Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 136 - The Khmer Rouge Part 4: The Fall

Episode Date: January 4, 2021

In the conclusion of our series Vietnam liberates Cambodia and slaps around another world power. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys

Hello, and welcome back to another episode of the Lines Led by Donkeys podcast. I'm Joe, and suffering with me through the second hour of the day is Nick. I was promised this was going to be better. I mean, that's a low bar coming from part three. It is. There's not many things that could be more depressing. Is there anything we can look forward to?

We do get to talk about how the Khmer Rouge get fucking brutally stomped by the Vietnamese army. Not even a fight. It's amazing. Oh, really? Yes, it's great. get to talk about how the Khmer Rouge get fucking brutally stomped by the Vietnamese army. Not even a fight. It's amazing. Oh, really? Yes, it's great. So with that, we can start part

four. We left you last week. The genocidal reign of the Khmer Rouge was about to come to an end. Kind of. But the worst parts were about to be over. Right uh we talked about a little bit already and it's been fleshed upon uh fleshed out a little bit over the last uh about three and a half hours but uh vietnam and cambodia fucking hate one another during this time they still kind of do

uh there's still a lot of uh tension there but they aren't shooting at each other anymore, so that's called progress. Yeah, that's something. During the time of the Khmer Rouge, not so much. Not only did Cambodia and Vietnam hate each other historically, but that only became amplified during the years of Khmer Rouge control. We talked a little bit before about how

China totally and fully supported the Khmer Rouge, and that was not out of the goodness of their heart. They knew a strong Cambodia was a thorn in Vietnam's side. Remember, we're just getting over decades of war between the French and then the Americans and then fighting the South

and then unifying it. They've been through some shit. Not to mention they were dealing with the horrible after effects of those wars and losing millions of their own people. A large percentage of the Vietnamese population died during America's intervention there. And not to mention however many millions were maimed or wounded by chemical weapons or bombs. China and Vietnam had also a bit of historical hatred and bad blood.

And at various points, Vietnam was conquered by Imperial China, though they were willing to overlook a lot of that when it came time to do some communism together. During the French War in the country, the Chinese helped the Viet Minh forces defeat my grandpa and his friends and

throw them into camps. I'll never not bring that up. It's kind of hilarious. Thousands of Viet Minh fighters trained in China, they were armed by China, and in some cases, led by Chinese military advisors in battles. Though the

enthusiasm for the Viet Minh began to wane, when it became clear they were cool working with the Chinese, but they had no intention of letting themselves

become dominated by them ever again. They were fighting to free themselves from the french not to fall under the imperial rule of communist china like they're like yeah we're like we're cool with the solidarity but also we don't like it like this like one of the things that became um like a tipping point was they stopped working with like directly under the command of chinese military advisors so like thanks for the training but we can do this on your own go fuck yourself type deal so at that the chinese advisors and training stopped and aren't uh and like they were pulled out of the country but arms still flowed through um because you know while china wasn't the biggest fan anymore they also also wanted to own the French, obviously.

And while China soured on the Viet Minh, the Soviet Union did not. And while China was fine acting as a go-between, China wasn't pumping endless amounts of their own weapons into Vietnam. They bordered Vietnam. So Soviet Union and China are still communist bros at the time. And the Soviet Union's like, we're cool with that, but we're like gonna push so many weapons into vietnam through you and they're like fine whatever do it um and there was some advisors as well like a lot of soviet advisors went through um to train them on more advanced weaponry and tactics okay uh though eventually even that ended when joseph stalin died in the 50s uh this led to the sino-soviet split Okay. order um but they weren't going to be bros anymore this is that long story short sino-soviet split

happens uh ussr and the china is not working together anymore uh especially not to overland haul weapons into vietnam now china assumed that their fellow asian communists would take their sides on the split but vietnam remembered while the USSR came with their own problems, they never attempted to take them over like China had. So it actually stayed close with the Soviets, telling the Chinese to go fuck themselves. This made things very fucking awkward when

both China and Vietnam supported the Khmer Rouge during the Cambodian Civil War, though not together. They both supplied weapons and training, but it but never like it was never like a unified front like oh it's funny seeing you here like it's like running into an ex-girlfriend at like a walmart like uh i'm not saying hi have you done this before um i ran into an ex-girlfriend uh at a taco bell years ago uh and it was very weird because we did not break up under good terms.

Oh, fuck. Yeah. So even before Vietnam was unified, North Vietnam spent a lot of money and time training the Khmer Rouge. However, eventually, like we talked about, decided that the Khmer Rouge wasn't really worth the effort.

They're going to expand the war we're not ready for. We need to fight the Americans now. Because remember, they're juggling, and the Khmer Rouge is trying to throw more balls into their juggling hands or whatever. This isn't working for me. Yeah, I'm not a juggler. Yeah, I don't know enough about juggling discourse

for this metaphor to work. Vietnam requested that the Khmer Rouge not start a war against the government of Cambodia at that point, the prince, because look at everything we have going on over here. We really can't handle this at once. was quite legitimately worried that the americans would bleed the war over into cambodia if the kamaroos started popping off for fear of them being called you know vietnamese agents which is exactly what happened uh because ho chi minh ain't nothing to fuck with i guess um i mean that's the americans are bobbing cambodia flat specifically because the Khmer Rouge did not listen to North Vietnam. So they were right on that one. Though what really made Vietnam break off the relationship was the violent racism the Khmer Rouge had towards the Vietnamese people within their own borders, which we all know eventually led to a genocide.

