?

In the final episode of this season, Lachlan covers the circumstances surrounding the plot to remove Norodom Sihanouk from his position as head of state. Lon Nol and Sirik Matak will take advantage of the problem of Vietnamese troop presence on Cambodian land and turn it into a political necessity to oust the prince. They would make several miscalculations, and the plan would largely backfire, as Sihanouk joins a resistance front with who he thinks are the Khmer Rouge, as well as the Vietnamese, and receives Chinese aid. Lon Nol's new government will have to resort to terrible measures to try and deliver on their promises.

Sources

Chandler “Tragedy of Cambodian History” and “Brother Number One”
Short “Pol Pot”
Shawcross “Sideshow”
Heder “Cambodian Communism”
Sihanouk “My War With The CIA”
Osbourne “Sihanouk”
Jagel “Khmer Nationalist”
Haing Ngor “Survival in the Killing Fields”
Kamm “Report from a Stricken Land”

In March 1969, American B-52s began bombing Cambodia, a neutral country, in an operation so secret that even the Air Force's own reporting system was falsified to hide it. The campaigns were codenamed Breakfast, Lunch, Snack, Dinner, Dessert and Supper. The menu would run for fourteen months.

Time Period Covered: 1968 to 1969

How did Cambodia become the 'key' to Nixon's plan to end the Vietnam War? What was the secret bombing of Cambodia? How many bombs did the US drop on Cambodia? What factors led to the end of Sihanouk's leadership of the country?

In this episode Lachlan looks at the gradually degrading situation in Cambodia, and the destabilisation prior to a change in the White House that will only make matters worse. We look at Sihanouk's movies, the Cambodian economy, and the Khmer Rouge as they continue their 'armed struggle' across the country. Nixon's ascension to power is explored, his plans for a quick end to the Vietnam War, and the role Cambodia could play in producing this. The bombing, done in secret, is explained, as well as some comments on the general discourse around the idea of 'bombs over Cambodia' and the correction Kiernan made in his cowritten article.

Check out the YouTube Channel at https://youtu.be/8QdRvpbMr_w?si=vTEurMs6dDEmjjHI

Sources

Short “Pol Pot”
Chandler “Tragedy of Cambodian History”
Shawcross “Sideshow”
Mark Atwood Lawrence “Concise History of the Vietnam War”
Kiernan “How Pol Pot Came To Power”
Osbourne “Sihanouk”
Heder “Cambodian Communism and the Vietnamese Model”

Article Links

https://quillette.com/2023/12/07/kissinger-and-cambodia/

https://gsp.yale.edu/case-studies/cambodian-genocide-program/us-involvement/united-states-bombing-cambodia-1965-1973

Support

https://www.patreon.com/shadowsofutopia

On the morning of March 16th, 1968, the soldiers of Charlie Company entered the hamlet of My Lai expecting to meet a Viet Cong battalion. They met villagers eating breakfast. Over the next four hours, more than 500 civilians were killed. Nobody fired at the Americans that morning, and only one man ever went to prison.

Time Period Covered: December 1967 to March 1968

What role does the Tet Offensive play in the My Lai Massacre? What circumstances in troop deployment and officer training influenced what happened? Why were more than 500 civilians murdered by Charlie Company?

In this episode, Lachlan confronts the horrors that occurred in My Lai on the 16th of March 1968. He attempts to answer why more than 500 civilians were killed, what the context of these killings was, as well as the role that officers such as William Calley had in producing the massacre.

For Photos and Maps of the My Lai Assault please visit https://www.shadowsofutopia.com/episodes/tet-part-two-the-my-lai-massacre

** Be advised of a mistake in the episode. Hugh Thompson did not receive the "Medal of Honour", but a US Army Soldier's Medal. I meant this as a generality but forgot there is a genuine "Congressional Medal of Honour". Apologies. **

Sources

The Peers Inquiry of the Massacre at My Lai 1970
Edward Miller The Vietnam War: A Documentary Reader
William Thomas Allison My Lai
The Vietnam War Geoffrey War and Ken Burns
The Vietnam War Mark Atwood Lawrence
Anatomy of US and South Korean Massacres In the Year of the Monkey Heonik Kwon

In the early hours of January 31st, 1968, communist forces attacked more than a hundred cities and towns across South Vietnam at once. In Hue, the old imperial capital, they stayed for four weeks. When the city was retaken, mass graves held the bodies of at least 2,800 civilians.

Time Period Covered: 1968

What did the Tet Offensive achieve? How was the Battle of Hue waged? Why were almost 3,000 people murdered by the Viet Cong?

This episode covers the Tet Offensive of early 1968. Lachlan links the media coverage of the event, with the extreme scenes in Saigon, to the reality of the offensive and what the communists hoped to achieve. In Hue, perhaps the most stunning battle of the offensive took place, as for four weeks the city was occupied by the NVA and NLF. During this time, as a brutal campaign of house-to-house combat took place, the communists embarked upon a reign of terror to reshape the city they had taken.

Sources

Edward Miller The Vietnam War: A Documentary Reader
Nha Ca Mourning Headband For Hue
The Vietnam War Geoffrey War and Ken Burns
The Vietnam War Mark Atwood Lawrence
Vietnam Max Hastings
The Viet-Cong Strategy of Terror Douglas Pike
Hue Mark Bowden

On January 17th, 1968, the Khmer Rouge attacked a military post at Bay Damram in Battambang province. It was the official beginning of their armed struggle, launched by a movement with almost no weapons. The phrase they used for it was a revolution waged with empty hands.

Time Period Covered: 1967 to 1968

How did the CPK develop their plan to genuinely start a war in Cambodia? Why did Sihanouk seek rapprochement with the United States? How did the bombing of Cambodia begin?

January 1968 will prove to be a pivotal month for Vietnamese, Cambodian and American interests in the war. This episode details how the Cambodian communist movement finally began an armed struggle against the Sihanouk government, how the United States negotiated a deal to bomb Cambodia, and how the Vietnamese began a counter attack against the Saigon regime.

Sources

Philip Short Pol Pot: History of a Nightmare
David Chandler The Tragedy of Cambodian History & Brother Number One
Ben Kiernan How Pol Pot Came to Power and Peasants & Politics in Kampuchea
Milton Osbourne Sihanouk
Steve Heder Cambodian Communism and the Vietnamese Model
Elizabeth Becker When the War was Over
Nic Dunlop Lost Executioner
ECCC Case 001 Witness Testimony 2009
Shawcross Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon, and the Destruction of Cambodia
CIA FOIA

Between 1966 and 1969, teenagers with armbands beat their teachers to death in Chinese schoolyards, and roughly a million people died at the hands of their own countrymen. Mao had asked for it. Less than a decade later, the Khmer Rouge would put children in charge of adults for reasons that were not unrelated.

Time Period Covered: 1964 to 1969

What led to Mao's launching of a 'cultural revolution' in the People's Republic? What were the aims of this movement? Why did perhaps a million people die at the hands of their countrymen in less than four years?

In what could be considered a belated part two to the episode introducing Maoism and the Great Leap Forward, Lachlan revisits China and attempts to explain the Cultural Revolution. Officially launched in 1966, this period of chaos, an example of a cult of personality being used to destroy a system and replace it with a kind of perpetual revolution, would lead China into a near state of anarchy.

Radical young Maoists, organised into groups of Red Guards, terrorised those they considered insufficiently loyal to the ideological mandate set by Mao.

 
Sources

Philip Short Mao
Frank Dikotter The Cultural Revolution: A People's History
Andrew Walder China Under Mao
Richard Baum Lecture Series