A world famous video, the photo of a young girl burned in napalm in 1972 has almost no influence on the Vietnam War, according to several researchers. Because another event swept the news ten days later: the watergate.
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It is an icon of photojournalism. Its original title, The Terror of War, ended up fading behind Napalm Girl. The image shows a small, frightened Vietnamese, current naked on a road, arms apart. It has just been seriously burned in a napalm bombing on June 8, 1972, near Trang Bang, a village located about fifty kilometers from Saigon.
The image of Nick Ut, a Sud-Vietnamese photoreporter, goes around the world and deeply marks the memory of the Americans. To the point that many end up attributing a decisive influence to Napalm Girl: it would have ended the Vietnam War. What exactly?
Sources:
the icons of Vietnam and their power , thesis Doctorate by Camille Rouquet, (dir. François Brunet), Paris-Diderot University, Manuscript, 2017.
avatars of “napalm girl”: variations around A Vietnam War icon