This was combined with constant border raids that the khmer rouge launched into vietnam uh the reason for this was some of the lands held by vietnam at the time uh were considered historical parts of cambodia by the khmer rouge um and this happened even while vietnam was training and arming them so like finally they're like all right this, this is enough. Fuck you guys were out. Um, but to be clear, Vietnam's goals were not altruistic. They saw themselves as a regional power competing with China and they wishes they wish to export the revolution and influence the nations around them like Cambodia and Laos and to a lesser extent,

Thailand. Um, but eventually splitting goals and splitting power is bad because they have the Americans to deal with. So they said, fuck these guys and left. So China took over. Okay. Thinking if they played their cards right,

they'd have a pliable client state right next to those bastards who chose the Soviets over them. So at any point, the only reason why anybody is supporting the Khmer Rouge is to use them. That's what I was thinking. It's more nefarious to remember that China supported them

through everything that we have talked about so far. Through S-21, through the killing fields, through the genocide. It's been only China the whole time. Vietnam's support of them ended before Vietnam was unified. So this is all on China. I mean, it's all also on Pol Pot,

but the support is on China. Now, despite the massive amounts of crimes and violence being perpetrated by the state against their own people, China poured tons of weapons and military materials into the country. However, very little military training was done, as Pol Pot did not want his military being trained by the Chinese,

who he also thought were subhuman. What the fuck? Remember, he also committed genocide against Chinese people in Cambodia, too. And China knew this and did not care. At least didn't seem to care, because they never really slowed this down. That's not surprising.

It's not. I mean, yeah, but it's still like kind of incredible. Like, yes, we understand they're massacring Chinese people by the tens of thousands, but we also gave them the weapons that they used to slaughter Chinese people by the tens of thousands. So that is the stage that is set. Once the Khmer Rouge took over the country,

they never really stopped their attacks over the border into Vietnam. While the Khmer Rouge fighters, formerly known as the Khmer Che and Revolutionary Army, had been supplied with massive amounts of military equipment, what they didn't have was skill. Remember, the military

under law, no, while bad, had been destroyed like quite effectively the roots had been torn up it no longer exists uh so the kra is a completely new native force um with almost no training no organizational strength like they have no generals who've been to a staff college who knows how to do logistics and shit like that. That's what I'm wondering. Like, who's running? Like, is this organized organized?

No. It's largely factional. While they had an overall commander, that being Pol Pot, he extended no command and control because he had no idea how. Like, remember, they killed off all the trained soldiers. Remember, they killed off all the trained soldiers, replacing them with, at worst, illiterate people, or at best, completely uneducated people on military affairs or tactics or training. And remember from our second episode

that these same formations are also fighting each other in an institutional civil war. So if there were trained people people there's a good bet that at one point they'd just be declared like an enemy of the people and get massacred by another group of the k the kra like it's still very good like i'm mind fucked it's it's like the taliban right like we a lot of people like to consider them under a central leadership because technically they have one. But in reality, it's more like controlled by warlords

with very factional leadership control. They control X amount of people within this providence, but they have no... There's no aid with another unit next door. It's all very, very factional and

regional. So hypothetically, they all believe to the same organization or belong to the same organization. They actually don't. They're not going to get orders from General Whoever. General Whoever isn't going to pass the orders down to Colonel Whoever, down to

a brigade, at which point they're going to muster their forces and do like a brigade movement into Vietnam. They got a right before that. Yeah, I got a drug test to barracks inspection. Instead what's happening is like shithead a and his

political officer stationed right over the border from Vietnam's like I'm going to attack Vietnam. So he takes yeah, so he takes whatever military power he has under his direct influence and assaults with it like there's no

organized front here it's not a military in a traditional sense it's almost like you know because Pol Pot led a armed revolution from the forest with the so calledcalled Forest Army. That was almost entirely irregular and had no central chain of command, which did make it very hard to defeat as an insurgency. Because that's how insurgencies win.

Like, you can't snuff out a group like, ha-ha, we killed the leader. Because it doesn't really matter. That's why faceless and leaderless organizations are so hard to stop. doesn't really matter it's why faceless and leaderless organizations are so hard to stop um however you can't really import that as an institutional army for a state right like ever hoaxia tried this in albania to have like um like an uncentralized militia be like the defense plan but like he never had to use it because alban was never invaded. But Pol Pot did, and he was. And now we know how that goes, which is not great, it turns out. You need those command and control things.

So going off of that, when an attack by the KRA was launched into Vietnam, it was almost always in a piecemeal fashion. launched into Vietnam, it was almost always in a piecemeal fashion. At no point was there a massive Khmer Rouge army mustered in an organized offensive. They only targeted parts of the border they felt were largely

undefended, so they could attack unguarded villages, kill as many unarmed people as they could, and then burn everything to the ground before leaving. There was also blind artillery strikes into random parts of Vietnam. These started

very small, but eventually ramped up to the point where thousands of Khmer Rouge fighters crossed the border at undefended points and slaughtered over 3,000 Vietnamese civilians and burnt the village to the ground. That is when Vietnam decided to take the fucking kid gloves off uh they're like we gotta

go fuck these dudes up so they know not to fuck with us right it it was uh like something we talked about when we talked about the battle like tudorburg forest in a punitive expedition like we're gonna go out there fuck them up to teach them a lesson then come back like this is not the invasion of cambodia yet so 60,000 regular soldiers backed by fighter and bomber jets as well as tanks and artillery cross the border into

Cambodia in front of them the Khmer Rouge just ran hardly even trying to put up a fight they stopped within a few miles of a bordering provincial capital turned around and then went home their goal was to show the Khmer Rouge that they were not fucking with the right person and flex on them.

