‘Turning Point: The Vietnam War' resurfaces ugly truths, exposes America's shameful repeat of history

San Francisco Chronicle​

28-04-2025

In marking the 50th anniversary of the Fall of Saigon, Vietnam War documentaries have become a television genre. This week, Netflix joins the trend with 'Turning Point: The Vietnam War.'
The third of Brian Knappenberger's 'Turning Point' miniseries (previous entries looked at 'The Bomb and the Cold War' and '9/11 and the War on Terror'), its five episodes cover much the same ground as Ken Burns' 2017 PBS series ' The Vietnam War ' and ' Vietnam: The War That Changed America,' which Apple TV+ released earlier this year.
That's unavoidable; the historical record is the historical record. But America's mid-20th century involvement in what was essentially a Southeast Asian civil war was so complex and camouflaged in deception — not to mention brutal, racist, socially disruptive and ultimately, unforgivably senseless — that every one of these extended documentaries illuminates new, or at least different, tragedies.
We're talking small degrees of emphasis here. Knappenberger lays out the pertinent aspects more comprehensively than the Apple TV+ series did and in a less plodding manner than Burns. 'Turning Point: The Vietnam War,' may be dense with information, yet is edited and delivered in a manner that feels fleet while still getting the job done.
This show relies a lot on CBS news archives, hence the prominence of network stars Dan Rather (who is also an elderly, insightful talking head here), Morley Safer, Ed Bradley and, of course, Walter Cronkite.
However 'Turning Point,' like its predecessors, prides itself on newly discovered sources such as declassified government records and personal footage taken by U.S. and Vietnamese troops of both sides. Most enraging are secret White House tape recordings. It's clear John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson had reels turning long before the system led to Richard Nixon's Watergate Waterloo. The audio evidence of how all three administrations lied to the public about the war's feasibility makes for an appalling indictment.
Grunts, POWs, anti-war protesters, U.S. military and government higher-ups, historians, Graham Nash (CSNY's 'Ohio' is predictably prominent on the soundtrack) and especially sharp book authors explain America's tactical and moral failings and the resulting, ongoing credibility gap between citizens and our leaders. The complicated story of post-World War II Indochina is cleanly laid out, while a well-balanced array of North Vietnamese, Viet Cong and South Vietnamese combatants and civilians describe the awful things people did to each other in the names of freedom from colonialism or communism.
The program's most chilling sequence is a kind of virtual walk through the My Lai Massacre, when a U.S. unit methodically murdered hundreds of women, children and seniors in a rural hamlet soon after the 1968, attitude-changing Tet Offensive. Ronald Haeberle, a military photographer who took pictures with a personal camera that the Army couldn't censor, provides grisly graphics and soul-throttling commentary of what he saw that day. Wizened Vietnamese survivors will break your heart.
If I recall, My Lai wasn't even mentioned in 'War That Changed America,' which speaks to this docuseries' more traditional, full-picture approach. The Apple TV+ series placed more emphasis on human factors, though Knappenberger is no slouch in that department. The first vet we hear from this time around is Scott Camil, a Marine who also figures prominently in the Apple TV+ show. I think Knappenberger uses the same footage of G.I.s turning their weapons into bongs that we saw a few months ago, as well.
But whatever seems repetitious in these Vietnam documentaries is mitigated by necessity. 'Turning Point' concludes noting the invasion of Iraq was justified by Gulf of Tonkin-style lies, and our 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal looked strikingly like that chaotic, 1975 airlift from Saigon.
Bob Strauss is a freelance writer.