Visit Beautiful Vietnam
Visit Beautiful Vietnam: An ABC of Aggressions today is a collection of essays by the German philosopher Günther Anders. The original edition was published in 1968 under the title Visit Beautiful Vietnam: ABC der Aggressionen heute by Pahl-Rugenstein in Cologne.
The author is said to have once remarked to Herbert Marcuse that the book was better than the first volume of his work The Outdatedness of Human Beings.
Content
The work is structured as an Abecedarium, an alphabetically organized "ABC of Aggressions." In short essays, Anders addresses concepts and topics related to the Vietnam War. He draws comparisons between American military strategies in Vietnam and the methods of National Socialism, particularly regarding industrial-scale destruction, the use of oppressed populations as soldiers, and the propagandistic minimization of violence.The style is essayistic and polemical. Anders aims not only to inform but also to provoke a moral reaction through historical analogies and pointed metaphors.
Context
By the 1960s, Anders was already a vocal critic of the Vietnam War and participated in the Russell Tribunal in 1967, which investigated U.S. war crimes in Vietnam. In the foreword to the original edition, he warned about the potential use of tactical nuclear weapons. An expanded German edition - with a slightly changed title - was released in 2023 by CEP Europäische Verlagsanstalt, Hamburg, edited by Gerhard Oberschlick with an afterword by the German historian Bernd Greiner. The 2023 edition emphasizes the timelessness of his analyses, particularly in relation to modern warfare and geopolitical strategies.Reception
Visit Beautiful Vietnam is considered a provocative contribution to political philosophy, media critique, and war analysis. In literary criticism, Anders is often compared to theorists such as Hannah Arendt, who explored similar themes of power, propaganda, and violence. The 2023 German edition and a 2024 French translation highlight the ongoing relevance of his thought.Quotation
From the foreword:
„Nicht unmöglich, dass sich durch das Gelingen der vietnamesischen Offensive die Lage radikal zum Guten wendet, oder – wer weiß? – durch den Einsatz taktischer nuklearer Waffen radikal zum Schlimmen wenden werde. Und durchaus nicht undenkbar, dass sich unter Umständen die Frage erheben wird, ob denn die hier vorgelegten Analysen auch heute noch gültig seien.“
"It is not impossible that the success of the Vietnamese offensive could radically turn the situation for the better, or—who knows?—that the use of tactical nuclear weapons could radically turn it for the worse. And it is by no means inconceivable that, under certain circumstances, the question may arise whether the analyses presented here are still valid today."