Did they flex more? It did not. So, they thought this would convince the Cambodian government to go to a negotiation of some kind to hash out their border disputes. Like, clearly you're not going to win this militarily, dude. Let's talk this over.

This did not work. Rather than admitting they got stomped by Vietnam, Pol Pot said that their withdrawal actually meant that Vietnam had been defeated. Huh? They also rolled this into pro-war propaganda to take the fight back to Vietnam to reclaim the land that was stolen,

that they were already fighting over. It seems like a dumb move. It's a very dumb move. Yeah. Like Vietnam gave Pol Potten out and he did not take it. Like at this point he'd be like, Oh fuck. It turns out having a whole bunch of 15 year olds with AK is a bad idea.

Uh, I should probably talk to Vietnam about this. Uh, instead, uh, nope. And what's telling is he knew what just was coming for him, which was the army of Vietnam,

which remember defeated the French, defeated the Americans and defeated the South Vietnamese. Significantly more powerful than anything that's ever been mustered in Cambodia. And he saw that full force and was like, we could probably take it. Which means that either he is very, very stupid

or he bought into his own bullshit. It's hard to tell which one. I think he bought into his own bullshit. Because, I mean, he's effectively king of this country. I hope he had army guys and that's just how he planned it. I don't think there's any plan. Because he had no command and control function. Like, there's even at he planned it. I don't think there's any plan because he had no command and

control function. Even at a state level. He said there's plans from his head. He's like, alright, now execute. I mean, clearly we're good at killing people. Look at all our own people that we killed. We could surely do this to the Vietnamese army. The

Cambodian leadership at the time put out propaganda that said like one Kampuchean soldier was equal to 30 Vietnamese soldiers so if Kampuchea could raise 2 million soldiers from a population of 8 million it could wipe out Vietnam's entire population of 50 million and still have 6 million people

left that's a good army like they were quite literally like openly talking about genociding Vietnam like hey you know how we did all this here let's do that next door too we're taking our band on the road yeah uh and kamarouge units once again raided over the border killing thousands of civilians um and then start bombarding others with artillery and it's worth noting that i think this is what pol pot thinks a military offensive is. It's just raiding villages and then running away. Okay.

He's not taking this land because he knows that Vietnam will just come and stomp them out of wherever they hold up. Yeah, they're not holding that fight for long. Yeah, he was attempting to fight a guerrilla war with a country. Does not work. It became very clear to Vietnam. They were dealing with a rational does not work. It became very clear to Vietnam they weren't dealing with a rational state actor and they couldn't expect to do business

with him like they would with anybody else. They weren't going to get him to a negotiation table or anything. So they began to foment their own proxy war within its borders, attempting to create a Cambodian liberation army under their control and made up of refugees that fled over the border, at which point they'd go over the border

build up their ranks with disaffected Cambodians who hated the Khmer Rouge and then march on Phnom Penh at which point Vietnam could be like, ha ha, I can have now I can flex my influence on them because I put them there and I didn't even have to risk any of my soldiers to do it.

We tried the same thing in Vietnam so like they know all about it uh it did not work um while the u.s had been well fuck i gotta say that again while vietnam had been successful in starting their own people's war against the u.s france and south vietnam they failed completely in cambodia this is not a failure of ideology or even Vietnamese forced farms. The main reason for this was the Santa Ball. The Khmer Rouge security

apparatus was so pervasive through their system of snitches and atmosphere fear that they created that they rooted out revolutionary cells almost immediately and recruitment within the country was almost non-existent due to everybody being too fucking scared of doing anything.

Yeah, they created such a culture of self-criticism and backstabbing. Everybody was too petrified to do anything against them. So I guess technically the Santa ball worked, but also no. So Vietnam went back to the drawing board like

well, our people's war failed. What else can we do? The one thing hung in the balance. They knew that. So Vietnam knew they could stop Cambodia. Militarily, that was never in question. What was in question was if the Soviet Union would support them if they went into all out war. And that was solved with the Treaty of Friendship in 1978.

That's a nice treaty. Yeah, what it came down to is like, look, I believe it was Lejuan at the time, it was like, look, if we invade Cambodia, will you still support us? And they're like, yeah, for sure. Word. All right, cool. High five. Yay, communism. Time to own the

Chinese, pretty much. After that, they stepped up propaganda efforts against the khmer rouge even getting entire units of the kra to turn against them via bribes what yeah like they sent agents in and we're like look we're coming and you know we'll fucking destroy you the only thing that could possibly help you is joining our side and they're like that sounds like a good deal yeah will you feed us that's like we didn't put anything on the table like no it's all right you don't need to we'll do it yeah and honestly this is one of the probably on purpose master strokes was obviously vietnam wanted to build up an a native army so they didn't have to put more of their own soldiers at risk, which didn't completely work.

But what happened is when Pol Potret's hearing about entire units of the KRA turning against him, he just starts purging his military even harder, making it even more useless and weak and unable to action against the Vietnamese offensive that's coming for them. So it's kind of brilliant. Each soldier can take on 30 of them.

We're kind of losing a lot of guys. Yeah. So that means we can kill more, right? Because we don't need that many. Ah, shit. So these turncoat KRA units became part of a building block to form a different Cambodian rebel group that they would use as a front organization and eventual government during their time as occupiers of Cambodia, which is the Kampuchean United Front for National Salvation.

