The Blood Road: The Ho Chi Minh Trail and the Vietnam War

"The Trail undeniably lay at the heart of the war," writes John Prados in the introduction to The Blood Road. The Vietnam War cannot be understood properly without considering this elusive path from North Vietnam to South Vietnam, which helped the Viet Cong defeat the armed forces of a much more powerful country. "Building the Trail or hiking it became the central experience for a generation of Vietnamese from the North," says Prados. The Trail--known as the Truong Son Strategic Supply Route to the Communists and as the Ho Chi Minh Trail to the Americans--was composed of more than 12,000 miles of roads and paths, and it remained open throughout the course of the conflict despite American efforts to close it. When the Nixon administration ordered attacks on Cambodia and Laos, the goal was to destroy the Trail and its supply depots. Prados suggests that the result of the Vietnam War might have been different if the United States had somehow managed to shut down the Trail, even though he also acknowledges the extreme difficulty of succeeding at this task. The Blood Road offers a fresh look at an old debate, and marks a welcome contribution to the literature on the Vietnam War. --John J. Miller