US Vietnam War posters and leaflets, 1954–1975

This gallery collects 42 records from the FRAME snapshot made between 1954 and 1973 that were either issued or filed by a US government office for audiences in Vietnam, or printed by private American groups arguing about the war at home. Cards run in date order and show the identifier the archive records.

The grid mixes two kinds of speaker on purpose, because the period did. Most of the official sheets are in Vietnamese. They come from the U.S. Information Agency poster series for Asia (1954–1957 and 1964), the Psychological Warfare Posters series that the National Archives credits to the Joint U.S. Public Affairs Office (JUSPAO), and leaflets credited to JUSPAO, MACV-SOG, the U.S. Army, and a U.S. Marine unit. The private sheets are in English and come from the Library of Congress: student committees, the Mothers' Crusade, Young Americans for Freedom, the New Mobilization and Student Mobilization committees, the United States Servicemen's Fund, the Committee to Help Unsell the War, the Socialist Workers Party campaign, Students for a Democratic Society, and Voices in Vital America.

The anti-Nazi gallery on this site leaves out foreign-language sheets. This one cannot, because what the US government said to Vietnamese is half its subject. It still leaves out sheets that the records credit only to the South Vietnamese government or to provincial offices, even when the National Archives files them in the same series. Every card here names an American office or an American group in the maker line, or sits in a series the archive credits to one. Where an official sheet prints no American name, the card is still here, and the essay page says so.

Where this site has an essay, the card opens it. Otherwise it opens the FRAME record. If the line under the title says "no primary id in the snapshot," the record gives no NARA number, and none is supplied here. Translations on the essay pages are FRAME's machine renderings unless the page says otherwise.

The 1964 Gulf of Tonkin photograph and the 1965 Defense Department film still are in the grid because they are the government's words to Americans. The Pentagon Papers are not, because no record in the archive snapshot covers them. North Vietnamese and National Liberation Front posters are outside this site's scope. The parent page is US Vietnam War messaging, 1954–1975.