That's a lot. Not as cool as the FUNC. No, it's not. I don't take it. It's a lot. When you're thinking of insurgent and liberation groups, you've got to think of a snappy acronym like FUNC. Can't think of any other ones right now.

I think theirs is just off the top of the head, and they just went with it. Or the MILF from the Philippines. Amazing stuff. Nobody ever forgets about the MILF. So in response, China deployed tens of thousands of advisors to Cambodia, as well as threatening Vietnam with what would happen if they invaded. To underline this, they deployed hundreds of thousands of soldiers on their southern border, which is Vietnam's northern.

China was hoping Vietnam would blink. Look at how many soldiers we have where China, we're fucking huge. We'll drown you in soldiers. Obviously, you're not going to invade Cambodia. You're going to take a step back. mean this is quite legitimately like america's foreign policy most of the time like whenever we shift soldiers around like the u.s or the or over around like europe and the middle east like look at our military strength you probably shouldn't do that but like vietnam looked at them like yeah we fought stronger and then invaded Cambodia on Christmas of 1978 like you know we dusted the US we dusted

the French we'll fuck you up too and then invaded Cambodia with 150,000 soldiers artillery tanks and aircraft they remind me of Randy Marsh when he's fighting all those dads I thought this was Vietnam

like I didn't hear the fucking bell just looking all fucked up Randy Marsh when he's fighting. I'm sorry. I thought this was Vietnam. Like I didn't hear the fucking bell. Just look at all fucked up. And remember, this is 1978. This is only a couple of years removed from like Saigon falling and Vietnam's like that. We could do an invasion. Like they've been almost constant war for decades.

If anybody is going to try to get Vietnam to blink when it comes to flexing on them as a superior power, if anybody knows better by now, it's China. They've seen so many armies go into that place and get annihilated. We could do better. We could play chicken with them. Yeah.

Vietnam invades Cambodia. And standing shoulder to shoulder with their Chinese advisors, the KRA attempted to stand in defense. And holy fuck did they fail entirely. Not in a single place did the KRA stop the advance of Vietnam's vastly superior and battle-tested army. Within just two weeks of fighting,

and mind you, not a single point of this does Vietnam stop. The only time they stop is they actually outran their own supply lines at one point. Fuck, we're tired. Yeah, pretty much. Through two weeks of fighting, half of the carry was completely destroyed.

Two weeks. They did little more than slow Cambodia down by forcing them to kill them where they stood buying just enough time for the government of cambodia to run for their lives seeing the writing on the wall they abandoned the pile of corpses of a nation they had created by january 7th panampan had fallen and vietnam established a new government in its place and yeah like about two weeks of fighting it shits over you think they got there like huh hey do you think that was just a little too easy well what's interesting is

vietnam knew they were gonna steamroll them but they didn't think it was gonna be that easy so it was like this is a trap they're luring us into panama pen to trap us in here yeah so they were like really cautious going into the city. And he realized like, huh, nope. And you could hear like the Khmer Rouge guy all the way on the other side of the city that they're still trying to hold. Like, we had a guy who was supposed to booby trap that, but he

turns out he didn't know how to booby trap. We had a defending army for the capital, but it turns out they're kind of revolutionary and we beat them to death. Those fuckers. That'll teach them. Now, it's worth pointing out here that Vietnam knew that the Khmer Rouge sucked. They were dealing

with refugees like, yeah, they're killing everybody over there type thing, but they had no idea what Cambodia looked like beyond border raids. Soldiers were shocked to find mass graves with tens of thousands of people in them and they discovered the horrors of s21 and the other death camps like the there's a vietnam army

combat photographer who discovered s21 i think it's like novantre or something like that and he said he found it because while standing in the middle of the Capitol, he smelt decaying bodies and just followed the smell until he found S-21. Oh. Once there and on the roads to the Capitol, they found civilians so weak and starving they dropped dead from hunger as they walked down the road to see who the army was. At no point did Vietnam assume that this would take place. So, like, no humanitarian rations were alongside soldiers right and to be fair Vietnam was not doing this for humanitarian reasons

but soldiers are people and they didn't come equipped to help the population but soon found themselves giving up their own rations the dying people they found around every turn they had to be stopped by an army doctor because they're feeding them too much and he's afraid they were going to kill them.

Go ahead and throw an animal fact in here. Squirrels will adopt other squirrels babies if they're abandoned. That's really nice. That's adorable. It is. Scientists have observed scientists have observedirrels caring for

Abandoned young Squirrels have families Who would have known The thing about the army doctors You have to stop feeding these people You're going to kill them American soldiers were into that same problem At concentration camps

They had to be physically stopped From feeding these people to death. I believe it's called overfeeding or something like that. Soldiers who thought they were just going to beat the shit out of the people who kept attacking their country found themselves becoming humanitarians for millions of people who were on death's door from starvation. Almost

the entire country was starving. Through just four years of Khmer Rouge power, 25% of the Cambodian population had been killed. Within those numbers lay the destruction of a genocide. A full 70% of the Cham population was destroyed, along with 100% of the Chinese and Vietnamese populations within Cambodia were killed or otherwise displaced. This means looking at the percentages of the targeted populations that Cambodian genocide is one of the most thorough in a single country in human history. It is one of the most deadly genocides ever launched by a nation against its own people. For comparison, the

Holocaust was largely led by Germans against Jews and other people they saw as subhuman across various different countries. So to measure it the same way, you'd need to look at the destruction of the Jewish population or other targeted populations of Germany, which is around 25%. However, if you look at places outside of Germany, like Poland, nearly 90% of Polish Jews were killed. However, unlike the Armenian Genocide or the Holocaust, when it was over, nobody would be swinging from an end of a rope or being shot by an assassin. In fact, shit would get dumb as hell. After Vietnam

invaded, the recognized government of Cambodia, that being the Khmer Rouge, demanded an emergency meeting from the UN Security Council, and got one. Really? There, Prince Sihanouk reappeared, who I believe he'd been living in North Korea during all of this time.

