| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 105.1

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 105.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Asia

John Prados. The Blood Road: The Ho Chi Minh Trail and the Vietnam War. New York: John Wiley and Sons. 1999. Pp. xvi, 432. $35.00.

The "Ho Chi Minh Trail" was the land route by which men, munitions, and supplies went from North to South Vietnam during the Vietnam War. It was not a single route but a network of trails through the Truong Son or Annamite Cordillera, the mountain range along the border between Vietnam and Laos. It expanded continuously as the war went on. New routes were added, and footpaths were upgraded to dirt roads and, eventually in some places, to multi-lane paved highways. The size and armament of the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) forces operating the trail and guarding it from ground and air attack grew in proportion. The main routes lay in the western part of the Truong Son, in Laos, detouring around the Demilitarized Zone that directly separated North from South Vietnam. 1

In the 1960s, the trail was a major supply line for the Communist forces in South Vietnam, but not the only one; important shipments also came by sea. In the 1970s, when the shift to a more conventional style of warfare greatly expanded the Communist forces' munitions needs, the trail became for a while the only important route by which those needs could be met. The Communist victory of 1975 could not have been won without it. . . .

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