His other historical works are so poorly executed that they are generally regarded as unsuitable sources even for undergraduate term papers. Yet De Pauw cites Laffin as the sole authority on several significant aspects of women's participation in the Vietnam War. The sheer implausibility of this scenario scarcely requires demonstration. Let me tell you how it was in the old days. Yet it is included in De Pauw's text without so much as a raised eyebrow.
Credulity shapes wider arguments as well.
De Pauw, firmly committed to the existence of Amazon cultures in the ancient world, uses a limited and questionable body of evidence to depict not merely bands, but entire armies of women warriors. The combat memories of modern female soldiers are accepted as they are presented, without even the limited critical framework employed by battle narrators like Gerald Astor or Stephen Ambrose. De Pauw is similarly willing to take at face value accounts of women's participation in combat without questioning the agendas of the systems sponsoring those accounts. The Soviet Union and the DRV each had good reasons to assert that they were fighting people's wars in which gender was irrelevant. Neither system was characterized by respect for inconvenient facts.