I almost fucking forgot about that guy. Yeah. He hand-waved away the crimes of Pol Pot and said that Vietnam's invasion was illegal and demanded everyone suspend aid going to Vietnam and withdraw all foreign forces from the country. Despite the vast crimes of the Khmer Rouge

being known, pretty publicly at this point, the US, China, France, Norway, Portugal, and the UK supported the prince's resolution, but thankfully it was shot down by the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia. Though after

this, the UN voted to continue to recognize the khmer rouge as the legitimate government of cambodia even though they had just been reduced to isolated jungle camps hiding some of the worst war criminals in modern history fuck the international community cut off vietnam and their newly established mostly puppet admittedly government of cambodia which became one hell of a problem when Vietnam needed help trying to feed the sick and dying of Cambodia. In doing so, they exploded their own economy

and suffered food insecurity at home so they could give some to Cambodians. Imagine the first country to liberate a death camp and everybody was like, ah, we should really recognize the Nazis. And in fact, we should not give any food to these people because the Nazis deserve it instead. That's effectively what the UN did. And a lot of people blame the US

specifically for this. And while the US has a hand in it, because at this point they just want to own Vietnam because they just lost. It's the entire international community, with the exception of like the soviet union there's like pretty much the entire world is like yeah it's fucking bullshit i hate it um like i've pointed out before vietnam pointed out that its invasion was not human humanitarian they did not invade to save the Cambodian people. They did it to fuck up the Khmer Rouge. It just so happened

one of those goals accomplished the other. It's one of those times that regime change is actually good sometimes. In response to Vietnam's liberation of Cambodia, China invaded Vietnam in February of 1979. That next month. Around next month.

Oh. Around one month after the fall of Phnom Penh, about a hundred and something thousand Chinese soldiers, the numbers are kind of hazy, invaded Vietnam. Now, the purpose of China's invasion is hard to pin down because they only talked about it once. It was over.

It was like, it was never one of those things that like, if you don't do X, we're going to do Y. It was just like boom invasion. I mean, they threatened it beforehand because like, Hey, if you invade Vietnam,

if you invade Cambodia, that'd be a bad idea. Cause like, look at all of our boys. And then like China called them on their bullshit or Vietnam called China on their bullshit. And China was like, fuck,

I guess we have to invade now. It was very half-assed. Honestly, didn't know anything about that yeah most yeah a lot of people don't know about the Sino Vietnam War because you know the US generally stops caring about Vietnam once its soldiers leave yeah

you can think of this as once again a punitive invasion but I also don't think that was it because it was an abject failure they didn't uh the the vietnam government did not withdraw from cambodia nor did the comey rouge come back to power so it's hard to pin down why they did this the only thing that makes sense is very clearly an invasion in support of the khmer rouge so you have to accept they meant to force vietnam to withdraw from cambodia maybe even invading and taking hanoi um however that's not what happened uh and vietnam did not confront them in the way

they assumed um vietnam which had just launched a conventional invasion of cambodia about a month and a half before held back thousands, hundreds of thousands of troops, arraying them in guerrilla units and small defensive positions and almost a nationwide defense and depth strategy. And these are not regulars. These are militia forces. Most of the battle hardened Vietnamese troops are in Cambodia at this point. So like these are,

I get you can consider them reserves. They're militia, the irregulars. So So like these are, I get you can consider them reserves. They're militia, the irregulars. So they like a raid, all of these farmers turned soldiers into a nationwide hit and run attack. And Holy shit. Did it work? Really?

Fuck Vietnam. Jesus. And remember the people facing them, they think are regular soldiers from the people's liberation army. They are not. Um, well, that sounds bad them, they think, are regular soldiers from the People's Liberation Army. They are not. While that sounds bad, and it was, and odds are not in Vietnam's favor here, China refused to deploy its air force to support its ground forces, fearing Vietnam's air defenses. Also, Vietnam had a much more experienced air force at this point, and they were afraid of losing their Air Force. They also wouldn't deploy soldiers outside of its air defense bubble.

So they wouldn't have to worry about Vietnam deploying its Air Force against their soldiers. Which meant it moved very slowly. So like they could only move as fast as air defense. Which meant infantry, which probably

could have shocked Vietnam with this war. I mean, Vietnam probably wasn't expecting it. It was more of a surprise attack, uh, had no defensive works in place, had no regular army in place, had militia instead probably could have surged into Hanoi,

which is remember in North Vietnam. Right. Um, and, but all of that is hamstrung by the fact that they're too afraid of the V, uh, of Vietnam's air force. It's kind of hilarious.

Um, which is a, which makes for a very, very slow moving ground invasion. Right. Also another downside, the PLA or the people's liberation army of China was almost universally worse than Vietnam's.

