Vietnam stab-in-the-back myth

[4] Jeffrey Kimball wrote that the United States' defeat "produced a powerful myth of betrayal that was analogous to the archetypal Dolchstoßlegende of post-World War I Germany.

Joseph A. Fry contends that the Joint Chiefs of Staff and SPIS, by blaming the media and antiwar protesters for misrepresenting the war, cultivated the stab-in-the-back myth.

[9] In 1978 and 1979, Nixon and Kissinger respectively published best-selling memoirs that were based on access to still-classified documents, which suppressed the decent interval theory and "prop[ped] up the Dolchstoßlegende," according to the historian Ken Hughes.

"[11] However, the historian Ben Buley has written that Summers' book is actually one of the most significant exponents of the myth, in a subtle form in which the military is criticized, but the primary responsibility for the defeat lies with civilian policymakers.

[12] In his 2001 book The Culture of Defeat: On National Trauma, Mourning, and Recovery, Wolfgang Schivelbusch denied the existence of a Vietnam stab-in-the-back myth comparable to the German one.

"[1] Kimball writes that the stab-in-the-back charge was resurrected in the 2004 United States presidential election in which the candidate John Kerry was criticized for opposing the war after his return from Vietnam.