Um, it was almost completely unmechanized, meaning you had to walk. So soldiers being soldiers, this meant that they weren't going to do that. Soldiers are going to find their way to not walk as often as they can. This meant sitting on top of vehicles. But a lot of Vietnam is very very rough terrain so soldiers were afraid they would fall off so they would literally tie themselves to the vehicle so they

didn't fall off what yeah this meant when they got ambushed by the the militia they were literally tied to the biggest target they could and in many cases the Chinese tanks and APCs are trying

to traverse their targets engage target and just rip their own soldiers apart because they were tied to it and just get crushed oh fuck yeah yeah and if that wasn't enough these constant hit and run attacks via the the Vietnamese irregulars also use their own terrain against

them for instance when Chinese forces advanced on a very, very narrow valley road, Vietnam just opened the dam up and flooded it. Look. Nobody's really sure how many Chinese soldiers are dying. The numbers are very iffy, but it's thousands.

So, you're strapping yourself to your tank. Where are you strapping yourself to? I would fucking never do that. Also, like when the first things you're taught in tank school is like, look out for the turret. It will eat you. But I guess the best place to do it would be on top of the turret, at which point you just have to worry about getting shot.

So odds still not good. No, odds are very bad here. Though through sheer force of numbers uh the chinese still advanced but slowly uh but they because they were moving so slowly they could not exploit any breakthroughs that were made like the the vietnamese defensive strategy was not to sit and fight it out they'd hit incur as many casualties as they could on the enemy and then fuck off back into the woods. And eventually, as they got closer to population centers, they began to fight again. Held up, sit in lines, don't let the Chinese advance. And the Chinese would eventually break them.

But they wouldn't be able to exploit any of these breakthroughs because they're moving so goddamn slow. And then as this happens, Vietnamese regulars begin to reappear from cambodia the reason for this is because russia got involved really russia didn't yeah russia did not want to directly intervene with the war because it would start effectively world war iii and the soviet union was quite legitimately worried that the americans would help the chinese which they then did um because the u.s doesn't like china but they hate russia more uh so the soviets instead airlifted tons of supplies uh to vietnam as well as airlifting their own soldiers from cambodia that dropped them back off into Vietnam so they could immediately get back into fighting the Chinese.

Oh, that's helpful. Yeah, the Vietnamese logistics and transportation network is pretty much just Soviets. And it almost certainly won them the war. So as they begin to actually beat the shit out of the militias, actual soldiers reappear with even more fighting under their belt um this brought more and more problems into the pla for that the pla was suffering into the forefront one of which they lacked pretty much any kind of modern communications and supply systems uh they relied on human or animal labor to carry a third of their supplies and all of their tactical signaling was done through flags

like there was no radios yeah not a big flag guy yeah um and a lot of this is built into remember what we talked about when pol pot went to china and he saw the cultural revolution there's a completely deficient training within the pla due to an education collapse uh that occurred during the cultural revolution this led to peasants hastily drafted to the war and received only one or two practice sessions with live ammunition and grenades being for it before being sent directly into combat to fight the most combat-hardened army in that part of the world on their home turf. It's almost like China didn't just see this happen twice

before and ignore it. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. One of the hasty fixes, nobody in the army knew how to read maps. That was a problem. Who needs it? I'm sure northern Vietnam has plenty of easily

signaled road signage in Chinese. I'm sure northern Vietnam has plenty of easily signaled road signage in Chinese. I'm sure. Yeah. So the army hastily implemented a policy of teaching one soldier out of every three how to read maps. How'd that go? Not great. Because it turns out when you're taking heavy casualties, the map guy might die. Yeah.

Also, another problem is they were still deploying tanks that infantry support which is something that we figured out how to do in World War 1 obviously in case someone listening does not know deploying tanks on infantry support is a very good thing to do if you want to kill your own tanks because tanks are

very easily outmaneuvered by infantry and infantry weapons can kill you very easily outmaneuvered by infantry and infantry weapons can kill you very easily but yeah this led to incredibly high levels of losses with Chinese armor because remember the Vietnamese had just been fighting American armor

which is much more competent with infantry support and air support and still knock them out they're like we can figure this out and the one time like the chinese they took it they took over a city and they found it wasn't even worth it because the the vietnamese would fight from what like it was like fighting for the kitchen from the living room they would not retreat so they're like just like hemorrhaging losses in every

direction and not taking over shit meanwhile more and more seasoned soldiers are showing up to dust the PLA. And also, they learned the standard firearm of the day was the SKS for the PLA, while it was the AK-47 for the Vietnamese Army. So, like, even the most standard weapon being used is significantly better, even though the country's, what, like, one one-hundredth of China's size?

Oh, absolutely. That's fucking insane. I remember when we used semi-automatic rifles you fucking idiots yes they're just pumping ak rounds yeah um so after about three weeks of this clusterfuck china declared their objectives met turned around and went home good news we're going home. So even though small border fights continued, China's weirdly half-assed war in Vietnam was over. But Vietnam's war in Cambodia was not. The Khmer Rouge had been kicked out of power, but remember, they started their movement

as a weird jungle insurgency, and they just went right back to that. They went back to launching guerrilla raids against this time an occupying Vietnamese force. Once the once again, rebel Khmer Rouge were propped up by arms material supplied by Thailand, China and the US, meaning that the hatred for the communist Vietnamese government forced the US and China to work together to support one of the worst groups of people to ever come in power in any country throughout any period of history yay

friendship now like one of the things that like the US was supplying was food oddly enough like they supplied a lot of food into what they called refugee camps, which were Khmer Rouge-controlled

rebel camps. Most of the arms and training came from China and Thailand. Thailand was worried that the Vietnamese would invade Thailand because that had been on their drawing board for quite some time. So the Thailand's like, I guess we got to support these guys now. So Vietnam ended up fighting its own vietnam war right next door um veterans of the war talk about hunting shadows in the jungle unsure of where the next attack was going to come from uh they also

talked about how uh if you came back physically unwounded mentally you came back wounded. Oh. Yeah. Which, uh-huh. And, uh, furthermore, they received no accolades when they returned home from their tours in Cambodia due to the fact their government didn't want to talk about how hard the war was going or how deep their involvement was to their own people. By the time the Vietnamese soldiers withdrew

from Cambodia in the 1990s, Jesus, as many as 50,000 of their soldiers died fighting a communist insurgency in the jungle this has to be the most powerful uno reverse card in military history quite legitimately this same fucking thing happened to the united states even the casualties were almost the same and like there's like a small memorial in i believe hanoi uh for like the soldiers of the war that meet up like once a year to hang out with other veterans but like

nobody gives a fuck about them i was like i was reading this and like couldn't help giggling because like obviously vietnam did the right thing by invading cambodia that's inarguable but the fact that they like only like five years removed from their own war against the u.s they found themselves in an imperialist quagmire in the jungle like fuck um now you're probably wondering what the hell happened to pol pot yeah actually yeah i am wondering that well as the Khmer Rouge were still the recognized government of the country, he was still technically in charge. Isn't that fun? Really?

But he eventually actually stepped down as a PR moved. He realized that, like, man, people really aren't going to like me. So he stepped down and made somebody else Prime Minister. Eventually, the prince decided he needed to make himself look better as well

and distance himself from Pol Pot, as well as the rest of the Khmer Rouge leadership, and became prince of Cambodia again. He died not a royal anymore, but not because of any connection to the Khmer Rouge. Yep, that sucks. But the stress of the constant fighting and losing not because any connection to the Khmer Rouge. Um, yep, that sucks. Uh, but the stress of the constant fighting and losing led to fractures with the

Khmer Rouge movement, making them weaker and weaker as the years of their insurgency went by. Uh, and then, uh, Pol Pot suffered a stroke and then got cancer. Good. Um,

I've never cheered for cancer before, but I'll take this. Um, now this badly sickened him and left him mostly housebound and attached to a tank of hot oxygen at all times. But that did not stop him from ordering hits from his house. Really? Yeah, to include the execution of Song Sen, the former minister of national defense, because he thought he was going to overthrow him. Though he himself was eventually ousted from power in 1998.

Jesus. 1998. Holy. And placed under house arrest by Ta Mok, known as brother number four while they were still in power. Okay, we're still alone with house arrest. Got it. Yeah, he's under house arrest.

Ta Mok was also trying to fight for relevance and for the Khmer Rouge's image in Cambodia and he was like attempting to like bring the Campuchian Communist Party back into the political fold and realize I probably can't do this

if I still have Pol Pot hanging around though to be like Tom Mock was a hundred percent implicated in all of these crimes as well so he made a deal with the government to turn over Pol Pot to them and to be charged with crimes against humanity. The next day, Pol Pot was dead. It's generally accepted that Pol Pot found out about Tom Ock's plan and killed himself.

They said it was like an overdose of heart medication and Valium, which is a much better death than this man deserves. I was kind of hoping for something else. Yeah, I was kind of hoping, I don't know, being beaten to death with an axe. And the Cambodian government propped up his body on a table and took a picture of it just so everybody knew, like, hey, look, this motherfucker's dead.

The monster's dead. Because they were afraid that nobody would believe them and He's dead. He's the monster's dead. Like, cause they were afraid that nobody would believe them and he would still be out in the jungle. Yeah. Even though he was like fucking 80 by then. Um, though,

thankfully Tom mock struggle was for nothing because he was captured in 1999 and put on trial for crimes against humanity alongside comrade Dutch and a few others. Now I do have to point out, there was a different trial before this. This one sponsored by the UN, the one before being sponsored by Vietnam and with their puppet government, and pretty much handed out carte blanche death sentences for everybody involved, which, okay. I mean, I know most of it was show trials, and there was very little

investigations being done here. I'm going to let that slide, that know most of it was show trials, and there was very little investigations being done here. I'm going to let that slide, that situation, but nobody was ever put to death for it. Oh. Because they lacked the ability to actually track these people down. However, they base it under this new one, which was called the Extraordinary Chambers of the Courts of Cambodia, or otherwise known as the Khmer Rouge Tribunal.

And it came under the guidance of the UN. And most of these guys were getting very old. Like, for instance, Dutch turned himself in. And he actually seemed to be the only guy in a serious point of power that was like, no, everything I did was a fucking, like, I'm a horrible person and I deserve all of this. So he turned himself in.

And that's actually where most of this information from the inner workings of the state come from, because he was very open with everything. Pretty much everybody else refused to acknowledge their part, or like Brother No. 2 in the documentary Enemies of the People was like, i was all the spies i wasn't us that that had all the all this bad stuff happening it was the spies um but yeah he turned him he turned himself in he was living pretty much

freely a lot of these guys became school teachers in china um ironic um, yeah, but they were eventually all eventually captured. Um, but yeah, um, unfortunately because it's the UN, the death penalty is off the table. They will not sense anybody to death. Really?

Yep. Comrade Dutch or King Keck Lou was charged with crimes against humanity. He was also the only person involved who never denied anything. He opened up to all of his crimes and told the court in detail what he remembered doing and who ordered him to do what. This ended up being evidence against his other co-conspirators.

He was sentenced to life in prison and died this year, 2020, from COVID. What? Yep. Nguyen Che, or brother number two, was charged with genocide

of the Vietnamese and Chams, as well as crimes against humanity. He denied everything and instead blamed the failings of the Khmer Rouge government and the CIA and the Vietnamese. He was found guilty and also sentenced to life in prison. He died in 2019. Lang Sari,

or brother number three, or co-founder of the Khmer Rouge with Pol Pot was charged with crimes against humanity and genocide but died before his trial finished Q Semphan probably the most powerful man to stand trial he was considered Pol Pot's

right hand man and he was the one that Pol Pot handed the title of prime minister to when it was no longer looked kind of bad when if Pol Pot was still in charge when he was in the jungle camps it was no longer looked kind of bad when if Pol Pot was still in charge when he was in the jungle camps it was him. He became prime minister. So he's only the second prime minister of democratic

Campuchea to exist. He was charged with crimes against humanity and genocide. He denied all of his roles and said he never did anything wrong and he actually blamed Pol Pot for a lot of it since he was dead and couldn't be punished anymore. He was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison where he remains alone

today. The last living senior member of the Khmer Rouge. And I hope he fucking rots and piss. That's still crazy how recent it was. Yeah. I remember it was a couple months ago. I read the article about Comrade

Dutch dying and I was like holy shit like every once while you forget how recent like vietnam pulled the troops back in the early 90s like grunge was fucking pop like kurt cobain was probably put out in utero while vietnam was fighting a guerrilla war in cambodia like this shit is very very very recent. Um, and yeah, I hope Semphon gets fucking stabbed by a guard. I don't give a shit. Fuck him. Um, now Nick,

we can actually end this entire series on a good note. Okay. This series, we do. This series is terrible. If you listen to the whole thing, I hope you learn something. I hope you learn something new about human psychology,

by history, about not beating people to death with axe handles. So we do a thing on the show called Questions from the Legion, where if you are a Patreon supporter, you can ask us a question. It can easily be the best part of the show, like it is right now. Sometimes it fucking is. Jesus Christ. And if you'd like to ask this question you can email it to us you can ask us to on discord or you can message us on patreon

for just one dollar a month um and this question is what is the year's almost over we're in the middle of december we're recording this in the middle of december by the time it comes out it'll be the end of december almost 2021. It's been a shit year. But it's been a very interesting year for our podcast. We broke 1 million downloads, which I feel very great about. Oh, yeah. Mind-blowing. We became the second most popular podcast in Albania,

which is very weird. I love it. What's up, boys? I know we gave you a shout-out. Our show blew up after I guest starred on Behind the Bastards. Well, There's Your Problem, Trash Future. It's a weird couple months for us. And we've had a lot of good episodes as well.

And this question from the Legion is, which is your favorite episode that you made this year? There's a lot of them. I just have to remember what we did this year because I think mine is the death of

President Garfield that is by far one of my favorite episodes and I know you weren't on it so I feel shitty bringing that you were in the field again I understand where I'm at that was one of the ones that we did

with Francis Horton from Hell of a Way to Die and our podcast Lawyer Shocks as always but my favorite one that Nick was in on I think it's probably part three of our Russo-Japanese War series

oh my god that the fleet yeah yeah that one was one of my favorites i've been wanting to do that episode for so fucking long um and i have to give a shout out to our episode about robert e lee um because like uh the guys over at gizmondo fucking published that. That one blew up. And I had a lot of, I can't say I had a lot of fun talking about slaves being beaten. I'm glad it was made. I was totally into the Russo-Japanese War. Also, the U-Boat Life.

U-Boat Life, very good. I like that one. We also had our episode on the crippled eagles of Rhodesia, which led to a Zimbabwean man pissing on the grave of a Nazi who's buried over there, which is amazing. Um, we had a lot of good ones this year, man.

Um, it's weird. Uh, this is, we're going into our third, this is going to be our third year doing the show. And, um,

obviously we'll do a three year episode. Probably. I don't know if we really need to at this point anymore because we can't really be shocked that it continues. Yeah, right? Every day we make it, it still shocks me. I'm like, wow. I uploaded an episode this morning, part one of the series.

And I made coffee, came back, and 1,500 people had downloaded it in 10 minutes. So it's like, I'm glad that... This year has had a fucking solid stock of episodes. And I have a hard time saying which one was my favorite. It was one of the 20 that we just named. I mean, it's hard to live down some of the stuff that we've made in the past, like the Soviet-Afghan War series. Everyone's favorite series.

We're never going to outdo that. I'm glad that every year we can keep making episodes that we're legitimately proud of. I hope that answered your question. Nick, thank you for suffering through this with me. Yeah, this was awful. I can't wait for the palate cleanser.

Whatever episode we make next, I have an idea. It's not going to have anything to do with what we normally talk about but it's gonna be a palate cleanser to end all palate cleansers i feel like that we need that and i look for shotguns to the dicks live that is not what i meant uh donate to the patreon today and nick will shoot his dick off with a shotgun for your entertainment thanks for joining me again thank you everybody for sitting through four and a half five hours of this

wouldn't recommend hopefully you learned something hopefully you didn't rage quit halfway through if you did I get it sadly I learned anytime I come on here, I have to learn. And until next week,

hang war criminals. Later!